From microdome at seidata.com Fri Apr 2 18:37:34 2010 From: microdome at seidata.com (Kevin-PC Gurus) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 21:37:34 -0400 Subject: GuruNews, Volume 10 Number 7, 4-2-10 Message-ID: <682438A9AD8245C1BEDCCA65AB31386C@main> Welcome to GuruNews Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region. You can interact with the PC Guru team via our Web site, located at http://www.thepcgurus.com. On our site you can post your computer questions, comments and rants on the forums, e-mail the PC Guru team members and chat one on one in our nightly IRC chat beginning around 8:00 PM EDT. You can also subscribe to our RSS feeds so you can get the latest news and forum updates from the PC Guru Web site directly on your computer. If you're new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin's website at http://www.jpdurbin.net. There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives. The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region. Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online. USS Rover?s list of streaming computer shows is now available for download in Excel, Open Office and Linux ready formats from http://sheet.zoho.com/public/ussrover/shows. To subscribe to this newsletter just drop by www.thepcgurus.com and sign up! Vol. 10, No. 7 4-2-10 1 April Fool?s just got dangerous 2 W32/Swine 3 April Fools, more Fools, China hacks news, unscheduled update, Win 7 demo, audio flashback 4 Directory printing 5 Shaky monitor I?m glad most of the issues I?ve been able to get out this year have been on Friday, because there?s no way I?d want to publish anything on April 1st. The temptation to pull a prank is simply too great. I mean just look at the web yesterday. Google.com and Topeka.com switched places; news sites ran stories about global warming activists freezing to death and ThinkGeek had some? rather entertaining products featured. What I?m talking about is completely different and is certainly no joke. Microsoft is in talks with Ford and utility companies for a software system to handle the charging duties on electric cars. I don?t know how much this would tie into the car?s total electrical system but it?s enough to make me nervous. Don?t get me wrong. I think Bill Gates and Microsoft have contributed nearly endlessly to the world, making computers simple enough for a three-year-old toddler or a ninety-year-old grandparent to navigate. And goodness knows they are probably responsible both directly and indirectly for the lion?s share of the jobs in the US (maybe outside of the government agencies). I think we are all familiar with crashes, lockups, spontaneous reboots, blue screens of death and security issues, however. The security issues especially have caused major problems for banks, government organizations and individuals for years through exploitable flaws in the OS and browser. As things move more toward ?fly by wire? systems run electronically rather than through cables and hydraulics the OS controlling is more important than ever. Imagine a non-responsive throttle or brake or steering system at 80 MPH and you?ll get my drift. So all props to Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation that helps millions around the world. You are truly blessed and generous people but please, keep that buggy OS out of healthcare equipment and vehicles where my very life depends on proper operation. I can get a virus just by connecting to the Internet (that?s where the term ?worm? comes from, they?ll just crawl in through security flaws), why would I want to depend on that level of security when it?s responsible for the safety of those I love, including me? The inclusion of mobile WiFi and Bluetooth just makes the problem worse, Forget drive-by shootings, think drive-by infections. Welcome to the future? Kevin Mefford, Editor microdome at thepcgurus.com Terry Wise www.ratland.com Tech News of the Week Google cranked up the fake news for April Fool's Day today: http://tinyurl.com/ycduzn6 (Google changes it name to Topeka after Topeka 'renames' its city Google trying to vie for the Google internet expansion) http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/todays-vowel-outage.html (GMail had a vowel outage) http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-reader-gives-back.html (Google Reader gives away patches for how much you have read) The rest of the internet did a pretty good job too: http://techcrunch.com/april-fools-shenanigans/ (complete list of all the tomfoolery) In real news: Journalists' e-mail accounts in China were compromised: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/world/asia/31china.html There was a special update from Microsoft for Internet Explorer this week. Normal Tuesday updates happen next week: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS10-018.mspx Want to test drive Windows 7 inside your web browser? Here's how: http://tinyurl.com/ycmfmn8 Ever wonder what the third best selling album of all time sounds like ran through an 8-bit audio processor (it sounds like video games of 20 years ago)? Dark Side of the Moon meets its match in this 8-bit rendition: http://tinyurl.com/ya7mtv3 Daniel A. Williams daniel at thepcgurus.com Download of the Week Windows doesn't give you a way to print out a list files in a folder. Over the years, people have come up with a variety of hacks to get around this, but there's a much simpler solution: Use Karen's Directory Printer. Karen's Directory Printer gives you an enormous amount of control over printing out lists of files and folders. You can sort the files and folders for printing in any way you want and it's easy to do. Karen Kenworthy has lots of simple useful applications at her trusted site. Get it here: http://tinyurl.com/pcgurus-4-1 Carlita Lupino Cards57 at gmail.com Email Question of the Week Q: Hello Kevin. I have two questions: is clean my pc a good thing to down load and use, and secondly, my computer screen shakes and moves all the time, what could be the problem and how can I fix it. Thanks in advance for your answers. You and your team are doing a fantastic job helping the underinformed wannabe geeks out here. A: I've never heard of CleanMyPC. I generally only recommend one cleaner and that's only if someone insists on it. CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/) will do everything you want and it's free. If the picture on your screen is "shakes and moves" likely it's a bad monitor. Borrow one from a friend to try to verify that since it could also be the video card but odds are you're going to need a new one. These days that's no big deal as even the mammoth 22" models are under $200 and 15" models are under $100 (if you can find them). Hope that helps and keep me posted... Kevin Mefford microdome at thepcgurus.com Contact info and legal stuff If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the ?Email the Team? icon. Copyright 2001-2010 The PC Gurus, all rights reserved. Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged. Information provided in this publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. Although the information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL systems. Make use of any information supplied at your own risk. The PC Gurus are a group of volunteers who provide support for the PC, Mac and Linux users in the Kentuckiana region. To unsubscribe from this newsletter visit http://thepcgurus.com/mailman/listinfo/newsletter_thepcgurus.com or send an email to microdome at seidata.com with the words ?unsubscribe newsletter? (without the quotes) at the top of the body of the message. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 23430 bytes Desc: not available URL: