The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Gary Taig editor@melbpc.org.au |
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The copyright discussion continues to heat up and Electronic Frontiers (EFA) is drawing our attention to some of the extreme parts of the copyright Bill. Fancy having to contemplate 5 years jail and/or a fine of up to $65,000, firstly if you possess an IPod or a PC and secondly if some court decides in its wisdom that you intended to use them to make illegal copies.
Apparently that's what we have contained in the current draft and if it's pushed through the system it will be the thin edge of the wedge, so watch out.
Making a Clone?
If you plan to do any serious copying of disks or partitions as per Morrison Hoyle's article, especially if you'll be copying onto a new SATA target drive, and if you have an old version of Knoppix, it won't do the job. You'll have to obtain the latest or a later version of Knoppix. I added the note about the disc the group distributed and after those pages had gone to print this month I found my only copy of Knoppix — it was an old copy, v3.4 that I bought with the Monthly Disc in June 2004.
I booted from the CD-ROM drive and tried to look at a machine that has SATA drives in it. Wasn't worth the time it took. In its listing of resources Knoppix version 3.4 didn't know about nor mention the fact that there were two large SATA drives on that machine. Of course, it's perfectly under
standable that an older version of Knoppix doesn't know about those new fangled drives that were probably still in development. I'm just wishing I had thought of that before the article went to the printer.
Compliments of the Season
Next week I'm being dragged off to the family kids Christmas party. It makes you realise just how fast time goes when the parties are about to begin. Anyway, I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone all the best and especially to thank all those good people who contributed material to PC Update this year, and put out a call for new contributions for 2007. Compliments of the season to all, whatever the flavour of your
celebrations and your good cheer.
Tech Editors
On top of that, I want to draw your attention to the wonderful help provided by our four volunteer Technical editors. Roger Brown, David Brownridge, Malcolm Miles and Dennis Parsons. I saw their participation in what was almost an argument one day. I don't recall the technical topic but suddenly realised that even though you see some people in newsgroup discussions from time to time, you don't often fully realise what they're discussing, or the depth of their apparent knowledge, or level of involvement and contribution. So, I challenged all four; told them that sometimes
I'm in a mad rush to get to the printer on time. That I can miss picking up small errors as time flies by in the rush of a normal production period, and of course, no one person can possibly know it all; and I asked them if they were interested. Thankfully they all answered yes. So, these days when you read your PC Update, often there have been corrections — thanks to the expertise of those four volunteers.
Year 2007
Next PC Update will be February issue, delivery will commence on about Wednesday 31 January 2007. For those who don't know about the scheduling of dates for PC Update, it is delivered to you by the Friday of the weekend immediately prior to the next monthly meeting.
Contributions for the February issue will be needed by early January; contact me if you need a specific date.
Reprinted from the December 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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