PCWize Vol 4, Issue 34 - Lions and Tigers and Boogers oh my! August 21, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________ You could win $10,000 and a Sony DVD player just by recommending PCWize to a friend! ------ Remember that little hard drive I picked up in Akihabara-- the 534MB (actually a 527MB) for $4.50 USD? That isn't a typo BTW. I found the same drive on the Internet for $135.00. Don't believe me? Take a look here I'll tell you what. You can find some pretty phenomenal deals down there sometimes. I thought I had found another deal to end all deals on a 16 port fast Ethernet switching hub for about $70 USD. I was all excited, especially since they normally sell for about $230 USD. While I was being excited, the salesperson was being perplexed. At least until he figured out that the price marker was shifted too far to the right. It was actually the price for an 8 port version. Oh well, you can't win them all. ------ Remember the tip in last issue about the Zoom function of the MS Intellipoint mice? Reader Bobbie Jo wrote in to say that the tip was originally his-- sent in to PC Tech in September of 1999. While Josh says that he gleaned his timely tip from the Intellipoint on-line help --which I verified was truly there, I was also able to determine with reasonable assurance that Bobbie Jo was the first person to help make the tip publicly known. So kudos to Bobbie Jo for getting the ball rolling! ------ We had our first "thrill" with my 2 1/2 year old daughter shoving a foreign object up her nose. It took us ten minutes to work a necklace bead from her right nostril by massaging it out. I think I would have handled the entire incident much better if it hadn't been for the fact that my wife's first attempt was to try and suck it out using her mouth! Yeeeeech! ______________________________________________________________________ Table Of Contents - HackTech by The NMI - 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 And one for the Road... ------ Did I ever tell you all what a cool thing a laptop is? I'm writing this from about 40,000 feet in the air, on my way to a buddy's house across the North American continent. On the back of the seat in front of me is a phone with a phone jack (RJ-11) in it. This connector lets me hook up my laptop modem (don't even ASK about the price-per-minute) and call up my ISP to check e-mail, get on ICQ briefly to send a message or two, and even download an emergency driver if need be! Even though I don't yammer on the phone itself all the time, I like to be connected to the net when possible, and I love the fact that I can do that even from the air. Besides all the Net stuff, there are other uses for bringing a laptop with you when you travel. Obviously writing for this column is one of the better ones but there are many more. I love learning languages, as long-time readers will know. One of the coolest programs for learning languages I have found is the Transparent Language course . It comes on a CD-ROM, and starts you off with a simple sentence in the language you are learning. What gives it a very high neat-factor is that it speaks the particular part of the word, sentence, or paragraph that you select. Since they make it SOOO easy to get the basics of a language, I like to use my travel time for just such a purpose. Another great thing is reading material. Sure, you can carry around a book or two, but I have to have certain reference material with me when I troubleshoot a persons computer, and there is NO way it would be feasible to carry around in paper what I have on my laptop hard drive. Whether it be pinout specifications for an odd connector, or the e-version of "the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" in Russian. (You have GOT to try reading a favorite book in another language, what a trip!) You just can't beat a portable computer for the amount of space it saves. Let's not forget entertainment, too! In the lulls between fixing peoples computers, geeking on the Net, and raising my foreign language quotient, I like to have fun too! Does anyone remember that easy-to-build game controller interface I told you about a while ago? It was the one that you could build to hook up a playstation controller to your parallel port. Of course I brought my controller with me, it's part of my essential equipment! I can game with the best of 'em using this puppy, and it's a nice method of stress relief on these annoyingly long flights :) As a side note, Leif was recently asked about my name, The NMI, which some people thought to be pronounced as "en-em-ee", as in "enemy". Just so I can set the record straight, it is actually pronounced just as each letter says - N - M - I. What does this stand for, you ask? Well, it actually began as a little joke, because I had to change my handle. Way back in the day when I was still going through school, before the word "Cyber" had been abused by every tom, dick, and e-business trying to make a name for itself, my hacker handle, or nickname, had been "CyberMage". Now days, it sounds kinda lame, I agree, but back then, it was a pretty cool name, not just another overuse for the record books. Anyway, when I got to hearing that word pop up around every corner-- and in print too, I decided it was time for a change. Now My friends had always poked fun at my absentmindedness, which they, being computer geeks too, called a "memory parity error", computer parlance for the time when you have a problem with your system memory. Now, being the ubergeek that I was, I chose the name NMI-- which stands for Non-Maskable Interrupt. This is the condition that happens when your computer's memory goes bad, and the computer detects it. It shuts down the whole computer (until you reboot) and prints out on your screen in little letters at the top "NMI - Non Maskable Interrupt". I figured it was an apt description, and to break in my new name, I made sure it popped up on all my friends computers, for a short time (and much to their annoyance), just so they knew who was still the best. No damage was done, of course, and eventually they all thought it was pretty humorously ironic, my way of messing with them being the very thing they liked to tease me about :) And now you know... the REST of the story. So let me move on to playing some Unreal on my laptop here before we land - See ya next week! TheNMI Send your favorite hacker names and Airline compatible phone card donations to: TheNMI@PCWize.com ______________________________________________________________________ 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: CDex version 1.30 beta 4 by Albert Faber Genre: Audio converter Platform: PC Win 9x/NT Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 1.23MB Homepage: Download: I finally got off my rear-end and started playing around with audio rippers to convert CD audio to MP3. After a few false starts and stops with various "other" programs, I ran across CDex. Talk about a no-brainer. You unzip it to a directory, run the cdex.exe program, put a CD in the drive (which reads in the tracks), and press the CD to MPEG button. If you take a little extra time before pushing the button, you can name all the tracks and add details-- called ID3 --such as artist, song title, genre, and year. It's pretty quick too. You can convert a CD audio "song" into an MP3 in about half the time it takes to listen to the song. There are even enough options available to keep a heavy "ripper" happy. Of course, being freeware is nothing to sniffle at either! ______________________________________________________________________ Cool Sites ------ Idleworm Flash Animation, Games and Parodies Are you fed up? Take it out one one of Idleworm's characters. For instance, take Barney (that horrid purple blimp of a parental headache) on a stroll through a minefield, take Bill Gates to the mat with a sucker punch to the groin, hook Jerry Springer up with a chair-- fatally of course, or whip out your schwartz and lop some appendages off the imminently annoying JarJar from Star Wars Episode One. You are the master! May the schwartz be with you! ------ The Interface Hall of Shame Do you know what makes a good piece of software vs. a bad one? Sure you do! If I say it's good, then it's gotta be true right! Seriously, take a look at the Interface Hall of Shame to see who should be hanging their heads low. ______________________________________________________________________ Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Even as insecure as ICQ is, I must admit that I like it. I've tried many different types of Instant Messengers (IM), but I've stuck with ICQ, because it's highly configurable-- not to mention I like my ICQ UIN (216395). One feature that I've always thought should have been included, was a way to revoke your authorization for someone to have you listed in their contacts. From time to time, we all make mistakes and some of you may have given authorization to someone who you later wish you hadn't. In my particular case, I have an open authorization for anyone to add me to their contact list, because I got tired of dealing with the huge number of authorization requests from people like you-- PCWize readers, as well as people from the multiple other discussion lists that I run. Unfortunately, that free access is sometimes abused by spammers and other assorted boneheads who feel the need to try and hack into my computer. So, what are we to do? Well, there's a way, but it involves a few steps. 1. Click the little ICQ button in the lower-left of the ICQ window 2. Select SECURITY & PRIVACY 3. Select the INVISIBLE tab 4. Drag-and-drop the contact name to the large details block 5. Click YES and OK in the resulting dialog boxes 6. Select the IGNORE tab 7. Drag-and-drop the contact name to the large details block 8. Click YES and OK in the resulting dialog boxes 9. If you don't normally use the WEB AWARE, then you need to disable the ALLOW OTHERS TO VIEW MY ONLINE / OFFLINE STATUS FROM THE WEB, because if you don't then the person you are trying to get away from will be able to tell if you're on-line. Although, they won't be able to send you any messages, chat requests, files etc. ------ I used to be one of those Post-it-note freaks. I mean, my computer desk was so covered with them, that you'd think that the desk was actually built of Post-it-notes. I later moved on to writing in notebooks, but that was as much of an organizational nightmare as the post-it-notes were. I even downloaded a couple of "virtual" Post-it-note programs, but I found out that you don't need anything that complex. Try this one on for size. Right-click on the desktop, select New, and then Text Document. Name it something original, and then start jotting down your phone call logs, quick web site URLs, e-mail addresses etc. Once a week or so, take a few minutes to sort it out into some logical organization and get rid of old info. It's just a simple matter of double-clicking the text document, and start typing those quick notes at the top. ______________________________________________________________________ That's the news! ------ Yahoo/Geocities wins a big case against cybersquatters. Ok, now I'm all against cybersquatting when it's a clear cut case, but... Just read my article on it from a while back . Two domain names that were won back by Yahoo/Geocities were gecities.com and ayhoo.com. There were a total of 40 that they got back. Let's put this in perspective... To protect the PCWize.com name, I need to make sure that I also own cpwize.com. Geez! I mean give me a break. What if GE (General Electronics) wanted to create a community called GECities. Now what? Good domain names are harder and harder to come by nowadays. Let's not make matters worse by giving misspellings of names to someone for trademark protection. ------ Privacy or privates? New airport security measures tell all, and worse, pretty much show all as well. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ I have received quite a few messages from you all about e-mail which states that you can obtain diplomas-- all the way up to PhDs based on knowledge and experience you already have. They further claim that you don't even need to take any tests or anything. Well, let me put it to you this way. If it was that easy to get a diploma, then why in the heck is everybody wasting their time and money going to school. One good tip-off was that all of them used free mail servers for their supposed e-mail address, and their only "real" way of contact was a phone number. That's a very good indication of something buffaloneous. ------ Surprisingly, not much has happened on the virus/worm front. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. ------ Sorry, no contest this week. I haven't had time to line up some new sponsors. Once this move gets all worked out, we'll be back on track with some great stuff to give away. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. 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