In this issue:
- Legal protection for mail: company disclaimers
- IBM to buy Informix database division
- Microsoft to drop support on nearly new products
- Returning to your last edit in Word
- Quickly send messages to users
- Bold Head of Departments
- How do I stop banners from printing?
- Changing the default ruler
- Stan Kelly-Bootle's Devil's Advocate
- PC Re-cycling
- Explorer: Quick Rename
- Quickly moving around Outlook
- Topic: eye drops
LEGAL PROTECTION FOR MAIL: COMPANY DISCLAIMERS
And how others shot themselves in the foot.
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What an interesting couple of weeks it's been for email and the like. Firstly, stand up Neal Patterson, CDO of US healthcare company Cernet - a Fortune 100 company.
Patterson's email stated that he though his employees were incredibly lazy, as the car park was "sparsely used at 8am, likewise at 5pm" - not to mention weekends, which he did. He then went on to say "you will fix it or I will replace you - you have two weeks. Tick, tock". Then finished with a "hell will freeze over" before employees get more benefits.
Needless to say, the email was promptly sent out to a much wider audience and Cernet's stock value fell 22%.
Here comes the plug! If they had been using Mail Essentials then they could have forced an automatic disclaimer at the end of the text sent out by the employee's. Mind you, thinking about it, they probably should have sent that email out.
Remember, companies are effectively responsible for the content of their employees’ email messages, it is extremely important to ensure that a disclaimer is added to each outgoing email. Furthermore, this disclaimer/footer text can be used to add a uniform message to each email, such as an address or company slogan, or to share the company’s public key. Although most employees have their own personal signature, the disclaimer/footer text ensures that the corporate message is always communicated.
Secondly, in different fashion Alcatel managed to shoot itself in the foot by posting a Word document to their web site regarding a recently found security vulnerability in their DSL modem products.
Nothing wrong with that, except that they forget to "Accept all changes" for the reviewed document and so included internal comments like "This paragraph worries me a bit. It could be taken as us favoring a segment of customers (SOHO). There’s an argument to be had that everyone’s information is sensitive. Why don’t we provide this level of security to all of our customers? Why don’t we switch on firewalls by default for all of our customers?) "
Moral of this story, better to post HTML than Word documents anyway, if you are going to place Word document on the web (or indeed email it) you should make sure that if the document has been reviewed you select the "Accept All Changes" option first.
See http://www.c2000.com/products/sec_mail.htm for more information
IBM TO BUY INFORMIX DATABASE DIVISION
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IBM is to buy Informix's database business for $1 billion cash. IBM aims to migrate all users to DB2.
It's a little early to tell what this really means, things won’t really take shape for a few months yet. But for existing Informix users this must be a worry. I think everyone would expect support for Informix software to start to dwindle.
For Uniplex users who use the Uniplex database standalone - with no additional Informix based applications - this should not be a worry. Uniplex has always shipped a dedicated version of Informix and I believe they have rights to port Informix to any required platform.
However, if you use Uniplex with other Informix tools then you should watch what's happening here just in case.
See http://www.c2000.com/ for more information
MICROSOFT TO DROP SUPPORT ON NEARLY NEW PRODUCTS
Windows 3, Win95 soon, Win 98 and Win NT in 2003
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This is a reminder that Microsoft will be ceasing support for the following products at the end of this year:
Windows 1.x through 3.x
Windows for Workgroups
Windows 95
DOS up to V6.22
None of those products are available for purchase from Microsoft already. In fact if you are still using one of those old platforms, make sure you've got installation disks etc for emergencies. I was talking with a chap in America who had a failure while trying to upgrade his Win 3.1 system and no install disks to sort it out.
More crucially support for Windows 98 and NT Workstation will cease in summer 2003. I must admit that does sound a little close for the Workstation products. I am sure that a number of you will be using one or both of those products in 2003.
See http://www.c2000.com/ for more information
RETURNING TO YOUR LAST EDIT IN WORD
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Just Press F5 and you are returned to your last edit point.
What's better, this even works between closing and re-opening your document!
See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information
QUICKLY SEND MESSAGES TO USERS
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Sometimes you need something more immediate than email. You can send anyone a message from the command line:
net send "this is the message"
To send a message to any user logged on that computer name:
net send "System going down"
To send a message to all users with connections (open files for example):
net send /Users "System going down"
You get an immediate dialog box displayed on screen, no doubts, no delays. Just what you need if you think people don’t check their email frequently enough (and they don't).
See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information
BOLD HEAD OF DEPARTMENTS
Using functions for formatting.
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Here's one I had to wrestle with earlier this week. A report listing staff members in alphabetical order. I had to show department heads names in bold. You can't use any standard formatting because of the ordering.
Instead I turned to using a small bit of VBA code. The record contained DeptHead and the report had fldName for the staff member name:
Private Sub Detail_Print(Cancel As Integer, PrintCount As Integer)
If Me!DeptHead Then
Me!fldName.FontWeight = 700 ' Bold
Else
Me!fldname.FontWeight = 400 ' Normal
End If
End Sub
Detail_Print is called automatically for every record that is printed, so you can set up all sorts of clever formatting there if you need to.
See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information
HOW DO I STOP BANNERS FROM PRINTING?
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You need to edit the file /etc/default/lpd. You need one of the following lines:
For Xenix: BANNERS=0
For Unix: BANNERS=nobanner
Note that there are some Unix printer interface scripts which do not use /etc/default/lpd, and you must use an option to these to disable banners. Also, some Unix printer interface scripts expect the Xenix syntax above. Aren't standards wonderful? Should you encounter one of these, if you're reasonably adept at shell scripts, you might want to cut and paste the section that reads /etc/default/lpd from a script that works properly. Of course, be sure you make note of your changes so that you can redo them the next time an upgrade replaces your printer drivers.
See http://www.c2000.com/uniplex for more information
CHANGING THE DEFAULT RULER
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You can set up to 10 system rulers, the first of which is taken as the system default.
Modify the file UAP/uniplex.sys (you can use any text editor). Adjust the rulers are required.
Once complete, you need to recompile the file, from a Uniplex shell prompt run
"syscomp -s".
Note, users who have made their own changes to system rulers will NOT pickup these changes. They must edit their own rulers and re-save them.
See http://www.c2000.com/uniplex for more information
STAN KELLY-BOOTLE'S DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
Old Unix hackers cheer!
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Old Unix programmers like myself would eagerly await the next issue of Unix Review - only because of Stan Kelly-Bootle's Devil's Advocate or very geeky (not that the word was used then) comic article about software, computers and other such things.
Well, back in Jan 2000, Unix Review (or Performance Computing as it had become) closed down and I had though that SKB was lost for ever. Happily not, the column has been reborn as Son of Devil's Advocate and can be found at http://www.sarcheck.com/skb/
By the way, it is pretty sad enjoying SKB's column, so don’t worry if you don't get it.
See http://www.sarcheck.com/skb/ for more information
I was asked once again about disposing of old and obsolete PC's in a useful way the other day. I suggested the questionner contacted www.pc-recycler.fsbusiness.co.uk.
PC Recycler is a non profit making group, based near Blackpool in Lancashire UK. Originally founded by one family to obtain PC equipment for their local primary school, PC Recycler now collects redundant IT equipment from anywhere in the UK free of charge.
The equipment is donated to voluntary organisations via The Council for Voluntary Services.
See http://www.c2000.com/papers for more information
In Windows Explorer you can press F2 to rename a file or folder.
You can also use F2 in most File Open dialogs too. Very useful when you want to rename a file before you edit it.
Incidentally, to select all files Windows Explorer displays in a folder just press Ctrl + A.
See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information
QUICKLY MOVING AROUND OUTLOOK
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In Outlook you don't have to keep opening and closing windows to look at appointments, tasks, contacts or messages. Once you have the window open you can move up and down through the list using:
Ctrl + > Next Item in folder
Ctrl + < Previous item in folder.
See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information
Topic: eye drops
From: seanhoutma@******.com (Sean Houtman)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams
From: "Chip Pearson" chip@******.com
>Soak two spoons in ice water for 5 minutes. Apply to eye,
>concave side to the eye. Feels better than eyedrops, and doesn't
>cost $5 per half-ounce.
>
WARNING!
Do not use this method of soothing your eyes while driving or operating heavy equipment (unless advised by a physician)!
See http://www.c2000.com/fun for more information
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