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WebSkulker was on vacation for a couple of weeks.  He and Ms. Cat accumulated many sites and news stories in the meantime, so for this issue we will break out of the usual format and just list everything with short notes for each item.

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http://www.redgorilla.com

WebSkulker mentioned this site in the last issue, but this was very bad timing.  Jr. Skulker Chris Jernigan told us that it was on the verge of shutting down and indeed it has.  The site currently has a message that the service is being taken over by www.officetools.com and should be back on the air shortly.  This brings up the interesting question about whether we should ever use sites like RedGorilla.  There is a whole initiative going on to get people to use Application Service Providers (ASP's) to run applications and store their data over the web instead of on their local PC's.  But what happens when your ASP suddenly goes off the air and you lose access to all of your data stored on their server?

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http://phone.yahoo.com   1-800-MY-YAHOO

Jr. Skulker Batteryman was the first to tell us that Yahoo now has a phone portal for retrieving information over the phone.  Go to the link to sign up and set your preferences, then use the phone number.

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http://www.phonecube.com

Our 4/6/00 and 4/7/00 issues mentioned a couple of telephone conference call systems with web interfaces to control the conference.  Both of these offer free demos so you can set up a real conference call between you and several of your friends completely free, even if the phone numbers are long distance.  PhoneCube offers this same type of service, including a free demo.

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http://www.freetranslation.com

http://explorer.msn.com

The Microsoft Network keeps trying to compete with the training-wheel software of AOL.  You can download and try out their latest effort from this link, and you don't have to be an MSN subscriber to use it.  In fact it is more a front-end for Hotmail and the other free MSN.com services than anything special for people who dial into the MSN phone numbers for their Internet access.  The new MSN explorer is a front-end for Internet Explorer that has menus and buttons for the MSN services along with huge stupid graphic buttons that waste a lot of screen space for commonly-used features.  You can play with it without any effect on your normal Internet Explorer sessions, because MSN Explorer is only active when you start it explicitly.

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http://www.atomicpark.com

WebSkulker bought a copy of pcAnywhere from them for only $50, an amazing price because this is usually over $150.  This site is a fairly-normal online store that sells only software from major publishers.  Their prices seem pretty typical except for Symantec products.  WebSkulker doesn't know whether they have a special deal with Symantec or whether they are selling OEM versions of the products that aren't intended for retail sale to end users, but their Symantec prices are a fraction of other stores.  What's even stranger is that some of their packages for new users are cheaper than their upgrade packages for old users.

Go to their home page and click on their logo to enter the store, then choose "Symantec" from the list at the left.  Scroll down to the pcAnywhere section and you will see the $50 price for "Symantec pc ANYWHERE V9.0 Host & Remote EDOCS w/Free Update to V9.2".  This comes as a CD only with no box or paper documentation.  At the end of the install process, the setup program offers to run Live Update.  This is a Symantec program that automates the process of getting updates of pcAnywhere and other Symantec products from their web site.  Let this run and check the box that you want the version 9.2 update which is over 9 Mb so it will take a long time on a modem.  When the update is complete, reboot to complete the installation.  If you have an older version of pcAnywhere on your system, you should uninstall it first.

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Jr. Skulker Chris Custer says to dial 1-800-888-3999 and listen to the main menu.  Everything is normal and boring until #7, so listen carefully as it gets close to that.  Then press 7 to choose that menu option.  Why????

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http://www.halt2000.com

http://www.halt2000.com/sb2004.htm

Do the jr. skulkers of the world really want the government installing a device in every car that the police can use to stop your engine by remote control?  This would be activated if a policeman tries to pull you over and you refuse to stop.  But you don't have to worry about some hacker figuring out the code to activate the device and stopping cars for fun.  This would be illegal per the draft law being considered in California that you can read at the second link, and of course anything illegal will never happen.  Thanks to Jr. Skulker Bob Bernay for telling us about this.

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http://www.findsounds.com 

"FindSounds.com lets you search the Web for sound effects and sample sounds. More than searching text labels, FindSounds.com allows you to search for audio files based on how they sound. You can even create your own sounds and use them to find similar sounds on the Web."

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http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html

"On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962.  This was the public debut of the computer mouse.  But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. 

The original 90-minute video of this event is part of the Engelbart Collection in Special Collections of Stanford University.  This original video has been edited into 35 segments and reformatted as RealVideo streaming video clips.  A brief abstract of the subject matter treated in each segment is provided below."

Submitted by Jr. Skulker Ms. 1133

Dear Consumers: 

It has come to our attention that a few copies of the WINDOWS 98 SOUTHERN EDITION may have accidentally been shipped outside the South. If you have one of these, you may need some help understanding the commands. The Southern edition may be recognized by the unique opening screen. It reads: WINDERS 98, with a background picture of General Robert E. Lee superimposed on a Confederate flag. It is shipped with a Dukes of Hazzard screen saver. 

Please also note: 

The Recycle Bin is labeled "Outhouse" 

My Computer is called "This Dern Contraption" 

Dial up Networking is called "Good Ol' Boys" 

Control Panel is known as the "The Dashboard" 

Hard Drive is referred to as "4 Wheel Drive" 

Floppies are "them little ol plastic disc thangs" 

Instead of an error message a "garbage bag and roll of duct tape" pops up 


CHANGES IN TERMINOLOGY IN SOUTHERN EDITION: 

OK . . . . . . . ats aw-right 

Cancel . . . . . stopdat 

Reset . . . . . . try er agin 

Yes . . . . . . . yep 

No . . . . . . . noop 

Find . . . . . . hunt fer it 

Go to. . . . . . over yonder 

Back . . . . . . back yonder 

Help . . . . . . hep me out here 

Stop . . . . . . kwitit 

Start . . . . . . crank er up 

Settings . . . . settins 

Programs . . . .stuff at duz stuff 

Documents . . stuff ah done did


Also note that SOUTHERN EDITION does not recognize capital letters or punctuation marks. 

Some programs that are exclusive to Winders 98: 

Tiperiter . . . . . . . . A word processing program 

colerin book . . . . . a graphics program 

cyferin mersheen . . . calculator 

outhouse paper . . . . notepad 

iner-net . . . . . . . Microsoft Explorer 4.0 

pichers . . . . . . . A graphics viewer


We regret any inconvenience it may have caused if you received a copy of the SOUTHERN EDITION. You may return it to Microsoft for a replacement version. I hope this helps all y'all! 

Billy Bob Gates 

Head Honcho

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