By Kenneth S. Moser, CNA, CNSA
APICS Director of Information Systems

However, in order to access the new site, you must change your bookmarks. As I write this, our old site is still online delivering the information we posted last March and April. While it's online, your bookmarks will work just fine, but the information you will get will most likely be out of date. Once the servers or pages go down, your bookmarks will return nothing more than error messages. Therefore, if you have not done so already, clear your old APICS bookmarks and access our new site through domain name, http://www.apics.org.

If the APICS graphic at the top of your screen has a red jelly bean with the words Industry.net, you're looking at the wrong site.

Next, this may be old news by the time you see it, but I would not be doing my job if I failed to warn you about a few potential hazards.

ITEM: Both Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have confirmed major security holes in Java's virtual machines — a component of your browser that supports Java applets. These holes can cause problems ranging from a system crash to lost files. Sun has also confirmed that hostile Java applets can perform "denial of service attacks," causing a user's browser or operating system to freeze up by devouring all of the computer's memory or CPU power.

ITEM: Don't smirk if you turned Java off in favor of ActiveX, as Microsoft is grappling with many of the same issues.

ITEM: If you use Microsoft Windows (3.11, 95, or NT), you could encounter WinNuke or WinKiller. These, and other programs like them, perform what is called an "out of band" attack to your network resources and typically cause your screen to display what is affectionately known as "the blue screen of death." Apparently, this has become a popular way to shut people up in chat rooms around the Net.

ITEM: If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or downloaded the review release of version 4.0, malicious Web sites can execute any program on your system without permission, as well as delete files or upload private information.

ITEM: Internet Explorer users are also advised to download and install Authenticode 2.0 before the end of June (I am writing this in mid-June). People who fail to update their browsers will begin receiving a large number of warnings every time they access digitally signed ActiveX and Java programs, especially if their security settings are set on high.

ITEM: Netscape has announced security flaws in Navigator 4.0 for Communicator as well. One of these flaws could allow administrators on Web sites you visit to access any files they can guess the names of.

ITEM: For those of you who run Windows NT, there are 113 patches contained in Service Pack 2. And for those of you who applied these patches, there are already nine new fixes for SP2 itself!

ITEM: There are also a bunch of new viruses in the wild, including several nasty macro viruses such as Sharefun that can travel via e-mail. We've encountered quite a few of these at APICS headquarters, and they are no fun at all. If you're in the habit of accessing e-mail attachments without scanning them first, you may want to exercise some caution here.

Finally, new "challenges" are being discovered every day. I cannot endorse a specific product here, but unless you like to scan Web sites for updates on a weekly basis, you may want to invest in products like Oil Change that do it for you. Just make certain you use them.

The good news is that if you're running Windows 95 or NT, you can obtain patches for all of the Microsoft bugs, and Netscape's patch for Navigator will probably be out before this is published. Better still, the patches are freely available from Microsoft's web site at http://www.microsoft.com and from other popular sites such as http://www.download.com.

The bad news is that it could take you the better part of the day to download and install all of these patches. Worse yet, Microsoft has announced that it has no plans to continue providing a complete set of patches for Windows 3.11, so if you are still using it, you may want to upgrade.

Is it worth it?

YES! Here's a few reasons why:

If you like to get news that's tailored to your needs as I do, check out CNN Custom News, located at http://customnews.cnn.com/. I built my profile from scratch, selecting from dozens of news topics in general sections ranging from science and technology to international news. Once you do this, the site will compose a personalized front page featuring the topics you have selected. If you want more focused views of the news, you may enter up to three keywords in the "On Target" personal clipping area.

If you use a browser that supports Java and have young children, check out http://www.bonus.com/. As a site designer, it's hard for me not to envy the resources that obviously went into building this visually appealing site. As a kid roughly 30 years removed, I must say that the site certainly looks entertaining. My quick survey revealed dozens of games, coloring books, puzzles, photo galleries and more. What's more, these activities are presented in a virtual browser designed to keep young children in place; it won't fool older kids, but it should keep young children from wandering onto the Net unattended.

I've not had an opportunity to investigate it yet, but those of you who are interested in remanufacturing and ISO 14000 may want to check out the new WASTE Mailing List and Usenet Newsgroup. This is an unmoderated forum for the discussion of all waste-related topics. With your background in cutting waste, it seems to me that APICS members could bring some useful information to this forum. To subscribe, send an e-mail message containing the command, subscribe waste [email protected], to [email protected]