GCC Newsletter

First off, I have to apologize for not getting my newsletter article out sooner. I’ve been working on and off for the last month, trying to find software that would make for a robust utility release, and I ran down to the wire with getting everything organized, filed, and burned. I think this is the best release I’ve made to the club library so far. It’s nearly full of all kinds of utilities, productivity software, and all kinds of goodies. As an overview I’ll mention a few of the things on the disk.

First, I’ve made sure to include several of the programs that have been mentioned at the club meetings at the question and answer time. There is an updated version of Cain and Abel, updated versions of Spyware Search and Destroy, Adaware, and Microsoft’s Antispywarebeta. I’ve included several benchmarking/testing tools, as we’ve needed updated ones in the last few months, to be able to check hardware during the fix-it portion of the meeting, namely Everest Home Edition and Sandra 2005 SE. I have a couple of bookmarks checkup utilities one that was mentioned and another I found along the way, AM Deadlink. I included several different CD/DVD burning packages, including DVD Shrink, DVD Decryptor (the final release), and a freeware burner called CD BurnerXP Pro. I’ve included a large selection of graphic/animation tools, including some new ones from Microsoft, and a complete open source 3D animation program. Lots of goodies if you are into photo editing or animation, or would even like to touch up some old photos. I’ve included the newest video drivers for both NVidia as well as ATI, and have also included a driver updater program, for general driver use. I have a selection of internet tools, mainly search engines, and an IM program called Miranda. Also, I have a Media Player section, that has a couple of good music/video players, as well as a CODEC package that has codec’s for the most popular video formats, as well as freeware substitutes for QuickTime and Real Media’s players. I have a ton of system
monitoring/maintenance programs that can view/monitor all aspects of your computer system, as well as controlling various functions of your system. There are too many tools here to talk about them all, but this section alone is worth the time to view the CD.
I’ve included a Windows System Tools section that has a few other goodies that weren’t put in the maintenance programs section.

The last but not least section was a neat little section called Portable Programs. I found versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and OpenOffice that all will run directly from a jumpdrive or flashdrive. If you were to put them on a removable memory drive, you’d have access to an Internet viewer wherever you went, as well as access to Microsoft Office documents, through Open Office. The other file in this section is called Metropipe Net-Portable Virtual Privacy Machine, whew that was a mouthful. This is a
complete internet communications system running from a jumpdrive. It includes Firefox web browser, email software, PGP software, and even a few games. All this and it boots directly from your jump drive. No software to install, it just runs virtually off the drive.

Thanx so much for you time and I’ll see you at the meeting.

Jason Whitener

ICANN Creating Virtual Red-Light District

Jun 13, 10:08 AM (ET)

By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK (AP) - A red-light district tentatively cleared for construction on the Internet - the ".xxx" domain - is being billed by backers as giving the $12 billion online porn industry a great opportunity to clean up its act.

A distinct online sector for the salacious, one with rules aimed at forbidding trickery, will reduce the chances of Internet users accidentally stumbling on porn sites, they argue. If only it were so simple:

Zoning in cyberspace has always been a daunting proposition, and participation in the porn domain will be voluntary. Critics wonder why ".xxx" got the OK at all when so many other proposals sit unaddressed, some for years.

Nearly five years after rejecting a similar proposal, the Internet's key oversight body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, voted 6-3 this month to proceed with ".xxx."

ICANN staff will now craft a contract with ICM Registry Inc., the Jupiter, Fla., company that made the bid. If the board and ultimately the U.S. Commerce Department approve it, ".xxx" names could appear in use by the year's end.

The market unquestionably exists: Two in five Internet users visited an adult site in April, according to tracking by comScore Media Metrix. The company said 4 percent of all Web traffic and 2 percent of all surfing time involved an adult site.

As envisioned, ICM would charge $60 for each of up to 500,000 names it expects to register, $10 of which would go to a nonprofit organization that would, among other things, educate parents about safe surfing for children.

The nonprofit, run by representatives of adult Web sites, free-speech, privacy and child-advocacy concerns, would determine registration eligibility.

Skeptics argue, however, that porn sites are likely to keep their existing ".com" storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new ".xxx" domain name. And that will reduce the effectiveness of software filters set up to simply block all ".xxx" names.

The ".xxx" domain "legitimizes this group, and it gives false hope to parents," said Patrick Trueman, senior legal counsel at the Family Research Council and a former Justice Department official in charge of obscenity prosecutions.

The adult entertainment industry is also hardly behind ".xxx" as a group. Many of its webmasters consider the domain "the first step toward driving the adult Internet into a ghetto very much like zoning laws have driven adult stores into the outskirts," said Mark Kernes, senior editor at the trade monthly Adult Video News.

ICM insists it would fight any government efforts to compel its use by adult Web sites, but the existence of ".xxx" would certainly make the prospect easier.

"There are going to be pressures" to mandate it once available, said Marjorie Heins, coordinator of the Free Expression Policy Project at New York University's law school. Federal lawmakers have proposed such requirements in the past.

Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer hired by ICM to address free-speech issues, said the company has pledged $250,000 for a legal defense fund to keep ".xxx" voluntary, and he notes that courts have struck down efforts to make movie ratings mandatory.

"Where governments have tried to use private labeling systems as proxies for regulation, courts have always held those measures unconstitutional," he said.

Even if it's voluntary, supporters say, adult sites will have incentives to use ".xxx."

"If the carrot's big enough, you're going to get sites in there," said Parry Aftab, an Internet safety expert who served as an informal adviser on ".xxx."

Stuart Lawley, ICM's chairman and president, said use of ".xxx" could protect companies from prosecution under a 2003 federal law that bars sites from tricking children into viewing pornography - as ".xxx" would clearly denote an adult site.

All sites using ".xxx" would be required to follow yet-to-be-written "best practices" guidelines, such as prohibitions against trickery through spamming and malicious scripts.

Lawley said those requirements could make credit-card issuers more confident about accepting charges. The online porn industry currently faces higher fees because some sites engage in fraud and customers often deny authorizing payments.

But given the limited effectiveness of a voluntary ".xxx" for filtering, Internet filtering expert Seth Finkelstein calls ".xxx" no more than a mechanism "to extract fees from bona fide pornographers and domain name speculators." (ICANN also gets an unspecified cut of each registration fee.)

Even if it were mandatory, it wouldn't be foolproof.

A domain name serves merely as an easy-to-remember moniker for a site's actual numeric Internet address. David Burt, a spokesman for filtering vendor Secure Computing Corp., said a child could simply use the numeric address when the ".xxx" equivalent gets blocked.

Better technologies exist, he said, including a little-used self-rating system that lets Web sites broadcast whether they contain nudity, violence or foul language, along with the specific forms, such as presence of genitals or passionate kissing.

Burt also favors a ".kids" domain that would serve as a safe haven for children. The U.S. government has approved one under ".us," but support has been cool, with only about two dozen ".kids.us" sites listed.

ICM proposed both ".xxx" and ".kids" in 2000, but ICANN board members resisted them for fear of getting into content control. Instead, ICANN approved ".info,"".biz," and ".museum" and four others.

But pressure has continued to mount for ICANN to expand the number of domain names, and last year it reopened bidding.

ICM resubmitted its application for ".xxx" only, this time structuring it with a policy-setting organization to free ICANN of that task.

That did the trick.

ICANN board member Joichi Ito, who backed ".xxx," wrote in his Web journal that the decision wasn't an endorsement of any type of content or moral belief but a chance for "creating incentives for legitimate adult entertainment sites to come together and fight 'bad actors.'"

Anti-porn activist Donna Rice Hughes, however, remains unconvinced.

"They are not going to give up their '.com' addresses," she said of porn sites. "It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that one out."

A RIDDLE THAT'LL KILL YOUR BRAIN!

This is going to make you so MAD!

There are three words in the English language that end in "gry".

ONE is angry and the other is hungry. Everyone knows what the third ONE means and what it stands for. Everyone uses them everyday, and if you listened very carefully, I've given you the third word.

What is it? _______gry?

Compliments of Ronda Morris.

Hint: Google this "words that end in gry" You'll be surprised at the answer(s).
***

Are you an Internet nerd?

This quiz is dedicated to all of those people who find themselves constantly roaming the net. Do you leave yourself logged in twenty-four hours a day, even when you're not home? Is your wpm typing speed higher than your IQ? Are you having trouble seeing things at distances greater than 2 feet? Yes, YOU. You know who you are.

Ok... shall we begin? Yes? 5 points... (you could've backed out.)

Unless otherwise stated, point values are as follows: 2 for (a), 4 for (b), 6 for (c), and 10 for (d).

1. How many valid net addresses do you have? Multiple machines at the same site do not count.
2. How many hours did it take for you to create your .sig?
     1. Huh?
     2. More than one
     3. More than five
     4. I'm still looking for a really funky quote
3. On an average working day, how many email messages do you receive?
     1. Nobody sends me any mail... sniff
     2. Three, but they're all from Lester in the next cubicle over, because he has nothing better to do
     3. I can't count that high, I failed calculus
     4. Don't ask me now, I'm too busy. Send me e-mail.
4. All right, fess up. Have you ever read alt.sex.bondage just to see what the heck those perverts were talking about?
     1. Yes, and I'm so ashamed
     2. Yes, and I'm so embarrassed
     3. Yes, and would you please explain a few things to me...
     4. No, never. (10 points. You're lying.)
5. Have you ever met one of your past SO's (significant others) via a computer network?
     1. No
     2. Yes, through a newsgroup we both posted on
     3. Yes, by chatting randomly over the Internet (shame!)
     4. Yes, by chatting over RELAY
6. Once you've logged onto your system, what do you spend most of your time doing?
     1. Putting books on reserve in the library computer system.
     2. Reading _Alice in Wonderland_ in the online bookshelf
     3. Reading the monthly postings on rec.humor.funny
     4. Writing up stupid quizzes because you've done everything else
7. If someone were to telephone your home at any given moment of the day, what would be the percent chance that your phone would be busy?
     1. Zero... I've got call waiting
     2. 25%.... I only dial in from work (Uh, hi, boss)
     3. 75%.... Duh, so that's why nobody ever calls me
     4. Zero... My modem has a separate phone line
8. Which Usenet newsgroups do you spend the most time reading?
     1. The comp. groups... because they're so informative
     2. The soc. groups.... because they're so multicultural
     3. The rec. groups.... because they're so diverting
     4. The alt. groups.... because I don't know what half those words mean
9. What's your worst complaint about having an Internet account?
     1. I have to pay $5/month for it
     2. The damn sysadmins won't give me enough quota to hold all my .gif's
     3. All those programmers keep tying up the modem lines
     4. I have to stay in school to keep it
10. Check your watch now. What time is it?
     1. 10 am... coffee break
     2. 3 pm.... General Hospital's on
     3. 12 am... one last login before I hit the sack
     4. 4 am.... Oh my God, I've got a test tomorrow

ALL RIGHT, GUYS. SCORING TIME.

0-25 points: You're not a nerd. Go read a manual or two and come back next year.

25-50 points: You're an up-and-coming Internet nerd. Why don't you telnet over to 128.6.4.8 and play around with the Quartz BBS for a while.

50-75 points: You're a full-fledged Internet nerd. Join the club.

75-100 points: You're an Internet addict. Try going to the library this week, it'll do you some good.

100+ points: You're an Internet obsessive-compulsive. Unplug your computer, go out in the woods for a few days, and relax. Lay back and listen to the birds singing. Clear your mind. And don't forget to unsubscribe yourself from all those lists before you leave.

Found in: internet newsgroup
Author: Sarah L Lewis <slewis@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>

If you have something you want to share, just send it to me using the above mailbox
or catch me at a meeting.

Number of Members in attendance last month:
Total Membership Before last month's meeting
Number of Members renewing last meeting
Number Of Members joined last meeting
Number of members dropped
Current Total Membership
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Volume 24	June, 2005	Issue No. 6