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Wednesday, July
12, 2000
I realize I had promised to get these pages going
again on July 10, but you can't believe how much I had to get
caught up on when I returned home from my extended stay in Daytona
Beach. In fact, Suzy and the kids are still there, planning
to return this weekend.
When the snail mail resumed its delivery on Monday
I had a very nice greeting (tongue planted firmly in cheek).
Right on top of the stack was a notice from our local sheriff that
I had been summonsed to jury duty on September 12.
Naturally, like anyone else, my first thoughts were to try to
concoct some scheme to get out of serving, but in actuality, I
have been very lucky. This is is the first time I have been
called on to perform my patriotic duty since I became eligible at
age 18. So, I'll be a good little citizen and report for
duty at 8 AM on Tuesday, September 12 and hope for a very short
trial. There is a chance I may not have to go at all.
Forsyth County uses a lottery system . You call the night
before your date and you may get lucky enough that your number
will not be in the sequence needed for the next day. I
probably will not be that lucky. My number is 12.
Other than the usual junk mail there was not much
in the two week stack to get excited about. However, the
stack of junk mail headed for the recycling bin was about 8 inches
high. It's obvious the post office has decided to keep the
cost for mailing junk mail low and makes a killing on
volume. I personally think a reduction in first class and
increase in junk mail postage is in order, although I don't
believe the direct mail folks at the office would agree.
The first week in Florida was consumed with
activities at the Pepsi 400 NASCAR Winston Cup race and then on
the second week I hooked up with Suzy and the kids at her dad and
brother's house. She and the kids usually hit Florida for an
extended stay each summer and luckily I was able to join them for
a week of relaxation this year. I continued my walking and
exercise regimen while there and surprising enough Suzy did the
same. The Florida heat and humidity really gets those perspiration
ducts or glands or whatever working. The mid-morning
exercise was as close to work as I came for the week. The
remainder of the time was spent clowning around with the kids in
the pool or reading. In fact, I polished off three books
while I was there. I had begun reading Takedown,
which was about the pursuit and capture and Kevin Mitnick, an
early day Internet hacker and break-in specialist before I left
town. I also added SSN,
a collaboration between Tom Clancy and Martin Greenburg on a
submarine war with the Chinese. I typically don't like the
Clancy knockoffs, but rather enjoyed this one. And for the
life of me I can't remember the name of the other paperback I
read. It was about the political fight between the President
of the United States and a highly decorated Navy Admiral.
They Admiral won this one as the President faced impeachment.
The fact that I read three books in a week says a
lot for me. I read only moderately and am not what you might call
a heavy recreational reader. Mostly I read on airplanes as a
way to pass away the idle time. However, any new John
Grisham or Tom Clancy novel that hits the stands, I grab. I
am starting to expand my horizons and maybe I'll put up a web page
that includes the books I have read. Not so much for book
reviews, but as one place I can turn to to remind myself which
books I have read. As case in point would be the series of
Sidney Sheldon books. I discovered Sidney last year at the
beach and have since read a couple more of his novels, but now
when I'm scanning the shelves in the airport gift shops I can not remember
which Sheldon's I have read. Must mean I am getting older.
Reading Takedown made me think quite a bit about
my system's security now that I am on the internet 24x7. As
I have mentioned here before I left I have my machines running
behind a WinGate proxy/firewall and Gibson Research's tests say I
am fairly well protected. However, I wonder I can run
something on my NT box which has the cable modem and the WinGate
server that would trap and log the IP addresses of any incoming
traffic. That would alert me in the event someone was trying
to crack into my system. This will be a topic for discussion
with Bob Thomposon and some of
the other DayNoters in the
near future. I would only want to log someone who is trying
to crack me, not the return of a web page I have requested.
I suppose it will take Linux to do something like this and I admit
I will be a fish out of water when it comes to Linux and its
powerful capabilities.
Suzy's brother and father also have a small
peer-to-peer network in their home in Florida. In fact,
he is still sharing his machines with NetBEUI, the fact of which I
almost choked on. I began to tell him about my cable modem
installation and strongly suggested to start to use his NT server
as a server, dump NetBEUI and get TCP/IP installed right
away. In fact, he's still using a modem on each machine on
his network and I strongly suggested he consider WinGate which
would give him modem sharing capability. Right now if one
machine is dialed in, he of course can't get on to the information
highway from any other machine. I told him how WinGate would
solve that problem.
He then confessed how he'd been hacked one night
when he left his connection up. Some hacker left an HTML
file on his system explaining how open his box was and how easy it
was to get into it. I then brought up the Shield's
Up page and showed him how open he was to the world over his
dial-up line. When I left he was beginning to re-install NT
server, create a domain and get his machines running on TCP/IP.
Before I left on the trip to Florida I had
begun to move my network over to the cable modem and
WinGate. I still had both networks up, my new cable modem
network and the old ISDN setup which meant I had hubs for both
sides. The hub and its twist of cables and patch cords that
connected the machines to the cable modem was in the middle of the
floor, while the old network was on the shelf. I spent most
of last night pulling the old network out and putting the
equipment for the new network in its place. All machines
seem to be connecting nicely with the exception of the Win 95 box
in Katie's bedroom, which I have not attempted to move over
yet. I cancelled my ISDN service while I was out of town and
am looking forward to a reduced phone bill. I have not yet
cancelled my BellSouth internet service account yet, but that's
next on the list.
Napster seems to be talk of the town.
While I was driving home yesterday the local radio call in station
was talking about music and royalties and whether using a service
like this was essentially stealing intellectual property when you
weren't using it for your personal use. At that time I
didn't realize the boys from Napster had been to Capitol Hill to
put on a dog and pony show, only to be followed today by Metallica.
And then I scanned through the television channels last night and
the news shows were full of clips from the Senate hearings.
Napster, of course, claims
its sharing service is legal and plans to fight 'em all the
way.
One of the first things I learned to do when
burning CDs was not to touch the system while the CD burn was
in progress, make sure I wasn't doing something else in the
background and above all else, the hardest thing to remember was
to disable the screen saver before beginning your CD write.
I can't tell you how many coasters I've made when the screen saver
kicked in about 30 minutes into a CD, sucking away the majority of
the processor's clock ticks and leaving you with a coaster.
Victim of a buffer underrun when the CD writer starved for
information
Plextor, with its latest entry, says they have
accomplished a couple of things with the introduction of the Plexwriter
12/10/32. The Plextor drive claims to write at 12x,
perform a rewite on those CD-RW discs at 10x and read a noraml CD
at 32x. On top of this clam, the brag sheet claims you can
surf and burn at the same time.
Bob Thompson had a discussion on burning CDs the
other day on his notes page and mentioned that he's discovered a
new CD burning software. Many of us typically use Adaptec's
CD-Creator software, but Bob says the Nero
Burning Rom suite blows away the competition and he's hasn't
manufactured a coaster since beginning to test this software.
I plan to test Nero on my HP CD-Writer Plus in the very near
future.
Look what I found in my
guestbook today. I bet I know who dropped me this line
and will I ever convince them I was going to get this posting up
tonight before I saw that entry? I doubt it!
Thought you were going to be back up
with daynotes on the 10th of July. Been looking but there have
been none.
someone
USA - Wednesday, July 12, 2000 at
05:00:13 (EDT)
Ok, I admit it, I am running behind!
And in cleaning up my mailbox upon return I
had this note from 910gale
[910gale@email.msn.com]:
Hi Steve, I saw
your message about an interesting letter you received from
Russia in December. Well, watch this fella. I
believe he's a conman. I started emailing him a couple of
days ago because I too found his letter, but in another place.
He writes the same letter EVERYWHERE! Go to the google
search engine and type in his last name, you will find where he
has made 100's of entries with the same letter. He has a
website as well, speaking of all the horrors in Russia and how
he lives in poverty, even though he's a sociology professor (so
he says) at a University in Moscow. But get this, amongs
all those search engine results, Georgi also has web pages where
he sells Russian art, lacquer box, dolls, cards, stamps, you
name it, he sells it. I feel like I'm being scammed.
In his first email to me as a pen pal, he wrote a very large
email (probably the same he sends to everyone) tugs at your
heart strings, and at the very end he says this:
If you will want and
can help our family, we shall be very glad and are grateful to
you. Practically it is to make very easy.
In turn is I will very
glad to answer on your questions about Russia, about politician,
culture, religion in Russia and I is shall be glad, if too will
can to help for you, to help to learn better my country which
inhabitants will ache now very difficult, heavy time and very
will require in support.
then he gives his
postal address in Russia. Just be careful please!
A concerned internet
friend.
I didn't do anything with the letter other
than post it on my website and had forgotten about until your
email.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Thursday, July
13, 2000
I thought it was amusing that just yesterday I
mentioned I had read the book about the takedown of notorious
hacker Kevin Mitnick and today he's back in the news. His
mention on the news page today was not from hacking, but rather a
Federal Judge has decided
he can begin using a computer again. More than that, he
can also pursue a job in the computer industry or he can write
computer news stories, etc.
The folks at ZD Net have a couple of features
that could be handy...or on the other hand could really help you
hose your system. ZDNet
Updates.Com will scan your system for out of date software and
then go out and fetch the updates for this software. I ran
the update package and it returned three pages of updates I could
perform, but I chose not to implement any of them. The
majority had Microsoft and vulnerability in the title.
The second tool in this suite is a PC
Hardware advisor that will go out and look at your machine and
suggest hardware changes.
Naturally the newest version of Internet Explorer
5.5 was on the top of their list. Unfortunately you still
can't download the entire package. You download the setup executable
which then goes out and grabs the pieces of the program it
needs. I would like to download a full version of Internet
Explorer and then save it to a CD so when I make changes to my
system I don't have to go through the download process every
time. I am sure Microsoft considers this new way an
improvement. I don't.
I have been thinking that since I moved to the
cable modem that I need to look into one of the free ISP's for
those times when the cable modem is not available. I have
been dragging my feet, becuase I find it hard to believe that you
can get a decent ISP service for free, with no strings
attached. I would need to do some more research on this
subject before signing up.
C|Net has decided to do some of the work for
me. Today
they issued an review of their top four free ISPs.
These include 1stUp.com,
Freeinternet.com,
NetZero
and Spinway.
I am sure there are some major tradeoffs, but hey, we're just
talking about connectivity in an emergency situation. I'll
bet I can put up with a few ads if I know it's not going to be a
long term thing.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Friday, July14,
2000
Here’s a different twist.
Computer security guru’s said they weren’t worried
about a new virus that was supposed to hit today, claiming
the Smash virus was more hype than reality.
Now I’m sure if you’re system got smashed you are not
one who thinks it was just hype.
It appears that Microsoft’s new Internet
Explorer won’t do anything to clam
down those anti-Internet Explorer advocates.
You can download IE 5.5 here
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/download/ie55.htm
The nasty Hurricane season is approaching
and when one hits we usually spend lots of time hitting sites
like the Weather Channel and NOAA.
These sites get very busy when there’s a major weather
event going on. I
ran across this shareware program on ZD Net that might make
tracking hurricanes a little easier this season.
I have been having an unusual problem with
one of my Windows 98 machines.
When I boot this machine it boots directly to Windows and
does not give me a chance to log on to my local network.
If I select logoff from the start button I am immediately
presented with an opportunity to log on to my domain.
At first I thought I had selected the
Windows family logon from the network tab in control panel, but
upon further investigation everything appears normal here.
The properties on the Client for Microsoft Networks appears
to be in order and I do not have the Microsoft Family client
loaded on my system. Didn’t
have much look looking around the Microsoft Knowledge base on this
issue either, so I am guessing I may just need to reinstall Win98
on this machine. I
have even tried removing the Microsoft network client, rebooting
and then adding the service back without any luck.
I also made sure that I had selected the
Microsoft Network client as my primary logon, and you guessed
it...nothing new.
I have giving Nero Burn a spin here and
like the CD creation software very much.
One thing that I found was that I had done when I built
Betty (the same machine I am having network logon problems with)
that I had put both CD-ROMs (one player and one burner) on the
same IDE channel and two hard drives on the same channel.
I took a few minutes to separate the CD-ROMs and made a
couple of quick 4x test burns on my HP 8100 without incident.
However, I haven’t yet tried to copy a CD that’s full
or make a new CD from scratch.
I’ll let you know how this progresses in the future, but
for now it looks like Nero is a winner.
Suzy and the kids are scheduled back
tomorrow and I will be glad.
The house has been so quiet this week without them.
In the past I suppose I didn’t give it much thought, but
when I arrive home in the evening there’s always something
happening. This week
I have been arriving to an empty quiet house and it’s been sort
of eerie. I am sure
they will be glad to be home as well, however Andrew will be
downgraded back to his 13” television set for his Playstation
games. During his
visit in Florida the Playstation has been connected to a huge 50
inch Sony television. He’ll
get over it after some intense initial moaning I am sure.
And I am sure Katie will happy to get
back on the phone to her friends, a luxury she hasn’t been
afforded in Florida, although she did check her email a couple of
times there. However,
it doesn’t appear she’s checked it since I left.
How do I know this? First,
she hasn’t responded to a couple of messages I sent her and
second, as the Tucker network administrator I telneted to her
mailbox and noticed she’s got a dozen or better messages waiting
on her the next time she logs into mail.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Saturday, July
15, 2000
I am sure some of you who already know that I am
employed by a tobacco company would expect me to have something to
say about yesterday's
absurd verdict in the Engle class action case in Miami.
In the end this whole deal will be nothing but a
huge waste of money, both for the companies involved and for the
court system. This trial has taken somewhere around two
years to complete and in the end I will be it will be for
naught. This Florida case is rare in that has been certified
for class action. Other courts have rejected class action
claims and it will not surprise me when the Florida case is
overturned on appeal. Expect this one to play out in the
court systems for year. More waste of money. Smokers
have to know there are risks associated with smoking and should
take some responsibility for their actions. Most courts and
juries have already said this.
As a casual observer In the Florida case from time
to time, it almost appeared as though the judge has some personal
vendetta against smokers. Maybe he was a former smoker or
maybe someone in his family has suffered from smoking.
And watching that lawyer, Stanley Rosenblatt,
calling Geoffrey Bible from Phillip Morris out like he was
inviting him to a street fight was sickening to watch. He is
probably making so much noise now because in his mind he knows the
case is ending and his publicity will be going away. He
probably knows he'll never see a dime from this case, nor will you
or I live long enough to see any money paid out even if the judgment
did stand.
If you think this case is about the tobacco
industry, then think again. It has far greater implications.
Attempts to legislate the industry out of existence have not been
successful, so now a bunch of self-righteous folks are attempting to
put these companies, who make a legal product, out of business
through the court system.
If it's tobacco today, what will it be tomorrow.
Once this train starts rolling down the tracks it will difficult,
if not impossible to stop. Heck, Bill Gates and Microsoft
are just getting their first taste of being steamrolled.
Better be looking over your shoulder.
And here's another disturbing trend.
The Marlboro
township in New Jersey has ordered a ban on talking on your cell
phone while driving there. From this article it appears that
you can still use your cell phone as a hands-free device and if
that's the case, then the new law there accomplishes nothing.
As a heavy cell phone user, I will be one of the
first to admit that you should not be talking on your cell phone
while riding down the road. I am guilty of this practice and
more than I have gotten so involved in my conversation that I
created a driving hazard. Luckily my guardian angel was riding
with me and I didn't harm myself or any other motorist. I am
sure there have been times when I was cursed by other drivers.
It shouldn't be up to cities and towns to rush to
their chambers to create such an ordinance. State regulators
shouldn't even take up these issues. Enough of big brother
trying to do what he thinks is right for us. As cell phone
users if we don't police ourselves we're going to have deal with
this in a way that will not be very popular.
Another town, DOYLESTOWN, Pa., had added a similar
ban on their local books, but
a judge saw through this and quickly overturned the law.
Yet another item that shouldn't be clogging the court docket.
President Clinton is flexing his muscle on this
one and it'll be interesting to watch how he follows
through. The President has vowed to veto the repeal
of the estate tax passed by the U.S. Senate yesterday and now
headed to White House for his signature.
The more liberal inside the Washington beltway
gang claim this is a tax break for the rich. Think again.
I don't consider myself as rich, but the estate
tax will have some impact on my family unless I do some fancy maneuvering
in setting up trusts to protect my modest asset from the tax
mongers. It doesn't take much for your estate to zoom past
the low government limit and I'll bet when you sit down and look
at your own situation you be amazed at the potential impact on
your heirs. The estate tax is really double taxation.
We'll already paid tax on our assets once, so why should the
government employ this extortionist money grab at our
passing. I look forward to this becoming a hot potato during
the Presidential election season. Maybe it'll be the final
nail in Al Gore's election coffin.
I may have temporarily solved my problem with
Wilma, who wasn't presenting either a Windows logon or network
logon opportunity at boot.
As I was looking over the system last night I
noticed an opportunity to remove Windows 98 Second Edition and
revert back to Windows 98. Bam, I made this choice and when Win 98
reappeared the first thing that hit the screen was an opportunity
to log on to Microsoft Networking and my domain.
One problem solved and other reappears.
Before I moved to Win98 SE on Wilma I had a
problem when I rebooted the machine. Windows would lock up
tight about hapf-way through its boot session. We're talking
about a tight lock-up here. No Ctrl-Alt-Del. The only
way out of this mess was to hit the power switch and then progress
through several safe mode boots before you could get the system
back.
When I blew away second edition, this problem
reappeared.
I guess I am going to eventually have to strip
this machine down, format the drive and start over. I am
avoiding this pain for as long as I can, however I do questoin my
wisdom when I am going through the safe boots trying to get the
system back. One of these days....
In the meantime, thanks to Gary M. Berg who suggested a workaround to the login problem.
I ran across this a long time ago,
and it has to do with having created a blank password:
I think the problem is in the
"Real Mode Net" key...
TECHNICAL SUPPORT BULLETIN
SUBJECT: No Windows or Network Logon
Dialog Box at Startup
TECH: Donald Hill
KEYWORDS: New User Logon Password
AutoLogon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Problem: No Windows or Network Logon
Dialog Box at Startup
Solution: Edit registry entry
AutoLogon= as described in the following article from Microsoft
Knowledgebase.
Article ID: Q141858
Creation Date: 28-DEC-1995
Revision Date: 17-OCT-1996
The information in this article
applies to: Microsoft Windows 95
IMPORTANT: This article contains
information about editing the registry. Before you edit the
registry, you should first make a backup copy of the registry
files (System.dat and User.dat). Both are hidden files in the
Windows folder.
SYMPTOMS
When you start Windows 95, you may
not receive a Windows or a Network Logon dialog box, or you may
receive one of the following error messages:
No network provider accepted the
given network path.
The operation being requested was
not performed because the user has not logged on to the network.
The specified service does not exist.
Or, the Change Passwords tab may be
missing from the Passwords Properties dialog box. Note that this
symptom occurs only if the second cause listed below is in
effect.
CAUSE
This behavior can occur if any of
the following conditions are true:
The Primary Network Logon field is
not set correctly.
The following entry appears in the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Network\Real
Mode Net registry key
AutoLogon=<x>
where <x> is a number.
You are logging on to a Novell
NetWare network and the server you log on to is running multiple
frame types.
You are logging on to a Microsoft or
NetWare network and you have cached your network password.
The network adapter is improperly
configured.
RESOLUTION
Use the following troubleshooting
steps to resolve the problem.
Make sure to restart Windows 95
after each step.
Warnings
You can edit the registry using
System Policy Editor (Poledit.exe)or Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).
Check with your network administrator before you make any
changes to the registry.
For information about how to edit
the registry, view the Changing Keys And Values online Help
topic in Registry Editor
(Regedit.exe).
Note that you should make a backup
copy of the registry files (System.dat and User.dat) before you
edit the registry.
Using Registry Editor incorrectly
can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall
Windows 95. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting
from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use
Registry Editor at your own risk.
System Policy Editor (Poledit.exe)
is available in the Admin\Apptools\ Poledit folder on the
Windows 95 CD-ROM.
Use the Add/Remove Programs tool in
Control Panel to install System Policy Editor.
NOTE: System Policy Editor is not
included in the floppy disk version of Windows 95. You can
download Policy.exe, a self-extracting executable file
containing Poledit.exe, from online services. Please see the
following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base for
information about downloading Policy.exe:
Thanks for the workaround. However, as
a matter of course I try to stay away from regedit! I
think it was a bug with my Win 98 SE install or maybe, I know
you will find this hard to believe, a bug in Windows 98 Second
Edition itself.
Dan Seto [dan@seto.org],
one of my fellow DayNoters, offered some helpful advice on my
impending day for jury service.
If you do have to report for jury service, remember to take one of your paperback books with you! A report by the National Center for State Courts ("The Relationship of Jury Fees and Terms of Service to Jury System Performance, March 1991) found that the factors relating to juror satisfaction are as follows (in descending order of significance):
1. General processing (how efficient and easy to use);
2. Expectations about jury service;
3. Hardship experienced;
4. Time waiting;
5. Whether actually picked as a juror;
6. Whether they tried to be excused or not;
7. Whether they had to turn in their juror fee to their employer (Federal
employees have to do this)
8. The amount of fee paid to them (varies from a low of nothing for the
first day to a high of $50/day);
9. Availability term of service (how long you are "on call:. Many now use
one day or one trial);
10. Court facilities (clean, comfortable, etc.); and
11. Type of court (state or federal).
So, if you go in with a positive frame of mind, have a book with you to keep you busy while waiting, and are actually picked as a juror, you will have a satisfying time.
YMMV.
It is interesting to note that if you are picked as a juror, statistically speaking, you will feel more satisfied about the experience than if you were not picked. Several hypothesis for this effect have been proffered. I think the most popular right now is that as the person goes through the system, they get a better understanding of what goes on. And if they are picked as a juror, not only do they get to experience the complete trial, they also feel that their time was not wasted.
When the time comes, be sure to tell us how things went. As the author of a report to the Hawaii State Legislature (two sessions ago) on the jury system, and jury fees in particular, I am especially interested in how things are done in your state.
Thanks for the advice and helpful
hints. However, I feel I will be more satisfied if I am
not selected for service, but get to have my name removed from
this list for a several years. If I am selected, I hope
it's a quick trial.
I had already planned to take a book. I
hope I don't forget this most important task.
And, what the heck, I'll get paid $12 a day
for my service!
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