Tom Anderson, the first group officer to give his report for the evening, said the June issue of Sacra Blue has yet to be published because of an extremely busy personal schedule as well as blaming our newsmagazine’s Tech Talk columnist, Milt Hull, for missing his deadline again.

Tom reminded the membership that beginning with this issue, access to Sacra Blue will require a password. Information has been posted to SPCUG’s Web site detailing these changes. As tangible member benefits, the current issue, immediate past issue, and the Mentor List will now be accessed behind secure Web pages.

Tom also said he thinks this issue will one of the smallest that the group has published in some time. The availability of guest columns and articles is small and the pickings are slim. Tom welcomed back Tim Feldman with his column on Linux, and mentioned another important installment of the Virus of the Month column and several other regular columns.

Webmaster Brian Smither reminded the membership that an automatically generated password was e-mailed mid-June and that anyone wishing to change the assigned user name or password should simply send an e-mail to passmgr@sacpcug.org specifying the details.

Brian also recalled a recent experience with a member who had had Bonzi Buddy installed on her system. He pleaded with the audience that if anyone is considering installing, or if anyone is recommending the installation of the program, to "Just say no."

Bonzi Buddy is a purple gorilla that entertains you for about five minutes before his antics become quite annoying. In many cases, the program creates havoc with your computer, interferes with your Internet access, incessantly pesters you about upgrading (at no small cost), and reportedly sends details of your computing activities, unbeknownst to you, to advertisement servers (such a program is commonly called "spyware").

Ken Hopkins lamented over the fact that we are struggling to fill the schedule for future speakers. Lots of invitations have been made but very few replies received. If anyone has any suggestions about vendors or topics, please let him know.

Ken then reported on the latest virus threats. Klez.H has made it to the top of the distribution list, accounting for 96% of all reports of infestation, or one in every 300 e-mail messages, for May. A new virus with an attachment that is supposedly a JPG of Shakira is actually a file with an executable extension of VBS.

A survey of 10,000 people revealed that 59 individuals fell victim to the "Nigeria scam." The average loss was $5,575. A new virus, Simile.D, can infect both Windows and Linux platforms, the first cross-platform virus. It also randomly changes its file size, which means virus scanners may need to be updated. The Frethem.E worm is spreading fast but does no real harm. The e-mail attachment containing this worm looks like a Web site address and a text file having some passwords in it.

There has been a "proof-of-concept" virus developed that purportedly can infect non-executable files including image files, MP3 files, and other data-only type files. The structure of this virus concept requires an executable, not itself a virus, that will copy out from an infected data file the actual virus. It’s like having a record player playing the Beatle’s white album backwards and hearing "Paul is dead." The virus is in the data file (the message is in the record) but requires a reader (the record player) to extract it.

An attempt by compact disk manufacturers to prevent ripping the tracks to MP3s has been easily foiled. A data track was added to the CD which causes CD-ROM drives to see the disk as a data CD, while not interfering with how audio CD players read the disk. Using black magic marker, some individuals have obscured the data track, permitting CD-ROM drives to see the disk as an audio CD.

Milt introduced Don Mongeau, SPCUG’s scholarship chairman who, in turn, introduced Susan Mao, the second of two recipients of the group’s annual awards. She graduated eighth in her class at Sacramento High, plans to attend Berkeley to study Environmental Science, has been active in teaching and mentoring other classmates, and is active in jazz and dance.

Milt finished the business portion of the meeting by thanking the numerous volunteers and by making special mention of CalWeb, our ISP who provides services at no cost to the Sacramento PC Users Group.