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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2002-08-15

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!

Many readers are still writing in about their experiences with ZoneAlarm--- thanks. Here are two emails of special note:

Reader Tommy Wright reminded me that "Visualzone," a free intrusion-analyzer we've mentioned before, now works fine with the new versions of ZA free and Pro. VisualZone processes your ZA log files, and can tell you (either in real time, or as a run-on-demand service) who's trying to access your system, what ports they're accessing, who they are, and more. Although ZA has basic alert analysis built in, the VisualZone tools are far more complete. Definitely worth checking out: http://www.visualizesoftware.com/visualzone/visualzone.htm

And reader Howie Mirkin gave us a heads up about some, er, alarming new firewall tests:

Fred, You might be interested in this site, http://www.pcflank.com/ particularly the article "Personal firewalls vs. Stealth Test, part II NEW!"  on http://www.pcflank.com/art27.htm .

Interesting indeed: According to those tests, the Norton firewalls fail some very basic "stealthing" tests.

"Stealthing" is a technique whereby a firewall doesn't respond at all to suspicious probes from external sources--- it's almost as if your computer isn't there. Because a cracker can't "see" your PC, he'll probably move on to an easier target (and that's just what you want).

But not all firewalls use stealthing; and some that do use it only do so on selected ports. Instead of stealthing, these firewalls simply "close" the ports. That's OK, as far as it goes: By analogy, a closed port is like a locked door. With closed ports, a cracker still may not be able to get in easily, but he or she will know a PC is present behind the closed port, and may try more sophisticated attack methods to break in.

The basic firewall built into Windows XP will close (but not stealth) your ports. And, according to the PCFlank tests, the Norton firewalls do likewise. So do some other firewalls.

Stealthing is better. By analogy, it's like a door that's not only locked, but camouflaged: A prospective burglar can't even tell the door is there, and so won't attempt to break the locks.

The PCFlank tests do show that my personal two favorite desktop firewalls--- ZoneAlarm and Sygate--- pass all tests. <g>

Thanks to Tommy, Howie, and all who wrote in!

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2) Free Utility to "Sterilize" Hard Disks

Hi Fred, [Here's] a free utility for erasing information off disks; it runs from a bootable floppy. It's called Autoclave and was written by Josh Larios from Washington University and can be found here: http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/index.html

...[I]t sounds like a cool tool to have around, for when it's time to discard old drives. As the description of the program claims, the most thorough erasing "25 structured passes: Unbearably slow, but probably secure against the NSA" )--- Eran Rosenmann

Thanks, Eran. The tagline for "Autoclave" is "hard drive sterilization" and it does sound like it could exceed some of the techniques we covered in http://www.informationweek.com/837/langa.htm . I'd probably feel comfortable using Autoclave on most standard hard drives, but I still have to agree with the US Government that the only 100% certain way to ensure that a hard drive's data is no longer readable is to destroy the drive physically. (No, I'm not kidding!)

I've actually done that several times in the past, such as when I replaced a dying hard drive that had contained subscriber information from the Plus! edition of this newsletter. I wiped the old drive clean with third-party software using a standard "government wipe" process: a 7-pass procedure that involves overwriting the entire disk (including the directory, where the file names and attributes are stored) multiple times with random data, and truncating the file allocation record so that wiped files appear to be a zero-length items.

I then used a prybar to destroy the drive's circuit board; popped open the drive enclosure, broke off the drive heads, and scratched off large amounts of the oxide coating on the actual platters.

Extreme? It all depends on how much you want to protect old data from potential snoops. (In my case, I take data security *very* seriously. <g>) For less extreme cases, something like Autoclave may be a simple, less messy alternative!

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3) "A Great Website" For Tech Bargains

You've probably seen this one, but just in case, it's http://www.techbargains.com . It's a guide to special deals from the big name companies. Some require coupon #s or entering the vendor site in a certain way, which Techbargains explains in detail. Some have very limited time frames.

I found this place by chance at 11 pm on July 31. They had posted an alert to an end-of-quarter deal from Dell Small Business Division, with full instructions on how to get it even if you're not a business. I beat the expiration time by 5 minutes. Purchased a Dimension 4500 with 1.8ghz P4, 40 gig drive, 128 meg DDR ram, cdrom, WinXP Home and a throwaway MS Works, no monitor or speakers, for $409 plus sales tax, shipping free.

This is the first PC I haven't built myself. I couldn't have purchased the parts at anywhere near this price. --- Randy Brook

Thanks, Randy. I assume the site gets a commission from items purchased through its links, but the deals still seem pretty good. For example, in going to the Dell site and trying to recreate the pricing on  Randy's Dimension 4500 as closely as possible, the best I could do was $678. It appears that Randy's deal was a genuine bargain, with a savings of $269. Not bad at all! The "Techbargains" site has lots more, too, in many categories--- worth a look!

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--------------( the above is an advertisement )--------------

4) Not A "Sign," But  A Real Spaceship

The movie "Signs" is fun fiction, but make no mistake: Crop circles are really done by human pranksters and "performance artists."  Crop circles have been done at various times in history, with the recent, er, crop of circles starting some years back when a couple of older guys with a good sense of human gullibility used boards and ropes to flatten out simple circular areas in British grain fields, to the consternation of some locals.

Today, crop "circles" are rarely simple circular areas. Instead, whole teams of pranksters and artists actually compete against each other to create ever-more-elaborate designs, and to get away undetected. They've developed techniques for entering and exiting the fields without leaving obvious tracks (one team uses bar stools to move through the grain without footprints). There are even videos and web sites that show you how it's done; including the math and tools behind the complex geometries of some of the fantastically elaborate designs that have appeared. 

For example, see http://www.circlemakers.org/guide.html or http://www.circlemakers.org/exhibit_a.html or http://www.circlemakers.org/ or  http://www.csicop.org/list/listarchive/msg00350.html or  http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/138_circlemakers.shtml  Or, do a web search. But be warned: You'll have to wade through an incredible number of sites from people who desperately want to believe that aliens or unexplained "plasma vortices" or "earth energy ley-lines" or other made-up phenomena somehow create these designs. Hey, why accept the simple, obvious, demonstrable answer (humans!) when you can imagine some unseen, un-provable force or intelligence behind the designs?

I personally love the notion of aliens who--- although smart enough to travel interstellar distances--- are still so dim that they think the best way to communicate with us is not through radio or TV, or by landing a ship in any populated area, or by walking up to to a human and simply saying hello--- but rather to draw enigmatic patterns in grain fields. I truly hope the universe really is teeming with life and other civilizations, but if or when we meet them, I also truly hope they're not dolts whose idea of communication involves doodling in our Wheaties.

OK, by now you've guessed I'm a deep skeptic of most supposedly paranormal things, so you may be surprised when I tell you there's a real spaceship visible most nights over the US this week. In fact, at one time or another, it's visible over most of the earth. Really!

For more info, and to find the local times when this for-real spaceship will be visible to you. See: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/24jul_spaceship2.htm

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5) Digital Photo Info

Fred, As a Plus subscriber, I thoroughly enjoy the Langalist, "plus" the extra items for us subscribers, however your vacation pictures were a "plus" that will be hard to beat. They are absolutely great!!!. Thanks for sharing them with us. I'm looking at buying a digital camera and would like to know what make & model camera you used to shoot those great vacation pictures. Keep the Langalist coming! ---Phil Carlson

I have an older Sony Mavica CD1000. Perhaps its nicest feature is that it records images directly to a mini-CDR right inside the camera body (no memory sticks or flash cards to download from, etc). Blank mini-CDs cost about 40 cents each, can hold 156 MB of photos; and can later be viewed on any PC with an ordinary CD drive. (No special card readers, cables or adapters are needed.) You also can change CDs on the fly: When one fills up, you pop it out, pop in a blank one, and continue shooting without having to "empty the camera's memory" or download anything to a PC or other device. In fact, you can change a CD in less time than you can change film in most conventional cameras.

The Mavica also can take 15-sec MPEG mini-movies on the same CD, side by side with the still photos; these movies also play on any standard PC (Windows Media Player handles the files just fine, for example). This is a nice plus, although the camera is really built for, and works best at, still photos.

Newer CD-based Mavicas are smaller, have much higher resolution (my older model is a 2.1Mpixel unit), and cost much less than the original CD-1000--- quite a deal!

But the Mavicas, like all digital cameras, have built-in biases and limitations. For example, the Mavica tends to shoot "dark," and has trouble with extreme dynamic ranges (say, a vista with brilliant white clouds or snow *and* deep shadows, all in the same frame).

This is correctable with image editing software, and there's a ton out there. But note: The images I posted online were largely *un*corrected because I had literally about 1,000 images, and time only for a very basic "clean up" of the photos.

As with the best film-based photography, you get the best results from digital photography when you tweak (or "develop") each photo, one by one. I usually reserve this for special shots, because it's time consuming. For routine tweaking of digital photos, I'll use a "batch mode" tool that's roughly analogous to putting film through a commercial processor: You can process a pile of photos at once, but with less sensitivity than with frame-by-frame tweaking. (Most of the online photos I posted were tweaked only at this very general level.)

The tool I personally like is DCE AutoEnhance because it has both a very powerful custom mode for frame-by-frame image editing and also an easy batch mode for blowing through many photos at one sitting: Once you know your camera's biases, you can save the settings (for gamma, contrast, sharpness, color balance, etc.) that best improve general picture quality, and apply those settings to any number of photos, automatically. The software also easily lets you scale, resize, or resample photos (say, to produce smaller images suitable for email or web sites).

There are free and pay versions of AutoEnhance and many other digital imaging/media tools available at http://www.mediachance.com/ . If you have a digital camera, that's a site you definitely want to visit!

And if you need photos to experiment on:

Plus! Edition Subscribers click here to access photos and files from the private download area: http://www.langalist.com/Plus/euro/eurotrip.asp

Standard Edition Subscribers click here for the standard resolution photos from the public download area. Note that, due to high download volume, the server may be slow. http://www.freetune.com/euro/eurotrip.htm

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6) Thanks!

Thanks to thousands and thousands of you, the LangaList is still--- for the third year running--- one of the ten most-recommended "Computing & Internet" web sites, according to the folks at Recommend-It! It's a great feeling to know that this newsletter (and Langa.Com) is useful enough for many, many of you to have suggested it to friends and colleagues.

And, as a way of saying "Thanks!" there are two prizes you can win simply for making a recommendation. For example, if you use the Recommend-It service, you can win $10,000 (full details also available via this link):
http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=143182

Or, win a no-strings $30 Gift Certificate for any item at Amazon.Com--- books, software, hardware, kitchenware, toys... and more. To have a shot at winning, 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 a $30 Gift Certificate! (Full details also available via this link):
http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm

Either way, thank you again, and good luck!

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7) New Release of Favorites Home Page

Remember this free tool by reader Robert Perry? It parses your Favorites folder, and places the URLs into a custom web page that resides on your own system. Using that web page as your Home Page means you have instant access to all your Favorites in a format that's easier to navigate than via the Favorites menu.

Hi Fred, There's a new release of Favorites Home Page available.

Version Info and History
http://www.favoriteshomepage.com

Download
http://www.favoriteshomepage.com/fhp.zip
http://www.geocities.com/favoriteshomepage/fhp.zip

Regards, Robert Perry

Thanks, Robert!

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8) They Just Keep Coming And Coming And Coming...

Over two 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:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site
http://www.langa.com/randomlink.htm

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

Glassblowing and More
http://telusplanet.net/public/rkaltenb/index.html

Ralph's Links (incl. Troubleshooting And Tweaks)
http://www.ralphcaddell.com

IE Toolbar Extensions
http://louhol.bravepages.com/

CyberPub
http://www.cyberpub.co.uk/

Channel Z (writing/fiction)
http://members.lycos.co.uk/mattpurland/links.html

Link Central
http://personal.atl.bellsouth.net/msy/k/o/komputer/links.html

3D Chat and More
http://webline.150m.com

AlphaOmega Computers
http://aocomp.4gigs.com/

Religious Links
http://members.shaw.ca/carmenhumphrey/links.htm

Improve Your PC's Protection
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~guyw/computer_stuff.html

Live from Maine...
http://doyouhaveabuck.com/

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9) Over *Fifteen Thousand* Free Math Tools!

Fred, after reading about Calc 98 (see "Free Scientific/Engineering/Stats/Financial Calc" in http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2002/2002-08-05.htm#3 ). I remembered a site I have used: Martindale's *the reference desk*. The web site is
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html

According the home page the site contains over 15,656 calculators for math, statistics, science and engineering. --- Ron

Wow, Ron! I never knew there were so many types and varieties of calculators available. There are so many, you almost need a calculator to grasp 'em! <g>

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10) Just For Grins

Reader "mlcraige" picked up on pun-able wording in the item "Microsoft Opens Windows, A Little" in http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2002/2002-08-12.htm#4. He writes:

"... Microsoft said it plans to disclose 385 bits of computer code and internal operating rules, previously kept secret, that outside software developers can use to write programs to run on Windows."

Fred, here they are:

1010100001100010101010101010000101010000101011110001111011100011100001
1100011100001110101010100010101011100010101010001010101000010101010000
1010101000101010100010101010000010101010100001010101000101010100001010
1101010000110001010101010101000010101000010101111000111101110001110000
1110001110000111010101010001010101010000110001010101010101000010101000
0101011110001111011100011100001110001110000111010101010001010

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Inkjet Cleaning
• "Old newbie's" reflections on Mandrake Linux
• Feedback on "Mosquitoware"

Today's LangaList Plus! Edition contains all ten items above, plus about 30% more content including: Tools and techniques to keep your inkjet printer heads clog-free--- or to revive them if they're already clogged beyond what a normal "cleaning cycle" can handle; a reader's thoughtful and informative trials of a different flavor of Linux; and real-life feedback on anti-mosquito software (!) we recently discussed in the Plus! edition.

The Plus! edition is just a buck a month! http://www.langa.com/plus.htm 

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PLEASE NOTE:
Due to scheduled monthly system maintenance,
the next issue will mail on: Aug 22

See you next issue, Thursday Aug 22.

Best,

Fred
( Editor@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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