Internet

Today I received very disheartening email. Al G. writes: " Why has my subscription to the Infopackets Gazette newsletter suddenly ceased? " I decided to check the subscriber base, and found Al's email address still in the list. I know that most of ... the newsletters have been successfully delivered because the web statistics reflect normal activity. So, why wasn't the newsletter getting delivered to Al? The only logical explanation I could think of -- other than Al's mailbox being over-quota -- was that his Internet Service Provider (ISP) may be incorrectly blocking this newsletter due ... (view more)

Cinnamon asked me a very good question over the weekend: " Hi Dennis! In an attempt to clean out old and/or unnecessary files, I accessed my Winzip files. In scanning through the list and opening (or attempting to) open them to find out what they ... belong to, I find it just a bit mind-boggling. It's very hard to tell what some of them are. Is there a guide one can use in attempting to delete some or all of them? I'm afraid I'll remove something that I need! Thanks, and keep up the great work! " My Response: Zip files are archived files and usually contain many files. Chances are you ... (view more)

How can poetry stop spam? Answer: Habeas . Habeas is a new company on the Internet which has developed a technology that permits legitimate bulk mailers -- such as infopackets.com -- the ability to deliver authentic emails and eliminate spam at the ... same time. Legitimate bulk email service providers are able to inject Habeas copyrighted Haiku poetry into outgoing email headers to ensure authenticity and delivery. Internet Service Providers and Spam Fighting programs are able to pick up the headers which can then be used to determine if the message is spam or legitimate. Wait a sec, what's a ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Bonnie V. writes: " Dear Dennis, I keep getting unsolicited emails that claim they are from a web address which in fact does not exist. Is there a mail rule that I can create in Outlook Express to check for valid web addresses, ... and block the ones that aren't valid (I.E.: a 'faked' web address)? " My Response: Rather than attempting to block all the offending emails, why not just create an anti-spam filter to delete all emails that are not from a list of your friends? Example: Apply this rule after the message arrives; Where the From line does not contain ' friend1 ... (view more)

If you share files online the Internet (trading MP3s, movies, software), you have undoubtedly already heard of Kazaa -- maybe even Kazaa Lite . In a nutshell Kazaa uses its own P2P (peer to peer) technology which allow users across the Internet to ... share files online. The last time I checked, there were about 2.2 million users online Kazaa, sharing some 5 million files. That's a lot of files. I'm not going to get into the complexities of how things work, because I've already discussed that in a previous issue of the Infopackets Gazette. Kazaa is free software which gets its funding from the ... (view more)

Tracert.exe? Ping.exe? What the heck is that? Trace Route (tracert.exe) is a DOS command line utility program that traces connection pathways along the Internet using the TCP / IP protocol. Ping (ping.exe) calculates how long it takes to transfer a ... packet of information from origin [you] to destination [a web site] and back again [to you]. What is TCP / IP? The TCP / IP protocol is a method used to communicate computers on the Internet. Any computer using the TCP / IP protocol has a unique address, referred to as an IP (Internet Protocol) address. An IP address can be thought of as a special ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Linda S. write s: " Dear Dennis, With regards to the last newsletter , is it possible that you are assuming that Christine R. accidentally stated that Windows Explorer was trying to access the internet and that she actually meant ... that Internet Explorer was trying to get access? My firewall also will not allow me to have access to the internet unless I give both Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer access. Her question may have been a typo but I think maybe she is having the same problem as I am. Can you offer any suggestions to remedy this? " My Response: I'm ... (view more)

There is a nasty worm (virus) making its way through the Kazaa file sharing network . On Friday, a friend called me up and told me that his "C drive" was full and that he couldn't do anything with his computer. So, I hopped in my car, drove over to ... his place, and cleaned up some temporary files on his system. I freed up about 400 meg or so on his C drive. Satisfied with the results, I went home. The next day, he called me back with the same problem. Oddly enough, he said the computer was left untouched since I left his house the previous night. So what happened to all the space I ... (view more)

Well, it finally looks like infopackets.com has completed its journey over to its new web server. The entire process (from start to finish, including changing registrars ) took about 60 days to complete. Most importantly, my own personal computer is ... finally connecting to the new web server. The hard lesson learned: while most web service providers are eager to say that a change like this "should only take 72 hours to complete", just remember -- anything that could go wrong probably will, and expect the worse case scenario. OK, I expected that. But I think I got hit with worse than ... (view more)

Last week the last issue of the Infopackets Gazette was sent out. At the same time, a configuration change was made to the web server which hosts infopackets.com. What happened? It's a long story, but I'll try to reiterate in simple mumbo-jumbo ... without too much techy-talk. As you may already know, infopackets.com has experienced a major growth spurt in the last few months and has outgrown its current web server configuration. Therefore, it was decided that infopackets.com should be moved to a dedicated web server which offers unlimited bandwidth to fit the needs of its users. A purchase was ... (view more)