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Please note: Older issues may contain information that is now out of date.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 2000-10-19 A Free Email
Newsletter from Fred
Langa --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
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Exactly three years ago
yesterday, the very first issue of the LangaList was published to a very
small--- OK, *tiny* <g>--- number of subscribers. Back then, I published the
newsletter once a week, more or less. Today, the newsletter is distributed twice
a week to about 140,000 subscribers--- that's 1.2 million copies of this
newsletter mailed every month. And at the same time, the Langa.Com website also
is busy pumping out about half a million pages a month. It's been a heck of a ride; all
the more so because the LangaList and Langa.Com is all a one-person operation.
Thank goodness for caffeine! 8-) Your fellow subscribers hail from
153 nations all around the globe. As you might expect for an English-language
missive, readers in English-speaking countries (the USA, Canada, Australia, the
UK, New Zealand...) tend to make up the largest part of the subscriber base; and
there's a significant number of readers in places where English is not primary
language, but where the Internet is readily available (Europe, portions of South
America and Africa...). But you may be surprised--- I sure was!--- to find
that the same List you read also goes out to people in places like Kyrgyzstan,
Mali, the Udmurt Republic, and Kiribati. Heck, you even have fellow readers
inside the Vatican. <g> The next few paragraphs give you
a little background on the List's history--- feel free to skip ahead if that's
of no interest. But if you do skip ahead, let me say this to you now: Thanks for
subscribing; it's my pleasure and privilege to serve you! Many people have asked about how
the List started: Three years ago, after a 20+ year stint in the publishing
industry where I'd been the chief editor of a number of publications, including
Byte and Windows Magazine, I wanted to get back to my first professional love,
which was writing. I moved my family out of New York and back to our native New
England, and hung out my shingle as a freelance writer. (See http://www.langa.com/about_fred.htm
if you're a masochist and want all the gory details. <g>) At the time, I had a hazy idea
involving a self-publication effort that would let me communicate directly with
readers, rather than being totally dependent on traditional publishing
processes. Maybe--- an email newsletter? There was a second element to
this hazy idea. I know it sounds corny, but I'd been in publishing for a long
time and had made a good living running a variety of magazines and online sites.
This fuzzy piece of the puzzle was the idea of somehow "giving back"
to the readers and to the computing community in some way. So, I wanted the newsletter to be
free; I'd pay to run it myself, out-of-pocket, assuming I could make a living as
a freelance. That led to a third piece of the puzzle: I needed a way to
self-publicize my for-pay work so people would know about it and read it, and
keep my publishers happy so I could indeed make a living. There was no "Eureka"
moment--- I didn't run naked through the streets of my home town---but
eventually the ideas firmed up enough so that I figured I'd send a weekly email
message to interested readers. The emails would contain useful tips, tricks, and
other information about using computer hardware and software, and also would
contain pointers to the columns and web sites I was producing for others. But the emails wouldn't be just a
tease: I wanted them to contain enough "meat" to be useful and worth
reading in their own right. And I wanted them to be rich with pointers to many
sources of information, only some of which would be my own work. I also wanted the emails to have
a personal tone, more like a letter from a friend than some kind of
corporate-speak publication, or a generic-voiced magazine article. The weekly
email letter was going to be from me, personally, and written in the first
person. In short, I wanted it to be a
simple, friendly and (hopefully) helpful email from me to interested readers. Fast-forward two years: By then,
the list had grown to a size where I could no longer afford to publish it
out-of-pocket. So, after much internal debate, I began accepting advertising as
a way to defray my escalating publishing costs and to keep from losing my shirt
on the deal. With readers clicking on the ads and checking out what the
advertisers offer, the newsletter became more or less self-sustaining. Now, three years into the
project, you're reading the results to date. I hope you're enjoying the
newsletter as much as I enjoy bringing it to you! There's lots more ahead---
including some major positive announcements I hope to make in the next few
weeks. Stay tuned, and thanks for being
a part of the LangaList community! Click to
email this item to a friend You can think of 'em as an
anniversary gift from me to you. <g> You may recall that reader Mick
Hickson provided us with a tiny registry patch that added the original
CleanUp.Bat to your Recycle Bin menu: When you right-clicked on the Recycle Bin,
you'd see "Langa.Com Cleanup" as a menu item just above "Empty
Recycle Bin Contents." It was a very handy patch because it let you dump
all manner or trash files with just two clicks--- one click to empty the Recycle
Bin, and another to run CleanUp.Bat. (Don't know about Cleanup.Bat? Click here: http://www.langa.com/cleanup_bat.htm
) Many readers have asked for a
similar patch that would add the much more-powerful CleanALL.Bat to the Recycle
Bin menu, and I'm happy to say it's now available at http://www.langa.com/cleanall_reg.htm
. Plus, that same page also
contains an equally-tiny reg patch that *removes* CleanAll.Bat from your Recycle
Bin menu, should you later decide you don't want it there. I've also modified the earlier
CleanUp patch at http://www.langa.com/cleanup_reg.htm
by similarly offering a tiny reg patch to remove CleanUp.bat from your Recycle
Bin menu, should you want to do so. So now you can add or remove
either batch file to your Recycle Bin with just a couple clicks. And as always
at Langa.Com, the files are free. (Your clicks on the newsletter ads and the
download page ad banners will help support the site and keep it free--- and you
just may find a cool product or service to try, too. Check 'em out!) Click
to email this item to a friend --- ( Your
Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
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Reader Gary Hollingworth was
concerned about URLs that don't seem to follow the standard
"www.sitename.com" format: I am seeking information
on the hows and whys of website links with the following format, e.g.
http://402653384/. I've only seen this format in spam type messages as it
appears to be constructed to hide the real address. How does it work since it
isn't in either of the recognized standard www.anysite.com or 123.456.789.000
formats? What are your thoughts about its use? Are these style addresses a
concern to the casual Internet user? First, let's look at the format,
then we'll discuss the implications: Unless you own your own web site
with its own domain name, you may not realize that all Web addresses really are
numeric: When a web site is created, it's normally listed with a special
"registrar" who is authorized to run a Domain Name Server. This server
contains a huge lookup table that associates a normal-sounding name (such as www.langa.com)
with the web site's true numeric address. For example, http://www.langa.com
is really site number "www.langa.com." If you click on http://www.langa.com
(or enter in your browser's address line), you'll still go to Langa.Com exactly
the same as if you'd clicked on http://www.langa.com
. The more familiar URL format--- www.langa.com--- is really nothing more than
an alias provided solely for human convenience, because it's much easier to
remember than a string of numbers. But it's the numbers that matter:
When you enter or click on a URL like www.langa.com, your browser actually asks
a Domain Name Server for the real numeric address of the site, and then uses the
numeric address to find the page you want. (By the way: Now you know what
your browser means when it gives you a "DNS Not Found" error: It
couldn't find the correct Domain Name Server, or couldn't find the correct site
entry within the server, and thus didn't know how to find the site you were
looking for.) The Web's numbering scheme is the
key to a spammer's ability to hide his URL. With a bit of deep-geek
manipulation, those numeric addresses can be converted into a variety of
formats. For example, the four groups of three digits in a site's real numeric
address are based on powers of 256; from right to left, each group of digits
represents itself times 256 to the zero, first, second, and third, respectively
. I'll do the math for you, but you
can see that Langa.Com's "www.langa.com" address can be expanded into
209 + 60928 + 2490368 + 2130706432, and that adds up to 2133257937. And in fact,
http://2133257937/ also gets
you to Langa.Com. (Well, it actually gets you to the root of the Langa.Com site,
where a redirect page then takes you to the public home page. But that's due to
the way I have the site set up--- it has nothing to do with the addressing per
se.) But there's still more: If you're
looking for real obscurity--- as some spammers are---the human-friendly decimal
(base ten) digits also can be translated into their computer-friendly
hexadecimal (base 16) equivalents; and the numbers and punctuation also can be
represented as ASCII computer code. (For a simple table of ASCII codes, see http://www.asciitable.com/
) Thus, http://www.langa.com
can be shown in all these ways, which function identically, and bring you to
exactly the same place: http://www.langa.com/ Your browser is perfectly happy
with any of these representations of the address because under the covers, all
six URLs are actually identical! So, with a little
calculator-punching and detective work, you can pick apart any numeric
address--- or you can use Karen Kenworthy's cool "URL Discombobulator"
tool to automate the process: http://content.techweb.com/winmag//columns/powertools/ptlookup.htm It's worth noting that often, a
plain numeric address (such as http://www.langa.com/
) is simply an indication that a site is brand-new--- the site is alive and
accessible, but hasn't yet been registered, and so no DNS entry yet exists for
it. Because there's no human-friendly name associated with the site yet, the
numeric address is the only way in. This type of address may be perfectly
benign. But addresses in the other weird
forms, such as http://%32%30%39%2E%32%33%38%2E%33%38%2E%31%32%37/
, often are used by spammers or porno-site purveyors who wish to disguise their
site name or URL. There's really no good reason to use a URL in that format,
except as camouflage. Fortunately, as you now see, it's
not too hard to peek beneath the disguise and see what's *really* there. Click to
email this item to a friend --- ( Your
Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
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There's a new minor update to
ZoneAlarm (the excellent free-for-personal-use firewall) available at http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/partners/zonealarm/download.html
. It's version 2.1.44. Long-time readers know we've
covered ZoneAlarm many times (see http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=zonealarm&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000
); in fact, LangaList readers were among the first, anywhere, to learn about
ZoneAlarm. A "personal firewall," ZoneAlarm software helps protect you
against malicious internet hackers, and can even guard against some email
Trojan-horse programs and other apps that may try to "phone home"
behind your back. The new version is a very minor
update from the last, but it's still good to stay up to date--- and thanks to
reader J. M. Dixon for being first to tell us about the new version. Click to
email this item to a friend You folks are great--- you keep
digging and digging into the topics we discuss, and generously share your
results when you find something interesting. Take reader Dave, for example, who
found this when he went looking for "oinkage;" space-wasting junk
files on his hard drive (see http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=oinkage&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000
): Hi Fred, great
Newsletter! In your last article, you mention bloat in the Windows directory. I
would like to add that some systems can free up 25 MB by getting rid of the
Windows 98 tour/welcome. Delete the entire subfolder called "Tour." I
never used since first boot. It is located on my system at
C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS , though many systems may find it at C:\WINDOWS\CABS I
carried it around for a week in my recycle bin for safety, as I do with all big
deletions, and things are normal. Keep Up The Good Work! Thanks, Dave. And that trick---
carrying a file around in the Recycle Bin, or (perhaps more safely) renaming it,
or moving it to a safe location, is very smart. That way, if it turns out you
need the file, you can just move it back in a flash. But, after a while, if
everything continues to work fine, you can then delete it knowing it's not a
file your system relies on for anything critical. Click to
email this item to a friend Reader Paul Van Noord suggested
an alternative to the drive-partitioning scheme I suggested in http://content.techweb.com/winmag//columns/explorer/2000/20.htm
: I am a consultant &
VAR who works strictly with small business & churches & missions. I have
found that using 3 partitions is valuable for many reasons. I label the D
partition [Data] and set up all the user created files to be saved there. It
makes it easy for them to find and easy to backup. Also, there are no operating
system or program shenanigans tampering with the data. A further benefit is that
the data doesn't fragment program files. All of windows stuff is on C except for
the swapfile which is on E. All programs are installed on E so if windows
misbehaves anything created away from the windows folder is also preserved.
Ontrack's Fix It! 2000 DefragPLUS is a great utility than can run on a schedule
along with automatic backup. After reading your article I think I will begin
using a 4th partition strictly for drive image files. Thanks, Paul. Indeed, your way
will work fine. Mine is tailored to my specific needs which are admittedly
somewhat, um, not normal: With my frequent tests if software and hardware, I'm
very hard on my system, and as a result need frequent backups of the system
files, setup, and data files. Partitioning as described in http://content.techweb.com/winmag//columns/explorer/2000/20.htm
gives me all that in one daily backup. In short, there's no one
"right" way. As long as you have a system that works for you and lets
you back up your files, great! Click to
email this item to a friend Reader Dale Greenwood sent in the
results of his professional research into backup/restore options: Fred, I've been working
on a development project for a client regarding hard drive imaging / backup to
CD R& RW on (mainly) WinNT & Win2K systems. I spent nearly a week
auditioning Powerquest's latest high-end products which provide these
capabilities (ServerMagic 3.0 and Drive Image Pro 3.0). As it turns out, if you
are working with FAT or FAT32 formatted partitions, Powerquest's products work
very well - however, for use with WinNT and Win2K, I found that their products
are confused by NTFS partitions that have been created or manipulated by Disk
Administrator, specifically if the cluster size has been changed. Executive
Software, makers of Diskeeper - the defragmenter licensed by Microsoft and
bundled into Win2K - advocate making the cluster size within NTFS partitions
4096 bytes in size (with a lengthy technical explanation of the pros &
cons). Within the Powerquest products reviewed, I also found a number of other
compatibility problems of this sort which their second level tech support was
unable to address. So I've been taking my search for appropriate software
elsewhere. Here is what I've found
so far: Adaptec sells a software product called Take Two, bundled in the Deluxe
version of their Easy CD Creator software suite which will do WinNT & Win2K
disk image snapshots with disk spanning onto CD-R & RW with full restore
capabilities, however their software isn't capable of doing incremental backups. I've most recently run
across a software package called Retrospect by Dantz, which does everything Take
Two will, plus it will do incremental backups, batched automatic restoration
from incrementals, disk imaging / backups of other machines within the intranet
and a bunch more. Appears to be best of breed, by far. Very interesting, Dale--- thanks! Click to
email this item to a friend If you think the LangaList is a
worthwhile read, maybe a friend would find it useful too! Just use the following
link to recommend the LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful
information and you just may win $10,000 for your trouble (full details also
available via this link): 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!" Speaking of which: Here's another
eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal: Trashy
(Clothes) Link Seite (Germany) Dirt Cycles Claude's
(Canadian) Place Wellington
to Waikanae (New Zealand) PC
Enhancements Dan's
Technology Website It Just
Ayntryte Garland's
Windows Me Site NEIL'S
INTERNET REST STOP Click to
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href="http://www.langa.com/ratecard.htm">AOL
Users Click Here!</a> --------------(
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Old jokes never die-- they just
morph into new variants on the web. Take, for example, the
"light bulb" joke, where there's a question in the form of Q: How many
(name of group of people/persons) does it take to change a light bulb? followed by an
answer in the form of A: (Some
number;) one to change the bulb, and (one or more, up to the required number to
make the joke work) who behave in a manner that mocks or perpetuates a
stereotype of that person or group. Most are silly,
but---like when you hear a really bad pun--- sometimes you can't help but smile
anyway, even if you *know* it's dumb. Reader Albert II got
me thinking about this when he sent along a link to http://www.wilesworld.com/jokes/lightbulb.shtml,
which contained items like these: Q: How many senior
managers does it take to change a light bulb? Q: How many Help Desk
people does it take to change a light bulb? Q: How many software
engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Q: How many hardware
engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Q How many support staff
people does it take to change a light bulb? I then wondered what else the web
has done to this ancient joke form, so I did a search and---yow! Check out http://bulbs.sector13.org/
or http://users.fast.co.za/~tmar/lightbu.htm
or http://www.lamps.co.nz/jokes.html
or http://www.lightbulbjokes.com/
or... well, you get the idea. 8-) Nihil novi sub sole, eh? Click to
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See you next issue! Best, Please recommend
the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win $10,000!I) An easier-to read formatted
HTML version is available in the "Current Issue" section of http://www.langa.com.
(The HTML version of each issue normally is available by 9AM EST [UT-5] of the
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If you're getting this newsletter; your name came to me through one of those
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TROUBLE? HAVE QUESTIONS? NEED HELP? See http://www.langa.com/help.txt About
the advertisers: Langa Consulting LLC will never knowingly accept
advertising for a fraudulent product, company or service. However, Langa Consulting LLC makes no implied or explicit warranty, recommendation or endorsement
of or for the products, companies or services mentioned in the ads. Disclaimer:
(Please see full disclaimer here: http://www.langa.com/legal.htm.)
Abbreviated version: The tips and other information given in the newsletter are
researched and are believed to be accurate, but we cannot and do not guarantee
that all the information here will work on all systems, for all users, all the
time. All information herein is offered as-is and without warranty of any kind.
Neither Langa Consulting LLC, nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for
any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from application
of any information presented here. This newsletter is a free
service of Langa Consulting LLC and is Copyright © 2000 Langa Consulting LLC. All
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