E-Musings Mon Immorata

Avoiding a Wallon Wallop Marketing slogans may be truisms but a virus can last forever Microsoft certainly got it right with their What Do You Want To Learn Today? marketing slogan. I learn something new every day. And have learnt, often the hard way, that learning is just half of the process. Storing the link or information in an easily retrievable format is the other. What's the point of learning every day if you can't remember anything a few days later? But meanwhile don't get walloped by the Wallon (Win32.Wallon, W32.Wallon.A@mm, Wallon, W32/Wallon.worm, TR/SPY.GooglerFS.1) worm. This takes advantage of a well-known (and documented in this column) Internet Explorer vulnerability that permits previewed messages to download files without the user's knowledge. The problem can be resolved the recently updated Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-013 cumulative update for Outlook Express. The Wallon worm is pure nuisance and generates spam. It uses the Windows Address Book contacts as its targets to send an HTML-formatted message with an embedded hyperlink. The latter, if clicked, in turn downloads a whole series of files culminating in WMPLAYER.EXE which over-writes the existing Windows Media Player file. This in turn downloads pornographic dialers, and changes the browser home page to a porn site, and continues to send out spam on your infected behalf. So beware! Opera 7.50 browser has been released for Windows, Linux and Mac. And there are significant changes as a result of intense user feedback during the 6-month long Beta phase that began in December 2003. In the interim there were two separate Preview versions; the second was completely rebuilt. Opera is among the most standards compliant browsers. And is also safe and secure with its built-in pop-up blocking and restricted object support. However this extra security means ActiveX remains wholly unsupported. And even there are issues with Macromedia Shockwave player, Adobe Acrobat PDF plug-in and QuickTime plug-in. And despite reinstalling all three applications was unable to use them! The included M2 mail client does mail (POP/IMAP/SMTP), newsgroups and RSS feeds. There's a separate IRC chat interface connecting to not just Opera servers but also other IRC networks worldwide. Incidentally, while in the Opera Forums, I cam across a really good guides on using M2 written by a member of the development team. It describes what is and isn't possible. There's another posting on adjusting to M2. Overall the default (out-of-the-box) Opera interface has changed. And a significant exclusion is the very detailed list of Bookmarks. So before you install the new version, make sure to backup existing Bookmarks (typically Opera*.adr). Do also save Opened sessions and store somewhere other than the Opera folder. But even with a quite bare bones browser, the Bookmark Manager's neat interface helps import and organize your Internet Explorer, Netscape/Mozilla and Konqueror bookmarks. Other than a few hiccups involving ActiveX (which is in any case a security risk), Opera browser is great. With its super fast rendering engine, built in search, email client, news reader, and chat. Plus a pretty good download manager, as well as an ability to save in-page text to Notes. And what I do adore is the Ctrl+D paste URL to go feature. Opera 7.50 is available in both non-Java (recommended) and with Sun Java Runtime (JRE). The full details of what been changed in Opera since Opera 7.23 is available in the changelog. Other freeware updates this week include SpyBot Search & Destroy 1.3 (final). And I recommend downloading and installing it immediately. The included anti-spyware tracker (powered by the TeaTimer applet) has been improved with a memory leak fixed. You do have a choice when installing SpyBot if you want TeaTimer to run at Windows startup. And continuing last week's thread about Windows assistance sites, if you want only Microsoft-related software support information, don't bother attempting to unravel the Knowledgebase. Instead use the KB Alerts site that scans the Microsoft Knowledge Base nightly. Although their main offering is a free email digest listing recent information updates, the site also has a comprehensive search indices. Actually, you should always begin a quest at Google Groups: an excellent place to search for solutions to common problems. This service indexes not only Usenet but any publicly available News server. And it's a lot easier to use its familiar Google interface to locate information across Microsoft Newsgroup servers. Instead of subscribing individually to each subject-specific server and then trying to spider hundreds, often thousands of messages. However not all the results returned by Google Groups may be relevant to your quest. And do avoid single posts. Instead look for posting threads with at least 2 or more messages as this indicates there may be at least one possible solution. A quirk I've noticed about Groups is that if you view the cached version you usually see only the specific message that best matches your keywords. But the active link displays the latest posting in a thread. This approach doesn't phase me but can be disconcerting to a harassed newbie looking for quick answers! Another great resources is the Windows Support Center. This joint effort from several Windows and Microsoft experts, including MVPs (Microsoft Valued Professional), is among the most comprehensive Windows resources online. You can read FAQs, download recommended freeware, learn about Registry Patches as well as important Knowledge Base content. The site also has tips and tweaks for the next Windows consumer version: the to-be-released Longhorn. If you are looking for Microsoft-specific technology solutions, visit MVPS.ORG: the MVP Mecca that combines individual MVP sites, with MVP Group sites and blogs. There's also a Google-powered search to help you locate information on the site, or across the Web. And with that I leave you thinking (hopefully) happy thoughts. Stay Safe! Click Here to Email Me