Two Gigs, and Growing:
An Informal Personal History of Computing

It’s available starting 24-May-99 at http://www.byte.com/ . Click on over!

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ICQ Security Holes

Lots of people use ICQ--- a kind of instant message for the Internet as a whole. Even some businesses use it to communicate with employees scattered far and wide--- because it’s even faster than email!

But it’s NOT secure. It’s relatively easy to hack the ICQ passwords, and the text transmitted across ICQ also can be tapped into; and all passwords and messages are stored on your hard drive in plain text.

ICQ even tacitly admits the service’s insecurities with verbiage in the Terms of Service Agreement that states "By using ICQ Software and its privacy and security features, you may be subject to various risks, including among others: Spoofing, eavesdropping, sniffing, spamming, breaking password, harassment, fraud, and forgery."

A company called Encryption Software makes a free little app called the ICQ Password Revealer that finds and shows your password (it parses the DAT files in your ICQ directory). Its main purpose is to scare you by showing how easy it is to recover your supposedly-secret password info, but it also can be used to recover lost or forgotten passwords.

You can download the Password Revealer here: http://www.encrsoft.com/icqpass.zip

The company also offers encrypting/decrypting tools that can make ICQ messages much harder to crack. There’s a free version that offers limited protection, and a commercial version that uses a 464-bit encryption key! That level of encoding is all but unbreakable.

If you use ICQ check out http://www.encrsoft.com/products.html

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New Browser Audio Media Tests

As I bring BT98 up to BT2K standards, I’m updating and improving many of the tests---even the simpler ones.

For example, last week, I used an experimental Bell Labs’ text-to-speech synthesizer to create new Mac, UNIX and Windows-format sound test files.

You can hear the results at http://browsertune.com/bt98/othersounds.htm . Now, when you run the AIFF, AU, and WAV sound tests, your browser will actually say "BT2K Sound Test" in a rather strange mechanical voice. 8-) It’s kind of neat--- check it out!

And if you’d like to check out the Bell Labs’ system, it’s online at http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/

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NT Through the Wringer

One clue that Microsoft is heavily focused on NT these days (as they ramp up to NT5---oops, I mean Windows 2000) is the number of NT bugs being patched. It used to be that Win98 patches and bug fixes far outnumbered NT patches, but now that’s flip-flopped. Interesting, eh?

Well, this time they’ve found a nasty critter hiding in NT 4.0’s remote access service (RAS) client. This "vulnerability" (MS never calls them bugs) "could allow a denial-of-service attack to be mounted against the client machine or, under certain conditions, could allow arbitrary code to be executed on it."

In simpler terms, hackers can either drag your system to its knees, or actually run whatever programs they want on your machine, from afar. This is not good. 8-)

Here’s the fix:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/fixes/usa/NT40/hotfixes-postSP5/RAS-fix/

If you use NT4, grab the patch ASAP.

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Shocking Discovery About Iomega’s Jaz Drives

Did you buy a new or remanufactured Jaz 1- or 2-GB unit after September 1, 1998? Turns out the plastic casing on the power supply may be bad, and there’s a risk of electrical shock.

If you think you’re affected, check out http://www.iomega.com/support/recalls/index.html

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A Bizarre (But Effective) Way
To Get A Copy Of Communicator 4.6

I told you last week how the "SmartUpdate" feature of Communicator wouldn’t work for me. Several readers did get it to work, but many others had that or similar problems.

For example, Paul R Soucy wrote:

Tried to download Netscape 4.6 and received file SD_cc32e46en.exe OK. Next tried to load the update. During the update a message popped up telling me I was already connected to a Netscape version and to disconnect to finish the update. Soon as I disconnected, the update stopped. Do you have another idea on how to get 4.6 or what I'm doing wrong?

It seems to me that Netscape has been in a downward spiral for a year; this kind of silly (and avoidable) problem just shouldn’t happen with a top-flight company.

Be that as it may, here’s what I ended up doing: I eventually just went to the Netscape site with IE5, and "saved to disk" the entire 14MB new communicator. Sigh.

Pretty silly to have to use IE to get a copy of Communicator, but it worked…

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Let Your Online Friends Know You’re Thinking About Them

Do you know one other person who might find this newsletter interesting or useful? Click on over to http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2     to see just how easy it is to auto-email them a free sample issue, in your name.

Thanks!

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Just For Grins: Too Much of the 90’s

Several readers (including Marti Coley and RogerGri) sent in various versions of this:

Signs that you have had too much of the 90's

You try to enter your password on the microwave.

You now think of three espressos as "getting wasted."

You haven't played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.

You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

You e-mail your son in his room to tell him that dinner is ready, and he emails you back "What's for dinner?"

Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.

You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven't spoken to your next door neighbor yet this year.

You didn't give your valentine a card this year, but you posted one for
your email buddies via a Web page.

Your daughter just bought on CD all the records your college roommate used to play that you most despised.

Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the bottom of
the screen.

You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and now sells for
half the price you paid.

The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a
purchase is foreign to you.

Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of the
back seat of your car.

Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not
have e-mail addresses.

You consider 2nd day air delivery painfully slow.

You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet.

Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post-it notes.

You hear most of your jokes via the LangaList instead of in person.

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred

( fred@langa.com )

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