PCWize Vol 4, Issue 18 - Windbagging April 30, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ You could win $10,000 and a Sony DVD player just by recommending PCWize to a friend! ------ Just a warning!! This is a big issue. Lot's of things to talk about. Or maybe, only a few things and we just got long-winded! :^) ------ In last week's issue, I told you all about a game called DX-Ball 2. During the opening screen you are presented with an ultra-cool particle storm fireworks show. I immediately thought "This would make a great screensaver!" Apparently I wasn't alone in that thought. Take a look at their very wicked Particle Fire screensaver at: Unfortunately, it's a seven day trialware, but once you purchase it you'll get every new version for free. ------ Quite a few of you signed up for Paypal under my referrer ID. I thank you wholeheartedly and hope that you'll find it as useful as I do. I stated last issue that I wasn't sure how you all would react to me recommending something that would obviously compensate me monetarily. Nobody sent me any nasty grams, but many of you who did sign up sent a note saying they liked the service. I did receive a couple of e-mail from people who were dubious as to whether Paypal was going to be one of those fly-by-night deals who would take off with their money. I didn't mention (and maybe I should have) that they have been around for a while, and so far so good. They look like they're around to stay. Again, thanks to those who signed up under my referral ID. It's a great way to support the PCWize e-zine-- as I don't make any money on it in any other way --and it didn't cost you anything but a couple of minutes of your time (not to mention you got five free dollars when you signed up.) The sponsors I usually solicit for PCWize are the ones who give away the software to you guys and gals in the weekly contests, and the other persistent sponsor is from the people who host the PCWize web site. For those new subscribers who didn't get a chance to take a look at Paypal, you can check it out and earn yourself (and me) five dollars. ------ It's about that time again! I haven't done a survey in over a year and PCWize has changed quite a bit in that time. What I'd like to do is find out how you would prefer to take the survey. If you'd like to do it on-line via a form, click below and send the generated message. If you'd like to do it by answering questions sent to you in a plaintext e-mail, click below and send the generated message. Depending upon the responses, I might end up doing both, but I'd like to get a feel for how you all want to do it. The survey will help us to determine more of what you'd like to see, and to "trim the fat" so to say, where necessary. The last survey was a great success and I learned a lot from it. This only helps you, so please participate. ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. HackTech 2. Voting Booth and Other PCWize Stuff 3. Software Review 4. Cool Sites 5. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's 6. That's the news! 7. Security Issues, Hoaxes, Viruses and Other Urban Legends 8. 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 ** ------ 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: ______________________________________________________________________ 1. HackTech by TheNMI ------ What do you want to LEARN Today? I was hunting down a particular security-oriented file recently, as my job(s) often employ the use of various security testing tools. Try as I might, I had no luck finding any sites in English. The only sites that came up seemed to be in garbled characters and nothing was plainly readable. This told me right off the bat that these sites were in another language (foreign characters often appear to be garbled text, until you switch your "Character Set" - See below). I checked the URL, and it went to something.ru, a Russian site (because it ended in .RU) Well, lucky for me I had already taught myself Russian off the Web! That's right, I learned the Russian alphabet - Cyrillic, some basic words, and even how to pronounce them properly, all by using JUST the Web! Now I know you may be thinking "Boy, this guy sure has a lot of time of his hands!" Well, not exactly, but I ALWAYS have enough time to learn something new, especially if it includes languages. I learned a long time ago (yep, here goes the flashback), back in JR. High, the benefits of learning a new language. You see, way back in 4th grade, I had the chance to learn Spanish. They were implementing a foreign language into our studies at the school, and everyone seemed to be taking it great; except for me. Of course, even back then, I knew everything and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I needed to learn a language that no one in my town spoke natively. Big Deal, right? I knew English, and if people wanted to talk with me, I figured they should be speaking English. Boy, was I stupid back then! My Spanish teacher at the time, a short petite Spanish lady with a fiery disposition, said on NUMEROUS occasions "You, know, ONE DAY you are gonna need this language, and you are really gonna regret not learning it when you had the chance!" I would stubbornly give her some attitude, and she would scowl and walk away. What did she know, eh? Damn her, she was right - not two years later I ended up moving to a town where almost ALL of my friends spoke Spanish or a derivative thereof, and some of them didn't speak English at all! Boy, talk about a culture shock! My petty little worldviews suffered quite a blow, I can tell ya! I had a hard time making friends at that school and it would have gone SO much easier had I not been such a bastard to that poor Spanish teacher... But, alas, I still didn't learn my lesson. The next school I went to, I got there kinda in the middle of things and all the popular classes were taken. I needed an elective course still, and the only ones open were Chinese and something else (I forget what it was). Yep, you guessed it - I passed on the Chinese. I still remember the attitude I gave the lady at the desk: "Why the heck would I want to learn Chinese?? I don't know ANYone that speaks it! Come on now, give me that other thing!" I transferred to another school. Wouldn't you know it, there was this gorgeous girl there, of course speaking mainly Chinese - I didn't have a prayer! I could have at least had something of a conversational opener with her if I hadn't been so stupid. But even then, I still hadn't learn my lesson! When I went to Japan (the same place and time that I met Leif incidentally) I knew ahead of time that I was going. Now as a general rule, the Japanese people I met were some of the most polite people around. Compared to them, Americans are just plain rude (and I can say this because I AM an American). When I was there in Japan, I met some really cool Japanese people, who I couldn't communicate with, other than nods of the head and my rough vocabulary. I would've loved to have been able to talk with some of the locals, and just converse... But like I said before, I can be really stupid. I REFUSE to go through that kind of thing again! Maybe 10 years ago people might have had an excuse as to why they couldn't learn a new language - maybe the information was not available, or it was too expensive, etc. Now days, with the incredibly exponential expansion of the Internet, all those excuses go by the wayside! It's simply much too easy to find information on another language, with web pages teaching you how to read, write, pronounce, converse, and even curse (not recommended for those under 16!) Now, back to the Russian thing. A friend of mine had an old camping stove he bought cheaply at a thrift store, and it had Cyrillic writing on it. He wanted to learn more about it, it's origins and such, so he came to me with it, knowing how language-curious I was (Yes, I FINALLY learned my lesson ). I copied down the characters from the lamp as best I could, and hit the Web. Going to WWW.ALTAVISTA.COM and typing "Russian Language" yielded me several web sites, two of my favorite being http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/alphabet.html and http://catcode.com/rintro/first.htm The first site is run by Bucknell University's Russian Department, and the link I gave you is a kind of word-game: A word is written in Cyrillic characters and you are given a clue in English. By the end of the page you can actually start translating the words pretty easily. If you print the thing out and refer to it from time to time, I can almost guarantee you'll be able to at least pronounce some actual Russian words when you see them somewhere! You may need to download the Cyrillic (KOI8-R) fonts at the link provided on the page, or simply switch the character set in your browser to that character set (Consult your particular browsers HELP function). The second site is a great tutorial on the Cyrillic alphabet, By J. David Eisenberg. You don't need any special font set to view this page, as all the Cyrillic characters are graphics files, so they come up in most any browser. Mr. Eisenberg has put together a fantastic tutorial on each character, with WAV sound files demonstrating how to pronounce words, some of the special cases of pronunciation, and all in all, a pretty entertaining lesson! Just so you all aren't mistaken, I am by NO means an expert in this language, since I only started learning it relatively recently. I WOULD however hazard publishing my personal opinion that Russian is easy to START learning, because Cyrillic is VERY phonetic. It's pronounced a lot of the time just like it's written. Thanks to these and other web sites, I found out that my friends Camp Stove was apparently built for the Russian army by Optimus, a Swedish camping equipment manufacturer. I also found that file I was looking for, because I can now translate basic words like computer, program, etc. I challenge each and every one of you to use the Web this week to find out about another language, and get back to me about it. It's so amazing to be able to look at something in a foreign alphabet and know what it means, just from learning it on the web. Start at your favorite search engine, type the name of the language accompanied by keywords like "Alphabet" or "Language" and see what you can learn! Educate yourself, impress your friends, and talk to the REST of the world! :) TheNMI You can send your English or non-English comments to thenmi@PCWIZE.COM No promises on getting back to ya, but I will try to translate them all. Please, however, avoid Sanskrit, as after a lengthy effort, let's just say I am coming back to this language later... MUCH later ______________________________________________________________________ 2. 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. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Software Review ------ Name: ICQ2000a by ICQ Inc. Genre: Instant Messenger Platform: Just about every platform Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 6.29MB Homepage: Download: Of all the instant messengers (IM) that I have tried, ICQ is still the king. In their latest release, there have been some changes, but for the most part nothing spectacularly new. The first thing you will notice however, is its monstrous size. If they keep up this rate, they'll be competing for bandwidth against other behemoths like IE and NN. I sort of wish ICQ would come out with two versions, or better yet a totally plugable version. This way you could still have all the fun of ICQ, but by making it plugable you would only have to install the things you need. For me this is important, because the first thing I did after installing ICQ2000a, was to turn off, disable, or ignore about 60% of the things it offers. For example, I do not want a to-do list, greeting cards, phone follow-me, voice messaging, e-mail support, and various other sundries. So, if I don't like all of this stuff, what exactly do I like about 2000a? For starters, they've put all the configuration stuff into a single dialog page, and they added a very cool function to the messaging where you can see a dialog pane with all the messages. The former is helpful because I hated trying to track down exactly where a setting was. The latter is extremely helpful, because when you have multiple messaging conversations going on, you can keep track of what was said and to whom. They've also added a toolbar which you can customize for easy access to important functions. Another nice function is the user tooltips which show you a quick pop-up of a user's details without having to actually check their "User's Details". Lastly, they made the message history a plugin, which is a start to a better ICQ. I use the message history all of the time, but some of you may not. If you don't use it, then don't install the plugin. All in all, it's worth the download, but if you don't like bloat stay with ICQ99. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Cool Sites ------ SearchIQ When you want to search for something, where do you go? A search engine of course! Now which search engine is the best? Is there a search engine for search engines? You bet! Take a look at SearchIQ and get all the good stuff on which search engines got the right stuff, and which are faking it. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Here's a first! I'm running you off to someplace to read their tips and tricks. I couldn't help it though, this article is on the ball and I couldn't have done it any better. Read the "Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet" to put you on the road to search engine gurudom! No more fruitless searches! Well, ok, I won't promise you that, but you'll definitely increase your relevant hits if you use their tips. ______________________________________________________________________ 6. That's the news! ------ Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest man! Hmmmm. Let's see, do you realize that Bill Gates could give everyone in the world one dollar apiece, and still have roughly 45 Billion left (based on a world population of approximately 6.5 billion). *Note: The above probably wrapped, so you'll have to cut and paste everything between the <> into your browser. ------ I got quite a bit of mail about my thoughts on Microsoft and monopolys. The good news was that they were all good. Meaning no flames. The bad news? I think I should have put it up for discussion on the forum board. There were some good comments, and I would have liked to have everyone see them. Because space is limited, I've included just one, but I'd like to see your comments on the PCWize forum at: Garland Depew writes: In your recent discussion for alternatives to Microsoft and their products, I can't believe you didn't even mention Macintosh.  I have a WinTel box (Win 98SE) and a Mac G3,(Mac OS 8.6) and I absolutely love the Mac.  It's beyond me why people don't look to this very obvious alternative to the "Evil Empire".  When I *have* to run PC software, I use Virtual PC on my Mac--no PC can run Mac software.   Can you tell me why Macintosh just dosen't get the attention it deserves?  My reply was pretty lengthy, but here it is: You are correct, I didn't mention the Mac in that article. I suppose mainly because I don't have much experience with Macs other than I've played on them a few times at stores and a couple of friend's houses. Will I say that the Mac is a better platform than the PC? No, but I also won't say that the PC is a better platform than the Mac. While they do many things similarly, each platform has its advantages and disadvantages. My personal belief on why Mac isn't very accepted is threefold. The most detrimental reason is that the majority of people look at Macs as the stupid people computer. I don't agree with this, but it is a paradigm that has persisted for a very long time. The second reason is the limited software diversity. You go to a software store and you see row upon row of PC software while the Mac has a couple. The perception is that the Mac is obviously an inferior platform because there is comparatively little software. What people don't understand, is that the software the Mac does have is much better designed and has more functionality than the PC counterpart. There is more software for the PC, because someone saw where another package could be improved or more functionality was needed. Now, I do have to amend that statement slightly, because there is a good deal of PC software out there that is completely unique which I enjoy very much. The third reason is that Apple has never been very good at the marketing game. They tried catering to the select group of graphic artists for the longest time. They ignored the larger general user for so very long that they allowed the PC to dominate, and when something dominates like that for a long enough period of time, it becomes the de-facto standard. An example of this on a smaller scale would be Creative Labs Sound Blaster. There wasn't much competition in the beginning, and by the time there was, Sound Blaster was the de-facto standard that everyone had to be compatible with. Another example is the 100MB Iomega ZIP drive. The LS-120 and Orb are much, much better products, but ZIP got the foothold, everybody bought it, and therefore became the de-facto standard. Why would anyone buy an Orb when none of their friends or co-workers could read them. Is this to say that these competitors should just give up? Heck no! We wouldn't get anywhere that way. Their major obstacle is that there is no compatibility. For example, if the Orb could have read ZIP disks and also use their own 2.2GB disks, then they probably would have shot through the roof. Let me give you another example of this. Microsoft knows extremely well that if they had dumped Win9x and gone solely to WinNT, they would have left a huge population of users behind. The migrations and mergings of the 9x and NT OSs is the only way they can keep these people. Another example of this would be with Intel. I'm sure the IA-64 (can't recall the codename for it right now) is going to be a real wicked beast, but there was no way that they could dump the x86 line entirely. They would lose way too many customers that way. I mean who wants to dump their entire software base and start over on a new architecture. This is why the IA-64 will be able to emulate x86 enough for users to migrate. See where I'm going with this? Why would a PC user dump their software base to start anew with the Mac. I don't know how good the PC emulators for the Mac are now, but even still, most people are used to the look and feel of Windows. The non-geeks (read non-adventurous) will want to stay with something that is familiar. Let me give you another example. Do you know why UNIX was the dominating server OS software for so long? Aside from the fact that back then it was really the only option due to its flexibility, UNIX developers gave their software to Universities for free. By doing this they got the computer geeks used to it, comfortable with it, and when they went out into the real world, that was the OS they wanted to use. One day I will buy a Mac, even if only to expand my horizons, but for now my limited knowledge of the platform precludes me from writing intelligently about it. In the beginning, when PCWize was VBOK, I had a guy who used to write the occasional Mac article for me. He moved on, and in the time since, PCWize has become so PC centric that well, the name PCWize sort of sums it up. Now, I would be willing to include articles in PCWize about the Mac if someone was willing to write them. I don't make any money off PCWize (pocketable at any rate, it all goes to the domain name, web site hosting, and the future Lyris listserve software), so I can't pay anyone for their articles, but I'm not opposed to it in any way. In fact, there are a decent number of Mac users subscribed to PCWize, but none have taken me up on the offer of writing. The world will never know about the Mac platform until more Mac users start helping to promote the platform. ______________________________________________________________________ 7. 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. ------ Kelvin O'Neal sent this one in, and for his troubles, he wins a free copy of WinSafe98 from Easydesk Software. The below is a hoax, and you can read more about it at: RETIREMENT: Permanent repair for Social Security For any who don't know, SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT! Our Senators and Congressmen don't pay in to Social Security, and, of course, they don't collect from it. The reason is that they have a special retirement plan that they voted for themselves many years ago. For all practical purposes, it works like this. When they retire, they continue to draw their same pay until they die, except that it may be increased from time to time by cost of living adjustments. For instance, Former Senator Bradley and his wife may be expected to draw $7,900,000, with Mrs. Bradley drawing $275,000 during the last year of her life. This is calculated on an average life span for each. This would be all well and good, except that they paid nothing in on any kind of retirement, and neither does any other Senator or congressman. This fine retirement comes right out of the general fund. Our tax money. While we who pay for it all draw an average of 1000/month from Social Security. Imagine for a moment if you can structure a retirement plan so desirable that people have extra deducted so that they may increase their own personal retirement income. A retirement plan that works so well that Railroad employees, Postal workers and others who aren't in it, are clamoring to get in it. That's how good Social Security could be, if only one change were made, and that change is to jerk the Golden Fleece retirement out from under the Senators and Congressmen, and put them in Social Security with the rest of us, and watch how fast they fix it. If enough people receive this, maybe one or some of them along the way might be able to help. How many can YOU send it to? ______________________________________________________________________ 8. 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. ------ This week's sponsor is EasyDesk Software, and they have developed some great applications to make your daily life much easier. Please visit their web site to get the lowdown on all the great products they have, and to help keep the PCWize newsletter FREE! ------ The winner of this weeks prize is: Kelvin O'Neal He won a totally free copy of WinSafe98 from Easydesk Software for his submission of this issue's hoax. Thanks Kelvin! ______________________________________________________________________ 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 its 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