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The e-mail message goes
something like this, "For every person that you forward this e-mail
to, Microsoft will pay you $245" or "if you receive e-mail titled:
Win A Holiday - Do Not Open It. It will erase everything on your
hard drive."
Then there's the Budweiser screensaver warning - yes, another hoax.
These types of e-mail "chain letters" are a plague to email users
because they waste time or cause unnecessary panic.
The truth is that they are hoaxes. But how do you know for sure? By
applying a little bit of knowledge and common sense.
Here's some telltale signs of an e-mail hoax.
They all reference an Internet authority, sometimes it's IBM or
Microsoft or America Online - in some cases, it may be all three.
The author promises that the catastrophic virus will arrive as
e-mail and wipe out a computer's hard drive. They also encourage the
recipient to spread the word about the impending evil that's about
to descent on a hard drive.
That line is the giveaway to the hoax.
It is the reason for the e-mail's existence and means to how it is
replicated over the Net. Basically, the author of the letter/e-mail
is taking advantage of people's good nature and the quick
dissemination ability of the Internet.
E-mail is a text file that arrives on a hard drive from the
Internet. But, unlike a piece of software, or a macro program, it is
not executed or interpreted by your computer system.
In order for a computer virus to spread, it needs to execute some
code or programming instructions to cause the desired havoc. Since
e-mail is purely a text file, it cannot be executed. Even if it's a
Web document that arrives in e-mail - called an HTML file in web
lingo - it is unlikely to do much harm because Web page technologies
- like Active X or Java -- are a difficult medium to build viruses
in because they have been design to be secure.
There is, however, a couple of exceptions to this rule.
If e-mail has a file attachment such as a game or a file saved as a
word processing or spreadsheet document, then it may contain a virus
through the executive program buried in the file format. But, to
spread the virus, you would need to open and run the file in
question.
Secondly, if the attached file is a document from an office suite
program, such as Microsoft Word, then it may contain a macro-virus.
Today's advanced office packages often have macro file capabilities,
and virus writers like to exploit these potentially weak areas of
attack.
A macro is a sort of programming language that can be embedded into
a document to perform simple tasks like math or mini-tools that help
with the file format. Should a system become infected through such a
virus, in most cases it can be easily removed with one of the
commercial anti-virus programs. If a program arrives as an
attachment, it can be scanned with an anti-virus program to clean it
before it's run.
However, getting rid of the e-mail virus hoax is not as easy a task.
It can be deleted it from a mailbox, but sure enough, just like a
real virus, it is likely to show up again because some well-meaning
person or friend on the Net will fall for the joke and you're going
to be on their mailing list.
Further information on hoax viruses should is available at the Data
Fellows web site at
http://www.Europe.Datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm/.
Finally the newly discovered VBS BubbleBoy worm changes the rules of
the game for the virus via e-mail game.
All a user has to do to get this virus is to open an infected email
- not the attachment, and the entire system is infected!
This flies against all the rules. Luckily the virus was not released
into the wild. It was sent to an anti-virus software maker to prove
it could be created.
Users of free e-mail program Microsoft Outlook Express may be
infected by simply having "AutoPreview" enabled - a function that
shows you the contents of an e-mail in a program window before you
open it.
BubbleBoy inserts a script file into the Startup directory of a
Windows 98 computer. When the computer is restarted, the script
runs. BubbleBoy will only work on a computer system with Internet
Explorer 5.0 using Windows Scripting Host. It will not run on a
Macintosh, Windows NT or default settings for Windows 95.
Luckily, BubbleBoy is considered low risk because the virus was not
released into the wild. It was sent to an anti-virus software maker
to show that it could be done in November of last year.
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By Andy Walker
Question: I want to
learn to use search engines better. Can you help?
Answer: There are many secrets that lie within search engine
pages, but they are not immediately obvious. Here are a few advanced
techniques.
Search engines work by comparing words that you type in their query
boxes to a massive library of indexed Web pages. They use software
to study Web pages and rank them according to topics and keywords.
You have a few options when you do a search. Google.com has some
amazing technology that seems to always find what you are looking
for if you know a little bit about the topic, but don’t really know
anything specific.
Google also offers category specific searches. Try news.google.com
to find topics that have been covered by the news media. Or use
images.google.com to find pictures. Froogle.com is also a Google
site that helps you find products and pricing. My favorite feature
is the search term spellchecker. Enter “Jean Cretien” (this is a
popular misspelling of the Canadian prime minister's name) and
Google will provide the results but also ask in red: “Did you mean:
Jean Chretien?” If you click on this, it will provide the search
results for the correct spelling.
Altavista.com is a good alternative to Google as it indexes things
differently and is a good place to go if Google doesn’t produce the
information you are looking for. AltaVista also has a very good
niche search engines that find images, MP3 and video. Look for the
blue tabs at the top of the page.
Yahoo.com is good for finding lots of information about a very
general topic. It does have a generic search engine, but its
strengths are a directory of web sites managed by humans that
categorize pages into zillions of topics and sub-topics. Instead of
typing search terms, click down through the categories, which are
often several levels deep to find great sites related to your
search. This is a good technique to use if you're just browsing or
are unsure of the specific area you are interested in.
Whichever site you use, be sure use Boolean operators for advanced
searches. They are special words that qualify a series of search
terms. You see, simply typing in one word into the search box is not
enough. Think of walking into a library and telling the librarian
that you're looking for information on music. Chances are the
librarian will ask you to be more specific. Boolean operators help
you do this on search engines.
Whenever you start a search, think of several words that relate to
your topic. Perhaps you want to know about the Swedish pop sensation
Abba, but are actually more interested in what happened to the women
in the band. In this case, your search could be abba female members.
(Note that most, but not all, search engines don't differentiate
between upper- and lower-case characters.)
That query means: find all pages that include these words: abba,
female, members. If any of these words appear in a Web page, then
that page will be displayed in your search results. If a page has
the word female, but not the other two words, it will still be in
the results listings.
Soon you discover that the female members of Abba were Agnetha and
Frida (also known as Anni-Frid). If you add Boolean operators (AND,
OR, NOT), you can narrow your search further. The AND operator
ensures the words will be in the results, so the query abba AND
agnetha AND frida will find pages that include all three of those
words.
Using the OR operator is like using a blank space between words. So
abba agnetha frida is the same as abba OR agnetha OR frida.
The NOT operator excludes words from any results. So the search
query abba AND agnetha AND frida NOT bjorn NOT benny would result in
Web pages that include the word Abba and mention the women's names,
but exclude pages that also reference Bjorn and Benny, the male
members of Abba.
There are shortcuts to these operators, which can be very useful.
The plus (+) and minus (-) symbols can be used instead of AND and
NOT, respectively. So the query +abba +agnetha +frida would produce
the same pages as the query abba AND agnetha AND frida. All words
would be found in the pages listed in the search results.
The query +abba +agnetha -frida would find pages about Abba and
Agnetha, but that exclude any mention of Frida. To mix and match,
the search query +abba agnetha -frida would produce Web pages that
might contain the word Agnetha, would not contain the word Frida and
would definitely contain the word Abba.
Quotation marks are useful in searches. They define phrases. So if
you enter "mamma mia" into a search box (including double quotes),
the search engine will look for Web pages that contain that phrase
and not the separated words.
Brackets are useful. For example, abba AND (album OR single) would
look for Web pages that are about Abba and their albums or Abba and
their singles.
You can mix and match all these techniques to do fairly elaborate
searches.
Consider this search query: "mamma mia" AND abba AND (theatre OR
musical) -london.
It would find all Web pages that mention either the word theatre or
the word musical and the phrase Mamma Miaand the word Abba. The
results would not contain the word London. Hopefully you would get
pages that talk about the musical Mamma Mia featuring Abba music but
not pages that refer to performances in London.
Now go put on the Abba tune Dancing Queen and celebrate. Make sure
you pull down the blinds so you don't embarrass yourself in front of
the neighbours.
Done? Good. Not all search engines support all these advanced
features. Most do, though. There are good guides to search engines
and the search features they support at
http://www1.sympatico.ca/help/Learn/FAQ/search-tools.html#OVERVIEW.
Natural language search engines can be particularly useful. Ask.com
– formerly known as Ask Jeeves - is one of these. On the site, you
type in your question as you'd ask it to another human being.
"Natural language" means that, instead of using keywords, it's
written as it might be spoken, as in: Where are Abba's lyrics
located on the Web?
Ask.com will respond with results that include what other search
engines find, as well as related sites rated by Ask.com staff. It
will also suggest related search terms.
Some services such as Ask.com and Google offer downloadable search
toolbars that can add a search field to the top of your Internet
Explorer web browser (if you run Windows). Check out Google’s at
toolbar.google.com. Yahoo’s is at companion.yahoo.com and the Ask
Jeeves’ toolbar can be downloaded here: sp.ask.com/docs/toolbar/
Finally, it's worth looking for links or buttons that refer to
advanced searches. These Web pages often list advanced search
techniques as well as tips on how to specifically search the site
you are in.
Below are some web addresses of advanced search tip pages on popular
Canadian and U.S. search engines.
Canadian sites
http://www.google.ca/help/refinesearch.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/ca/ysearch/basics/basics-04.html
U.S. sites
http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/ca/ysearch/basics/basics-04.html
http://www.altavista.com/help/adv_search/syntax
http://sp.ask.com/docs/help/help_searchtips.html
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Question: I have been
sending large files as e-mail attachments to a colleague in another office but
the IT guys (tech staff at work) have been complaining because I bog down the
e-mail computer. Is there anything I can do to solve this problem?
Answer: I always recommend that you never use e-mail to send file
attachments any larger than about two megabytes. Often e-mail servers - which
are the computers that direct e-mail traffic -- are set up to give the users a
finite amount of disk space to store incoming or outgoing e-mail. File
attachments can eat up into this allocation and prevent the e-mail account
holder from getting any more e-mail because it exceeds their e-mail storage
space.
If you have a slow modem connection, uploading and download e-mail can take a
long time when big attachments are involved.
Your best bet is to shrink the file using a file compression tool. First off
here how to tell how big a file is in Windows before you send it. Locate the
file using either My Computer or Windows Explorer. Click on it to select it and
then click with your right mouse button. A dialogue box will appear with
information about the file. Look at the Size entry. This will be measured in
bytes, kilobytes (KB) or megabytes (MB). There are one million bytes or 1,000
kilobytes in a megabyte.
First here's how to shrink the file size for transmission.
There are program that can convert the file into a ZIP file. These remove extra
space in the file (white space or repetitive data) and compacts the file down.
It kind of crunches it and renames the file with a ZIP extension. So
ilovegranny.ppt would become ilovegranny.zip. Depending on the file type, you
can reduce the file size by up to 10 times.
This makes the IT guys happy, the e-mail server healthy and makes it quicker to
send and receive the file as an attachment.
The problem with this is that when the recipient gets the file they have to
uncrunch the file back to its regular state. If they are using Microsoft Windows
Me or XP (the operating systems that came after Windows 98) all they have to do
is save the compressed attachment to their hard drive and double click on it.
Windows Me will display the file inside the zip file and it can be dragged out
to its full size.
If they don't have Windows Me, they can download WinZip from www.winzip.com or
use StuffIt for Windows from www.aladdinsys.com. Both programs are great at
zipping and unzipping these kinds of files.
>> Lex
Stewart also recommends tiring
http://www.yousendit.com/
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