Volume 33, Issue 5 October 25,1996
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Maine South H.S. Park Ridge, IL
National Merit commends students Eight recognized for academic promise The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has announced that Eric Anderson, Todd Clemens, Kristin Durianski, George Hartman, Elizabeth James, Nick Kacprowski, Mat Lake and Frank Merle have beeen named Commended Students in the 1997 National Merit Scholarship Program. This means that Dr. Cachur will present them with Letters of Commendation from Maine South and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Commended students earn this honor through ranking in the top five percent of the more that one million students who took the 1995 PSAT/NMSQT. About 35,000 students in the United States recieve this honor. Though these students are no longer in competition for the 1997 NaÂŤ : ^onal Merit Scholarships, they are being recognized for having great academic promise. A spokesman for the National Merit Progam stated, "The young men and women named Commended Students have demonstrated outstanding academic potential by their high performance in the extremely competitive Merit Program. In a nation that values excellence, it is important to publicly recognize the attainments of our scholastically talented young people and to credit
Left to Right: Dr. Cachur, Eric Anderson, Frank Merie, Elizabeth James, Nickolas Kaprowski, Kristin Durianski, Matbew Lake, George Hartman, Todd Clemens, Mr. Reese schools for the important part they play in their development. We hope this recognition will help to broaden the educational opportunities of Commended Students and serve as encouragement to them and other able students to develop their abilities to the fullest." The SAT and PSAT are very similar. A high score on the PSAT is an indication that
these students will score well on the SAT as well. Perhaps this achievement will lead to many more rewards and opportunities in their futures. Congratulations to these Commended Students. They have achieved a great honor as a result of much hard work throughout their high school careers.
Virus strikes Maine South Writing Lab Those who have computers know that the threat of computer viruses is prevalent. They can be acquired in many ways. If one simply swaps disks with a friend, a virus can be transferred quicker than the blink of an eye. Some viruses are harmless, others can go as far as causing the hard drive to crash. A boot virus has infected the Writing Lab computers. The virus is new, thus very little is known about it. Its origin remains a mystery. Spreading very rapidly, it quickly infected many fmputers. Students then transferred the virus their own computers if they did not have a virus checker. It can even pass a virus checker
if a disk is inserted without rebooting. There are reports of several serious problems caused in students' personal computers. It is speculated that these problems were caused in students trying to remove the virus or "fix" their computers. However, this virus appears to be completely benign in the school's computers. This conclusion was drawn after several computers were purposely infected and no ill effects were seen. Writing lab officials believe they have this problem under control. All lab computers have been innoculated through the use of a virus scanner/cleaner which was downloaded from
the internet. Due to the newness of this virus, a cure could not be found in any stores. Before using the lab, students disks are scanned and then cleaned if a virus is found. This is for the benefit of the students' home computers, because the virus no longer poses a danger to the Maine South Writing Lab. The school appears to have conquered this virus, but a new one could appear at any time. Early virus checkers can catch the virus, but it will not be able to clean the disk. Students are reminded that if they are going to use a disk in two computers, then the use of a virus checker is imperative.