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Volume:00 Issue:003
Sept 15, 1999

" Translating 'computerese' into 'computer ease'"

Click on a Topic: Spambots - MP3 - Web Graphics on a Budget - CacheSentry - Crash Clinic

INVASION OF THE SPAMBOTS! Like an invading army of alien slime, these bots are silently stalking the world wide web in search of email addresses. And when they get an email address in their tentacles, they inject it with their insidious spam. "Spambots" are computer programs used by spammers to automate their never-ending quest for converts to their cult of "something-for-nothing". They will gladly share (for a nominal fee) how to become rich overnight with your very own spambot!

Protect Yourself from these unwanted guests to your web site! Spam Free Email back in issue 1 of this zine, suggested that you avoid posting your primary email address on your web site. But if you like the convenience of being able to easily communicate with the human visitors to your site, what's to do?

    • Post a web-base email
    address that lets you forward
    to your main email address.
    If you get spammed, get
    a new web mail account.

    • Mail yourself a message to
    "youruserid+nospam@yourISP
    Many ISPs ignore anything
    after the "+" plus sign. If
    this works, you can easily
    change and repost it frequently

    • Don't post an email link.
    Put up an image file of your
    email address instead. Images are
    invisible to spambots!

And that's not all
you can do to protect yourself. With very little knowledge of Javascript, you can create email links that are hidden from spambots. Send me email and I'll be glad to reveal the technical magic (or just take a look at the source code behind the mail link in this paragraph).

You can learn much, much more about spambots and how to foil them at Spambots Beware!

Web Graphics on a Budget is full of tips and tricks and tutorials for PaintShopPro, an excellent shareware graphics program available from Jasc Software. It also has a page full of useful Graphics Links. If you need help beautifying your web site, give 'em a visit.

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$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $	YOU CAN INCREASE YOUR CACHE VALUE With CacheSentry you may not be smiling all the way to the bank, but you are likely to start smiling when your revisited web pages start popping back onto your monitor instead of returning at a crawl. This small(44K), but effective little program from Enigmatic Software gets your Internet Explorer 3.0, 4.0 or 5.0 cache working the way a cache is supposed to work. A browser cache has one purpose: to store visited web pages so that when the "back button" is clicked or a page is revisited, it reappears almost instantly. For some strange reason that seldom happens when IE is left to manage its cache by itself. Pages frequently take as long to load as if you're exploring virgin territory. If you download CacheSentry, put cachesentry.exe in a cozy directory on your hard drive, and then put a shortcut to it in your startup folder. For the complete details click here. Once it's set up, CacheSentry can be left running invisibly in the background with no further user intervention. Download CacheSentry now. Why keep w - a - i - t - i - n - g.?	$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
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"I WANT M Y M P 3 !"     It is incredibly easy to copy or record music to mp3 files which can be sent via email or posted to a web site. So easy, in fact, that the recording industry is in an uproar over these copyright "violations." Blaming a 30% slump in CD sales on mp3, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit to stop Diamond Systems from manufacturing the Rio Mp3 player, a nifty portable piece of hardware that can be loaded with mp3's from the internet. Since the lawsuit, awaresness & interest in mp3 has exploded.
    Mp3 gives musicians and songwriters a new, cheap and easy way to distribute their music and that could further erode the power the industry has over what kind of music we listen to.
    Meanwhile,there are more mp3 sites on the web every day.

)	)	)	)	)	SMALL FILES BIG SOUND	(	(	(	(	(
	The reason mp3 files are so popular is simple: they sound great-- as good as compact disks to human ears, and they are relatively small. Three minutes of CD-quality music can fit in a 1.5 megabyte mp3 file. A comparable recording in *.wav format would be over 30 megabytes.

Easy as MP3

    To hear what all the excitement is about, first you'll need a player. While Windows Media- Player 2 can play mp3s (about as well as a sewing needle and a dixie cup can play LPs--remember those?), WinAmp, freeware, passed the Knat test with flying colors. It comes in two version, lite (571k) and standard (2 megs).
    There are a number of ways to get mp3 files. One way is to create mp3 files yourself from CDs or *.wav files. Quite a few shareware and freeware programs are available to "rip" CD tracks and convert them to mp3. AudioGrabber, when used along with bladeenc.dll, a wav to mp3 conversion utility (both freeware), makes the process simple.
• Download AudioGrabber here.(0.99M)
• Download BladeDLL075.zip(100K)
    MP3s can be found on thousands of web sites. Just type "mp3" in your favorite search engine. The WinAmp home page has links to mp3 sources. Mp3.com lists songs by category and has thousands of mp3 files to choose from. Knat's personal favorite is Scour.net. Scour provides a free mp3 downloader that supports the resumption of interrupted downloads.
    For the hardcore mp3 junky, Abe's Mp3 Finder or Planet Mp3 Find are two freeware mp3 searching programs. These programs as well as web sites like Audiogalaxy produce lists of mp3 ftp sites. Many of these are ratio ftp sites where first some mp3 files must be uploaded before they permit any downloads.
    Wherever you go looking for mp3, be prepared for some "busy signals." It seems like everybody is trying to get their share of mp3.

New in the Knews

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CRASH CLINIC

Dedicated to the smooth and efficient operation of your
Win9x system because there's nothing so irritating as a
computer CRASH! #@*%!~`#/$>o!! :( :( :(

Whoah! Backup.
    Windows 9x is an inherently unstable operating system and Windows users accept crashes as a fact of their computing life, but there are crashes and then there are CRASHES--Crashes that leave you unable to even run Windows, or so cripple your system that it becomes difficult or impossible to use the computer. It is at times like this when a backup copy of your critical system files can easily bail you out. You do have these backups, don't you? If your answer is "no", keep reading, because in this Crash Clinic you will learn how you can easily back up and restore your system and how you can use some batch files written by Knat--available for download here in knatsbats.zip (291K)--to automate the process.
    The two single most important system files are user.dat and system.dat, which comprise the Windows Registry. These are located in c:\windows unless unique user profiles have been enabled through the "Users" applet in the Control Panel. If that is the case, use the Find utility to locate them on your system.
    Both of these are hidden, read-only, system files, so we have to remove these attributes before making copies of them. The easiest way to do this is at the DOS command prompt:

C:\>attrib -h -r -s c:\windows\user.dat
C:\>attrib -h -r -s c:\windows\system.dat
C:\>_

We can copy them to any directory. The following commands create copies right in the Windows directory as "user.sav" and "system.sav":

C:\>copy c:\windows\user.dat c:\windows\user.sav
C:\>copy c:\windows\system.dat c:\windows\system.sav
C:\>_

Now, restore the protective attributes to the originals with the attrib command:

C:\>attrib +h +r +s c:\windows\user.dat
C:\>attrib +h +r +s c:\windows\system.dat
C:\>_

Since Windows creates copies of these files everytime it boots successfuly (as user.da0 and system da0), you might wonder why bother with all of this? The problem with how Windows backs up these files is that it overwrites them everytime it restarts. If the problem with the registry began several days ago, or if you rebooted the computer because the system froze up, you've already lost the files that could get you back up and running. If you follow the steps outlined above on a regular basis, you will have your own, good copies to fall back on.
To restore the Registry, boot into DOS and repeat the procedure above, reversing the copy commands as follows:

C:\>copy /y c:\windows\user.sav c:\windows\user.dat
C:\>copy /y c:\windows\system.sav c:\windows\system.dat
C:\>_

Reply "yes" when prompted if you want to overwrite the files or just use the /y switch (as above) with the copy commands.

    To simplify the process further, download knatsbats.zip, which contains the batch files you can use to save and restore copies of win.ini, system.ini, autoexec.bat, and config.sys, user.dat and system.dat. The main program, Knat's REGSTORE.BAT, uses pkzip (available from PKWare) to put them all into a zip file named with the month and day--"0506save.zip", for example. To use regstore.bat, first make sure you have a copy of pkzip.exe located in a directory on your path [click for definition].
Use regstore in MSDOS mode [click for instructions on entering MSDOS mode]. If regstore.bat is also on the path, you can simply type "regstore" to save today's system files. If you've already run regstore once on a given day, it exits doing nothing unless you type "regstore /y" in which case it will overwrite the previous backup.
    To go with regstore.bat, you will also need a copy of Knat's RESTORE.BAT. Put it in the root directory or any directory on your path. You will also need to have a copy of pkunzip.exe somewhere on your path. If you ever need to restore your system files, get into MS-DOS mode and type "restore mmdd" where mmdd is the month and day of a previous backup. Whenever you replace the current Registry with an older one, changes to the Registry that have been made since the previous one are lost. You may lose some Windows settings if you've changed them recently and if you have just installed some new software, you will probably need to reinstall it--provided it wasn't the cause of your system trouble.
    If the following line is added to your autoexec.bat file:
       CALL REGSTORE.BAT
whenever the computer is turned on, a backup of the system files will be created. REGSTORE deletes the backups when they are over 3 weeks old so your hard drive won't eventually become filled. If you seldom make changes or install new software, you may not need daily backups, but for most everyone else this is highly recommended. If you like to edit your Registry on occasion, you can now rest assured that you have protection against your mistakes.

GETTING INTO MS-DOS:3 different ways
1. From Windows 95, press the start button, choose "Shut Down", then click the radio button next to "Restart the Computer in MS-DOS mode?" and press Enter.
2. Create a WIndows shortcut to DOS, then just click on the DOS icon for a quick exit to DOS. Here's how: Right click anywhere on the Desktop and choose "New","Shortcut" from the pop-up menu. In the space for "Command line:", type "command", then press "Next>". It will say, "MS-DOS Prompt" in the space for the shortcut's description. You can type in anything you want. "DOS 7.0" would be an accurate description. Now click "Finish", but we aren't fisnished with it yet. Next, right-click the shortcut and choose "Properties". Click on the "Program" Tab and press "Advanced". Now mark the check box next to "MS-DOS Mode". For a quick exit to DOS, uncheck the box marked "Warn before entering MS-DOS Mode", but then remember to only use this shortcut when you've closed your other programs. If that makes you nervous, it's OK to leave this box checked. Make sure the radio button for "Use current MS-DOS configuration" is selected. Now click "OK" and then "OK" again. You're finished, unless you want to selsect a different icon for the shortcut.
3. When starting the computer, press F8 as soon as you see the words "Starting Windows 95" on the screen. The timing can be a little tricky here. If you get it right, a menu will appear. On of your choices will be "Command prompt only". Choose that and the computer will quickly enter MS-DOS mode.
Hitting the F8 key at the right moment to get the startup menu can be a real hassle sometimes. Here's a way to make the menu appear automatically every time your computer starts. Find the file named msdos.sys in the root directory. You may need to make sure Explorer isn't set to hide system files. Or you can just use the "Find Files and Folders" utility accesible from the Start Button. Now right click msdos.sys, choose "Properties" and uncheck the "Read only" box so the file can be edited. Now open it in Notepad. Start Notepad, choose "File, open" and type C:\msdos.sys. In the section titled "[Options]" add the following two lines:
       BootMenu=1
       BootMenuDelay=2
The first line activates the menu. The second line allows the computer to continue to boot unattended after 2 seconds. Choose any number of seconds you prefer, or leave line 2 out altogether if you want the menu to just sit there waiting for your input ever time the computer is booted. Now save the file and again open up msdos.sys's properties and recheck the "Read Only" box. You're done. Now you'll be able to select "Command Prompt", "Safe Mode" with ease any time your computer starts.

PATH--A list of directories you can find in your system's autoexec.bat file after "PATH " and separated;by;semicolons. Files in these directories can be accessed from any directory on the computer. If you have a program called "abc.exe" in a subdirectory of C:\windows called "myplace", and ";C:\windows\myplace;" is somewhere in the path, you can simply type "abc" to run it instead of typing the whole path as in "c:\windows\myplace\abc.exe". You may add directories to your path statement, but you are limited to 127 characters in your path statement, so don't go overboard.

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