PCWize Vol 4, Issue 35 - TWO dorks (notice the emphasis) August 27, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ You could win $10,000 and a Sony DVD player just by recommending PCWize to a friend! ------ You're going to run across a new section in the newsletter below. Hope you all like it. Let me know what you think! ------ Just to clear up some apparent confusion. The HackTech column-- right below the sponsors section, which is below the Table of Contents, which is below my general yapping right here --is written by TheNMI, and *not* me. Please send your comments concerning his column to him, and not to me (which happens when you hit reply to this newsletter.) You'll receive replies quicker, because you won't have to wait for me to get around to forwarding them to him. Thanks. Leif (the dork who writes the rest of the newsletter!) ------ Those of you who are also subscribers to Maximum Linux, they will be changing to a monthly publication schedule instead of a bimonthly one. Now we can get our "Geek Fix" on a much more frequent basis. I can already feel the Geeksterone building. Speaking of which; When I first made up the word "Geeksterone" (at least I'm pretty sure I made it up) in issue 4.30, it was a combination of the word "Geek" (duh...) and "Testosterone". It, ahem, is not pronounced "Geekster One", but nice try to the few who wrote in asking about it! ;-) ______________________________________________________________________ Table Of Contents - HackTech by The NMI - Randomness - 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 NOW where am I gonna hide? ------ I was talking recently with a cute lady-friend of mine, over the net the other night, and she asked me why I hardly ever e-mailed. I thought about it for a while, and the answer, though odd, came to me rather suddenly: E-mailing took too long! Sounds ridiculous, right? I mean, in this age of the Internet, and e-everything, even e-mail seems to take too long. It's not because I'm lazy, but because I am always pressed for time, and terribly distractible. The seemingly simple act of sending an e-mail off has become yet another thing to fight for time on my schedule list, and some of you out there know how late I can be with replies, as eventual as they are :) This train of thought got me thinking about how I have come to depend on programs like ICQ or for some others, programs like AOL instant messenger, or the MSN Message program. I use it to keep in contact with friends, because it's right there, I click on a name and type, and get an instant reply if that particular person happens to be on-line at the moment. I use it to send files, sounds, even video-conference if need be. I am predicting that future communications will evolve along this line: Instead of a cell-phone, we may all be wearing some kind of watch or something. Maybe not like the Dick Tracy device from the comics, but something combining the functions of a PDA, a cell-phone, and an Instant message program, all on your wrist. It would have to be voice operated, of course, but the problems with voice recognition can be solved by basically throwing more (or faster) hardware into the mix. In a few years we're probably gonna have multi-gigahertz processors the size of a postage stamp, or smaller, with extremely minute power requirements. With something like that on your wrist, you'd probably address it with some unique name, just so it can pick out your commands from the background noise. Perhaps something that described its computer-like qualities, something like "QuasiModem"... "QuasiModem, send a message to Leif, tell him my article's gonna be late again..." "Leif is not available at the moment, he appears to be off-line..." "QuasiModem, in that case, take down this dictation under the file name 'Next Article'..." You can see how cool this would be, staying in contact with people no matter where you were, getting business done without having to dial any numbers, or poke at little screens with a stupid stylus device that you can't find ANYway because they get lost so easily. And they'd have to include a feature so I can find it, for when I take it off and lose it like everything else: "QuasiModem, where ARE you?" "Sanctuary! Sanctuaryyyyyy!" Yeah, I think I could use a device that made my life a little easier. The only thing I can't figure out is, with a processor that powerful on my wrist, can I stand carrying the fan and heatsink that go with it! :) Send your comments, gripes and compliments to The NMI ______________________________________________________________________ Randomness ------ What is Randomness? It's a new section to put stuff that just doesn't fit anywhere else. Randomness is more or less the text version of the sidebar items that will appear in the HTML version of PCWize. Speaking of which, there will be an HTML version,-- don't worry, the text version isn't going anywhere for all of you HTML despisers! --but I'm waiting for a single thing to happen; The Bat! to support HTML message composing. Yes, I could do it under Outlook or Outlook Express, but for two important reasons. Firstly, The Bat! has spoiled it for me where other e-mail client software is concerned, and I want to keep the PCWize mailing list(s) under one roof so to say (not to mention that The Bat! is immune to those nasty worms and viruses that plague Outlook and Outlook Express.) The other, is that I have decided The Bat! is all I need-- sans a much faster Internet connection --to meet my immediate and fairly distant mailing list needs. This means I won't be moving the list to a Lyris list server. The added bonus is that your e-mail addresses will only exist on my machine, and I won't have to worry about an unscrupulous list server owner stealing them. So, without further annoyance from my blabbing hole... Tagline(s) of the Week: - Books you'll never see; Children's book of pop-up anatomy. - Give me ambiguity or give me something else. For those of you not familiar with what a tagline is, it is a witty comment or quote included at the end of an e-mail. Its purpose is to provide something interesting in your e-mail even if the rest is boring! Geekword of the week: UDL (User Discussion List) - - A discussion list in which everyone subscribed can send a message to the list address. The list software at that address will then send a copy of your message to all the other subscribers on that list. The other subscribers can reply to your message which gets routed back through the list server, and that reply is sent back out to all of the subscribers as well. Contrast this with PCWize-- a mailing list --which is a one way communication. You get the newsletter, but you don't interact with the other subscribers-- sans the PCWize Forum of course. WinAMP Skin of the Week: - Receiver by Timo Henke Did you know: - The Earth spins Eastward at 15 degrees per hour. Take 360 degrees and divide it by 24 hours. Funny of the week: - You know you're a geek when you're in the back seat of your car, your date is looking wistfully at the moon, and you're trying to locate a geosynchronous satellite. We'll see how this section goes. If you all like it, let me know, same for if you don't. Is it fine here, or would you rather see it more toward the end of the newsletter? ______________________________________________________________________ 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 ------ Name: ACDSee v3.1 by ACD Systems LTD. Genre: Graphics Viewers Platform: PC Win 9x/NT/00 Type/Cost: Shareware / $49.95 USD (download) / $59.95 USD (CD) Size: 5.4MB Homepage: Download: I've used various versions of ACDSee for almost as long as I can remember. For the fastest image viewer around that reads almost every darned graphic format out there, this beast is the best! It's got all sorts of little fun stuff thrown in, like an image converter so you can instantly replace your Windows wallpaper, an HTML auto-generator that makes thumbnails of your pictures for publishing on the web, and a whole slew of other goodies. This one is a definite keeper! ------ Version 2.65 of WinAMP has just been released. It fixes the following bugs: - Fix to ex-m3u bug/security hole. - Improved mp3 http streaming dialog (no longer upsets AVS, etc). - Optional aol icon evilness in full version (sorry folks, we sold out). ______________________________________________________________________ Cool Sites ------ Movie Bloopers My wife gets annoyed watching movies with me, because I keep pointing out bloopers-- like items appearing in one scene, but mysteriously absent in the next --but I just can't help it. If you do this too, or maybe even if you don't, you're going to love Movie Bloopers, where they not only tell you about it, but you can view the scene where the blooper took place. ______________________________________________________________________ Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Get the most out of your screen real-estate! When you look at the taskbar on the bottom of the screen, does it go all the way to the edges of your screen? Unless you changed your monitor settings, probably not. How about vertically? This one is a little more difficult to determine, but you can either click and hold your taskbar and move it to one of the screen sides, or set your wallpaper to a tileable one so as to cover the entire background. The second method is the preferable method for aligning and resizing the screen dimensions to match those which your monitor is capable of. So, with your wallpaper set to Tile, take a look at the buttons/knobs on your monitor. The actual controls can vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer, so I'll just spell out the basics, and you'll have to do the rest. First, look for a box with a double-headed horizontal arrow in it. Use the up/increase button/knob to resize the screen outward until the borders align with the plastic around your monitor. In some cases, a little centering is required, which usually is denoted with a horizontally off-center box within another box. When setting this control, you are looking to center the screen. You may have to go back and forth between these two settings to achieve the desired result. Next, you'll want to do the same for vertical. In some cases you might see some convexing or concaving at the screen sides. This is called pincushioning, and most monitors have a setting which will let you adjust this as well. You might also see something called trapezoiding, which means that the upper or lower portion is larger than the other. Another is called parallelogramming, which means that the upper or lower portion is closer to the screen edge than the other. These can usually be adjusted as well. If it all went right, you should be using the entire screen. One note, is if you have a el-cheapo monitor, the image displayed may become slightly distorted at the screen edges-- especially on convex screened monitors. There isn't much you can do about this other than decreasing the screen dimensions until they are no longer are distorted. ______________________________________________________________________ That's the news! ------ A vow of silence (temporarily) on newly discovered software bugs? What should a person do when they discover a new security hole in a piece of software? Obviously they should let the software makers know so that they can fix it with a patch, but how long should this person wait before letting the information out to the public? A day? A week? Until it's fixed? What if the software company doesn't respond quickly enough (read dragging their feet.) Take a look at this article and make your conclusions. Maybe you'll stop by the PCWize Forum and share them with us. Note: Give me a day to get the forum discussion started. I have been unable to get to the forum manager screen for 24 hours now. ------ Remember Big Blue? Should you? A marketing firm has declared that even after three years, one out of two Americans still know what Big Blue was, and what it did-- a hint, it had something to do with chess. ------ First maybe there was life on Mars, now maybe on Jupiter's moon Europa ______________________________________________________________________ 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. If you use the Additional Decryption Key (ADK) functionality of PGP in versions 5.5 through 6.5.3, you might want to download the latest patch. It appears that an ADK can be surreptitiously added to a keyring, updated to the servers, and which "could" allow a third party to decrypt a message which they are not authorized to do. ADK is a useful feature for employers who need to be able to decrypt messages if say, an employee quits but doesn't fess up the passphrase for the secret key to decrypt the company related messages. There are a few "conditions" for this to happen though, and you'll find them on the first link. Get the patch via the 2nd link depending on your OS platform. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ Next week, we'll have a new sponsor (actually, three kind of dropped into my lap. No solicitations by me! Gotta love that!), so the free software giveaways will begin again! ______________________________________________________________________ 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