The PC Improvement News
Issue 1-7
November 18, 1998

ISSN 1488-3163
Published electronically by PC Improvements (c) 1999
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://www.pcin.net/

NOTE: If any of the links are too long to fit on one line, they will end up on 2 lines so the link won't be accurate. If that happens, please cut and paste. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Welcome to the 7th edition of the PC Improvement News. In this newsletter I try to have a couple of tips to make you computing life easier as well as highlights of the previous weeks PC Industry News. As always, I am more than willing to discuss any PC related topics in this newsletter. Just email me at editor@pcin.net with your suggestions. Also, if there is any strange formatting in the newsletter you receive please use the same email address to let me know so I can fix any incompatibilities. With your help and suggestions, it will get better.

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THE NEWS
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Equal Access for All
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I know that in this day of political correctness, we have to accommodate everyone, but there was a story this week which I thought was crazy. In an article, "Blind man wants better cyberspace access" there was a report that a man had placed a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Transportation Commission of San Francisco saying that there web site violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.
As a web site designer, this kind of scares me. I know that people with disabilities have text readers and other tools to help them, but the only way to have them read everything we see, is to have a text only site, and that isn't what the web is about. I agree that this man should have some access to bus schedules, and much more, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the multimedia heaven we call the Internet. Just my opinion anyways.

But can I still get fast food on January 1, 2000?
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All of us fast food junkies (read McDonald's junkies) breathed a sigh of relief this week upon reading that the company has spent $30 million dollars to upgrade their computer systems to be year 2000 compliant. The total included the cost of equipment and testing. They also stated that they would be reviewing the status of their key suppliers in regard to this issue as well.
Our hydro may not work, and planes may come tumbling down, but at least we'll have McDonald's fries! (Just kidding)

Read the article at:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,28858,00.html?st.ne.87.head

What's up with Microsoft?
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Every week, I will provide several links to articles about the Microsoft case with the DOJ. I will provide no editorial comments, other than this. I think that Microsoft should give every company a chance to compete, but I don't think that they should be under such intense scrutiny as they are right now. People complain about the Starr report costing so much money. Well, this DOJ case won't be cheap for either side, and I don't really think that anything will come from this. A waste of time!

Links:
Freedom to Innovate propaganda from the Microsoft Site
http://www.microsoft.com/misc/inv_howuhelp.htm
Microsoft trial: Defense goes after McGeady, but Intel exec remains calm
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/technology/html98/micr_111298.html
Cyber Trial of the Century
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/special/msdojtrial.html
**Check this site out often as it is updated daily as new case information becomes available**

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THE TIPS
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Doing better Searches
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One of the things that frustrates most Internet surfers, is the inability to find what they are looking for. You can search for something, but then get 2 million sites, but only 3 of them are remotely close. As I mentioned in a previous issue, you can do a search at Metacrawler http://www.metacrawler.com/ and you will probably have better success. There are also a few other things you can do to get better results.
Instead of just typing in your keyword, try adding one of the following words with a colon before the keyword:
title: (find keyword in title)
url: (find keyword in URL)
image: (find keyword in name of image, and/or the ALT attribute of the
image tag; not a very good field to search)
text: (find keyword anywhere in HTML code, I did a search using this tag
and just a regular search for "GRAHAM WING" and I found 22 references
using text: and 18 using just the name)
link: (find keyword in link, also use if you want to find the sites that
link to another site ie. link:www.pcimprovements.com)
By using this type of search, you will be able to find that specific keyword in any of those fields. It might also be a good idea to use a this technique at a search engine like Infoseek, where you can get a group of results, then do a search of those results.
NOTE: Not all of the search engines have this ability. Infoseek, Excite, Altavista, Lycos, and Hotbot all have some ability to do one or all of these searches.

Am I safe from Virii (Viruses)?
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With the number of people searching the net everyday, there is an increased awareness and possibility that you could download a virus. Unfortunately, with the distribution of fake letters from AOL and other companies warning about a virus (they would never do it this way), there is a lot of misunderstanding.
The only thing you really have to understand is that you need a good Virus checker that you run regularly (for me, about 1 time each week), and you should be okay. I have only ever gotten a virus once, about 7 years ago, on my old 8088 (came before the 286). It only had a 20 Mb HD, but I lost almost everything because i didn't have a boot disk, and I didn't have a virus checker. I learned my lesson.

Can a hacker get my email address from my browser?
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This certainly isn't anything you have to be worried about, but there is a way for a hacker to get your email address from your browser. As I'm sure most of you know, you can access ftp sites from your browser. But what you might not know is how you are able to log into an ftp site. Most ftp sites require a user name and password. Your browser will automatically set the user name as "anonymous", and usually has a password of some form of an email address like "mozilla@" or "ie4user@". It is possible for you to change this to your real email address. If you do, then it is possible for ftp host to get your email address, since your browser is freely giving it to them.
If you visit http://www.glenns.org/spam/ftpgrab.html there is a nice article explaining this, as well as a test for it. Check it out. My browser was okay.

 

Well, that's all for this week. Remember that if there is anything that you want to learn about, let me know and I will try to accommodate you.

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The PC Improvement News is brought to you by PC Improvements. The Opinions expressed are those of the editor, Graham Wing.

Editor: Graham Wing editor@pcin.net

Copyright 1998, PC Improvements and Graham Wing. All rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.

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