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
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