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LangaList 2003-10-23 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free! --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 1) Murphy Lives!You've all heard of Murphy's Law--- usually summed up as "whatever can go wrong, will." The original "Murphy"--- the late Edward A Murphy Jr.--- was recently and belatedly honored for coining the phrase some 50 years ago during early rocket sled experiments at Edwards Air Force Base in California. See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994231 and http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2003 . Although Mr. Murphy is gone, his law lives on, and has been in full force around here. I won't bore you with the details, but basically every essential service that I outsource--- web hosting, ecommerce, my newsletter mailing service, my ISP, my telephone, and lots more, encompassing literally *every* essential service I outsource for Langa.Com and this newsletter--- has suffered one or more failures in the last 10 weeks. Sigh. And because these are external services, I neither caused nor can fix the problems myself. The only recourse I have to effect a solution is to talk to distant techs who may not regard my problem(s) with the same urgency as do I. Normally, I'm a big fan of outsourcing, but lately, man.... Bottom line: It's been nuts; the worst string of bad tech luck I've ever had. Oddly, one of the once-reliable services that's becoming less dependable is plain old email. For example, last week, I sent in my normal column to InformationWeek.Com, but it never got where it needed to be. Perhaps the mail server hiccupped on send; or the mail was misrouted; or lost on receipt; or misfiled--- who knows? By the time all concerned realized what was happening, we'd missed the posting deadline for this week's scheduled column. That column will appear later. But one immediate result was that I had to tear apart and rewrite last Monday's scheduled newsletter issue at the last minute because it originally contained a reference to the now-delayed InformationWeek column. That hasty re-do, in turn, caused more glitches. For example, in the password-creation story, I gave what should have been the same example two different ways, using "Borg aren't Swedes" in one place and "Borg are not Swedes" in another. (See http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-10-20.htm#3 ) I apologize for the error, which (fortunately) doesn't affect the main point of the article. But that specific email problem got me wondering about email reliability in general. How much mail overall is getting lost or misfiltered? How many direct and secondary problems are caused by what seems to be email's decreasing reliability? To answer that question, I'd like to propose a grand, worldwide experiment. May I ask for your help? See the next item. Click to email this item to a
friend 2) Let's Test Email ReliabilityHere's what I propose: I'd like to gather a group of several hundred volunteers from all over the world, and send each one a simple non-spam email message, in plain text and with no attachments, from a personal mail account (not a bulk mailer). I'd like to see how many of these simple messages actually make it through the gauntlet of servers, routers, and isp-based and local mail filters. I won't tell the volunteers in advance what address the mail will come from or what the subject line will be--- it would be a kind of cheating to have people pre-set their filters to let the mail in. Rather, I propose to simulate a normal, unanticipated, plain-text, non-spam email, as if between friends or coworkers, and see what gets through. May I ask for volunteers? Of course, and as always, I promise not to spam you or use your email for any other purpose whatsoever. Ideally, I'd like to have every country in the world, and certainly every state in the US, represented. If you'd like to participate, please send a short note to EMAILTEST@LANGA.COM ; please put your general physical location in the subject line with the COUNTRY FIRST and the CITY/TOWN SECOND. (This will let me sort the mail geographically.) For example, your subject line might be "USA, Boston," or "England, London" or "New Zealand, Wellington" etc. If there's more than one city with the same name in your country, please add a further identifier as a THIRD element in the subject line: "USA, Portland, Maine" and "USA, Portland, Oregon" for example. Again, for clarity, the email should be addressed to EMAILTEST@LANGA.COM and the subject line should contain either: COUNTRY, CITY or COUNTRY, CITY, STATE/PROVINCE You can leave the body of the email blank, or put whatever you like there. If I get enough volunteers from enough locations, I'll first contact the volunteers to let them know what the exact test procedure will be, and we'll go from there. Thanks for your help--- assuming Murphy cuts us a break and that you got this email newsletter in the first place! <g> Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 3) More On Passwords
Re: Spaces Some password systems and OSes don't allow spaces, so standardizing on no-space passwords makes this approach more universal. Also, not having spaces does make it a little harder for simple dictionary-based password-cracking schemes to succeed, because they have to figure out where the concatenated words start and end. But there are no absolutes: if you wish, and if your password systems and OS allow spaces, you can certainly use them. Re: Simple substitution rules... Well, my substitution example was deliberately simple, for illustrative purposes. And remember, most people who use passwords employ words like "password" or "secret" (those really are the two most common passwords!) or words from the dictionary, or obvious things like their spouse's name, and so on. Using even the simple scheme I illustrated is a big step up from those too-easy passwords. But for more advanced users, by all means, use the most advanced method you can, as long as it doesn't get so complex that it gets in your way or tempt you to cut corners. Click to email this item to a
friend 4) CoolWebSearch = Very UnCoolCrackers--- malicious hackers--- often are very lazy. I don't just mean in the obvious sense, in that they won't get off their butts and find honest work, or use their talents for any constructive end. But they also often steal each other's work, so that when one "exploit" succeeds, many other crackers will simply ape the exploit in their own wholly-derivative, non-original work. For example, this reader encountered an old browser hijack exploit that's been widely imitated in new follow-on exploits. They're all named after the original instance, even though most of the follow-ons have nothing to do with that initial item:
Thanks, Ed. Indeed, the above site refers to this often-copied exploit as "The CoolWebSearch Chronicles---The story of a thousand hijacks." Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Compendium Of Google Tips
Wow, that Ziff site has more ads and less content per page than just about any major site I've seen recently. But if you take the time to step through the pages to follow the thin thread of actual content through to the end, it's a pretty good article. Thanks, Lynn. Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 6) Last Week To "Recommend And Win"Next week, I'll choose three more monthly winners who each will get a FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to the LangaList Plus! edition. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.) 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 FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION! (Full details also available via this link): http://www.langa.com/recommend.htm Click to email this item to a
friend 7) Broken "Help"Every 90 days or so, when we update the LangaList Archives for Plus! subscribers ( http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-10-13.htm#11se ), some readers discover that their Windows Help system is broken. The Archives are distributed as compressed Windows HelpFile content (a .chm file); that content is meant to be searched and displayed by the Help engine built into each copy of Windows. But this reader found that his system couldn't process the .chm file, and then also found out why:
Thank you, Jos! Sometimes, a mangled Help system is a sign of more-serious trouble with the base OS, but the above may be a great help if it's just the Help subsystem itself that's broken! Click to email this item to a
friend 8) More Reader Sites!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 ) Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date
Sites Starting At Music with Lena Dr. Craig Benson Thomas A. Roll The Hatman Chronicles System Doc Faddis.net Computer Services Herbs Can Cleanse Aussie Ruth's Freebies... Personal Computer Trainer Sarge's Personal Web Page Worlds Best Computer Tips Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- $12 For A Full YEAR! "Fred, I can't tell you the number of ways I have spent twelve bucks - but I can tell you the best twelve bucks I've spent in a long time was to upgrade to the Plus Edition of the LangaList. And so darn organized too, your operation that is. I've already got another twelve just waiting for next year! ---John" Thanks, John! <g> --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 9) Free Text Readers/Speakers
Thanks Marc! Interested readers might also want to check out the free version of ReadPlease http://www.readplease.com , too. I use the commercial version of ReadPlease for proofreading. Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For GrinsAl Amantea sends this along:
Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
Plus! edition subscribers not only get much more content in every issue (like the above), but also have access to a private web site with over 100,000 words of special content and features not found in *any* issue of the newsletter; along with dozens of private downloads and much more--- all for just $1 per month! Check out: http://www.langa.com/plus.htm Click to email this item to a
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