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Old Chebucto News Home >> Beacon >> Chebucto News >> Old Chebucto News Serving Your Community's Online Needs Since 1994. |
Updated: 11 September 2003
A steady stream of new members has been responsible for the growth in
numbers, mostly from the closing of Dalhousie University's in-house
Premium Dial-Up Service, but increasingly from the local community as
well. The increase in numbers is not enough to put any extra strain on
any Chebucto services and there are plans in place to expand services as
the demand increases.
The Chebucto Community Net is looking for a Junior System Administrator, a
full time term position running to the end of this year. Further
information on this is
here.
Chebucto's main server, halifax, handles mail to Chebucto users including
the actual filtering of the spam tagged by our mail filtering servers as
well as being a file and web server and handling the text service phone
lines. One strategy tried was to move the text service phone lines to
another server to help reduce the load on halifax. While this succeeded,
it was discovered that the new setup could not be accessed by text dialup
users with 1200 and 2400 baud modems and several text service users
reported download problems on the text service. The phone lines are
presently back on halifax but there are continuing reports of access
problems. These are being investigated. The Chebucto Plus 56 K dialup service is not
affected by this issue.
Chebucto Commmunity Net membership figures set new records in August,
according to the Chebucto office. There were 21 new Chebucto Plus accounts, beating the previous
record set in August 1999. This year to date there have been 307 new
Chebucto accounts, as compared to 205 new Chebucto accounts for all
of 2002. Chebucto Plus has set new
high records for seven of the eight months this year so far since the
upgrade to 56 K service.
The new view also shows where cruise ships coming to Halifax dock and this
has turned out to be popular for the families of the cruise ship
passengers, who have been writing in to thank us. At its peak during the
Tall Ships 2000 event, there were several million visitors a day but since
then the webcam site has stabilized at around 3,000 - 8,000 visitors a
day.
Cool new Chebucto hats available!We now have available excellent quality Chebucto Community Net hats. Click on photo to see larger version. These fashionable stone coloured washed cotton Chino twill hats are low fitting with adjustable strap and antique silver ring buckle for a perfect fit and are embroidered with the Chebucto Community Net logo and web address. Machine washable and drip dry with a pre curved peak, this hat will provide years of comfortable wear as well as showing your support for Halifax's own one-of-a-kind independent Community Net. You can get your very own Chebucto Community Net hat from the Chebucto office for $20 or we can mail it out to you for an additional $10.
Chebucto Newspaper Column Give-aways!Chebucto's Mousepad newspaper column, written by Chebucto Board member Mark Alberstat with occasional help from some fellow Chebucto volunteers, is being well received and a fifth free mousepad for a column idea has been sent out. The column is published every second week in the Sunday Chronicle Herald. The Mousepad focuses on computers and internet technologies and how they can be used by people for an almost infinite variety of purposes. People can write in questions to the column and if they are used they will get a cool new Chebucto Community Net mousepad. Email questions to the Mousepad at mousepad@chebucto.ns.caChebucto mousepads may be purchased from the Chebucto Office for $10 each or mailed out for $15 each. Contact office@chebucto.ns.ca to order.
Alert: Windows updates important!We strongly advise all of our users with computers running Microsoft Windows (all versions but especially Windows XP and Windows 2000) to keep updated with the latest security updates from Microsoft. There are major security holes in the Microsoft Windows Operating System, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and Microsoft's Outlook Express email program which can be fixed with software patches from Microsoft's own Windows Update site. Microsoft Office users also should check with Microsoft for patches for recent vulnerabilities.Unpatched versions of these Microsoft products are vulnerable to many viruses, worms, trojan programs and exploits where hostile users can get access to your computer and files. Users are strongly advised to keep current with Service Packs and Critical Updates for Microsoft products, which are released on a regular basis. Since the beginning of September, there have been several new Critical level updates released. Chebucto Users still tops in *.NS.CA SETI processingSETI, 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 more than 1,611,000 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, producing more than double the results of both the government of Nova Scotia and the vast resources of EdNet, the schools network combined. Current stats here. Chebucto users have sent in more than 22,900 results, representing more than 46 years of CPU time that would otherwise have been wasted.
SETI is about to enter a new phase, targetting the top 200 candidate
signals for direct observation using the full resources of the world's
largest radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Outlook user email advisoryAfter the continuing 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.
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