Metrobyte - Answering FAQs - 2000

Hey, welcome back to MetroByte. I'm Scott Rigby. We've been having a great show, taking a look at screensavers. If you want to answer your question, or you want your question answered on the show, give us a call at 877-MSG-METRO. This is the segment of the show that we know everybody waits for, and everybody's sort of gotten their sandwich made, and they're sitting there with their sandwich and their pencil and their pen ready for frequently asked questions. We have Courtney Pulitzer back for this segment to answer frequently asked questions. Courtney, welcome back.

Thank you. It's great to be back.

Yeah, it's good to have you. Um, our first call, we have a call coming in tonight from Eileen. Eileen, welcome to the show.

Hi.

Hi, how are you?

Okay.

Good.

Um, I actually had two questions, but, um, the first one had to do with the screensavers. Um, with the new LCD screens, uh, are they in danger of the, um, that burn-in phenomenon?

Mm, yeah. Are LCDs in danger of burn-in? Actually, not nearly as much as the old cathode ray tubes, the regular CRT monitors are. There have been some reports that LCDs do burn in because there is a refresh rate, but it's really not that much of a problem because it's using a different kind of technology.

Yeah, monitors are getting so advanced now that you really don't have to worry about it too much.

Yeah, but they're just a lot of fun. So anyway, yeah, it's one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that Monitor technology has gotten to the point where monitors just in general are much safer, and you're not getting as many of the problems as you used to have when screen savers first came out.

Right, yeah.

Now we like to go out on the street and get a next question, because we always like to do that, go out for people's questions. So let's go out on the street and get our first one.

All right, let's go get them.

All right. I have an AOL account. Can I use that with Netscape? First, I want to say, yikes. Apparently we went to see the cast of The Lion King. So the question is, AOL account. Can Netscape be used with an AOL account?

You know what's great about AOL is that it's so easy, but they are getting much more better about customizing so that you can use Netscape with your AOL account as long as you download it and then it's just set up like your regular browser.

Mm-hmm.

That's terrific. Yeah. So yeah, most people think that— and for a long time AOL wouldn't work with other types of programs because AOL, one of the things that they did very well is they really reinvented their business. And they want people to stay on AOL, but once you have your AOL account open, once you dial in, you can use any number of, uh, any number of programs. That includes any of the, um, any of the browsers. It includes any of the Telnet programs, anything like that.

Yeah, so yeah, it's much better.

We have another, we have another caller coming in now from Matt. Matt, welcome to the show.

Hi, how you doing?

Pretty good, how are you?

Good, very good.

Good, what's your question?

Um, I just bought a computer.

Uh-huh.

It's my first one.

Congratulations. Oh, thank you. We're big proponents of that.

I'm having a great time with it, but I'm a little afraid of getting a virus through the mail And I'd like to know, like, should I upgrade my system, or when can I upgrade my antivirus system?

Mm, I see. What package are you using right now?

Dell?

Using, uh, what's your antivirus package?

McAfee.

Okay, McAfee. McAfee is an excellent program. As a matter of fact, a lot of people know the Norton Symantec package, and that's a very good program as well, the antivirus package. But McAfee's actually been doing this longer than Symantec has, and is rated actually a little bit higher. I mean, they're both excellent packages. But you really can't do better than the McAfee package. So you're doing that right, right away.

Yeah, I actually just bought the McAfee software. So because I've known about it and downloaded some of their beta and test versions on the internet and know that they have live updates where you can get— there's new virus information from their website. So they are— they've been around for a while and they are very good.

Yeah, and the other thing, the other part of your question, Matt, was asking us, can you get a virus through email? And this is a big question that people have. And the main thing that protects you is that if you download an email and you just open it up and it's just text and you read it, you can't get a virus from doing that. Let me repeat that: you cannot get a virus from reading an email. How you can get a virus is if there is a, is a program or a file attached to it. Take a close look at that file. If that file is what's called an executable, in other words, if it says .exe at the end of it and you're not sure where it's, where it's coming from, or it's coming from an anonymous source, that's when you shouldn't run the program. Because it's executable programs that infest computers with viruses. That's really the main thing you have to worry about. There's a lot of, uh, scares going on out there about viruses. One's called Good News and it sort of recycles every year.

Right, Good Times.

That people say there's a virus out there, um, that comes in through just the email system. It's really, a lot of those are rumors. It has to be an executable file. So thanks for calling, Matt, and you're going to win a— and Eileen as well— and you're going to win a lovely, a lovely screensaver. So, uh, so thanks for calling in. Um, so we've got to— we've got an email we want to take a look at too, where somebody's asking us sort of what, what are gophers? What are, what are gophers and what do they do? Here's what, very simply, what are gophers? It's the shortest email we've ever gotten here.

And they're cute little creatures too.

They are.

They're really funny little names.

So, um, so gophers are generally programs that that help you sort of find things on the internet.

Yeah, yeah, that's one of the, um, programs that really fascinated me, um, when I first began exploring the internet, because there are all these different programs other than just the web where you could go and search and find information that's been archived in a database, um, and all of these files all organized. And they usually, um, well, they started at universities and government repositories, so you could get all this good information there. Um, and they use a special program also.

Yeah, and gophers, before the internet existed, gophers were out there, and as the name implies, it was sort of the way there's a Gopher Coffee and a Gopher this and a Gopher that. And actually, before there was a World Wide Web and before there was a way to kind of search for different types of information, you had a whole system of gopher servers.

Right.

And, and that was sort of the thing that people used in order to get information out there. Right. Then these other things started to develop. So actually gopher itself has evolved over time, the meaning of it. Now it's kind of evolved into being a computer that goes out and gets information.

Right.

But if people are finding this information on newsgroups and whatnot, chances are it's talking about a computer program, but there may be some vestigial information out there that's still referring to sort of this old gopher system.

Mm-hmm. So, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so, well, Courtney, thanks a lot for being on the show.

Sure, thank you.

It's been great to have you on and help us with frequently asked questions and help us look at screensavers. It's just It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, it has. And, you know, when we come back next week, we're going to be taking a look at, wow, just all kinds of things having to do with computers. So thanks for being here on MetroByte, and we'll see you next week. Come on back.