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LangaList 2001-02-08 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!
1) Juno to Users: TANSTAAFLTANSTAAFL is the acronym for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch;" it was first popularized by author Robert A. Heinlein, many years ago. Of course, it refers to the fact that things that appear free usually have a hidden cost, and we've discussed the TANSTAAFL principle twice before in these pages. (See http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=TANSTAAFL&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000 ) And it's back now, big time. Reader Theo Tanalski, who is a user of the Juno ISP service, noticed something ominous in a recent change in the terms of service. Although Juno is the first, I can easily believe other ISPs will try the same thing soon. In fact, I'm amazed that AOL hasn't announced something similar yet. Theo sent along this clip extracted from Juno's latest service agreement dated 1/18/2001:
There's lots more, but the above encapsulates the amazing part: In effect, Juno is saying that you must give them the right to use your PC for whatever purposes they choose, when they choose. You see, Juno wants to lash up its subscribers' computers into an ad-hoc distributed computing network and sell the aggregate computing power to others. Someone with a large computational problem will contract with Juno, which will divvy up the large problem into smaller chunks and force-feed it into its subscribers' PCs. Those Juno-laden PCs, which must be left on and running, will execute this external code and send the results of the computations back to Juno. The process then repeats. This kind of distributed computing is a very powerful thing, and has been used for good purposes among businesses (which have the right to run whatever they want on their own PCs) and among volunteer operations, such as SETI@home. But I believe this is the first attempt by an ISP to grab a piece of its subscribers' PCs in such a blatant manner. This isn't just stealing a little bandwidth to cram some ads down the wire at you--- this is taking over your PC at a fundamental level. And that might lead you to wonder, "What happens if Juno's software trashes my system?" That's spelled out in the rest of the amended terms of service: The subscribers must perform these forced services at their own risk and expense: You pay for the power consumed to run Juno's calculations; you pay for the call (if needed) to send in the results; and if Juno's software crashes your PC and eats your data, well, tough luck. Juno calls this the "Virtual Supercomputer Project," and describes it in glowing PR-speak at http://www.juno.com/corp/news/supercomputer.html . So: not only TANSTAAFL but TANSTAAFISP--- there ain't no such things as a free ISP. Juno users will have to weigh the cost of the force-fed ads, plus the cost and risks of running unknown software on their PC--- software of unknown quality, by unknown parties for unknown purposes--- against the benefit of saving a few bucks a month. Sometimes "free" lunches turn out to be very expensive. Click to
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the above is an advertisement )-------------- 2) Deleting Typing Errors in IE5 URLsPaul Kunino Lynch ran into an all-too-common problem:
Some URLs are stored in the windows\history folder. If you can't delete URLs there any other way, a boot to DOS and a Deltree will do it for sure! Other URLs are stored in the
registry key One fairly easy solution is to run RegEdit (Start/Run/RegEdit) and navigate directly to that "typed urls" sub-branch, and edit the URL(s) you don't want. Or, use RegEdit's Find function to search for all instances of whatever offending URL you want to delete. You also can use other tools such as Funduc's excellent "Search and Replace" ( http://www.funduc.com/ ) to find the mistyped URL no matter where it resides on your hard drive: as long as it's in a recognizable text string somewhere, Search And Replace will find it for you. Click to
email this item to a friend 3) Speaking Of The Registry...In the "Free Registry Primer, and More" item in a recent issue ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-02-01.htm#4 ) we discussed several places where you can get excellent information on this often-misunderstood part of all Windows Operating Systems. Well, as usual, readers had some great suggestions to offer on their own. For example, Jamie Jensen wrote:
Jahufar Sadique offers:
And Nate Houk suggests:
Thanks to all who wrote in! Click to
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subscription to the LangaList Plus! Your Inner Geek will love you for it! (Non-geeks welcome too! <g>) <a href="http://www.langa.com/plus.htm">AOL Users Click Here</a> --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 4) Adios "Flow Control?"Reader Gary asked:
If you're unfamiliar with Flow Control, here's what Gary means: Click on Modems in Control Panel, then Properties/ Connection/Advanced: You'll see Flow Control as an option there in two flavors: Hardware flow control lets the modems regulate the flow of data passing over the wire: If a modem at either end of the connection starts to have trouble keeping up with the data flow, it can signal for a temporary "time out" to allow it to catch up. Likewise, if some of the data being received by either modem arrives scrambled, that modem can ask the other modem to stop, back up, and resend the scrambled data. Software flow control does the same thing, but is handled by your communications software rather than the actual hardware managing the connection. With a fast PC and a reliable connection, Flow Control is less important than it once was. Fast PCs easily can stay ahead of the flow of bits passing through a modem; and a consistently bad phone line usually simply causes the transmission speed to be reduced to levels where errors don't occur, rather than staying fast and suffering from routinely scrambled data. So, you probably *can* turn off all flow control, and be OK; with a little less transmission overhead, you may pick up a modest speed increment. But you should know that the speed increase is unlikely to be really significant. Plus, you'll be losing the ability to prevent errors from "buffer overflow" problems if they do happen; and you will be reducing your modem's ability to handle random, intermittent transmission errors, should they occur. If your primary activity is passive surfing--- viewing sites--- the occasional error may not be a big deal. But if you upload data (for web sites, for important email and such) you may want to keep Flow Control enabled to help ensure your data arrives at the other end just the way you sent it. As with most tweaks, this one's a judgment call where you have to weigh the risks and benefits for yourself. Click to
email this item to a friend 5) Is This Information Useful?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): http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1 Or, win a no-strings $30 Gift Certificate for any item at Amazon.Com--- books, software, hardware, kitchenware, toys... and more. (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 6) Defrag Solution #2,345,677...Some topics just won't die. 8-) We've covered problems with Defrag hanging or never finishing many times before ( http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=defrag&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000 ) and have touched on just about all the tricks and fixes, including the most common solution which is simply to close *all* other apps. But the topic comes up again and again in emails from readers. The link above will give you a ton
of specific fixes, and these two links contain the official Microsoft
diagnosis and cure: WinMag.Com also offers fixes: But just this week, reader Bilderback offered a simple workaround to create a "run once" defrag option from your own Windows98 setup CD:
Then, when you reboot, Defrag will run before anything else loads. This is similar to the WinMag.Com script, except you probably already have this on your CD. Click to
email this item to a friend 7) They Just Keep Coming And Coming and Coming...Well over a thousand of your fellow readers have "Loaded the code." Please click over to http://www.langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join them! (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
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the above is an advertisement )-------------- 8) Other Lesser-Known Cool ToolsLast issue's "R.I.P. SysEdit" ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-02-05.htm#2 ) generated a ton of email: I'm sorting through it now, and will present the collective reader feedback in an upcomiing issue. But SysEdit--- a kind of super-notepad that uses a "multiple document interface" to open five important Windows files at once for easy, side-by-side scrutiny and editing--- isn't the only cool system tool that's on tens of millions of Windows systems, and yet usually ignored. Frequent contributor George Tullius points out another:
Indeed, it's surprising what's tucked away in various corners of Windows systems--- stuff you might never find unless you go looking for it, or are told about it. SysEdit and WinIPcfg are just two. The many TXT files in the /windows directory are another: You'll find Tips, setup info, troubleshooting and recovery info--- a couple dozen files in all, some with information that might give you a "I never knew that!" moment. We've discussed many of these little-known tools before. See, for example, http://bbs.winmag.com/columns/archives/1998/072698/monday/body.asp?frames=no or http://bbs.winmag.com/columns/archives/1998/090698/monday/body.asp?frames=no Or better still, poke around your own system, and see what you find! Click to
email this item to a friend 9) Just For GrinsIf you thought bread was bad (see "Bread Kills!" http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-02-05.htm#10 ), reader Matthew Markowitz was the first of several readers who wants to warn us all of the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide, "The Invisible Killer."
(OK: For those of you who slept during high school chemistry, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is ordinary water. <g>) Click to
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the above is an advertisement )-------------- See you next issue!
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