PCWize Vol 4, Issue 06 - You just can't win! February 6, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ Some of you have asked why I discontinued making the past editions available via autoresponder. Well, there were a couple of reasons, but mainly it had to do with my filtering system under my e-mail software. It was so enormous that it became borderline artificially intelligent. Just a couple more filters and my e-mail software would have become self-aware . As hard as I tried to set up filters to catch every variation you all could possibly come up with to request past editions, somebody always came up with something I hadn't thought of (misspellings, phrasing etc.) I ended up doing a lot of the *auto*responder work manually, so I discontinued it. Soon however, I will be starting a passworded subscriber's only section on the PCWize web site where you will be able to get the past editions. I'll let you all know when it's up. ------ I love my daughter very much, but some days I just want to strap her to a rocket and send her to the moon. :^) Ashley is very "into" her Japanese children's videos, and has watched my wife and I load the tape into the VCR enough times to be able to do it herself. We usually let her do this with the 13" combo TV/VCR in the bedroom, but she knows that the living room entertainment center is off-limits... Well, she's supposed to know that anyway. Having four Infinity SM-155 speakers in the living room, I can rattle everything in the house with the volume set only on four. Well, last Wednesday, I had just sat down in the bathroom to do what people normally do while sitting in the bathroom, when I was almost blown off the seat by a huge concussion wave of sound. I could hear things falling and the sound of breaking glass. I leapt up and shuffled (because I'd forgotten to pull up my drawers) as fast as possible to the stereo receiver. I passed my daughter about half-way there, who was running full tilt in the general direction of the master bedroom. I jabbed at the power button, and then looked down to the volume control knob; it was set at eight. Turning around, I saw broken glass from picture frames that used to be mounted on the wall, a broken vase, a lamp hanging by its cord, and the rear-end of a cat who had tried to cram itself under the couch. My daughter, of course, was nowhere to be seen. A quick search of the bedroom, and I found her buried under a load of laundry in the closet with only her eyes showing. I think she was more scared of the noise than anything I was going to do. Unfortunately, she was just too darn cute with her little head poking out from under a pair of jeans for me to stay mad very long. I really hate it when they do that! The good news is that the overload protection circuits in the speakers clipped and none of them got blown. Ashley received a stern lecture on not playing with daddy's toys, and daddy received a stern lecture from the wife on how daddy's toys were too loud. You just can't win! ------ I finally got around to loading Linux on the laptop. Talk about easy as pie. Mandrake Linux even allows you to run it under UMDOS, which means that it will co-exist on the same partition as Windows. This was a boon for me, as I really didn't want to deal with having to re-partition the hard drive anyway. The install went superbly, and didn't require much more knowledge than what type of graphics chipset the laptop had, and the vertical refresh rate. This was all obtainable from the Windows Display settings. A great deal of work has gone into making Linux almost a no-brainer to install. This is a huge advancement from the time I installed Linux a few years back. Boy, that was ugly! While the installation was a breeze, you still have to be pretty computer savvy to get Linux tweaked out. I'm no Linux guru myself, but everybody has to start somewhere. There are all sorts of flavors of Linux out there, so take a look around, jump into some newsgroups, and start asking people what would work best for you. Hopefully, in the near future, you'll be seeing some Linux spotlights, and possibly even a dedicated section on it. ------ For those of you who have been with me for a very long time, you might remember the occasional appearance in the security articles section by The NMI. He's back, and he's bigger than ever! The NMI will be writing his own dedicated column called HackTech, which will cover all sorts of neat things. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this will not be a hacker how-to tutorial, but a column for tips and info on plugging up your security holes, general security related ramblings, and how to easily build some very ultra cool projects. For example, keep an eye out for his informative how-to on building your own night vision goggles using just your video camera, a couple of batteries, and some old TV remotes. I met The NMI during some programming classes in college, and we have remained good friends ever since. He's a very talented programmer and computer guru, and I think he will make a valuable addition to the PCWize team. On a related note, I've also got a game reviewer lined up who will be providing great reviews on the latest and greatest in computer gaming. He's also a long-time friend, and plays more games than anyone I've ever met in my entire life. :^) ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff 2. Software Review 3. Cool Sites 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's 5. That's the news! 6. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends 7. PCWize Contests and winner announcement If the columns in the below articles appear misaligned, it's because you are using a non-fixed width font. If you would like to see them nice and straight, change your e-mail font to Courier New. ______________________________________________________________________ ** A word from our sponsors ** ------ http://www.freecreditanalyzer.com - Get your credit situation analyzed online without affecting your credit report. ------ Want to see your advertisement here? For more information, go here: ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff ------ Click here to vote for PCWize as one of the best newsletters in the "E-zines Top Ten Poll"! It's just a click, no need to fill anything out. ------ Come visit the PCWize forum and live chat. You may discuss anything computer related and it's a good place to get help with any computer questions you may have. ______________________________________________________________________ 2. Software Review ------ Name: SETI@Home II Genre: Screen Savers Platform: PC Win95/98/00/NT; MAC; Linux; OS/2; BeOS; Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 739KB Homepage: Download: Do I believe in Aliens/E.T.? Well, yes and no. I don't believe that they keep dropping by to suck some hapless human into the cargo bay for tests. If they do, then they have got to be morons! One human isn't that much different from the next, so you'd figure they'd only need a couple to do whatever it is that they are doing. However, on the other hand, I can't see Earth as being the only place in that whole wide universe out there with intelligent life on it. Even if you disagree, you've got to download the new SETI@Home distributed processing project screensaver. They've revamped some portions of the interface, and fixed some bugs. It's just the coolest conversation piece around. For those of you who missed my review of the older version of this software, here's a recap. A distributed processing project is one where people like you and I, download a piece of software that analyzes or works on a chunk of data. Once you've completed the analysis of that chuck, the server takes your results and then sends you a new block to work on. Why do this? Well, a vast majority of us leave our computers on while we aren't using them, so there are a great deal of unused processing cycles just being wasted. The idea is to harness as many of these unused cycles and put them to "good" use. This isn't a new concept, just a new application of it. What SETI@Home is having us do, is to analyze a block of radio data received by the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. We are looking for a signal with a period of 12 seconds, at a specified minimum power level, and doesn't appear to be random data. Why 12 seconds? This has to do with the time it takes for a signal to appear on the leading edge and disappear from the trailing edge of their satellite dish as it tracks across the sky. What does this tell us? It means that the signal is not terrestrial in nature i.e. it's not coming from something Earth based. If it was terrestrial, then the signal would most likely be present throughout a wide degree of azimuth and elevation. You can also do something else fun with SETI@Home! You can join Team PCWize and our data will be collected as a group. On the Berkeley web site, they post the results for each team as to how many blocks they have processed, total computing time volunteered etc. See the Team PCWize page here: http://www.pcwize.com/info/seti.shtml Once you've downloaded the SETI@Home software, you can go to to join Team PCWize. But wait, there's more! You can also download Distant Suns v4.05 which will take the information from the SETI@Home screensaver and show you exactly where in space your data came from. It's a very cool astronomy program in its own right, so if astronomy is your thing, this is a very nice program to have. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ FunBets There are always betting pools going around with my friends on just about anything. Generally, I avoid participating in them like the plague because in the most simplest of terms, I suck! It's a very good thing that I'm not addicted to betting, because I'd probably be living on the street by now. Now there is a way for me to get any betting urges out of my system without actually losing any real bucks. FunBets starts you off with a million dollars, and you can bet on just about anything there is to bet on. Wanna bet on the WWF, golf, NFL, cricket, or even entertainment items like who will be nominated for Academy Awards, or how much a movie will gross etc. If it happens in real life, you can be sure there is a bet for it on FunBets. I stated earlier that it's all fake money. However, at the end of each month, they tally up the total money (points) for each player and the highest pointers win a percentage of *real* money. You've got nothing to lose but time! ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Most of us know that with a little folder rename finagling or by way of a tweak utility, you can add the Control Panel to your Start menu. The problem is that these tricks don't really let you put it where *you* want it. On your desktop or in whichever folder of your Start menu (C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs) you wish to place the Control Panel shortcut at, just create a shortcut to C:\Windows\Control.exe. ------ I got some great responses concerning the trick in issue 4.04 concerning the removal of that annoying "Show Files" link you're forced to click upon entering the C:\Windows folder. For the more advanced geeks out there, here is a tip provided by Jimmy Conner to really get more out of those folder.htt files. 1. Navigate to a folder that uses the folder.htt in which it requires you to click on the "Show Files" link. 2. Click the "Show Files" link. 3. Find the file called folder.htt ** If you can't see it, then you most likely have your folder view properties set to not show hidden files. To change this, select View from the folder toolbar, choose Folder Options, click the View tab, Under Hidden Properties, select Show All Files, click OK. 4. Open folder.htt with a text editor. 5. Scroll down until you see the line " function Init() { " (for those of you who use a text editor with line number capability, it's line 126. At least under Win98SE.) 6. Place your cursor at the end of the line for the below text: " Info.innerHTML = L_Intro_Text + "

" + L_Prompt1_Text; " 7. Hit Enter. Make sure that the "}" is below the new line you've just created. 8. Type or paste the below text on the new line: ShowFiles(); 9. Save the file, navigate up one directory in the folder view, then go back into the folder you just changed the folder.htt file for. 10. No more annoying "Show Files" link! Thanks Jimmy! ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ You've heard me talk about The Bat! e-mail client software many times before. I've said over and over how powerful, but easy to use it is. Don't take just my word for it, see the review it garnered in CMP's FileMine with the highest user rating of 5. ------ The digital fountain of youth discovered in Norway! Caution, the above URL most likely wrapped. You will have to cut and paste everything between the <> into your browser. ______________________________________________________________________ 6. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends ------ Please visit http://www.pcwize.com/tech/computer/secdef.shtml if you would like to know the definitions for hoaxes, viruses, worms and urban legends. ------ Name: FCC imposed charges for Internet use on a per minute basis. Category: Hoax/Urban Legend Here's another one that has long since moved into the urban legends category. However, at one point, this particular legend had a kernel of truth to it. "In December 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requested public comment on issues relating to the charges that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and similar companies pay to local telephone companies. On May 7, 1997, the FCC decided to leave the existing rate structure in place. In other words, the FCC decided not to allow local telephone companies to impose per-minute access charged on ISPs." Every year since then, this story has made a comeback. You can dismiss these warnings and (hopefully) forward this issue to the person(s) who sent it to you. You can read more about it at: If you really want to read all about it, you can see the original proposal at: Beware, the above URL may have wrapped. You will have to cut and paste everything between the <> into your browser. On a related note, you can also find information on the first page concerning the Modem Tax urban legend. It too at one point had a kernel of truth to it. ______________________________________________________________________ 7. PCWize Contests and Winner Announcement ------ Each week PCWize holds a random drawing contest and gives away free stuff (usually software) to its subscribers. We will continue to do this as long as there are advertisers who are willing to provide the prizes. If you are such an individual/company, then please contact me at editor@pcwize.com so that we can work a deal. ------ The winner of this week's prize for his Tips/Tricks submission is: Jimmy Conner. ______________________________________________________________________ Well, that's it for this issue! Have a good week and I'll see you in seven days. Leif Gregory Copyright © 1997-00 by Leif Gregory. All rights reserved. You may share this copy of the PCWize newsletter with others as long as it is reprinted in it's entirety to include the copyright notice and subscription directions. If you've received this edition of the PCWize newsletter from a friend or colleague and wish to start receiving your own copy, then click the below link and send the generated e-mail message. I have made every attempt to ensure that all information contained in this newsletter is accurate to the best of my ability. Due to the myriad of possible configurations in the PC platform, information and software discussed here may not always work with your particular configuration. That being said, Leif Gregory and the PCWize newsletter can not be held liable for any damages you may incur either directly or indirectly from the use of anything contained in this newsletter. PCWize does not endorse any of the products or services provided by advertisers in this newsletter. As with anything in life, please check the credibility of the advertiser as well as to use common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. PCWize Editor PCWize Homepage Unsubscribe