From: newsletter-bounces@thepcgurus.com on behalf of Kevin-PC Gurus
[microdome@seidata.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2007 8:24 PM
To: jpdurbin@jpdurbin.net
Cc: PC Gurus Newsletter
Subject: GuruNews, Volume 7 Number 40, 10-18-07
Attachments: ATT00104.txt
Welcome to GuruNews
Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.
You can interact with the PC Guru team via our Web site, located at http://www.thepcgurus.com. On our site you can post your computer questions, comments and rants on the forums, e-mail the PC Guru
team members and chat one on one in our nightly IRC chat beginning around 8:00 PM EST. You can also subscribe to our RSS feeds so you can get the latest news and forum updates from the PC Guru Web site directly on your computer.
If you're new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin's website at http://www.jpdurbin.net. There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.
The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region. Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.
USS Rover’s list of streaming computer shows is now available for download in Excel, Open Office and Linux ready formats from http://ussrover.googlepages.com/ussrover%26%2339%3Bscomputershowlist
To subscribe to this newsletter just drop by www.thepcgurus.com and sign up!
Vol. 7, No. 40
10-18-07
1 A fond farewell
2 In Memoriam
3 DRM free music, Apple felines, spyware marriage, the death of YouTube
4 Lets all relax
5 Bogus bounce messages
Working for a small business means I wear many hats ranging from repair tech to salesman. As such I often deal with retired folks who are buying their first computer (usually at the urging of their kids or grandkids) and are scared to death of making a bad decision or clicking the wrong thing after they get online and destroying the machine.
These folks didn’t grow up with the technology, nor did they have to use it for work, so they generally feel overwhelmed and I try to offer as much help as possible. On occasion however, I’ll get a customer who isn’t afraid of the computer and, while not up on the latest fads and technology, knows what he wants the PC to do and is already familiar with them. Joe Hensley was such a man.
I’ve known of Joe since I was in High School. He was the Fifth Circuit judge in Madison, IN and was mentioned often in the local papers. He also served as an Indiana State Representative and was both a private attorney and, for a time, a prosecuting attorney.
All of that aside, Joe was a writer. He wrote science fiction short stories and mystery novels and has published hundreds of items since the early 50’s. I initially “met” Joe through a short story in a science fiction anthology called “Dangerous Visions”. I picked this up in a used bookstore as a freshman in college back in ’81 (yes, I’m that old), mainly because it was edited by one of my favorite writers, Harlan Ellison.
The introduction for the story clued me in to the fact that the writer was our local Joe Hensley and I loved the story, controversial as it was for the time. These were dangerous visions, after all.
Needless to say I was thrilled when Joe wandered into the shop looking to purchase a new PC. I finally got to meet the man behind the words, and he was almost exactly like I imagined him. Set in his ways, very outgoing but unflinching when stating his opinions, kind of the curmudgeonly grandfather with the heart of gold. And man was he quick witted! Age had done nothing to Joe Hensley; he was as sharp as he’d ever been.
Over the next half hour or so I discovered that he just wanted a glorified typewriter. Bells and whistles were unneeded; it just had to run the DOS version of Word Perfect and print to a laser printer.
We talked several times after that and I asked him once about that old “Lord Randy” story. He laughed and told me stories about Ellison and his early search for buyers for his work. All in all he was just a great guy and an excellent wordsmith and I met him solely because of a computer, even though I think he would have been happier with an IBM Selectric.
Joe died about six weeks ago on August 27th. He was 81. He will be missed.
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Apple Inc. today cut prices
of copy-protection-free music by 30% to 99
cents, matching the standard for iTunes tracks that come with
restrictions and narrowing the gap between its prices and those of
rivals:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=networking_and_internet&articleId=9043005&taxonomyId=16
And also from Cupertino: Apple announced
Tuesday
that its newest operating system, one in a long line named after cats,
will be released at 6 p.m. Oct. 26:
http://www.mercurynews.com/businessheadlines/ci_7200810
In a marriage made in cyberspace if not in
heaven, MySpaceIM with Skype
will allow users of both services to call and IM each other at will:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202403873
YouTube debuted copyright enforcement measures
this week. The technology is designed to let content owners prevent YouTube
users
from uploading copies of their videos, or they can have the choice of
monetizing unauthorized uploads with ads:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202403363
Copy us on the good stuff.
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
As this long hot summer
finally fades into fall we might find ourselves in contemplative moods. Dark clouds rolling over a mountainous shoreline
can lead to a certain serenity. This
soothing desktop theme called "Sea Dance" should help you keep your
equilibrium--for free. The wallpaper is a tranquil beach with mountains in the
distance; it appears to be evening and fog sits on the water.
While I don't use themes and
screensavers I know many, if not most, of you do like them. The website Patina's Treasures has dozens of
themes and screensavers to browse and download.
Get the "Sea Dance" theme and saver here:
http://www.patinastreasures.com/4sdance.shtml
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I am getting 60 to 100 e-mails daily stating
that the e-mails that I sent
are unable to be delivered. Reasons are that they are considered spam,
e-mail error, out of office,over quota, etc.
I didn't sent these e-mails in the first place.
Is there anything I can
do to prevent these and what is causing this problem? Appreciate any
help!
A: More than likely someone who has your email
address in their address
book is infected with a virus and/or a zombie spam-bot computer has
your email address. What viruses like that do is to randomly pick
names from people's address book and use them for the "From" and
"To"
fields to spoof who the email actually came from. The electronic
"postmaster" rejects the email for the reasons you outlined but sends
it back to you, since your address was in the "From" field.
Unfortunately there is not much you can do about it. If one spam-bot
has your email address, it has pretty much spread to every junkmail
generator in the world within minutes. It is also unfortunate that
Webmasters don't set their mail servers to NOT automatically generate
these error messages as they don't serve their intended purpose anymore.
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
Contact
info and legal stuff
If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or
submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the “Email the Team” icon.
Copyright 2001-2007 The PC Gurus, all rights
reserved. Publication, rebroadcast or
storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward
this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and
B) no fee is charged.
Information provided in this publication is provided
"as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or
implied. Although the information
provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL systems. Make use of any information supplied at your
own risk.
The PC Gurus are a group of volunteers who provide
support for the PC, Mac and Linux users in the Kentuckiana region.
To unsubscribe from this newsletter visit http://thepcgurus.com/mailman/listinfo/newsletter_thepcgurus.com or send an email to microdome@seidata.com with the words “unsubscribe newsletter” (without the quotes) at the top of the body of the message.