Vol. 25 number 6 June 2008 The newsletter of the Ottawa PC Users' Group Calendar OPCUG General Meeting National Museum of Science and Technology 1867 St. Laurent Blvd. Second (*third) Wednesday of each month, 7:30pm Jun 11 TBA + BBQ Beginner SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. IT Pro SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. Linux SIG After the OPCUG General Meeting, at the Museum. PIG (or Wing?) SIG, after all the other SIGs, at 10 p.m. Chances "R", 1365 Woodroffe (at Baseline), College Square Beer BOF (Wing SIG East, after all the SIGs, at 10 p.m. Liam Maguire's, St. Laurent at Innes Rd. (formerly Hooters) Please note that unless otherwise noted, SIGs meet at 9:00 p.m. (immediately following the OPCUG General Meeting). ____________________________ Coming Up... June 11, 2008 PIZZA Night: 6:30 pm (see article just below) Speaker (7:30 pm): Jason Tryon, Service Desk Delivery Manager at Hewlett- Packard (Canada) Co. Topic: HP "Help Desk" The HP Service Desk has a long history in the Ottawa area, including it's tenure under Compaq, and earlier, under Digital. At our June meeting, Jason Tryon, Service Desk Delivery Manager, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co., will tell us all about it's successful run. We're hoping to hear such things as the history of the service desk, who it serves, the type and extent of service activity and how many people handle it, the extent and technology behind the knowledge base, how calls are handled, most common problems, most difficult, etc. And of course, we've all heard a bit of that help-desk-humour. Is it really true? There will of course, be some time for Questions and Answers. Looking forward to seeing you there. ____________________________ Pizza Night (or "a day at the races") 6:30 pm Come and see members of your BOD moonlighting as pizza delivery boys. Things could get frantic if they underestimate the number of pizzas needed, so why don't you ALL come and see the action! Bring a guest! Runs for extra pizza might start looking like the Le Mans car race, so don't forget your binoculars to track them up and down St. Laurent Blvd. Eating will be earlier at 6:30 under the big tent in the front yard of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Guests are welcome. Pizzas will be available in several popular varieties, including vegetarian. And we won't forget the pop, water, and desert. At 7:30 the regular meeting will take place with speaker Jason Tryon, Service Desk Delivery Manager at Hewlett- Packard (Canada) Co. The topic is HP "Help Desk". This will be our last meeting before the fall. We'll see you in September after the summer hiatus. Consult the OPCUG website (http://opcug.ca) for details. ____________________________ June Raffle At the June general meeting, thanks to the generosity of Corel, we will be raffling off a copy of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. If you have a digital camera, this package can help you make the most of your photos. An impressive array of easy-to-use automatic fixes as well as precision editing tools will speed you on your way to improving your digital images. You don't have to make do with the crippled, free program that came with your camera. A powerful, yet easy- to- use tool like Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 can help you to bring out the best in your photos. Valued at $80. Tickets are still only $1 for one, $2 for three, or $5 for ten. What a bargain! ____________________________ May Prize Winners The winners of the raffle prizes of a copy of the McAfee Internet Security Suite with Site Advisor software were: Richard Aylesworth, Michael Gibson, Genadi Gunther, Tim Hillock and George Monson. Our door prize winners of a copy of the McAfee Virus Scan Plus software were: Dan Byrne and Irene Kwik. Thanks to McAfee for supplying the prizes and to Richard Aylesworth for tossing his second win back into the draw. ____________________________ Article Share What You Know and Make A Difference! Are you comfortable in the VISTA environment and familiar with MS-Office 2007? Can you spare a few hours to provide coaching in the basics, and respond to occasional questions by telephone? There's a group of hardworking, dedicated teachers in a local community organization* whose job is to teach English as a Second Language to newcomers to Canada, at 3 locations around Ottawa. The organization's computers have recently been upgraded. The teachers need to become proficient quickly (primarily in MS-Word and MS-PowerPoint), so that they can continue preparing materials for the classroom and showing their students how to create simple documents in the computer lab. This doesn't have to involve a long-term commitment; what's needed is a kick- start! If you can help, please contact Carol Clarke, OCISO* Volunteer Coordinator at 613-725-0202 (ext. 333) or cclarke@@ociso.org . * OCISO is the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (www.ociso.org) ____________________________ Product Review Wubi by Peter Hawkins Wubi is a Ubuntu Installer for Windows, although if you look at the letter order, you would probably say it as "Windows Ubuntu Installer". The first thing you are going to be asking yourself is whatever are they letting this guy tell us about an Ubuntu install when we already know the havoc he inflicts willingly on his own computer! Well, I do have an answer, and it's really pretty simple. Allow me to explain. My friend Alan has been plying me with absolutely free live CDs of Ubuntu, beginning around 6.06 and then updating me with each new release. And each time I faithfully promise him that I will run the live CD and play with the program. And I have. Just a little bit. But enough to know that eventually I'm going to move to an Ubuntu desktop and laptop. However I have had some reservations about this commitment and have thus held back. Before we go any further, however, the obligatory paragraph about risk/reward and so on has to be issued. Forthwith: I did this to my computer, it may not work as described on yours. The results I achieved may be entirely unattainable by anyone else, so you must assume the full risk of anything that you do. In other words, I am not responsible, I won't take any responsibility at all, and in fact I'll deny that I ever said it (We're writing this under an assumed name, aren't we?). Okay, enough, notwithstanding the foregoing, I'm now going to tell you what I did and how it turned out. If you are one of those people who have to read the end of the book before you are willing to read the whole book, okay, here is the ending:"And They all lived happily ever after!" The problems with a live CD are that it runs in your optical drive, and will only transfer data from that drive at a rate which seems pretty darn slow. Linux is supposed to be fast and nimble, quick on its feet, but an optical drive really doesn't let it show its stuff. Just teases really. However, if I want to install it to my hard drive, then I have to have a dedicated partition for it. Wubi eliminates this problem. I won't need to repartition my drives, and in fact what it essentially does is set up a folder on a Windows drive just like any other Windows program I could install on my computer. That means if I am unhappy with it, I can un- install it by going to the Add/Remove programs menu and removing it. Let's get on with it. First, go to http://wubi-installer.org/index.php and click on the green "Download (Beta)" which you will find in the upper-right corner of the screen. Now you may want to look at other things on this page before you begin. I did, but that's just basically wasting time! That takes you to SourceForge.net page where you will see the heading "Wubi, the easiest way to Linux!" and the 6th tab "Download" is already highlighted. Click it to go to the next page where you will see a green highlighted "Download". When you click it the next page shows 2 files: Wubi-8.04-beta-rev-487.exe and Wubi-8.04-beta-rev487-src.tgz and I want the first one because I am working in Windows XP. If your version of IE stops the process by wanting you to confirm downloading the file, do so. You will be asked if you want to run or save the file, so I chose to save it to my hard drive in the partition where I intended to put Ubuntu. It's a file that is only 1.11 MB in size so it downloads quite quickly, even on my basic DSL connection. Then I double-clicked it in Windows Explorer so it would run. Answer the easy questions, if in doubt, the down-arrow button shows the available choices. Pick the drive where you want it, give it 6 to 8 gigs of space, use English, easy to remember user name and password. That's it. Sit back and wait, because you will need to download the whole ISO before it will install. On my system it took about 1 1/2 hours to do it all so I hit Finish, and it did. You've got to remember that you're going to end up with a dual-boot screen so you can choose which OS you're going to run. Every time you want to change, you have to restart your computer. I'm thinking that the longer I play with this, the longer I'll stay in Ubuntu. I'm even thinking that now the Wine is at version 0.95 stable, I could run what few Windows apps I want without leaving Linux, but that has to be a topic for another day. WOOPS.......WUBI UPDATE When I originally wrote the piece about installing Ubuntu using the WUBI installer, I had a keyboard and mouse that had leads that attached at the back of my computer. They were "wired" in, in other words. Firmly attached by very short leashes to my desktop, and quite unlikely to stray. The install process went perfectly, without a single glitch. You would think I would have taken the "No news is good news" thing as a kind of warning. You would think that! Naturally, I paid it no attention and continued on in blissful ignorance, booting into Ubuntu regularly to try it out, then re-booting into windows without a thought...UNTIL....I installed a wireless keyboard and mouse. The very next time I rebooted to try Ubuntu, the dual boot screen came up, just like it always did, and when it came time to choose, I hit the down-arrow key to change....and absolutely NOTHING happened. Well nothing but a countdown timer that eventually booted me into Windows. What had gone wrong? I tried it several more times, always with the expectation that THIS time the keyboard would let me choose Ubuntu, which, of course, it never did. Yes, I know that there is a word used to describe people who continue to perform the same action over and over expecting a different outcome, but I would very much appreciate if you would kindly refrain from even thinking it! I finally realized that the drivers for the wireless keyboard and mouse loaded much later in the boot-up process and that I still needed the wired keyboard plugged in. This fixed my little problem right away. The wired keyboard sits quietly beside my computer case, out of the way, just waiting for the very few times in a week when it is briefly needed for one keystroke....the one very important keystroke that lets me choose to boot into Ubuntu as I slowly climb the learning curve towards Linux! ____________________________ Product Review Exploring Linux - Part 10 by Alan German As I write this, it's almost the end of April, 2008. April being the 4th month in 2008, means that Ubuntu 8.04 is available (since, as you know, the version numbering scheme uses 8 for the year and 04 for the month.) So, of course, we need to drop everything and give the new version a try. Now, obtaining the new version should be simplicity itself. Point Firefox at the Ubuntu web site, hit download, select a mirror, and wait patiently while the 699 MB ISO file is transferred. But, of course, in my Linux world, nothing is ever simple. However, this time, it's not Linux that's the problem, nor even Windows Vista. No, it's my so-called high-speed Internet connection that's flaky. Sure, it starts off well, downloading the file at 250 KB/s plus. But, eventually, either the transmission speed slows to a crawl (below 56 KB/s), or the modem drops the connection entirely. Neither situation is terribly useful. In the first case, I would like to cut the connection and re-connect to obtain a higher transfer rate, while in the second case I have no other option but to do so. Of course, the problem is that Firefox doesn't have the facility to resume the download so, with the connection constantly being dropped, it's almost impossible to capture the entire (huge) ISO file. Browsing the web for possible solutions to my dilemma suggested that (a) I could wait for Firefox 3 to be released which will support resuming downloads, (b) I could try a BitTorrent client to capture the file in multiple bits, or (c) I could use the wget command which includes a continue- download feature. Discounting the future option for Firefox as much too time- consuming, my first attempt was to download the file using Azureus, a BitTorrent client for Linux, even though I had only a vague idea of what BitTorrent does. In fact, the process seems to be that you browse the web (using Firefox) for a .torrent file that is associated with the Ubuntu 8.04 ISO file. The .torrent file is then loaded into Azureus and the latter takes care of locating sources for the actual ISO file on the web, and downloading pieces of the file using multiple connections (so-called seeds and peers). At some point, your machine too becomes a peer, and starts to share pieces of the file with other users in the "swarm". You are now part of a file-sharing network (need any MP3 files anyone?!) My problem with the process turned out to be the connection speed. Having multiple connections to different pieces of the download didn't help very much since my modem refused to maintain a high transfer rate. But, by just letting the thing run, I eventually downloaded the entire ISO file. In fact, I let it run for an entire evening while I wasn't at home. It completed in 2-3 hours, and "seeded" itself to share my download with other users, so improving my download/upload ratio which, apparently, is a good thing in terms of BitTorrent etiquette. Finally, I investigated the wget command (man wget) and found that this process is better still. Wget is designed to obtain files using the http (or ftp) protocol and, according to one web site, it "works particularly well with slow or unstable connections". All I needed was the URL of a source for the required ISO file. This was easily obtained by starting up the download process at ubuntu.com. I chose the mirror at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Ubuntu download page displayed the file name and full path of the ISO file that had been selected. Downloading the file with wget was then as simple as running a Terminal window (Applications - Accessories - Terminal) and issuing the command: wget http://mirrors.rit.edu/ubuntu- releases/hardy/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso After starting wget, the resulting display indicates the progress of the download, both as a percentage and as the actual number of megabytes, and gives the current speed of the transfer. But, the really useful feature for my system is that, if the transfer speed becomes unacceptably slow, I can cancel the transmission with Ctrl-C, reset my modem, and then resume the download by issuing the same wget command but using the -c (continue) option. In fact, this proved to be a really useful feature since, as I was trying the process late at night, I opted to resume my download the next day and so didn't have to sit up until the early hours, or have to leave my machine running all night. (Remember that, for me, leaving the machine running is no guarantee of eventual success since the modem will undoubtedly drop the connection at some point - and it won't automatically restart!) That's a long, sad story on how I finally obtained an ISO file with which to burn a bootable Ubuntu 8.04 CD. But, now that we have the beast in hand, what's new, and was it worth all the effort? Well, the live CD works just fine. The screen has the usual default orange colours, but features a really cool stylized heron (the distro is "Hardy Heron"). A few new things are fairly obvious. Under the Applications' menu, the Internet tab now includes "Transmission" (another BitTorrent client), while the Office tab gives access to the Writer, Calc and Impress modules from OpenOffice.org 2.4, the current version of this office suite. On my system, the Places menu item shows that I can access a "Data Disk". This is in fact my Windows' data drive so, evidently, access to Windows' drives is now included by default. But, such access is not entirely straightforward. Clicking on Places - Data Disk brings up an Authenticate (Vista users - can you say User Account Control?) dialogue box requiring a system password. Apparently, the "System policy prevents mounting internal media". But, fortunately, there is an option to "Remember authorization" which, if left checked, avoids this complication in the future. Ubuntu 8.04 is an "LTS" (long term support) release which means that this version will be fully supported for at least the next three years. However, for those of you who like new toys, don't despair, updated versions will continue to be provided on the usual six-monthly release cycle. New features of 8.04 include the latest (Beta 5) version of Firefox 3; enhancements to F- Spot, the default photo- manager; many improvements to music and video file handling; and a whole raft of good stuff buried somewhere in the Linux kernel and the Gnome desktop manager. One of the other new features of this Ubuntu distro is the inclusion of wubi.exe on the CD-ROM. As Peter Hawkins relates in a separate newsletter article, Wubi lets you install Ubuntu to your hard disk, effectively as a folder in Windows and, at the same time, provides a dual-boot environment for either Windows or Ubuntu. If you aren't sure about stuff like creating new disk partitions for Linux, Wubi will let you install Ubuntu without the need for such major surgery. And, if you subsequently find that you don't like Linux (but, how could you?!!), you can uninstall the entire system just as if it were a Windows' application. I opted to install Ubuntu 8.04 directly to my hard drive. Since I already had Ubuntu 7.10 installed, the partitioner suggested that I should use guided partitioning to resize the ext3 partition, leaving 9.5GB for 7.10, and assigning 25.7GB for 8.04. The installation process worked flawlessly, and GRUB provided a triple-boot option for Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 7.10 and Vista. Now, I just have to ensure that Ubuntu 8.04 will do everything I need and then I can think about how to remove the earlier version and free up the disk space. Bottom Line Ubuntu 8.04 (Open Source) http://www.ubuntu.com Azureus 3.0 (Open Source) http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ GNU Wget 1.10.2 (Open Source) http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/ Wubi (Open Source) http://wubi-installer.org/ ____________________________ Article The following article was reprinted from the free article directory website Content for Reprint (http://www.content4reprint.com). The article can be found more specifically at http://www.content4reprint.com/computers/security/phishing- scams-how-to-detect-them.htm Phishing Scams - How To Detect Them Since the Internet began, it has been an incredible way to do business, socialize, increase knowledge, blog, and even commit crime. In fact, no other venue in the world has given the cyber criminal such a huge hunting ground for his or her next victim. Sadly, many people are Internet illiterate and do not seem to recognize the dangers associated with this type of activity and many suffer for it. The Nigerian 419 scam is one of the most prevalent. It lures people into thinking that, if they help some family smuggle millions of dollars out of their country, they win turn will pay them (the intended victim) a portion of the proceeds. The victim will, of course, have to pay various "fees" to help get the money transferred. These fees will often drain the victim 's accounts before they realize it. These would be thieves are even brazen enough to call their victims and share sad stories with them. This is designed to continue to lure the victim in. There have been a surprising number of people who do not think about what they are doing and fall for it. In a number of cases that I have read about, the victim even goes to the country in question to get his money, only to suffer the final humiliation of being run back out of the country by the country 's "officials" who are actually part of the scam ring. A couple of the stories I read indicated that the victims were in fear of their lives. Some of the other victims were even murdered. One important point to remember is that U.S. banks are required to report unexpected or suspicious account activity which, in turn, causes the government to investigate such banking activity. It is my understanding that this type of banking transaction is illegal and could very well land the victim in jail. Most of the time, this scam starts out via e-mail. These e- mails can begin by informing the victim that they have won a fabulous prize or cash in a national lottery or, as in the example above, can be a plea for help in moving large sums of cash out of some war torn country (there are a number of variations to this story). These e-mails look real, sound real, and some of the more sophisticated ones have the real company or organization 's logo on them. In all the cases that I am familiar with, they inform the victim that he will have to pay some "fees" in order to get his "check". This, by itself, should be a red flag to anyone who gets themselves involved in these types of scams. No lottery that I am aware of will force the "winner" to pay fees to get their winnings. Though there are no hard and fast rules to detect a scam, here a few red flags to watch for. Do they ask for fees? Does the actual url match the one in the e-mail?(Most of the time, it won't.) Many of these e-mails are sent in html (so they can present the company logo as in the national lottery scams). Place your mouse pointer on the link without clicking it. More often than not, the link displayed in the url repeater will not be the same. Another red flag should be in how the e- mail is addressed to you. Another, and probably more important red flag, is this: Do they ask for your financial and personal information? This, by itself, should alert you that something is amiss. Any e-mails you get from any financial institution should be treated with a healthy dose of suspicion. If you have any doubts forward these e-mails to the company 's fraud department. Never, click on the links supplied in these e- mails and never reply to them! Even if legit, you should adopt the practice of opening a new window and going directly to the site from there. In the case of the lottery or Nigerian scams, simply delete them or report them as spam. About the Author Ryan Smith is the author of the hot, new, blog "The 10 Commandments of ID Theft Protection". Learn more at http://www.e-profitsubmissions.com/wordpress ____________________________ 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, 613 727-5453 Meeting Coordinator: Bob Gowan, bob.gowan@@opcug.ca Treasurer: Alan German, alan.german@@opcug.ca Secretary: Gail Eagan, gail.Eagan@@opcug.ca Membership Chairman: Mark Cayer, Mark.Cayer@@opcug.ca, 613 823-0354 Newsletter: Brigitte Lord, brigitte.lord@@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-webmaster@@opcug.ca Privacy Director: Wayne Houston, privacy@@opcug.ca Director without portfolio Don Chiasson Beginners' SIG Coordinator: Chris Taylor, chris.taylor@@opcug.ca, 613 727-5453 Linux SIG: Don Chiasson Note: We added an extra "@" to the emails to reduce spam. (c) OPCUG 2008. 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. 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. Any item left over at the end of the meeting will be sent to the... recycle bin.