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ADA NEWS TODAY
If you haven’t seen it lately, "Today’s News" on ADA.org has a new look and a new mission: to serve as a one-stop, comprehensive online resource for the latest dental news.

Recast as "ADA News Today" and tied more closely to the print ADA News, the daily online news section has been expanded to include new, regularly updated features and content, as well as a graphical interface.

The mainstay of this resource still is breaking Association and professional news, updated every business day. A series of links to "Hot Topics" now gives fast access to the latest developments in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, dental materials, water fluoridation and dental wastewater, with more to come as issues develop.

Feature stories take a closer look at how some ADA members work in their communities and the interesting ways they spend time away from the office. Editorials reprinted from publications throughout the tripartite offer thought-provoking views on professional issues in ethics, science, dental practice and other topics, while the opinions of ADA members are highlighted in "Views," a letters-to-the-editor section.

"In the Media" is a digest of articles and reports involving dentists and dentistry that have appeared in the popular press.

"We’re delighted to offer our readers this expanded online news coverage as part of our efforts to serve as the best source of dental news on the Internet," said Laura A. Kosden, publisher for ADA Publishing, a division of ADA Business Enterprises Inc. "We hope our members will come to the site every day."

THE COMPUTER GRAVEYARD REVISITED
Donating old computer systems, a topic explored in the March and April 2001 Cyber-News columns, remains a good way to recycle aging equipment. Be careful, however, about what you’re giving away.

To see what kind of data they could recover from old equipment, two graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently bought 158 used disk drives from auction Web sites and swap meets and extracted leftover data from them. Among their findings were credit card numbers, medical reports, detailed personal and corporate financial information, and several gigabytes worth of e-mail.

If you’re planning to donate or sell an old computer, it pays to take a little time to clean off any data you would prefer others don’t see. Simply deleting such files is sufficient to prevent unwanted access by a casual user. Remember, though, that the "delete" functions in most operating systems do not actually remove data, they just mark the segments of data as available for overwriting. Commonly available utilities can retrieve such "deleted" information.

A better option is to use a disk cleaning utility to entirely overwrite all the data on a hard disk, guaranteeing it can’t be accessed in the future. Macintosh devotees can use the operating system "Disk Setup" utility and choose the "Zero All Data" option. Since the Windows formatting utility, "fdisk," doesn’t overwrite all hard drive data, PC users will need to employ a third-party application. Search the Internet software library at "www.tucows.com" for "disk cleaners" to see what your options are.

Reported by Joe Hoyle, electronic media editor, "hoylej{at}ada.org".

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