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1-8-04
Another year, another 12 months of news, tips and info for the technically curious in the Kentuckiana area coming up. Welcome to 2004 J
Mail continued
to come in over the holiday break concerning the content of the newsletter, the
vast majority of which found it entertaining and informative as is. Keeping that in mind the lead will
continue to rotate through tips, news and editorials that have an affect on
computer users. However, I will
lean more toward general information rather than political commentary. When something spectacularly stupid
comes up though, like pending technical legislation written by people who think
TCP/IP is something that Native Americans used to erect to sleep in, you can
count on me voicing an opinion.
We won’t be
lacking in news coverage anyway.
Matt Dattilo has rejoined the staff as Editor of a new News of the Week
section, which will give a brief synopsis of interesting stories from the tech
world and include links to the full stories. In addition Troy Overton has already
filed a full month’s worth of downloads for Windows users, Hash contributes his
Mac Tip this week from his hometown of Mumbai, India and Ed gives us part 11 of
Is Linux Ready for the Desktop.
To get off on
the right foot information wise, there are a couple of things happening right
now that Windows users need to be aware of.
First, there’s
a new virus called I-Worm.Sober.C that is spreading by using an extremely clever
social engineering technique. The
infected email claims to be from the FBI and states that the recipient is under
investigation for downloading music or movies from the Internet and violating
copyright laws. What with the
plethora of lawsuits filed by the entertainment industry last year over music
downloads (I use entertainment industry instead of RIAA because I swore I
wouldn’t mention them in this first issue… oops!) many users are immediately
opening the infected attachment, which purports to be a list of the offending
files on the users hard drive.
You can read
more about this new virus tactic at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/06/1073268005348.html,
http://www.viruslist.com/eng/viruslist.html?id=603668
and http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encyclopedia/overview.aspx?lst=det&idvirus=42896.
The other
warning concerns spyware scanners.
If you’ve read this newsletter or listened to the show for any length of
time you are aware that we recommend SpyBot and Ad-Aware as scanners (links to
both are located at our website, www.84online.com). These are the ones that we use and
trust.
Companies that
implant spyware on unsuspecting users have started fighting back against these
programs by posting “fake” spyware scanners that are, in fact, spyware
themselves.
You can Google
“spybot” and get 237,000 hits, many of which lead to questionable scanners that
may remove competitor’s spyware while installing their own malware. You can visit your local department
store and find spyware removers on the shelves in retail boxes. Many “internet security” suites now
include removal of spyware. Avoid
them all, stick with the original programs.
That’s enough
for this week. Please feel free to
email comments or suggestions to me at any time. Any and all get considered and may make
a difference it what we feature each week.
As I’ve said before, we’re here for and because of the readers. Keep us apprised of what you want and
we’ll try to deliver ;)
Kevin Mefford,
Editor
If you’re a
regular user of eBay you know that their fees for sellers have not been
increased in nearly three years.
That’s about to change.
News.com talks to the decision-makers at eBay about the impending rate
hikes and asks, “Why now?”:
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5135465.html?tag=nefd_top
In this day and
age, to be a Windows user is to spend at least some of your time online
downloading updates. Ars Technica
takes the Beta version of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP (due later this year)
for a ride and comes back with a verdict and some cool screenshots. This Service Pack weighs in at 222MB, so
you may want to start warming up your modem now:
http://www.arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/04q1/sp2-beta-1.html
If you don’t
have a burning desire to jump a plane to Vegas and spend your vacation wandering
around vendor booths looking for free handouts, PC Magazine has the next best
thing; an online guide to the
Consumer Electronics Show, which starts today:
http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,4148,1412163,00.asp
Real Networks,
the people who brought you the endlessly annoying RealPlayer, are going to
launch a music download service much like Apple’s iTunes. This market is getting crowded, but a
little competition may mean even cheaper prices for us
consumers:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5135382.html
On last week’s
show, we spent some time talking about spam and what it means to us in our
personal and professional lives.
Now at least one company is claiming that garbage in our e-mail inboxes
costs businesses $20 billion a year in lost
productivity:
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32478.html
If you find a
tech news tidbit that you would like to see included in the newsletter, please
send it to me at md84online@yahoo.com. If we use your item, you’ll get a
mention, a smile and all the fame you can stand.
Matthew
Dattilo
Hello
again to all the 84 Online subscribers! I hope the holiday season has been good
to you, and that those New Year’s Resolutions are going strong. Speaking of
resolutions, with the reader feedback Kevin received my resolution is that I
will try to get you some type of download tip for each week’s newsletter. Rest
assured that some will be better than others…now for the
download.
Over
the past few years NStorm has made all kinds of wacky games, with none more
popular than “Elf Bowling.” The original version was even rumored to have
contained a virus that would wipe out the data on a person’s PC at some point
during the holiday season. Rumors quickly subsided and office productivity hit
an all time low as mooning elves and stray bowling ball crowned deer graced
desktops aplenty.
Later
versions included Santa snapping the undies of the poor elves in an attempt to
shoot them to the end of a deck for points. Not really a bowling game, but again
office productivity sank while giggles rose.
This
year NStorm (http://www.nstorm.com) offers
up the latest in the series, Super Elf Bowling. A fabulously free download, this
and other fun games await you to help keep holiday spirits up and office
productivity down. I’m not gonna give away any of the details on this one,
you’ll have to try it for yourself. I will tell you that the game is free, but
has features that are “locked” unless you buy.
On
a side note, I’d also like to hear from you! Let me know what you’d like to see
in download tips and if you have a good one, let me in on it. If I feature a
download you found I’ll be sure to tell everyone where I got
it!
Thanks
for reading, and hope you enjoy!
Troy
Overton
Greetings from
sunny Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, where the current temperature is a balmy
78 F. Just to show that even on vacation the 84Online Newsletter takes
precedence, here are a couple of simple tips in Mac OSX, Panther
(10.3).
Address Book Instant Messenger ID's.
There is a
nice feature in the new Address Book (version 3.1). The Instant Messaging ID
field now includes all the major IM clients as the choices. The list includes
AIM, Jabber, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo. Now if only iChat could natively talk to all
those clients I would be thrilled with Apple. Unfortunately, iChat will only
converse with AIM for the present.
Secure Empty Trash
This
is a wonderful new feature of Panther that bears repeating. Most systems when
they delete a file do not actually delete the data. They just put up a flag that
the space on the hard drive is available and inform the OS that the data on that
spot can be overwritten.
In Panther if you wish to completely and
securely delete a file, after you drop it in the trash can, Click on Finder -
Secure Empty Trash from the Main Menu. OSX will delete the file and overwrite it
with random meaningless data. Please note that files deleted in this way are
irrecoverable even with recovery tools. If you have a very large file this will
be noticeably slower than just trashing the file normally.
Some people
have claimed recovery of Hard Drive space by using the "Secure Empty Trash"
occasionally, but the evidence is purely anecdotal.
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
Updating
software in Linux used to be a real pain in the rear. As a matter of fact, one of the things
that used to turn me off about Linux when I was learning to use it was the
hassle of installing applications.
I didn't want to know how to compile a program, and finding dependencies
for RPMs was a headache. Linux has
really grown since those days and software installation has come of age. Thanks to programs like Apt and Yum,
software installation on Linux is now as simple as point and click.
Introducing
Apt
Enter Apt, a
simple idea created for use in the Debian Linux distribution. Apt was first introduced in Debian
version 2.1 as an easy way to install Debian Package Files (Aka dpkg) without
the associated hassles of dependencies.
In addition, it was now possible to install applications with a single
command. All you had to do was
select an application to install; Apt automatically figured out all of the
dependencies necessary to install the package, downloaded and installed them
without any user intervention.
Users would
tout the power of apt and claim how easy it was to install applications on
Debian Linux, compared to how cumbersome it was for users of other Linux
distributions to install their software.
Eventually, Linux programmers realized that the Debian users had it right
and started to port Apt to other distributions, which use other kinds of files
like RPMs.
Apt is now one
of the most popular ways to install software in Linux. Thanks to many available repositories
(sites that are setup to be used by Apt), Linux users can search for and install
an almost endless supply of open source software. Best of all, there is a GUI for Apt
called Synaptic, which literally makes installing software a matter of pointing
and clicking.
You can find
out more about Apt by visiting the following sites:
·
Freshrpms.net Apt Web
Page
http://freshrpms.net/apt/
·
Apt How-To
http://olympus.het.brown.edu/doc/apt-howto/en/apt-howto-en.html/
·
Synaptic GUI
http://www.edengelking.com/linux/images/Synaptic-Fedora.jpg
And now
for Yum
Yum, Aka the
Yellow dog Updater Modified, works a lot like Apt. It is designed to download applications,
check dependencies and install software on Linux distributions that use
RPMs. Also like Apt, Yum uses a
repository to download newer versions of software available on the net. As a matter of fact, there really isn't
any real difference between the ways that Apt and Yum behave. Their real difference is that they're
not the same program.
So why would
someone want to use Yum? Simple ...
the ability to choose. There are
Linux users who prefer Yum to any other software updater for Linux. Some distributions are also choosing to
use Yum over Apt, such as the newly released Fedora Core 1, formerly known as
Red Hat Linux. The Red Hat Updater
in Fedora uses a Yum repository as a replacement for the Red Hat
Network.
For more
information about Yum, check out the following Web
sites:
·
The Yum Project
http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/index.ptml
·
Yum How-To
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/yum_HOWTO/yum_HOWTO/
·
Fedora Updater GUI
http://www.edengelking.com/linux/images/Yum-Fedora.jpg
Ed
Engelking
This
article was written on OpenOffice Writer, a free word processing program for
Windows, Mac and Linux that is completely compatible with Microsoft Office. Try it today at http://www.openoffice.org/.
Email
Question of the Week
Q: On my old PC, I had both McAfee
Anti-Virus program and Norton Internet Security
program.
Now have new PC
which came with factory installed McAfee Anti-Virus--a 90-day "free trial"
deal.
Need to decide
which way to go when the free trial expires. Is there any advantage to
having 2 programs? If one protection program is sufficient, do you
recommend McAfee or Norton?
I want
protection from hackers, viruses, snoops.
I do not need
parental oversight coverage.
A: The short answer is "neither". Neither Norton’s nor McAfee has very good anti-virus software and the Norton's product you mentioned isn't anti-virus software at all, but a firewall. If this were my PC, I would uninstall all McAfee and Norton's products and use the following:
1. The
Free Edition of AVG for anti-virus software (www.grisoft.com). I've used it for
almost two years now and it's awesome. Some of our team members use Panda
(www.pandasoftware.com). It's
not free, but it's worth every penny.
2.
ZoneAlarm for a firewall (www.zonelabs.com). Don't pay for Zone
Alarm Pro; the free version has all the features you
need.
3. Spybot
Search and Destroy (http://security.kolla.de) and/or Ad-Aware 6
(www.lavasoftusa.com) for spyware
detection and removal. Both of these are free; I use both but I prefer
Spybot.
As you can see,
you can get by without spending a dime on new software and still have top-notch
protection. You also save yourself the hassle of dealing with the
bloatware offered by McAfee and Norton's. Hope this helps and thanks for
listening.
Matthew
Dattilo
If you have tech support
questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please email them to bob@iglou.com.
Copyright 2004, The 84
Online Team. All rights
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Information provided in this
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