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Please note: Older issues may contain information that is now out of date. How To Subscribe
and Unsubscribe is at the end of this note. Mailing List Trouble? See http://www.langa.com/help.txt Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win $10,000 !) An easier-to
read formatted HTML version of this newsletter is available on line at The LangaList 2000-07-27 A Free Email
Newsletter from Fred
Langa --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- STOP "CRAWLING" THE NET WITH YOUR DIAL-UP INTERNET ACCESS
--------------(
the above is an advertisement )--------------
You may not know it, but robots are
already among us--- and I'm not referring to any particular US presidential
candidates, either. <g> On the mundane side, for example,
there are dedicated industrial robots--- welders, spray painters, parts
transporters, chip-inserters and the like. But that kind of robot isn't at all
personal, and they have essentially zero intelligence: They're meant to perform
a set task in exactly the same way again and again. Any tiny change in the
environment or operating conditions (say, a part out of place) and the robot
almost surely will fail. And sometimes dangerously: The
first-ever human death at the "hands" of a robot was caused by an
automotive welding robot that pivoted unexpectedly and pinned a hapless
autoworker against what was supposed to be a safety barrier. That's a far cry
from what fiction predicted would be happening around now--- such as a psychotic
HAL 9000 using an EVA pod fatally to ram an astronaut in cis-Jovian space--- but
it more accurately reflects the true and not-very-advanced state of the art in
commercial, off-the-shelf robotics. But in R&D labs, it's a
different story. Take, for example, an offshoot of the MIT AI Labs: "The
Ants" project. This is a community of self-mobile, sensor-equipped
microrobots, each about a cubic inch, or about 16 cubic centimeters, in size;
they roll around on tiny tractor treads! The robo-ants can communicate among
themselves and collectively even exhibit a kind of social behavior. Eventually,
a swarm of robo-ants could be released to clean up a biohazardous spill,
eliminate unexploded ordinance, or explore hostile terrain---on earth, or even
on Mars. ( http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/
) This and many, many more for-real
robotic surprises are detailed in my current column at Byte.Com. Click on over
to http://www.byte.com
or the "Monitor" column's front door at http://www.byte.com/index/monitor
. Check it out today! Click to
email this item to a friend Sometimes it happens at work or at
home: You just can't get a dial-up connection to the Internet. Nothing you do
seems to work. You're stuck, offline. Worse, it can happen when you're
traveling: You stumble into your hotel room, bone tired and dragging what feels
like half a ton of suitcases, briefcases, laptops and what not. You get yourself
sorted out, splash a little water on your face, plug your cell phone into the
charger, and set up your laptop. Power cord here, phone cord there, click on
Dial-Up Networking and… nothing. OK, is it the phone itself? The
phone lines? Your modem card? Your pc or laptop? There you are, needing to
connect, and something---who knows what?--- is preventing it. There are myriad ways you can find
yourself unable to connect, and (alas) sooner or later you'll probably encounter
many of them. So, I've prepared a guide that will help you (1) avoid or minimize
many problems beforehand; and (2) overcome most of the problems that remain.
It's specific to the worst-case dial-up communications problems--- trying to
connect on a portable computer in a hotel room or similar situation where many
of the variables are out of your immediate control--- but most of the
information can easily be adapted to other operating systems, other types of
communications devices, and other locations (including your office or home). In fact, I've included such a broad
range of information here it might seem daunting at first. But rest easy: The
odds of them all happening to you at once are very remote! I'm just being
thorough so that no matter what trouble you do run into, you'll have the answer
here at your fingertips! If you click on over to http://portablelife.com/tips/story/0,,2073,00.html
, you'll find a kind of decision-tree that will lead you--- step-by-step and
page-by-page--- through a series of diagnostic and repair procedures that should
help you resurrect your dead dial-up connection--- and get you back online! Check it out *before* the next time
you're stuck with a dead dialup! Click to
email this item to a friend --- ( Your
Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- Two
Dozen GREAT Computer Books--- at Deep Discounts! Great
reading: Check out the They're
all personally recommended by Fred Langa, and --------------(
the above is an advertisement )--------------
Reader Milly Peters asks: Using the hosts file to
block adverts is old news, but the idea seems to be gaining a lot of momentum
recently, centered around the GRC newsgroups (at www.grc.com). A couple of regulars have
built sites devoted to the topic, and there are now more than 3000 advertising
servers, and climbing, available for cut-and-pasting into users' Hosts files.
[Example sites follow.] http://www.smartin.addr.com/index.htm Whatever your views might
be on this subject, and I imagine they're not likely to be wholly supportive, I
thought you might like to consider commenting on it at this early stage?---
Milly Peters Thanks, Milly, and you're right,
this isn't what the Hosts file was meant for, although the technique of using it
to help block ads can work, if you use it carefully. The problem is that Hosts
files are static, and web addresses are dynamic--- a Hosts file can get out of
date very fast. And when that happens.... well: Check out http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-04-03.htm#5
and http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-04-10.htm#5
for an idea of what can happen when a hosts file gets out of date or is misused. I don't use this technique myself,
and I generally don't recommend it. But if you want to give it a try as a way to
block ad sites, at least now you'll have both the pro- and con- arguments at
hand. Click to
email this item to a friend Behind every tip in the LangaList
lie two internal debates: First, I try to scope out if the information should be
aimed at newbies, or intermediate users, or advanced users. (I usually aim at
the middle because that's the largest group by far, but I try to include enough
getting-started info so newbies can still benefit; and enough advanced info so
that experts won't fall asleep. <g>) Second, I have to try to decide if
the information will be more useful in specific form (say, keyed to a particular
version of particular software), or left in a more general form. Sometimes--- ahem--- I choose wrong. For example when I discussed
ways to escape from "Web Sites That Won't Let Go" ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-07-20.htm#5
) I left the information general, rather than trying to tailor the reply to
specific browser instances. But about 1,000 emails later
(ouch!), it become obvious that in this case I should have provided more
specific information. My apologies. For example, newer builds of
Internet Explorer have tiny little down-pointing arrowheads--- they look almost
like decorative spacers--- next to the "go forward" and "go
back" arrows. Those little arrowheads are clickable, and call up a brief
history list. You can select any page from the history list and jump straight to
the selected page--- bypassing any page that tried to trap you. You also can
access the same history list via the View/Go To menu. Netscape browsers have similar
features: You can click and hold, or right click, the "go back" arrow
and see a history list; or click the Go menu and access the history list there
to select any page prior to the one that trapped you. Other browsers have similar
features--- but with 50+ browsers in common use, I can't possibly detail the
"go back" vagaries in them all! Still I should have included more
specific info on at least the top two browsers--- and now I have. <g> Thanks to all the many reader who
wrote in to point out my lapse! Click to
email this item to a friend The example I used when discussing
sites that can trap you (see item #4, above) was http://www.walktoschool-usa.org/
. Last week, it was set up in a way that let you get into the site, but then
trapped you in a two-page loop that was very hard to exit from. Within a few hours of my mentioning
the site's trapping behavior, the folks running the site saw the influx of
LangaList visitors, figured out what was going on, and sent me the following
note: Hi Fred, I represent the Walk Our
Children to School site that you refer to in your article "websites that
won't let go." I want to thank you for raising the awareness of our web
development team. We didn't realize this was such an issue with the public at
large. Please be advised that we have made the necessary changes to insure our
users don't get trapped on our entry page. Please mention this in your article.
Thanks again. Sincerely, chad sattler Indeed, they've redone the whole
intro to the site and you can now navigate in and out--- even via the back
buttons--- without trouble. All the attention of the LangaList
readers--- all *your* attention--- made a bad site about a worthy cause into a
good site about a worthy cause. Check it out! Click to
email this item to a friend --- ( Your
Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------(
the above is an advertisement )--------------
Freddie Cash is among the
still-small but growing number of fans of the Opera browser--- which gets better
with every release. He writes: Those using Netscape
browsers and looking for comparable features in alternatives will be glad to
know that Opera 4 supports nearly all Netscape plugins, Java, Java/ECMA script,
and is supposed to be fully-HTML 4/CSS1+2-compliant (although the DHTML support
is a little lacking). For enable Java support,
one must download the Java Runtime or JDK from SUN. Once it's installed, simply
copy np*.dll to the Opera plugin directory, open Opera, select File >
Preferences > Plug-ins and click on Find Plug-ins. To incorporate all your
Netscape plug-ins, you simply copy the contents of the Netscpe plug-ins
directory to the Opera plug-ins directory, and follow the steps above. Also new with this version
is an integrated e-mail client. However, as I am [perfectly content with my mail
client (Pegasus) I have not tested/used it, so I cannot comment on it. The only downside to Opera
is that you have to pay for it. Considering how fast and small it is, the fee is
worth it indeed!! For many, the fee is indeed offset
by Opera's attributes. I'm still a little dubious--- in
addition to the drawbacks Freddie mentions and the assemble-it-yourself nature
of some of the browser's features, it also historically has had one of the
slowest scripting engines ever created--- literally orders of magnitude slower
than IE and Netscape. For me, the idea of paying for a product that's slower and
rougher than ones you can get for free has always seemed a little, um, strange. But I know there are millions of
Opera fans who would violently disagree with me--- so, as I have many time
before, I mention Opera in the spirit of completeness. It's fast and free to
test drive, so if you want to give it a spin, click to http://www.operasoft.com/
. Click to
email this item to a friend The Recommend-it site
gives away up to $10,000 as an incentive to use their service to recommend
newsletters like this one! If you think the
LangaList is a worthwhile read, just use the following link to recommend the
LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful
information; I just may gain a new subscriber; and you just may win $10,000 or
other prizes from the folks at "Recommend-It:" http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1 Or, win a copy of
"Poor Richard's E-Mail Publishing: Creating Newsletters, Bulletins,
Discussion Groups and Other Powerful Communications Tools." This book has
been described as "An excellent, straightforward manual on email
publishing, banner ads, driving traffic and especially ethics." (Full
details also available via this link): http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2 Either way, thank you,
and good luck! Click to
email this item to a friend "NotePad," the plain-text
editor that ships with Windows, is about as sorry a little app as you'll ever
see: it's so limited, it's more like a student's programming project than a real
app. There are several freeware
replacements--- almost all of which are better than the original--- but reader
James McLeod found one I hadn't heard of that looks especially good: Fred, Heads up! Here's an
enhanced Notepad-like program, called NotePad Light. (There's a for-sale NotePad
Pro, too.) I've been using Notepad+ for some time now but, one look at this
program and that went out the window. This does HTML and *everything*. I can't
believe that such a useful tool would be free. But it is. http://www.notetab.ch/download.htm Thanks for all the pointers
to great software. This is an effort to pay all of you back, you and your
readers (in a small way) for all the help you have given me. ~Jim~ Thanks, Jim! Click to
email this item to a friend Do you have a home page or website?
(It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://www.langa.com/code.htm,
and maybe you can join the hundreds and hundreds of LangaList readers who have
"Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and
are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please
see http://www.langa.com/link.txt
) Speaking of which: Here's another
eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal: Click to
email this item to a friend This news release crossed
the wires last week: The Los Gatos man who
invented the Pet Rock laid claim to another dubious honor yesterday when he won
the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing. Gary Dahl, an advertising
man who dreamed up the Pet Rock in 1975, won the contest entered by more than
2,000 writers around the world with a single descriptive sentence about the
English countryside: "The heather-encrusted
Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched
precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their
bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded
old men falling asleep in their pints." The contest, conducted
annually since 1983 by English professors at San Jose State University, is named
for the 19th-century English novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who once
started a novel with the words "It was a dark and stormy night." Among entries winning
"dishonorable mentions" were -- "His eyes bored
into hers like the slowly turning bit of a 2.5 horsepower drill press set to
slow speed to keep from scoring the surface of a priceless mahogany table being
repaired for an estate auction that was not expected to bring in much,
anyway." (Martin M. Conrad II, Colorado Springs, Colo.) -- "It could be said
that Martha and Isaac had chemistry, but Martha had never been good at
chemistry, and sex with Isaac had been like an experiment wherein she had
accidentally mixed ammonia and bleach, burned her eyebrows off, lost all sense
of smell for weeks, and never saw the family cat again." (Kelly Griffith,
Media, Pa.) -- "The alien's single
eye glowed on its stalk like the headlight of a police motorcycle pursuing a
speeder on a dark highway on a stormy night, its ears protruding from its head
like an old Garfield toy beginning to fall off the suction cups." (Seth
Miller and Cassandra Thomas, Plano, Texas) For more of the best of the
worst, go to Click to
email this item to a friend --- ( Your
Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- You're
reading this--- so are 117,000 Advertising
in the LangaList --------------(
the above is an advertisement )--------------
See you next issue! Best, Please recommend
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(Please see full disclaimer here: http://www.langa.com/legal.htm.)
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Neither Langa Consulting LLC, nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for
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