PCWize Vol 4, Issue 31 - Perilous Journeys July 30, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ You could win $10,000 and a Sony DVD player just by recommending PCWize to a friend! ------ While here in Tokyo, I met up with one of your fellow readers for a beer and good conversation. The trip to see Chris was an interesting one as it was my first attempt at braving the Tokyo train system by myself. There was danger around every corner, every step a perilous one, crowds, flashing lights, people speaking a language I didn't fully understand, ticket machines with buttons in another language, little turnstyle type machines that sucked the ticket out of my hands in the blink of an eye, and big-wheeled box machines that made much noise and screeching. Well, ok, it wasn't that perilous... My destination was only two stops down the line, and the only real danger was from me squishing some poor Japanese child under my size 13 clod stompers, but there really were flashing lights and large screeching metal boxes on wheels. :-) ------ If anyone downloaded and later registered Clipmate-- a recipient of the PCWize Superior Software Award , their latest release includes some very nice additions. One of which is the very cool e-mail clean-up function. You know those e-mails you get that have been forwarded a zillion times, have numerous ">" quoting delimiters, and the text is bunged up with linebreaks appearing in all the wrong places. Clipmate will do a fantastic job of cleaning all that up into a newly formatted text block where you can define the new linebreaks, and even re-quote it. If you've already registered Clipmate, the upgrade is free, if you don't own it yet, you should grab it and see why they garnered the very hard to earn PCWize Superior Software award. ______________________________________________________________________ Table Of Contents - HackTech by The NMI - Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff - Software Review - Cool Sites - Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's - That's the news! - Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends - 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 as written, please change your e-mail font to Courier New. ______________________________________________________________________ ** A word from our sponsors ** ------ http://www.creditcardanalyzer.com - find out how much your credit cards are costing you and see how much money you could save by transferring the balance to a lower interest card ------ Want to see your advertisement here? For more information, go here: ______________________________________________________________________ HackTech by The NMI Your normally scheduled article will not be seen today, due to the columnists current addiction to "Diablo II". Yes, it's true - I've found another game I'm quite stuck on... Or perhaps stuck with? I can't decide. Diablo II, for those of you not so easily addicted to this kind of electronic narcotic, is a wizards-and-warriors type of game, where your character has basic statistics, like health, strength, agility, and mana (magic). You start out the game with very low stats, and you proceed to whomp (is that a word?) on various and sundry enemy bad guys (as opposed to an enemy good guy :). The game comes with two different ways to play, by yourself, and with other people. By yourself is fun, and although the game is difficult in some areas, it's still not that hard all together. Kill monsters, get gold, get better weapons, kill more monsters, get more gold, etc. The way this game really shines is when you are playing against other players - You now have teammates, perhaps friends that live near you or that you work with to help out on your quest. In the lower levels, other players can't just beat you and take your stuff. In the Higher levels they can - Is that new guy really an ally...? It's a lot of fun, or at least, it is when Battle.Net is working. Battle.Net is the server (or group of them anyway) that you log onto to play the game with other people. I can understand that this game is fairly new, but sheesh, this is the SECOND version (Diablo II). They should have had all the bugs worked out earlier. Now, of course, I know that yes, the programmers are working on the problem, they are tired of hearing gripes, and that the on-line version is provided "free". But was it really free? I didn't pay for the single player version, I paid for that little line on the box that read "Multiplayer available on Battle.Net". And speaking of paying, you can bet your shorts that the game creators are paying Battle.Net to host their game, even though Battle.Net has always (in MY circle of friends) been known for their not-so-hot connections. So is this really "free"? I don't think so, there's definitely been money changing hands here. The problem is, how can I, as a consumer, get my moneys worth? I'll tell you when - when software makers are required by law to put a certain guarantee on their product. As a programmer myself, I know that it is virtually impossible to account for every type of system and configuration out there, BUT there HAS to be some kind of accountability. When a software maker charges you $50-$60 OR MORE for a title, you have certain expectations about the functionality of the thing you're buying. Would you buy a radio from Sears and "just deal with it" if it only played CD's when there weren't too many people in the same room? Or maybe that blender wouldn't work right because you were using a different brand mixer on the same electrical socket. Sound ridiculous? Maybe I'm getting a little crazy with the analogies, but SHOULD you have to deal with this kind of abuse from a machine and products that sometimes cost a heck of a lot more than that blender or radio? Of course not! What's the difference? As much as I love to get into the guts of the machine, figure out what's going on, and fix them, at this late stage in computer evolution, I shouldn't HAVE to. So what's the answer? Some simple things you can do: If a product screws up on ya, and with reasonable work, cannot be fixed (reasonable as defined by downloading a patch, etc) then TAKE IT BACK! Go back to the store, DEMAND your money back, talk to the manager, tell s/he you are dissatisfied with the product, and that as a consumer you will not put up with it. There is a thing in the software world called "early release" where the software just was NOT up to par, but to meet managements deadlines, it was put out on the market anyway, just to "appease the customer". I don't know about you, but I'd much rather wait a few more months to get something that worked right outta the box, rather than get something NOW that crashed constantly and I STILL had to wait a few months to get fixed! If I have it now and it doesn't work, I'm that much more likely to buy someone ELSE'S product, than to go through the same troubles. Unless of course, the product is the only one out there, ( a certain BIG company comes to mind...) which brings me to the OTHER thing you can do: Demand a guarantee from the store you are buying the product from. Make the sales associate or whoever sign a paper saying it will work. If they don't, refuse to buy it. Tell your friends to go in and do the same thing. Retailers need to know that customers are getting more and more sophisticated these days, and won't stand for "broken" programs. Also, if you are politically inclined, call your congressman, local law official, or various officiate, and ask them what their stand is on "Software Guarantees". Some companies have claimed that it will "be too much of a legal hassle to guarantee software works with everyone, and would cost the consumers more money in the end." This, my dear readers, is a load of bull. Aren't they saying "This software will work" when they put the box out on the shelves? The only difference NOW is that if your software doesn't work, they don't have to give you your money back by LAW. What I propose is that if software doesn't work, you get your money back. Yes, there are some incompatible systems out there, but take this to it's logical conclusion: When people hear that system Z will not run software from companies A, B, and C, they will not WANT to buy a system Z, therefore, the company will either make their system compatible, or they will lose profits, dry up, and blow away like so much dust. This is the way it SHOULD be, because as it stands now, you have virtually NO guarantee that things will work "as advertised". Talk about it amongst your friends, and the next time you all want some type of software, hardware, or whatever, make it known that you will NOT put up with "pre-broken" items. The only way things will change is if companies stop getting paid for continuing this practice. Now I'm gonna go back to Diablo II on-line, and see if I can manage to keep my character alive, or if I will get kicked off AGAIN... TheNMI Send your Diablo II secrets and cheats to: TheNMI@PCWize.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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 can discuss anything computer related and it's a good place to get help with any computer questions you may have. ______________________________________________________________________ Software Review ------ ** Winner of the PCWize Superior Software Award ** Name: Kyodai MahJongg v12.07 by Naoki Haga's Genre: Games Platform: PC Win9x/NT/00 Type/Cost: Shareware / $22.95 USD Size: 1.37MB (LT version)/4.38MB (Full version) Homepage: Download: Off and on through the years, I've played various Mahjongg games by different people. They all had their neat features, but they were all lacking something. Kyodai isn't lacking anything! It's got it all. Great graphics, music, different ways to play, and a fantastic 3D gamespace-- if you've got OpenGL. This is one version of Mahjongg that you won't get tired of anytime soon. ______________________________________________________________________ Cool Sites ------ Moon landings were FAKED! My great-grandparents didn't believe we ever landed on the moon, and now here is the support they could have showed me if only they had been on the Internet. ------ The Last Word Science Q&A Why? Why? Why? These are the words that I hear from my daughter's mouth more than anything nowadays. The sad thing is that I asked for it. I remember specifically telling my wife that "I can't wait until she starts asking my why things are the way they are." Duuuuhhhh! What the heck was I thinking! Well, the relief is in! Send your kid (provided they're old enough to read, which unfortunately for me isn't the case) to the Last Word to find the facts to some very fascinating questions. ______________________________________________________________________ Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Josh Weber sent me a very cool tip shortly after the last issue came out in reference to my new MS Intellimouse Explorer. It seems that if you have this mouse and are using Internet Explorer, you can hold down the CTRL key and simultaneously rotate the mouse-wheel up and down to increase or decrease, respectively, the font size of the web page being viewed. I tried this and it does indeed work most awesomely. I've also noticed that it works with Outlook Express and Microsoft Office applications. Very cool indeed! ------ Another tip concerning mice with multiple buttons came from a subscriber to one of my discussion lists concerning The Bat! e-mail client by RITLabs . One of the functions of The Bat! is that you can highlight a particular passage of an e-mail message and hit the F4 key to reply while only quoting the highlighted text. His tip suggested that I remap one of the five buttons to the F4 key so that I could highlight the passage and hit the button to reply with the highlight text quoted without ever taking my hands off the mouse. Mondo cool dude! Thanks! So if a program function you use often requires a single keypress, remap it to an available button on your mouse for speedy delivery. ______________________________________________________________________ That's the news! ------ New SETI funding by some old Microsoft hands. The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project was started in the 1970s, and has caused considerable debate in its lifetime. They've been sharing radio telescope resources (Arecibo in Puerto Rico, and the Jodrell Bank Observatory in England), but with the new funding, will be able to build an antenna array with between 500 and 1,000 receivers. If you haven't joined the Team PCWize SETI@Home distributed processing project, stop by for details. ------ Motorola to de-orbit 86 Iridium satellites as early as next week. A sad day... I covered this a little while back when rumors first began about Iridium's imminent demise, but there was a slim chance of breathing life back into the project. I guess it was too slim as the last major possible buyer backed out. Iridium was an ambitious project to connect the world via satellite phones. It worked, that there was no doubt, but the quality wasn't quite up to par, and the cost was much to high for the consumer. It's too bad... It was a worthwhile project. :-( ------ Go eBay!!! eBay takes spammers to the mat and makes 'em beg for mercy. ReverseAuction.com is paying eBay $1.2 Million in restitution for harvesting the e-mail addresses of eBay users. This isn't the first time eBay has put the squeeze on harvesters, and that's enough for me to give them a big two thumbs-up! ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ A hoax chain letter affecting Hotmail users is making the rounds. I'll paste in the hoax text in a minute, but basically it says if you don't forward the letter to other Htomail users, your account will be deleted due to inactivity. Think about it for a second. Hotmail is run by Microsoft, so they're bound to have better ways to track an account's usage. For instance, here is a quote from their FAQ: When will my Hotmail account be marked "inactive," and what does this mean to me? Currently, if you do not sign-in to your Hotmail account for 60 days, or if you do not sign-in within the first 10 days, your account will be marked "inactive." Stored e-mail will be deleted, and inbound mail will be refused. Your Passport will still function, and your Hotmail e-mail name will be reserved. To re-activate your account, simply go to http://www.hotmail.com, and enter your member name and password. You will then be able to once again send and receive e-mail using Hotmail. If your account stays "inactive" for a full year, it may be permanently deleted. At any rate, you can dump any message similar to the below, and please tell the person who sent it to you that it's a hoax. Dear Hotmail User, Because of the sudden rush of people signing up to Hotmail, it has come to our attention that we are vastly running out of resources. So, within a month's time, anyone who does not receive this email with the exact subject heading, will be deleted off our server. Please forward this email so that we know you are still using this account. WARNING WARNING Hotmail is overloading and we need to get rid of some people and we want to find out which users are actually using their Hotmail accounts. So if you are using your account, please pass this e-mail to every Hotmail user that you can and if you do not pass this letter to anyone we will delete your account. From Mr. Jon Henerd Hotmail Admin. Dept. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ Sorry, no contest this week. I haven't had time to line up some new sponsors. Once this move gets all worked out, we'll be back on track with some great stuff to give away. ______________________________________________________________________ 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