Issue 146 - August 01, 2001

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements ©2001
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Welcome to the 146th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you.

You can reach me at mailto:editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!

OPENING THOUGHTS

I am sitting here in my office area of our beautifully air-conditioned home. Yes, this morning we had our huge oil furnace replaced with a gas furnace that is about 1/10 of the size. And while we were at it we had central air installed. Very nice :-)

I will have the FrontX review done for next week. It looks very nice (I'll see if I can get a couple to give away as well).

Lastly, if there are any special topics that you would like discussed in a new Forum, or here in the newsletter, then feel free to email me. Remember that I am always open to suggestions, and I love hearing from you.

The NEWS

Organized Crime Case Raises Privacy Issues

"Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr. might seem an unlikely champion of civil liberties in the high-tech age. Mr. Scarfo, the son of the jailed mob boss "Little Nicky" Scarfo, has been awaiting trial on charges of running gambling and loan sharking operations for the Gambino crime family.
But like so many businessmen today, Mr. Scarfo kept his data on his personal computer; and like many other businessmen, he encrypted the sensitive stuff to protect it from prying eyes.
Today, a federal judge in Newark will hear defense motions to throw out evidence gathered by a controversial new law enforcement technology: a system that recorded every keystroke typed on Mr. Scarfo's computer, including the password that investigators used to unscramble Mr. Scarfo's files. That wrinkle in the case makes the United States v. Scarfo the latest battleground in a growing struggle to determine the proper balance between the government's ability to conduct surveillance and a citizen's right to privacy."

For more info:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/technology/30TAP.html
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168491.html

It's official: Caldera wins super size deal

"McDonald's, as expected, plans to migrate 4,000 stores to Caldera's OpenServer Release 5. Smart Partner reported the pending win for Caldera last week (see Super size deal for Caldera).
The OpenServer networks will relay data from McDonald's point-of-sale systems to the company's corporate headquarters. Sources say the system will also use IBM's MQSeries, to ensure data integrity and availability across the network."

For more info:
http://www.zdnet.com/sp/stories/news/0,4538,2800511,00.html

Post-Napster Pirates Commandeer Computers

"There's been a wild party at the New York City Board of Elections. With plenty of movies--"The Green Mile," "Braveheart" and "Unbreakable"--and pop music from Willa Ford and R.E.M., plus MTV videos. All free and all illegal.
To join the fun, online party-goers just directed their Web browsers to an election board computer site. Then they made their own copies of the entertainment stash before officials noticed this virtual rave party erupting in their computers.
Episodes like this one, which went on for weeks until the Board of Elections shut down the site last weekend, are part of an online piracy wave that is sweeping across the Internet. When the online music-sharing service Napster was shut down by a judge four weeks ago, its millions of users had to go somewhere. Many shifted to the dozen or so legal online alternatives still in operation."

For more info:
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000061971jul30.story

PCIN POLL of the WEEK

Here are the responses from the last poll:

Which peripheral do you use the most?
CD Burner: 38.46%
Digital Camera: 24.62%
Scanner: 18.46%
Palm Pilot (or similar device): 10.77%
DVD-ROM Drive: 4.62%
Digital Video Camera: 3.08%

Total Votes: 65

Visit http://pcin.net/polls/ to participate in the new poll this week:

If you were to think of the Internet, which of these companies would you think of first?

MOBILE COMPUTING NEWS and NOTES

Well, there's a new PDA-phone on the block, and this one looks like fun. It's called the PC EPhone and it does look a little funny because it's bigger than a normal PDA or phone. You can surf the web color & the phone works via CDMA, but you use a big Bluetooth powered pen as the phone. You know what? They can explain it better than me at http://www.pc-ephone.com/

Brought to you by Shawn Bremner and The Wireless Web ezine. Sign up by sending a blank email to mailto:wirelessweb-subscribe@topica.com

FREEHELP FORUM

Visit the PCIN FreeHelp Forum to post your questions or answer others. Each week I highlight a question, and where to go to get the answer.

Question
I recently began receiving blue screen whenever I restart, (error is 05:0108:000037F1) followed by a freeze. Any tips or fixes?

Answer
The infamous blue screen is not a good sign my friend. What you can try is running it in safe mode and uninstalling or undoing what it was you last did before it appeared. From my personal experience the blue screen is not something easy to get rid off. Often I have needed to reinstall windows.

Visit http://www.pcin.net/cgi-bin/forum/index.cgi and check out the General Discussion Forum to post your suggestion, or to post a question of your own.

PCIN.net UPDATE

Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:

Maximize a Program When It Starts
http://pcin.net/help/articles/maximizescreen.shtml

Some Useful Registry Tips (Now 44 Tips)
http://pcin.net/help/articles/registry.shtml

Support PCIN
http://pcin.net/donate.shtml

THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF

Cheap Trick of the Week

**Belay that delay**
When you start Windows 98 or ME, it usually pauses for two seconds to allow for the detection of hardware that is slow to activate, but the vast majority of hardware doesn't require this extra time.
To get rid of this delay, first click on Start, Find, Files Or Folders, type in msdos.sys, tell Windows to look in C: and click Find Now. When you see the msdos.sys file appear, right-click it and choose Properties. If the Read Only and Hidden boxes are ticked, untick them.
Click OK and then create a backup of this file just in case you encounter any problems.
Next, right-click on msdos.sys again and choose Open With. Choose to use Notepad to edit the file. With the file open, find the Options heading and under this, add a new line saying BootDelay=0 or BootDelay=1 (that's a zero or a numeral one), for no delay or a one-second delay.
Close Notepad, saving your changes on the way. You should then change msdos.sys back to being a Hidden, Read Only file before you restart Windows. If you do encounter problems without the two-second delay, simply open up msdos.sys, remove the BootDelay line, then save the file again.

Get your own copy of "The Little Black Book of Cheap Tricks: 2001" by visiting http://www.pcin.net/lbbct/

More Streaming Radio

Subscriber Shawn Bremner (yes, Shawn of the Mobile News and Notes section) sent me this:
"Do you use Spinner? I have used it for about a year at work and at home. I think it is way better than any Internet radio station because it is mostly the music of your choice and they have every music type available...even tons of genres that you've never even heard of. Go check it out at http://www.spinner.com/
Also, someone was telling me this weekend that http://AudioGalaxy.com/ is better than Napster ever was even at it's peak. The stuff he told me...you could pick the closest person to download from...you could resume download from someone days later if you got cut off...and lots more. You should check that out too."

Search Engine Tip

A few weeks ago the Cheap Trick was a tip for search engine use. Subscriber Duncan Long sent me this:
"Another trick that I use often with search engines are quotation marks. These can be used to designate a phrase that must have the words in the correct order for a hit. Not all search engines recognize this, but Google and most others do and it can often be a real time saver."

Changing Windows Settings/Colours/Fonts etc

The latest free PC Magazine utility is DisplaySet. The PC Magazine site describes it best this way:
"The Appearance tab of Windows's Display Properties dialog has hardly changed since the original Windows 95. It still uses a cramped preview pane that shows only a limited subset of the effects of your changes. It still treats some settings as different when they're actually the same for example, the typeface and size used for "Active title bar" and "Inactive title bar". And it doesn't include the ability to modify all the settings that are included in its own appearance schemes. DisplaySet remedies all of these limitations, while remaining compatible with the existing Appearance tab."
Check it out at http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s%253D1478%2526a%253D7361,00.asp

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.

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Graham Wing can be reached at mailto:editor@pcin.net

Copyright 1998-2001, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved.

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