News from PANUG/BizNix - September 25, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org

ACTIVEX, ADMIN LOGINS, & MICROSOFT
by Raymond L. Robert

Open the FAQ in MSB02-052.  You'll see a Q & A:

"I'm a network administrator. I see that the patch is
vailable on Windows Update, but I'd like to download it
and install it on my users' systems. Can I do this?"
 Following is a series of instructions for how to do
this from the Windows Update site.  

What they don't mention is that they require that you be
logged in as an administrator. You get nothing from the
site if you're not. I'm not brave enough to browse the
Internet as administrator with ActiveX enabled.

This certainly clarifies why Microsoft's new EULA requires
us to give them rights to change our machines. They're
exercising this right by inducing us to log in for them
as administrator.

Apparently Microsoft would have us switch to their Software
Update Service. This requires a W2K server inside the
network that has carte blanche to communicate through the
firewall to Microsoft's Software Update site.  Sites serving
W2K Pro users via Linux/Samba servers, e.g., are SOL.
Coincidence?
Is it another coincidence that they start this with Sun's
Java?

Presumably one can legally obtain the fixes by connecting
to Windows Update as administrator on a stand-alone system
(e.g., a VmWare session or a laptop that one later wipes
out).
[ED: VMware is one of the universal solutions for dealing
with Microsoft's outrageous requirements that put you in
jeopardy.]


STAR OFFICE/OPEN OFFICE DRAWINGS
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

When people talk about Sun's Star Office as a replacement for
Microsoft Office, most discussion focuses on the word
processing and spreadsheet functions - not the drawing
function. Yet, the drawing portion of StarOffice is one
of the nicest features. Called StarDraw, the functionality
comes close to CorelDraw. While not a clone of Corel Draw
by any means, it is certainly more than adequate for most
users. I use it to create drawings and line art for books
and web sites.

Note that the same drawing function is also in Open Office -
the Open Source version of Star Office that is free.

A major benefit for me is that I can run it on a Linux
workstation but it runs on Windows and Unix as well.
I decided to switch from CorelDraw to OpenOffice when I
was faced with having to upgrade to a newer version of
CorelDraw that was more friendly with Windows 2000. I
decided not to do that when Corel pulled support for it's
Linux version. It doesn't make sense for me to lock myself
into single-platform products.

StarOffice/Open Office can export to the following formats:

BMP Windows Bitmap
EMF Enhanced Metafile
EPS Encapsulated Postscript
GIF Graphics Interchange Format
JPG Joint Photographic Experts Group
MET OS/2 Metafile
PBM Portable Bitmap
PCT Mac Pict
PGM Portable Graymap
PNG Portable Network Graphic
PPM Portable Pixelmap
RAS Sun Raster Image
SVG Scalable Vector Graphics
SVM Starview Metafile
TIFF Tagged Image File Format
WMF Windows Metafile
XPM X PixMap


Emmeline V. Loanzon contributed this:
Found this site for Linux cartoons:
http://www.hackles.org/index.html