Vol. 22 number 4 April 2005 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Apr 13 Eric Jacksch, Tenebris Technologies Inc., Ottawa May 11 Sylvain Dumas of McAfee, Montréal Jun 15 BBQ Internet SIG (I-SIG) After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Windows SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Digital Imaging SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. IT Pro SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Developers SIG To be announced (see article) Delphi User Group To Be Announced PIG (or Wing?) SIG, after all the other SIGs, at 10 p.m. Chances "R", 1365 Woodroffe (at Baseline), College Square Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up... Date: April 13, 2005 Speaker: Eric Jacksch, Tenebris Technologies (http://www.tenebris.ca) Topic: VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Abstract: Voice over Internet Protocol, usually called 'Voice over IP' (VoIP), is now becoming a household word. Local print and broadcast media feature advertisements from several competitors in this new technology. The term VoIP simply means sending voice communications such as telephone calls over an IP-based network like the Internet. With many households and businesses using broadband, multiple voice calls can easily be supported VoIP providers are offering a variety of services at a lower price than local telephone companies. Eric Jacksch of Tenebris Technologies will tell us all about this new technology. What is it, exactly? What's available for local, long distance and other services? How to decide whether to use or not to use it? Eric Jacksch is a regular contributor to Monitor magazine. He writes the "NewTech" column. Tenebris Technologies is an Ottawa company that provides information security services such as vulnerability assessments, investigation services and computer forensics, security integration services, software development, training and consulting. ____________________________ April Raffle At the OPCUG's meeting on April 13, our raffle prize will be a copy of Easy Media Creator 7, courtesy of Roxio, Inc. (http://www.roxio.com). This suite of applications includes full versions of Easy CD & DVD Creator 7, Photosuite 7 Platinum, VideoWave 7 Professional, and Napster 2.0. With this package you will be able to capture, organize and edit digital photographs, audio files and video; easily create slideshows with background music tracks, greeting cards and calendars; burn any type of file to CD or DVD; and create professional quality disk labels. So, with this package, you will be able to handle any audio-visual media project. (For more details, see the review below.) Raffle tickets at $1 for one, $2 for three, or $5 for ten. ____________________________ Recent Prize Winners Let's catch up on recent additions to our prize winners list, shall we. At the January 12th meeting, 3 lucky winners went home with after-Christmas goodies. Cornel Bierman won a copy of Age of Mythology and Morris Turpin received a copy of Microsoft Encarta 2005 on DVD. Raymond Martineau was the night's raffle winner and got a copy of Digital Imaging Studio to keep him busy. On February 16th, Ron McPherson and Henry Sims each won a copy of Corel Studio while Keith Martinsen took home a copy of Paint Shop Pro. The raffle prize of a copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips was won by Mike Charette. On March 9th, both Patricia Abels and Albert Wu took home Corel T-shirts while Alex Mack won a copy of the book on PC Annoyances as the door prizes. The evenings raffle prize of a copy of Microsoft Encarta 2005 on CDs was won by Ian Reid. Many thanks to O'Reilly Publishing, Microsoft, and Corel for the prizes. ____________________________ Product Review Easy Media Creator 7 by Alan German Most people will be familiar with Roxio's Easy CD Creator since, in the good old days, it was bundled with many CD burners. Similarly, most people will know that this product has evolved over the years through a variety of numbered versions. Did you also spot the significant name change in a recent version to Easy CD & DVD Creator? The reason behind this was quite obvious, but what about the latest incarnation of the product - Easy Media Creator 7? The answer is that the package is now a suite of programs that will handle just about every application for audio- visual media processing that you can think of. The bread- and-butter CD and DVD burning operations, previously enhanced with sound file processing, digital image management and video capture capabilities, are now supplemented with even more features for all of the above, plus video editing functions using storyboards and timelines with multiple tracks. A full installation of the package needs a lot of free disk space, but it is simple to customize the installation process to eliminate portions of the software that you can't use at present. For example, in my case, I don't currently have any video material to edit so I opted to omit the installation of VideoWave 7 Professional. But, it's nice to know that it's in the box and can always be added later should my needs change. One new feature that's almost worth the price of the whole package to me is a simple little button in Creator Classic. This is the piece of software that allows selection of individual files and directories for burning to a CD. Creator Classic provides a Windows Explorer type interface to your hard drive from which you can tag files and add them to a "disk project" to be burnt to a CD. In most cases, once the desired files have been selected, all that is required is to click on the Burn button and the default options take care of creating the CD. For more control, one can access the Details panel and set a range of parameters including write speed, write and/or test, and create a read- only disk (close the disk). However, if you are like me, even though CD's are around 50 cents, it goes against the grain to burn a few files, close the disk, and leave a whole bunch of empty, and now unusable, space. Of course the answer is to create a multi- session disk by burning files in separate sessions, leaving the disk open and appendable for the addition of more files at a later date. The trick always used to be to figure out how to add the new files to the desired directory that you knew existed somewhere on the disk. My seat-of-the-pants solution was to flag one file to be copied to the disk project. This "woke up" the software to scan the drive for the existing data structure. It was then just a matter of removing the file from the root directory of the project and adding the new files to the desired sub-directory. The new version has a much more elegant solution - a button labeled "Import data from an appendable disk". In fact, the system is smart enough that when you insert an open CD-R, it points to this button as the appropriate first step in the burning process! As you might infer, clicking on this button displays the directory structure of a CD that already contains some data. So, it's now really easy to burn new files to desired locations. If you need digital image management software, Easy Media Creator 7 contains Photosuite 7, a fully featured system to capture, edit and manage all your digital photographs. 'Capture' locates installed devices, such as a digital camera plugged into a USB port, and allows easy transfer of photographs to the hard drive using a wizard. At the end of the transfer process you can select from a number of appropriate next steps, including going to Photosuite to edit some of the images. Navigating through the very intuitive menu system soon locates an image to be edited. The image is displayed in a window with options for Photo Doctor (adjust lighting, contrast and sharpness), crop, rotate, red eye, add or edit text. For the red eye function, press the AutoFix button, wait a few seconds, and the red eyes (on both individuals in my photograph) magically disappear. Another menu button "Show all features" reveals the depth of functionality that this part of the package has to offer. There really is a lot of stuff in this box! And, some of the stuff is just plain fun. Do you want to be featured on the cover page of a magazine or on a poster? A second CD in the box provides access to a large number of predefined templates for cover pages of magazines relating to computers, music, sports, and more. Choose one of the templates and then customize it with your photograph and text. Instant celebrity status! However, perhaps a more practical application for most of us would be customizing templates for such items as greeting cards, gift labels, and even calendars. There's a raft of such things to play with. Another nice feature that the package offers is StoryBoard. Rather than the video editing function offered by VideoWave, this program allows the creation of slideshows using digital photographs and audio files. The process is simplicity itself. Just drag photographs into the empty boxes on the storyboard, choose from a variety of transition effects between slides (such as slow dissolve), and add an audio file as a background audio track. Play the production on the built-in viewer and tailor the results as desired. Bingo! You have a fully-functional, all-singing, all- dancing, audio-visual display to wow your friends and family. It's also worth noting the superb on-disk help system that documents all aspects of program operations. Help can be context sensitive (i.e. pop-up help "for this window") or a fully-featured, web-page system of links to both local help pages and information on the Internet. Individual pages have clear text and colourful diagrams, including step by step instructions to accomplish a specific task, and screen shots highlighting the associated buttons. Of course, there's much more to this package than this brief review can cover. For one thing, there's AudioCentral that lets you rip, organize and burn music files, including creating MP3's, to your heart's content. If you have any wish to copy vinyl LP records to CD's, this package will let you record, edit and burn the music between the two formats. [A more in-depth review of this process will be included in an upcoming multi-part article on copying vinyl to CD - Ed.] The Media Manager utility allows you to capture and store all kinds of audio-visual files, and provides powerful cataloguing and search functions. Easy CD and DVD Creator 7 allows you to copy CD's and DVD's, create backup disks, and supports CD-RW's through Drag-to-Disc. Also included in the box is Napster 2.0 with which you can locate and purchase a huge variety of music. There is a built-in media player and even label creation software so that you can give your home- burnt disks a professional finishing touch. So if you need to handle data, music, photographs, video on CD or DVD, Easy Media Creator 7 may just do the trick. Even if you only need one or two of these functions at present, the all-inclusive price of this package, and the incredible range of included functionality, may be sufficiently attractive for you to purchase the suite and have the other programs at hand when your appetite for multi-media increases. Bottom Line: Easy Media Creator 7 Proprietary ($99.99) Roxio, a division of Sonic Solutions http://www.roxio.com ____________________________ Product Review Advanced Office Password Recovery Professional v3.03 by Chris Taylor Have you ever password protected a document and felt a cold chill at the thought that you might forget your password? Have you ever actually forgotten a password on a document and had to reconstruct it by hand? Do you support other computer users who forget the passwords on their password- protected documents? If so, you might want to take a look at ElcomSoft's Advanced Office Password Recovery (AOPR). There are three versions. I took a look at the one that can deal with the most file types - the Professional version. AOPR Pro can crack the passwords in just about every Microsoft Office document type; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, OneNote, Visio, Publisher, Project, Money, MS Backup, Schedule+, MS Mail, and the content advisor in Internet Explorer. But how easily can it crack passwords? Well, that depends... Aside: "that depends" is the correct answer to any computer- related question. I had a PowerPoint file Microsoft posted for one of their web-based seminars. There was nothing particularly secret about the document, of course. But they had put a password on the ability to modify the file. I was sort of shocked when AOPR Pro found the nine-character, lower-case alphabetic password in less than a second. Then I tried an Access 2000 database file. I had chosen the password for this file and had given it some degree of complexity - ten characters, with upper- and lower-case alphabetics and numerics. Pretty good, I thought. Well, AOPR Pro cracked that in less than a second. I was starting to wonder... So I fired up Word 2003 and created a small amount of text. I clicked on Tools | Options | Security and entered a password of ThePasswrd4Open to open the file. I saved the file and verified that Word would not allow me to open the file unless I entered the correct password. When AOPR Pro tried to crack the password, it chugged away at the file for a couple of minutes and finally reported the File Opening Password for this file cannot be recovered instantly. Ah, this seemed a little more reasonable. I tried my ten-character, upper- and lower-case, plus numerics password (that I had used for the Access database) on the Word 2003 document. AOPR found it in less than a second. However, it reported that it found the password in its password cache. Aha! Lesson one - if a person password- protects more than one document, there is a good chance they will use the same password for all documents. Easier to remember, but if someone cracks your password in one document, they have access to all your documents! When I cleared the cache, AOPR Pro reported that the password could not be instantly recovered. Lesson two - not all password-protection schemes are created equally. I don't know the encryption scheme that was used to protect the Access 2000 database, but it was obviously way less effective than the default for Word 2003. In delving into the options available under Word 2003, I found that there are actually ten different options for encryption, such as Office 97/2000 Compatible and RC4, Microsoft Base Cryptographic Provider 1.0. The AOPR Pro help file was most informative on different Microsoft document encryption schemes. Remember the instantly-found modify password on the PowerPoint file from Microsoft? Well, the AOPR Pro help file says that, while the Password to Open is a Strong Password and can be recovered only by Brute-Force or Dictionary Attack, the Password to Modify can be recovered instantly. I go back to lesson two - even within a single document, encryption schemes to protect different capabilities such as open vs. modify may be of wildly different strengths. OK, so let's assume we go with a strong encryption scheme. How safe are your documents? Well, that depends... AOPR Pro has the ability to do dictionary attacks with good speed. It ships with a dictionary file of almost a quarter million "words". So, if you use alexandrianism, asdfghjk, qazwsx, qwerty or untranslatableness as your password, AOPR Pro will crack it in less than 2 minutes - even if you use the encryption scheme RC4, Microsoft Enhanced DSS and Diffie-Hellman Cryptographic Provider, whatever that is! AOPR Pro uses plain text files for dictionaries, and there are lots of these files available on the Internet. Besides lots of "normal" dictionaries, you can find specialised dictionary files of hacker lingo, medical jargon, etc. So if we eliminate weak encryption schemes and weak passwords, are we stuck? Well, that depends... AOPR Pro can brute force any password, as long as you have enough time. On my desktop - a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 - AOPR Pro can check over 400,000 passwords per second. If we assume that people are going to use any printable characters (upper- and lower-case alphabet, numerics, and symbols) for their password, that comes to 95 characters. If we look at the possible permutations for passwords and how long it takes at 400,000 passwords per second, we get; 1 character - 95 (instantly) 2 characters - 9,025 (instantly) 3 characters - 857,375 (2 seconds) 4 characters - 81,450,625 (3 minutes) 5 characters - 7,737,809,375 (5 hours 20 minutes) 6 characters - 735,091,890,625 (25 days) We can see that a 6-character password that is not in any dictionary file, with a strong encryption scheme, is not practical to consider cracking on my computer, right? Well that depends... AOPR has the ability to customise a brute force attack. For example, if you know the password does not contain numerics, you can eliminate them. Or, if you know the password contains certain characters, you can use a mask to shorten the permutations that must be tried. You can even enter a custom character set to be checked. So, if you have no clue about the password at all, a long, complex password, and a strong encryption scheme was used, it is not practical to crack the password, right? As the saying goes, that depends... Recently, a flaw in the way Microsoft implemented their encryption was discovered, even when using a strong algorithm such as RC4. If two versions of the encrypted document are available (a not uncommon scenario), the password can be recovered very quickly. Properly securing a document through encryption is not a simple task. Weak passwords are frequently used and vendors often use weak or flawed encryption schemes. In most cases, if someone forgets their password, a tool such as AOPR can recover the password in short order. I found the help file for AOPR Pro to be very interesting reading. There is lots of information about the encryption schemes used by Microsoft applications as well as general information about encryption. Elcomsoft has even put their help file up as web page at http://www.elcomsoft.com/help/aopr/index.html. While I tested the Professional edition of AOPR, there are also Home and Standard editions that can deal with fewer file types. For details of the capabilities of each version see http://www.elcomsoft.com/aopr.html. ElcomSoft also has programs to recover passwords from many different file types such as archives, WordPerfect, Adobe Reader, and more. For details, see http://www.elcomsoft.com/prs.html. System requirements: CPU: Pentium or better OS: Windows 95 or better Disk space: 4MB AOPR pricing (Canadian dollars at the ElcomSoft web site) Home Edition - $62.00 Standard Edition - $125.00 Professional Edition - $252.00 ____________________________ Special Interest Groups Beginners-Orphans-Windows-SIG by Alan German At the SIG meeting on March 9th, a discussion was held on the name for this SIG. Some innovative suggestions were provided - Windows for Dummies, Paneless Windows... If you normally participate in this SIG, but missed this specific meeting, your opinion on an appropriate name for the SIG would be welcomed. Bring your suggestions to the next meeting, or post it on PUB II. Two other ideas were raised: firstly, that it would be useful to have live demonstrations using a laptop and an LCD projector at the SIG and, secondly, that some record of the items discussed should be produced. The plan is to have semi-formal presentations of prepared material at future SIG meetings which takes care of item number one. This brief report is an attempt to start the ball rolling on item two. Being in the newsletter, the information will be available for future reference since all newsletters are posted on the club's web site. It was noted that this used to be a feature of past newsletters, and that an added benefit would be that those of us unable to attend more than one SIG meeting at once could still be aware of items of interest that were discussed by the other groups. What the SIG(s) needs, therefore, is someone to take notes and write up the proceedings of future meetings. Any volunteers? The SIG held a round table where members identified themselves (so, now we can put a face to those messages on the PUB!) and gave an indication of their computing interests. It turned out we were quite a diverse bunch, with experience ranging from FORTRAN programming with punched cards, to needing to find out how to control the computer's sound system after our husband has "tinkered" with the settings. Similarly, there was a range of different interests including the use of spreadsheets, and copying music from long-playing records to CD-ROM. A general discussion of issues that could usefully be addressed in future meetings followed and a list of potential topics was quickly developed that had broad interest amongst the group. First and foremost was what was available on PUB II and how to obtain access. This will be the basis of a presentation to be made at the April meeting. Other items on the list are: system backup through disk imaging; updating virus scanners, firewalls, and anti-adware software; program startup control; BIOS settings; screen grabbers; image management systems; file extensions and associations; and handling attached files and embedded images in electronic mail. Once again, your suggestions for additional topics would be of interest. Contact Chris Taylor, the SIG Coordinator, whose E-mail address is listed on the back page of this newsletter. The process of copying LP's to CD's sparked considerable interest in the group, and the evening was rounded out by an informal chalk-talk on how to achieve this for less than five dollars! The answer is to purchase an RCA Y-adapter cable from Canadian Tire to connect the hi-fi system to the computer's sound card, download WaveRepair to make the recording, and burn the resulting WAV files to a CD-R using the software that came bundled with your CD burner. [More details to follow in a future newsletter.] ____________________________ Special Interest Groups Blogs, and RSS Feeds by Eric Clyde, Coordinator of the Internet SIG Blogs A couple of months ago Christopher Cobb had a long article on "blogs" in the Ottawa Citizen (The Citizen's Weekly, January 30, 2005, page C5). The Merriam Webster definition is: "Blog: noun [short for Weblog] (1999): a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." (It should also have noted that, in many cases, the comments are often reactions, pro and con, by others.) Cobb wrote that a search on the word blog in Google gives about 37 million hits. When I repeated that search recently I found that there were about 214 million hits! Topics cover the whole gamut of human knowledge and experience, from aardvark to zyrian. (In case you are wondering, the Komi Zyrian are Finno-Ugric Jews who live in Northeast Russia.) As well as text, photographs and, sometimes, audio files can be included. To find blogs of potential interest, do a search in you favourite search engine on "blog" and the topic you are interested in, e.g. [blog travel new zealand] generates about 379,000 hits! But don't believe everything you read -- for controversial topics, there are many highly opinionated but ill-informed people only too willing to provide input. If you are interested in setting up your own blog, there are many free services available. Two that are recommended are Blogger (http://www.blogger.com ) and MyBlogSite (http://www.myblogsite.com), but there are lots of others.. RSS Feeds If you want to keep up to date on almost any topic without having to check numerous web sites, newspapers, magazines, or even blogs, you should get an RSS reader. RSS stands for "RDF Site Summary," but is commonly referred to as "Really Simple Syndication." It is method of providing website content such as news stories or software updates in a standard XML format. Websites such as The Wall Street Journal and CNET's News.com provide news stories to various RSS directories that distribute them over the Internet. RSS content can be accessed with an RSS-enabled Web browser or other programs designed for retrieving RSS feeds. [Definition and text from "The Sharpened Computer Glossary"] There are many such readers available, many free of charge. A list of some recommended ones can be seen at http://blogspace.com/rss/readers. I use BlogLines (http://www.bloglines.com/) to keep informed of new technologies and also current events in Britain. There are too many features to list here, but to get some idea of these, look at http://www.bloglines.com/about/. I have been pleased with its ease of use and how much time I can save by not having to check lots of newspapers. ____________________________ Search the Windows WUGNET Shareware Hall of Fame by Bettie Cummings Cook SW Indiana PC Users Group, Inc. (swipcug.apcug.org) http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/wugnet.mspx is the web site of WUGNET. On this site are the Microsoft picks that demonstrate the highest standards available today in shareware for Windows XP. Just for the record, freeware is free and shareware is generally free to try but you are on your honor to send the compiler a fee or a contribution. Yes, you can use them as long as you please without sending a nickel for them but I encourage you to support the persons who unselfishly provide good shareware programs. A number of the programs will develop into large, well-known products or become incorporated into new system programs. To cite a few old examples that did so: PKZip, Brother's Keeper, Checkit, XTree, and TweakUI. I purchased these as shareware programs a number of years ago for five dollar each. To the credit of the shareware compilers, their programs have continued to operate from Windows 3.1 thru Windows XP. So, for the most part, they are good investments. Twenty-five of the best picks for Win XP are featured with links to downloadable sites. Everything from utilities to games. I was intrigued by one called Ink-Saver. It adjusts the amount of ink flow from cartridge to printer and causes those expensive ink cartridges to last a little longer. Check it out for dependable sources that have MS approval. Bettie Cummings Cook is Newsletter Editor of the SW Indiana PC Users Group, Inc. (SWIPCUG). The above article appeared in the January 2005 issue of the P-See Urgent, SWIPCUG newsletter. Permission is granted to other non-profit computer user groups to use this article in their publications with credit to the author and the SW Indiana PC Users Group. There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author. The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you. ____________________________ Humour Funny Signs - Part 1 (source unknow) *Plumber: "We repair what your husband fixed." *Pizza shop slogan: "7 days without pizza makes one weak." *At a tire shop in Milwaukee: "Invite us to your next blow out." *Door of a plastic surgeon's office: "Hello, can we pick your nose?" *Sign at the psychic's hotline: "Don't call us, we'll call you." *At a laundry shop: "How about we refund your money, send you a new one at no charge, close the store and have the manager shot. Would that be satisfactory?" *At a towing company: "We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows." *Billboard on the side of the road: "Keep your eyes on the road and stop reading these signs." *On an electrician's truck: "Let us remove your shorts." *In a non-smoking area: "If we see smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action." *On maternity room door: "Push, Push, Push." *At an optometrist's office: "If you don't see what your looking for you've come to the right place." *On a taxidermist's window: "We really know our stuff." *In a Podiatrist's office: "Time wounds all heels." *On a butcher's window: "Let me meat your needs." *On a fence: "Salesmen welcome, dog food is expensive." *At a car dealership: "The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment." *Outside a muffler shop: "No appointment necessary, we hear you coming." *Outside a hotel: "Help! We need inn-experienced people." *On a desk in a reception room: "We shoot every 3rd salesman , and the 2nd one just left." *In a veterinarian's waiting room: "Be back in 5 minutes, Sit! Stay!" *At the electric company: "We would be de-lighted if you send in your bill. However, if you don't, you will be." *On the door of a computer store: "Out for a quick byte." *In a restaurant window: "Don't stand there and be hungry, come on in and get fed up." *Inside a bowling alley: "Please be quiet, we need to hear a pin drop." *In the front yard of a funeral home: "Drive carefully, we'll wait." *In a counselor's office: "Growing old is mandatory, growing wise is optional. *At a Santa Fe gas station: "We will sell gasoline to anyone in a glass container." *In a New York restaurant: "Customers who consider our waitresses uncivil ought to see the manager." (Part 2 will appear in a future newsletter) ____________________________ OTTAWA PC NEWS Ottawa PC News is the newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group (OPCUG), and is published monthly except in July and August. The opinions expressed in this newsletter may not necessarily represent the views of the club or its members. Member participation is encouraged! If you would like to contribute an article to Ottawa PC News, please submit it to the newsletter editor (contact info below). Deadline for submissions is three Saturdays before the General Meeting. Group meetings OPCUG normally meets on the second Wednesday in the month, except in July and August, at the National Museum of Science and Technology, 1867 St. Laurent Blvd, Ottawa. Meetings are 7:30-9:00 p.m. and Special Interest Groups go until 10 p.m. Fees: OPCUG annual membership: $25 per year. Mailing address: 3 Thatcher St., Nepean, Ontario, K2G 1S6 Web address: http://opcug.ca/ Bulletin Board - PUB II (BBS): http://opcug.ca/default.htm President and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator: Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Secretary: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, jocelyn.doire@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, brigitte.lord@@opcug.ca Email: (Mr.)Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Public Relations: Morris Turpin, morris.turpin@@opcug.ca, 729-6955 Facilities: Bob Walker, 489-2084 Webmaster: Brigitte Lord, opcug-webmaster@@opcug.ca Privacy Director: Bob Thomas, BobThomas@@opcug.ca, 820-6835 Internet SIG coordinator: Eric Clyde, eclyde@@rogers.com, 749-2387 Delphi SIG coordinator: Martin Pagnan, mpagnan@@cyberus.ca Windows SIG Coordinator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 727-5453 Developers' SIG (in hibernation): Vacant, contact Bob Thomas, bob.thomas@@opcug.ca Digital Imaging SIG: Duncan Petrie, gdpetr@@hotmail.com, 841-6119 IT Pro SIG: Bob Thomas, bob.thomas@@opcug.ca, 820-6835 Note: We added an extra "@" to the emails to reduce spam. (c) OPCUG 2005. Reprints permission is granted* to non- profit organizations, provided credits is given to the author and The Ottawa PC News. OPCUG request a copy of the newsletter in which reprints appear. *Permission is granted only for articles written by OPCUG members, and not copyrighted by the author. ____________________________ Newsletter by email: To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "subscribe NewsletterTXT" or "subscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes nor HTML code) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. Cancelling the Paper Newsletter: You can help the environment and save us some costs by sending an email to Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca asking to cancel the delivery of the paper version of the newsletter (or ask him in person - Mark is usually at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings). Announcements Mailing List: To subscribe to the Announcements List send an email to listserve@@opcug.ca, leave the subject blank and in the body of the message put "subscribe announcements" (without the quotes nor HTML code). Within a couple of minutes you will receive a confirmation message from the list server. OPCUG clock/calendar/calculator and mug: Check out the clock/calendar/calculator and thermal coffee mug sporting our club logo at the back of the auditorium at General Meetings! OPCUG insulated mugs are $15 and OPCUG clocks are $20. Reuse, recycle: Bring your old computer books, software, hardware, and paraphernalia you want to GIVE AWAY to the general meetings, and leave them at the table near the auditorium's entrance. Please limit your magazines to publication dates of less than two years old. If you don't bring something, you may want to TAKE AWAY something of interest, so look in on this area. Any item left over at the end of the meeting will be sent to the... recycle bin.