From: newsletter-bounces@thepcgurus.com on behalf of Kevin-PC Gurus
[microdome@seidata.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:35 PM
To: jpdurbin@jpdurbin.net
Cc: PC Gurus Newsletter
Subject: GuruNews, Volume 8 Number 11, 3-20-08
Attachments: ATT00024.txt
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Vol. 8, No. 11
3-20-08
1 Productivity during March Madness
2 Hello, Police?
3 Hacking contest, Linux loony, RFID exploit, is your PC Pwnd?
4 New scanner
5 Network collaboration
This year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament started today and managers everywhere are either shaking in their boots or caught up in the madness themselves. I know, I know, technically it started Tuesday night with the play-in game, but that was just a pointless contest to determine North Carolina’s first victim.
Between filling out brackets, running office pools and watching streaming video of the games the estimates for the loss in productivity this year are as high as $3.8 billion. Yes, that was a “b”.
Newspapers all over the country have quoted this figure but I found it smelled a little funky. How can you estimate something like that when there are so many variables? So a bit of Googling turned up http://www.slate.com/id/2138333, which pretty much debunks the whole theory.
Lovely tidbit’s like: “In concocting his lost-productivity estimate, Challenger doesn't acknowledge that "wasted time" is built into every workday. Workers routinely shop during office hours, take extended coffee breaks, talk to friends on the phone, enjoy long lunches, or gossip around the water cooler. It's likely that NCAA tourney fans merely reallocate to the games the time they ordinarily waste elsewhere. Likewise, many office workers who don't complete their tasks by the end of the day stay late or take work home. If fans who screw off at work ultimately do their work at home, the alleged "loss" to productivity would be a wash.” making a compelling argument that the whole “lost productivity” idea is a myth.
And if it does hold water, I’ll do my part by offering the link to streaming video of every game ;) http://www.ncaasports.com/mmod offers them all for free, but keep in mind that the site can apparently handle only 200,000 concurrent connections so odds are you won’t get in.
Brackets, on the other hand, are available all over the place and make managing your office pool a breeze. CBS, ESPN, Yahoo and hundreds of others allow you to create free groups for each of your participants to use, although they usually require a free account.
These sites track the results of the games and do all the scoring for you. No more spending hours during the first weekend doing everything by hand, just check the web for your group’s standings.
This is fine and quite a time saver, but in the age of social networking people are making mistakes that could land them in the crossbar hotel. As a general rule office pools are viewed the same as a neighborhood poker game. Get some friends together, toss a few quarters in the pot and deal the cards, nobody cares. But if the house takes a cut, it’s illegal. And in the US, at least, if it’s done online it’s illegal.
Social networking sites like Facebook have users who are starting to create bracket groups and charge a buy-in to participate. Bad news folks, the FBI is already looking into it and if you set up or participate in one of these online pools you may get an unexpected and unwanted visit.
Keep your friendly wagers in-house, don’t take a cut to pay for your trouble of running it and DON’T invite people online to participate and buy-in with Paypal and you’ll be fine. Failure to follow those simple rules could mean someone else will be running the pool next year.
Now cross your fingers for your picks and prepare for the inevitable bracket meltdown.
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Pwn2Own competition at this year’s CanSecWest pits Vista against Ubuntu against OS X Leopard. Lat year’s winner took complete control of a remote computer in under 12 hours, guess which OS:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/pwn2own_contest_returns/
Linux guru loses his “cool” during murder trial:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/hans-reiser-stu.html
Think RFID is a secure technology? You, too, can hack it for about $8:
http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/how-to-hack-an-rfide.html
40% of computers connected computers are compromised by spambots:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2008-03-16-computer-botnets_N.htm
Matthew Dattilo
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
Looking for an anti-malware
tool with a little something extra? Hazard Shield claims to be a fast
anti-malware program that can do both manual scans and real-time monitoring for
ongoing protection. At this time, we're
still evaluating the real-time protection but it hasn't created any problems to
date. Hazard Shield definitely completed
its scan quickly. What’s more, it found
several items that Spyware Doctor appears to have missed. Hazard Shield has a
few other features, like the ability to delete those pesky hard-to-remove files
that are locked or in use, an uninstaller, and more. Hazard Shield can scan
both local and network drives. It’s free
here: http://www.orbitech.org/hazardshield.html
*Note: Softpedia guarantees
that Hazard Shield is 100% FREE, which means it is a freeware product (both for personal and
commercial use) that does not contain any form of malware, including but not
limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: Is there any way (hopefully, free or cheaply) to set up an Excel document and have three additional people - all in different locations - also be able to access and edit the document? We already have a message board set up for the group, but I don't think there is any way to incorporate an Excel document there. I considered a wiki of some kind but, again, I don't think I can use the Excel format. The purpose is for all of us to be able to post, rate and briefly comment on a variety of products we try. I thought an Excel document would work, but I'm open to other suggestions as well. Thanks!!
A: Interesting question, and I think I may just
have what you need. Google Documents, at http://docs.google.com looks to be something that would be of good
use. If you have a Google/GMail account already, you will be able to go
right in and upload the existing document with the upload button. When it
is uploaded, click in the check mark next to the entry in the main pane, and
click the share button. In that pane, you will be able to enter the
e-mail addresses of anyone who needs to be able to edit the document. As
they log in, they will be able to exert the same control over the document to
be able to edit it. You can view revisions of it by going in to the
document and clicking on the revisions tab. And when you want to save it
back to your computer, just go to File > Export > .xls, and it will be
back on your hard drive.
Hope this helps, and e-mail us back if you have any questions!
Daniel A. Williams
daniel@thepcgurus.com
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