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Front Range PC Users Group Newsletter k-Byte |
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| v. 22, n. 11/12 November/December 2005 | Users Helping Users |
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Contents 1 USB Flash Drives - Brian K. Lewis 2 About k-Byte 6 Security Watch: Bird Flu Infects Microsoft Word 7 Expect The Unexpected When Traveling Abroad - Lynn L. Kauer 11 Chasing The Internet - Gabe Goldberg 13 Indexing The Web: Spiders, Web Crawlers & Bots - Brian K. Lewis 14 Calendar of Events 16 December/January Calendars 18 Membership Application 20 Tips Of The Month - Richard O. Johnson 23 Tech News - Sue Crane 26 Software And Website Reviews - Herb Goldstein 30 Trading Post 31 FRPCUG Contacts Richard Feynman - Report on the space shuttle Challenger disaster USB Flash Drives by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.* Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. You may already be familiar with the small USB flash drives that plug into a USB port. However, you may know them by another name. Flash drives, Jump drives, Pocket drives, Pen drives, and Thumb drives are all names for the same thing. They are a solid-state medium for storing data, music, photos, and/or applications. Now there is also a new version, the U3 smart-computing platform, which allows the user to carry applications and data from one computer to another and to launch the applications on any USB equipped computer. Many flash drive manufacturers are already jumping on this bandwagon and producing U3 based drives. Since flash drives are growing in capacity, functions and speed, they will probably be important in your computing future. So let's take a closer look at them. A flash drive consists of a solid-state circuit board inside a plastic casing. Most of these casings are strong enough to stand some substantial abuse. My one gigabyte (GB) drive has managed to fall on the floor several times and it "still keeps on ticking", as the saying goes. It tolerates this kind of abuse because it has no moving parts. Imagine if this had been a magnetic hard drive with several spinning platters and a movable read/write head. Just one fall could knock it completely out of alignment and cause it to fail. So that is one advantage of the flash drive. Another is its portability. Flash drives are small and very light weight. They can easily be carried in a pocket or strung on a lanyard or a key chain. The USB A type connector on these drives is frequently covered by a plastic cap that protects the connector. Flash drives are powered directly from the USB port on the computer. When they are disconnected, the information stored in them is retained, not lost. The silicon chips used in flash drives are referred to as a form of nonvolatile memory. The RAM memory in your computer requires constant electrical input to retain information. The same is true of the BIOS chip. But flash drives retain information for greatly extended periods of time without any electrical input. Some estimates indicate data can be retained for periods of up to ten years, possibly longer. Flash drives also have low power requirements, needing only the five volts and 100-500 milli-Amps provided by the USB port. However, their power demands are such that they generally will not run when plugged into a non-powered hub. You are always better off to directly connect the drive to the computer's USB port. Flash memory was originally developed in 1988 and has seen considerable use in storage for digital cameras. (For the technically minded, flash memory is based on NAND gates where the transistors have two inputs and one output.) Some smart phones and PDA's are now using nonvolatile flash memory to retain information when the device is turned off. This reduces the drain on the device's battery. Flash drives are believed to work for up to 10,000 write/erase operations. However, some sources indicate that flash drives can survive for up to ten million operational or write/erase cycles. Even so, all this indicates that flash drives have a finite life span. To me, this life span seems to exceed that of a standard hard drive which is supposed to operate for up to half a million hours. In practice we know that hard drives generally fail much sooner than that. So a flash drive having a finite life span is really no different than a hard drive. Flash drives now on the market have capacities of 3 - 4 gigabytes. Samsung has also announced a flash chip capable of storing 16 gigabits. (Note that this is bits, not bytes.) It would take 16 of these chips to make a 32 gigabyte drive. As an indication of what is coming, BitMicro has announced a 155 gigabyte flash drive! Obviously, the flash drive has many advantages over other removable media such as floppy disks, CD-ROMs, ZIP disks and others. Unlike Zip disks, floppies and CDs, flash memory lacks moving parts, making it ideal as a simple solution, requiring only a port to interact with a system. It doesn't require any special hardware, it is smaller, more portable and it is not as likely to develop storage errors. Flash storage devices, compared to other storage media, are fast, high capacity, durable, and compact. Some computers can already boot from a flash drive that makes them an ideal replacement for bootable floppies or CDs. Floppy drives are not even included in many new computers. As flash drives already exceed the capacity of CD's; they are becoming a replacement for them. Certainly they are more portable than a CD or a DVD and only require a USB port to run on any computer running Windows XP. They can be run on Windows 98 providing the manufacturer's specific driver is installed. Additionally, flash drives are not subject to scratches, dust, coffee or other liquid spills. In fact some have survived being passed through a washing machine! However, this is not recommended treatment for them. The popularity of flash storage devices may be attributed to their compact size, operating system compatibility, and their use of the standard USB interface. With all of their capabilities, it is possible to foresee some applications for flash drives that may show up in a reasonable period of time. For example, if the read/write speeds can be increased to a level comparable to that of current RAM memory, flash memory could then replace RAM chips. If the cost of flash memory is also reduced then it could be used to replace the current computer hard drives. Think about what this would do to the size of computers and their power requirements. Think about replacing that 10,000 rpm hard drive and it's casing with a flash drive that can be connected to any computer's USB port. Certainly if we can produce 155 GB drives now, what will the capacity be in a few more years? Earlier, I mentioned the new U3 (smart drive) specification for flash drives. This allows applications to be developed that can be stored and run from a flash drive. Software is already available for such drives. One such example is Mozilla's Firefox browser and their Thunderbird e-mail software. There are other applications that synchronize office files, folders and Outlook e-mail between a computer and a U3 flash drive. There is a version of Pass2Go that securely stores passwords, banking and credit card information on these USB smart drives. Also announced are photo management software and instant-messaging programs. Skype, a VoIP provider has announced a U3 version of their software that would permit voice calls over any computer with a U3 flash drive. The U3 flash drives and the associated software will run only on computers using Windows XP and Windows 2000. A Linux version is expected to be announced shortly. The U3 smart drive contains software that functions as a "launchpad" to provide a menu of applications on the flash drive. It also has options for drive management and a link that leads users to a web site where they can obtain additional U3-compliant software. When the drive is removed from the USB port, the system software automatically shuts down any applications running on the USB drive and cleans out data fragments so no personal information is left behind on the computer. This U3 system software uses about 6 MB of the drive's capacity and loads within 30 seconds after the drive is plugged into the USB port. One result of this capability is that the U3 compatible flash drive can become your "personal" computer. Certainly it is even more portable than any laptop computer. The day may come when your computer will be not much more than a motherboard, sound cards, wireless Ethernet and USB ports. This reduces the moving parts to not more than a cooling fan, if that. All of the software and data will be on your flash drive. The face of computing is continuing to change. Fascinating isn't it? Dr. Lewis is a former university & medical school professor. He has been working with personal computers for more than thirty years. He can be reached via email at bwsail@yahoo.com. Published bi-monthly, k-Byte is the official newsletter of the Front Range Personal Computer Users Group (FRPCUG): our mailing address is PMB 152, 305 W. Magnolia, Fort Collins, Colorado 80521. Opinions expressed in k-Byte are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the group or its members. Publication of information in k-Byte constitutes no guarantee of accuracy. Use of any information found in this publication is at the sole risk of the user. Neither k-Byte, nor its officers, nor k-Byte, nor its editors or contributors assume any liability for damages resulting from use of information in this publication. Submissions Articles, letters and short items of interest on computer-related topics are welcome and encouraged. All items submitted for publication are subject to editing. Send your contribution to the editor via e-mail attachment or submit on disk. If you have questions about a submission, please contact the editor for information. Copyright k-Byte is copyrighted ©2005 by the Front Range Personal Computer Users Group. Unless otherwise noted, other nonprofit users groups may reprint or quote from any articles appearing in k-Byte without prior permission, provided that proper author and publication credits are given and that a copy of the publication in which the article appears is sent at no cost to k-Byte at the above mailing address. User groups wishing to exchange newsletters with FRPCUG are invited to send a copy of their newsletter together with an exchange request. IBM PC, OS/2, Compaq, MS-DOS, UNIX, Windows and other trademarks occasionally mentioned in k-Byte are registered trademarks of International Business Machines, Inc., Compaq Corporation, Microsoft, Digital Research, AT&T or their owners respectively. Neither FRPCUG nor its newsletter k-Byte are connected in any way with any manufacturer or seller. We, however, gratefully acknowledge sponsorship of our group by Data Service Center, Jim Becker, owner. Advertising Classified advertising is free to members for non-business ads. See “Trading Post” for pricing for camera-ready display ads. Charges for ad makeup from sketches, etc., are available on request. Deadline for camera-ready and classified ads is listed in the Calendar of Upcoming Events. Deadline for ad-makeup is the same as for articles. About FRPCUG FRPCUG is an independent nonprofit computer society, so incorporated with the State of Colorado and open to anyone interested in MS-DOS, Windows, or UNIX/LINUX microcomputers. Its purpose is to provide an educational and scientific forum of mutual benefit for members of the micro-computer community. FRPCUG holds a monthly meeting and conducts various special interest groups (SIGS) and seminars. Members have voting privileges, subscription to k-Byte newsletter, SIGs and selected seminars. Annual dues are $25 for individual/family membership and $50 for corporate/group membership. PC Magazine 10/31/05 [Ed. Note: Because of intense media coverage, the editor reminds all readers that there are no reported cases of bird flu in the US (as of 11/01/05), and no reported cases anywhere of bird flu transmitted from people to people] What it does: Naiva.A is more interesting than threatening. It is a Microsoft Word document that has two possible titles: * Outbreaks in North America * What is avian influenza (bird flu)? Naiva.A is actually a Trojan horse rather than a virus because it has no mechanism for spreading itself. But it is written in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and therefore is easily customizable for other malicious purposes. When the document is opened it drops the Trojan Ranky.FY, allowing the computer to be remotely controlled. It does not infect other Word documents. How to avoid it: When the Macro Security setting in Microsoft Word is set to Medium and this document is loaded the user will receive a warning that there are macros in it. When the setting is at high the macros will not run (only signed macros from trusted sources are allowed to run in that case). Different versions of Microsoft Word have different defaults, with the current 2003 version defaulting to High. Earlier versions defaulted to Medium. Anti-virus software can also detect and block this threat (emphasis added). How to remove it: Delete the document. Delete %WINDOWS%\UPDATE.EXE (the Ranky.FY Trojan). We offer our best wishes for a happy holiday season and a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. by Lynn L. Kauer, Editor Saginaw Valley Computer Association llkauer@chartermi.net My wife and I recently went on a river cruise from Vienna, Austria starting with the Danube River. As we continued our trip on the Danube through Germany, we connected with the Main River that allowed us to travel over the mountains and connect with the Rhine River. The trip ended in Amsterdam in the Netherlands (Holland). This trip was for a period of three weeks and was on a boat that only held 150 persons, including the crew. We are more accustomed to the ‘big’ ships with upwards of 2,400 passengers plus crew containing all the amenities like an onboard shop to download the photos from the digital memory cards onto CD’s. I knew that this service would not be available on the riverboat and became a bit concerned with respect to what I would do if I ‘filled’ all of my digital storage. My camera is a Sony DSC-F717 and uses “Memory Sticks” for digital storage. (Other cameras may use Secure Digital, Compact Flash Cards or XD cards depending on the manufacturer.) Although the camera is capable of taking photos at five mega pixels (2,560 x 1,020 JPEG image size), I adjust the settings downward to (2,048 x 1,536 JPEG image size). I also adjust the setting to ‘fine’ mode instead of ‘standard’ mode. This allows me to save approximately 80 photos on a 128MB stick instead of only 50 if I were to shoot at the five-mega pixel setting. I own ten 128MB plus three 256MB memory sticks. Doing the simple math, they are capable of storing 1,280 photos. While it may seem like a lot, it really is not. I used almost all of their storage capacity on our last two-week trip to the Mediterranean while visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey and Croatia. On that trip, we sailed miles off the coast and there was no opportunity to take photos until we landed ashore. On the river cruise we would be traveling through the scenic vistas of three countries plus having stops along the way. I was concerned with having enough storage because we would be traveling for three weeks. After the first day I quickly learned that there are a lot more things that one should worry about than digital storage. Some of the things contained in this article will surprise you and hopefully give you some insight as to what you should think about when traveling abroad whether on ship, train, bus or car. RESOLUTION As stated above, I lower the resolution to approximately three mega pixels on my camera. One of the passengers had a camera like mine. As we chatted, he told me that he had recently purchased the camera for the trip and was finding it easy to use. He previously owned a 35-mm film camera. We somehow got on to the subject of storage and I asked him how many ‘sticks’ he had. His reply, “Just the one that came with the camera. I can get all of the photos on the stick that I expect to take while traveling. I can get almost 800 photos on the stick.” This is when I learned that the salesperson had changed the resolution on his camera to the lowest possible setting. In other words—Internet resolution. When I asked him if he intended to make prints he replied, “Oh yes. But none larger than 8 x 10.” He was the type who knew everything about everything so I found a way to let him snap away and disappeared into the crowd. I also bumped into another poor fellow who really had a problem. He bought his camera real cheap in a pawn shop a week before the trip. The camera stored everything on a permanent chip inside the camera. The salesperson had told him that all he had to do was to go into any photo store and they would be able to transfer his photos to a CD with no problem. At this point, only three days into a sixteen-day cruise, his camera was full. Worse, he could not find a store that could provide the service for him. Onboard the ‘big’ ships the service is readily available for a fee. On the riverboat, they had no provisions for this service. The crew attempted to help him by downloading the photos onto their computer but they too bumped into a brick wall. He never received the instructions or the CD that contained the necessary software with which to unload the photos to a computer. His photo shooting days ended early. POWER As stated earlier, I was concerned with having enough storage space for photos. (Incidentally, I shot almost 1000 photos.) The first option I thought about was to get an adaptor that would allow me to download the photos onto a laptop computer. However, this idea was short lived because carry-on luggage space is limited. International flights limit the passenger to one piece of carry-on luggage and the size is restricted. Secondly, carrying laptops through airport security is a royal pain. Therefore, I decided that I would become a ‘selective’ photographer and not try to capture every photo opportunity I saw. When traveling in Europe one must keep in mind that 110-volt power is not available. All of the electrical power in Europe is 240-volt and not all of the plugs are the same from country to country. My first purchase was to buy a transformer to adjust the voltage for a 110-volt external battery charger. It’s about the size of a small flashlight, costs less than $25 and allows me to use it in any country. This is where I bumped into the first problem. I didn’t read all of the instructions that came with the transformer. The first occasion I had to use it was while in the hotel in Vienna. That is where I learned that the voltage was 240-volt and 50-cycle. The instructions clearly stated to not allow it to be plugged into the outlet for more than an hour or it would become overheat and possibly damaged. Therefore, I plugged the transformer into the outlet and let the battery recharge for shorter periods. When we boarded the ship the only outlet available was in the bathroom. There were two outlets available. One noted for use with an electric razor only—110-volt. The other outlet was for 240-volt appliances. I used the 240-volt outlet with the transformer for one hour time periods to recharge the camera batteries without a problem. Alas, two of our shipmates were not so lucky. One plugged his charger into the 110-volt outlet and failed to pay attention to the time. Two hours later, when he entered the cabin, he found his charger smoking. The problem is the 50-cycle current. It burned it up. The other shipmate was less fortunate. He plugged the cord into his camera to recharge the battery. It also caused damage to the built-in charger and he now had a dysfunctional camera. I make it a practice to never use the camera to recharge the battery unless it is absolutely necessary. INTERNET CAFÉ’S & KEYBOARDS While in our hotel in Vienna I found a computer, that one could rent for Internet access. The rental rate for Internet access was three euros for fifteen minutes. This means $4.95 per quarter hour or about twenty bucks an hour. Because of the committees Crystal and I are involved in, we wanted to know what the latest information was. This is when we learned that attachments do not get transmitted overseas. This was very frustrating because we attempted twice later in different cities with the same result. The interesting thing I learned on the first attempt was when I tried to send an e-mail to the sender that had the attachment. When I typed the message a lot of the letters were mixed up. For example, the S key would be displayed as a “&”, the “P” key would display as an “X” and the “R” key would come up as a “>”. The keyboard layout doesn’t match that of ours! When I got it cleaned up and attempted to send it I received an error message that I had been logged off meaning that I had spent five bucks for nothing. This wasn’t unique to the hotel’s computer. It was common at other sites as well. The result was that we were out of contact with anyone online for a month because things just don’t interface as we expect them to. I had bumped into the keyboard layout problem a couple of years earlier in England but it wasn’t as complex as being in Germany. Imagine what it would be like in China or some other remote country. The connection speeds were a step back in time. While some sites boasted cable and broadband access, the speed was similar to 56KB modems. I should have realized what the speed differences were as almost every home had an antenna on the roof! HOW DO YOU SPELL RELIEF? What does one do when they get sick in a foreign country? You call your doctor, right? Nope! Our shipmate had quadruple bypass surgery a couple of years earlier. About half way through the trip, he got a sore throat and a severe cold. He failed to bring medication along to take care of this condition. This became a big problem for him. Since the time differential was six hours, and he got sick on a weekend, he was unable to contact his doctor in the states. He sent a fax to his doctor’s office to learn that the office staff turns off the machines when they leave work. Thus, for us it was noon and his doctor’s office was already closed because it was 6:00pm. While ashore he tried to make a phone call but his doctor’s answering machine told him to call another number in the event of an emergency. The other number had a message to the effect, “the doctor is not in right now. Please leave a phone number where he can contact you.” Since we were ‘at sea so to speak’ there was no way for the doctor to call back. After two days, the ship managed to contact his doctor who faxed a prescription to the ship via a satellite link while tied up in port. However, when he took it to the pharmacy, the pharmacist refuse to fill it because it was written in English and not from a doctor recognized as being in Germany. So, what’s the point? When traveling abroad try to anticipate the unexpected for medications that may require a prescription. In my case, I became ill during the second week having caught the ‘cold’ of the fellow trying to contact his doctor. My only alternative was to talk to a pharmacist for some ‘over the counter’ medication. It didn’t work very well. When I arrived home and found myself unable to sleep in a bed. The first night was spent dozing on the recliner. The next morning I met with my doctor and took the medication I had purchased with me. He pulled out the instructions from the package and exclaimed, “Everything is written in German. Why don’t they write in a generic language in English so that we could understand what they are telling us?” I replied, “Doc, we were in Germany. How many ‘over the counter’ medications in our country are written in German.” He looked at me with a sly grin and realized the folly of what he had asked. From now on, when we travel abroad we will take some of the ‘over the counter’ medications that we use from time to time with us. We found aspirin a bit difficult to find as it was ‘blended’ with other unpronounceable things. The rule to follow is the same as going to a cheap party—BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle). In this case, BYPM (Bring Your Own Medicine). by Gabe Goldberg, APCUG Advisor; Columnist, AARP Computers & Technology Website A long-ago famous and favorite I Love Lucy episode [http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-1038/epid-15119/] showed Lucille Ball and sidekick Ethel facing an ever-faster conveyor belt delivering chocolates for them to wrap: they couldn't keep up. The Internet sometimes makes me feel as though I'm at the wrong end of that conveyor belt. I confess that I don't always reduce online interruptions and information coming at me. I'm not yet a recovering info-junkie, so this article is definitely "do what I say, not what I do" advice. The Internet is like the accelerating candy conveyor belt. There's more content (online newspapers, portals, Web rings, etc.) and more forms of content (e-mail initially, then Web sites, mailing lists, blogs, streaming audio/video, downloadable music, Web cameras, etc.) But even with today's pace of change, whether we do it deliberately or just let it happen, we create our own online experiences. So we can make it fit our needs and change it when necessary. I've sometimes resisted dropping e-mail lists because I once liked them. That's silly: my and your most precious resource is time. So I'll share time savers: Tell people what you're interested in; if they scan online and offline resources for you, you don't have to. Tell people what you don't want! If you don't want jokes, motivational sayings, political news, etc., cancel your subscriptions by asking people to stop sending it. I like jokes, I like technology, I'm interested in politics. But some people just aren't on my wavelength. When you send e-mail or reply, don't send unnecessary copies. Encourage people to not copy you unless you need to know or do something about the topic. When replying, trim what you quote to essential matter and (especially) encourage others to do the same for you. Bloated and repetitive reply-reply-reply notes waste time while you look for what's new! If you send common replies or send periodic e-mail such as club meeting notices, use templates (stored copies of pre-formatted e-mail) so you can just fill in details but needn't enter text repeatedly. Use e-mail and spam filtering. Most e-mail software can automatically route spam to a special folder (and, of course, I'd like to route spammers to a special place). Some spam filters learn what's spam based on what you flag, so their accuracy improves over time. My spam is increasingly filtered, and no real e-mail is filtered. You can also set rules for routing e-mail into folders for easier reading and management. Based on rules I've defined (special keywords in e-mail subject and sender fields), my e-mail is put in folders such as AARP, Lists, To-Read, and Travel. This lets me organize e-mail time, prioritize my reading and answering, and sometimes catch up by deleting an e-mail category I don't really need to read. And the best part is that I avoid interruptions of each note arriving, since routing takes place silently and invisibly. Set discussion mailing list subscriptions to "digest mode". This groups list e-mail into fewer/larger notes, sent occasionally, sometimes once/daily. This has two benefits: it eliminates many interruptions, and it greatly reduces the temptation to answer list notes, since by the time you see something someone else has likely already answered it. Pick times during the day to handle e-mail, read favorite Web sites, use instant messaging, etc.; ignore it all at other times. This allows focusing on tasks at hand, reduces frenzied multi-tasking (trying to do many things at once), and lets you actually finish things you start! Don't be trapped by time-wasting habits. Use technology that matches your needs; change it for yourself, not because people urge you to (there's peer pressure at all ages!); adopt changes such as broadband Internet that save you time but be selective in what it brings you. Recognize that the conveyor belt always wins the race and focus on what really matters -- most of which, after all, isn't even online. by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D., Sarasota PC Monitor Sarasota FL PC Users Group http://www.spcug.org Have you ever wondered how search engines such as Google manage to get the answers to your queries so rapidly? How could they search the web that fast, I mean usually less than one second to find the words you ask for? Well --- They don't. Actually the searching goes on constantly, 24/7. And, the mechanism they use is just a modification of what you use for browsing the web. Although you may have heard about spiders, web crawlers and web bots, they don't actually traverse the web any more than does your web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox or whatever browser you use). Instead they download web pages that are then scanned and the significant words added to an index. To simplify the terminology, I will refer to all the web searching programs as “spiders”. (It takes less space and is easier to type.) These spiders are programs designed to find web addresses (URL's} and to download the pages. Some also do the indexing of the words on the page. However, Google uses a separate indexing program and stores the downloaded pages for future reference. Now if a single spider were being used to locate and download pages, the task would really be impossible. Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, the originators of Google, published a paper while they were graduate students at Stanford that utilized three spiders. Each spider kept about 300 connections open simultaneously. With four spiders they could download about 600 pages per second. This paper referred to the prototype that became the commercial Google enterprise. Even with the prototype system they were able to download and index 24 million pages in a week. Their current methodology is proprietary and so is not public, but it is probably a significant improvement over their prototype system. We can use the original Google system as a model of what could be used by search engines to prepare the index and database of web pages that you access when you send a query. The first step is to send a list of URLs to the spider to download. This is done by a server that maintains a list of URLs. The spider will download pages and also follow any hyperlinks to other pages. Addresses of pages that were linked to the original search list are also sent back to the server to be checked to see if they were already on the list. If not, they are added to the URL lists. Not every spider uses a URL server. The spider will continue crawling the web until it reaches a dead end or a page with no further links. As I mentioned earlier, a spider isn't just working with one page, but has hundreds of connections open to different pages. Given that there are billions of pages on the Web, even with thousands of spiders collecting information, only a small fraction of the entire web is scanned. Some web sites, such as those with news or rapidly changing information are visited hourly. Every spider has a re-visitation policy that determines how frequently a page will be revisited and checked for changes. There is another general policy that is usually programmed into these spiders. That is called the “ politeness” policy. This is used to prevent the overloading of web sites. After all, there is a finite limit to bandwidth and it would be possible to overwhelm a web site with visits from multiple spiders in a short period of time. This policy provides for an interval of time to elapse between accesses by a spider. This time interval seems to vary from 20 seconds to 3-4 minutes. This would be the case where multiple pages need to be downloaded from a single server. Revisiting indexed and stored web sites occurs at less frequent intervals. However, even this politeness policy is sometimes inadequate. Frequent visits by spiders may result in complaints being sent back to the owner of the spider. So it is also possible to enter code on a web page which asks the spider to not access or download a page or pages. This can be done by the addition of meta tags in the page header or by a robots.txt file placed in the root directory for the web site. This is especially appropriate for game pages. These pages use a dynamic format that changes when pages are viewed or links are followed. When a spider downloads these pages the game program may respond as if a very high-speed player were logged on. This can create problems for the program and may result in crashing the game server. So we now have the robot exclusion protocol being used by owners of web pages that do not want their pages included in the search engine indexing. In the original Google system the web pages were sent to another program referred to as the indexer. This program sorts through every word on the page and stores them in a database. The exceptions are the simple words such as a, an, the. However, simply entering the words into a database is not sufficient. They have to be identified to the particular page from which they came, the location on that page and a relative ranking in importance. The frequency with which they appear on the page as well as the position on the page may be used in determining the weight or relative rank. Words in the title or near the top of the page may be ranked as more important. So the storage of the words include the URL, and a calculated weight in an encoded format. The word database is then indexed to speed the retrieval of the information. This is usually done by the building of a Hash Table. Hashing evens out the alphabetical sections so that it takes no longer to find a “z” than it does a more popular letter like “m”. It also separates the index from the actual entry for the word. This improves the efficiency of the storage of this information. The indexing and the Hash Table also speed the overall retrieval of the information. The complete web page is also stored in a separate location. Once the indexing process is completed, the information is available for your query. Given the size of the web and the continuing changes to web pages, the spider's search is never ending. It may also be one where we will never have every page indexed. One other aspect of the size of the web and the time required for the crawling process is that broken links will always occur. If a page is not re-visited frequently, it may still be in the index and the database long after it has been removed from its server. Another situation may be where the URL has changed and the new location has not yet been crawled. So, the process is not perfect by any means. The other aspect of searching the web is the design of the query you want to submit to a search engine. As I'm sure you know, you can simply list a few keywords in the search engine and hope you will get a useful result. Many times you will also get results that have no relationship to the information you are seeking. In some of these cases, you need to try the advanced search or learn to use Boolean operators. Those most frequently used are: AND – all the terms joined by “AND” must appear in the pages or documents. OR – at least one of the terms joined by “OR” must appear in the pages or documents. NOT – the term or terms following “NOT” must appear. Quotation marks – Words between quotation marks must appear as a phrase. Followed By – one of the terms must be followed by the other. Near – one of the terms must be within a specified number of words of the other. Generally, search engines can use these Boolean operators to provide results more closely aligned to the topic you are trying to locate. Like everything else related to computers, web indexing and searching are not static technologies. The search engine companies are researching “natural language” queries such as those handled by “Ask Jeeves”. Currently, these queries can accommodate only relatively simple phrases. However, there is heavy competition to develop an engine that can work with much more complex queries. Another area that is being pursued is “concept-based” searching. This would use a form of statistical analysis to determine if the page fit your query. And, as you may have read, Google has plans to put the content of the world's libraries on the web. Just imagine what it would be like if we didn't have these search engines to help us find information on the web. So good searching and I hope you find what you are looking for. Dr. Lewis is a former university & medical school professor. He has been working with personal computers for more than thirty years. He can be reached via e-mail: bwsail at yahoo.com. IMPORTANT NOTICE FRPCUG meetings are held at the Fort Collins Senior Center. Check below for directions to the Senior Center. December General Forum Meeting We will meet at the Fort Collins Senior Center on Tuesday, December 6 at 7:00 pm. Meeting Agenda 7:00 - 7:15 Announcements 7:15 - 8:00 Adobe Acrobat Reader 8:00 - 8:15 Break 8:15 - 9:00 Elections and Social Hour January General Forum Meeting We will meet at the Fort Collins Senior Center on Tuesday, January 3 at 7:00 pm. Meeting Agenda 7:00 - 7:15 Announcements 7:15 - 8:00 Open Forum 8:00 - 8:15 Break 8:15 - 9:00 Flash Drives - The technology and uses, including portable applications. See you at the meetings! Directions The Fort Collins Senior Center is located at 1200 Raintree Drive. This site is situated at the northwest corner of the Shields and West Drake intersection, on the north side of the Raintree Shopping Center. Check the marquee at the main entrance for directions to the specific meeting room. Up-Coming SIG’s, Seminars and Meetings Board Meeting FRPCUG's executive board meets on Wednesday of the week following the General Forum Meeting at 7:00 p.m. All members are welcome and are encouraged to attend. These meetings are held in the Staff Board Room of the Fort Collins Senior Center. New Technology SIG The LINUX SIG and the Telecommunications SIG have been combined to form the new Advanced Systems Support SIG. This SIG provides advanced support for all PC-related operating system and telecommunication issues. The meetings are held at 7:00 PM on the third Thursday of each month at Bluebird Manufacturing Inc., 1421 Webster Avenue, in Fort Collins. For more information contact Chuck McJilton at 493-2987 or email telecomsig@jymis.com. Rocky Mountain Internet Users Group Meets on the second Tuesday of ‘odd’ months at NCAR in Boulder. Meetings start at 7:00 pm, but members are encouraged to arrive at 6:30 pm for informal networking and refreshments. NCAR is located in Boulder at 1850 Table Mesa Drive. For more information see the RMIUG Web site at: http://www.rmiug.org/. Upcoming FRPCUG Meetings Along with presentations of new hardware and software, we will certainly continue to present tips, hints, solutions, as well as what is new with Public Domain and Shareware offerings. If you have ideas for presentations which you would like to see at future General Forum meetings or seminars, please let us know. We would appreciate the input and opportunity to improve your meetings. Know of a another computer-related meeting in our area? Please let us know so we can post it here. 6 FRPCUG General Forum Meeting 7:00 PM 14 FRPCUG Board Meeting 7:00 PM 15 New Technology SIG 7:00 PM 24 Christmas Eve 25 Christmas Day 31 New Year’s Eve January 2006 1 New Year’s Day 3 FRPCUG General Forum Meeting 7:00 PM 11 FRPCUG Board Meeting 7:00 PM 19 New Technology SIG 7:00 PM Internet Explorer Tips and Tricks by Richard O. Johnson, TUGNET rj@theskillspool.org Internet Explorer, despite inroads made by Firefox and other browsers, overwhelmingly remains users' browser of choice (perhaps because it comes bundled with all new Windows computers). The following pointers are designed to help you get the most out of your use of Internet Explorer. They're written with IE6 in mind, although most will apply to earlier versions, and some may apply to other browsers as well. USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS My regular readers will know that to increase efficiency I strongly encourage the use of keyboard shortcuts in preference to the use of the mouse. Here are my favorite IE keyboard shortcuts: Use Alt-Home to bring up your home page. Use Ctrl-H to open or close your history pane. Use Ctrl-I to open or close the Favorites pane. Use Ctrl-B to organize your Favorites Use Ctrl-N to duplicate the active page in a new window. Use Ctrl-F to find a word, partial word, or phrase on the current webpage. Use Backspace (or Alt-Left) instead of the IE Back button, to navigate back. Use Alt-Right to navigate forward. Use F11 to toggle full-screen mode. Use Alt-D to move to the address bar. (Or use Ctrl-O, and you won't need the address bar! See “Other” Tip 3, below, for details.) Once in the address bar, use Enter to bring up the specified webpage or Ctrl-Enter to first surround what you've typed with “www.” before and “.com” after, and then bring it up. Use F5 or Ctrl-F5 to refresh a page. It's a good idea when refreshing to routinely hold down Ctrl (whether you're using the keyboard or the mouse), to bypass the IE cache and give you a more effective refresh. Optimize the toolbar Unless you maintain only a dozen or so Favorites, you'll want to take full advantage of the Links option for the IE toolbar, which you activate with the right-click toolbar menu. Drag the Favorites you'll want to have most prominent into the Links section of the toolbar. Using the right-click Properties menu of each “Link,” you'll probably want to assign it a unique icon and, to save space, rename it to a shorter form. [Ed. Note: The casual or inexperienced user should obtain help from a technically knowledgeable individual before making changes to the registry as described below.] Tip: You can save additional space by shortening the “Links” title on the toolbar. Unfortunately, simply renaming the “Links” folder won't work. You'll need to open the Registry Editor, by choosing Run from the Start menu and typing regedit. After pressing Enter, drill down to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Internet Explorer > Toolbar. On the right-hand side you'll see LinksFolderName=“Links.” Change the word within the quotation marks to a one-character name you'd like to use instead, perhaps “.” or “+,” and close the Editor. (Use extreme caution, as making a wrong entry in the Registry Editor can have dire consequences!) You should unclutter the toolbar by instructing it to “Remove” nearly all the toolbar buttons. These not only occupy valuable space but can actually interfere with efficient browsing (by discouraging use of the keyboard shortcuts described above). You get to the Remove command via “Customize,” on the right-click menu. Of the built-in IE toolbar buttons, the only ones I recommend displaying are those for Size and Back. All the other button functions can better be facilitated via the keyboard or by other means. (For a complete list of IE keyboard shortcuts, go to http://snipurl.com/bskn. The reason for keeping the Back button is its associated pull-down menu.) KEEP IE SECURE It goes without saying that you need to keep IE fully patched, perhaps with the use of Windows Update or Microsoft Update. But what of the Internet Explorer security settings (accessible via Tools > Internet Options > Security)? In the “Internet Zone”--the default zone for a webpage--it's prudent to be more rather than less restrictive. (Better safe than sorry!) The easiest way to go is simply to move the “Default Level” slider to High. Or you could use the “Custom Level” to make a determination for each setting. In that case you may want to consult a guide such as the one at http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/ie6/ie-5.shtml. Remember that if your security restriction interferes with the proper viewing of a page, Windows will let you know--although most often you'll be able to view the page just fine notwithstanding what Windows says. To remove the restriction for a given page, you can add that page to your “Trusted” sites, against which the restriction won't ordinarily apply. (You may have to refresh the page after adding it.) To simplify moving webpages to your trusted list, a free program is available at http://ww.geeksuperhero.com/zones.shtm. An alternative method does not require you to move all such sites to the Trusted zone. For this you'll need the laudable Push the Freakin' Button software, available at modest cost at http://www.tlhouse.co.uk/PTFB.shtml. With PTFB in place, use IE's Custom Level to choose “Prompt” instead of “Disable” for every feature except any that you're absolutely sure you'll never want to use. Then instruct PTFB to push the “No” (disallow) button when the prompt appears. Should you decide to permit the feature in question, you can with a double click disable PTFB, and just as easily re-enable it when done. A good (free) test to assess your IE vulnerability may be found at http://snipurl.com/ietest. OTHER TIPS To execute a link in a new window, hold down Shift. Is IE acting strangely? You can often fix it by using the IE Repair utility accessible via Add/Remove Programs (in the Windows Control Panel), upon selecting “Microsoft Internet Explorer” and then “Add/Remove.” You can dispense with the address bar, by using Ctrl-O to open a webpage or other location. You can then completely hide the address bar (using the IE toolbar's right-click Customize function) or shrink it down to its title only (having first “unlocked” the toolbar, also with the right-click menu). Losing the address bar will eliminate the temptation to go there with the (less efficient) mouse, and can free up space that may be better put to other use. On the downside, you'll also lose the functionality of the Ctrl-Enter address bar shortcut (see Keyboard Shortcuts, above). You might be able to save considerable time if you bypass your home page (start page) when you don't need to see it. Here's how: Enter “about:blank” [without the quotes] in the IE address bar, to create a blank quasi-webpage. Then use Right Click + F to turn that page into a Favorite, and drag the new Favorite's icon into the Quick Launch section of your Windows task bar, before deleting the Favorite. You may want to assign a different icon to your new IE shortcut with the use of its right-click Properties menu. (You can use this same technique to set up a secondary home page” instead of a blank page.) ADD-ONS Useful IE add-ons, free except as noted, include: Google Toolbar, at http://www.toolbar.google.com, which enables too many useful features to even hint at here. Highly recommended. Favorites Search, at http://www.dzsoft.com, which lets you speedily locate a Favorite, no matter how many you've stored. Y!Q DemoBar, at http://yq.search.yahoo.com/splash/demobar.html, which enables context-based searching. This can easily be squeezed onto the same line as the IE address bar. ieSpell, at http://www.iespell.com, which will quickly spellcheck all the text you've entered in any Web form. AddaButton, at http://www.harmonyhollow.net/aab.shtml, which will let you fit more buttons onto the IE toolbar. These buttons can open documents and applications (not just websites) and don't require space-consuming displayed names. Shareware, $11.95 Richard Johnson is a writer and editor, and founder/administrator of FREE FOR ALL The Skills Pool, a 29-year-old membership organization (http://theskillspool.org). He is a volunteer with TUGNET HelpContact for assistance with Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Gmail. He welcomes feedback, at rj@theskillspool.org. by Sue Crane, Editor, Big Bear Computer Club http://www.bigbearcc.org sue.crane@charter.net Free services are being used to install malicious code Cybercriminals are increasingly using blog sites, photo album sites, fan and greeting card sites and other free online services to install and spread software designed to steal personal information or hijack a victim’s PC. In the first two weeks of July, security company Websense saw more than 500 incidents of such attacks. The free services are an anonymous and affordable way for attackers to store and spread their malicious code. Be careful what you click on! Insect “extermination” via mini robots Scientists in Lausanne, Switzerland, have successfully infiltrated a colony of roaches with a micro robot according to a report published in the June issue of IEEE Robotics & Automation. Called InsBot, for “insect-like robot,” the mechanical bug mimics the insects’ smell and movements so the roaches have accepted it as their own. Vector Capital purchases WinZip WinZip is one of the most popular shareware programs on the Web. More than 140 million people have downloaded the program, and it’s downloaded for free about 500,000 times a week. Turnaround investor Vector Capital. will try to change that by reminding users a little more firmly that the software costs $29 (after a free 30-day trial), as well as likely coming out with new features that only paying customers can download. Better Eating Through Nanotech Major food producers are using nanotechnology to improve the quality of their foods, although some warn that the technology may be misunderstood by consumers. At a Nano4food conference food scientists, material scientists and nanotechnicians met to discuss how the technology is being used to improve the consistency of yogurt or cheese, packaging technologies, and even how to “wall off” the most nutritional components of food in favor of tastier alternatives. However, as nanotechnology moves forward, consumers will have to be informed and educated about the possible benefits and hazards of using it. Microsoft Finalizes Genuine Advantage Microsoft has gone live with the Windows Genuine Advantage program. The program, which has been available in an avoidable pilot version since late 2004, is now mandatory. Microsoft also noted that it has somewhat simplified the Windows Genuine Advantage validation process; for example, users are no longer required to enter a 25-character product key to validate their software. Users who try to validate software and discover that they’re unwittingly (or otherwise) running illegitimate copies of Windows have a few options. According to Microsoft, qualifying customers who fill out a piracy report, provide proof of purchase, and send in their counterfeit CD-ROMs can receive a genuine copy of Windows XP Home Edition or XP Professional Edition (depending on which version they’re using) at no cost. Customers who submit a piracy report can get XP Home for $99 or XP Pro for $149. There is no “Superfetch” Ed Bott, bestselling author and computer journalist advises: “The same yokels who insist on spreading the “clean out your Prefetch folder” BS are now spreading the word that there’s a super-double-secret registry setting in Windows XP called SuperFetch that will reduce boot times dramatically. No, there isn’t. And if you see any Web site that tries to insist that there’s any benefit to cleaning out your Prefetch folder or enabling this latest bogus tweak, you should assume that any other advice they give you is worthless as well.” End of analog TV? Millions of American television sets that receive only analog over-the-air broadcasts could go dark if not upgraded by Jan. 1, 2009. That deadline was suggested by members of the U.S. Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The committee is readying legislation expected this year that would require all American televisions to run on digital signals by the end of 2008. That would free up the analog, or 700 MHz, spectrum for other uses. Under current law, analog television would be cut off on Dec. 31, 2006, or when 85 percent of households are capable of receiving digital signals, whichever comes sooner. Last month, the FCC proposed to move the date by which all televisions with screen sizes of 25 to 36 inches must contain digital tuners up to March 2006. All televisions, VCRs and DVD players would have to carry the technology by 2007. New Media Center Device Microsoft will soon ship a wireless Media Center keyboard and remote control that will help people who have Media Centers in their living rooms interact with the machines. The device features beveled edges for easy two-handed holding, an integrated pointing stick, full Media Center remote-control functionality, a full-sized keyboard with special Media Center buttons, and even power buttons for the PC and TV. Nothing is Ever Really FREE Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux OS, has begun protecting his trademark for the term Linux. He’s doing so to protect users from unauthorized and confusing use of the name. Torvalds first trademarked Linux several years ago but has rarely defended its use. The licensing fees for Linux are modest. LMI is charging $200 to $5000 for each license; most sublicensees end up paying $200 to $500. Most Linux companies have enthusiastically agreed to the licensing terms. AMD Asks Intel for a duel Major US newspapers in September showed an AMD processor standing in a boxing ring waiting for Intel to appear for a duel later this year so consumers can see who has the best dual core processor. Dual-core chips have two processor cores on a single piece of silicon, boosting performance and reducing power consumption compared to two single-core processors. AMD released its first dual-core Opteron processors earlier this year. Intel said that it will release its first dual-core server chips later this year, ahead of its original schedule. But regarding the duel, Intel was not available for comment. PC Has Water-cooled Radiator NEC took the wraps off its Valuestar G Type C, a new desktop PC that has a radiator embedded in the water cooler unit built into the back of the chassis. The company said the added refrigeration will let consumers overwork the included Intel Celeron processor but keep the PC running at 30 decibels, which is whisper voice. PC noise is increasingly a concern as more powerful computers require stronger and often louder cooling systems. New IE 7.0 is for Windows Only! Sources at Microsoft have announced that IE 7.0 will henceforth be referred to as Windows IE 7.0, highlighting the fact that the browser is integrated with Windows and isn’t a standalone product. According to a source at Microsoft, the change signifies that IE will no longer be available for other platforms. Users should simply consider IE 7.0 to be part of Windows. No More Textbooks? Students at Empire High School in Vail, AZ started class this year with no textbooks. Instead, the school issued laptop computers to each of its 340 students, becoming one of the first U.S. public schools to turn away from printed textbooks. Empire High, which opened for the first time this year, was designed specifically to have a textbook-free environment. TMPs Make E-Commerce Safer Trusted Platform Modules, if you’ve never heard of them, are chips that store cryptographic information needed to unlock hard drives, authenticate network log-ons and perform similar tasks. What is exciting about TPMs is their role in electronic transactions because they make sure the money and the product get to their proper destinations, via “anonymous certificates.” Hacking such a certificate would not give criminals access to personal information such as credit card numbers, since the transaction is done on your side of the network, not on the server-side. eBay Rethinks Recycling Faster, more advanced computers, cell phones and electronics offer endless possibilities for enrichment, learning and entertainment. But as consumers and businesses keep pace with the introduction of exciting new products, we are faced with a mounting challenge: what to do with the products we’re upgrading from. The Rethink Initiative brings together industry, government and environmental organizations to offer a fresh perspective and new answers to the challenge of e-waste. On their website you can find information, tools and solutions that make it easy – and even profitable – to find new users for idle computers and electronics, and responsibly recycle unwanted products. http://rethink.ebay.com/ Software and Website Reviews by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor Sarasota FL PC Users Group http://www.spcug.org E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org [Ed. Note: Items selected from a larger list] INTEL TO CHANGE CHIP DESIGN. Intel is promising to increase performance and lower power consumption with a new chip design. The chip is expected to debut in the middle of 2006. PC INSPECTOR FILE RECOVERY. This data recovery program recovers lost files and finds partitions automatically, even when the boot sector of your machine has been damaged or erased. Even when a file's header entry is no longer available, PC Inspector File Recovery can recover the file. The program lets you save recovered files on network drives. It recovers files with the original time and date stamp, so maybe it'll be like nothing ever happened. http://www.pcinspector.de/file_ recovery/uk/welcome.htm THE MICROSOFT OFFICE DOCUMENT SCANNING TOOL is a small dedicated interface for scanning documents. While this might not seem like a 'big thing' it is a small but effective scanning application that lets you do things like scan images into multi-page Tif or MDI files. So, for example, when you need to scan and retain a large document like a contract, you can scan it into one file rather than have one file for each page in the document. The Microsoft Office Document Scanning tool also lets you configure scanner presets which are configurations for various scanning jobs. If you regularly scan documents using Grayscale mode and a set resolution, you can configure this as a preset in the Microsoft Office Document Scanning application and then use it by selecting the preset name when you need it. This saves you having to set the scanner options manually each time. So, enough about what it does, how d |