Topic: Science & Technology

Bits &Bytes

A Decade of Surfing the WWW by Ms. Lin MacDoss

It's hard to believe that for most of us the Internet is only ten years old. Although the World Wide Web has actually been around since 1969, it wasn't until 1993 that the regular person could effectively use it. Before that, you needed to be some kind of Einstein just to navigate the web. It was, of course, the birth of the modern browser that made the Internet accessible to us all.

Bits & Bytes

Snappy Fax Makes Faxing From Your Computer A Snap by Ms. Lin MacDoss

If you use your computer for faxing, you're probably using the free bitware that came with your fax modem. Unfortunately, most bitware programs don't do very much except send faxes. Sure, faxing documents from a word processor is easy enough. In most cases you simply select "print to fax," enter a phone number and the fax goes. But faxing from a scanner usually requires the user to scan a document into a photo editing program, then import the saved image through a complex maze into the bitware program before it can be sent. You'd think there would be an easier way. After all, computers are supposed to be all about convenience.

Bits & Bytes

Three Essential Computer Utilities by Ms. Lin MacDoss

Utilities are those nifty little programs that make maintaining and fixing your computer easier. In a way, they're like health insurance, since you often wonder why you spent money on them. But when you need them, you're thankful that they're in place to help you rescue yourself from a problem.

Fortunately, you don't have to spend an arm and a leg to get some great utilities to help make your computing experience more trouble free. The brief list of utilities I've assembled here are all designed for Windows, since Microsoft's products usually need all the help they can get. As with any application, before using any of these programs you're advised to RTFM. Politely translated, that means “read the manual.”

You can always count on the fact that somebody will want to ruin the party. Take email, for instance. Several years back, when your email client told you "you've got mail," that meant that someone had sent you a personal note that you definitely wouldn't want to miss. These days, "you've got mail" means that some con artist wants to help you arrange a loan, get a credit card, obtain refilled printer cartridges, or increase the size of certain body parts. Oh yes, the mail could be from the Queen of the Third World who needs you to help her get $642 million out of her country.

Linux Canada, Inc. has announced that they plan to take Quasar, their popular cross-platform accounting program, open source, beginning with the release of their next version, 1.3. This should come as welcome news to the open source crowd, since a business accounting application of Quasar's scope is something that's been missing in the list of open source applications.

Editors Note: When this article was written, we were still trapped in the world of Microsoft and Windows. We have since migrated to Mandrake GNU/Linux 9.0 and now use open source or open source based applications almost exclusively. For example, this article was preparred for publication using StarOffice 6.0 , the Bluefish HTML editor, and the gFTP program. Although we still have to use Windows to run our inventory control program for The Unicorn Shoppe, that too shall pass. We are currently attempting to replace Small Business Inventory Control, mentioned in this article, with a GNU/Linux alternative.

Almost anyone who's ordered software over the internet will tell you that customer relations are practically nonexistent in cyberspace. If you have a problem with installation or figuring out how to use your newly purchased program, you're usually directed by an automated server to the dreaded "knowledgeable database," a Byzantine maze that requires the knowledge of a programer to navigate. An email to technical support will usually be answered several weeks later with a document from the aforementioned database that's indecipherable by the lay person. Advise from an actual human being is usually not available, and when it is available there's a hefty fee involved. In other words, after you fork over your credit card number and download that program you really need or want, you're pretty much on your own.

Do you consider yourself to be an “alternative” person? Do you resent the hold that mainstream “traditional” medicine holds over the health care system, at the expense of alternative treatments like homeopathy, herbalism, and acupuncture? Do you gripe about the fact that big chains like Wal-Mart and Borders have all but driven local community based merchants out of business? Do you think there's something drastically wrong when a company like Enron can amass and lose billions of dollars buying and selling oil without producing a single drop? Are you appalled because your supermarket's shelves are filled with produce from another hemisphere when locally grown crops rot in the field for lack of a market?

Editor's Note: Although Open Source software is usually associated with GNU/Linux, many applications are cross platform and will work on Windows, Linux and other operating systems.

For more than two years, this column has been written using Open Source software. This started when I downloaded a copy of StarOffice 5.2, an office productivity suite similar to Microsoft's Office, to evaluate it for an article. To my surprise, I discovered that I liked the suite's word processor so much that it quickly became my writing tool of choice. The fact that it does an excellent job of opening and saving documents in Office formats means that I can read and send attachments to those who are still beholden to Microsoft – a definite plus.

If you spend any time online, or ever share a file with another computer via a floppy or CD, then your computer is at risk. There is the risk of potentially destructive viruses infecting your system from email attachments, or of other malicious codes being placed on your machine from a seemingly innocent web page. There are also hackers who scan your ports, hoping to gain access to your computer. Once access is gained, the hacker can do anything from destroying your data, recording your keystrokes to gain access to your user names and passwords, to turning your machine into a "bot" (short for robot) to be used in distributed denial of services attacks on key Internet services.

Did you ever wonder why the biotech industry and the large grocery chains have spent so much money to assure that the FDA doesn’t require that genetically engineered foods are labeled? The answer is simple: they’re afraid that if your produce was labeled “grown from seeds that have been genetically modified” you might decide it’s time to start shopping at the local organic food mart, which has been the case in all countries where labeling has become a requirement.