John Barker opened the meeting of 42 members and guests.

Two of our main topics were dvd technology and computer security. 

John Barker bought a $50 item from Staples for the meeting, a USB Jump Drive or Scan Drive Cruzer (sic). This item has 128MB and plugs into the USB port on the computer. The memory held two short very funny film clips. This exciting product has plenty of possibilities for toting around music on Mp3s!

A donated scanner was brought to the club for a blind auction. Mary Carey wins the USB scanner with her silent auction bid.

Picasa2, Google's free photo organizer, is demonstrated. This automatically organizes your photos (see www.picasa.com/).

Dvd Technology

Bob Young 2 has a fascinating discussion on the differences between CDs and DVDs. See (electronics.howstuffworks.com/dvd.htm).

We, as members of the ELCC, are mostly members of the jet-set ;-). Carrying original dvds in our luggage is too risky, and we really need to watch our movies as we travel the globe. Hollywood doesn’t understand our plight and prevents us from enjoying our movies with region codes and copy protection on the dvds.  John Sturgis explained region codes. Every DVD is designed to work only in a certain region of the world corresponding to the region code of the DVD player. If you are in the jet-set, (and aren't we all?) that can be a problem. If we wish to fly all over the world with copies of our DVD collections, we need special software. Bob Young 2 explains how dvdiddle-pro can defeat region codes. Go to (www.dvdidle.com/dvd-idle-pro.htm).  To rip (that is, transfer onto your hard drive) DVDs in order to make copies, you need AnyDVD, to defeat the copy protection. This also defeats region codes as does dvdiddle-pro. See (www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html).

The meeting opened at 10:00 AM with about 35 members in attendance. John told another of his cute jokes and announced that  the new Institute for Learning in Retirement brochures were now available. Sturg advised that all members should get the latest Windows and Office updates due to a major security flaw in all Windows versions.

Computer Security

After the 11:00 break, computer security was discussed. You have probably heard that Mozilla and Firefox provide more security than Internet Explorer. However, some sites have features that require Internet Explorer. Terry Carr discusses Firefox plugin to read sites coded only to display in Internet Explorer. See (ieview.mozdev.org/ ).

Bob Young 2 discusses getting rid of trojans by removing Sun Java Plugins using advanced tab in Internet Explorer (Tools>Internet Options>Advanced) . Don't download Cool Web Search if you don't want trojan viruses.

Katherine Croxton discusses AnalogX (www.analogx.com/ )   or ( www.analogx.com/contents/download/). This site contains many useful tools including ones used for privacy. SuperShredder is a utility to remove all remaining evidence of deleted files. Do not confuse this site with the trojan virus "analogx" which is a modified version of a proxy server featured in this website.

Bob Young 2 begins a discussion on getting rid of browser helper agents (a.k.a. browser hijackers).

There was a discussion of Pest Patrol 5 as a tool for getting rid of browser helper agents and other spyware. Pest Patrol has now been bought by Computer Associates and no longer has a free evaluation version.

Easy Cleaner is mentioned for use in completely getting rid of programs you want deleted. See (www.docsdownloads.com/Tier1/).

John Sturgis explained how Norton Antivirus is one of the hardest programs to remove. Symantec has tools to remove it on its site. See (service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/).

There was a Q&A session about faxing. Go to Windows Component Wizard in XP and add "fax services" to use  the fax.

Bob Young 2 explained how you can save money on your phone bill by using Nanco. See (www.nancoinc.com/).  Notice the really good Flash graphics on the splash screen.