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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2001-04-05

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

Contents:

1) Free, Way-Cool Desktop "Search Bar"
2) Serious Internet Explorer Security Problem
3) Less Serious "Compressed Folders" Security Hole
4) (Psssst! Here's A Way To Access WinMag Material)
5) And: Here's NEW WinMag Content... Without WinMag
6) Edson Got His Gift Certificate. Want One?
7) Ad-Aware Defunct?
8) They Loaded The Code
9) Just For Grins
10) Just One Thin Dime...

For even more content, downloads and special services,
check out the LangaList Plus! Edition: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm

 

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1) Free, Way-Cool Desktop "Search Bar"

Plus! reader Patrick Deal, at the ripe old age of 19, already is a pretty good programmer. He's developed a free custom search bar for your desktop that lets you instantly access any of 6 major search engines without having to first open your browser. Here's how he describes it:

Search Bar is a little program I created because I hated having to open a new browser window, go to a search engine site, wait for it to load and then do my search. Search Bar is a little window that sits on top of all your windows to give you quick access to many different search engines.  It comes with 6 popular search engines (Altavista, Excite, Google, HotBot, Lycos, and Yahoo), but you can add almost any engine you want. You can minimize the program to an icon in the system tray for quick access to the Search Bar.

At first, Search Bar was a simple program I created to make my personal searches quicker and easier.  Then I read an issue of the Langa List that talked about search engines and quicker ways to search. After reading that, I realized that since my program had made my searches easier and quicker, it could do the same for others.  

Aside from being a pretty good programmer, Patrick also is generous: He polished his code and told me I could offer it to you, for free.

I have his Search Bar running on my desktop now. Minimized, it shrinks to almost nothing as a magnifying-glass icon in the "tray" over by the clock. But even maximized, it presents a small, clean UI that takes up hardly any space. You type what you want to search for, select which of 6 search engines you wish to use, and click the search button. In a flash, Search Bar opens your browser, switches to the search engine of your choice, and feeds in the search terms. It's incredibly useful.

Note that you are likely to experience delays in downloading this software due to the anticipated high volume. SearchBar was first offered to the LangaList Plus! subscribers about a week ago, and is still available to them via the speedier Plus! private site. (Plus! sign-up: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm. Plus! subscriber login: http://www.langa.com/plus/ )

Public download: http://www.langa.com/sb/sb.htm

Thank you, Patrick!

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2) Serious Internet Explorer Security Problem

It's another bad one:

Last week, Microsoft acknowledged that an "incorrect MIME header can cause IE to execute E-mail attachment" with the result being that your system would "run code of attacker's choice." Yikes.

Anyone running IE 5.12 or 5.5 needs the patch available at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-020.asp

There also are some manual workarounds (such as turning off File Downloads for the affected  Security Zones). The above link will bring you to a full explanation, as well as to the download link for the patch.

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3) Annoying Security Hole In "Compressed Folders"

"Compressed Folders" are a special kind of file that uses Zip-type compression to reduce the size of a folder's contents. But unlike Zip files, Compressed Folders appear as actual folders in Windows Explorer. To distinguish them from standard, uncompressed folders, Compressed Folders use a special icon: a manila file folder adorned with a zipper.

Compressed Folder capability is built into Windows ME, and can be added to Win98 via optional, extra cost add-on software called Plus! 98 (or sometimes simply: "Plus Pack."). But there's a problem:

For interoperability with leading third-party compression tools, [the Compressed Folder feature] provides a password protection option for folders that have been compressed. However, due to a flaw in the package's implementation, the passwords used to protect the folders are recorded in a file on the user's system. If an attacker gained access to an affected machine on which password-protected folders were stored, she could learn the passwords and access the files.

This isn't a huge issue, but anyone using WinME or an optional "Plus Pack" for Win98 should read the full announcement and grab the patch that corrects this problem:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms01-019.asp

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4) (Psssst! Here's A Clever Way To Access WinMag Material)

I'm getting a *lot* of email from people trying to access material from the defunct WinMag site; readers keep asking if I have new URLs. I don't.

You can access some material via a search at Planet IT ( http://www.planetit.com/ ) But reader Don Chapman found an even better way:

Hi Fred, I have been a subscriber for about 2 years and am currently a "Plus" subscriber and for only $10 a year I don't think there's a better deal on the internet.

Needless to say I was extremely dismayed when you announced the news about winmag.com. I frequently refer to your past columns and the discussion groups for information. I hope that you are able to at least salvage that portion.

For the time being, I've found a way to still get most of the content off the now defunct winmag website. Just run a search on Google and when the results are returned simply click on the "Cached" link underneath the resulting items. Since Google keeps a cached copy of most popular web pages most of the info is still stored on Google's servers.

What a great idea! You also can refine the search to just WinMag.Com pages either via the advanced search or by entering the term "site:winmag.com" after your search words. For example,

fred langa site:winmag.com

will pull up all my stuff that Google previously found on the WinMag site. Then (as Don suggests) clicking on "cached" after a search result listing will call up a copy of the page stored on Google.

I don't know how long Google keeps its cache active; and some of the most-recent additions to the WinMag site never made it into the cache. But there's a lot there--- and certainly better than nothing.

Thanks, Don!

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5) And: Here's NEW WinMag Content... Without WinMag

A number of the WinMag writers and columnists have their own newsletter now; some are wholly new, and others are successors to columns or newsletter they produced for WinMag. There's no central sign-up page (yet) but for now you can pick and choose among these e-publications:

Serdar Yegulalp's Win2K Power Users: http://www.thegline.com/new/
Karen's Power Tools at http://www.karenware.com/
Jason Levine's Toolbox: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/
Mike Elgan's List: http://www.mikeslist.com/default.htm
John Woram's newsletter: http://www.woram.com/letter/index.htm
Dan Rosenbaum's newsletter: http://www.danrosenbaum.com/subscribe.htm
Dave Methvin's PCPitstop: http://www.pcpitstop.com/newsletter.asp
Scot Finnie's Newsletter: http://www.scotfinnie.com/newsletter/
Yael Li-Ron's MS Office Beat: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Li-Ron/

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6) Edson Got His Gift Certificate. Want One?

Reader Edson Schalm just got his no-strings $30 Gift Certificate for any item
at Amazon.Com--- books, software, hardware, kitchenware, toys, and
more. He got it by using the "Recommend" link at
http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#2 .

If you use that link to recommend the LangaList to a friend, your
friend may find a new source of useful information, I may gain a new
subscriber; and you just may win a gift certificate, just as Edson
did. (Full details are available via that link.) The more times you
make a recommendation, the greater your chances are of winning!

Or, if you'd like to try to win $10,000 (really!), try this link (full
details also available here): http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm#1

Either way, thank you, and good luck!

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7) Ad-Aware Defunct?

Well, not exactly Ad-Aware--- the free and excellent spyware-remover from LavaSoft. But LavaSoft itself seems to be gone: Their web site at http://www.lavasoft.de/ spewed file and server "not found" messages for a week, and now gives only a generic "Hier entsteht eine neue Internetpräsenz!" (or, loosely, "Here comes a new site...".)

You can still get the software from a variety of download sites (see http://www.google.com/search?q=ad%2Daware ) but the parent company may be dead. If anyone has a lead on their whereabouts, please let me know.

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8) They Loaded The Code

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:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site
http://www.langa.com/cgi-local/rand_link.pl

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://www.langa.com/readersites.htm

The Museum of Depressionist Art
http://www.dearauntnettie.com/museum/index.htm

Gladys Dwindlebimmers Ralston Gallery of the Unidentifiable
http://208.55.110.185/gallery/index.htm

The American Forces Vietnam Network
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Gold/6654/afvn.htm

Silver Phoenix
http://www.geocities.com/philbb.geo/

N6HB (ham radio) homepage
http://www.n6hb.org/

Upstrap Camera Straps
http://www.upstrap.com/

Wilson Web
http://www.homestead.com/clarkdw/

The WebWorks @ Little Mountain
http://www.webworks-at-littlemountain.com/

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9) Just For Grins

I never would have guessed it, but we have many closet classical scholars among us, judging by the response to last week's list of neo-Latinisms (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-03-29.htm#10 ). For example, reader Dave Loomis offers:

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
(How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?)

Reader Gord Hines goes even further:

In my first college year, I learned two more neo-Latinisms that have served me well for almost three decades

1. "Non urum ad ventum" [recall that the Latin letter "v" is pronounced as a "w"] trans: Don't pee into the wind

2. "Illegitimati non carborundum"
trans: Don't let the b*stards grind you down

And this twist I just learned of today: "Carborundi non illegitimatum"
trans "Don't let the grind make a b*stard out of you."

According to this website,  http://www.staticvision.com/achtung/quotations.htm  it [ the "illegitimi" phrase] is credited to Joseph Stillwell, American General in WWII. On this site, it is cited as a line in a Harvard "fight(?)" song by way of Stillwell. http://www.auburn.edu/~blashrk/cob5.htm On this website, the quotation is given a different and older origin: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/2948/fraselat.html :

ILLEGITIMIS NIL CARBORUNDUM
--From the mediaeval jingle, "Si te dominorum vis/Facit furibundum,/ Dico "illegitimis Nichil carborundum"

On this website, it's attributed even further back in time to "Marcus Aurelius" http://www.happyhacker.org/hhlist/digest20.shtml (Marcus lived 121-180; Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher)

It also appears, unattributed, at http://www.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/~henry/jokes/Latein.html

It appears that eventually all our acquired knowledge [jokes included] is progressively finding its way onto the www.

And Max Booher writes:

I think most of those euphemistic Latin statements originated with a guy named James (?) Beard who wrote an entire book of them a few years ago called "Latin for All Occasions". Very funny reading; I think my favorite line was "Fac ut gaudeam" ("Go ahead -- make my day"... or, more literally "Do, so that I may rejoice.")

Speaking of Latin, check out http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata.html  for a Perl module which allows you to write Perl programs in Latin. For me, a Classics-geek-turned-computer-geek, this site really "made my day".

Thanks to all who wrote in!

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10) Just One Thin Dime...

Did you know that the LangaList Plus! only costs about a dime--- ten cents per issue!--- and yet contains no ads and about 30% more content? For example, today's Plus! issue contains all the items above, minus the ads, plus: more custom menu tricks; two extra search bar tips; and a cool tip for printing custom envelopes in Word.

Check out the Plus! Edition at: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm 

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See you next issue!

Best,

Fred
(fred@langa.com)

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 issue date.) All past LangaList issues are also available at the Langa.Com site.

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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 service of Langa Consulting LLC and is Copyright © 1997-2005Langa Consulting LLC. All rights reserved. LangaList: ISSN 1533-1156

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