Windows Tips and Tricks

That is not a question for your GPS. That is a general question and the answer for many young people is “No, and who cares”. CNN reports on a National Geographic study that says nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 cannot find Iraq on a map and one-third could not point out Louisiana on a U.S. map. The dismal roll call of ignorance goes on and on; 88 percent of those questioned could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia, 47 percent couldn’t find India. The results of the study are truly disheartening. Not only are our young people ignorant but also they see no reason not to be ignorant.

Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.

Our educational system is massively failing. Not only does it teach little but it does not even teach that knowledge is important. Meanwhile, several billion Asians with a tradition of respect for learning and no fear of hard work are creating new centers of power.

Most PC owners ignore the command line. If they know of its existence at all, they think it’s the old outmoded DOS. They are overlooking something with many uses. In fact, the Windows XP command line is a powerful tool employed all the time by systems administrators and knowledgeable PC users. I have mentioned some applications in previous entries on changing read-only attributes and listing files of a given type. I am a bit of a proselytizer in this area and I have created a Web site whose purpose is to make the power and utility of the command line more familiar to a wider community of computer users. Take a look. You might be surprised at what you can do with the command line.

Greetings from Lexington, Kentucky, where there are a lot of beautiful horses.

Like everybody, I get spam. Mostly it gets filtered into a spam folder or the trash. Normally, I just scan the contents of these folders quickly to make sure nothing important is there by accident and instantaneously forget what I’ve seen. But today, some stuck in my mind. I have asked this before but I can’t help asking again. Who opens email that has a sender named “Destinee Maday” and a subject “Re: your creedt”. Yes, that’s the spelling that was used. How about this one with a sender “Fabius Dimmitt” and a subject ” Re: your VALtbUM”. Do you open things like that? Use common sense and you can avoid most problems associated with email.

My wife and I are about to embark on a one-month auto tour of more than 3000 miles from NJ to the Kansas-Colorado border and back. I’ll have my trusty laptop and (hopefully) broad-band Internet access as we go. So I’ll still be making blog entries. However, I will have to cut back to just a few a week. I promise not to bore you with any slides from the trip.

At the monthly Microsoft patchfest last Tuesday, Microsoft actually provided software updates for a non-Microsoft program. Internet Week reports

Tuesday, Microsoft pushed out a patch to Windows XP, 98, and Millennium users for Flash Player, an Adobe-owned multimedia application that’s bundled with those operating systems. It was the first time that the Redmond, Wash. developer had issued an update for a non-Microsoft product using its Windows Update service.

In another Internet Week article Mike Murray, director of research at vulnerability management vendor nCircle, is quoted as saying

“We can’t get our heads around [the Flash player patch}. Maybe there’s something going on behind the scenes, but since when has Microsoft patched third-party products? Is this a move to take more accountability of bundled, partnered products in Windows? If so, that would be huge, a phenomenal step for Microsoft, to essentially ‘own’ security at any level that touches the Microsoft OS.”

Microsoft seems to have indicated that this will not be the last time they issue a patch for a third-party application. However, they are having a less than auspicious beginning. Guess what? Glitches in the Flash update are being reported

If, as an analyst suggested Tuesday, Microsoft plans to begin patching more than its own software, its first effort got off to a rocky start. By Wednesday, Windows users were complaining of glitches in updating Adobe’s Flash Player through the Windows Update service…

Threads with titles such as “Security Update for Flash Player,” “flash player cannot be updated,” and “Flash Player” contain a slew of grievances, most of them remarking about repeated failures of the patch to install.

Personally, I am sticking with getting updates directly from the company involved. The Flash update has been available for some weeks from Adobe.

For some time now there has been a proposal to create a special Internet Top Level Domain (like .com or .net) for adult fare only, with the designation .xxx. The governing body in charge of such things, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), has been dragging its feet on this and has now said “No” in a 9 to 5 vote. Conservative American Christian groups have been opposed while Europeans have generally been in favor.

There are various arguments, pro and con, on whether trying to gather porn into one domain is a good idea. It is a fact that there is an enormous traffic in porn. It can certainly be argued that it would make it easier to guard what children see if porn were put in one domain. But opponents say that nothing keeps a porn site from staying at a .com address. Whatever the merits of the various arguments, the political repercussion is not favorable to the US. As I said about the previous controversy on Internet governance, the US cannot expect the rest of the world to continue to meekly accept the Internet being administered by this country. The Wall Street Journal has an article (May 11, 2006; Page B5) that says

The move attracted the ire of other countries who saw it as evidence of U.S. influence over the Internet. They argued that the U.S. government, beholden to conservative groups, was politicizing decisions normally determined by technical criteria. The European Union, South Africa and Iran, among other countries, have said that the Internet is a global resource and no one country should have more control over it than others. The matter plays into broader concerns about Internet fragmentation, where countries develop their systems out of disenchantment with the Icann-managed Internet.

TechWeb comments

The vote also came in the wake of efforts by several countries to gain a stronger voice in the operation of the Internet. Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance at Oxford University, told the Wall Street Journal: “Dot-xxx isn’t the best idea in the world. But a virtue of going ahead with it would have been a signal to ICANN’s constituencies around the world that it is not just an arm of the U.S. government.”

Added later in the day:

ZDNet has an article, “EU slams ‘interference’ in sex site vote”. One quote is

The Internet governing body’s decision to reject a new .xxx Internet domain for porn sites is a clear case of U.S. political interference in the Web’s governance, the European Commission said on Thursday.

I have been presenting a slideshow on how to find and use health-related resources on the Internet. Here is a selection of some useful sites that I compiled.

Those little clickers that let us unlock our car doors before we get there also broadcast information to anyone nearby. It may be coded but it is a fairly low-level encryption. Some cars also have a keyless ignition that uses electronic codes. Robert Vamosi discusses how car thieves can easily hack your codes and make off with the Mercedes.

Last fall the authors of a study from Johns Hopkins University and the security firm RSA used a laptop equipped with a microreader. They were able to capture the code sequence, decrypt it, then disengage the alarm and unlock and start a 2005 Ford Escape SUV without the key

Apparently European car thieves are already on to the technique.

Meet Radko Soucek, a 32-year-old car thief from the Czech Republic. Using a laptop and a reader, he is alleged to have stolen several expensive cars in and around Prague. Soucek is not new to auto theft; he has been stealing cars since he was 11 years old, but he recently turned high-tech when he realized how easily it could be done.

In the April 21 issue of the New York Times, the Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying about Google’s servers, “Those machines are full. We have a huge machine crisis.” Whether because of this or the “Bigdaddy” update to the search infrastructure that Google made in January, a lot of Web sites have been adversely affected. Search Engine Watch reports

This week, problems have gotten worse, webmasters all over the forums are reporting server issues with pages dropping in and out of the index, pages not being crawled, old cached pages, dead (404) pages being returned by Google and outright irrelevant results.

The muckraking and entertaining (but not always accurate) site The Register reports

Webmasters have been seething at Google since it introduced its ‘Big Daddy’ update in January, the biggest revision to the way its search engine operates for years.

Alarm usually accompanies changes to Google’s algorithms, as the new rankings can cause websites to be demoted, or disappear entirely. But four months on from the introduction of “Big Daddy,” it’s clear that the problem is more serious than any previous revision - and it’s getting worse.

Unfortunately, the Google search engine has such a preeminent position that its problems can wreak havoc in innumerable ways. I love Google but this concentration of power in one search engine is a problem.

CBS has launched a TV channel for those with a broadband connection. it is called by the cutesy name “Innertube” and can be viewed at this link. According to CNET

CBS Corp. has released a broadband channel that will feature original programming, supplements to popular shows, classics and encores of prime-time shows.

Initially, Innertube will feature original content. In the coming months, CBS television programs will be added. Advertising will be the channel’s main source of revenue.

If watching stuff this way appeals to you, keep that last part under scrutiny. Do they plan to use adware? Annoying Macromedia Flash ads that cover the screen? Since this “channel” may be a model for others to come, I’ll be curious to see what kind of advertising method they come up with.