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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2003-05-08

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!

1) Easy Linux Setups

Come check it out, and then join in the discussion: Have you tried any of the zero- and small-footprint Linux distributions? If you have, which ones, and was your overall experience good or bad? If you've shied away from Linux in the past, will you now try one of the versions that won't affect your current setup? Which Linux versions look most appealing? Join in!

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--- Tom Sobieski"

Just $1/month--- 14 cents an issue!

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2) Invisible Caching

In "Web Pages Not Updating?" ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-05-05.htm#5 ) we discussed several common reasons why a web page might not refresh  when it should, so you browser instead shows you an old, out-of-date page.

Reader Michael Kirk suggests another cause, as well:

Dear Fred, I read with interest the piece on web pages not updating due to cache problems on the user's local PC as I had similar problems some months ago.

I suspected a similar problem at the time and did something like what you suggested and was surprised when it didn't fix it. I even went to the length of completely disabling caching and I would still get stale pages.

It turned out the problem was that my (then) cable ISP was using invisible caching servers which intercepted and re-directed all web traffic; these caching servers were not properly updating though. I found the cure was to hold the Ctrl key while clicking the refresh button in my browser, apparently this sends a message to the caching server to refresh the cached copy it has stored.

I've since changed to a decent DSL ISP that doesn't use such under-handed tactics to cut its bandwidth bill; you wouldn't mind so much if the servers they put in place worked properly. :-(    ---Mike

Thanks, Mike. Several "speed up your connection" companies do this as well, not to reduce their bandwidth, but to make your own connection seem faster than it really is: They sell you software which fools your browser into going to their servers for all web accesses. The first time any user of the service visits a site, there's no real or apparent speedup. But the next time anyone else asks for the same page, it's delivered from a copy stored on the intermediate server instead of from the actual site. This saves several "hops" across the web to the real site, and avoids any bottlenecks that may exist at the actual site's servers. In some cases, the server that's storing the cached version of the pages may also do some form of data compression to further speed the transmission of the stored web page to you.

If you frequent only popular pages and sites, this kind of setup can indeed make things seem faster, because it's likely that someone else already will have visited the site in question, and gotten it loaded (at normal speed) into the intermediate servers. But if you're often the first to any given site--- if the places you like to visit haven't already been visited by someone before you--- you won't see much (or any) benefit. And (as Mike says) if the intermediate servers also don't regularly update their stored pages, you can end up seeing yesterday's news, or worse.

BTW: AOL used to cache pages on its servers, too, although I don't know if they still do. See, for example, http://www.conanicut.com/aol_users.htm ; or the section called "OUT-OF-DATE CHARTS AND REPORTS" on http://www.decisionpoint.com/aboutdp/customerservice.html .

So: The Achilles heel of all these caching schemes is that if the cache gets out of synch with the real page, users of the cached copy may never know; and will see only the old, stale page.

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3) Deciphering Error Codes

Sometimes, when there's a problem, Windows will try to tell you what went wrong--- but often, the explanation isn't exactly illuminating. <g>

Hi Fred, I have received the newsletter for a couple of years and I have interested many more from the Tampa PC Users Group. I have been looking for a site that would explain and have a listing of BSOD ("Blue Screen Of Death" ) codes to use in trouble shooting. I used to have a bookmark but when my hard drive died and I restored from my backup of course I can't find this bookmark. I have searched for 2 days now and about given up from typing in search engines and then looking at results. ---Bob

Let me suggest an alternative: Rather than searching to find a list of all error codes, use the individual error code itself as the search term. (That's what I do.)

For example: Say you got a cryptic "Stop 0xA0" error. If you go to the Microsoft Knowledgebase (
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;KBHOWTO ) and enter "Stop 0xA0" in the "Search For" field, you'll get a list of 25 different articles that discuss the exact causes and solutions for that error You can further refine the search by limiting it to just the version of Windows you're using, too.

You often can do the same sort of search in Google by using the error code itself as the search term. If the error code is more than one word, enclose the entire error code in quotes. (Google turns quote marks into the HTML equivalent code, which is %22, but don't worry about that: You can type the quotation marks normally when you enter your search.)

For example, if I go to Google and enter "Stop 0xA0" (with the quote marks) as the search term, Google turns it into this url,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Stop+0xA0%22 , and brings up about 50 pages that discuss the "Stop 0xA0" error. Piece o' cake!

If the narrow search doesn't work, you can go broader, searching for  more general codes: http://www.google.com/search?q=error+codes+windows  Or trawl Usenet for similar info, as these example searches show: (general) http://tinyurl.com/aqjx ; (specific) http://tinyurl.com/aqk1 .

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4) Still *More* Free Tool Recommendations

Man, I knew our discussion of favorite free software tools ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=8800348 ) would get a lot of replies, but this has been awesome--- they're *still* coming in!

For example:

Fred,  Re your invitation for recommendations to supplement your own useful list of tools, I should like to nominate a couple--

1). X-FONTER 3.7.6 is an excellent means for sorting out bloated font lists. Some applications dump a load of fonts on to one's PC without even mentioning them, and it is easy to amass so many that they cause problems. X-Fonter illustrates the list and shows their file names. There is a generous-sized panel on which one can set up one's own specimen text, upper and lower case alphabets, numerals, accented letters and so on, in one's own choice of size and colour. It is thus easy to run down the names and see instantly, for example, if a Euro or other symbol [is available].

http://users.pandora.be/eclypse/xfonter.html or
http://www.google.com/search?q=X%2DFONTER

2). YANKEE CLIPPER is an incredibly useful super-clipboard which, in History mode, records every 'copy' and 'cut', and stores them even when the PC is switched off, up to a limit of 200 text items, 200 RTF, 200 URLs, and 20 bitmaps. There is also an additional Boilerplate mode which can store standard texts for pasting into documents as required. From http://www.Yankee-Clipper.net  --- Alan Turner

Thanks, Alan! We'll have more reader recommendations in upcoming issues--- there's way too many to run all at once!

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5) "Yahoo Popper"

Our discussion of "HotMail Popper" (
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-04-24.htm#9 ), a tool that lets you access HotMail accounts with normal POP3 email clients and anti-spam tools, brought this related suggestion from reader Roelof Stevens:

Dear Fred, In the LangaList SE of April 24th 2003 reader Mark Guenin mentioned Hotmail Popper. There is a similar program for Yahoo webmail accounts. It allows you to download your mail from Yahoo through a normal POP mail client.

Downloading your mail this way is slower than from a normal popmail account, but still the advantages are obvious. When Yahoo terminated their free pop access, my account seemed rather useless. Now I use it all the time. Heck, I even sent you this message through Yahoo, using my ISP's smtp server.

See http://sourceforge.net/projects/yahoopops/

Kind regards, Roelof Stevens, The Netherlands

Thanks, Roelof!

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6) Paul Watson Got A $30 Gift Certificate. Want One?

Reader Paul Watson just got a no-strings $30 Gift Certificate for any item at Amazon.Com--- books, software, hardware, kitchenware, toys, and more. Paul writes:

"Thank you for pulling my name out of your hat :) I really appreciate your list, it gives me a lot of information... I gratefully accept your gift certificate and look forward to receiving more great info." ---Paul

Paul got the certificate by using the "Recommend" link at http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm  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 may win a gift certificate, just as Paul did. (Full details are available via that link.) The more times you make a recommendation, the greater your chances of winning!

Or, if you'd like to try to win $10,000 (really!), try this link (full
details also available here): http://www.recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=143182

Either way, thank you, and good luck!

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7) Spam's Silver Anniversary (Sigh)

Here's an odd but interesting item I saw on a BBC tech site I visit from time to time: The very first spam message was sent exactly 25 years ago this month!

Research by net alumni Brad Templeton has found that the first spam message was sent back in the days when the internet was known as Arpanet.

By 1978 Arpanet had been operating for about nine years and was letting lots of people at universities and government bodies swap e-mail.

On 3 May a marketing executive at Digital Equipment Corporation, a leading maker of minicomputers, decided to send all West Coast Arpanet users a message about an open day that would show off its new range of machines.

The message generated huge controversy within the Arpanet community, partly because it was so poorly written and because it clearly broke the nascent network's acceptable use policy....
 

Fast forward to today, and now something like 40-60% of the world's email traffic is spam. Sigh.

Full item: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2996319.stm

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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/randomlink.htm

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

OmemO
http://www.omemo.be/index.html

Capeway (as in Cape Cod, Mass.)
http://www.capeway.com/

Allan G. Lloyd
http://www.alloyd.us/

One More Mountain to Climb
http://www.mypixels.net/

Mule
http://mule2.com/

Cleveland Indians Report
http://cir.blogspot.com/

Scrabble Fanatic
http://free.hostdepartment.com/s/scrabblehead/

Pam's Panic Place
http://panic54.tripod.com/

raymonddale.net
http://www.raymonddale.net/sc/doc/1000.htm

Red Oak Eagles
http://www.foe.com/iowa/redoak/index.html

Souris Valley Humane Society
http://fp.minot.com/jasper/

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9) Two More Reasons To Like Eudora

We've discussed Eudora many times before (
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=eudora&as_sitesearch=langa.com ); the more email you have to deal with, the more you'll like Eudora, which has amazing filtering capabilities. For example:

Dear Fred, I am a LangaList Standard Edition subscriber. I often heard you mention Eudora and its filtering capabilities. So maybe you would want to visit http://www.cecilw.com/eudora/  Thanks for providing LangaList Standard Edition for FREE. Rgds, Erik

Thanks, Erik. the site above is a set of downloadable filter rules you can install in Eudora to provide powerful spam-filtering abilities. It's based on pattern-matching--- it's not statistically-based--- so it's not a state of the art antispam tool, but it works for many kinds of spam, and also serves as an example of just how powerful Eudora's built-in filters are: The author claims he achieves a 99% success rate in blocking spam, with very few false positives.

Then there's this, which may be of interest to anyone experimenting with Linux:

Fred: I've been enjoying your ezine for a few months now after reading about it on the TechnoLawyer mailing list ( http://www.technolawyer.com ). Anyway, I thought I'd drop you a line with another Eudora tip.

As you mentioned, Eudora's MBX mail box files are basically big text files. What you may not be aware of is that they are in a standard UNIX format, which allows a Eudora user who is interested in trying out or moving to Linux or BSD to migrate his mail over easily (although I'm not sure how well any attachments might get migrated). As a matter of fact, I was able to move mail from Eudora into KMail -- KDE's integrated mail client -- merely by copying the Eudora mail over to my Linux box into my /home/user/Mail folder.

This feature could also be useful for someone using a different Windows mail client who needs to move it onto a UNIX box. For example, an Outlook Express user could import his mail into Eudora, then move it to his UNIX client.

Hope you find this tip useful and keep up the good work. --- Dave Markowitz

Thanks, Dave. I've shifted Eudora mailboxes around from PC to PC many times, but always within Windows. Nice to know the mobility extends to Linux, as well!

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10) Just For Grins

Hi! love the letter, esp. "just for grins". I'd pay for the letter just to read this part! Thought I'd make a contribution to your various laugh lines. This was passed on to me by friend, who got it from a friend, who got it from various friends over time. So, I'm clueless as to where it came from. But since most computer geeks are "engineers", thought you and others might enjoy reading it. Enjoy, Rachael Anconetani

---Engineer’s recipe for chocolate-chip cookies:

1.) 532.35 cm3 gluten
2.) 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3.) 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4.) 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5.) 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6.) 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7.) 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8.) Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
9.) 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10.) 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

Directions:

To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.

Using a screw extruder attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to thermal equilibrium.

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• Homemade "Sticky Note" Trick
     (no need for extra software to create "Post-It" type screen notes)

• Keyboard ShortCut Compendium
     (sometimes, typing is faster than mousing)

• Free Document Converter, Boot Disks, More...
     (still more excellent software)

DID YOU KNOW--- that Plus! subscribers have access to additional special features, extra content and links on a private web site? All that, plus 30% more content in every issue, for just a dollar a month. Full Plus! Edition info: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm

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PLEASE NOTE:
The next issue (May 12th) is a SPECIAL EDITION that
will be sent to Plus! subscribers only.

 The next Standard Edition will mail on: May 15th.

See you next issue!

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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Disclaimer: http://www.langa.com/legal.htm  In brief: 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 your choosing to use any information presented here.

This newsletter is a service of Langa Consulting LLC and is Copyright © 2003 Fred Langa / Langa Consulting LLC. All worldwide rights reserved. LangaList: ISSN 1533-1156

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