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Updated: 12 June 2003

Message Of The Day Chebucto News Archive

Chebucto Office on the road!

The Chebucto Office in the Chase Building will be closed Friday, June 13 to allow us to open it at the 50+ Seniors Expo, being held at Exhibition Park, Halifax. The Chebucto Community Net will be sharng a booth with the Halifax Regional Community Access Program (CAP). There will be all-day service there both Friday and Saturday running from 9 am to 5:30 pm.


System and security upgrades continue

The Chebucto Technical Commnittee has been working on upgrades to several different Chebucto services ranging from updates to our Spam filtering software and the machine running it to security patches for active web servers. There have been some minor disruptions in service including delays in receiving new email and some webmail sending problems but all have been fixed soon after their discovery.

In today's internet, with the amounts of spam and virus laden mail starting to become the majority of all mail received by our system, such work is of critical importance.


AGM News

[Photo: Ed Dyer showing wifi card] The 9th Annual General Meeting of the Chebucto Community Net Society held April 10, 2003 at the North Branch Library went very well, with about thirty members in attendance. The opening presentation delivered by Andrew Wright highlighted the many technical advances Chebucto has made over the past year and the ongoing challenges of running a community net. This theme was touched upon again in Chebucto Chair Marilyn MacDonald's report, available here.

Treasurer Bernard Hart reported that Chebucto is in good financial shape, Internal Committee Chair Mark Alberstat reported on the revitalization of his committee and Policy Committee Chair Andrew Wright reported that spam email using forged headers pointing to innocent third partys' email addresses was the biggest abuse issue Chebucto faced in 2002. Board member Christopher Watt's excellent home-made cookies and squares were well received by the membership.

[Photo: Chair Marilyn MacDonald with Certificate of Appreciation] Technical Committee Chair Edward Dyer reported on the many technical advances made in 2002 and how Chebucto is looking to make even more, demonstrating wireless internet technology at the meeting. Chebucto is actively investigating possible uses for this new high speed technology. In recognition for all the work done by the Technical Committee this year, Chair Marilyn MacDonald presented them with Certificates of Appreciation. She was surprised by receiving a Certificate of Appreciation herself from Board member John McKay.

Six Board members offered for re-election this year: Edward Dyer, Bill Matheson, John McKay, Jeff Warnica, Christopher Watt and Andrew Wright. They were elected by acclamation. The Chebucto Board of Directors has been joined by local community activist and newspaper columnist Joan Jones, who is completing the second year of recently resigned Board member Mark Rushton's two year term.


Chebucto Newspaper Column Give-aways!

[Photo: New Chebucto Mousepad] Chebucto's Mousepad newspaper column, written by Chebucto Internal Committee Chair Mark Alberstat with occasional help from some fellow Chebucto volunteers, is being well received and a third free mousepad for a column idea has been sent out. The column is published every second week in the Sunday Chronicle Herald. The Mousepad focuses on computers and internet technologies and how they can be used by people for an almost infinite variety of purposes. People can write in questions to the column and if they are used they will get a cool new Chebucto Community Net mousepad. Email questions to the Mousepad at mousepad@chebucto.ns.ca

Chebucto mousepads may be purchased from the Chebucto Office for $10 each or mailed out for $15 each. Contact office@chebucto.ns.ca to order.


Alert: Fake Windows updates

We wish to advise our users to beware of email messages claiming to be from Microsoft containing supposed Windows Updates. These messages are fake and the included web address or program is a virus. Microsoft does not email users about Windows Updates.

Chebucto advises all users of the Windows Operating System to keep updated with the latest security updates from Microsoft. There are major security holes in the Microsoft Windows Operating System, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and Microsoft's Outlook Express email program which can be fixed with software patches from Microsoft's authentic Windows Update site.

Unpatched versions of these Microsoft products are vulnerable to many viruses, worms, trojan programs and exploits where hostile users can get access to your computer and files. Users are advised to keep current with Service Packs and Critical Updates for Microsoft products.


Chebucto Users still tops in *.NS.CA SETI processing

SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, has been processing their radio telescope data with home users' computers for years now. Using an innovative screensaver which runs whenever the user computer is not in use, SETI has had more than 1,492,000 years of high quality computer processor time donated to it.

Of all the computer domains ending in the letters NS.CA, denoting Nova Scotia, chebucto.ns.ca now ranks number one, producing more than double the results of both the government of Nova Scotia and the vast resources of EdNet, the schools network combined. Current stats here. Chebucto users have sent in more than 21,000 results, representing more than 43 years of CPU time that would otherwise have been wasted.

SETI is about to enter a new phase, targetting the top 200 candidate signals for direct observation using the full resources of the world's largest radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.


Outlook user email advisory

After the continuing wave of viruses specifically targetting users of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email programs, and the constant stream of user complaints about randomly altered program settings and difficulty using the program, the Chebucto Community Net Office and the Chebucto Technical Committee recommend our users do not use either Outlook or Outlook Express as their email program.

Windows Users can find a selection of email programs available for download here and Macintosh users can find a selection of email programs here.


 

 

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