Chebucto Community Net

Help \| Search \| News \| Contact Us \| Web Cam
											Chebucto Community Net Old Chebucto News Home >> *Beacon* >> Chebucto News >> Old Chebucto News Serving Your Community's Online Needs Since 1994.

Daily Service Bulletin

Chebucto News Archive

Permalink

Updated: 8 May 2006

High attendance for AGM

Chebucto's 12th Annual General Meeting drew an audience of more than sixty people, double last year's AGM audience and the highest attendance in more than six years.

Elected by acclamation to two year terms on the Chebucto Board of Directors are new Directors Bob Adams, James MacLennan and Heather Townsend. Tom Daly, Bernie Hart and Alan Turner re-offered for fresh two year terms and were also re-elected by acclamation. There were no nominations from the floor.

Also joining the Board are Richard Connolly and Kent Murray, appointed to fill the remaining one year terms of resigned Directors Bob Ashley and Dale Crory.

Long-time head of Chebucto Userhelp Norman De Forest was remembered and a presentation giving members an advance sneak peek into a future direction for the Chebucto Community Net was well received.

One GB mail quotas coming!

Mail quotas on Chebucto will soon be getting a lot bigger thanks to the purchase of two new mail servers. The top-end mail quota on Chebucto will grow in size 250,000 times from 4 MB now to 1,000 MB (1 GigaByte) in a few weeks from now.

One new server will join the two servers already filtering junk and viruses from incoming Chebucto mail. More than ninety percent of incoming email to Chebucto is spam, scam or virus-carrying mail. The second server will host the new larger mailboxes, taking that chore from main server halifax.

Chebucto's mail system is being re-organized from top to bottom. The first priority is to make sure it all works properly before the switch rather than rush to get it into place. Unlike other internet service providers, Chebucto supports many different ways to access email - the standard POP3 and IMAP as well as Webmail and our text-only inline PINE. We also support strong encryption for all forms of email access on Chebucto.

Chebucto services maintenance window

The Chebucto Technical Committee wishes to advise Chebucto users of upcoming regularly scheduled planned maintenance downtimes. Chebucto Community Net services may be unavailable between 3:30 AM and 4:30 AM Tuesdays to allow for system upgrades. Some or all Chebucto services may go down with minimum or no warning during this maintenance window as systems are shut down and restarted.

Chebucto Community Net RSS how-to guide

Chebucto Community Net has posted a guide on how to use our RSS news feed here: chebucto.ca/rss/

Our RSS feed is our way of letting people know fast about important software updates and security alerts as well as new developments at Chebucto. Stay informed with the news as soon as we have it ourselves with our RSS news feed.

Updated - Recommended software list

With the recent interest in Internet security and the rise in various exploits meant to take over user machines, the Chebucto Office has compiled this list of recommended software for user computers running Microsoft Windows.

Web browser: Mozilla Firefox free from Mozilla.org
Upgraded to version 1.5.0.3.

Email client: Mozilla Thunderbird free from Mozilla.org
Upgraded to version 1.5.0.2

Anti-Spyware Software:

Ad-Aware SE free and paid versions from Lavasoft.de
A-Squared free and paid versions from Emsisoft.com
Spybot: Search & Destroy free from Safer-networking.org

Firewall: Zone Alarm free and paid versions from Zonelabs.com

Free anti-virus programs for home users (Note that both of these programs also have paid versions which offer additional features):

AntiVir: available from www.free-av.com/
AVG: available from free.grisoft.com

FTP Software: FileZilla free from FileZilla.SourceForge.net

RSS Newsfeed Reader: RSSOwl free from RSSOwl.Org

The Chebucto Office does not recommend using the Internet Explorer web browser for any use except for accessing Microsoft's own Windows Update page. The popular web browser has been repeatedly successfully targetted by virus writers in particular seeking to break into home computers to use them for criminal purposes such as sending out spam, sending out viruses to break into other computers and being used to disrupt services on other computer systems.

After many reports about vulnerabilities for 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.

Keeping Microsoft Windows up to date is also very important. Windows XP users should have Service Pack 2 installed. All Microsoft Windows users should make a point of using Internet Explorer to visit the Microsoft Windows Update site at least once a month and download all critical updates.

Cool Chebucto hats available!

We have available these 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.

Go to the Beacon

Go to the Services page