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Issue 81 - April 26, 2000
ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements (c) 2000
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Welcome to the 81st issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN
consists of news, tips, thoughts, and contests. There is something
for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there
will be something for you. I am willing to discuss any computer
topic. Email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net with any suggestions.
If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come
back for more!
Recommend PCIN to others and be entered in a monthly draw
(April draw is for Mijenix's PowerDesk) at http://www.pcin.net/recommend.shtml
OPENING THOUGHTS
This is the last Wednesday that the newsletter will be sent
out at this time. This is my last week of school, and next
week I start a job for the summer, so my schedule will change.
I will still be sending the newsletter out on Wednesday, but
it will most likely be later in the evening. Not a big deal,
but just thought I'd let you all know.
Without any homework to do, in the evenings I will have more
time to make some of the changes I mentioned a couple of issues
ago. I will keep you updated as I make changes.
SMILEYS and ACRONYMS of the WEEK
(:)-) Scuba Diver (that's a mask)
d:-) Wearing Baseball Hat
POV Point of View
SYL See You Later
Get the WWW. Smileys & Acronyms book for the PCIN special
price of $7.00 Cdn (around $5.00 US). You can only get this
price by visiting http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/smileys.shtml
The NEWS
Mafiaboy Caught
There has been speculation since it happened that the person
responsible for the recent Denial of Service attacks (users
can't access a web site) was a Canadian boy using the handle
Mafiaboy. Well, he was officially charged and appears in
juvenile court in Montreal, Quebec, Canada last week.
Because of his age (15), he is considered a Young Offender,
so he can get a maximum of 2 years in a youth detention
centre. Mafiaboy was caught by the RCMP (Royal Canadian
Mounted Police) after bragging on the Internet about what
he had done.
After his appearance in court, he was back at school the
next day attending class.
It is truly amazing that a 15-year-old boy with limited
resources could cause CNN, Amazon, ZDNet, and other major
sites to be inaccessible for hours.
For more info:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/397153.asp?cp1=1
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35768,00.html
Search Engine Spidering Illegal?
U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte recently ruled that Bidder's
Edge has broken the law. It spidered eBay's site and allowed
it's own visitors to search the eBay site from theirs. The
judge agreed that this sort of things slows down eBay's
site and that copying the content was illegal. This could
have repercussions with search engines. In essence, when
a search engine "crawls" a site, it is copying
the text and storing it in their database. There have been
several rulings like this lately, so a lot of experts think
that current searching/spidering techniques will be changing.
For more info:
http://www.clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/cz/ebr/ebr.html?article=1618
Fibre Optic Internet Speeds
As reported in the April 20, 2000 Toronto Star newspaper
(page H5):
"Researchers at Lucent's Bell Labs recently transmitted
3.28 terabits per second of data over a long stretch of
fibre optic cable. A terabit is a trillion bits, or 1,000
gigabits - roughly 20,000,000 times faster than 56kbps speeds
most people use. Put a different way, the 3.28 terabit capacity
would be capable of moving three times today's daily global
Internet traffic every second."
Fighting for Elián González on the Web
I guess depending on where you are, you either have very
strong feelings on this (on either side) or you just want
it to go away. The latter certainly doesn't seem like it
is going to happen any time soon. Pictures of Elián
González are everywhere. And as with everything in
the world, the web has become a major player. The Cuban
government has set up a site (which features a composite
photo of the child looking skyward with the caption, "I
want you to take me back to Cuba" (Yo quiero que tú
me regreses p'a Cuba) in a childlike scrawl). All of the
major news sites have sites loaded with pictures, and there
are many independent sites that people have set up. The
link below links to all of these.
For more info:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/04/18/elian_sites/index.html
I NEED HELP
I offer a free help service via email. If you have a question,
you can email me and I will try my best to answer them. I
can answer about most of them, but there are things that I
have never tried or experienced so I don't have an answer.
I post those questions here and see if any of the readers
have any suggestions. I will include all reasonable suggestions
with credit to you.
These are NOT my own questions and they are NOT my answers.
I will NOT check the validity of these comments. That is up
to you. If you do try one of these tips, please let me know
how the suggestions worked out. Did they work or not? Please
send in your questions or results to mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
Previous Question 1
Why when I delete files, my "Recycle Bin" icon shows
it's full, but when I right click it to empty the bin the
"Empty Recycle Bin" command is greyed out and can't
be selected? I have to double click the icon to open the bin
and delete the files manually. There are files in the Recycle
Bin, but the Empty Recycle Bin command isn't available.
Answers to Question 1
John Hills said, "Normally, the "Empty Recycle Bin"
command is greyed out because the recycle bin is empty. It
obviously is not so you could check properties to ensure the
settings are correct. Other than that I think it is a registry
job which is beyond my capabilities."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Lowell said, "For WIN98 go to the recycle bin, click
on <VIEW>. At the bottom should be <OPTIONS>.
Choose the <CUSTOMISE> option and check out the various
choices. One of them may need to be turned on or off. Another
avenue to explore is right click on the recycle bin to get
the properties of the page. It may be hidden in there. I can't
reproduce the problem on my box so I can't be more specific.
If worse comes to worse c:\RECYCLED is the hidden file WIN98
uses for this stuff. Blow the contents away using the ATTRIB
and ERASE DOS commands until you figure out what WIN98 is
thinking. Be VERY careful when using DOS to debug windows.
I blew away the advertising driver because I didn't want to
see the ads. After re-installing IE5.1 and 128-bit encryption
and putting in a web washer to stop the ads my machine was
back to normal. 4 hours work. Try and use windows if you can.
Good luck. P.S. if you do want to use DOS, do it by booting
from the A: drive backup diskette. Don't use the MSDOS prompt
as windows is still in control and may thwart you."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leeor Geva said, "This is an unusual scenario to me,
you might want to search the microsoft site (their "knowledge
base") for that problem, because fixing that may be just
adjusting the fields in your registry or running a "patch"
from microsoft."
Previous Question 2
We have an old 486 & currently unable to access Internet,
getting error message "modem not responding, turn modem
off." What does this mean?
Answers to Question 2
John Hills said, "It means your "modem not responding,
turn modem off." Sounds very much like the modem is not
installed properly and you need to go into Control Panel,
select the modem icon, then select DIAGNOSTICS highlight modem
if there and click on INFO. If the modem responds it will
be obvious: if not an obvious message will appear. If all
is well then you need to have a good look at the software
you are using. Try dialing out a telephone number using Windows
phone dialer. If that does not work then nothing else
will."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leeor Geva said, "Contact the modem's creator's web site
(such as US Robotics) and get the "drivers" or "connection
strings" for that modem and for the operating System
that you use (win 3.1, windows, Linux :-) ) you may need to
open up the computer case to get the modem's info. Basically
your Internet connection program doesn't recognize your modem,
or it thinks it's external and it's turned off. See if you
can set the modem to a "general modem" in your connection
settings, that may fix the problem without getting the correct
drivers and info for your modem to work."
New Questions
Q1) I seem to have lost my recycle bin icon and the only way
I am able to access the bin is through Explorer (that lets
me see what is in there and manually delete things but I want
my visual bin and easy restore back!). The only change I have
made to my desktop is that I enabled active desktop and "view
as web page". I have tried everything I know including
reverting to the original settings.
Q2) Is overclocking a good idea? Where can I learn about?
If you have an answer to these questions or have a question
of your own, please email me at mailto:freehelp@pcin.net
THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF
Cheap Trick of the Week
**Back to big**
Last week in "Smaller is better" we came up with
three ways to minimize all your open windows at once. So
this week we need three ways to get back all the windows
you have minimized with any of those methods. Here they
are:
1. Click on the Show Desktop icon again next to your Start
button, if you have one. (It's a Windows 98 feature.)
2. Right-click on a blank space on the taskbar across the
bottom of your screen and select Undo Minimize All from
the context menu.
3. If you have a Windows keyboard, hold down both Shift
and the Windows keys, and press M.
You can get the Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks yourself
for only $9.95 Cdn (about $7.00 US)
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/cheaptricks.shtml
(Please mention that you heard about it from PCIN)
How Wealthy is Bill Gates
http://www.webho.com/WealthClock
This is a site I saw mentioned in Inter@ctive Week magazine.
If you are from the US and you want to consider that all
of Gates' wealth comes from you, then you have contributed
over $300 to his wealth. If you want to be part of a bigger
world, then when you take the entire world population into
consideration at http://www.webho.com/WealthClockIntl
then you have only contributed around $15. In either case,
I have certainly paid more than $300 over the years, so
someone isn't contributing their fair share around here!
Another good site that goes into all sorts of details of
"How Rich is Bill Gates" is http://quuxuum.org/~evan/bgnw.html
I have mentioned Bill Gates' wealth many times in PCIN.
I'm by no means obsessed with money. It is just one of those
things that is hard to get a handle on (you could go to
the moon and back 12 times if you put dollar bills end to
end that equaled his wealth).
After I wrote this, the Microsoft stock went down even more,
and recent figures (they change by the minute) had Bill
Gates at $49 billion, with Larry Ellison of Oracle closing
in at $48 billion. If things keep up, someone is going to
have to make a How Wealthy is Larry Ellison? site.
Backspace Key Useful for More than Deleting
When you have a folder window open, you can press the Backspace
key to move to the parent folder, even if that folder window
isn't currently open. For instance, if you had the c:\program
files\microsoft office folder open and pressed Backspace,
you would see the c;\program files folder open. If you pressed
Backspace again, you would then see the window open for
c:\ open.
Poor Richard's Web Site Second Edition
I've done reviews for all of the Poor Richard books so
far, so when author Peter Kent updated his Poor Richard's
Web Site, I immediately asked for a copy. I probably didn't
need to be too anxious. Just like Windows 98 SE, PRWS SE
had very little change from the predecessor. There are updated
links, some information on new technologies, and some outdated
information has been removed, but it basically the same
book.
The book itself is still very good. If you haven't read
the original PRWS, then I would still highly recommend the
book. It is very well written so the read clearly understands
the purpose of a given chapter. If you are making your own
site, whether it is personal or business, or want to learn
more about web site technology to increase your skills,
then PRWS SE should definitely be read.
If you have read the original PRWS, then you probably won't
get much more out of the SE.
Read the original PRWS review:
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/prws.shtml
Read the PRWS SE review:
http://www.pcin.net/help/books/reviewed/prws2.shtml
DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF
PCIN is brought to you by PC Improvements. The opinions expressed
are those of the editor, Graham Wing. PC Improvements and
Graham Wing accept no responsibility for the results obtained
from trying the tips in this newsletter.
- If any of the links are too long to fit on one line,
you may have to cut and paste.
- You can only win one contest every 30 days.
- To subscribe another address or unsubscribe, please visit
http://www.pcin.net/ and follow the appropriate
links.
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and be entered in a monthly draw.
- There are only 2 ways to get on the subscriber list.
You have either been subscribed by filling out a subscription
form on any of the pages on my site, or you have requested
FreeHelp from me in the past.
- If you have a web site or run your own newsletter, please
email me at mailto:editor@pcin.net
and I will add it to the subscriber web pages that I have
on my site.
Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2000, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All
rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced in hole,
or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter
is presented as is.
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