COMPUTER CHINCHAT
From Vince Chin
How do you fancy helping to find extraterrestrial intelligence by using the Internet? Well, here's your chance! Visit the SETI@Home web site at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu to download a cool screensaver application that will do just that.
The aim of this project is to survey the skies for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence aided by computer applications. The problem they discovered was that they did not have the computing power or money to progress onwards, so they adopted a technology called Distributed Computing. It transmits tiny data computations to thousands of distributed computers over the Internet, which in turn solve these computations and return the answer.
This computation would be accomplished whilst your computer is switched on but you were not using it. It is just like a normal screensaver except that this one has a purpose: compute the data unit and return the answer to SETI@Home. Unfortunately, this means that only people who are constantly connected to the Internet can take part, so dial-up connections cannot participate.
There are thousands upon thousands of distributed computers, all returning tiny data computations - can you see the advantage? Wow! The power of the Net!
Security, I hear you scream? What about the application reading data from your hard drive or infecting your PC with a virus? SETI@Hme state that their application is secure, so we'll just have to take their word for it! If they are lying, the Martians may well get them!
And Today's Virus Is...
Talking about viruses, past weeks have seen many Internet users
screaming about an email attachment virus, explorerworm.zip. This
particular virus would delete all Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft
Excel documents, C program files and a plethora of other documents before,
as a special bonus, sending itself to everyone in your email address book!
So for those of us unsure about email viruses, here are a few
tips and facts:
- You cannot get infected by viruses when just reading your emails.
- Opening attachments to emails is when you are very vulnerable.
- You cannot get infected just by browsing the Internet.
- Downloading programs from the Internet is when you are most vulnerable.
- These days, most viruses are propagated via email.
- Never open attachments when you are unsure of the sender.
- If you subscribe to newsgroups, never supply your real email address in the content of emails.
- If in doubt, bin/trash it.
- Finally use an Anti Virus application like McAfee's or Norton's and upgrade it regularly.
Free (Yawwwnnnn) Internet Access
Guess what the next subject is? Yep, free Internet access! As promised,
I'm carrying on from last month's article relating to Tempo's and Nortel's
new totally free service.
To take advantage of this new service, you have to obtain a
CD from any Tempo store. That was the easy part, even though it meant a 34
mile round trip for me. (Serves you right for becoming a country
bumpkin...Ed)
As usual, I never install any software like this on my main
PC, I always test it first on one of my other machines - that's when I can
get the kids off them! And what a fiasco that installation was...
Initially it went fine, it installed Tempo and Nortel's ISP's
Screaming.net's version of Internet Explorer 5 with no problem, then it
tried http://www.screaming.net to
finalise the installation. This is where it fell down flat, crashing my
machine and leaving the infamous blue screen of death. (I always think
that computer shade of blue is extremely attractive! ...Ed).
There was no way I was going to call the help-line at 50p per
minute, so I tried to solve the problem by rebooting and manually
connecting to the 'Net using my existing solid, reliable,
never-breaks-down connection. Yep, that worked fine, but the finalisation
of the screaming.net installation never happened.
My advice to you is to wait until their product is stable
enough to be unleashed on the masses. Also, bear in mind that I've heard
of two other ISPs that will soon be offering totally free Internet
services - amazingly, one of which is BT...
If you have a question that you would like Vince to answer in Call Sign, either post it to the usual address or email it to callsignmag@aol.com
