--- In SFFiG@..., "Ben Hughes" <grombek@...> wrote:
>
> Greetings all,
> We now have, for your enjoyment, SFFiG Forums!
> Sign on and you can see local events (SFFiG and otherwise), chat
about your
> favourite SF&F shows, books, movies, etc, get the latest news (all in
> specially encased spoiler threads) and generally socialise in an
arguably
> non-social manner!
> Do it now!
> http://z10.invisionfree.com/SFFiG/
>
> ~Ben Hughes
> Ambivalent Overlord
>
I strongly encourage all members to join up and participate in this forum!

SFFIG & DWCV Combined Event
November 29th 12-5
Girl Guides Hall,
33 Myers St Geelong

Entry:
Non Members $8,
SFFiG & DWCV Members $5
Doctor Who Trivia, videos, things to buy, tea & coffee provided

Meeting update:

This will now be our Christmas Event, so come along and support the club!

There will be DVD's running, Merchandise and a mini auction.

Aussie Santa Clause will be there with goodies and surprises for all!
There will be some fun activities for the kids and hopefully a good
old Aussie BBQ.

So come along and have some fun! It should be a great day!

Greetings all, Happy New Year and a Joyous Religious Festive Period
of Your Preference.
With the new year comes a new beginning once again for SFFiG and it's
time that those of us in charge (ie me) got behind myself and give
myself a big boot in the necessary sections so that SFFiG can claim
it's rightful place in the history books!

So here's the plan: SFFiG currently has in it's ownership - Money.
This money _could_ be spent on the betterment of the club, by means
of a television set.
If we were to have a TV owed by the club it would mean we can then
run weekly / fortnightly evenings of TV/movie nights, which I
personally would love to do. It would mean we can have regular meets
and any bigger events (trivia, games, etc.) can be organised instead
of or around these regular meets. It can also help to attract new
members as we can advertise a regular meeting time, and also is
minimal organisation necessary, which helps in my currently busy and
ever changing work schedule.

So if anyone has any suggestions of what or where to get a TV for a
good deal please let us know. Guidelines for what the club eeds would
be:
Size - medium - big enough for a group of people to sit and watch
together, but ot too big so is still easily transportable and
storable.
Cost - we can aim at around about a $200 range.  We could go higher,
but might take some more fudraising to do so first.
Bear in mind I have a staff discount on all things ColesMyer related -
  anyone able to offer similar for relevant stores would be
appreciated.
Built in capabilities would be useful - though I do have a portable
DVD player that I can led whenever necessary I beleive should be easy
to hook up, it's only restriction is that it does not play certain
copied discs, but is still quite useful for legitimate and
some 'backed-up' discs.

Let's get this going soon so we can continue to share and expand our
geeky worlds :-)

~Ben

To all members,

I am sorry to have to do this, but gmail has recently attracted a large amount
of fraudulent
people.

It has got to the extent where I am receiving an average of 5 to 20 emails a
week from
spammers with gmail accounts requesting sign up with our forum.

I have run out of enthusiasm in continuously blocking individual gmail
addresses.  I have
far better things to do with my time!!

So why am I contacting you?  From the beginning of March, I will be blocking
anyone with
a gmail account.  This will sadly include existing members.

I therefore request anyone who logs on to the forum with a gmail account to
change it to
something else, even if it means re-registering.

I apologise for having to do this, but it is unfair on all  who run this forum
to have to
continually block spammers with gmail accounts.

Please be assured that I have now secured this forum to the extent that external
parties
and people awaiting registration can do nothing more than browse the forum. 
They
cannot contact individuals within the system, or look up your details unless
they are an
approved user.

I will continue to protect your interests, as well as mine and keep this forum
as safe as
possible, without making it too difficult to access.

Thank you for your time and understanding

The following is a reproduction of a letter I received recently from
Symantec. I have taken out the tech talk and reproduced it in a way
you may understand.

Hackers have recently found a vulnerability in the hotmail system, and
have found a way to access any hotmail account that has a password
less than six characters long.

With this information, they have been using random hotmail accounts to
sent out phoney emails to everyone in your hotmail address book,
trying to lure them into known internet spam sites.

Whilst Microsoft, Hotmail, Symantec and McAffee's are all working to
rectify the problem, there are some simple steps you can take to
protect yourself.

First of all, change your password. preferably to something with the
following criteria:

* Ensure that it is at LEAST six characters long (ie: my password)

* Mix up your password with a combination of Capital and lower
case letters (ie: My PassWord)

* Add in Numbers at random places (ie: My P4assW0rd5)

* Add in Ascii Characters (!@#$%^&*()-+{}[]:;"',./\|~`) (ie:
My~P4assWord5!)

* The longer it is, and the more variety of Capital Letters, Lower
Case Letters, Numbers and Ascii Characters you can add in, the better
the password!

* As always, make it something you are likely to remember, but
would be hard for others to guess


Second, check your outbox regularly for messages you haven't sent.

Finally, don't click on any link that you are not sure about.

Next is the tricky, technical bit:

This mainly applies to Microsoft and Internet Explorer users:

If someone asks you in an email to click on a link to do something
(like to check out a site), if you are not 200% positive where the
link leads, right click in the link, copy the web address and paste
this into a search engine. If it is a fraud, Google, Yahoo, AltaVista
, Ask and some other search engines have lists of the latest
fraudulent web addresses. At the very least, it will give you
information about the page you are trying to go to!

Do not use GoMamma or most Meta search engines, as these have been
compromised in the past!

If anyone wishes to rewrite the above two paragraphs in a manner that
is easier to explain, feel free.

That's the long and short of it! Hope this helps!