GNOMEREPORT: Auld Lang Syne

4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 2003. Aw, dang it. I can't get in the habit of writing 2003. Oh, no! I did it again! I wonder how many checks I will sign with 2003 before I finally remember to change it to 2004 (there!)? I've never been so eager to welcome a new year after this tumultuous one where I've been down and out for most of it. In fact, a couple of days ago, my back went out again for the second time this year. Back to therapy.

Fast rewind of this year's ups and way downs. Three surgeries, severe vertigo from cochlear implant, couple of other health issues you don't wanna hear about, Paul laid off, son born in April, older son had stitches TWICE, daughter's volleyball team won the tournament, sending B. Dodger (beagle) to live with my in-laws in the country in East Texas, my parents are in good health and celebrated their 48th anniversary last month, the Dallas Cowboys made the playoffs, OK, now I am getting carried away.

No, no, no... not looking for cheese to go with my whine or pity. Just an explanation why I'm ready to put this year to bed. Three bright spots for this year: the birth of my youngest child, my family's good health, and the opportunity to do more for you, Lockergnome readers.

I love Robert Burns' words, although there is some argument he borrowed some someone else and that the words are never said correctly, but I don't want to start a debate here. This is the version I like:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

I don't know what it is about the words, but I like 'em. Happy Anniversary to my sister and her husband. Happy New Year to all of you. See you in oh-four!

Best,
Meryl K. Evans

GNEWBIE GNOOK: Feedback From Yesterday's Stinky Links

In yesterday's Gnewbie Gnook, Ken Colburn of Data Doctors described a recently-discovered vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer:

"The vulnerability allows malicious coders to create Web sites that look exactly like legitimate sites, credit card companies, or online merchants, and 'spoof' the Web addresses. When a user is at one of these sites and looks in the address section of IE, it will appear as if they are at that company's site."

Ken went on to give a link to Secunia's site where susceptibility to this vulnerability can be tested (to see yesterday's edition and the entire article, click here.)

Gnomie Mike Stark wrote to let us know that, when clicking on the Secunia link, his virus software appeared to be alerting him to an attempt by that Web site to exploit his system's vulnerability, and then he spent a considerable amount of time scanning his computer to make sure that Secunia (and, inadvertently, we) hadn't infected it.

We do understand that this was very frustrating for Mike, and we want to make sure that no such thing happens to any of you without warning. Because that link is testing for the possibility of such exploitation, it's not surprising that it would trigger a computer's virus software. In fact, it means that both the test and the virus software are doing their respective jobs; think of the Secunia test as someone benevolently checking to see if your door is unlocked, and your anti-virus software as the security system letting you know that, while your door is locked, someone did try to see if it would open.

This reminds us to mention, again, that since we all have different systems running different software, it's impossible to know when anything we run is going to be 100% safe on someone else's machine. Caution is always, always advised!

Gnomie Michael writes in with another way of checking to see if a URL you're visiting is legitimate:

I use MyIE2 as my browser and (the vulnerability) is already fixed, however, there is an easy way to check a Web page's real address. Type:

javascript:alert("The real URL of this site is: " + location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname + "/");

in the address bar and click enter. The browser will show the real address of the Web site! This little script is not mine; I found it on the net, so I don't know who the author is. Maybe you can let the readers know.

We certainly will, Michael!

SPECIALS: Dogs and Words and Art, Oh, My!

This will be the last newsletter to feature all three of these specials, so you might want to at least check 'em out to see if you can use 'em before it's too late!

The main ingredients in "Sausage's Lockergnome Holiday Special" are software and tools for creating and managing Web sites. Hot Dog-named titles are Web page authoring tools with different features depending on the version. FlashPoint and Boomer help create multimedia presentations. The Lockergnome News Feeder is for reading those XML and RSS whatmacallit news stuff with Lockergnome-stamped style. There are unique programs in each of the packages, and you can get detailed descriptions from the Web site. You have a choice of two packages:

Hot Dog Family CD Special (good for the kids, too). There are too many things listed in the package, so take a look on the site. In a nutshell, it's a $434.75 package marked down to $129.95. Go ahead and do the math - we'll help.

$99.95 for Hot Dog Professional (Web authoring software), $39.95 for Hot Dog Junior (Web authoring software for kids), $14.95 for Lockergnome News Feeder (RSS reader), $24.95 for HotFTP (uploading and downloading your Web pages), and PageWiz (Web authoring for the novice) is $69.95. Those are not all of the products and already we're talking close to $250.

Oh yeah, the other package is for Hot Dog Professional Web Master CD, which is $129.95 down from $479.85. The catch? You got me, there is a catch. Each package is only available for the first 1500 people who order. [Meryl]

ActiveWords turns words into actions from any program. Type "close" followed by the ActiveWords key (F8 is the default) and the active program closes. You can add more commands to tell your computer what to do without navigating the interface. The ActiveWords gift to Gnomies is good until January 10, 2004, which ain't far off. The deal is you can get ActiveWords SE for free, and sign up to get a license e-mailed to you by going to this link. This is a $19.95 product and there's no trial garbage involved. If you like it, you're welcome to try ActiveWords Plus. If you like it and wish to purchase it, you can get a 20% discount, which would be $39.95 - $10 off the original price. [Meryl]

And Neven from ArtPlus writes us:

Here is a little gift to your readers!

As you know, many people around the globe either don't own a credit card or simply can't afford to pay $30-$40 for a piece of software. Right?

Okay... we decided to give one free license of any of our programs to anybody who sincerely says he can't afford to buy our program at this moment for whatever reason.

All they have to do is to send us a note through our contacts form telling us which software they like, and say that they can't afford to buy it at this time... That's all.

This is our little Christmas gift to people regardless of their religion, race or nationality and is valid from now until Dec. 31.

So, feel free to share this information with your friends and readers.

By the way, we will not decline anybody, but please do ask them not to abuse our trust... we're still selling the software to people who can afford to buy it. Namely, I also have three kids to feed and buy gifts for! :-)

That's it!

Oh, since we'll be fulfilling the orders manually, please ask people to be patient...

Have a very happy holiday season!

To take advantage of this wonderful gift, please visit ArtPlus at: www.artplus.hr

REBUTTAL: Off? On? A Little Of Both?

Disagreement rages on about whether a computer should be turned on or off when it's not in use. In response to Jon Peltier's rebuttal (in favor of leaving it on, which was in response to another Gnomie who wrote in about the benefits of turning it off) in yesterday's newsletter, John Faulks writes:

Jon Peltier would be 100% correct if fatigue due to thermal cycles was the only possible wearout mechanism.

It is certainly a major, most likely dominant mechanism for consumer PCs, but not the only one. For example, silicon and certain other components have aging mechanisms driven only by time and temperature. It relates to diffusion rates and/or chemical reactions. Hot silicon in the processor is a common example - all those precise tiny dopant volumes that form the millions of transistors will revert to sand with only elevated temperatures and time (a very short time if the fan stalls on the CPU). The larger transistors in the power supply also run hot. Keeping fans running and cleaning out the dust will minimize the opportunity for these types of failures.

Next you might be unlucky enough to be hit by a high energy particle - a cosmic ray. Normally they only cause temporary memory upsets, especially at higher altitudes (Denver, for example) - which is why high availability systems use error correcting (ECC) memories. Occasionally cosmic rays can result in permanent damage, more so with fine geometry components like CPUs, memories, and the custom chipsets that tie everything together in the PC.

I leave my PCs on 24/7 to minimize the cycles, but do shut them down every couple of months to clean them out and check the fans. And I do not overclock to keep the heat down.

If you must turn your PC off, keep it dry. Even a mild condensation film can accelerate oxidation effects over time. Connectors are more vulnerable to corrosion.

By the way, my background is investigating failures in critical high reliability avionics systems and products that are taking off and landing every couple of seconds somewhere in the world.

This could trigger others among us to write in a rebuttal to this rebuttal's rebuttal's rebuttal, but let's take it to the forums where all points of view can be presented!

DOWNLOAD: UnCHK

• [25K]
• Win9x/2k/XP
• FREE

www.ericphelps.com/uncheck

{Recover CHK files} High tech crashing happens all the time and has become a standard annoyance in working with computers. CHK files are recovered file fragments. Programs aren't properly closed when Windows or a program crashes, but how were we to know it was about to crash? Never mind that. CHK file recovery programs are not for recovering files, but for renaming them to the correct extension. There is a list of extensions the program can handle on the site and you can add more by following the instructions in the readme file. To run the program, you need to have Visual Basic 5 runtime files, which you can download free from Microsoft. [Meryl]

DOWNLOAD: BrowseTo v1.0

• [43K]
• Win98/2k/XP
• FREE

www.straightnochaser.org/goodies/aboutbrowseto.html

{Go to unlinked URLs} When you see a link like www.lockergnome.com, you have to copy and paste it to go to the site since the link is not live. Small nuisance, but BrowseTo is an answer to avoid using CTRL+C and CTRL+V. Those keys deserve a vacation, don't they? When you come across an unlinked URL or even mailto address, just right-click the mouse and select BrowseTo and it'll whip you away to where you want to go or open an email message. This is for Internet Explorer since the idea came from Mozilla's Firebird browser, which has the feature using the TextLinks extension. [Meryl]

FAVORITE: UFO Evidence

www.etcontact.net/

{Research and resources on UFOs} Little green men. Area 51. Star Trek. Star Wars. Battlestar Galactica. Real, an elaborate hoax, or a figment of someone's imagination? I'm not looking to start a debate as I'm a debate wimp. UFO Evidence has a debate on whether or not UFOs are real, so that's where you can go and let it out of your system. You can report a UFO sighting or view the reports. Crop circles, abduction, and government cover up are topics in the evidence / phenomenon section. Let's hope Beagle, Europe's first probe to Mars, starts barking soon so we can learn more about life (or lack thereof) on the Red Planet. [Meryl]