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Updated: 24 September 2001
New Membership Reward Plan!
Chebucto is pleased to announce a new Membership Reward Plan open
to all current Chebucto members. Full
Details here.
For each new Sustaining or Family Sustaining member who tells us
they were referred to us by you, we'll give you a $20 credit good towards
your next Sustaining or Family Sustaining membership. "Word of mouth"
advertising can now get you free internet: five referrals are good for a
free Sustaining membership, including a year of our famous
Chebucto Plus full graphical access.
Chebucto to appear at Word on the
Street
Chebucto will have a booth at this year's Word on the Street literacy
festival, held indoors at Pier 20 next Sunday, September 30th. Details here
This marks Chebucto's fourth year attending the event, which has been
moved indoors to Pier 20, behind the Westin Hotel, after last year's
torrential rains forced an early closure. Two of the three previous years'
festivals were rained out. Chebucto made a splash at the festival two
years ago, with our 5th
birthday celebration.
Chebucto Board Turnover
Technical Committee Chair Ed Dyer has accepted the Board nomination for
the position of Vice Chair of the Chebucto Community Net Society, joining
the four member Executive Committee. Ed has been a long term
volunteer at Chebucto and was elected to the Board at the last Chebucto
Annual General Meeting, April 24, 2001.
Director Viola Winstanley has resigned from the Chebucto Board, just over
a year into her two year term. Her resignation is the second since the
most recent Annual General Meeting. Chebucto Vice Chair James Carroll
resigned earlier this year when his job moved to Ottawa.
The Chebucto Board has appointed a new Director, Bill Matheson, to
complete James' term in office, which would have expired at the next AGM.
Bill is a long time Chebucto IP editor and member. The Board is still
considering candidates for the second vacancy.
Chebucto Users tops in *.NS.CA
SETI processing
SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, has been processing
their radio telescope data with home users' computers for years now. Using
an innovative
screensaver
which runs whenever the user computer is not in use, SETI has had 740,000
years of high quality computer processor time donated to it.
Of all the computer domains ending in the letters NS.CA, denoting Nova
Scotia, chebucto.ns.ca now ranks
number one, beating out both the government of Nova Scotia and the vast
resources of EdNet, the schools network. Current stats here.
Chebucto users have sent in more than 8300 results, representing more than
20 years of CPU time that would otherwise have been wasted.
Chebucto User and Neighbourhood
Account
Agreements updated
Due to the recent spate of internet viruses and similar mischief, the
Chebucto Community Net User Agreement and Neighbourhood Account
agreements have been modified to help give Chebucto administrators
additional options for dealing with problems.
The previous Clause 2 has been modified to include the
restriction of account services and privileges in the event of untoward
account activity and a new Clause 8 has been added to explicitly allow
virus and spam filtering of mail and data. The new Chebucto User Agreement
can be found here
and the new Neighbourhood Account Agreement can be found here. The new
Agreements are in effect now for all users.
Virus filtering successful
Mail filters designed to trap the W32/SirCam and Hybris worms have proven
to be effective. The filters, which check for particular patterns within
the virus structure, trapped more than 1000 virus-laden emails within
their first 48 hours of operation. While there are no current plans to add
more viruses to the filter, the filter design allows for it. Chebucto's
filtering of these particular viruses should not be considered a
substitute for users protecting themselves with good anti-virus software
kept up-to-date with current virus patterns.
Email viruses hit Chebucto users
Email viruses continue to cause trouble for
Chebucto text and Chebucto Plus users.
Windows 2000 and Windows NT users are vulnerable to the Code Red and Code
Red II worms. There is a software patch that protects these users from
these worms and instructions for applying the software patch here:
http://microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/security/topics/codealrt.asp
As mentioned in the news item above, Chebucto now filters
for the W32/ SirCam and Hybris worms. There have been some reports of user
infection with other viruses, notably the Magistr worm.
The Chebucto Community Net strongly recommends that all Chebucto Plus users have anti-virus software
and that they keep their virus definitions updated frequently, no less
than once a month.
An excellent source of information is Chebucto UserHelp Team Leader Norman
De Forest's Anti-Virus page, which includes links to more information
and help in fixing an infected computer:
http://chebucto.ca/~af380/antivirus.html
Outlook user email advisory
After the recent wave of viruses specifically targetting users of
Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email programs, and the constant
stream of user complaints about randomly altered program settings and
difficulty using the program, the Chebucto Community Net Office and the
Chebucto Technical Committee recommend our users do not use either Outlook
or Outlook Express as their email program.
Windows Users can find a selection of email programs available for
download
here and Macintosh
users can find a selection of email programs
here.
New Chebucto By-Laws now in
effect
The new Chebucto Community Net Society By-Laws approved by
Special Resolution at this year's AGM have been approved by the Provincial
government and are now in effect. The new By-Laws can be found
here
and through the Chebucto text service by using the g)o bylaws shortcut
(when in Lynx, type gbylaws then hit Enter or Return).
Chebucto gets a new domain name!
Chebucto has acquired the new domain name chebucto.ca. This new name can be
used for web page addresses on Chebucto as well as email addresses on
Chebucto. The existing domain name chebucto.ns.ca will still work
for both web page addresses and email addresses and there is no plan to
discontinue it. Users are advised to only use chebucto.ns.ca to
subscribe to mailing lists due to the configuration of outgoing mail from
Chebucto.
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