Newsletter January 05, 2005

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                      RIVERS, RAILS and BACKROADS
                  Your Daily Neighborhood Newsletter
           The Very Best of Everything in Alle-Kiski Valley
                    http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/
                                   
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                       Tuesday January 25, 2005
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       You may also read Rivers, Rails and Backroads online at:
              http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/newsletter/
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           Don’t Miss the January Alle-Kiski Today Magazine
           Now available at area outlets ~ Read these great
                Stories and watch the interviews online
                                   
     * An Intimate Story on Sgt. Lonny Wells Courageous Sacrifice
        * Read the Varsity Girl’s Basketball Coaches Interviews
            * The New Kensington U. S. Army Reserve Center
             * Highlands School District Excellence Award
             * New Kensington Church Expands Its Ministry
               * Locally Manufactured Handcrafted Stone
                  * How One Person Makes a Difference
                                   
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             ___ TODAY IN RIVERS, RAILS AND BACKROADS ___
     
       1.   TODAY IN ALLE-KISKI TODAY ONLINE
           * Local Army Reserve Key Element in War
       2.   WEATHER FORECAST
       3.   TODAY’S FEATURED CLASSIFIED
           * Rental Needed
       4.   COMPUTER~INTERNET TOOLS AND TIPS
           * 'Browser Hijacking' Is Only the Latest Threat
       5.   OUR LOCAL HERITAGE
           * The Loyalhanna Path
       6.   OUR HEALTH WEB SITES THIS WEEK
           * Cancer Facts and Human Body & Mind
       7.   TODAY’S SPORTS SITE
           * USATODAY.com - Sports News, Scores & Stats
       8.   TODAY’S FEATURED WEB SITE
           * Human space flights, home energy saver and more
                                   
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     Make  your  dialup service up to five times  faster  for  only
     $5.00  more  a  month  ($4.00 for HighVision  Internet  Access
     customers). Call 724-567-2302 and ask about the accelerator.
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     TODAY IN ALLE-KISKI TODAY
     
     Local Army Reserve Key Element in War
     http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/articles/1770
     
     Thousands  of  Alle-Kiski Valley residents  pass  by  the  New
     Kensington  United  States  Army  Reserve  Center  every  day,
     located  at  the corner of Craigdell and Leechburg Roads,  and
     most  have little knowledge of what goes on behind its' walls.
     Although  the  Reserve Center often looks  quiet  with  little
     activity,  the  U. S. Army men and women reservists  stationed
     there  are  our neighbors who are very busy and  have  already
     suffered  the  loss of two of their own in the Iraq  war  with
     another  20 wounded. Two wreaths quietly are set in  front  of
     the  Reserve  Center. Read the entire Alle-Kiski  Today  cover
     story and watch the video interview at the Army Center.
     
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     WEATHER FORECAST
     http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/weather.html
     
     Tonight. Cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow showers.  Low
     around 17. Southwest winds 10 to 20 mph. Decreasing to 5 to 10
     mph  after  midnight. Tuesday. Mostly cloudy in  the  morning.
     Then  becoming partly cloudy. Highs in the mid 30s.  Southwest
     winds 10 to 15 mph. Tuesday night. Partly cloudy. A chance  of
     snow  showers  after midnight. Lows in the mid 20s.  Southwest
     winds  10  to  15  mph. Chance of snow 40 percent.  Wednesday.
     Mostly cloudy. A chance of snow showers in the morning. Then a
     chance of snow and rain showers in the afternoon. Highs in the
     mid  30s. West winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation  40
     percent.  Wednesday night. Mostly cloudy  with  a  30  percent
     chance  of  snow  showers.  Lows 10 to  15.  Thursday.  Partly
     cloudy. Highs around 20.
     
               Alle-Kiski Today weather is a direct feed
              From the National Weather Service. Be sure
          To check it online for your latest weather report.
     
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     Gloria’s  Kitchen  and Healthy Eating bring  you  hundreds  of
     recipes  to  help  you prepare meals for your  family.  Gloria
     Myers  and  Amy Myers are busy bringing you new recipes  every
     month. Check their recipes out today at:
                           Gloria’s Kitchen
             http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/articles/1574
                            Healthy Eating
             http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/articles/1576
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     TODAY’S FEATURED CLASSIFIED
     http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/classifieds/
     
     Rental Needed
     Young professional couple relocating from Harrisburg, PA.  In
     search  of a rental, preferably a house in the Avonmore,  New
     Alexandria area. Small dog must be ok. Please email  me  with
     any information at jillbeanzz@hotmail.com
     
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     COMPUTER~INTERNET TOOLS AND TIPS
     
     For  Windows  Users, 'Browser Hijacking' Is  Only  the  Latest
     Threat
     By Rob Pegoraro
     
     
     The  ongoing  Internet-security  freakout  for  anybody  using
     Windows keeps getting worse. Every other week yet another part
     of  the  online world gets a warning label slapped  on  it  --
     downloads,   e-mail   attachments,   instant-messaging    file
     transfers and now Web pages themselves. "Browser hijacking" is
     as  bad  as  it  gets:  Like the Blaster worm,  this  form  of
     trickery  can take over your software silently and  invisibly.
     Typically,  users discover what has happened  only  after  the
     actual  hijacking: Their Internet Explorer home page  and  Web
     searches have been switched to strange sites, a flock of  pop-
     up  windows follows them around, their lists of favorite sites
     have become a catalogue of porn purveyors -- and none of these
     changes can be undone without tedious debugging. These attacks
     differ  from  "spyware"  invasions,  which  can  have  similar
     effects,  in  that  victims never took the conscious  step  of
     downloading a program and then running its installer. In  some
     cases,  the  only  mistake a user made was to  click  an  "OK"
     button  to  allow what they thought was a change in  home-page
     settings  or an addition of a Web toolbar -- not knowing  that
     the  site  would  do  much more than  that.  This  can  be  an
     understandable error when you look at the ways  sites  attempt
     to fool users; the sleaziest sites won't include a "no thanks"
     button  in  their  pop-up alerts and will prevent  users  from
     closing  these windows. (If that happens to you, hit Ctrl-Alt-
     Del,   select  Internet  Explorer  from  the  list  of  active
     programs, and click the "End Task" button to bail out.) Often,
     though, the problem can be attributed to going online with  an
     out-of-date  copy  of Windows, allowing a hijacker's  site  to
     exploit old vulnerabilities to worm its way into the PC. (I've
     yet  to see any reports of Mac or Linux browser hijacks.) None
     of this has to happen. Beyond the usual precautions of running
     an  up-to-date  anti-virus utility and  firewall  program  and
     regularly    downloading    Microsoft's    critical    updates
     (windowsupdate.microsoft.com), two  of  the  biggest  security
     flaws  behind browser hijacking can be fixed with  a  pair  of
     quick  downloads.  A  third can be remedied  by  installing  a
     newer, better browser, and your risk drops to nearly nothing.
     Step one is to stop sites from throwing pop-ups at you in  the
     first  place.  Not  only will this make the  Web  vastly  more
     pleasant, it will eliminate the ability of a would-be hijacker
     to  badger you until you accept a software download  or  home-
     page  switch. The easiest pop-up blocker to adopt is the  free
     Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com); you do, however, need  to
     run  Internet  Explorer 5.5 or newer to get this  feature.  Or
     install  any other browser -- IE is the only one around  these
     days  that still lets in pop-ups. (I'll get back to this in  a
     moment.)  Step  two  is to update the Java  software  on  your
     machine. Java lets you run entire programs in a browser window
     and,  when  done  right, it's not risky.  Its  developer,  Sun
     Microsystems,  designed it with tight limits on  what  a  Web-
     based  application can and can't do. But these limits must  be
     enforced by a "virtual machine" program that runs on your  own
     computer, and the one Microsoft developed contained  a  couple
     of  bugs  that  hijackers abuse. If you've been  keeping  your
     computer's  software current with Windows Update,  you  should
     have  a  fixed version of this Microsoft virtual machine.  But
     the  better option is to download and install Sun's own,  free
     Java  virtual machine (www.java.com), which is both safer  and
     more up-to-date than Microsoft's aging software.
     Step  three  is  to  get away from something  called  ActiveX.
     Developed  by  Microsoft to compete with  Java,  it  allows  a
     similar  sort of Web interactivity, but without any of  Java's
     fail-safe  limits: An ActiveX program in a  Web  page  can  do
     anything that a regular Windows program could do on your  hard
     drive.  This  can have legitimate uses. For instance,  Windows
     Update uses ActiveX to scan for out-of-date components in your
     copy  of Windows, and an ActiveX installer makes it easier  to
     add  Sun's Java software to Internet Explorer. But ActiveX  is
     exceedingly  dangerous overall, since it relies  on  users  to
     make  the  right call when they are presented with a  "do  you
     trust this publisher?" alert from Internet Explorer. Once they
     click  "yes,"  the ActiveX program can do whatever  it  wants.
     Updates  to  IE have limited ActiveX's reach, and an  upcoming
     "Service  Pack 2" revision for Windows XP will add still  more
     restrictions.  But  it's wiser to use an ActiveX-free  browser
     for  everyday  Web activity, reserving Internet  Explorer  for
     Windows  Update and the occasional site that, because  of  its
     authors'  inattention, works only in IE. For most people,  the
     best    IE   replacement   is   a   free   copy   of   Mozilla
     (www.mozilla.org), the descendant of Netscape.  If  you  don't
     mind using a preview release, however, the faster, simpler and
     also   free   Mozilla   Firefox   will   be   a   better   fit
     (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/). If  your  computer
     has already been infected, your antivirus program should clean
     it out. But you may need to resort to such specialized hijack-
     removal  software  as  Hijack  This!  or  WShredder  (both  at
     http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html).   Whatever
     software you take with you on your Internet travels, you  also
     need to bring some common-sense skepticism. Pushy salesmanship
     by  a  strange  site  deserves  the  same  reception  that  an
     aggressive  telemarketer would get in the  real  world:  "No."
     Living  with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro  at
     rob@twp.com. © 2004 The Washington Post Company
     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14264-
     2004Feb28.html
     You  will  need to register to read the article - Registration
     is free.
     
        “Computer~Internet Tools And Tips” is at your Own Risk.
     
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     OUR LOCAL HERITAGE
     http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/articles/archives/8
     
     The  Loyalhanna  Path, a major path thru parts  of  the  Kiski
     Valley  in  the  1700s,  ran  from  the  Latrobe  area   along
     Loyalhanna Creek to the Saltsburg area. It apparently followed
     part  of  the  Kiski River then cut across parts of  Allegheny
     Township  to  join  up  with the Kiskiminetas  Path  somewhere
     outside the Vandergrift area. Read more interesting history at
     Our  Local Heritage at above site. Click on “Archives”  for  a
     list of history tidbits.
     
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     OUR HEALTH WEB SITES THIS WEEK
     
     CancerFacts.com
     http://www.cancerfacts.com/
     
     This online resource for cancer patients, their families,  and
     caregivers   is   dedicated   to   delivering   accurate   and
     personalized  information at a time of need.  The  NexProfiler
     Tools  for  Cancer  help  people  with  cancer  make  informed
     treatment decisions for an optimal outcome.
     
     Human Body and Mind
     http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/
     
     Fascinating  BBC  site  explores  the  human  body  and  mind.
     Features  include: Interactive Body, Psychological  Tests  and
     Human Instinct.
     
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     TODAY’S SPORTS SITES
     
     USATODAY.com - Sports News, Scores & Stats
     http://www.usatoday.com/sports/front.htm
     
     Check  out  the USA Today sports news. Even gives you  running
     scores while major games are being played.
     
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     Put  your  community  events up free by  selecting  “Community
     Notices” at http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/classifieds/
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     TODAY’S FEATURED WEB SITES
     
     NASA: Human Space Flight
     http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html
     
     This  NASA  site presents the latest in space news including:
     Space  Shuttle, Space Station, and Behind the Scenes of Human
     Space Flight.
     
     Languages
     http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/
     
     This  BBC  site provides resources to help you learn Spanish,
     French,  German, Italian, and other languages through  online
     lessons.  You can also learn holiday phrases in 34  languages
     and more.
     
     Home Energy Saver
     http://hes.lbl.gov/
     
     The  Home  Energy Saver calculates how much energy your  home
     uses.
     It  then  offers  recommendations on  how  to  decrease  that
     amount. The first web-based do-it-yourself energy audit tool.
     Start saving energy in your home today!
     
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