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Hello everyone!
I have an interesting story to tell you guys. More later :-)
Are you a registered user of the PuterGeek.Com Message Board? If you are, you'll want to read this, if you aren't just send me an email at webmaster@putergeek.com with a subject of "New Board User" and tell me the following;
username (lower case, one word)
full name (will be on posts)
email address (will be on posts)
Hey! This would be a great time to get a free web-based email account from PuterGeek.Com! It's quick, it's easy, plus it'll help your favorite geek:-)
The message board now has the ability to email you any new posts that come in! Just edit your profile, and say what sections of the message board you want new posts emailed to you. You then have the option to reply to these emails thus generating a new post on the board. It's really neat! Give it a try.
In other news, I just found a commercial website that had stolen some of PuterGeek.Com's content! This website;
http://www.thepcsurgery.co.uk/
has a ...ahem...cough, cough..."support" page at
http://www.zen.co.uk/thepcsurgery/
which has a link on it
http://www.zen.co.uk/thepcsurgery/install%20html/main
_page_installing.htm
That had six of my WebPages on it! This company had downloaded these pages and uploaded them on this ISP's webserver
All they did was to remove all references to PuterGeek.Com. But they forgot to remove the "meta tags" from the pages! They still showed Peter Crockett as the author and copyright holder.
When I emailed the ISP the only response from them was to contact the customer.
I then emailed the customer with no response, then I called their business in the UK (at $1.16 per minute) and spoke with an employee who told me the person in charge was out but here's our "main" website...
Well in the meantime I had emailed a few of our subscribers who were king enough to start sending emails to this company. One reply that I really love is as follows...
*************quote****************
-----Original Message-----
From: daren [mailto:daren@thepcsurgery.co.uk]
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2000 10:55 AM
To: XXX XXXX
Subject: Re: web page content
please refrain from unsolicited emails regarding items of no direct concern to yourself mr crockett has been spoken too and the appropriate action is being taken.
we do not appreciate bombardment of emails when the matter is being resolved by ourselves and also when the matter is not of your direct concern please refer any further emails or comments to mr
crockett as your any further emails from this address will be blocked in laymans terms mind your own business as this matter is being resolved
D Shaw
The PC Surgery
*************end quote****************
Can you believe this guy!? BTW...He has never spoken to me either! The stolen pages are now down, but for how long? I'm concerned with the fact that the ISP refused to become involved even though this violated their usage statement! Plus I have not received any type of apology from any of these people!
I believe that the internet is for the sharing of information. The ONLY reason I got mad is that these people failed to give me any credit for my work! Had they had links to PuterGeek.Com on those pages I would have said "Thank you for the flowers!" instead. But no, they had to steal them.
I'd like to give a special thanks to Genie and Thomas! Thanks guys, I know you're really busy, but it was too cool the way you both took the time to help with this issue!
If you feel like I do, and feel the need to email someone <grin> here are some email addresses.
support@zen.co.uk (this is the ISP)
sales@thepcsurgery.co.uk (the company who stole my WebPages)
Now, on the other hand, if any of you want to use any of my content on your website, you are welcome to. All I ask is that you email me to let me know, and that you put links back to PuterGeek.Com and give me proper credit for my work. People really need some of this info, and the easier it is to find, the better it is for all of us. Remember, "What goes around, comes around"!
Here's an easy way to let friends and family know about the PuterGeek.Com Newsletter.
Like this newsletter? Tell a friend and you could win $10,000!
<http://recommend-it.com/l.z.e?s=800433>
I'm still working on the "new look" for PuterGeek.Com. I hope to have it up by Christmas. I'm trying very hard to make it as easy to navigate as possible, as well as quick loading.
If you want to check out my work in process here's the link
http://www.putergeek.com/test/
Please be aware that not everything on the page is working yet :-)
About the banners...
Nothing has been decided yet. I'm looking for 3-5 clients so I'll have total control over the look of the banners. You will never see more than one banner per page! I hope to only choose clients that will actually be of use to all of us.
BTW, if any of you want to donate to the cause just email me at crockett@putergeek.com I will put up a special "sponsors page and put up your name and website or company info.
More WinME info:
I pulled an all-nighter working on a friend's 'puter, trying to get WinME up and running on it. He has an ATI Rage 128 All-in-wonder AGP video card. What a nightmare! The video card cost us almost 6 hours! I never have like ATI cards, but now I will never suggest them to anyone! here's a lesson to learn, always, always plan on the worst, then if the worst fails to happen you'll be pleasantly surprised!
PuterGeek.Com has won some awards!
The "Fathead" award at
http://www.fathead.net/cgi-bin/award.cgi?id=360
And the "Echo Web" award at
The PuterGeek.Com Newsletter is still in the "top ten" at infojump.com.
If any of you haven't rated this newsletter on Infojump.com www.infojump.com
please do so now. Think of it as a way to thank me for putting out this newsletter. You can either click on the link here;
http://www.infojump.com/cgi-bin/rate?id=
9024&pts=5&src=link%2C9024
Or, if you'd rather give me a lower score, you can find the rating link on the navbar about half way down most any page on the website :-)
I haven't changed the poll yet since I'd really like to know the answer to the question. Please take a moment to go here and vote.
http://www.putergeek.com/index.shtml#poll
When Amy and I got home the other day (we'd been gone a couple of weeks) the first thing I notice was some really loud fan noise coming from my Linux box (it's been up 36 days without a reboot). It had a couple of problems... One, it had not one, but two fans going bad! The second problem was dust (no, Amy is a good housekeeper). It had been about 6 months since I had blown out the case with compressed air.
When was the last time you took the cove off your case and got rid of the dust, if ever? You can get compressed air at most any 'puter shop and it'll take you all of about 30 minutes to get it all blown out. Plus, this would be a good time to verify that the CPU, power, and any extra fans you have are working properly.
Have you ever heard of PC Power & Cooling?
http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com
They make the best power supplies and fans! If you want to keep your 'puter cool, here is the place to go (and no, this is NOT an ad)! I've added their "heat alarm" to all my 'puters!
Now, on with the good stuff!
From the Funnies http://users.erols.com/hmmd
One Sunday morning William burst into the living room and said, "Dad! Mom! I have some great news for you! I am getting married to the most beautiful girl in
town. She lives a block away and her name is Susan. After dinner, William's dad took him aside. "Son, I have to talk with
you. Your mother and I have been married 30 years.. She's a wonderful wife but she has never offered much excitement in the bedroom, so I used to fool around with women a
lot. Susan is actually your half- sister, and I'm afraid you can't marry her." William was heart-broken. After eight months he eventually started
dating girls again. A year later he came home and very proudly
announced, "Dianne said yes! We're getting married in June."
Again his father insisted on another private conversation and broke the sad news. "Dianne is your half-sister too, William. I'm awfully sorry about
this."
William was furious! He finally decided to go to his mother with the news.
"Dad has done so much harm.. I guess I'm never going to get married," he complained. "Every time I fall in love, Dad tells me the girl is my
half-sister."
His mother just shook her head. "Don't pay any attention to what he says, dear. He's not really your father!"
Three men were walking along and came to a violent river that they had to cross.
How were they going to do it?
The first man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the STRENGTH to cross this river." Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs and he swam across the river in two hours.
Seeing this, the second man prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the STRENGTH AND ABILITY to cross this river." Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he crossed the river in one hour.
The third man, seeing the success of the other two, also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the STRENGTH, ABILITY, AND INTELLIGENCE to cross this river."
Poof! God turned him into a woman.
She looked at the map, and walked across the bridge.
A fellow in a bar notices a woman, always alone, come in on a fairly regular basis. After the second week, he made his move.
"No thank you." she said politely. "This may sound rather odd in this day and age, but I'm keeping myself pure until I meet the man I love."
"That must be rather difficult." the man replied.
"Oh, I don't mind too much." she said.
"But, it has my husband pretty upset."
From the Langalist www.langa.com
We're almost to the end of our "Save Your Butt With DOS" series (
http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/2000/17.htm ), which was occasioned by the release of Windows Millennium Edition. You see, in
WinME, Microsoft has hidden access to DOS and made it difficult to create a useful bootable floppy disk.
As Microsoft is doing its best to shield utter newbies from DOS, it's making life harder for the rest of us. Without easy access to DOS, some types of powerful, low-level disk diagnostic and repair operations become much more difficult.
Of course, Windows 2000 goes even further, by design; it has no component that we would normally refer to as standalone DOS.
"Save Your Butt With DOS" has covered a lot of ground so far--- the basics, free DOS tools, batch files, and more. (see
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-10-05.htm#1 )
Now, in the series' next-to-last column on using DOS in an increasingly DOS-free world, we'll show you how you can build your own batch files--- or alter those of others, including the
Cleanup batch files!
If you're new to batch files, we'll walk you, step by step, through clear examples you can type and run or copy/paste and run on your own system. You'll learn by doing, and that's the very best way.
If you already know the DOS batch language well, you may find some good stuff in the references at the end of the article: There's a ton of info and downloads there--- even for batch experts!
Novice or expert, please check out the column: It's scheduled to go live midday [UT-4] on Monday Oct 9th at
http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/ .
From Microsoft www.microsoft.com
WHO WANTS TO WIN A SCHOLARSHIP?
Attention students: are you up for the challenge? Play the Encarta(r) Bee Challenge, an online trivia question tournament, for your chance to win a $50,000 scholarship and a trip to New York
City.
http://www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/pfencbee.htm
GET A $5000 BOOST TO START YOUR OWN BUSINESS
Want to start an online business in your home? Visit MSN's(r) bCentral(TM) and enter the sweepstakes for your chance to win $5000 for your own business or a slew of other prizes. MSN's
bCentral can help you secure a Web address, create your site and market it across the internet.
http://www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/pfbizboost.htm
From the Win Letter www.winmag.com
EUROPE OK'S TW/AOL
I wrote last week about Time Warner's travails with anti-trust regulators in Europe. To update that, the European Union has OKed the merger of AOL and Time Warner, with an interesting restriction.
In the United States, the merger appears to be hinging on the combined company's dominance in broadband connectivity and content. Regulators here are uncomfortable with the possibility
that AOL may have preferential access to the cable modem customers of Time
Warner's cable service. (There's also some considerable bureaucratic conflict over whether the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission should have the final word on
this.) There also is concern about some joint ownership of cable systems with Time
Warner and AT&T.
But in Europe, the concern was over AOL's content deals with the German multimedia giant Bertelsman. The EU just squashed Time Warner's plans to buy the English music publisher EMI; Bertelsman (also a major record label) has oustanding content deals with AOL. Under the EU deal, AOL and Bertelsman will end their joint ventures, which included several European ISPs.
From Woody's Office Watch www.wopr.com
MSN EXPLORER: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
I've heard from a few people inside Microsoft about MSN
Explorer, its "Melissa in slow motion" pseudo-spam, and its
wonderful habit of disabling Outlook access to MSN email
accounts. CNet picked up the story, and through them, the
NY Times online. Ed Bott ran a great article on the topic,
too ("Don't Touch That Beta!"), at
http://windows.about.com/compute/windows/library
/weekly/aa092700a.htm
. COREL AND MICROSOFT?
Now, isn't this sweet?
First we hear the rumor that Microsoft is dropping
PhotoDraw. Then Microsoft announces it's buying 24,000,000 shares of Corel for $135,000,000 - a whopping 50% premium over Corel's going stock price (as of close-of-business Monday). Do
I smell a marriage made in heaven?
Nawwww. There's no way Microsoft is going to take over
Corel. That would be extraordinarily foolish. But now that
the, uh, let's say, er, controversial Dr. Cowpland is gone
as head of Corel, maybe Microsoft can help peddle a few
copies of CorelDraw. Make that a few hundred million copies of CorelDraw. (Conflict of interest alert: as you may have guessed, Dr. Cowpland and I are not on the most cordial of terms.)
When Microsoft put a little spare change into Corel, it not
only bought a stake in PhotoDraw's best replacement, it
also purchased an ally for the .NET initiative
(WordPerfect-for-rent on the Net, eh?), quashed a number of potential lawsuits (no details on that, only rumors), and
ensured that Microsoft's number-one competitor in the
applications field stays alive (how do you spell J-A-N-E-T
R-E-N-O?).
So what happens to the LittleCorels: WordPerfect (did you
know that WP 2000 is up to Service Pack 4 already? Yikes!), Paradox, Ventura, NETPerfect, Resero, Bryce, and the freebies - LINUX OS Second Edition, Presentations, not to mention the greeting cards
and screen savers? Where wil they go? I don't have the slightest idea. If any of you
Corelians would like to spill your guts, you know where to
reach me - mailto:rumors@wopr.com .
It's funny to read what the press has to say about the
deal. Mostly, writers are asking about Corel's future with
Linux - after all, Corel has been the most visible (and
arguably the largest) application developer to hitch its
wagon to Linux. What will this strategic link with
Microsoft do to the strategic (there's that word again)
decision to push Linux, Linux, Linux?
The answer's awfully simple. Corel was going to hell in a
handbasket trying to milk revenue from a Linux world. Now
that Corel has hooked up with Microsoft, its Linux efforts
will continue going the same way they've always been going - nowhere. Fast.
Last month, when I gave that talk in Denver to the Windows on the Rockies User Group, somebody in the audience asked what I thought about the future of Corel, and WordPerfect.
I opined that Corel reminded me of Ashton-Tate in that it
was very good at buying reasonably decent products, then
running them into the ground. I figured Corel was headed to the Canadian equivalent of Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the most direct way possible.
In my not-so-humble opinion, Corel's new interim CEO Derek Burney may just succeed in resuscitating the company. Bravo.
Unfortunately, I'll bet anything that WordPerfect and
PerfectOffice will continue to die from neglect. That
spells bad news for law offices, in particular, who are
still dependent on WordPerfect. It's also lousy news for us
Microsoft Office users, because the weaker PerfectOffice
gets, the more complacent Microsoft gets.
But it's good news on many other fronts. And - as always -
it's a brilliant business move on Microsoft's part.
From the Lockergnome www.lockergnome.com
WinGrab v1.34a [939k] W9x/NT/2k FREE
Unearthed by a Lockergnomie
http://w1.2518.telia.com/~u251800188/wg/iwg134a8.exe
http://w1.2518.telia.com/~u251800188/wg/
{Screen shot manager} Have you ever tried explaining certain technical aspects of a program to somebody? Perhaps a screen shot or two would help. Yes, of course they would! With this, you can copy an image of your Desktop's current state or a selected window to the clipboard quickly, then tweak the fresh captures (crop, reduce colors, etc.). Want to include the cursor in your snaps? Gotcha. Set it up to capture and save images at specific time intervals, too. Batch printing is supported as well, so your printer should remain relatively happy. Definable hotkeys make this program a winner for any user. Pictures speak louder than words, especially those with audio cards attached.
Rescue from Space Invaders v1.65 [2.1M] W9x FREE
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/rrivero/my
homepage/Rescue21.exe
http://members.nbci.com/fexil/rescue.html
{Popular coin-op sequel} Ah yes, who could forget when our afternoons were invaded from space? It was a much simpler time back then, wasn't it? Aliens didn't fly all over the screen in
three dimensions... they just marched back and forth across the screen and vaporized with a single shot. Well, maybe not. It turns out that those pesky little digital attackers have returned. Not
only that, but those ships that couldn't thwart the alien attack back in the 80s have been captured. Hey, I'm not going to let those pixel-blobs take over my planet. It's time to fight
back once and for all with this hip spin on an Atari classic. I think Mr. Do and Frogger are throwing a hero party afterwards.
Leaping to W2k wasn't too difficult; I was expecting to face more software foibles. MaxMem (one of ANALOGX.COM's killer utilities) was an indispensable for Windows 98 add-on. I figured I'd run into the same old memory leaks on this new platform. Check this out: in Windows 2000, you should keep every open app minimized when its not in use. Why? Because memory allocation minimizes, too. Watch the Task Manager if you don't believe me. 13 MB can drop to 2 MB in a click; that's a GOOD thing. What's really weird: even with all EXPLORER.EXE windows closed, less resources are used when one Explorer instance is open and minimized (to the taskbar). Keep any number of programs open without dealing with half the fat. Or NTFS, as the case may be.
That's it for this issue!
-----
Peter Crockett - webmaster
website: http://www.putergeek.com/
mailto: webmaster@putergeek.com
Please vote in the Poll!
-----
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