PCWize Edition #25 - More fun stuff than you can shake a stick at. October 24, 1999 ______________________________________________________________________ My wife who has a very active dislike of all creatures smaller than a cat, is having a rough time. My daughter, now 22 months old, is fascinated with all forms of insects and kids being kids, wants to share her discoveries with anyone who will listen. This of course has taught my wife to never hold out her hand when my daughter has something to "share". Our cat, of course, is not making the situation any better as he has taken to catching mice and other rodents during his nighttime excursions and depositing them on our back porch. Always near my wife's slippers and in a usually less than appealing state. So now in addition to my daily morning routine of taking out the trash and picking up stray toys, I have added insect eviction and rodent removal. I am hoping this winter will be long enough that my daughter will jump from the relatively small insects to the larger creatures like dogs and cats instead of catching the in-between sizes such as frogs (which my wife absolutely abhors!). This is definitely in my daughter's best interest, as my wife may decide that instead of a daily insect eviction, we could much more easily solve the problem with a one-time child eviction. :^) ------ BOZO Alert! What's the BOZO Alert you ask? It's my way of informing you of an Internet or computer related service that you should stay away from. You won't see too many of these, because they have to be pretty lousy to make my bozo list. I use a mail and web site forwarding service from . I have been having some serious problems with this service as numerous times their server wasn't working and I lost about a days worth of mail. For most people this isn't a huge deal, but when I lose new subscribers, distance education messages from my college classes and the loss of prospective advertisers for this e-zine, that's bad. I have sent five messages so far over the last few months and not a one of them gotten a response. I have to admit that their worse transgression to date has been the two incidences in which mail was cross routed between people. One day I received seven messages that were supposed to go to someone else. The thing was, her e-mail address wasn't even close to mine. The second time, I received mail for all sorts of people, and none of their e-mail addresses were close to mine either. I don't foresee this service staying around much longer if they keep up this kind of customer support. Please note that this is my personal experience with this service. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). ______________________________________________________________________ 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 ** ------ * LiveWire! Broadcast - Easily locate and play Live Radio and TV stations on the Internet * MediaGrab! - Find and download MP3s and 18 other types of multimedia files. * WebGrab! - Great web tool for viewing and downloading webpage elements. * UsenetGrab! - Integrated Usenet News browser and more. EastBay Technologies - http://www.eastbaytech.com ------ Want to see your advertisement here? Send mail to with the text 'Advertiser' in the SUBJECT line for more information. ______________________________________________________________________ 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: Al Morale Genre: Fun stuff/time wasters Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT & MAC PowerPC Type/Cost: Shareware/$18.95 USD Size: 2.59MB Homepage: Download: Do you have low self-esteem? No motivation? No friends?!? Try Al Morale! Just what you need to feed that enormous ego! He is the end all-be all of 'Yes men!' What a fun piece of software. Just get Al going, and watch and listen as he blows smoke up your backside. Nobody is better at flattery and just plain ol' fashioned brown nosing. Just what every self-important manager needs! ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ Stalking the Mysterious Microbe Who says that microbes aren't fun? This very well designed site can be fun for the whole family. Cartoony characters take you on a fun ride through facts, experiments, and games all starring our friendly (well, ok, maybe not real friendly) microbes. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ No matter how careful I am, or what I do, I always seem to have an inordinate number of broken shortcuts lying around. Of course the simplest fix would be if the uninstall routines actually did uninstall everything, but the simple fact is that they don't. This weeks tip concerns a program called CHKLNKS.EXE which you will find on the Windows 98 CD under \Tools\RESKIT\Desktop. Just double-click the file and it will return a list of broken links which you can then delete. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ "I'm very sorry that I deleted all of your important files, maybe you'll feel better if I order you an on-line fudge sundae." Hmmm. Computers and electronic devices that will react to our emotional state? Rosalind Picard, an associate professor at MIT's Media Lab seems to think so. I wonder if she's any relation to Jean-Luc? ______________________________________________________________________ 6. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends ------ Before we begin, let me define these for you: Security Issues: These are issues affecting your privacy and security while on the Internet. Most security risks that will be mentioned here are ones concerning holes in software which leak information or will allow people to gain access to private information. Viruses/Trojans/Worms: These will be *real* warnings about new viruses. If I'm warning you of a virus, then you can take it to the bank that I've fully checked its validity first. Hoaxes: The most memorable in all of your minds is most likely the Good Times Virus hoax. These are warnings about some new fangled virus that will wreck your life. The difference between this and other virus warnings is that they aren't for real. Their entire purpose is to scare people and bog down mail servers with all the forwarding going on. The reason I'll be telling you about them is so that you'll be in the know and won't forward them to everyone in your address book. Urban Legends: These are stories that will be computer related, but aren't necessarily virus related. A warning/story moves out of the hoaxes category when it keeps making a comeback. An example of an urban legend would be the one about the FCC allowing phone companies to charge for local access to the ISP in which the cost would be passed onto us as users. ------ Name: W32/Pretty.Worm Category: Worm What it does: After executing the attached file called "Pretty Park.exe" a 3D Pipe screensaver will display while the worm infects the file "Files32.VXD" in the \Windows\System directory. This file is subsequently called every time you run an .EXE file because this worm has also changed a key value in the registry. Once infected, the worm will try to e-mail itself to all the e-mail addresses in your addressbook every 30 minutes. Furthermore, it connects to an IRC server channel and sends sensitive information about your computer to it. What to look for: If you receive e-mail that has a file attached called "Pretty Park.exe", then you can avoid infection by not running the attachment. The person who you received this infected e-mail from has already been infected with the W32/Pretty.Worm. You might want to send them this section of the newsletter. How to fix it: Removal is pretty much a manual method, and the exact steps can be found here: ______________________________________________________________________ 7. PCWize Contests and Winner Announcement ------ This weeks contest sponsor is Eastbay Technologies and they have generously offered four of their products to be used as prizes in our random drawing contests. Eastbay Technologies offers a wide variety of software to meet many different user's needs. Take a look at some of what they have to offer: * LiveWire! Broadcast - Easily locate and play Live Radio and TV stations on the Internet * MediaGrab! - Find and download MP3s and 18 other types of multimedia files. * WebGrab! - Great web tool for viewing and downloading webpage elements. * UsenetGrab! - Integrated Usenet News browser and more. EastBay Technologies - http://www.eastbaytech.com ------ 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 vbok@biogate.com so that we can work a deal. ------ The winner of this weeks random drawing contest is: Jack Teems Jack Teems publishes the NNT newsletter Neat Net Tricks is now in its fourth year with free computer and Internet tips twice monthly by email and the feature is read by 56,000+ readers in 137 countries, along with another 3 million readers of Yahoo!Internet Life where Neat Net Tricks appears monthly as a regular column. ______________________________________________________________________ Well, that's it for this issue! Have a good week and I'll see you in seven days. Leif Gregory Copyright © 1997-99 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 Back-Edition Titles