With November being our Annual General Meeting time, this month PC Update carries the details and being time critical, has an earlier cutoff. Thus it is the end of September as I write this introduction and our Annual Report and there is plenty to discuss.

Management Committee Elections

With nominations having just closed, there are single nominations for the four Executive positions and nine nominations for the eight general committee positions, as detailed on page 42. We will therefore need an election to select the eight and I invite everyone to exercise their voting rights to decide the outcome. There are three methods available: being at the AGM in person, or postal voting using the form on page 45, or appoint a proxy to vote for you, using the form you can download from the Committee Web page at http://www.melbpc.org.au/committee/proxy05.pdf.

Reporting and Preventing Spam

E-mail Spam continues to be a problem for many of us - not only for those who need to publish their e-mail addresses, but also for those with predictable addresses eg. dave@melbpc.org.au. That is not my e-mail address, but even so, I am very appreciative of the Spam Assassin tool provided by our Internet team, and have set my own levels to mark at 3 and delete at l0.Ofthe 100 or more Melb PC e-mail messages I get each day, about 50 are automatically deleted as obvious Spam (score greater than 10), with a further 15 sent to me as being marginal (score between 3 and 10). Of that 15, 99% are also unwanted. If you are using Melb PC email and haven't already setup your Spam-Assassin parameters, I recommend you do so via https://mansec.melbpc.org.au/spam/.

With the advent of recent legislation and clamping down by Australian authorities, we are seeing a reduction in Spam from local sources - especially since the legal battle using these new laws, alleging that Clarityl in Perth had sent out 56 million Spam messages. Further ACA measures are due to be launched, using a Spam reporting tool at http://www.aca.gov.au/secure/complaint_form.htm. Although it may seem that this method would have limited use in reporting sources outside Australia, the ACA is collaborating with a number of other countries, and will share reporting as appropriate.

The tracking of Spam sources is showing up some hijacked sites - where a Trojan program had been unknowing (remotely) installed, and that PC was then used to send out Spam messages. These has even happened to some of our Members! Further investigation then usually shows that the hijacked site had not been using any Anti-Virus software or what it had was well outdated. I implore all members using the Internet to ensure that they use an appropriate, up-to-date virus scanner. One such tool is AVG. A free limited-edition is available from http://www.grisoft.com. Like all Anti-Virus software it needs updating regularly - at least weekly or even daily.

Microsoft VISTA

In PC Update, September 2005 I described our involvement with Microsoft's Beta program for its next operating system, VISTA. I have a copy now (after an overnight download of the 2.8 GB file) and have just managed to install it on a Home PC.

One of the main differences is a move away from seeing our PCs as having multiple disks, directories etc, onto a far more intuitive way of seeing our data classified by use - Documents, Music, Photos etc. We can then create a library of virtual folders for various subjects, with multiple entries. As an example, we might have a PDF invoice for a camera purchased from Kmart stored in our November Payments folder, and have another entry in a virtual folder title Warranties that links back to the original. As well, by specifying Kmart as a keyword, we could later search on the Kmart criteria to locate the invoice detail.

The beta program includes a new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) and it's good to see the TAB features that I have come to appreciate in Firefox, now available. Browser security is considerably upgraded, and there is a separate beta version available as an update to existing XP systems. I hope to be testing that aspect on an XP system during November, and will keep you informed.

Monthly Meeting and AGM

The November meeting will be held on Wednesday 2 November at 7.00 pm, in Lecture Theatre 1, at Deakin University, Burwood. Voting for the elections will be available as you enter the Theatre on the night, and the AGM, which traditionally takes about 15 minutes, is set down to commence at 7.30 pm. The usual monthly presentations will still occur.

Following the meeting, our regular social gathering the WAFFLE session will be at Dolci's, Pizza & Pasta Bistro, 173 Middleborough Rd, Box Hill.

Reprinted from the November 2005 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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