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Star Wars Episode IV — in ASCII text

Darth Vader intercepts Princess Leia, who jettisons the Death Star plans, which... The animation is absorbing — but it's all rendered using ASCII text!
This hilarious retelling of Star Wars Episode IV (the "first" in the series) is by Simon Jansen, a New Zealand programmer with way too much time on his hands. He provides a Java version of the movie at his site, ASCIImation.co.nz. But more interesting is the version that draws the movie in a DOS window on your screen using telnet.
To try this yourself, open a command window. (Start, Run, cmd, Enter.) At the prompt, type telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and press Enter. After a delay, the ASCII animation starts rolling.
The movie is by no means finished, but you may not care because you'll be rolling on the floor, laughing.

Visit the site

Free antivirus, a new firewall, and IP sniffing

By Fred Langa
Welcome to the first issue of the new, combined Windows Secrets & LangaList!
Although the newsletter format is different (and better!) than the old LangaList, I'm still getting the same kind of great reader questions and tips as always. This week, I discuss new products from the makers of two immensely-popular software utilities — AVG AntiVirus and Ad-Aware — plus a concern about IP data-mining.

Is the free AVG AntiVirus going away?

If my volume of reader mail is any indication, many of you are concerned about the imminent demise of a favorite antivirus tool. Take reader Graham Gwilliam's note, for example:

• "Fred, I hear that Grisoft's AVG AntiVirus Free Edition will not be free in the new year. I, together with my friends, have used this excellent antivirus software for some years. Is this the latest free software that we will now have to pay for or find an alternative that works as well?"

Not to worry. It's only the older versions that are going away. The newest version of AVG (7.5) is already available, and is still offered in both free and paid versions. (I'll give you the links in a moment.)
The reason for the confusion is that Grisoft's main Web site is set up so that you have to read through a lot of descriptive prose about the paid version before you find the links to the free one.
That's not a malicious trick or raw greed on Grisoft's part, it's just good business sense. Grisoft is doing a wonderful service to the computing community by continuing to offer a free, fully-functional and quite complete antivirus tool for personal and home use. But although that version is free to end users, it's not free to Grisoft. They paid to develop the free version, they pay to make it available for free download, and they pay still more to keep it updated.
That's very generous of them, but no company can afford infinite largess. So, if you can spring for the paid version on at least one of your personal-use PCs, please consider doing so. It will help Grisoft stay in business and allow it to continue to deliver good software. But if you truly can't afford the paid version, or can't afford it on all your PCs, then fine. That's what the free version is for!
And, by the way, one of the reasons Grisoft is trying to move all its customers to the new versions is that AVG AntiVirus 7.5 (free and paid) will ship with the "Security Center" in the soon-to-be-released Windows Vista. That makes AVG one of the most widely applicable AV tools in existence: Version 7.5 will run on all versions of 32-bit desktop Windows from Win98 through Vista.
The new paid version 7.5 is available now from Grisoft's main site. The free version is also available either by navigating from the above site (look for the small type near the bottom of the pages) or by going directly to the free download area.
Other free antivirus tools: Avast, ClamWin, Comodo, Antidote Lite

Ad-Aware's new firewall gets good buzz

Chances are you've heard of Ad-Aware, one of the oldest and most-popular antispyware utilities. But you may not know that Lavasoft (the publisher of Ad-Aware) now offers its own Lavasoft Personal Firewall as well. A reader named Gerry was first to sound the "heads up":

• "While looking at the updates for Lavasoft's Ad-Aware (I use it in conjunction with several other spyware/malware tools, like Spybot), I noticed that it is now selling its own firewall for $29.99 online.
  I am still using the venerable Sygate Personal Firewall. But, following its absorption (demise) into the Symantec conglomeration, I am still debating whether or not to move onto a more current stand-alone firewall (no suites)."

Thanks, Gerry. The new firewall is getting a good buzz on various online forums. But unlike the venerable Ad-Aware (which comes in free and paid versions), there is no free version of the Lavasoft Personal Firewall. Instead, there's only a 10-day free trial. In that regard, it's not a true one-for-one replacement for the late, lamented Sygate PF, which was totally free for personal use.
But before you toss your older firewall, note that firewalls in themselves don't need a lot of updating. Unlike antivirus and antimalware tools that require constant updating against new threats, firewalls deal with a fixed and finite number of Internet ports. (These are well-described by Wikipedia.) A firewall that stopped unwanted "port probes" yesterday will stop them just as well today. A port is either closed or open. There's not a lot of grey area there!
In fact, it's because firewalls can only do so much that Sygate and other companies got into the security-suite business. Once their firewalls were doing all they could to block unwanted access to your PC, the companies felt they had to compete via add-on bells and whistles to augment or supplement their base product. Before long, what was once a relatively simple, stand-alone firewall became a huge suite of security tools.
So, if your firewall — Sygate PF or otherwise — is working to your satisfaction, there's really no rush to replace it. It won't go bad or suddenly stop working.
But if you want to explore alternative firewalls, such as Lavasoft's, I suggest you temporarily remove Sygate PF and try the Lavasoft firewall for the free 10-day trial. If you like it and feel it's worth $30, go for it. If you don't like it or think it's overpriced, reinstall Sygate PF until and unless you find something better.
For more information: Lavasoft's Personal Firewall, Sygate Personal Firewall (via Oldversion.com), GRC.com (to test any firewall for free)

Is IP sniffing a security risk?

You've probably seen those targeted pop-up ads that seem to pinpoint your geographic location. Reader Dennis K. does, and they worry him:

• "My question concerns all these 'lovely ladies' who want to date me. It seems that they pop up on more and more sites. What really interests me is where the city information is stored on my computer that they are able to access to produce an ad that says that these girls are waiting for me 'in Westland.' Now, I don't live in Westland (Michigan) — but I'm close.
  Just how are these sites accessing this info, what other info is available to them, and how can I block this unwanted infiltration?"

Those kinds of ads can seem disturbing at first, I agree. It looks as if the advertiser has some kind of inside knowledge about where and who you are.
But there's nothing nefarious going on, Dennis — at least not in regard to finding your location.
Every time you go to any Web site, your browser has to identify itself (in a general way) to the site. Part of the information your browser sends is your unique IP address. Your browser has to send this so the site you're contacting knows how to send the page you're requesting back to you.
All the major Internet providers, interconnectors, and data "backbones" are identified by their electronic addresses, where they are, who owns them, and so forth. Your PC's IP address is part of a range of addresses controlled by your ISP. By examining your IP address, anyone can see what ISP your data originated from.
The ads use your ISP's physical location as a reasonable approximation of where you and your PC are. If you live in the same town as your ISP, the guess about your location will appear to be dead on because your town and the ISP's town are one and the same. But if — as in Dennis' case — your ISP is in a nearby town, then the guess about your location will be close but not quite precise.
For more info, Wikipedia has a rich explanation of IP geolocation.
There also are numerous free software tools that can tell you exactly where and how your data flows across the Web, hop by hop. For example, Tracert (pronounced "trace route"), while somewhat primitive, can provide pretty good clues as to the physical location of each electronic hop.
Other tools, such as IPGEO (also free), work as a kind of phone book for the Internet, letting you look up any IP address to see what country, city, region, ISP, and ZIP code that IP address is associated with.
The bottom line is that your IP address isn't secret (it can't be). Anyone can use it to make a reasonable guess as to where you are, based on your ISP's physical location. So, it's nothing to worry about.
Additional resources: IP Address Locator, Mappa Mundi, Cyber Geography Research, IP2Location (a commercial site with a free demo)

I came, I saw, I blogged: Crabby demystifies blogs - Help and How-to - Microsoft Office Online

Link to a good post about blogging at the MS Office site

This newsletter " the crabby office lady" has some interesting tips on using Office products

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?CIID=68835&r=rss

By Craig Simms | November, 2006

Introduction to RAID

Okay, this is how you raid a castle. First, recruit an army of 14th century soldiers. Then find yourself a battering ram (we hear Dan’s Emporium of New and Used Smashy Things has excellent deals). Then, get some boiling oil, arrows and… oh. Not that sort of raid. What? Hard drives. Aww...

The Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks (RAID, for short), is a collection of hard drives that for all intents and purposes act as one big hard drive. It also means ‘RAID Array’ is a tautology, just like ‘ATM Machine’, ‘BAS Statement’ and ‘PBS Scheme’, so smack anyone who says it. Yes, even your boss.
There are different levels of RAID that can be employed, so before we even start with the testing, let us delve through the craziness that is the more common RAID levels – there are very uncommon ones, like 2, 3, 4 and 7, and considering in consumer land we’ll very rarely see these, we’ll leave it up to you to research further if you feel the need. Also, take in mind that putting disks in RAID can lower the overall Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of the set, as more disks are running more frequently.
JBOD
Strings a whole set of disks together in one volume, hence the name ‘Just a Bunch Of Disks’. If you lose a drive, you only lose the content on that drive. Not RAID, but often included in the function list of RAID cards.
RAID 0
Despite the name, RAID 0 is not true RAID as it also lacks redundancy. Sometimes called ‘striping’, it simply joins two or more identically sized drives into one volume, spreading bits equally across the lot. If you have one larger and one smaller disk, it simply partitions the larger to use the capacity of the smaller disk. If you lose one disk, you lose all data across the array. So while it increases read and write bandwidth by employing multiple disks, it increases the risk of catastrophic data loss.
RAID 1
Ah, real RAID at last. Also called ‘mirroring’. RAID 1 simply copies the contents of one drive to another, meaning if one fails you have your contents already auto-backed up. Unfortunately, it also means you need double the capacity of your drives for that redundancy. RAID 1 usually incurs a minor write speed penalty hit, and may provide a read speed increase if the controller allows accessing both drives at once.
RAID 0+1
A little better than RAID 0, and requires a minimum of four drives to operate (and generally an even number of drives). First a set of drives are striped which gives a speed increase, and then that stripe is mirrored, providing redundancy. You can afford to lose one drive in this setup, however it still requires you to double your capacity to gain the redundancy. Should you lose a drive though, the whole thing acts a single striped array bringing back the perils of RAID 0, so still not fantastic redundancy. Generally 1+0 is a better idea.
RAID 1+0/10
Yep, they’re both the same thing, but conceptually a little harder to wrap your head around than 0+1. Still needing a minimum of four drives to work, the array is first mirrored then striped. How does this work? Take for example two mirrored sets, making up a total of four drives. These mirrored sets are then striped to form a single volume, allowing increased transfer rates – and letting one drive fail in each mirrored set before the stripe fails.
RAID 1E
RAID 1+0, but for an odd number of drives. Minimum of three drives required. Partitions each drive in half, and uses the second half of each adjacent drive as a mirror for the first half on the earlier drive. The mirror for the third drive is then wrapped around back to the first’s second partition. After that, all drives are striped together. RAID 1E can only lose one disk.
RAID 5
Now we’re starting to get serious. RAID 5 is a striped array with parity stored equally across all data. Parity data takes up space equivalent to one disk in the array. If a drive fails, you can add a new one, and the lost data is ‘rebuilt’ using the existing data + parity. You need a minimum of three drives.
The advantage of this compared to a mirrored array is the amount of space recovered – for example, in a 1TB 1+0 array you can only use 500GB – in a 1TB RAID 5 array you can use 750GB. Write speeds are penalised highly due to having to create parity data, but read speeds are impressive. The more drives you add, the faster it goes. The perfect solution for a file server. It’s usually best to have a hardware solution for RAID 5 rather than software, but if you’re only running at network speeds it’s bearable. It can still only suffer one drive loss.
RAID 6
RAID 5, but with an extra disk dedicated entirely to parity. As such, it can survive two disk failures, but write speeds are penalised even further. You’ll need a dedicated controller to even achieve this, short of some Linux trickery.

 

Create your own podcast

By Rick Broida, CNET.com on 06 July 2005

Step 1: Break into podcasting
Forget blogging: the hot topic right now is podcasting. If you've ever fantasized about hosting your own talk show, this is your chance.

Podcasts are recordings distributed across the Internet as downloadable MP3 files. Looking for a way to download recorded interviews to his iPod, former MTV VJ Adam Curry created a little application he called iPodder. But you don't have to have Apple's popular player to create or listen to podcasts.

All you need to start your own is a microphone, some software, and the gift of gab. In fact, most podcasts are home-brewed, even though large organisations such as the ABC are offering them.

Step 2: Tools for podcasting
Before you even get started with this project, we recommend that you have the following:

• A headset with a noise-canceling microphone
• A portable MP3 voice recorder
• Podcasting software (such as Audacity or iPodcast Producer)

Step 3: How to plan a podcast

A podcast can be anything: your political views, mock interviews with your pets, or something practical like a "live" trade-show report to share with coworkers.

Before you pick up the microphone, though, you should do some planning, especially if you're not used to speaking extemporaneously.

• Listen to some of the more popular podcasts to get a feel for style and content. A good place to start is Podcast Alley or iTunes.
• Write an outline to help you avoid long, awkward silences in your show.

Once you have a sense of what a good podcast should be and have narrowed down your topic, you can focus on hardware.

Other than a computer, the only hardware you need is a microphone; the better the model, the more professional your recordings will sound. You can use the mic that came with your PC, but for better recording quality, you should invest in a PC headset such as the Sennheiser PC 150, which offers a built-in microphone and noise-cancellation circuitry.

Some of the best podcasts are "road diaries." If you're on the go, don't forget to pack a portable recorder.

Many of the latest MP3 players have line-in jacks so that you can plug in an external microphone. (No, the iPod doesn't have one, but the iRiver H320 does.) Just make sure yours can record at a decent sampling rate -- at least 32Kbps for MP3 and 44.1KHz for WAV.

Tip: If you're parked in front of a PC and don't have headphones plugged in, be sure to mute your speakers. Otherwise, feedback could ruin your recording.

Step 4: Podcast-recording software

You can use a program as simple as Windows' Sound Recorder to capture your podcast, but something a bit more sophisticated would be better.

One popular podcast tool is Audacity, an open-source audio editor and recorder. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it includes a number of useful features and plug-ins.

If you want something even more podcast-friendly, check out Industrial Audio Software's aptly named iPodcast Producer. This start-to-finish solution lets you record and edit podcasts, create Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, and upload the finished product via a built-in FTP client. It's priced at US$249.95, but at press time the company was set to unveil a more consumer-oriented version, iPodcast Creator, for US$89.95.

Tip: If you decide to use Audacity, download and install the LAME MP3 encoder so that you can save your recordings as MP3 files, the preferred format for podcasts.

Step 5: Record your podcast

Technical glitches can ruin an otherwise perfect podcast, so start with a few sample recordings to test the software, adjust volume levels, and make sure everything works.

Next, set the sample rates for your recording. In Audacity, for instance, click File > Preferences, then click the Quality tab. If you're just recording voice, anything higher than 44.1KHz and 16-bit sampling is overkill for most noncommercial purposes. If music factors heavily into your podcast, however, consider higher rates, but keep in mind the resulting file will be larger.

Try to keep your show casual, conversational, and continuous. Remember, if you make mistakes, you can always edit them out later.

Tip: Some audio-recording programs, such as iPodcast Producer, let you add intro music, sound effects, and other audio in real time. That's usually easier and less time-consuming than adding it later. It goes without saying that if you include music in your podcast, you should respect copyright laws.

Make sure to select the right audio settings before you begin recording.

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Step 6: Edit and save podcasts
After you've finished your show, save it as a WAV file. That will give you a "master" file to work from and a backup in case you have a problem exporting to MP3.

Now it's time to edit. In most cases, that means cutting out mistakes and long stretches of silence. In Audacity, as in most audio editors, you can find and remove silent patches easily. Just look for areas where the waveform becomes an almost straight line. Select that area (much the same way you select text in a word processor) and hit Delete.

Ideally, you should now save your recording as an MP3 file, preferably using a 32Kbps to 64Kbps bit rate. In Audacity, with the LAME MP3 encoder installed, this is also the chance to add ID3-tag info: your name, the name of the podcast, and so on. Without this, listeners won't be able to find your show on their MP3 players.

Tip: Make your podcast jazzier and more professional by adding loops, snippets of music used for everything from opening the show to introducing specific segments. Find thousands of freely available loops at Flash Kit.

Prevent awkward moments by deleting stretches of silence in your podcast.

Step 7: Publish your podcast
Now it's time to get your podcast out there.

If you have access to an FTP server, just create a new folder and upload your MP3. If you don't have an FTP server, you'll need to find a site that will host your podcast. A good place to start is Ourmedia.org. For now, it's free and doesn't limit file bandwidth, but the site screens all podcasts and will remove any content it deems inappropriate.

Some fee-based sites, such as Audioblog.com and Liberated Syndication, charge monthly fees starting at US$5. They may also impose monthly data-transfer limits, so if too many people download your podcast, you could face additional charges.

The last thing you need to do is upload a podcast feed, an RSS file that includes a description of your podcast, a link to the corresponding MP3, and other information. You can create this file in a number of ways. The free ways are to do it yourself (you'll need to know XML, though), to use the free podcast RSS-feed generator at TD Scripts.com, or to use the generator available to Ourmedia users. Generators are also part of third-party software apps such as iPodcast Producer, as well as some fee-based hosting services.

Step 8: Test your podcast feed
Before you announce your podcast to the world, use a validation service such as the free RSS Validator to ensure your RSS feed is in proper working order. If it reports an error, you'll have to go back into the RSS file, correct it, and upload it again.

Tip: To help attract an audience to your podcast, submit your link to podcast directories such as iPodder.org, or promote it on sites such as Podcast Alley and the Podcast Directory. Such sites include links for downloading your podcast.

Source: Create your own podcast - Music Software