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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2005-11-07

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!

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1) Readers Rate Desktop Firewalls

The desktop firewall landscape is changing fast. It's not that the need for desktop firewalls is any different--- that hasn't changed at all. Desktop firewall software remains one of the three essential components of robust PC security.

But the desktop firewall software industry itself is in major flux. Some of it is consolidation: For example, Symantec (makers of the Norton Personal Firewall, among many other security products) recently acquired Sygate (makers of the popular Sygate Personal Firewall, and other products). Computer Associates bought Tiny Software (makers of Tiny Personal Firewall); Kerio has partnered with McAfee for some of its offerings; and has announced it will soon stop distributing its popular free firewall. And so on.

Even without mergers, acquisitions and partnerships, there's significant change: For instance, ZoneLabs, makers of ZoneAlarm (which almost single-handedly created the category of "desktop firewall"), now offers five distinct products ranging from a relatively basic desktop firewall up to a complex internet security suite. (More info. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=169400298 )

Even Microsoft is getting into the act. It's been shipping a basic firewall http://www.google.com/search?q=xp+firewall  as part of XP for some years now, and is extending the firewall's features and adding additional security services through its "OneCare Live" product, now in limited public beta http://beta.windowsonecare.com/ .

In short: There's a lot of dust in the air, making the choice of a desktop firewall more complex than ever.

So, to try to help sort things out, I recently asked  readers to volunteer their opinions on what the best-available current firewall is http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-10-13.htm#9 . I analyzed the first 500 replies and learned of a few firewalls I hadn't heard of before; and also saw some product-usage numbers that were, frankly, surprising.

And possibly quite useful: After all, this is a collection of first-hand reports from your fellow-readers--- people like you. It's the kind of information you might get if you sat down with a large group of people who use their PCs in ways similar to the way you use yours. It's as though you have a small army of people testing and trying things on *your* behalf.

Once I'd crunched the numbers, I downloaded the top dozen or so most-recommended firewalls, and installed them, one at a time, on a "virgin" test PC here to see what they looked like and how they set up.

It's all pulled together for you in the article posted now, free, at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402915 . There, you'll see the analysis of who's using what; see screen shots of all the most-recommended products; and read representative comments from your fellow readers as to what they like--- and don't like--- about the various firewalls.

Click on over to see the top reader-recommendations for best desktop firewalls! http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402915
 

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2) Search Frustration

Hi Fred! Thanks for the super informative work. A while back I remember an article you wrote regarding using some kind of switch or device to control two or more PC's while using only one keyboard and mouse. I can't find it in the Archives.  Perhaps  I'm not using the search function correctly since I'm a newbie at searches. Could you point me in the right direction for the article and also in the proper search techniques? Thanks again, appreciate all your help. LeRoy Segawa

There are different versions of the Archives--- one that's open to the public, and one for Plus! members. Each has its own search engine(s); and they operate slightly differently.

The best search is the one available to Plus! subscribers ( http://www.langalist.com/plus/archives/archives.asp ): You get the full content of all the LangaLists ever published in a compressed helpfile format, and use Windows' own Help engine to perform high-speed searches (simple or Boolean) right on your hard drive. It only takes a second or two to complete a search.

You normally use several keywords that you think will appear together in the article you're looking for. For example, for your search, you might type:

switch AND keyboard AND mouse

or

switch + keyboard + mouse

(either syntax works). In the Plus! Archives, you can use the AND, NOT, and OR Boolean operators; you can enclose terms or groups of terms in parenthesis to control the scope of Boolean operators; and you can use quote marks to search for exact phrases. The more, and more accurate, the keywords, the narrower your search.

The Help engine will think for a second or two, and then return the results, rank-ordered for you. In this example, if you click on the #1 Ranked item (you don't have to go online--- the full contents are right there inside the helpfile), you'll see the 2002-05-16 issue's "KVM Fans Emerge From The Shadows." Aha! "KVM" is the term you were trying to remember--- it stands for keyboard, video, mouse. The #1 ranked article may be what you looking for in itself, but if not, now that you know the exact term, you can do a new search for KVM, and the Help engine will spit out the 13 different places where "KVM" was discussed in any LangaList edition, Plus or Standard. And again, you don't have to go online to read any of the relevant articles; they're all there, right on your system.

The Standard Edition Archives are available only online--- it's a web-based search. Those Archives cover a lot, but, of course the Plus! edition's additional 30-40% is accessible only via the Plus! Archives.

The Standard online search starts at http://langa.com/search.htm , and there are several front ends offered because each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Google search is good for general queries, but less good when you're trying to find one particular thing. In this case, for example, the Google search will return KVM info, but it's buried in the list after other issues that happen to discuss keyboards, mice, etc.

Picosearch likewise isn't very good for this search.

The "Atomz" searches on http://langa.com/search2.htm work a little better in this specific case. Entering "switch + keyboard + mouse" (without the quotes) in the standard Atomz search will get you KVM articles, but also many unrelated articles; 256 in all.

The Advanced Atomz search does better: entering "switch keyboard mouse" without the quotes and hitting the "all words" button delivers 19 results; pretty good, and pretty narrow.

Please note that the Atomz searches are limited (by Atomz) to the top 500 pages at Langa.Com, so older, less-accessed information is not picked up by Atomz. And again, none of the Standard searches have access to the extra content of the Plus! editions.

So: There are many ways to search. You can search 60-70% of the total Langalist content using any of the free online tools at http://langa.com/search.htm ; it may take several passes before you find the search engine that works best for what you seek in each search, but you usually can get pretty close, as long as what you seek is in the Standard Edition, and not from too long ago.

Or you can search 100% of the LangaList content offline and at high speed, using either simple search terms or full Boolean operators, via the Plus! Archives, available free to Plus subscribers. http://www.langalist.com/plus/archives/archives.asp

(And BTW: I have two KVMs here, letting me switch among and between a total of six systems. It's wonderfully convenient!)

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3) Yikes! Here Come The "Splogs!"

It was only a matter of time, I suppose:

Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are Web Log (or "blog") sites which the author uses only for promoting affiliated websites. The purpose is to increase the PageRank of the affiliated sites, get ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Content is often nonsense or text stolen from other websites with an unusually high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites.

Splogs have become a major problem on free blog hosts such as Google's Blogspot service. These fake blogs waste valuable disk space and bandwidth as well as pollute search engine results.---Wikipedia

If you're a blogger, and especially if you use the Google tools for blogs, it'd be good to get yourself up to speed on this new form of spamming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splog
http://www.splogreporter.com/
http://fightsplog.blogspot.com/
http://www.fightsplog.com/
http://www.google.com/search?q=splog

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 so I can't order the Plus! edition. I would not mind having to pay an extra fee ...
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enjoy the Plus Edition for many years to come..." ---Jean-Pierre S

You can order by paper mail, Jean-Pierre,
and it doesn't cost any extra!

The normal ordering link (below) will let you choose among four different ways to pay,
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4) BIOS Tweaking Successes

In "Fixing The Hardware Foundation" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-10-27.htm#4 ) we discussed resetting the ESCD:

....the "Extended System Configuration Data" area; a small section of non-volatile memory that stores hardware configuration data from boot to boot. Normally, the ESCD lets your PC boot faster than otherwise by letting the system skip having to rediscover all the attached hardware. Instead, the PC just checks the ESCD and assumes that everything's still the same.

But if the ESCD gets scrambled, corrupted or out of date, then your PC will try to boot with a configuration that may not work. If the failure is egregious enough, the system will realize something's wrong and reset the ESCD data from scratch. But subtle problems may pass undetected by the PC's diagnostics--- even though *you* know something's wrong.

Several readers experimented with their ESCD and BIOS settings, with interesting outcomes:

Hi! Just wanted you to know that I had been having an on-going problem with my monitor and tried the resetting in Bios of the ESCD and bingo it helped my problem too. My monitor was blank at bootup and kept having to reboot until it would finally have something on the screen.  I tried everything and now my Plus subscription has paid for itself over and over as the advice from the Geek squad was to purchase a new monitor. Thanx Fred! ---Willy

Hi Fred, I thought you and your subscribers might find this experience of interest.
My wife has an eMachines system and experienced a problem.  She has a Haupauge TV tuner card in her computer and schedules TV programs to be saved for later playback.  Starting about a week ago her computer started recording programs shifted in time.  This resulted in her TV programs not being recorded.  She checked the Window's clock setting and found that the clock had advanced in time.  She reset the clock time to fix the problem.  This worked for a day, but then the clock again advanced in time and the TV recording problem was back.  Watching the clock she found that the clock would advance about a half hour in a 24 hour period. She has a service contract with eMachines and called their support line.  The technician said that the problem was that she had an application running that was affecting the running of the clock.  She had my wife delete most of the applications in the startup list. This did not fix the problem, so my wife called eMachine support again. This technician thought the problem was the battery.  She ask for them to send her a new battery.  They refused saying that she could damage the computer while replacing the battery. They wanted her to ship the computer to them to replace the battery.  They promised to return the computer in a few weeks.  This was unacceptable, so she asked to speak to the supervisor.  He said that the support tech was wrong.  That the problem was software and that she must have a virus or spyware on her computer that was causing the problem.  She told them she uses Norton Antivirus and anti-spyware software and had run them and they did not report any problems. The supervisor then said that something was wrong in Windows XP and she should reinstall XP from the CDs that came with the system.  He said this would wipe out all her data files and applications.  She should back up her data files and reinstall XP and then reinstall her applications and data files.  They offered to do this if she shipped the system to them and promised to return the system in two weeks.  However, they would not reinstall the applications and her data.  They refused to send a technician to the house even though their service contact says they would , at their discretion, do so. I then did a newsgroups search and found a many messages about clock problems.  They stated that this was a hardware problem and required adjusting a trimmer capacitor on the motherboard.  This requires having an instrument to check the clock frequency, which I do not have. Therefore  I decided to check the BIOS.  I did not see anything there that would allow me to change the clock's operation.  So I decided to just reset the BIOS to its default settings (which had never been changed).  This fixed the problem!  The clock now runs correctly and my wife is now able to record her TV programs. It appears to me that the BIOS has software and settings in it to manage the clock's operation and this had changed somehow. What do you think the moral of this story should be? ---
Sol Libes

The moral? How about: "Exhaust the simple fixes before you try the major ones." <g>

But it is a little strange: Every standard PC ever made--- ever, going all the way back to the very first IBM PC!--- has had a BIOS, but the BIOS remains electronica incognito for most users. The ESCD must be close to 10 years old now, and even fewer people have heard of it.

But now *you* all know!

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=BIOS&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000
http://www.google.com/search?q=BIOS

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=escd&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000
http://www.google.com/search?q=escd

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5) Linksys Gem

Fred -- On the Liinksys issue mentioned in your most recent issue: There is a website( http://www.linksysinfo.org/ ) devoted entirely to Linksys routers and especially to the WRT54G router. It includes a forum, drivers downloads, and information on modifications you can make to the routers. Most of the information is pretty technical but there are people in the forums willing to explain things in detail. ---Jonathan Spencer

Nice find, Jonathan! Combined with http://www.wown.com/ for general, non-brand-specific networking help, you ought to be able to remedy just about any networking issue you might encounter!

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6) PR Budget = $0.00

Long-time readers know this newsletter is a one-person private project of mine: It's not part of some publishing empire's stable of publications. It's just me here! <g> There's no budget, staff or facility to handle outreach and promotions: The newsletter depends on word of mouth to grow.

May I ask you a favor? In each issue, I try to offer you useful, interesting and amusing factoids to help you with your hardware, software, and time online. Can you take just a minute to help me out in return?

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, just use the following link to recommend the LangaList to a friend. Your friend just may find a new source of useful information and you just may win one of three FREE ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the Plus! Edition that I award each month.

Full info and "Recommend" form: http://langa.com/recommend.htm  Thank you for helping to spread the word about the LangaList!

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7) Sony's Baloney

Hi Fred, Are you aware of this.  Sounds liked a good idea gone really bad. Thanks,
Wayne

FYI, the newest Sony "Digital Rights Management" system on audio CDs apparently installs a "rootkit" that attempts to hide itself from detection and intercepts all calls to the cd drive of your PC. The rootkit appears to have several vulnerabilities in and of itself and these are introduced even on a fully patched and secured windows system.
As reported by The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/01/sony_rootkit_drm/
 

Hi, Fred ---- I'll be eagerly awaiting your comments in the LangaList on this Sony
rootkitting exploit:
Sony Attacks PC's Worldwide With DRM Rootkit
http://wizbangblog.com/archives/007480.php
Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html
--=Regards, Morton A. Goldberg

Many others wrote in, as well. (Thanks to all!) Lots more:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+drm+rootkit

Yes, it's a terrible idea; using a Rootkit ( http://www.google.com/search?q=rootkit ) for digital rights management is overkill, if ever there was such.

Hostile and aggressive copy protection has always, always, always backfired on the vendors using it. Example: Lotus1-2-3 was once one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world. Then they instituted a ridiculous "three installs and you're out" copy protection program where you'd be locked out on the fourth install, even if the reinstalls were totally valid ones by the original purchaser on his own machine, using the original disks. And this was back in the early days of PCs when it wasn't uncommon to have to reformat a system every 3-6 months. Didn't matter to Lotus:  There was no appeal, no legal workaround, no option: If your drive crashed, or you bought a new PC, or whatnot, you got three installs, period, and then had to buy a new copy of the very expensive software.

Guess what happened? Users either felt justified in using copy-protection cracking tools so they could access the software they'd paid for; and/or flocked to Microsoft's Excel, which wasn't as good (the macro language wasn't as well-developed then, for instance) but which avoided the hassles of Lotus' draconian copy-protection scheme. Lotus' fortunes changed soon thereafter, and it withered to a fraction of its former size and clout.

Note to Sony: Those who do not study history....

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8) They Just Keep Coming And Coming...

Some four thousand of your fellow readers have now "Loaded the code." Please click over to http://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://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://langa.com/randomlink.htm

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

Malware Help
http://www.malwarehelp.org/keep-yourself-informed.html

SoHo IT Solutions
http://callsohoit.com/

Aquarian Reflections
http://www.aquarianreflections.com/yahoowebsite.html

Ron's Newsletter
http://www.route53.com/newsletter.html

Designs by Patrick Immel
http://www.patrickimmel.com/

DogMatch
http://www.dog-match.com/

Web Development
http://www.rdesigngroup.com/

Web & Graphic Design
http://www.paulglowiak.com/

Billy Helfrich's Page
http://billy-x.50megs.com/index.html

Niagara Falls, Ontario
http://accessniagara.com/blog/

Funeral Consulting
http://www.patcorrao.com/funeral/index.htm

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9) WPA, Win2K, XP...

Fred,  Recently Ed Foster related a story about a user who was being squeezed into either getting a new copy of WinXP or installing an expensive, "approved" replacement motherboard http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2005/10/11/030/82390).  This brings up a question for users who, like me, are considering getting a new computer:  Does it make sense to use Win2k (if one can still get it) and avoid the activation headaches of XP, or does XP provide advantages which are so great that they overcome the annoyances of activation? ---Joe Decker

Windows Product Activation is an annoyance, but Microsoft hasn't been as aggressive (I know: a miracle!) as was first feared when WPA was announced.

Usually, WPA is a one-time thing that takes a few seconds. On a couple occasions here (I have almost a dozen PCs, with very frequent hardware and software changes), the automated process didn't work, and I had to use the toll-free automated phone system Microsoft set up. And once, maybe four years ago, I had to talk to a human tech. But in each case, I was given new activation codes. That's as it should be--- I wasn't doing anything illicit.

In normal use, WPA will be a speedbump you'll encounter now and again, but nothing too serious.

I have Win2K on a machine here, and it's a fine OS. But it's not as widely compatible as is XP. Because XP is built on Win2K, you get all of Win2K's benefits, plus added features and abilities. I think XP is a pretty solid choice for just about anyone.

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10) Just For Grins

Fred: Here is a site that might be a candidate for Just For Grins.
http://techrepublic.com.com/2300-10877_11-5844549-1.html
---Vern
 

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

Today's LangaList Plus! Edition contains all ten items above, plus about 40% more content including:

• Motherboard Fried?
     (low-cost alternatives to buying a new system)
• Free, Open Source "Remote Control"
     (works even for XP home)
• New Tools For Ancient Software
     (yes, even Win95!)
• Incredibly Content-Rich Site
     (you could spend productive hours there!)

The Plus! edition is only pennies per issue, and comes with a MONEY BACK
GUARANTEE from Fred. How can you lose? Check out the details: http://langa.com/plus.htm 

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(Give a gift subscription to the LangaList Plus edition!
Click <a href= " http://langa.com/plus_gift.htm ">here</a>)

The LangaList is published about 72 times a year, or about 6 times a month. See you next issue, 2005-11-10!

Best,

Fred
( Editor@Langa.Com )

Please recommend the LangaList to a friend! (And maybe win a prize!)

An easier-to read formatted HTML version is available in the "Current Issue" section of http://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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