by Don Singleton Tulsa Computer Society
From the May, 2007 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter
The members looked at computers in the news. Richard Hall said that Ubuntu 7.04,
Feisty Fawn, had been released on April 19. The release caused some servers to
overload, but the problem was relieved when people started to download the iso
files from mirror servers. Richard showed the program, but could not connect to
the Internet. The library Ethernet was not working and the new version of Linux
did not recognize the wireless USB wireless antenna because no drivers for the
hardware are available in Linux yet. Richard told the group that there was also
a new version of Thunderbird. The new Version 2 allows email to be tagged. The
members discussed privacy issues. Richard showed the members how to delete
cookies in Internet Explorer, Firefox and with other programs like Norton
SystemWorks. The group discussed tracking cookies and how to clean temporary
files and cookies with CCleaner. There was discussion about Google's proposed
purchase of DoubleClick and the privacy issues involved in the purchase. Richard
showed the group a list of 100 search engines sorted by popularity from
here.
The top 5 of 100 search engines have 95% of the market and Google alone has 52%.
Richard loaded his Google Web History by going
here
and then signing in at http://www.google.com/history. The group got to see
Richard's Google searches since the first of the year.
Richard showed the group of yet another Google product - a medical search at
64.233.167.99. The page has evidently not been released
to beta status.
The group looked at anonymous surfing and explored four products, one commercial
and three freeware.
The group discussed Vidoop, a local company that sells secure log-on services,
mostly to financial institutions. Carl explained how the service works - using
account names and pictures to log into a site securely.
The group agreed to look at file, directory and disk encryption at its next
meeting.
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