A motion was made from the floor to elect the current slate of nominees by acclamation. Unfortunately, our bylaws do not permit such a move because of the way the Executive Vice President and Vice President are chosen. From among the nominees for Vice President, the candidate that receives the most votes becomes the Executive Vice President and the candidate with the most votes after that becomes the Vice President.

An election by acclamation cannot resolve this method of appointment.

A comment from the floor brought up the fact that there are only two candidates. If everyone voted for the two, the inevitable result would be a tie. Ken said he had faith that someone would fail to mark both boxes, or in some way indicate a preference for Executive Vice President. If the result were in fact a tie, he would have the two candidates arm wrestle.

Milt Hull gave a few words about the group, a "campaign for the SPCUG," as he put it. The user group started out very small, meeting at the Sylvan Oaks library. He wants to see the group continue to grow and the most significant way he sees that happening is through its volunteers. Milt welcomes all volunteers with open arms and says he couldn’t do his job without the assistance of volunteer support. He would like to continue working with the group, promoting it to the community and encouraging its growth.

Tom Anderson gave a few words reminding the audience that in his 17 years of membership, he has held numerous positions and recalls the exciting times when the group reached its peak of approximately 3000 members. Tom mentioned that at that time, the group was able to draw very important industry leaders to speak to us. It would be great to return to those membership levels. His recent efforts have been to make Sacra Blue as entertaining and informative as possible. He echoes the sentiments of Milt Hull in that the group always needs more volunteers. The most important thing members can do for the group is to help it grow.

Tim Cardozo expressed his desire that the membership vote for Tom Anderson and not him so that Tom would become the Executive Vice President this time around.

While the ballots were being collected, Milt discussed the group’s usual collection of announcements and reports.

He began by asking for a show of hands of those who know about and watch "TechTV." TechTV is a satellite channel and is available on some cable systems (Dish Network 191 or C-Band F4-12, but not available on Sacramento Cable/AT&T Broadband). Milt says he is constantly drawn to this channel, especially to watch "The Screensavers." He laments that he is most definitely a nerd but even so, he recommends this channel because of the worthwhile and timely information delivered on a daily basis.

Milt introduced Nick Lee, a representative of SeniorNet. The SeniorNet Learning Center, having been operating for the past nine months under the sponsorship of CSUS, has openings for instructors and coaches to conduct 2-, 4-, or 8-week classes. The classes generally meet for two hours once or twice a week at the Julia Morgan House on T Street, and cover Introduction to Computing and Introduction to Windows. Workbooks for these classes have already been developed. Contact Nick at 916-415-9504 or the CSUS Life Center at 916-227-5518 if you have an interest in participating.

An announcement from the floor mentioned that a similar center exists in Roseville.

Tom Anderson and Ken Hopkins gave a rundown on the contents of the current issue of Sacra Blue. Tom informed the audience that the HardCopy column has returned but was edited behind the scenes. Evelyn Kaehler, SPCUG’s newest Book Review Editor, has come into some serious difficulties and we wish her all the best.

A question from the floor asked how does one access older issues of Sacra Blue? The answer is to get to the latest issue of eBlue (visit our home page and click the eBlue link). Along the left panel of information links, there is a link to the archives. Once there, choose which issue you are interested in. (The Chief Editor of eBlue apologizes regarding the lack of recent past issues. The archives page will be updated shortly.)

Brian Smither introduced a program that will automatically send to your site a Web page that includes the current dynamically-assigned IP address of your Linksys cable or DSL router. For those who want to run a home-based server, dynamic IP addresses pose a particular problem—the address can change unexpectedly. The program is called "StaticIP," and its function is to periodically check the router’s WAN address. It will then embed this address into a Web page of your own design and FTP the file to a personal Web site—perhaps a free Yahoo account, for example. Those who wish to access your home-based servers would first look at this specific Web page and note the IP address indicated. Once this number is known, access to your servers by IP address can be accomplished. StaticIP is written by J. Clement and is available at Static IP.

Milt Hull followed up by saying that due to the nature of dynamic IP addresses, your registered domain name cannot point directly to changeable addresses. In addition, many programs of this type will need to be updated when IP v6 comes online. IP addresses under IP v6 will have a different numbering scheme.

Milt said that the current allocation of IP addresses is nearly depleted. Much like when the available pool of phone numbers in a given geographical area becomes depleted, the phone company must activate a new area code. Milt also comments that phone books in the near future may even list an e-mail address given to you by your phone company.

Milt and Ken covered the list of upcoming speakers: April has Serious Magic with their Video Commander product. Serious Magic is staffed by ex-Play Inc. programmers, and the Video Commander is described as a software-based version of Play’s Trinity "video studio in a box" product.

Quester, a German company, is flying over a representative to demonstrate "Outlook Folders," a product that permits multiple users at multiple workstations to access the resources of one Outlook profile. So, when Bob is on the upstairs computer, he can check his e-mail and when he’s on the downstairs computer, he can also check his e-mail. All retrieved e-mail, regardless of which computer is used, will be stored at one designated location. All other Outlook resources can be shared as well.

For June: Microsoft will show digital imaging products.

Ken Hopkins gave his report of viruses currently making the rounds. The "GLIB" virus looks like it's from Microsoft, announcing that the attached executable is the latest security patches for various Microsoft products. It’s not. Microsoft doesn’t send files via e-mail.

The GLIB virus has a programming error causing it to fail to deploy its payload, but it will still attempt to e-mail itself out to everyone in your Outlook address book.

Another virus, called "My Life," also has a programming problem. It fails to damage your system as well.

The "Sharpie" virus was written specifically to exploit weaknesses in Microsoft’s new .NET technology. It doesn’t do anything—it’s just a proof-of-concept exercise.

A security hole has been discovered in the PHP scripting language. Be sure to apply any patches if you are running PHP on your Web server.

Two security holes have been discovered in JAVA and another in the ZLIB library.