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About:globalhistory

      Do you use Netscape? If so, did you know it's possible for anyone that have access to your computer to view a list of almost EVERY webpage you've visited? Well, it's true. In the "Location" bar at the top of the Netscape browser type "about:globalhistory" (without the quotation marks). Take a look at what shows up. Also, for a little fun, try "about:mozilla".
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Indentifying spammers

      Sick of Spammers? Well, there's an easy way to tell whether or not a letter is from a spammer even before you read it. Look in the "To:" field of the letter. If the "To:" field has the same e-mail address as the person that is in the "From:" field, instead of your address you know the mail is probably from a spammer. Spammers will send emails, often to hundreds of people at once, using the "BCC:" field (Blind Carbon Copy). This way, you don't see the "To:" field containing the e-mail addresses of the other hundreds of people.
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Cookies

      Did you know that it is easy for a company to track your every move on their website, store that information on your hard-drive, and then even give other companies the ability to read that information right off of your computer? Through the use of "cookies", it is certainly possible. "Cookies" are little bits of information that a webpage can store on your hard-drive. Search your computer for "cookies.txt" and see what you come up with. Fortunately, it is possible for you to control the "cookies" and whether or not a webpage is allowed to write one to your computer. Here is how you can do it using Netscape Communicator. Go to the edit menu, down to preferences. Once there, you will see an option marked "advanced" click on it and you will get another menu. We recommend choosing the "cookie" option which says "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server." This way, companies can't allow other pages to share the information that they have stored about you on your computer. Also, if you want to know when a webpage is writing a "cookie" to your computer, choose the "Warn me before accepting a cookie" option. Now you can choose whether or not to accept a cookie on a case-by-case basis. Be warned that this option can become annoying after awhile.
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Buggy Start button in 95

      Okay, maybe I need another hobby, but I really think this is a fun thing to play around with. Take a look at your Windows Task Bar for a moment. You're all familiar with it, and it's little "Start" button. Well, little known to many people, the "start button" is really an independant application, like any other program you might run. Just like every other program, the "start button program" can be moved around, and even closed! How you may ask? Simply follow the instructions as follows:
1. Click on the start button ONCE. It should now be opened.
2. With your mouse still on top of the "Start" button, hit "Alt" and the "-" key at the same time. You shall now see a new menu.
3. Choose the "move" option to move the start button (it looks weird seeing the "Start" button in the middle of the task bar). Or, choose the "close" option to get rid of the start button all together. You'll have to reboot to get it to come back (the ultimate practical joke?)!
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Detecting spoofed DNS/IP

      Many are particularly concerned about the infamous Denial of Service attacks on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat). How can you try to detect users' dns or ip addresses when people with spoofed addresses, are doing Denial of Service attacks on you? It is important to find out their actual addresses so that actions can be taken by the relevant authorities. Follow the simple instructions we have set forth below and hopefully you will know all about them.
1. A users is doing Denial of Service attacks against you. The user's nick is Goofy. Do "/whois goofy". You then found that the user's address is [email protected]
2. Do "/dns this.is.a.spoofed.address.com". You found that the hostmask could not be resolved. This shows that the user is probably spoofing.
3. No problem. Simply type in an IRC server command "/quote userip goofy" which will give you something like [email protected]. You now have his true ip address.
4. Now once again do "/dns 130.49.71.21". However, there is a chance that the person's ip address could not be resolved. If you are lucky, then you might get kmr-98.tm.net.my.
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Explore from anywhere

      By default the Windows 95 Explorer opens at the root directory of the hard disk on which Windows 95 is installed. That's fine if you want to work on a file the lives in c:\, but otherwise it's a tedious journey of click-scroll-clicking through folders.
      Here's a way to create shortcuts that tell Explorer where to go. Begin by examining the Windows Explorer shortcut in the Windows\Start menu\Programs folder. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties, then click the Shortcut tab. The command like or "Target" is:

      c:\windows\explorer.exe /n,/e,c:\

      The first part of this command calls the application itself. The "/n" switch forces the Explorer to load as a new window, "/e" instructs it to run in "explorer" mode with dual tree-file panes as opposed to the single window or "folder" view and "c:\" tells Explorer where to start exploring from.

      Creating a shortcut with the target:

      c:\windows\explorer.exe /n,/e,c:\mydocuments\uni\economics

will use Explorer to open Economics folder inside the Uni folder inside Mydocuments folder on the c: drive. If you want to open the directory in a standard folder window, remove the "e" switch from the Target line. You can force Explorer to show a full but unexpanded tree of all drives, desktop-level folders and system-level devices by changing the Target line to read

      c:\windows\explorer.exe /n,/e,/select,c:\

where "c:\" is the drive to have the initial focus. With just a few changes you can create Explorer shortcuts that instantly take you to any folder.
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Use icons as cursors

      Found an icon file (in the .ico format) that you'd just love to have as a mouse pointer? Ico and cur files are exactly the same format - a 32-by-32-pixel bitmap - but with a different extension. There's no need to even change the extension to graft that icon onto your mouse. In Control Panel, run the Mouse applet, click the Pointers tab and double-click the pointer you'd like to change. When asked to select the new cursor, drag-down the Files of Type list and select "All files", then move to your icon directory and make your choice.
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Software, begone!

      If you would like to know how to remove the names of programs that appear in the Control Panel's Add-Remove Program list you are in the right place. People often remove an application by selecting the directory in Explorer and hitting the Delete key.
      This is not the recommended strategy for most 32-bits apps. They are best removed through the Control Panel, which runs the app's own uninstall routine and in the ideal world will wipe surplus dlls, clean now-obsolete Registry entries and so on. It also clears the application's name from the Add-Remove Software list.
      But if you have already nuked the program at ground zero, how can you eliminate its name from the Add-Remove Programs list?
      Fire up Regedit and drill down to the subkey MyComputer\hkeylocal_machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion, then open then Uninstall folder. This is where the Add-Remove Software usually derives its list. Each program in this folder includes the "Display-Name" that appears in the Control Panel list and an "UninstallString" which starts the uninstall routine. Select the folder representing the application whose name you want to remove from the list then hit the Delete key.
      This works most of the time but not always. I've come across some 16-bit programs that append their name to the list but refuse to go away even when Dr Regedit performs the necessary surgery.
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Installing OSR2 over 95

      This trick is kind of old givin the fact that Windows 98 will be released soon. It is nonetheless very useful for those who are still running on Windows 3.x and thinking of upgrading to Windows 95. OSR2 is a newer version of Windows 95. It's not "Windows 97", as some people call it. OSR2 is merely the most up-to-date version of Windows 95 build on a singel CD-ROM, so you don't need to carry around a Zip dick full of patches, drivers, add-ons and so on, let alone load them one by one.
      The leaner and more space-efficient FAT32 file-allocation table which resizes clusters from 32K down to 4K holds most of the appeal. The fact that OSR2 is officially restricted to OEMs - for sale with a new PC, hard drive or motherboard but not on its lonesome - has also probably assisted in it becoming such a sought-after item.
      The only rough spot is that, unlike plain vanilla Windows 95, OSR2 cannot be installed directly over an existing Windows 95 or 3.x system. Users must totally wipe their hard disk or start their PC from a boot disk created on another OSR2 system.
      The trick of fooling OSR2 into loading over Windows 95 or Windows 3.x has come to light and like all the best sneaks, it's elegantly simple. Copy the contents of your OSR2 CD onto your hard drive to assist in the installation process, click Start Menu, then choose Shut Down and Restart in MS-DOS Mode. Go to your Windows 95 or 3.x directory (whichever you are running), select the file names win.com and rename it to wincom.old or something else. If you have a dual-boot system you'll need to repear this step in your Windows 3.x directory.
      That's all there is to it. Only the presence of win.com informs OSR2 that you already have an earlier version of Windows on your PC and halts the Setup process. Now, still at the DOS prompt, change to your OSR2 directory and enter setup.exe. You'll need to have your OEM license at hand as this is a special serial number that, unlike the usual Windows 95 license, includes the letters "OEM" in the string.
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DIY Start Up and Shut Down screens

      Are you sick and tired of the plain Windows 95 Start Up and Shut Down screens? You reading this you will be able to replace the standard Windows 95 Start Up and Shut Down screens with images of your choice.
      Windows 95 allows for three such images, each stored in your windows directory as an .sys file. The opening screen of the Windows 95 logo on the "blue sky with clouds" background is logo.sys. The shut-down graphic, which reads "Please wait while your computer shuts down", logo is logow.sys. The final "It's now safe to turn off your computer" image is logos.sys. Despite the .sys extension, each file is in fact a bitmap sized to 320 by 400 pixels. By creating a similar sized bitmap and giving it the appropriate logo name, you can employ any image in place of Microsoft's standard issue.       The first step is to save a copy of each original logo file with a bak extension so you can return to the original settings at any stage. Be cafeful when working with these logo files as they have confusingly similar names. Just remember that logo.sys is the main logo, the "w" in logow.sys denotes that you must "wait" until PC can be shut down while the "s" in logos.sys stands for "shut down".
      Now that you have chosen your new graphics, use a program like PaintShop Pro or LView to convert them into bitmaps if they are gif or jpeg photo images. Load the image into the Windows 95 Paint application and select Image, Attributes from the Menu bar. This shows the size of the image in "pels" (shorthand for "pixels") - it needs to be 320 by 400 pels. You can resize an image by selecting Image, Stretch and Skew and by changing the Horizontal and Vertical values in the Stretch box. Most Windows' wallpaper images that cover the entire screen with a single image are 640 by 480 pels. To make this into a logo screen you'll need to reduce the Horizontal stretch figure from 100% to 50% and the Vertical stretch from 100% to 83%.
      Click OK and select Image, Attributes. The image should now be 320 by 399. You can change the Height field to read 400 for a perfect fit. This is acceptable for modifying the image when it's already close to the final size, but if you try reducing a 600-by-480 picture to 320-by-400 by changing the figures in the Attributes dialog, the image will be severely cropped. Save each image with a temporary name such as logo.bmp, logow.bmp and logos.bmp. Now save the new Start Up file in the windows folder with the name logo.sys and answer YES when asked to overwrite the existing logo.sys file.
      The next time you start Windows 95 the new screen will show two chnges from the original Start Up screen: the new image will be surrounded by a white border and the animated scroll at the bottom of the screen won't appear. You can replace the other two screens by saving bitmaps as logow.sys and logos.sys.
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Windows 3.11 File Manager faces Y2K problem

      Most of Windows 3.11 is Y2K compliant but File Manager lets the side down because it cannot reports files dates later than December 31, 1999. Windows 95 Explorer fortunately doesn't have this problem. Below are some errors in File Manager regarding dates later than 1999:
      sep2021.txt -----> 12/09/;2
      nov2002.txt -----> 22/11/:2
      jan2000.txt ----->   1/01/:0
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Buggy Date

      This bug can cause real problems for deelopers of real-time software. In windows 95, double click on the Taskbar over the displayed time. You will see the dialog entitled "Date/Time Properties". Modify the date, but do not press OK or Apply.
      Open a DOS session and type "data". The modified date is displayed. Place the mouse cursor over the time on the Taskbar and leave it there. Again the modified date is displayed. Press Cancel in the Date/Time Properties dialog and the date returns to its previous value. It seems that the system date is modified as you type it. Interestingly, this does not happen with time, only date.
      Changing the date while running real-time software is always a little dangerous, although it may be necessary. Changing it continously while it is being typed and before the user expects it to be changed is a definite worry.



More To Come!!!