Many people have encountered a bug in Windows XP that prevents them from deleting large .avi (divx) files. The bug results from behavior that causes Explorer to read the entire contents of broken AVI files before allowing access to them. The file shmedia.dll is the root of this issue, as it dictates Explorer's treatment of .avi files.

To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following
registry key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Classes / CLSID / {87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E} / InProcServer32

This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files.

You cannot find this key by searching; you'll have to manually browse for it. Remember: editing the registry is a great way to mess up your computer. If in doubt, back up the registry before tweaking it.

Source: DVDRHelp.com

28 February 2003  |   permalink

Let's review the ways to avoid getting infected with a virus:

• Keep virus software on your computer, and keep it up-to-date.
• If you have a high-speed connection, consider installing a good firewall (such as the free Zone Alarm) so that some punk can't hack you and "push" a virus into your computer.
• Always be aware of what media you put into your computer, and its history. That floppy disc that you used on the computers at the public library may be suspect.
• Be weary of downloading from questionable sources, such as web sites make wild claims (i.e. free nude video of Britney Spears).
• Don't use file-sharing programs, such as Kazaa-Lite, unless you have up-to-date virus protection
• Above all else, do not open attachments unless you know the sender and the message makes sense!

For most users, this is all elementary. It does not hurt to repeat it, however, as we continue to hear about rapid virus attacks that keep exploiting the same old techniques.

The lastest nasty making the rounds is the Lovegate virus, which is a worm that can destroy the data on an infected computer. It may be sent by someone you know -- a friend, family member, co-worker. The message will say, "Take a look at the attachment and send me your opinion." If you click on the attached file, your computer will be infected, and the virus may spread to others.

When activated, "Lovegate" sends a reply to every message in a user's Inbox (Outlook or Outlook Express). These messages appear to be from the user, but they include the virus as an attachment.

If you get a message like this, simply delete it. (You might also want to inform the person who sent it that they seem to be infected with the Lovegate virus.)

Lovegate is rated as having "High" damage potential by Trend Miro and "High" distribution potential by Symantec.

27 February 2003  |   permalink

The other night I was looking to download Kazaa-Lite and it took me a little to find an active server to download it from. Viewing my Visitor Logs today, I see that a lot of people are arriving at this site while looking for Kazaa-Lite. Why not give the people what they want?

In case you don't know, Kazaa is currently the most popular file-sharing program on the internet. At any given time, millions users are sharing recepies, documents and other exciting items. Oh, and the odd person is sharing copyrighted music, software, games, movies, etc. The RIAA is doing everything in its power to shut Kazaa down for good.

The problem with Kazaa is that it comes bundled with all kinds of adware, spyware and who knows what else. If you use it, you will find all kinds of pop-up windows on your computer with advertisments.

About a year ago, some kids got together and hacked the Kazaa interface and created Kazaa-Lite. With this program, you can enjoy all of the benefits of Kazaa without the annoyances. It also includes a few dozen other minor improvments over the regular version of Kazaa.

Download Kazaa-Lite here.

26 February 2003  |   permalink

Tweak the heck out of Windows!

Xteq Systems is a team of ordinary people dedicated to create, develop, improve, test and promote software, add-ons, tips and fixes, with the main goal of Do More Faster! Our flagship product, Xteq X-Setup, is constantly updated and delivers unreachable system tuning power to nearly a million desktops worldwide - at an also unbeatable price: it's free.  more...

Suggested by: Ian Weir of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

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Here is another senseless oversight on the part of Microsoft that will have Mac and Linux geeks laughing at us Windows users. The Windows Messenger service, which runs by default, allows anyone on the internet to create a pop-up window on your computer! In the past I've received advertisements similar to the one below, but I could not seem to eradicate them using either Ad-Aware or AdBot Search and Destroy.



If you get these ads, and you're running Windows 95 or 98, there is nothing you can do to prevent them. Nice, huh? Newer flavors of Windows can follow these directions:

Windows 2000
Click Start-> Settings-> Control Panel-> Administrative Tools->Services
Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK

Windows XP Home
Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
Click Performance and Maintenance
Click Administrative Tools
Double click Services Scroll
down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK

Windows XP Professional
Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel
Click Administrative Tools
Click Services
Double click Services Scroll
down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK

It seems to me that there is some relation between the occurrence of these pop-up ads and the incorrigible RealPlayer. If anyone can confirm or deny this hypothesis, please let me know.

Do not confuse Messenger Service with Windows Messenger, the chat program that is integrated with Windows XP and puts the little green men in your system tray:. That little annoyance starts up with Windows XP by default, whether you like it or not, and proceeds to pester you to sign in. To get rid of that, click Start | Run | copy and paste the following gibberish into the Run dialogue box and click OK.

25 February 2003  |   permalink

I haven't been keeping up my blogging this weekend, as I've been busy revamping this Hardware Catalogue for your shopping delight. It was not nearly as much fun as updating Super Fast Computer, but it is a heck of a lot more likley that it will help to pay all these bills that keep showing up.

24 February 2003  |   permalink

SpySites allows you to manage the Internet Explorer Restricted Zone settings and easily add entries from a database of 1500+ sites that are known to use advertising tracking methods or attempt to install third party software. You can select the sites from the list, or optionally add all of them, or only the "worst offenders". The program then adds the URLs to the IE Restricted Zone settings. Once configured, there is no need to run the program again, unless you want to add additional sites. Free download here.

Suggested by: Ian Weir of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

22 February 2003  |   permalink

If you've seen the movie Pirates of the Silicon Valley, you may be familiar with the popular story of the early days of Apple Computers and Microsoft.

Back in the 1970's, of course, computers didn't have a GUI (Graphical User Interface). If you worked on a computer, you were simply interacting with text on the screen. According to the movie, the researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), owned by Xerox, were working on several important innovations. Among these new technologies were the GUI and the mouse.

The movie goes on to depict how Xerox's Board of Directors failed to see the importance of some of these technologies ('Why would anyone need a mouse?'). Indeed, when the boys from Apple Computers came calling and proposed to work on a 'joint effort', the Board ordered their researchers to open the doors of the Research Center to Apple.

The movie portrays ulterior motives on the part of Apple, who quickly snatched up key innovations and integrated them into the early line of Apple computers.

But wait, there's more! Bill Gates and Microsoft meanwhile were allegedly wooing Apple, and used a similar argument to convince Apple to share its technologies (i.e. 'we will be more powerful if we work together'). Microsoft severed its relationship with Apple when it released its own GUI with mouse support for the MSDOS operating system, which they renamed Windows. Microsoft went on to own a substantial percentage of Apple Computer shares.

The plot, however, gets even thicker than the movie portrays. It turns out that the researchers at Xerox were not the first to invent the mouse. In actuality, the mouse is a product of the 1960's!

What's left out of the story is that the mouse and a multitude of other personal computing firsts spotted by the boys from Apple on that Xerox PARC tour were, in truth, first conceived of by Doug Engelbart in the early 1960's. At the time, Engelbart was a scientist at the Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California. The ideas were brought to PARC by Engelbart researchers who started migrating over in the early '70s.

Engelbart has a forty-year track record in predicting, designing, and implementing the future of computing. At a time when computers were huge calculating machines known to a chosen few, Engelbart saw them as the engines that could 'augment' the human intellect and help people make the best of their abilities and pool their resources for maximum benefit.

His "oN Line System" (1962) already allowed the users to share documents, and contained a sort of teleconferencing system whereby two people working in different places could see each other on the screen next to the text they were working on; the texts themselves had hyperlinks and could appear in "tiled" windows to avoid overlapping. Back then, people communicated with computers using punched cards and real-time interactivity was still a thing of science fiction.

The links below are video highlights from a live public demonstration presented by Engelbert and his group of 17 researchers in 1968. About 1,000 computer professionals attended the demonstration. This was the public debut of many key innovations, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two people at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface, and the first computer mouse.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10   (requires Real Player)

21 February 2003  |   permalink

The Register -- Microsoft has targeted spammers with a lawsuit aimed at bulk mailers who harvest email addresses of Hotmail subscribers in order to bombard them with junk.

In the suit, Microsoft alleges that unnamed bulk mailers used tools to randomly generate email addresses prior to testing this list out to see which accounts were active. Essentially this is a form of dictionary attack, which Microsoft argues violates federal laws including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Trespass is also involved in the attacks, the software giant argues.

Success in getting the suit through would strengthen Microsoft's hand if it came to sue particular spammers for using this type of attack in the future.  more...

For once its nice to see Microsoft suing someone.

20 February 2003  |   permalink

2600 News --On January 21st, convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick accessed the Internet for the first time since 1995. The press was watching eagerly, wondering what this notorious hacker would do first. But in a twist that's hardly surprising, a true mark of the occasion has been what other hackers have done with Mitnick's new electronic presence.

Mitnick's new company in Los Angeles, Defensive Thinking, hosts its web site using Microsoft IIS on Windows 2000. It was only a matter of time before the hacker "Bugbear" exploited an IIS vulnerability, using it to add a new page to the web site. "Welcome back to freedom, Mr. Kevin," it read. "[I]t was fun and easy to break into your box."

Next, another hacker exploiting another IIS bug from somewhere in Texas got into Mitnick's site on February 9th. He asked Mitnick to make him the company's Chief Security Officer.

Mitnick called the incidents "amusing."  more...

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Wired News -- An extremely rare Apple I -- one of only about 30 still in circulation -- will be auctioned on the Vintage Computer Festival website.

Is is widely agreed that the rare machine is among the most collectible personal computers ever made.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs hand-built about 200 Apple I's in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976. The original machines consisted of little more than a bare motherboard -- no monitor or even a case -- yet they are hailed as the touchstone of the personal computer revolution.

The broker holding the sale hopes the machine, which is in a wooden case and isn't fully functioning, will sell for between $16,000 and $22,000.  more...

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As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Google, the world's greatest internet service, has purchased Pyra Labs, the creator of Blogger, which powers Super Fast Computer.

The one regret that I have had since I started Super Fast Computer is that it is so hard to maintain a decent archive of material. The list of recent articles that you see at the top of this page is edited manually... which, even for a geek such as myself, is not much fun. I had been secretly pondering the idea of moving this weblog and all of its content to another excellent blogging service, called Movable Type. Sites that have been developed with this software seem to have a better look and feel, and have indexing that runs automatically. I have been debating the short-term nightmare of migrating this site over the long term hassle of doing everything by hand.

Now that Google has stepped into the fold, I think I am just going to sit back and wait to see what happens. For about 2 years, Google has been the very center of my universe. There is nothing on the internet that even remotely compares to the technical brilliance, usefulness, integrity and character of Google. I am planning to do an extended feature eventually on Google, in all of its shapes and services. Nothing thrills me more than to think that Super Fast Computer is now in the hands of this company, which I adore; and I have every confidence that they will continue to improve on the technology behind Blogger.

A lot of people are speculating and questioning why Google has made this move. I absolutely insist that you read the brilliant way the deal was revealed to the public, from the weblog of Evan Williams, co-founder and (recently ex-)CEO of Pyra Labs. To get the whole picture, read as far back as Saturday February 15th.

18 February 2003  |   permalink

Here is an amusing and timely 404 Error Message.

More creative error screens can be found here.

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I think that this site has the most accurate way of portraying visitor statistics that I've seen to date.

MS Worms are mischevious programs which attack Microsoft systems, mostly variants of Nimbda and Code Red. Strictly speaking these are all misses (since this is not a Microsoft site).

Robots are known robots or processes that behave like robots.

Visitors are genuine visitors like yourself.

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Weblogs [such as this one] are going Googling.

Google, which runs the Web's premier search site, has purchased Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that created some of the earliest technology for writing weblogs, the increasingly popular personal and opinion journals. Pyra founded www.blogger.com, which powers this site and has over 1 million registered users.

The buyout is a huge boost to an enormously diverse genre of online publishing that has begun to change the equations of online news and information. Weblogs are frequently updated, with items appearing in reverse chronological order (the most recent postings appear first). Typically they include links to other pages on the Internet, and the topics range from technology to politics to just about anything you can name. Many weblogs invite feedback through discussion postings, and weblogs often point to other weblogs in an ecosystem of news, opinions and ideas.

"I couldn't be more excited about this," said Evan Williams, founder of Pyra, a company that has had its share of struggles. He wouldn't discuss terms of the deal, which he said was signed on Thursday, when we spoke Saturday. But he did say it gives Pyra the "resources to build on the vision I've been working on for years."

Part of that vision, shared by other blogging pioneers, has been to help democratize the creation and flow of news in a world where giant companies control so much of what most people see, hear and read. Weblogs are also becoming a valuable communication tool for groups of people, and have begun to infiltrate the corporate, university and government spheres.

Source: Dan Gilmor's eJournal

17 February 2003  |   permalink

There has always been a world wide shortage of computer geek chicks. What is a guy like me, who lives, works and plays on his computer, to do?

Back in high school, my best friend was a female named Ingrid Hein. She was the coolest chick ever to hang around with. After high school, she moved to Montreal and I moved to British Columbia. A few years later, we lost touch.Ingrid Hein

This morning, I decided to Google her. You can imagine my surprise when the very first link that came up was this video (requires Real Player) of Ingrid buiding a computer from scratch and configuring it as an Apache web server! Any chick that is into that is simply sensuous in my books. But Ingrid! Combine good looks, intelligence, humor, an amazing personality-- with geekiness, and you have, in my opinion, the hottest female on the planet.

I managed to get in touch with Ingrid's roommate. It turns out that she is in South Africa until May. So I'll have to content myself with playing with computers until then. Perhaps I'll name my next computer Ingrid. One never knows, maybe she'll Google herself in the meantime and discover this page. My message is simple:

Ingrid Hein, will you marry me?

Eat your heart out, guys.

16 February 2003  |   permalink

The CG814M tidily resolves the problem of multiple networking and broadband-access devices cluttering up your desk. In a networked home or small business, you may have three to five devices, all with busily blinking lights, network cables, and wall-wart transformers that hog multiple outlets on your power strip. Making them work together is an exercise in frustration.

The five-tools-in-one CG814M, about $230USD street if you can find one (it's brand-new), combines a cable modem—traditionally a standalone device—with an Internet firewall for security; a router that allows access by multiple PCs and masks their presence from broadband vendors, some of which want to charge extra for multiple PCs; a four-port switch that connects up to four Ethernet-wired PCs; and an 802.11b wireless access point, which connects any wireless Ethernet notebooks or PCs you have. All this comes in a shiny 1-by-10-by-7-inch case with rounded corners, which looks like a jumbo sardine tin.  buy...

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A new vulnerability has been discovered that would allow anyone with access to a computer running Windows XP to bypass the password security and gain unfettered access to the hard drive.

• Anyone with a Windows 2000 CD can boot up a Windows XP box and start the Windows 2000 Recovery Console, a troubleshooting program.



• Windows XP then allows the visitor to operate as Administrator without a password, even if the Administrator account has a strong password.



• The visitor can also operate in any of the other user accounts that may be present on the XP machine, even if those accounts have passwords.



• Unbelievably, the visitor can copy files from the hard disk to a floppy disk or other removable media - something even an Administrator is normally prevented from doing when using the Recovery Console.

While one does need physical access to the machine to exploit the flaw, this will be little comfort to the administrators of academic computer laboratories and other facilities where users can easily pop a CD-ROM into a computer.

Several Microsoft executives have reportedly been notified of the vulnerability, but no response has been made. Read about Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative.

Solution: Kiosks, machines in academic environments, etc., should at least be secured by changing the boot sequence to not allow booting from CD or floppy, and then a BIOS level password set. Super paraniod: put a lock on the computer case, use NTFS 5.1 and encrypt the file system.


Source: Brian's Buzz on Windows

15 February 2003  |   permalink

USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure
Connect a 3.5" hard disk drive to a USB 2.0 port.
Supports ATAPI-4 compatible drives.

$119.48 CDN  buy...

Suggested by: Ricardo Nuggent of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

13 February 2003  |   permalink

A client was ready to pack in his PC because he was frustrated with the fact that Windows needs so much coddling to stay healthy. One of the contributing factors to his dismay what that Diskeeper gave him the notion that a hard drive needs to be defragged every day.

To illustrate how silly DK is being when it states that, I’ll show you the report I get on my C: drive.

Findings on C:

Diskeeper has completed a defragmentation run on this volume and there remain 0 fragmented files and 0 excess file fragments. (There were 0 excess file fragments before the defragmentation run, and now there are 0% less.)

The average number of fragments per file is 1.00.

Congratulations! There are no excess file fragments on this volume. The files on this volume are as defragmented as possible. Still, you should schedule Diskeeper to run at least once a day (if you haven't already done so) to maintain this low level of fragmentation.

This drive is perfectly defragmented, and has been for some time; but Diskeeper still thinks it is important that I still run their (otherwise excellent) program every day.

Ya, right.

Also, if there are 0 fragments on the drive, how can the average number of fragments per file be 1.00? I’m no mathematician, but it just doesn’t sound right to my ears.

However, if you are still frustrated with Windows, consider the next item...

12 February 2003  |   permalink

If you ever get tired of Windows, you can now convert your computer to the Mac operating system. Installation is a lot quicker and easier than you might think. ;)

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Consider this: wouldn't it be nice if your computer started in just a few seconds? Better yet, what if it started with your favorite applications running, your MP3's playing, and everything you need to get back to what you were last working on?

The Suspend-to-RAM feature of Windows saves almost as much power as turning your machine off, but it is also less taxing on your patience.

Go to the Start menu and click Shut Down. Choose the Stand By or Suspend option (depending on your version of Windows, it may be in a drop-down list).

If your fans kept whirling, you may need to configure your BIOS to enable this feature. Reboot and enter your PC's setup utility. (Watch the screen as the PC boots; it should tell you which key to press.)

Every computer is different. Look for a power-savings or power-management category. Search for settings related to suspend modes. Enable any setting labeled 'Suspend Mode' or 'ACPI Function'. Select Suspend to RAM by choosing S3 or STR. Save your changes, exit the setup utility, and boot into Windows.

11 February 2003  |   permalink

New Scientist-- Gary Kasparov chose to draw the deciding game of his match with the computer program Deep Junior on Friday rather than push for a win and risk defeat.

Kasparov was booed by some members of the audience for accepting the draw while having a far stronger position on the board and a better chance of winning.

But the world number one said he feared even the smallest mistake could have lost him the match. "Of course I wanted to win, but the top priority on my agenda today was not to lose," Kasparov said at a press conference held in New York after the final game.

more...

10 February 2003  |   permalink

Hard drives have long used the familiar ribbon cables. These cables are bulky, inflexible, fragile, too short and prone to interference. With CPU's running in the multiple gigahertz, and RAM so inexpensive, the last great bottleneck in computers these days has remained the ATA hard drive. A new standard has been developed by the industry to supercede these limitations of parallel ATA storage devices.

"It will all be worth it in the end. With 150 MByte/s, simpler cabling and guaranteed compatibility with earlier parallel ATA standards, Serial ATA looks set to become the dominant interface for hard disks."

Ironic that serial communications, which rely on only two data channels (one for sending and one for receiving), are faster than parallel. At one time, serial technology was considered obsolete. Super-fast serial standards developed in recent years include USB, FireWire, Ethernet and more.

The Serial ATA standard has been developed to be backward-compatible with existing software, operating systems and drivers.

Several motherboard manufactures have been shipping Serial ATA-capable motherboards for several months in anticipation of the new standard. While the first hard drives conforming to this specification have been on the market for a few months, Western Digital is set to be the first manufacturer to release a drive that will surpass the traditional speed limitation of 7200 r.p.m. To be released later this week, WD's new drives promise to run at 10,000 r.p.m. with an 8MB cache. The drives include a 5-year warranty. Pricing has yet to be announced.

Back To The Future: Serial ATA Arrives At Last
Enabling the Future: The Serial ATA Working Group

09 February 2003  |   permalink

No, the photograph is not of the Mason Family. It's Microsoft in 1978, with its first 11 employees. You may have seen this photo elsewhere on the web, usually with the caption, "Would you have invested?".

Here is an interesting article that explores what became of each of the gang.

Oh and incidentally, Microsoft has only retained one of its original employees. That's him on the bottom left: Billy G.

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This site is now slightly over a month old I'm thrilled by the number of visitors that have already found their way here. What I find perplexing, however, are the number of search engine spiders and other "bots" that find frequent this site daily.

"A web crawler (aka spider, robot or bot) is a computer program that scours the web gathering content. Some crawlers are specific in what they are looking for, while others are just interested in gathering as much content as possible."

Super Fast Computer is one of the few sites you'll find that makes its visitor logs available to the public. I glean all kinds of interesting information from the logs. For example, the vast majority of you are using Internet Explorer to browse this site, while only a small percentage of people are using (yuck) Netscape. Sadly, Opera users only account for about 1% of visitors.

My other websites are visited about once a month from search engines such as Google and AOL. Because of the fact that I'm constantly updating this site, Google sends its search spiders to this site every other day-- sometimes daily. (Even stranger is the fact that, despite all of the visits, Google is not currently displaying this site in its index, unless you trick it).

Within the two weeks of launching this site, I found that it was being spidered by so many bots that I took the step of telling my logger to ignore about a dozen of them. More bots continue to find the site, however, and I can't keep up with them all. As this graph shows, almost 32% of the visitors logged are using an "Unknown Platform"; the majority of these you can bet are non-human visitors. Look at them all!

You would think that for every search engine or weblog index that is listing this site, it would translate into lots of human visitors following links and showing up here. It does not appear to be so. I find myself wondering who is paying for all of these computers, and for what purpose?

08 February 2003  |   permalink

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has ordered the government to draw up guidelines for electronic attacks against enemy computer networks, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Bush signed a directive in July ordering the government to develop, for the first time, rules for deciding when and how the United States would penetrate and disrupt foreign computer systems, the newspaper said.

The secret national security directive had not been publicly disclosed until now, the newspaper reported.

According to the report, cyber warfare rules were being prepared amid speculation that the Pentagon was considering some offensive computer operations against Iraq if the president decides to go to war over Baghdad's banned weapons programs.

"Whatever might happen in Iraq, you can be assured that all the appropriate approval mechanisms for cyber operations would be followed," an administration official was quoted as saying. The official declined to confirm or deny whether such planning was underway, the newspaper said.

A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment.  more...

Source: Reuters

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Well, you could if you own a VW or Audi vehicle, a laptop and a couple hundred dollars in your pocket. Ross-Tech sells software and hardware packages that allow you to connect to the On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) port to talk to your car. Why would you want to do this?

Scenario: You're driving along, minding your own business, when you notice the "Check Engine" light is flashing.

You cringe. Last time this happened, you took the car to the dealership for service, and came out $80 poorer. The problem? A loose gas cap was causing the emissions system to freak out. Ouch. This time, you plug in you laptop and adaptor cable, fire up the Vag-Com software, and see why the car's not happy. The fault code shows you that a sensor is not operating. Off to the dealership or parts store, change the part, clear the fault code, and you're done. Or, if you prefer, just get your favorite mechanic to change the part. Either way, you saved yourself the cost of the trouble-shooting session. Plus, the geek factor is way up there.

SUBMITTED BY: Mike "D" DeJong of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

07 February 2003  |   permalink

I am a huge advocate of having a computer in the living room, serving as the hub of an entertainment center. The folks at Prismiq are thinking along the same lines.

"PRISMIQ revolutionizes your home with networked entertainment devices.

With the PRISMIQ MediaPlayer you can play MP3s and DVD-quality video files, surf the web and chat with friends, enjoy household news-on-demand — all from the comfort of your home entertainment center instead of from your computer monitor. All this for a fraction of the cost of competing, music-only or web-only systems. And there is no service fee!"

Although this device has won favorable reviews by such heavyweights as Cnet and TechTV, I do not advocate purchasing this product yet. At $249USD, I think it prudent to wait a few months to see what other competing products surface. This is, however, an encouraging entry into an emerging niche market.

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A client of mine recently told me that he wanted to use his two phone lines and two 56K modems to form a single, 112K Internet connection. I smiled. Having heard dozens, if not hundreds of "speed up your connection" gimmicks, I told him that it was not possible. "Oh yes it is," he said, "and I intend to do it".

Needless to say, my interest was sufficiently piqued. Although I enjoy high speed Internet, many of my clients live in the sticks and have no access to broadband service. I know many people who would die to double their connection speed!

It turns out that not only is it possible to "bond" or "shotgun" two or more modems together, but in fact most ISP's already support it. I guess I am just the last guy to hear about this technique. I am told that it is possible, although not exceptionally easy to set up.

On Monday I'll be heading out to the home of another client who lives/ works in the backwoods of Winlaw, BC. I will attempt to set up his two external 56K modems using Multilink PPP. If it works, maybe I'll convince him to get 6 phone lines. <g>

And now I pass it over to you, my amicable visitors. Is there anyone reading this page that is already shotgunning their modems? Has anyone set it up before? Please, by all means, share your advice with me!

Suggested by: Bill Dennis of Playmor, British Columbia, Canada

06 February 2003  |   permalink

Not getting enough geek stimulation from superfastcomputer.com? The Daily Rotation will help fill those gaps.

These guys snag headlines from over 190 tech related sites which you can read on a single page. The page is completely configurable, so you can decide which publication's headlines you want to view when you visit the page.

Now, more than ever, the Internet is an amazing source of information and time-wasting management.

Suggested by: Ian Weir of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

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A lot of geeks are already aware of just how cool Steve Wozniak is. As co-founder of Apple Computers, he can pretty much claim to have invented the personal computer. He is also responsible for a lot of other minor inventions, such as the universal remote control. But did you know that Steve was responsible for sponsoring one of the biggest rock concerts of the 1980's? How many geeks can claim that?

In 1981 after surviving a plane crash, Wozniak decided to quit Apple and spend more time pursuing other interests. One of the things he did with his new found freedom was throw one of the biggest parties that California has ever seen. The 1983 3-day US Festival featured U2, Van Halen, Judas Priest, The Clash, Men At Work, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, INXS, Willie Nelson, Scorpions, Pretenders, David Bowie and way more.

Photo: Steve Wozniak, Valerie Bertinelli, Eddie Van Halen

More Info:
US Festival
Recent Slashdot interview
Steve's website

05 February 2003  |   permalink

Wired News-- Technology not taxation! That's the battle cry of the Canadian computer industry in a war of words being waged among groups representing the nation's music, technology and retail industries.

The dispute centers around fees collected from technology companies to reimburse the music industry for losses incurred by music copying and swapping.

Canadians are legally allowed to copy music for personal use. In exchange, a small fee is added to the price of recordable CDs to compensate musicians and music publishing companies. Similar "royalties" are collected in more than 40 countries, including the United States under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.

But in the wake of the Canadian music industry's proposals for higher and broader levies in 2003, much of Canada's technology and retail industry is now calling for the levy's repeal.

In 2000, the levy per recordable CD was 5.2 cents (Canadian); in 2001 the fee rose to CN$0.21. The proposed fee for 2003 is CN$0.59.

In addition, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, the music industry group that collects the levy, has proposed new levies to be applied to any device that can store music, such as removable hard drives, recordable DVDs, Compact Flash memory cards and -- of course -- MP3 players.  more...

This article suggested by: Mike "D" DeJong of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

04 February 2003  |   permalink

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial

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For those that haven't realized it yet, Kazaa Lite is a stripped-down version of the immensley popular file-sharing program. Gone are the advertisments, pop-up/under ads, the spyware, etc.

KaZaA Lite 2.0.3 Final is coming soon. Release Candidates are already available for download. KaZaA Lite 2.0.3 includes all of the new features of Kazaa, plus a few enhancements on the Lite version, including:

- More keyboard shortcuts
- Dat View / AVI Preview / Sig2Dat / My Shared Folder / Help can be accessed from within KaZaA Lite
- Includes Kazap (instead of Speed Up)
- Updates can be found and downloaded from mirror.edskes.com
- Unreachable sources are no longer stored in the .dat files
- Option to hide the systray icon
- Improved startup page
- Minor installer improvements
- New icons
- Updated FAQ

Source:Betas.intercom.net

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Wikipedia is a multilingual encyclopedia that's created by volunteers and published free on the Web. The English-language version reached a milestone last week, when its 100,000th article was published.

Wikipedia is an example of open content -- information that is not only free (as in "free beer") but also free (as in "free speech"). The Wikipedia copyright page says "content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the recipient grants the same freedoms to others using their version and they acknowledge Wikipedia as the source."

Wikipedia belongs to everyone. Check it out. See also H2G2.

02 February 2003  |   permalink

"The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, they provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is kind of slow, but everyone knows time travel ain't easy. Check out what your favorite sites looked like years ago from their cache of more than 10 billion pages.. Visit the Wayback Machine by entering an URL below, or browse specific collections.

Advanced Search

Check out Yahoo!'s page from October 17th, 1996.

01 February 2003  |   permalink

In shocking news, IBM announced that they had lost a drive with data on it from Co-operators General Insurance Co., as well as other companies. That drive had 180,000 "names, addresses, beneficiaries, social insurance numbers, pension values, pre-authorized checking information and mothers' maiden names", anything else? Oh yes, their bank account details."

This is really scary in a time when everyone is worried that their identity will be stolen. The Toronto Star reports that the insurance company had to send out letters to every person to warn of identity theft.  more...

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