PCWize Vol 4, Issue 10 - Anybody got a gremlin trap? March 5, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ Gremlins stole the last issue! Don't ask me what happened! All I know is that issue 4.09 was sitting in the Outbox in a parked status like it was supposed to. The next morning, no issue 4.09 and there were suspicious looking gremlin prints on my desk. Fortunately for my daughter, they didn't match hers. Speaking of which, my wife woke me last Thursday with the news that Ashley (my daughter) had learned something new and fantastic. I dragged myself from the warm confines of the covers and sat down in front of my daughter at the breakfast table. My wife says "Listen to this!", I listen... My wife asks "Ashley, how old are you?" My daughter replies "Two". My wife asks "How old is Roberto?" (NOTE: I had absolutely nothing to do with the naming of that poor, wretched cat. It was all my wife's doing.) My daughter replies "Four". My wife asks "How old is dada?" My daughter, putting on her best smile replies, "He's old fart!" It's nice to know you're appreciated in your own home. :^) ------ Well, it's almost that time! I'll be separating from the military sometime in October, and I'll be starting a new job and a new life as a civilian. I've got the new life part worked out, but I just can't decide on what I want to do for a living. Oh, sure, I want to do something with computers obviously, but what exactly, I don't know. What would be even better, would be a job that allows me to not only work with computers, but to apply my skills as a satellite telecommunications and electronics technician. It'll be an interesting transition, and I must admit that there is a certain anxiety involved, but I'm sure that I'll find the right job for me. The worst case scenario of course would be a burger flipper. Then again, I've always wanted to work for Taco Bell because they have such cool uniforms. :^) ------ A common question I get asked is what computer related books I like to read. I figured that I'd share some of my favorites with you on books that I consider indispensable. 1. First and foremost are the Upgrading and Repairing PCs series by Scott Mueller. I've been a long time fan of his books since I was but a young pup. 2. Many of the "For Dummies" books. Don't laugh! Many of these books offer some great insights into their topic using straight English. They don't assume prior experience, and don't techno-babble at you. 3. My all time favorite magazine has to go to Maximum PC. At $12 USD per year, they offer some of the most h*a*r*d*c*o*r*e looks into h*a*r*d*c*o*r*e PCs. It is the *only* magazine that I actually read cover to cover. ______________________________________________________________________ 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 ** ------ Tired of slow connections? Modem Booster keeps your connection at TOP speed and accelerates your Internet surfing. Tweak your modem speed to the MAX with this Internet connection optimizer. Modem Booster accelerates your Web browsing by 10-50% on the average and up to 300% on the extreme. "This utility will speed up your online access." PC Magazine's First Looks. For more info go to http://www.inklineglobal.net ------ 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: PaneKiller v1.42 by MaDdoG Software Genre: Windows Tweaks Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT Type/Cost: Shareware / $10.00 USD Size: 320KB Homepage: Download: I love Window tweaks, and I really love PaneKiller. In issue 4.05 I discussed ways to increase your Start Menu speed. Move over Rover, there's a new dog in town! PaneKiller pretty much acts like the Windows Start button, and depending on how you set it up, it can actually replace the Windows Start button. What it does better, is that it caches the icons. What does this do for you? It's FAST! It's also much cooler looking as you can define what the menu title bars look like. For example, you can set them to a gradient, solid color, or even images. But that's not my favorite part. What I really like is that each menu acts just like a folder. You can move files, double-click on a menu folder and bring it up in Explorer or a folder view, and customize, customize, customize. You can even customize how the animations work when navigating folders. Don't like the sliding menus, change it to any one of 29 different animations or even have it randomized. You can also change how the PaneKiller Start button looks. Customize it with a picture of your favorite cheeseburger if that suits your tastes. One other ultra-cool feature is that menus can be "torn" off and placed on the desktop. For example, you can tear off the "Games" menu and place it on your desktop. Now, you can just navigate on the Games menu without having to click the Start Button. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ So you're bored and thinking that anything would be more interesting than what is going on now. Even watching paint peel would be more exhilarating. Well, you asked for it! Ok, ok, that one really got your blood pumping! Sit back, take a deep breath an mosey on over to the Roachcam. Ok, so now you're grossed out. Well, you could watch the Water Cooler Cam. ** Caution, this might be too much sensory overload for those who were excited by the Paint Peel Cam. Not your cup of tea?!? Well, try the action figure Wrestling Cam "[W]here live events take place whenever someone feels like moving the guys around!" In this day and age, it seems like anything can become the subject of a webcam. Hmmmm, maybe it's time to put into motion my lifelong dream of a nostrilcam. The camera could be attached to my excision digit, and you'd have a firsthand, full motion, tour of the wonders in my schnoz! ....I don't detect much cheering out there. Maybe the world just isn't ready for that kind of entertainment. :^) ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ That icon is only a hop, skip, and a jump away! I received a couple of e-mail from readers who wondered why their mouse was acting up. They said that sometimes the pointer would just stop dead in its little mouse tracks, and other times it would leapfrog over an icon they were trying to click on. The solution for both was a simple case of hairball removal. As you move your mouse around, the ball picks up all sorts of dust particles, hair, and Cheetos crumbs. These particles collect on the internal rollers which the ball comes into contact with. If you get too much cheese in there, the mouse just starts acting wacky. Here's what you need: - A couple of Q-tips - Isopropyl alcohol - Something sharp and pointy First, disconnect your ailing mouse, and then flip it over on its back. Try not to tickle it too much as they get squirmy. Around the ball will either be a rotating ring or a ring that slides back. Whichever you have, open the ring and dump the ball out. Note: Don't lose the ball or your mouse will never be the same again. Now, take a look inside and you will see two or three roller bars. These bars are what the ball moves to translate the motion into electrical signals. If your mouse had a bad case of the hairballs, you'll notice all sorts of gunk around the center of these bars. Wet the tip of one of the Q-tips in alcohol and soak the hairball. Don't overdo it, but try to get enough on them to loosen the gunk up. Next, take your sharp pointy object (I use a scalpel. Why do I have a scalpel? When I'm not writing PCWize, I have a part-time job as the Misawa slasher ) and lightly scrape off the gunk. Two notes: If your roller bars are plastic, be careful not to gouge them or your mouse will have a permanent stutter. Also, try not to let the scraped off gunk fall into a hard to reach innards area. After getting the big stuff off, go back in with the alcohol soaked Q-tip and rub the roller bars. There is no problem with rotating the bars to clean all around them. Once this has been completed, vacuum your mouse pad to remove the Cheetos crumbs, plug the mouse back in and you'll have back your smooth rolling hairballess mouse. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ So what's the deal with Aureate Media Corporation? Well, that's a very good question, and I don't really have an answer, but for right now my opinion is that it isn't nearly as bad as it looks. For those of you who are wondering what I'm talking about, this past weekend a private (limited distribution) e-mail from Dale Haag-- president of Net-Defender --concerning the Aureate advertisement system was leaked into the mainstream Internet channels. Many of his comments were taken out of context and caused quite a row in the Internet community concerning the possible abuse of our privacy. Basically what happens is that if you install one of 279 programs (called adware-- software that is free to you because you are forced to view advertisements in the software window while using it), a file called advert.dll is installed as well. This .DLL opens port 1749 and communicates (unknowingly to you) with advertisement servers. What caused such a stir was that Mr. Haag's comments-- taken out of context --suggested that personal information about you was being sent. This information was then being compiled to create a profile of you and your browsing habits. The water is still pretty murky, but I don't think that we need to be overly concerned. My cursory testing of the Aureate advertisement system via packet sniffer revealed no private information being sent to their servers. Again, this was a quick and dirty look, but I feel fairly confident that no funny stuff is going on. There is a removal tool for all the files related to Aureate, but I've heard many people complain that some of their software stopped working shortly thereafter. I'd wait until Steve Gibson of GRC.COM releases his fix. List of adware using Aureate's system Dale Haag's 21 page report CNET's story Aureate's response Aureate's info on how and what they collect Kumite.com myths page GRC.com info page ------ ICQ deja-vu! Buddy lists on cell phones?!? What would you need that for? Apparently CellPoint Systems thinks that people want their location to be known at all times. What the system does is to pinpoint where a cell phone user is in relation to certain landmarks and their distances from them. The buddy list lets you decide who can use the big red "X" on your back. Now Scully will never have to ask Mulder where he is every time she calls! ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ There's a pretty big craze going on right now for personal firewalls. These programs sit unobtrusively (for the most part) in your task-tray and monitor incoming and outgoing packets for suspicious hacker activity. If it smells something fishy, then all sorts of alarms, bells, and whistles (not at all unobtrusive) start going off. There's quite a few packages out there, and while they mainly all perform the same function, some do things that the others don't, or focus more on certain aspects of security. Your PCWize editors will be rounding up the hottest packages and putting them through a head-to-head torture test. We'll be throwing all sorts of trojans, viruses, Denial-of-Service (DOS) attacks, and backdoor scanning at them to see who's left standing and who gets left holding the bag. We will be testing ZoneAlarm 2.0, BlackICE Defender, and Lockdown 2000. If you use another, and would like to see how it compares, just drop us a note and we'll add it to the beat and bash list. ------ A couple of the latest hoaxes going around are: 1. Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home, (alone of course) after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home; unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself. (Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed in order.) Without help the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be very deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a phone and, between breaths, call for help. Tell as many other people as possible about this, it could save their lives! From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240's newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON... (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc.publication, Heart Response) LIFE MEANS MANY THINGS TO MANY PEOPLE. IF YOU VALUE LIFE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, PLEASE SEND THIS ARTICLE TO AS MANY FRIENDS AS POSSIBLE. As a certified CPR instructor this just didn't sit quite right with me, so I decided to look into it. You can find the debunk here: ***Beware, the above URL may have wrapped, and you may have to cut and paste everything between the <> into your browser. Thanks to Terry Speer for sending in this one. ------ 2. Last year on April 30, 1999, a gas out was staged across Canada and the U.S. to bring the price of gas down, and it worked. It's time to do something about it again. Only this time lets make it for three days instead of just one. The so-called oil cartel decided to slow production to drive up gasoline prices. Lets see how many Canadian\American people we can get to ban together for a three day period in April, NOT TO BUY ANY GASOLINE, during those three days. LETS HAVE A GAS OUT. Do not buy any gasoline from APRIL 7, 2000, THROUGH APRIL 9, 2000. Buy what you need before the dates listed above, or after, but try not to buy any during the GAS OUT. If you want to help, just send this to everyone you know and ask them to do the same. We brought the prices down once before, and we can do it again. Come on North America lets stand together. WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!! Even if you receive this 100 times keep passing it around, this way you know everyone is being informed and no one will forget!!!!! This one may not quite be a hoax, but the logic is certainly flawed. If you "Buy what you need before the dates listed above, or after, but try not to buy any during the GAS OUT.", then you'd still be buying the same amount of gas-- just not during those three days. So who would we really be hurting? The gas stations, as they would still have to pay the attendants for those three days that we aren't supposed to buy gas. For this one to work, we'd all have to reduce our fuel consumption across the board. For example, riding a bike, carpooling, skipping that mall run etc. Thanks to Dave Miller for sending in this one. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ This week's sponsor is inKline Global Inc., and they have developed some great applications to make your daily life much easier. Please visit their web site to get the lowdown on all the great products they have, and to help keep the PCWize newsletter FREE! ------ The winner of this weeks random drawing contest is: Ricardo Juliao ______________________________________________________________________ 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