President’s Message
By Tom Burt
New Look for Gigabyte Gazette
This month, we're trying out a new look and layout for the Gigabyte Gazette. Hopefully, this format will be easier to navigate and read. The material that was repeated in each issue now has its own, separate area. It can be reached by clicking the "About SCSCC" hyperlink at the bottom of the left-hand panel on this page and also in the bottom right corner of the home page. Feedback (pro and con) is welcome.
General Meetings
Our Thursday, May 1 meeting will be our Education / SIG Fair,
featuring our seminar, class and SIG leaders at individual stations. There
will be no formal presentation. This will be an open house for all interested
For July 3, because the meeting date falls the day before the Friday, July 4, Independence Day holiday, your SCSCC Board decided this year to not have a general meeting.
Boot Camp Update
Bill Wilkinson and Ken Bentley have been reworking the Boot Camp class. See the special article "Boot Camp Updated".
Constitution and Bylaws
I recently submitted our best final draft of the new Club Constitution to the Association's Community Services office office. After a week, they returned it to me with many markups and changes. As I write, your SCSCC Board and I are trying to sort out what these markups and changes mean and work out some acceptable language that both sides can agree on. I am dismayed that this has become a "both sides" situation. We will keep you updated via the SCSCC_Admin list. In the meantime, you can review your Board's latest proposed version of the DRAFT SCSCC 2008 Constitution by clicking HERE.
Lab Student PCs - Vista SP1
The Lab Maintenance Team has been installing the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 update on the student and instructor PCs. As I write, 12 PCs have been updated. We expect to finish updating all of the PCs by early May. Each of the Vista PCs has the entire 444MB Vista SP1 setup file in a folder on the C: drive at C:\WindowsVistaSP1_32bit. If you are a dial-up Vista user, you can bring a blank CD to the lab during Open lab hours and burn your own copy of the SP1 setup.
Membership
As of April 22, our 2008 SCSCC paid memberships total 1149.
Education Activities for May
As usual, we have a great line-up of classes, seminars and SIGs for May. See the May calendar as well as the Seminars, Classes and “SIGs and KKs” pages for full details. Our education program is one of the great benefits of belonging to the Club. No matter what your experience or skill level, you should find something to suit your needs.
Technical (Tid)Bits
Microsoft has finally released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP to manufacturing. Distribution will begin later this month. Expect it to show up via Windows Update and on the Microsoft download center by early May. As promised earlier, as soon as we can obtain a clean copy of the service pack, we will place it in a folder on the lab PCs so that dial-up users can burn a copy to take home.
There are some new malware attacks happening that involve using the Adobe Flash player to infect and secretly take over a user's machine. These attacks can occur simply if a user visits a web-site that displays "infected" Flash ads linked from another site, such as an Ad server. Your best defense is to download the latest version of the Flash Player from the www.adobe.com web-site.