net technology

technology zone
at abelard.org

how to survive and thrive on the web

article list

browser-related:

cookies at abelard.org and your privacy

you must register to view this content - NOT!

stopping advertising malware, including cookies

rss feeds - reading the news, or anything!

software for net security

searching on the net

your images from the net are not displaying?
by the auroran sunset

customising your browser

how to add phonetic symbols to a webpage
by the auroran sunset

customising your home page on your computer

software-related:

photo enhancing -
increasing the dynamic range

creating a web-site

advertising disclaimer

The technology zone at abelard.org advises our visitors how to live in the hyperspace universe. This zone is designed as a “get you going” area, rather than to turn you into a computer professional.

Be aware that there are a large number of people and organisations trying to intrude on you and your computer, from the mildly nosy to the seriously malicious.

getting started, using the web, for the young or inexperienced

Always remember that it is not sensible to put your name and location out freely on the Internet to people you do not know. If you are unsure what to do instead, show this note to someone with greater life experience, such as ‘your’ teacher or a carer, and ask them for advice.

attachments

You can easily send attachments without realising when using MS Outlook Express, or Outlook e-mail software. This software sends html attachments by default, unless you specifically ‘tell’ it not to. The attachments could easily hide a virus, or another e-nasty, waiting for a chance to spread to your friends, relations, work......

To stop this happening:

1. in the Outlook Express ‘tools’ menu, go to ‘options’;
2. click the ‘send’ tab;
3. at the bottom of the ‘send’ sheet, click ‘plain text’' for both ‘mail sending’ and ‘news sending’ formats;
4. click on the ‘ok’ button.

Never open attachments from sources you cannot fully trust. Even your friends can send a virus without realising it to your computer by this means, if their computer has become infected. Viruses come in a large variety of forms, and you really don’t any of them. There is some advice on protection against viruses in software for net security.

By far the most common ways that viruses are presently being spread are by MS Outlook Express email attachments, including MS Word documents. If you must send a word processor-type document, save and send it as a rich text format (rtf) document.

things stop working, it’s no big deal

Some computer programs will conflict with each other, causing themselves, other programs, or even the whole system, to stop working. Three very common types of software conflict are:

• between a firewall and security settings in MS Internet Explorer web browser;
• between two anti-virus programs, A and B, that are being run simultaneously;
• within a program, when it tries to do one or more tasks simultaneously.

Such conflicts are common in MS Windows, and some other software, because of very widespread programming errors and inadequate locking.

Rooting every problem out of a complex system is an extremely costly and difficult objective to achieve when writing software. Similar problem elimination difficulties are faced when developing and running any highly complex system, like a chemical factory, a nuclear power station or a large military operation. There is no way to make such seriously complex systems truly problem-free, one just has to do the best one can and live in the real world.

So next time you curse Bill Gates remember, while his products are often less robust than they should be, he is producing stuff that allows you to do some of the things you want to do, some of the time, as long as you tolerate regular breakdowns. Just as in the 1920s, you would have had to stop by the road and repair your motor car at inconveniently frequent intervals, Windows is also at the Model-T stage of development: cheap and nasty, but you usually end up where you wanted to go.

End notes

1 Locking:

When a program is run, it is assigned a working area in the RAM [Random Access Memory]. If the programming instructions are not adequate, the program will try to write outside that area. MS Windows has inadequate built-in defences against this sort of error, unlike other operating systems such as Unix, Linux and Apple’s OSX.

Thus, it is possible for a program to write into another program’s area and foul up the second program. To the second program, the data coming from the first program is as good as ‘random’. At best, the second program will crash. At worst it will try to do something with that nonsense input. The consequence can be that program after program starts trying to act on ‘random’ code and the whole house of cards collapses.

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