Monthly Technology Updates

MAY 1999

1. Y2K - Stocking up for the crisis

For those people who fear the worst from the year 2000 (Y2K) computer bug, stocking up on food and other survival essentials has led to big business. In some areas of the country sales of wood stoves have increased by more than 70 percent.

One community that is thriving on Y2K fears are the Amish people and those businesses that cater to them. Their religious beliefs prohibit the Amish from using modern machinery and electricity. Thus businesses have developed to provide this community with items like butter churns and kerosene lamps. Now these businesses are being flooded with orders from non-Amish people who fear the worst is coming in the new year and want to have on hand items that won’t be vulnerable to Y2K problems. Many of these stores historically have low sales, but they now have five- to seven-month back orders for many items.

The demand for portable generators has also grown in response to Y2K. Coleman Powermate, the nation’s leading portable generator manufacturer, is running behind on orders. The demand for generators comes not only from private citizens, but from businesses and municipalities.

Before purchasing any items like these it is probably a good idea to check with your local power, water, and gas companies to see where they are in fixing their Y2K problems. Also, inquire into their contingency plans should service disruptions occur.

For more information, click on these links:

2. PC tips - Mail merge, part one

The ability to send form letters to your client or prospect list can be a very powerful business tool. Fortunately, Microsoft Office provides a simple way to create mass mailings. There are two parts to this procedure. In the first part you set up an Access database to store your mailing list data. In the second part (which will appear in next month's technology updates) you use Microsoft Word to create a form letter and merge it with your Access data.

Part One: Creating the Database

  1. Start Microsoft Access
  2. On the startup screen, click the Blank Database button and then OK (NOTE: If you have the Wizards feature installed, you can create the database directly by clicking on Database Wizard and then selecting the Address Book application)
  3. Give the database a name (Clients, for example), then click on OK
  4. Make sure the Tables tab is selected
  5. Click on New, then choose Design View, then click on OK
  6. In the Field Name type Last Name, then press the Tab key
  7. Be sure the Data Type says Text; if not, use the drop-down box to select Text
  8. Put your cursor in the Field Name column below the Last Name row and type First Name
  9. Again be sure that the data type is text
  10. Continue this procedure for the following Field Names and Data Types

Field Name Data Type
Address One Text
Address Two Text
City Text
State Text
Zip Text
Salutation Text

  1. When you are done, click on File on the menu bar, then Save
  2. When prompted for a name, type Clients, then click on OK; when asked if you want a primary key automatically created, click on Yes
  3. Click on File again, then click on Close
  4. Your database is now ready for data entry
  5. Double click on Clients in the table tab
  6. The database will open in a spreadsheet-like form. Use this screen to enter your clients’ names, addresses, and salutations (Mr., Ms., Dr., and so on).
  7. When finished, click on File and then Close
  8. Click on File and then Exit to quit Access

  

3. Searching for signs of intelligent life in the universe - from your PC

Beginning in April 1999 you (or more precisely your computer) can join in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The SETI project uses radio telescopes to scan the heavens for signals from extraterrestrials (ETs). However, since we don't know how ETs might broadcast, the SETI project has to scan millions of radio frequencies. This requires a tremendous amount of computing power.

Now SETI scientists can harness the unused computer power of desktop computers around the world. By downloading the SETI@Home screensaver, your computer may become the one that discovers ET. When the screensaver is installed it will automatically download (via the Internet) a small piece of SETI data to process. Processing occurs only when the computer is idle. When the processing is complete it will be uploaded to SETI and a new piece of data will be downloaded. The program keeps track of which computer processed the data, so if your computer makes the great discovery, you will get the credit.

For more information, click on these links:

4.Online buyer beware

April saw two interesting cases involving the sale of securities over the Internet. In the first case, a Tulsa man named Howard Turney appointed himself prince of New Utopia, a proposed kingdom that would be located in the Caribbean. Turney, using the name Lazarus Long (after the fictional character in Robert Heinlein's novels), used an Internet site to sell up to $350 million in New Utopia bonds. In addition, the site was used to convince people to pay $1,500 for New Utopia citizenship. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit against Turney. On April 9 a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order.

The other securities-related Internet incident involved Amazon.com's new online auction site. On April 1 a person listed for sale 1,000 shares of a privately held software company, net.Genesis. However, offering the shares in this manner is a violation of securities laws. Amazon.com closed the auction before the transaction could be completed. However, the popularity of online auction sites may make it difficult for the Securities and Exchange Commission to monitor these types of stock sales.

5. Melissa virus strikes

On March 26, 1999, a computer virus called Melissa began infecting computers. Melissa spreads by E-mailing copies of itself. It uses an infected computer's E-mail address book to determine who should receive the E-mail. The subject line of a Melissa-infected E-mail message states "Important message from <name>'. The body of the message says "Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)." The message contains a Microsoft Word attachment, called list.doc, that contains a list of pornographic World Wide Web sites.

Melissa is known as a macro virus. Macro viruses use the macro languages built into popular applications, such as Word, to create their mischief. Fortunately, this makes them easy to defeat. Simply turn on the macro-virus protection feature that comes with most popular applications that can be infected (check the application's help feature for assistance).

Although this virus was relatively benign, it did cause problems in some organizations. For instance, one company reported receiving 32,000 Melissa infected E-mail messages within 45 minutes. Such heavy E-mail traffic can cause serious problems.

On April 1, 1999, a New Jersey man was arrested for having created the virus. He faces up to 40 years in prison and a $480,000 fine.

For more information, click on these links:

6. Cheap, even free, personal computers

Personal computers (PCs) that sell for under $1000 have been around for a while and were a hot item during the 1998 holiday season. But $1000 is apparently still too expensive. Now there are computers that sell for less than $500, and some companies are giving PCs away for free.

eMachines and Microworkz are two companies selling PCs for less than $500. The price of the eMachines system is $399. The system uses a 300MHz AMD K-6 processor and comes with 32 MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive, but no monitor. The $499 Microworkz system uses a 333MHz Cyrix MII processor and comes with 32 MB RAM, a 3.2 GB hard drive, a 56K modem, and a 15-inch monitor.

If $399 is still too much, how about a free PC? Free PC is a company that will give you a PC. In exchange you must give Free PC detailed demographic data, including information about your hobbies and buying habits. You must also agree to spend at least 10 hours a month on the computer. Half of the computer’s 4GB hard drive is filled with ads targeted to the user. These ads are periodically updated via the Internet.

If these systems sound too good to be true, in some ways they may be. Whereas a typical PC uses separate components for sound, video, and a modem, these systems are integrated into the motherboard in the sub-$500 and free PCs. To upgrade, then, you might have to purchase an entire new system.

For more information, click on these links:

7. Anti-trust update

Microsoft has recently entered into settlement talks with the Justice Department concerning the government's anti-trust suit against the software company. Many legal experts believe that Microsoft is losing its court case. Recent rumors suggest that the talks are revolving around the idea that Microsoft will make the source code for the Windows operating systems publicly available. The notion of Open Source (publicly available source code) computer software has been gaining acceptance as the Linux operating system (see the April 1999 technology updates) has increased its market share.

Microsoft's willingness to talk may have been influenced by a recent out-of-court settlement on anti-trust issues between Intel and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC complaint against Intel focused on how the company deals with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The complaint claimed that Intel withheld technical information from OEMs in order to coerce them into licensing their patents to Intel. As part of the settlement, Intel agreed to discontinue this practice.

For more information, click on these links:

8. Web anti-virus software

Computer viruses manifest themselves in many ways. Some are merely annoying, displaying a message on a certain date, for example. Others have the ability to destroy all of a computer's data. All computer viruses are designed to replicate and spread themselves. In the early days of computers, viruses typically relied on floppy disks to spread from one system to another. Today, computers are connected to local areas networks and the Internet.

One way to protect your computer from viruses is to use anti-virus software. Good anti-virus products, such as Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee Anti-Virus, use a variety of detection techniques, including signature-based scanning, checksum comparisons, and expert systems. Each computer virus has a unique signature, a pattern of programming code. Signature-based scanning looks for this code and matches it against a database of known viruses. However, new viruses are created all the time. Checksum comparison creates a unique signature for every file on a computer. The checksums are created when the system is known to be virus-free. Subsequent scans look for changes in the checksum patterns. These changes may reveal the existence of a new virus. Expert systems are used to combat the most serious virus threats, polymorphic viruses. These viruses change their form each time they reproduce, making them very difficult to detect. Expert-system anti-virus tools use thousands of tests on a computer's files to detect a polymorphic virus. If it finds one, the system determines how to remove it.

Viruses cannot spread by a person’s reading an E-mail message. However, files that are downloaded from the Internet or attached to an E-mail message are capable of spreading viruses.

For more information, click on these links:

9. Connect to the Internet through your satellite dish

If you want a high-speed Internet connection but digital subscriber lines (see the September 1998 technology updates) or cable modems (see the December 1998 technology updates) are not available in your area, you might want to consider a mini-satellite system. The system, made by Hughes and called DirectPC, works with a pizza-sized satellite dish.

The dish cannot send data, so it must be used in conjunction with a standard modem. The modem sends user requests (such as mouse clicks on Web links) and the dish receives data. The dish is capable of a 400 Kbps data rate. Dish prices start at about $300, and the cheapest service plan is $30 for 25 hours use per month. A more expensive dish, called DirectDuo, allows DirectPC connection to the Internet and DirectTV satellite television programming. A DirectDuo dish costs about $500.

For more information, click on these links:

10. Can't find the answer on the Web? Ask Jeeves

The past few years have seen great advances in the area of voice recognition. However, these systems merely translate speech into text. They do not comprehend what is being said. The goal of natural language processing (NLP) is to develop systems that can understand natural commands and requests. For example, instead of opening your Web browser and typing the address for these technology updates, a NLP system would be able to respond to your written statement "show me this month's technology updates."

Recently, NLP has moved onto the World Wide Web. A new search engine, Ask Jeeves, is capable of handling natural language inquiries. Instead of developing a complex query, with AND, OR, and quotes, you just type your question into the Ask Jeeves interface as if you were asking a friend. The Ask Jeeves Question Processing Engine (QPE) analyzes the question syntax and semantics to form a question template. Each template is a potential query. The user can then select which template to run against the search engine. Some corporations have expressed interest in the Ask Jeeves technology for their own customer-service Web sites.

For more information, click on these links:

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