http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2004/11.php .
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Has your computer ever been infected by a virus, worm, trojan, or piece of spyware? If so, or if you want to be
prepared in case it ever gets infected, read R.D. Stafford's new step-by-step article,
How To Clean An Infected Computer, the latest addition to this site's
Guest Articles section.
Since last Thanksgiving Day, I've made a lot of new friends, renewed relationships with several
long-lost loved ones, moved from the Frostbite State to the Sunshine State, dodged four deadly hurricanes, and gotten some
really great "things," like our dream
home. I also lost a few old friends, ended abusive relationships with a few loved ones, and tried to keep my mouth shut when it
would've been easier to defend myself or strike back at those who attacked me. Through it all, I learned some very difficult
but important life lessons. This Thanksgiving Day, I can't think of a better way to express my feelings than to repeat what I
wrote in this Journal one year ago today, with a short addendum:
Thank you, Lord, for always loving me, always watching over me, always providing for me, and always forgiving
me, even when I've been ungrateful, unfaithful, and uncaring. And please give me the faith and courage to treat others the
way you treat me.
This coming Thursday will be
Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. I'll cook the traditional turkey, and then my wife, our houseguest and I will take it to my Uncle Dom's house about an hour
away. To prepare for the big day, I did a search of about a dozen Web sites
that each describe the very best way to cook a holiday turkey. Based on my research, I think I'll oven-roast ours, both at high
heat and at low heat; both with and without stuffing; both with and without a can of beer inside of it; wrapped in aluminum foil,
then unwrapped, then sealed in a plastic roasting
bag; then in a covered roasting pan, then in an uncovered pan; then I'll deep-fry it, then barbecue it, then smoke it, then
microwave it, then cook it on a rotisserie. I'm beginning to wonder if Pizza Hut delivers on Thanksgiving Day.
On October 27, I told you that antivirus software creator, Grisoft, had announced that it planned to stop supporting its free AVG Antivirus 6.0 software on December 31, 2004, and that it would release a free version of its more powerful AVG Antivirus 7.0 software before that date. As promised, Grisoft released AVG Free almost one week ago. I've been running it on my computer, and my advice is that you do not install AVG Free on your computer yet. Users have reported many problems with it in Grisoft's free support forums, and I have been totally unsuccesful in my many, many attempts to get it to reinstall its MS Outlook extension on my Win98 SE computer, so at this point, AVG Free is not scanning any of my email. AVG has been my free antivirus software of choice for several years, but I recommend that you wait as long as possible before installing the new AVG Free, to give Grisoft as much time as possible to fix its many bugs and software conflicts.
A few days ago, I noticed that the new Firefox 1.0 Web browser has a problem with desktop Web shortcuts. If I create a a shortcut to a Web site on my Windows desktop and double-click it, Firefox displays the information that is in the shortcut itself, instead of going to the Web site that the shortcut points to. If I drag a desktop shortcut into my active Firefox window, then Firefox correctly navigates to the shortcut's site. From what I've read, this problem only occurs when Firefox is installed in Windows 98/ME. I consider it to be a very minor problem, and I'm sure it will be fixed in a future update.
Starmancer wrote to me and shared his Firefox pluses and minuses: The moment you first tipped me off to the prototype Firefox a few months ago on CB, I have installed it in no less than ten of my friends' computers. My good friend Michelle was especially frustrated with IE and all its updates and security flaws. After I installed Firefox to her system you wouldn't have believed the joy and happiness. Tears were streaming, a nervous laugh and relieved sigh were heard. It was beautiful. Even Michelle smiled as she handed me a tissue. Yep, Bob, I like having choices... One of most notable things was my observation that Firefox is actually about 50% slower than Internet Explorer on broadband. Yet, this might be as a result of not making the necessary tweaks (of which there are many available!) and/or an inability for my sentry programs to play nicely (hate when that happens)... Firefox possessing its own popup ad-blocking functions does not interact well with Zone Alarm Pro's ad-blocking function (again it's like two siblings and one cookie). This conflict, and an inability to peacefully resolve it, has made this feature pretty much useless in the interim. NOTE: Starmancer's slow page loading problem -- and possibly his other problems, too -- may be caused by an incorrect setting in his ZoneAlarm Pro firewall software. Please see this Firefox forum post for details of how to correctly configure ZoneAlarm Pro to work with Firefox.
Bob Lea shared the following comments: I've been using Firefox for about six-months and love it. New features that I like (in addition to your list): The Find in Page (Ctrl-F) is great! The extensions: Web Developer 0.8, DOM Inspector, ColorZilla, and HTML Tidy make working with web sites fast and easy. Disadvantage: The download file dialog box doesn't let you change folders.
I guess it's safe to say that each person's experience with Firefox may be affected by their operating system and by the
settings of any security software that they're running. Now that millions of people are using Firefox 1.0, with probably thousands
of different configurations, I'm sure the list of known Firefox bugs will grow. I'm glad that the bugs that I've encountered so
far have all been minor, so I will happily continue to use Firefox while I wait for its bugs to be squashed.
For the past 5 days, I've used the new Firefox 1.0 Web browser as my only browser. There are many Firefox reviews all over the Internet, so I won't do a full review here, but here are a few things that I really like about FF, and a few things that I don't like:
Based on my experience, I think Firefox is not perfect yet, but it's close enough that it's my new browser of choice,
and I can't imagine going back to using Internet Explorer.
Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 Web
browser has been released -- in fact, I just finished downloading it. Apparently, it was released only about 25 minutes ago, and
I just happened to wake up in the middle of the night and see it. Regular readers of this Journal know that I've eagerly followed
Firefox's development for the past year or more, waiting for its completion so that I could stop using Microsoft's Internet
Explorer Web browser. I imagine that the Firefox servers will be extremely busy and slow for at least the next few days, as more
than 8 million users of its pre-release versions, and probably millions more Windows, Macintosh, and Linux users, all download
its first completed version.
Kudos to my wonderful cousin Rita, who called my attention to
The Internet Movies Database. The IMDB bills itself as
"the biggest, best, most award-winning movie site on the planet." Whether you're trying to remember the name of the main
character in "They Live" (Nada) or who played the Flower Delivery Man in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (Louie Anderson), IMDB has the
answer, plus movie reviews, movie news, and forums where you can discuss your favorite movies with other sprocket-heads.
Strategies Of Domestic Violence is now the 39th piece in this site's
Abuse Information section.
Victory is ours! The United States has something to celebrate! Yesterday, a Virginia court sentenced a spammer to nine years in jail. I hope this will turn out to be just the first in a long line of cases in which spammers will be convicted and imprisoned.
Domestic Violence: Myths And Realities, a pretty comprehensive list,
is now the 38th piece in this site's
Abuse Information section.
It's only one week until the scheduled release of Firefox version 1.0, the fast, powerful, secure, free, open-source browser from Mozilla. If you're like me, you've been following Firefox's development for a long time, and you know that over 7 million users have already switched from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to one of Firefox's pre-release versions. Once Firefox 1.0 is released, I will switch to it, and then I'll eagerly await version 1.0 of Mozilla's email software, Thunderbird. If you're interested in reading a ComputerBob.com user's first-hand experience with Thunderbird, check out dralston's review in this site's Guest Articles section.
Do you know what verbal abuse is? Are you verbally abusive to your partner or spouse? To learn more about verbal abuse, please
read What Is Verbal Abuse?, the 37th piece in this site's
Abuse Information section.
This morning, I went out for about an hour, and this site had almost 200 visits while I was gone. Welcome to all of you from devx's Projectcool Sightings, which recommended this site to its readers today, and many thanks to Bob Lea, who brought this site to their attention.
If you've ever grieved over the loss of a much-loved pet, please read
The Dream, a new piece that I just wrote and added to the
Personal Stuff section this site.