User group Newsletter Editors: Utilize this content in your newsletter -- PLEASE ... reference UG Network Channel ... Shareware Manager is coming: YUM! Show us the shareware! The Info Manager is looking for your rumors and tidbits... give him a post! ...or subscribe... see subscription notes below Info Manager - 12/08/Y2K Broadband; Nisus Writer; MS gets another game company; . Broadband PC World's January 2001 issue has an article that is "Almost everything you want to know about Broadband". It does have a lot of information about your options for faster access to the Net. It just doesn't tell you which technologies are available for the Mac. (Not satellite or fixed wireless, although fixed wireless is coming from AT&T. Hopefully when Murdock buys DirecTV they will add Mac support). For the article see: http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=374700 . Nisus Writer 6.0.1 The above software has now been released. While it is a minor "tweak" and bug fix to the 6.0 version, there is one MAJOR consideration. 68K support is now available. So even with an old 030 or 040 Mac you can have an up-to-date word processor. Check it out at http://www.nisus.com/ Thanks to TidBITS for bringing this to my attention. (http://www.tidbits.com) BTW - if you aren't subscribing to TidBITS then you aren't serious about your Mac. . MS gets another game company The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has said, that Microsoft is going to purchase Digital Anvil of Austin, TX. Digital is the developer of such games as "FreeLancer" and will be developing games for the XBox. This is on top of the purchase earlier this year of Bungie. . MSN A year or so ago, Yahoo bought GeoCities and announced that all material stored on those computers would now be their property. After a huge protest, Yahoo said "we really didn't mean it" or words to that effect. Now the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that MSN is using material from the MSN Web communities on merchandise sold by Microsoft and its partners. Microsoft's response is that people who don't like it can take their communities private or take them down. __ I suspect that Microsoft hasn't heard the end of this one. (I received this information from ResearchBuzz newsletter and their link to the Mercury News story no longer worked. Probably because the Mercury News like most newspapers move their stories to the archives after a couple of days so they can charge for access. In any case, be sure to read those user agreements. EDITOR'S NOTE: over the past few months MSN has become one of the most prolific sites for generating spam (unsolicited email). Even many notorious spammers who mask their identity by using alias smtp servers and off-server relays have been traced back to MSN as the "hosting" post office. Since many people have obtained free email addresses from such sites as MSN, HotMail, Mail.com, Juno, GeoCities, Tripod, and others in order to avoid spam, they don't realize that they're generating more spam because many of the freebie mail sites are suspected of selling the incoming email addresses to the spammers. __ Most people have no idea of the amount of spam sent each day. The User Group Network mail server receives nearly 1,000 spams each day which either bounces, or has to be directed to the mail box to which it is addressed. This steals millions of 'K' of bandwidth from the web each day, and on a global basis pilfers literally billions of dollars from end users each month. Repeated attempts to get the MSN spammers stopped by reporting them to the Spam Cop have proven fruitless. It would seem that MSN has no problems with sending spam. Always report spam to SpamCop.com, or your TOS agent on AOL. . Iridium Do you remember that company? They advertised that you could place phone calls from anywhere. Even in the middle of the Sahara. Then found out there weren't many people any where let alone in the middle of the Sahara willing to pay $3K for a phone and $2 a minute for connection charges. They where backed by Motorola and established 72 low orbit satellites at a cost of $6 Billion to complete their network. The satellites were recently sold for $25 million. Well, it seems that they are the only network that supports encryption and the Pentagon thought that would be worth supporting and has now invested $72 million in the new company to keep it operating. However it is estimated that they need 40,000 additional customers to be profitable even though they are now charging 80 cents a minute and have only the $25 million or so invested in capital. One additional problem is that the satellites were only built to be in orbit another 3 years, so they would have to start looking for ways to send up new satellites shortly. Good luck guys. . RIP - Col. Klink On December 7, Werner Klemperer, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who played Col. Klink on Hogan's Heros died of cancer at 80 years of age. He stipulated in his contract that if Klink ever got the better of the American prisoners he would leave the show. Thanks for all the laughs. . Web Site of the Week: Heard of a new virus and want to know more about it? Or how about those "Good News" and "Dear Friends" and "GAP Email Tracking" or some other "virus" you suspect to be a hoax. Check out http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html for news about all that stuff and you can even get an updater for your Norton Anti Virus program as well. I always check before I send in a virus warning. . Quote of the Week: "For us, it was not a technical problem, but a customer service failure that we simply could not tolerate The day our DSL service went out, we ordered a cable connection for backup. Our new cable line was up and running before the DSL was fixed." -- Ken Riley, CTO of Thinkwell, an electronic textbook publisher in Austin, Texas (Thanks InfoWorld) . pau **** Don't forget ... the Info Manager invites you to use all or part of his column in your user group newsletter. Please let him know, and if possible send an electronic copy for the old scrapbook. Any suggestions for topics and reports of rumors are always welcome. Please me know. Thanks The Info Manager is a veteran of the UGN (AOL User Groups Forum) and User Group Network. He's been a supporter and volunteer on many, many UGNet and User Group Academy projects. As a long time user group member, he's served as volunteer from Honolulu to Boston and many points in between. Currently working with the Apple Corp of Dallas, the Dallas Mac Pack, Cowtown MUG of Ft. Worth and TUMS (the Tulsa Users of Macintosh Society) doing newsletter articles and the monthly CD-ROM Update. Post a lead Rumor Manager should follow up on. 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