GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 42, 11-12-09

Thu Nov 12 20:10:10 PST 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 42                           

11-12-09

1 Internet nonsense 

2 Online truths

3 MS silliness, Facebook as alibi, HP and 3COM sitting in a tree, Sony and Netflix alliance

4 Speed and usage monitor

5 Email issue

The Internet is a wondrous source of information and opinion.  You can literally find a website about anything, and I do mean anything, even sheer nonsense as hoaxes and rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Email is another great way to spread hoaxes and misinformation.  Remember the infamous “teddy bear virus” email that swept the country a few years ago?  It warned of a virus called jdbgmgr.exe that had a teddy bear icon and you were urged to search for that file.  If found, you were warned to delete it and warn everyone in your address book that they were likely infected with it.

Problem is, that’s a legitimate Windows file that handles debugging of JAVA code for developers.  Most end users weren’t adversely affected but it still shows the propensity of users to believe misinformation and carry out instructions that could damage their own computers.

Nothing that dire going on at the moment, but there are some pretty big falsehoods circulating at the moment based on nothing more than fear, anger and a lack of understanding.

Take the whole wave of 2012 warnings.  These purport to show evidence that the end of the world is coming on 12-21-2012 because the Mayan calendar ends on that date.  Even the few remaining Mayans say that’s hogwash.

The Mayan calendar follows cycles and each cycle ended in some type of change.  Not disaster, not calamity, just change.  And the calendar doesn’t follow any kind of basic set of days and years, so each cycle was written out.  Is it any wonder they stopped figuring after getting so far into the future?

The Large Hadron Collider on the border between France and Sweden is another source of massive misunderstandings and misinformation.

The Collider, 17 miles in circumference, is nearly 600’ underground and is the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet.  The main purpose of this apparatus is mainly to attempt to prove the existence of the Higg’s Boson, which is a theoretical particle much like Quarks used to be (they’ve been found in lower power accelerator experiments).  

Naturally there are those outside of scientific circles that think this all sound like gibberish.  They think the words accelerate and particle and collider strung together in a sentence only portend ill tidings and immediately flock to the Internet to give voice to their fears.

Unfortunately these fears have leaked into the mainstream as “theories” that the LHC will create a black hole that will swallow the Earth.  Umm… no.  Not even remotely possible.

A black hole is formed when something massive, like the sun, is compressed into an extremely small area.  Like the sun compressed to a sphere with a circumference of about two miles.  Something that small with that much mass is very dense, therefore it has enormous gravity, what is called a gravity well.

The escape velocity (the speed something needs to escape the orbit) of such an object exceeds the speed of light.  That’s why these objects are black.  No light can escape the surface so we can’t “see” them.

Slapping two particles with infinitesimal mass together can’t form a black hole.  Period.  End of story.

So when browsing about the Internet looking for new and interesting reading, tread carefully.  Don’t believe anything without doing a little research of your own.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

microdome at seidata.com

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

In a fairly blockheaded move, Microsoft tries to patent the 'sudo' command that users of Linux and Unix recognize as a command that elevates your user privileges to that of a computer administrator temporarily.  We'll see how this one turns out:

http://tinyurl.com/yctyvph

A teen's Facebook status being updated at a specific time cleared him of charges in a couple of crimes.  His alibi of being in the house with the computer checked out because while he was supposedly committing a robbery, he told Facebook and the world at large that he wanted some pancakes.  Coming soon, using Twitter to call in to work:

http://tinyurl.com/yfau5k3

HP is working on purchasing 3COM, a longtime network equipment maker:

http://tinyurl.com/yc4tzc8

Netflix and Sony have partnered to bring the Instant Streaming service to the PS3.  The only catch is that you have to put the Netflix program disk in the PS3 to watch any movies over the streaming service, and will for the next year.  Two steps forward, one step back:

http://kotaku.com/5401870/hey-ps3-owners-hold-onto-your-netflix-discs

Daniel A. Williams 

daniel at thepcgurus.com

Download of the Week

If you're looking to monitor your network and Internet speed, track overall bandwidth usage and get several other very useful utilities, you'd do well to download the free NetWorx. With easy-to-read graphs and in-depth reporting tools it's a great way for anyone, regardless of technical expertise, to track Internet use.  

It’s free here: 

http://tinyurl.com/yk6rmdr 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Email Question of the Week

Q:  This morning when I turned on my computer I received a window that indicated that the authentication to open my e-mail account had failed (mail.insightbb.com) because of a bad username or password. It indicated a server error of Ox800CCC90 as the cause. This has never happened before and I have never been asked to sign in before. Nothing has been changed by me on my computer and I tried several times reenter the correct username and password, but didn't have any effect on this problem. This screen keeps popping up even though I am not trying to access my incoming e-mail. I have windows XP,Mail Washer pro and get my mail through windows live. I think I can send this e-mail out, but guess I won't receive your reply until after the problem is fixed, however, I would appreciate you response to this problem in case it happens again in the future. I enjoy your Newsletter and have learned quite a bit about computers from it.

A:  This is probably something you'll need to call Insight about.  It's possible the account is corrupted on their servers or on your PC, or they might have switched the incoming port away from 110 or any number of things.  They are much better equipped to help you with this issue than we are.

Sorry we can't assist you with this one but some things are beyond our range :(

Kevin Mefford

microdome at seidata.com

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