Leo's Answers #38 - August 11, 2006 - Confident Computing

Leo's Answers
A Weekly Newsletter From
Ask Leo!
Leo Notenboom

Hello!

*** Contents

New Articles of Note on Ask Leo!
A Word from our Sponsor
Popular Articles from the Archives
Thoughts and Comments
Newsletter Administration

*** New Articles of Note on Ask Leo!

Parental Monitoring Software: My child figured out how to turn it off - what can I do?

My child's figured out how to disable the Parental Monitoring Software package Net Nanny by killing the process in Task Manager after hitting ctrl-alt-del. He learned to do that just by searching for "disable net nanny" on the web. Is there a way to make him stop? Perhaps a way to make Net Nanny run without being detected?

Kids are just too smart sometimes, aren't they? :-)

And even for those that aren't able to figure out for themselves these nifty ways of hacking around what you've put in place, as you've seen, there's plenty of information on-line. Kids helping kids against those "oppressive" parents.

Unfortunately this situation highlights one of the reasons I don't really like parental monitoring software in general.

Continue reading: "Parental Monitoring Software: My child figured out how to turn it off - what can I do?"
http://ask-leo.com/parental_monitoring_software_my_child_figured_out_how_to_turn_it_off_what_can_i_do.html

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Privacy? What Privacy?

AOL's recent intentional, yet mistaken, release of search data shows how tenuous our privacy really is.

Continue reading: "Privacy? What Privacy?" Article Includes Audio
http://ask-leo.com/privacy_what_privacy.html

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Why does my Microsoft Word document display differently on different computers?

I have a document which was created in Word XP and is 226 pages. When I send it to a client who is using Word 2003, it looks totally different and is over 330 pages. How can I send the client the document without it changing? Also, they wanted a pdf version, which looks nothing like the word document. How can I get the word document to look like the pdf?

Well, to be honest, you're trying to do something that Word documents aren't really intended to do. As counter-intuitive as it sounds Word isn't really about making the document look exactly the same everywhere.

But your client is on the right track, actually, since that's what PDF files attempt to do.

In a nutshell: it's all about the system, and the printer.

Continue reading: "Why does my Microsoft Word document display differently on different computers?"
http://ask-leo.com/why_does_my_microsoft_word_document_display_differently_on_different_computers.html

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26 Drives? Is there a way around the 26 drive limit in Windows?

Is there a way around the limit to 26 drives in Explorer? My in-home network leaves me only 3 drives available (X:, Y: and Z:). I am looking to add a 500GB drive (either internal or external) to my system, but want to partition it into at least 5 drives. Is it possible to do this without losing the ability to connect to the rest of my network? What suggestions would you have to handle this?

This is one of those situation's I've been meaning to get around to for quite a while myself. I have one machine on which I have several physical drives installed, and a USB 8-in-one flash reader that adds 4 more drives, and two CD-ROM drives. On top of that I, too, want to connect to several other machines on my network. I wasn't running out of room, but things were getting tight.

Note how I said "were". There are a couple of good solutions.

Continue reading: "26 Drives? Is there a way around the 26 drive limit in Windows?"
http://ask-leo.com/26_drives_is_there_a_way_around_the_26_drive_limit_in_windows.html

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How do I print just portions of an email or web page?

I love your newsletter, and want to print out portions that I might need and keep those in a binder instead of in a computer folder. How do I print just a portion?

Here I've been trying to go paperless, and save everything possible to disk. I know, I'm a geek, and most people still find plain old paper the easiest, quickest and most portable form of data storage for many things.

Rather than print out the entire document when you might want just a portion, there are a couple of common techniques to capturing just the information you want. Neither are pretty - in fact each leaves something or other to be desired - but both can work.

One way or another.

Continue reading: "How do I print just portions of an email or web page?"
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_print_just_portions_of_an_email_or_web_page.html

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Dictionary Attack: What is it?

My system administrator has my server locked down really tight so that I wouldn't be vulnerable to what he called "dictionary attacks". However this weekend he said that my server was being impacted by exactly that - a dictionary attack. Was he lying, or am I misunderstanding something? What's a dictionary attack?

I doubt that your system administrator was lying. (OK, I'll come clean - I'm the system administrator in this case, and the question came from one of my clients.)

There's definitely a little confusion as to what constitutes a dictionary attack - not so much about the technique, but all the different places that the technique might be applied.

Continue reading: "Dictionary Attack: What is it?"
http://ask-leo.com/dictionary_attack_what_is_it.html

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Outlook Express Problems: My folders are empty, corrupted or just not working - what do I do?

I use Outlook Express and all of a sudden all sorts of odd things are happening. A bunch of my email disappeared, my sent mail isn't being saved to the sent folder, more. I think my folders have become corrupt. What should I do?

I'm not going to answer your question.

Instead, I'm going to point you at someone else who's already written a very thorough article on the causes of, and solutions to, folder corruption in Outlook Express.

Continue reading: "Outlook Express Problems: My folders are empty, corrupted or just not working - what do I do?"
http://ask-leo.com/outlook_express_problems_my_folders_are_empty_corrupted_or_just_not_working_what_do_i_do.html

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Auto Start: How do I run a program automatically when Windows starts?

I have a program that I want to auto start every time when windows starts, how can I do that? I know that i can do it when i put it in start folder in "programs". But I don't want to do it at that way, are there any other methods? Is it possible to create a batch file or something and write what the program is named and just click on the batch file one time, and the program will start every time when the windows starts, or do you have other ideas?

The batch file idea reminds me of the old "autoexec.bat" file that would run every time MS-DOS was booted. That file still exists for some compatibility reasons, but it's no longer used at all.

There are other ways, but things get pretty geeky pretty quick if you don't want to use the Start menu functionality.

Continue reading: "Auto Start: How do I run a program automatically when Windows starts?"
http://ask-leo.com/auto_start_how_do_i_run_a_program_automatically_when_windows_starts.html

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*** Popular Articles from the Archives

Last week I pointed at the article "I keep getting bounce emails for addresses on my domain that don't exist. How can I stop this?" - a problem that owners of internet domains face when spammers send email to, or spoof email from, bogus addresses on their domain.

This week, a worse scenario that we all face, whether or not we own a domain - spam, or worse, sent "From" our own email addresses that we didn't send.

Someone's sending from my email address! How do I stop them?!

You're minding your own business, and one day you get email from someone you've never heard of, and they're asking you to stop sending them email. Or worse, they're angry. Or worse yet, they accuse you of sending them a virus! But you don't know them, you've never heard of them, and you know you've never sent them email.

Welcome to the world of viruses, where you can get the blame for someone else's infection. And there's worse news to come.

Read more... Someone's sending from my email address! How do I stop them?!
http://ask-leo.com/someones_sending_from_my_email_address_how_do_i_stop_them.html

*** Thoughts and Comments

Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me!

Ask Leo! turned three years old yesterday. It was three years ago that I posted the first Ask Leo! answer How do I keep the status bar from disappearing in Internet Explorer 6?. The internet archive has a couple of snapshots of Ask Leo! over the years, here's one from almost three years ago (yes, originally Ask Leo! was a for-pay service :-).

Each year gets more amazing, and more interesting than the last. This years highlights include the success of myspace (you'll see the impact below), and the launch of this very newsletter. Who knows what next year holds in store!?

Let me share some statistics with you...

On average 25,000 people visit Ask Leo! - every day
There are approximately 930 articles on Ask Leo!, and almost 1400 responses in the Ask Leo! mailbag.
Readers have posted nearly 21,000 comments on Ask Leo! articles.
My most popular article right now: How do I put a picture in a comment on myspace.com? - it gets three times as many visitors as the next most popular answer (How do I delete my Hotmail account?)
There are roughly 7,300 newsletter subscribers, in 155 countries (Top 5 in order: US, UK, India, Canada and Australia.)
I get between 50 and 100 questions and comments every day.

Not all of those questions and comments are gems, by the way. I save some of the weird, odd and downright silly questions for an annual collection I post out on my personal blog.

Thanks everyone for visiting, for subscribing, for recommending Ask Leo! to your friends, and even for the occasional cup of coffee!

'till next week...

Leo

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The Latest:
Forwarded Funnies:	"The Over 40 Eye Test" (R-Rated)
Taming Email:	"Don't Ask for Spam"
Leo's MovableType Tips:	"Get creative with Templates"

*** Newsletter Administration

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