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1) Reader Firewall Fallout"Readers Rate Desktop Firewalls" http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402915 is generating some excellent responses and email; and questions, like this one:
It's a very good question, Ralph. A firewall's main job is to block unsolicited connections from the outside world; in other words, to prevent uninvited persons and systems from connecting to your PC. Think of it as locking the doors to your PC. However, many firewalls that are excellent at blocking inbound attacks (routers, NATs, etc) do nothing against outbound attacks; that is, attacks that originate from inside your own PC. Many firewalls assume that anything coming from inside your PC must be coming from you, and thus should be permitted. But viruses, worms, etc., that may arrive inside emails, software, etc., (and not by overt external attack) may try to spread by hijacking your outbound connection. The better firewalls also guard against this kind of unauthorized outbound connection. Alas, many routers, NATs, etc do absolutely nothing about this kind of attack. This is why I recommend a multi-layer defense, so that a failure in any one security layer won't leave you defenseless. If you have a good inbound firewall, you'll prevent most external attacks from malicious hackers. If you have antivirus and anti-malware tools, you should be protected against most hidden malicious payloads inside emails, downloads, updates, etc. And if your firewall blocks against unauthorized outbound activity, then anything that made it past the first two layers can be stopped before it spreads. For more on this, see "How Much Protection Is Enough?" ( http://www.informationweek.com/840/langa.htm ) and "...the Single-Layer Defense Fallacy" ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=54800003 ) Combined with the current firewall recommendations from your fellow readers ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402915 ), you can build a very efficient protective system--- think of it as a series of increasingly-fine sieves--- that should catch just about all the nasties that may try to enter, infect, and depart your system. Now, back to your other question: How can you tell for sure if a firewall's working? There are many tests for inbound protection. The ones I most recommend are: There are fewer tests for the outbound side of the connection. Perhaps the simplest and best is: http://www.grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm See also "The Best PC Help, Reference, And Test Sites" ( http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010916S0021 ) Of course, no tests like these, by themselves, are 100% certain: There still may be obscure ways that a hacker can get at your PC or deliver a malicious payload to your hard drive. But if you carefully pick known-good tools (such as those we recommend in these items: http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-08-11.htm#5 and http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402915 ), and employ a multi-layer defense so you're protected against inbound, outbound, and local/internal attacks, you'll be safe from all the most common kinds of attacks; and far, far safer than most "average" surfers out there. In fact, with good tools, properly deployed, you may *never* be the victim of a successful attack; and even if you are attacked; you may escape with zero damage. Multi-layer is the only way to go! Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) Free Log ParserFrequent contributor Steve Groginsky (see next item, too) sent this in:
Thanks, Steve! There are other downloads accessible from that page and that area of Microsoft's site, as well. Most are geared for more advanced users and purposes, but it's worth poking around--- you just might find something very useful! Click to email this item to a
friend 3) OpenOffice 2.0 Is Here (Free!)Steve G is back, with this:
Thanks again, Steve. I have Open Office installed on several PCs here, and we've discussed it in the past ( http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=openoffice&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000 ). Although I'm not a big fan of XML (too many PCs still can't read/access/use XML files well), OO also supports other formats, and can be a pretty decent alternative to suites like Microsoft Office. And you sure can't beat the price--- free! Click to email this item to a
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great news letter, the best investment --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 4) Bolts From Above
Yes, there's a lot of conflicting advice out there, and lightning has its own little cluster of myths about it. The safest thing is to unplug sensitive electronics. When you think about it, the reason's clear: A lightning bolt that can jump through literally miles/kilometers of empty air isn't going to be stopped by the tiny air gap inside an on/off switch, right? And a lightning bolt that can set trees afire, or melt holes in steel, isn't going to even notice the "surge protection" electronics in a power strip or UPS. A good UPS/surge protector can help with power flickers, voltage sags, momentary outages, and the like. But if lightning hits the wiring in or anywhere even in the vicinity of your home or office, the only thing that will save your gear is to have it physically disconnected--- unplugged. It's a judgment call you have to make, based on the severity, proximity, and frequency of storms in your area. I have all my PCs connected via surge protectors/UPSes, but unplug them only rarely because we don't often get violent electrical storms here in New Hampshire. If or when you *do* get them in your area, then pulling the plug is the safest thing. (An aside about another lightning myth: Cars are safe in a lightning storm, but not because of any supposed insulation provided by rubber tires. Again, a lightning bolt that can bore through huge distances of insulating empty air isn't going to be stopped by a little rubber. The tires have nothing to do with it: Rather, it's the steel cage of the car's body that allows the current to flow *around* the occupants, and then through or around the tires into the ground.) See also: items #1-3 in http://langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-06-18.htm ; and also http://langa.com/u/5c.htm . Plus! subscribers can find additional, Plus!-only coverage by searching the Plus! standalone archives ( http://langalist.com/plus/archives/archives.asp ) for the following:
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friend 5) Laptop Circling The Drain
You actually have several options: If it's truly a nonessential unit, then you might ignore the hard drive warnings, and simply let the drive die, instead booting and running the laptop from an all-in-one, CD-based, "live" version of Linux, or a CD-bootable version of XP. Although these CD-based setups work better if the hardware drive is at least working enough to create a swapfile, it's not necessary: You can run them entirely from the CD and the system RAM, if need be. For just surfing, that might be all you need. It'd probably be good to get things set up while the hard drive is still
working at least some: You can also try to fix the hard drive problems. At the very least, open My Computer, right click on the dying drive, select Properties, Tools, Error Checking. Click both boxes in "check disk options," and reboot. It'll probably take a long time to run, but Chkdsk will do what it can to recover, or mark as permanently unusable, whatever sectors are going bad. Of course, this doesn't solve the root problem of what's causing the sectors to go bad in the first place--- Chkdsk isn't a fountain of youth for an aging drive--- but it may get things working more smoothly for a while. If you want to be a bit more aggressive, you can try Steve Gibson's Spinrite ( http://grc.com/spinrite.htm ). A commercial tool, it can eke additional life from hard drives that other utilities give up on. Note: It's also slow to process an entire hard drive--- it's probably best to let it run at least overnight. But again, although Spinrite can solve a host of drive problems, it can't roll back the odometer: If the drive is simply worn out, then problems with re-occur, and you'll have to use Chkdsk or Spinrite on a more and more frequent basis to keep it limping along. If none of the above works, then check out replacement hard drives. Unfortunately, hard drives for portables are usually expensive. If it's more than you want to put into an old system, you might also want to look at used laptops on eBay or a similar site; you may be able to buy a working, used unit for around what just a new hard drive might cost for your existing laptop. You might also see if your laptop can boot from an external drive, such as a generic USB device. XP isn't happy booting from USB, but Linux and older versions of Windows (eg 9x) may work for you. And if *that* won't work, then getting a new low-end laptop from a place like Tigerdirect, or from the "refurbished" sales areas from the major vendors may be the best choice to acquire a unit for casual, nonessential use, such as you describe. Lots of options! Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Don't Make Me Beg! :-)If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a
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friend 7) Too Much RAM In Win98?
Well, recall that when Win98 first came out, its minimum hardware requirements were a 66 MHz 486DX computer with 16 MB of RAM. Trying to put a gig of RAM into Win98 is like stuffing a jet engine into a Piper Cub. <g> It's an amount of RAM that was unthinkable when the system was designed. That said, there are some tweaks that may get you at least partial use of the memory above 512MB: "Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM
Installed 98se + 768 Ram? Make Win98 accept over 512 megs ram General: The above can help, but again, you're pushing the system into areas it's simply not designed for. You need a later OS to make good use of that much RAM. If a new version of Windows isn't possible now, you might try one of the free Linuxes. Although you may not get support in the free versions, Linux can run just fine on some older hardware, and also usually can make full use of available memory. 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://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://langa.com/link.txt
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At Fight breast cancer Band site Chuck's funstuff Classic car for sale Windows utility program for Filemaker V3-V8 Cedar Lane Farm tech.mchiu.com checklist of IT news and information Web2K SpiekersCorner Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 9) Frappr Fraps OutA few issues back, we discussed Frappr, a "friend mapper" that's a third-party front end for Google's maps; it lets members of any group create their own map, with each group member's location shown as a placemark on the map. I don't know what size group Frappr is designed for, but we exceeded it. <g> The Frappr Langalist map ( http://www.frappr.com/langalist ) was excruciatingly slow for a couple days,--- it still is, in fact--- and only some 2800 LangaList subscribers were able to get in and get themselves listed. That's less than 2% of our total subscriber list. Frapper also only wants to show 100 member placemarks at a time, which isn't terribly useful with large groups. With our list, for example, the slow-loading initial Frappr map is really showing you only a tiny subset (100) of a tiny subset (2800) of the total readership that tried to sign up (some percentage of 160,000). In short, Frappr, um, frapped out on us! So, this looks like a "for fun" kind of tool for small groups; not a tool with serious utility for any larger group. Still, it *is* fun. <g> Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For GrinsFred: The XP registry for IBM's ThinkPads proves the futility of some searches in the registry, or perhaps reveals where in the world some programming is being done:
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:Today's LangaList Plus! Edition contains all ten items above, plus about 40% more content including:
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