Vol. 30 number 2 February 2013 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second (*first) Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Beginner SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Linux SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Beer BOF (Wing SIG East), after all the SIGs, at 10 p.m. Liam Maguire's, 1705 St. Laurent at Innes (formerly Hooters) Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up... Wednesday, February 13, 2013 Speaker: Barton McKinley, CISM, CISSP-ISSAP, CRISC, ITIL Topic: "Bring Your Own Disaster. Issues and Options for Solving the BYOD Dilemma " I will allow time for Q&A and may do a simple audience participation exercise. Given the audience, I want to clarify that I am dealing with mobile device security which includes pretty much any laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc. I will talk about things from a user and corporate perspective but will emphasize security issues. O/S coverage can include Win8, BB10, Android, Linux, Mac OS and IOS. So, there is a real connection for PC users. Visit my blog at http://www.Security-Eh.com for perspectives, interviews and resources on Information and IT Security from a Canadian perspective. Wednesday, March 13, 2013 Speaker: Doug Drouillard of KRC (Knights Refurbishing Computers) INC (to be confirmed) ____________________________ February Raffle Courtesy of the McAfee Canada, we have a copy of McAfee Total Protection 2013. Guard your PC, social network, identity, family, and home network with McAfee's ultimate protection against hackers, malware, thieves, phishing, and other online threats. This prize is valued at $70 Tickets are, as always, a good deal at $1 for one, a great deal at $2 for three or the unbelievable bargain of $5 for ten! ____________________________ January Prize Winners Bob Gowan won our night's raffle of McAfee All Access 2012 software while Stu Moxley won our "Mystery DoorPrize" (rumoured to be a Jabra Phone but time will tell). Congrats you two and a big thanks to McAfee and Microsoft for the prize donations. ____________________________ December's Silent Auction a Success! Last year Jeff Dubois sent a message saying "Wow, I've got a lot of gadgets, bits, bytes and bobs kicking about that I no longer use but they might be, for someone else, quite usable." and then suggested we have a "charity auction", from that idea Jocelyn Doire suggested holding a silent auction and a non perishable food collection for a local charity at the December meeting. The BOD further suggested including the proceeds from the raffle and giving the total to the Ottawa Food Bank. The event was a huge success, well beyond everyone's expectations, raising a total of $664 comprised of $372 in auction bids, $141 from the raffle (Windows 7 Ultimate), and $151 in cash donations. The event was really a group effort including Chris Taylor getting 12 books from O'Reilly and announcing the event, Alan German doing the accounting and the slide show, Gail Eagen helping with the setup and the accounting, Bob Walker obtaining and setting the tables, Bob Gowan acting as the Master of Ceremonies, Brigitte Lord promoting the event in the newsletter and the OPCUG's web site, Jocelyn Doire creating the web page and organising the event, and last, but certainly not least, all the donors of the items for the silent auction, the food and the cash. ____________________________ President's Report: 2012 in review by Chris Taylor 2012 was a pretty stable year for the Ottawa PC Users' Group. We began the year with one change to the Board of Directors - Jocelyn Doire returned as a board member after having been out of town for a number of years, replacing Andrea Wells who stepped down to attend to her newborn baby boy. As I personally thank all the board members for their dedication to the smooth running of the OPCUG, I would like to welcome new blood into the operations. If you just want to "get your feet wet", talk to one of the board members about helping out. We currently have two non-board members who give generously on an on-going basis: Mark Cayer looks after membership; and Bert Schopf lets the board hold monthly meetings in his office. We had a nice balance of presentations in 2012. There were four meetings with presentations given by members of the OPCUG: I showed how to protect your computer; Alan German showed us how easy it is to use Linux; Bob Walker talked about accessible computing; and four members (myself, Alan German, Mark Cayer, and Jocelyn Doire) gave mini- presentations at a "members' favourites" night. We had six presentations from outside presenters: Dr. Michael Geist from the University of Ottawa gave us a fascinating look at how Internet users around the world rose up in response to restrictive copyright legislation; Pierre Roman from Microsoft Canada let us have a sneak peak at the Windows 8 Consumer Preview; Ross Kouhi from the National Capital Freenet told us how they were rising to the challenges of operating as an Internet Service Provider; Dr. John Nash showed us an open source project that allows for the creation of reports that contain ever-changing data; Chris Simons from the Ottawa Public Library showed us how the OPL is embracing digital media and talked about the challenges this brave new world presents to libraries; and Chris Ellis from McAfee Canada filled us in on the "12 Threats of Christmas" to round out the year. Thanks to all who gave so generously of their time to share with us. Financially, the OPCUG is in great shape. I am very pleased that we were able to give back to our community, not only in providing the normal services of the Group, but also in giving presentations at the Ottawa Public Library and our contribution to the Ottawa Food Bank. Membership levels are also in good shape. We are starting 2013 with 11 members more than we began 2012. Jocelyn has been working hard to line up great speakers as we head into the new year. I encourage all members to help find great speakers. I also hope we will have lots of members come forward to give presentations when we have another Members' Favourites night. Chris Taylor ____________________________ Treasurer's Report - 2012 Ottawa PC Users' Group, Inc. 3 Thatcher Street Ottawa, ON K2G 1S6 Web Site: http://opcug.ca Balance Sheet, 2012 Assets Current Assets 1000 Cash Account (TDCT) 1,306.41 1100 Investment Account (ING) 21,046.25 1200 Membership float 40.00 Total Assets 22,392.66 Equity Owner Equity OPCUG, Capital December 31, 2011 22,687.24 Total revenue 4,785.96 Total expenses 5,080.54 Net income -294.58 OPCUG, Capital December 31, 2012 22,392.66 Total Equity 22,392.66 Income Statement, 2012 Revenue 2012 ( $) 2011 ($) 2100 Bank Interest (ING) 213.96 258.65 2200 Membership Income 2,700.00 2,900.00 2300 Raffle Income 1,128.00 1,301.00 2400 Merchandise Income 75.00 1,675.00 2500 Workshop Income 0.00 0.00 2900 Miscellaneous Income 5.00 0.00 2910 Donation Income 664.00 Total revenue 4,785.96 6,134.65 Expenses 3100 PUB II Expense 936.12 950.36 3200 Newsletter Expense 2,284.57 2,208.17 3300 Office Supplies Expense 149.38 7.83 3400 Bank Charges 59.40 59.40 3500 Barbecue Expense 711.13 632.60 3600 Facility Rental 180.00 180.00 3700 Workshop Expense 0.00 0.00 3800 Merchandise Expense 95.94 1,952.61 3900 Miscellaneous Expense 0.00 50.00 3910 Donation Expense 664.00 Total operating expenses 5,080.54 6,040.97 Net income -294.58 93.68 ____________________________ ARPANET 30th anniversary January 1, 2013 marked the 30th anniversary of the "modern- day" Internet. On that day, all 400 hosts on ARPANET (which eventually became known as the "Internet") had to have switched over to use TCP/IP as the communications protocol or they would be cut off. Vint Cerf has a blog post on the official Google blog. http://preview.tinyurl.com/b2zr9t3 ____________________________ Article Wikipedia by Jocelyn Doire Last January 15, 2011, Wikipedia celebrated their 10th anniversary. Over that period Wikipedia has grown to an amazing size of over 3.5 million pages, with over one billion edits (for more statistics check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics), making it one of the top reference in the world. Granted not everything in it can be trusted, but I can't think of any other source of information that has a greater wealth of information and is more up-to-date than Wikipedia. People like you and me made this possible, and I don't know about you, but I think this is one of the finest examples of what humanity can do at its best! Despite all that wealth of information, it's not that uncommon to come across areas that are not that great, are missing information or are even plainly wrong, and that's where we can help, we can all add our bit of knowledge to the work, after all we often know things that very few knows, and you might be surprised at how easy and quick it is to add your own expertise to the site. Let's say you know quite well a particular weed that you've been fighting in your garden for many years, and you would like to improve its description on Wikipedia, simply click on the word "[change]" (or [modifier] in French), type in the new information into the text box that appears, click on the "Show preview" to check if everything is ok and when everything is as you wanted, click on the "Save Page", it's that simple. Now it's quite possible that your change will be rejected, maybe because you did not follow the guidelines (for example words can be linked only once). Don't be offended by that, simply look at the history (see below) and check if there is an explanation and make the correction as needed, or go to the "Talk" section and see if you can find out what happened, most of the time all it takes is a bit of extra of work to make the change stick. Wikipedia includes several code to improve the formatting of the text or add objects, for example if you want to add a link to another article, just add two sets of square brackets around a word in your text, for example [[Pollinisation]]. If the word in the text and the name of the article are different, add a vertical line character between them, for example [[ligule|ligulées]]. For a short list of those codes check the cheat sheet at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. Before doing any changes it's probably better to take the time to register yourself and then login into Wikipedia, it's easy and free, that way you can follow all the changes you did by going to your user page, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Joc. If you make edits in various languages, you should register under all those languages (Wikipedia can link those accounts). Unfortunately, Wikipedia is sometime subject to vandalism, some are simple and easy to spot but some others are much more elaborated and done by highly organised groups, that's why several tools had been developed to undo the damage. One example is someone who simply inserts his or her name; to undo it, click on "View History" at the top, select period of interest (from July 24 to July 27 for example), click on "Compare selected revisions" and then to proceed with the change click on "Save page" at the bottom. For more info on how to stop vandals you can check http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism. Over the time many of the pages on Wikipedia got quite technical and hard to read and so some people decided to create a simpler English version that can be found at http://simple.wikipedia.org, that alternative is newer and has many more pages that need expansion. I remember explaining to a friend what was Wikipedia and that he told me that it could never work, too many would pollute it, and I also remember reading several time that nobody should use Wikipedia in academic works, it can not be trusted, but despite all those dire predictions, it has not stopped legion of good people to make their own contributions to what is probably the largest encyclopaedia of all time. I hope you will be one of them. http://watchingthewatchers.org/indepth/1388831/tenure- awarded-based-part-wikipedia Tenure Awarded Based in Part on Wikipedia Contributions ____________________________ OPCUG Free Software Guide - Part 37 Compiled by Alan German, H.C. (Mike) McClemens, and Micheline Johnson This guide features an annotated list of free computer programs. The software mentioned has not been reviewed (except where noted) nor have any tests necessarily been conducted. Consequently, no guarantees are provided that the individual programs will perform as described. Rather the list of available software is provided for the information of our members who may find one or more of the programs useful. doubleTwist Manage and sync your iTunes music, photos and videos to a variety of non-iPod players. Connect your Android phone or tablet - or virtually any other portable media player. Current Release: Version 3.2.1.14961 Web Site: http://www.doubletwist.com/ GRAMPS The Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System (GRAMPS) is a free genealogy program that is both intuitive for hobbyists and feature-complete for professional genealogists. Gramps runs on Windows, Linux and MAC OS X. Current Release: Version 3.4.1 Web Site: http://gramps-project.org/ WizTree WizTree is a disk space analyzer. It scans your entire hard drive - fast! - and shows you which files and folders are using the most disk space. Use the information to quickly locate and remove "space hogs" from your disk. Current Release: Version 1.04 Web Site: http://preview.tinyurl.com/cktq7r4 Slim PDF Reader The only available bloatware-free, PDF reader that is completely secure. At only 1.5 MB Slim PDF Reader is touted as the smallest desktop PDF reader in the world. Web Site: http://preview.tinyurl.com/2a3przl Photoshop Express Editor From party pictures to vacation shots to family portraits, you have lots of good digital photos. Why not use the on- line Photoshop Express Editor to quickly crop, straighten, adjust the colour, and fix other small flaws? Web Site: http://www.photoshop.com/tools/expresseditor Racer This free car-simulator project uses high-end physics to achieve a realistic feeling and an excellent rendering engine for graphical realism. Cars and tracks can be created, providing a very customizable and expandable simulator. Current Release: Version 0.8.44.7z Web Site: http://www.racer.nl/ Ava Find Do you have music and video files in different folders all over your computer? With Ava Find you can browse them effortlessly with the single click of a button. And, Scout Bot finds newly downloaded files automatically - you don't even have to enter a search! Web Site: http://www2.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/ CubicExplorer This Windows-based file manager is aimed for both basic and advanced users. Its key features are tabs and book-marks. It uses sessions, and has filtering, file previews, search and many more features. Current Release: Version 0.95.1 Web Site: http://www.cubicreality.com/ce/ Holdkey This handy little utility will mean no more hassle with Alt- codes or other time consuming methods to create characters like é and à. Just type normally until you need a character with an accent. Then, hold the character for half a second. A small window with several character variations will appear. Simply choose the one you want! Current Release: Version 2.0 Web Site: http://www.holdkey.eu/ ____________________________ 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 Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/opcug President and System Administrator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Secretary: Gail Eagen, gail.Eagen@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 613 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, Brigittelord@@opcug.ca Email: (Mr.) Jocelyn Doire, Jocelyn.Doire@@opcug.ca Public Relations: Morris Turpin, PR@@opcug.ca, 613 729-6955 Facilities: Bob Walker, 613 489-2084 Webmaster: Brigitte Lord, opcug-webmaster2@@opcug.ca Privacy Director: Wayne Houston, privacy2@@opcug.ca Special Events Coordinator: Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Beginners' SIG Coordinator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Linux / Open-Source software SIG: (vacant) Note: We added an extra "@" to the emails to reduce spam. (c) OPCUG 2013. 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) in the body of the message. No subject line is required. To cancel e-mailing, send a message to listserve@@opcug.ca with the plain text "unsubscribe NewsletterTXT" or "unsubscribe NewsletterPDF" (without quotes). To change your e-mail address, cancel using the old e-mail address and re-subscribe using your new e-mail address. 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). 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. Please note: If you bring anything for the recycle table, you are responsible to check on your way out and if the items you brought are still there, you must take them home with you.