What You Need to Know about All Things PC
Volume 5 Number 14Click here to return to the back issues page.Click here to return to the main newsletter page.
The Naked PC - http://www.TheNakedPC.com What You Need to Know about All Things PC Publisher: Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee Editor in Chief: Dan Butler Contributing Editor: Al Gordon This issue is for Tuesday, July 2, 2002 - Vol. 5 No. 14 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Table of Contents ** 01. Letter from the Publisher ** 02. What a Strange Trip (by Al Gordon) ** 03. Spam Part VII - Horror Stories! (by Dan Butler) ** 04. Microsoft IntelliPoint 4.0 Makes Pointing Fun (by Lee Hudspeth) ** 05. Wireless, WEP, and Hackers! Oh My! (by T.J. Lee) ** 06. Featured Product - Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer (reviewed by Lee Hudspeth) ** 07. Featured Web Site - Webopedia (reviewed by Lee Hudspeth) ** 08. Featured Book - "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (reviewed by Dan Butler) ** 09. Featured Drawing - Printer Types ** 10. Newsworthy - a potpourri of current events and interesting stuff ** 01. Letter from the Publisher Thanks to the support of our readers, we're proud to look back over the past four years of publishing The Naked PC. It's been a very worthwhile adventure. We've worked hard to share our latest thoughts and experiences with you every two weeks, in the hope that you'll always be able to find something, if not educational, at least amusing and human, in our columns. Here's to the next four years. In this issue... Al reflects on where we've been and where we're headed, to a place where the "Tech Economy" really ignites. Dan offers some surprising and educational spam horror stories. Lee explores (no pun intended) Microsoft's latest incarnation of the IntelliPoint software that goes well with his new wireless mouse. Jim explains the security issues surrounding wireless access to the Internet and the difference between being secure and pragmatic. This issue we are giving away another of our Photon Micro-Lights. The question is, "What type of printer do you use most often?" It's fun and easy to enter, see the related Featured Drawing article. Reader support is what keeps The Naked PC free. To this end you can help us by passing a copy on to co-workers and friends (no spam please). We even make it easy to refer people to The Naked PC... check out our Refer page: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/refer/ +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> "How Many Ways Will You Use These Amazing Devices?" They're incredibly handy. When we first saw these amazing little devices we thought, "these will look cool hanging on my key ring." Then we started using them. WOW - every day we find more uses. How many will you find? http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/a/tr.cgi?swisstech +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 02. What a Strange Trip (by Al Gordon) A funny thing happened on the way to The Naked PC's fourth anniversary. There was that little tech-telecom-internet boom thing followed by that tech-telecom-internet bust ("implosion" is really more like it) thing. So where does that leave us? Strangely enough, we are in a place that isn't all that much different from what it was four years ago. PCs remain mainly a Wintel world; your local phone company is still your leading telecom source; hardware prices are down and features are up. What that means is that technology is becoming a mature industry. That's business-page-talk that means people are doing business on the basis of what they actually supply in the way of goods and services as opposed to what might speculatively be provided ... someday ... if all goes well. Putting it another way: since Microsoft Office 95 or 97 were released, what's in each subsequent version that you absolutely HAD to have? You are writing letters and reports in Office XP pretty much they way you did in Office 95. That's "mature." As the tech boom was reaching its climax, a Wall Street doubter pointed to the auto industry at the turn of the last century. He noted that there were more than 100 automakers in the market, while today only three survive in the United State--and that's only if you ignore the fact that DaimlerChrysler is more Daimler than Chrysler. That's true. But it's also true that if you had looked through the scores of early-1900s automaker and invested in the most promising ones, the odds are that you would have put your money into something that was a component part of General Motors et al. The point is that even the stereotypical kids in a garage messing around with electronics eventually do have to grow up. That's happening now. To be sure a lot of financial and creative blood has been shed. But at the end of the day, what you wind up with a is a real economic structure rather than smoke and mirrors. Ask yourself this: when we come back to this topic four years from now, will there be more technology or less? Will there be more communications or less? Will there be more innovations or less? Of course there will be more. The difference is that the Tech Economy, Release 2.0 will be a real, money-making making business. No one ever said that growing up is easy. (c) 2002, Al Gordon You can reach Al Gordon at: mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ >> "You Won't Believe Your Eyes!" It's amazing. You see one thing and it's really another. Find out how your mind and body work together. You'll watch this video tape and experience the results in your own living room. Find out more here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/514/tr.cgi?ill +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 03. Spam Part VII - Horror Stories! (by Dan Butler) My spam definitions brought various responses. People who don't do business via email had one opinion. Those that do had a different opinion. It isn't that all people who do business via email are spammers or even potential spammers. Some are. But often well-meaning users try to fight spam only to cause innocent people a lot of wasted time and effort. In some cases innocent people lose their Internet accounts. This issue you'll hear a few spam horror stories. Two involve TheNakedPC.com and the other is one of my consulting clients. If you missed my earlier columns on Spam you can find them here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/514/tr.cgi?dan1 First I'll tell you about someone who wanted to unsubscribe from our newsletter. Rather than go through normal channels or write us for help he decided to just run us through an automated spam reporting tool. A kind person running a helpful website was threatened with termination of his website. Why? We mentioned his site in the newsletter. The spam reporting service found his URL and reported him for spamming too. The man was justifiably upset and we did what we could to assure his web hosting provider that he was not spamming. Here's the kicker--the spam tool sends complaints anonymously and without the person's email address we were unable to unsubscribe them. Another time a different person reported us to the same automated spam reporting site. After wasting the time of all the system administrators with the frivolous complaint we finally got through to a live tech support person at the spam reporting service. His response? This is the actual quote from the spam reporting services staff: "Thank you for writing us. As a charter subscriber to The Naked PC Newsletter, I personally recognize it as completely legitimate and have enjoyed it immensely." He then went on to explain that if we would just change the way we handle subscribe/unsubscribes they would be "willing to take action against this user for an erroneous report." But since we don't do things "their way" they will continue to allow anonymous complaints to be filed and sent out against a newsletter they know is legitimate. Isn't that peachy! Last year a client of mine sent email to members of a professional organization. He belonged to this organization and sent the email only to the members who had paid to be in a directory. The directory was his list of contact information of people wanting information and commercial solicitations of interest to this industry. One of the people who received the email decided it was spam. My client clearly identified in his email where he obtained the contact information. The product he was promoting was exactly the type of product the person wanted information on. And it wasn't the sort of thing you run across very often. Remember--the complainer had paid to be on a list to receive this sort of information. The bottom line? My client came close to having his web site shut down and his Internet connection cancelled. Every system administrator we talked to understood the situation. The Complainer's response when we finally reached him? "Oh, sorry". I added up the time cost of the people involved in tracking this down. The total? Conservatively it was several thousand dollars. And that is not counting the work that was set aside to deal with the false complaint. Had any of the accounts been shut down it would have been much worse. So am I saying don't report spam? Not at all! Just be careful when you do. Be especially careful about using an automated service to send out complaints. Just dropping spam into an automated reporting tool without understanding what is going to happen can cause more damage than it corrects. For tracing the origins of spam I recommend the services at SamSpade.org. Download the Windows version and read the help file. You'll learn all about how to track down spam. Better yet you'll have a tool set you can use in many different ways--not just on spam. Find Sam Spade here: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/514/tr.cgi?dan2 You can reach Dan Butler at: mailto:danbutler@TheNakedPC.com +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ Special Offer for Readers of The Naked PC Newsletter! Are you looking for the ultimate computing resource? Look no further! Discover the Computing Encyclopedia from Smart Computing. You'll get the latest information on: Technologies, Products, People, Places, Events, Companies, And Much More! Find everything you ever wanted to know about computing technologies in this comprehensive Plain English reference tool no computer user should be without. Order your set NOW and SAVE 50%, just $29.95! http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/514/tr.cgi?encyc +++------------------------- sponsor -------------------------+++ ** 04. Microsoft IntelliPoint 4.0 Makes Pointing Fun (by Lee Hudspeth) In this issue's Featured Product piece you can read about my enchantment with a new mouse (or, in marketing-speak, "pointing device"): the Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer. I've been a fan of Microsoft's IntelliPoint software since I beta tested it in its very first incarnation (version 1.0) years ago when Microsoft released it together with its then-new "wheel" mouse. In this article I'll cover what to me are the most interesting features in IntelliPoint; for the others you'll find the help file to be thorough and well-organized. IntelliPoint is a set of device drivers and an extensive user interface for setting a plethora of Microsoft mouse-specific features. Once you have IntelliPoint installed and it recognizes your current mouse, its setup wizard will walk you through many of its settings. If you want to come back later and do some tweaking (which I highly recommend), there are three ways to start IntelliPoint. The fastest way is to double-click its icon in the system tray (assuming you haven't disabled it; more on that in a moment), or right-click and choose Properties. Other right-click commands are "Hide Icon" (dismisses the icon from the system tray) and "Close IntelliPoint". The second way is to click Start, choose Programs, then choose Microsoft Mouse. Thirdly, you can run the Mouse program from inside Control Panel. Once you see the multi-tabbed "Mouse Properties" dialog, you can start tweaking the settings. Note: if you hover the mouse over the systray icon and you've got a wireless mouse, its ScreenTip will indicate the mouse's remaining battery life. The Buttons tab allows you to configure your mouse's buttons. In version 4.0, you can apply any of the following 38 built-in commands to any physical mouse button: Click, Right-click, AutoScroll, Back, Forward, Keystroke..., None, Alt, Backspace, ClickLock, Close, Copy, Ctrl, Cut, Delete, Double-click, Enter, Esc, Explore My Computer, F1 (Help), F5 (Refresh), Favorites folder, Find Computer, Find Files or Folder, Maximize, Minimize, Paste, Print Screen, Recall window, Redo, Run..., Select All, Shift, Show/Hide Desktop, Spacebar, Start Menu, Tab, and Undo. The new Keystroke command supports the definition of keyboard combinations including either CTRL, SHIFT, or ALT plus any single letter or number key, e.g., you can program your right-mouse button to invoke CTRL+P (Print). New to IntelliPoint 4.0 is the ability to create program-specific button settings. For example, I programmed my buttons so that *only* when the active window is Windows Explorer, the large thumb button does an F5 (Refresh) and the small thumb button does a Select All; two operations I'm constantly engaging in that particular program (I left the other three buttons in their default state but of course I could have easily customized their behavior too). You can program your buttons any way you like for whatever individual program you have installed. Very nice features, and I encourage you to think about how you use each of your top five programs and consider reprogramming your mouse buttons to match your special needs when you're inside each one. There's a Pointers tab that basically allows you to pick from a long list of mouse-appearance schemes; this isn't my cup of tea but if you like schemes then you'll feel like a kid in a candy store. The Pointer Options tab lets you adjust a variety of parameters: how fast the pointer moves across the screen, whether you want the pointer's acceleration to increase as you increase the mouse's physical motion, Vanish, SnapTo, and Trails. I don't know why, but over the years since IntelliPoint introduced Vanish I personally haven't decided whether I like it or not; it sounds simple enough: Vanish hides the mouse pointer whenever you're typing. SnapTo I turned on when it first appeared (as far back as version 1.0, if memory serves) and have never turned it off: when on, and when a dialog box is displayed, it automatically and instantaneously positions the mouse pointer at the center of the dialog's default button (that's the one that's got the "enabled" dark shadow border around its perimeter). For example, in Windows Explorer press F3 and you see the "Find: All Files" dialog. With SnapTo turned on your mouse will be sitting right on the "Find Now" command button, ready for action. I'm telling you, I think once you try SnapTo you'll really like it. Trails puts a length- configurable--short to long and five levels in between--mouse trail after the mouse; useful for accessibility (visibility) requirements and on some laptop screens. The Activities tab lets you set double-click speed, Orientation, and ClickLock. Okay, Orientation has been around for a few versions, but I don't find it that useful. Basically, you run a little wizard that has you click a car then drive it through two flags across a finish line (I'm not kidding). The software figures out if you're actually moving your mouse, say, up and to the right by 15% off from the vertical (straight forward), and adjusts accordingly, so that from then on when you move the mouse up and to the right it moves the mouse pointer straight up your screen. Try it and see if you like it; you can always reset it to the default. Also on the Activities tab, ClickLock is a feature best experienced viscerally, but I'll try to explain it. You set how long you have to hold down the primary selection button (typically the left button) to activate ClickLock, and after that interval you can then highlight from the current cursor position WITHOUT HOLDING DOWN THE LEFT BUTTON (weirdness warning: to stop the ClickLock-mode highlight process you have to click the left button once which is of course the exact opposite of the way you've become accustomed to doing it). Or, if you have already selected a block of text, hold down the left button long enough to activate ClickLock, you'll see a fuzzy gray rectangle below the mouse pointer's tail, now point and click somewhere and the highlighted text moves there. That's right, it moves, it doesn't get copied. (In "smarter" programs, say Word as opposed to WordPad, once in ClickLock-selection-mode you'll see the question "Move to where?" appear on the program's status bar.) I personally *much* prefer the power of traditional right-mouse click drag-and-drop because then you can choose between copying, moving, linking, canceling, etc. On the Wheel tab you'll find options for how many lines to scroll when you rotate the wheel (including a "one screen at a time" setting), and new in v4.0 an "Enable accelerated scrolling (scroll faster as you roll the wheel faster)" option. Other troubleshooting and advanced features live here that you may wish to explore on your own. If you have a wireless mouse, ahem, pointing device, there'll be a Wireless tab that lets you examine battery level, current transmission channel, and run a wireless Troubleshooter should the need arise. If you ever accidentally turn off IntelliPoint's systray icon, to get it back start the IntelliPoint software (as described earlier), select the Button tab, right-click anywhere inside the Button tab's frame then choose "Show Taskbar Icon". This same trick works for telling what IntelliPoint version you have (select "About Microsoft IntelliPoint"). I have seen some pre-4.0 versions not support right-clicking on the Button tab frame, in which case do this: find the file point32.exe in Windows Explorer, right-click it, choose Properties, click the Version tab and check the file version there. To download IntelliPoint version 4.0: http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/514/tr.cgi?lee1 At the appropriate step in the process, remember to check that your PC or Macintosh meets the minimum system requirements. You can reach Lee Hudspeth at: mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com ** 05. Wireless, WEP, and Hackers! Oh My! (by T.J. Lee) Okay, everyone take five, time for a reality check. The fallout from my last article on the joys of wireless devices was intense. Had I just stuck to the basics, like my mouse and keyboard I probably would have been okay, but I mentioned my very cool new wireless access point that I use on my home computer to let my office laptop dial out to the Internet from my kitchen table... Oy! Yes, I am aware that wireless signals can be intercepted and that wireless access points (WAPs) create a security issue on networks. And I am also aware that the current security solution for WAPs, known as WEP, is somewhat fraught with peril. For those of you who have not jumped in the WAP controversy with both feet, WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy and is the currently accepted way to provide encrypted communications over 802.11 wireless networks. It was supposed to give you the same security that a hard-wired network enjoys, but it doesn't. WEP is based on "keys" so the computer on one end of a wireless connection can be authenticated by the WAP and given access to the network. There are additional features that allow for rotating keys, the use of specific hardware MAC addresses, and more and sundry features on the way. But to make a long story short, WEP is not absolutely foolproof. First, because most users who install a WAP don't bother going to the trouble of implementing WEP. Also, WEP does cost a slight performance hit when accessing the wireless connection. The other reason it is not totally secure is because of all those hackers driving around with laptops and radio gear on their dashboards trying to find your house so they can gleefully intercept and spend some fun-filled hours in your driveway using sniffing software to capture a successful "challenge-response authentication sequence" and deduce the keystream so they can fool the access point without knowing the key, then they just have to decrypt the 40-bit encryption cipher. Then they're in, baby, in! From the response my last article engendered one would assume that every neighborhood has gangs of well-equipped wireless cyber-hijackers cruising around. Maybe I'd better look out my window right now! Okay, hyperbole aside, yes, wireless access points can be hacked. And banks can be broken into, the mailman probably reads your postcards, and if you actually think your emails are secure I'd like to sell you some swamp land TNPC Hot Tips:
|
