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Saturday, March 20, 2004

A new Internet worm wriggled across the entire Inetner this Morning 


... "A new Internet worm wriggled across the entire Internet in the span of a few hours Saturday morning to all computers running several recent versions of firewall software from Internet Security Systems, including BlackICE and RealSecure, according to this story at Washingtonpost.com. The flaw that Witty exploited was discovered Wednesday by eEye Digital Security. The worm overwrites data on the first few sectors of the victim's hard drive, making the machine virtually ubootable and potentially destroying much - if not all - of the victim's data."

The full story



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Looking to save a little $ on car insurance & live in CA. I'm using them now,  



http://www.21st.com/evaluatorStart.do

Got more cars than people, wants to get a price based on milage and use, Click on'em.

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Friday, March 19, 2004

"Phishing" (fishing) it's trouble for you 


"Phishing" it's trouble
Phishing for Trouble Add a new term to your list of online annoyances: phishing. In this scam, criminals send out millions of fake e-mails to trick online consumers into disclosing personal and financial information. The bogus e-mails may appear to come from reputable sources such as big online retailers or banks. The phishers flood your inbox with requests for a wide range of personal information, ranging from bank account information to credit-card numbers to personal identification numbers for automated teller machines. How do they fool you? They direct recipients to phony Web sites that resemble legitimate corporate sites. Or, they claim that billing information needs to be updated or has been lost. In the most brazen versions, the criminals may actually suggest that you are a victim of fraud and that you need to share your information to avoid a fraudulent credit-card charge. Or, the e-mail may offer a bogus prize in return for your personal information. Here are some steps that the Federal Trade Commission recommends to protect yourself from e-mail scams: Don't click a link in an e-mail that warns your account will be shut down unless you reconfirm your billing information. Contact the legitimate company using a phone number or Web site address you know to be genuine. Avoid e-mailing personal and financial information. Before submitting such data through a Web site, look for the "lock" icon that signals the information is secure. Immediately review credit card and bank account statements for unauthorized charges. Go to the FTC Web site for more information or to file a complaint.


MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

A Short Thought or feeling... Windows ME Bottons & Tweak 


Windows Button
If you're like me, many times within Windows Me I accidentally press a keyboard combination and a screen pops up that I did not intend to initiate. The Windows button on many keyboards has many combinations that are easily started. You can disable this combination from within Tweak UI. Start Tweak UI (a Microsoft downloaded utility) and select the IE tab. One of the options is "Enable Windows+X hotkeys." Deselect this option and restart. Now the Windows button will no longer be an instigator of hotkey accidents. And Tweak Ul does alot more too. But be careful.

Seach on "Tweak UI"

Frankly I'd gave up ME and go to XP now.

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

TECH STUFF - Make that Laptop Battery Last 




Laptops drain batteries faster than children drain grape juice at Chuck E. Cheese. Plugging in the AC adapter recharges the batteries, but what do you do to maximize the time spent between AC outlets? To keep your batteries breathing as long as possible, try some of these tricks.

New batteries come uncharged and need to be broken in. Charge and immediately discharge your batteries a few times before relying on them. (Discharge portables by leaving them unplugged from the wall and turned on for a few hours — or even overnight.) In fact, keep up the habit of fully draining and recharging your batteries once a week.

Clean the contacts on your rechargeable batteries and charger. A cotton swab and rubbing alcohol can do the trick.

Head for the Control Panel, open the Power Management area, and make sure that Windows knows it's running on a laptop and needs to save as much power as possible. That way, it can shut off the hard drives when they aren't being used, for example, or turn off the screen.

When not using something with your laptop, turn off its power. Remove PC cards, for example. You can leave your modem PC card inside, though, if you make sure that your modem program isn't configured to receive calls. Otherwise, the PC card stays on, draining power as it awaits a phone call that never arrives.

Leaving a disc in your laptop's CD-ROM drive is actually beneficial; your computer peeks inside the drive at random intervals, and it takes less energy to find a disc than to search for one.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Thursday, March 18, 2004

"NOW with Bill Moyers" And I hear that this is his last year, he's 70. 


NOW with Bill Moyers
Friday, March 19 at 9PM on PBS
(Check local listings at
http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html)

=============================================================
This week on NOW:

* Mark Twain on politics, race and war. Bill
Moyers and actor Hal
Holbrook explore why America's greatest satirist is
particularly
relevant in a post-September 11 world.
* Bill Moyers talks to author Richard Rodriguez on
how the mixing of
races and heritages has helped define American
culture.

=============================================================
HAL HOLBROOK

The popularity of actor Hal Holbrook's long-running
one man show about
Mark Twain is sustained by the universal relevance
of Twain's candid
observations on politics, culture, race, and the
world. After 50 years
of getting inside the mind of this extraordinary
humorist and social
critic, what can Holbrook's experience tell us
about the unique nature
of the challenges facing America today such as war,
religious
fanaticism, race, and censorship? Bill Moyers
interviews Holbrook,
probing his experience with bigotry and censorship
while playing Twain
and examining why Twain's work is particularly
relevant in a
post-September 11th world. "We don't have truth
delivered to us very
often, especially in this very commercialized world
we live in," says
Holbrook. "Mark Twain cuts right straight through
that with a knife."

=============================================================
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ

Bill Moyers talks to Richard Rodgriguez, one of the
country's most
intriguing and controversial writers on how the
mixing of races and
cultures has influenced his life, his work and
American culture. "We
have these categories: white, black, and now this
new, ludicrous
category that Richard Nixon invented for me,
Hispanic. In 1972, I
became Hispanic," says Rodriguez, "Until then, I
was a Mexican-American.
And suddenly, I see myself over 30 years, in
concert with
Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians."
Rodriguez's books include
HUNGER OF MEMORY: THE EDUCATION OF RICHARD
RODRIGUEZ and the Pulitzer
Prize Runner-up DAYS OF OBLIGATION: AN ARGUMENT
WITH MY MEXICAN FATHER.
He talks to Moyers about his book BROWN: THE LAST
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA,
where he argues that America has been brown since
its inception and
reflects on how Hispanics are being Americanized at
the same rate that
America is being Latinized.

=============================================================
NOW WITH BILL MOYERS continues online at PBS.org
(www.pbs.org/now). Log
on to the site for a look at American political
satire through time for
the best places to find Mark Twain online; for
lesson plan on political
satire for high school students; for more on the
controversy over
banning Huck Finn; for updates on previous NOW
stories; and more.

=============================================================
**Support Your Public Television Station**
In some communities NOW may be pre-empted or moved
from its regular
timeslot due to your local public television
station's pledge drive.
Please check your local schedules at
ttp://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html to
find out when NOW will be airing on your station.
We also encourage you
to support your local station during this pledge
period and when you do,
please be sure to tell them that you support NOW
WITH BILL MOYERS.

=============================================================
You have received this e-mail because you asked to
be informed of
information on upcoming Bill Moyers programs. To
subscribe or
unsubscribe from the weekly Public Affairs
Television newsletter, visit
www.pbs.org/now/newsletter.html.


MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Tech stuff - A COMPUTER DICTIONARY 



Now you'll know what the word I use mean, right?
http://www.computerhope.com/jargon.htm

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Toshiba's coin-size HDD recognised by Guinness as world's smallest 


TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese electronics giant Toshiba said its coin-sized hard-disk drive (HDD) had been recognised by the Guinness book of records as the smallest in the world.


The 0.85 inch (about 2.1 centimeters) drive, unveiled in January, has storage capacity of two to four gigabytes and is small enough to be used in mobile phones, digital camcorders and portable storage devices, Toshiba Corp. said in a statement Tuesday.


The HDD, to be listed in the 2005 edition of the Guinness World Records book due out in September, will be mass-produced from late this year, it added.


Guinness' science and technology editor David Hawksett said in the statement that the world's first hard drive device, introduced in 1956, needed 50 two-foot (60 centimeters) disks to store 4.4 megabytes.


I could soon hold more information in my watch than "B" could on her desktop computer, just 7 years ago. When she had a 2.0 hard drive and was told by the heads of IT departments that she was just showing off and she'd never need that big a drive.

A picture

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Will Wal-Mart Track You? Ya think? Nano size a second one 


Brad Grimes

What do the U.S. Department of Defense (news - web sites) and Wal-Mart have in common?


The two organizations have become poster children for radio frequency identification (RFID), a technology that will undoubtedly help businesses and other enterprises do a better job of tracking goods, but also makes privacy advocates uneasy. Both organizations are requiring their suppliers to use RFID tags if they want to continue doing business with them.


With RFID, tiny radio transmitters are attached to products. These tags, as they're called, emit radio waves carrying data that's read using special scanners. RFID tags are like high-tech bar codes, only they can hold more data and their signals can be received over a far greater distance.



RFID holds tremendous promise. The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) is looking into RFID tags for prescription drug packaging to ensure people don't end up getting fake drugs. The Department of Agriculture wants to use RFID to track livestock from birth to the dinner table to avoid breakouts of mad cow disease. And grocery stores envision a day when your shopping cart is so full of "smart" goods that they can alert you to specials in the next aisle based on what you've already picked, then tally your bill without taking anything out of the cart.


Right now, the Department of Defense and Wal-Mart want their suppliers to use RFID tags so they can do a better job of tracking inventory. Wal-Mart toyed with the idea of requiring RFID tags on individual product packaging, but the ensuing furor forced the company to confine the tags to crates, pallets, and other bulk packaging. That's because people aren't sure they want companies to be able to track the individual products they buy.


Of course, if you use a loyalty card at the supermarket or a credit card at the local Gap, businesses already know what you buy. It's no coincidence that the cash register at your grocery store keeps spitting out coupons for a new brand of apple juice when you're always buying Mott's. But RFID tags have the potential to invade personal privacy to a greater extent.

Will Your Underwear Give You Away?

What worries privacy groups is the possibility that RFID tags will continue to transmit information after you've left the store. At a California hearing last year, State Senator Debra Bowden reportedly asked, "How would you like it if, for instance, your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts?"


Is that technologically possible? Yes. Will it happen? Not immediately, if ever. Companies are sensitive to the backlash that RFID might cause, so they're saying all the right things. They've even promised that any tags that go into products would be automatically disabled once the product leaves a store.


But the simple fact is that right now it costs too much to use RFID for every product in every store. Businesses need to pay for the tags themselves--at about a dime per tag--and stores need to build the network infrastructure necessary to monitor those tags. Experts say most companies have not figured out how to cost-justify the use of RFID.


What's more, RFID standards haven't been completely worked out. No company that sells supplies to the Department of Defense and to Wal-Mart is going to want to use two different RFID technologies to do the job in the event those organizations settle on different RFID platforms. So until the industry settles on standards (and it's getting closer), RFID adoption will be slow.


RFID tags are potentially very useful, but they could be abused. Privacy advocates don't necessarily condemn the technology; they just want government and industry to address the potential for abuse before rushing into anything. As long as average people are told when and where RFID tags are used and what information they track, and as long as RFID tags are deactivated when they leave a store, we will have very little to be worried about.


Brad Grimes is a former executive editor for PC World. He lives near Washington, D.C




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

TiVo Will Die 


Jim Louderback - PC Magazine

I was one of the first reviewers to get my hands on an early TiVo box. I compared TiVo with ReplayTV (news - web sites), and although I really wanted to like ReplayTV, TiVo won my heart over.


It wasn't the cutesy mascot, although that helped. Rather, it was the drop-dead simplicity and ease of use that even the first version evinced. And to top everything off, TiVo came with the world's best remote control ever, even more astounding for such a fiendishly complex device. Shaped like a dog bone, it was simple to use, easy to understand, and a pleasure to hold.


It's always hard to write an obituary, especially when the subject is still alive. It's especially hard for me, because I love the little guy like a brother. But, alas, TiVo (news - web sites) will die.

The Wall Street Journal's arbiter of tech—Walt Mossberg—still thinks ReplayTV was better, and we've argued over the brilliance of the remote. But the acid test, for me, was when I plopped TiVo down in front of my computer-averse wife. She took to it like a duck to water. So much, in fact, that I soon purchased another one just so I could watch what I wanted to see.


But TiVo today has a problem—and it's not what you think. Most folks point to TiVo's inability to convince consumers just how cool the product is and why they need one. Yes, it's hard to describe why a personal video recorder (PVR) is better than a VCR—until you use one. Give a TiVo to your friends for a month and you'll have to pry the remote out of their cold, dead hands. ReplayTV faces the same challenge, but that's not where the real threat lies.


Instead, a convergence of three separate trends is conspiring to kill off TiVo.


Three Horsemen


Moore's Law. The first one, ironically, derives from the same technology that enabled TiVo to live in the first place: Moore's Law. As chips got powerful enough and hard drives cheap enough, the PVR was inevitable. But now the raw materials are cheap enough to put hard drive–based video recording into just about anything.


It's not just cheap components. Television delivery has changed, too. The original TiVo was designed to suck in an analog TV signal, via either antenna or cable. It also included analog S-Video and composite ports for set-top boxes, which aside from DirecTV and Dish Network were mostly analog, too.


Fast-forward to today. Nearly half of what the industry calls multichannel homes (those with cable or satellite) receive their TV in digital form.


And that's bad news for standalone PVRs like TiVo and ReplayTV. Satellite providers Comcast, DirecTV, and Dish—and companies that offer digital cable service—have spent oodles of cash buying up the best available MPEG compressors to convert analog feeds from broadcast networks, ESPN, HBO, and the other cable networks into compressed digital bits for home delivery.


It's a generational thing. Even with digital cable or satellite services, the broadcast signals spend little time in digital form. Within the home, a set-top box first converts everything to analog (the box doesn't know whether you have HDTV). Then, if you're using a standard TiVo, that data is reconverted into digital form (MPEG) for time shifting and storage. But the data undergoes one more conversion back to analog, so it can play on a traditional television set.


Just as in the old audiocassette days—where if you copied your best friend's mix tape, a bit more hiss came along with each generation farther removed from the source—the two-step analog-to-digital conversion causes noticeable and annoying artifacts. And as TVs get bigger and cable companies squeeze more channels into the same space, those blocky artifacts will become worse and worse.


So what's the solution? Stay digital all the way. TiVo realized this early on and swung a deal with DirecTV to build a combination PVR and DirecTV tuner. With the DirecTiVo, the fat digital bits from the satellite go right onto the hard drive and aren't converted to analog until they squirt into your TV.


Good first step. But since DirecTV had TiVo, archrival Dish Network decided to develop its own PVR/receiver combo. The Dish Player still lacks some of the basic show-finding features TiVo has had for years, including wish lists and season passes. It's also buggy, as well-known usability expert Bruce Tognazzini details in his blog. But because the picture is better than an analog TiVo's, Dish customers have flocked to the Dish Player in droves. For TiVo, this has caused enough concern that the company has filed a lawsuit accusing Dish Network of intellectual property violations.


And now the guys who make digital cable set-top boxes have gotten into the game. Motorola and Scientific Atlanta both make combo receiver/recorders for cable. And they're cheap, too: Viewers can't buy them but can typically rent a box for just $6 a month. That's half the cost of TiVo's monthly service charge after you've bought a TiVo unit for $300 or so.


I've played with most of the cable combos, and while they lack TiVo's elegance and usability, they work well enough, and the picture quality is noticeably better than with standalone recorders. Let's look at the next TiVo killer.





HDTV. The next fatal problem for TiVo is high-definition TV signals. 2004 will be the year America embraces HDTV. The Super Bowl looked tremendous in HD, movies are amazing, and in May, when ESPN begins broadcasting SportsCenter in HD, the contest will be over.

With the world moving to HD, here comes TiVo—a year late—with its own HD PVR. Scheduled to ship in March, the DirecTV combination HD receiver and PVR will cost a staggering $1,000. Cable, again, is about to trump TiVo. Motorola and Scientific Atlanta are readying their own HD set-top boxes, which will again be free to use and will cost about $10 a month to rent.

A legitimate TiVo alternative, the Digeo Moxi, offers everything TiVo does and comes with the first decent PVR remote since TiVo. Expected monthly rental: around $10. You could enjoy a Moxi for eight years and still not burn through the out-of-box price for the upcoming HD TiVo.

Even so, TiVo could happily go on losing money for the next ten years, based on its lucrative agreement with DirecTV. But alas, you have to paint Rupert Murdoch as public enemy number three in this tragic tale.

Murdoch's DirecTV. The problem is that Murdoch is a rapacious cost-cutter, squeezing margins and hunting for profits at every turn. He has already moved to consolidate the fractured DirecTV set-top market—where more than ten consumer electronics vendors build their own branded boxes—into one (presumably cheaper) look and feel. The next step will be for Murdoch to oust TiVo in favor of a lower-cost and less useful but cheaper PVR. And when that happens, you can kiss poor TiVo goodbye.

Of course, Murdoch could purchase TiVo lock, stock, and barrel—though it's doubtful. But there's one sliver of hope for the beleaguered PVR vendor, and that's software licensing. Unfortunately, the low price that TiVo's software would command won't translate into any sort of positive return on equity for shareholders. So that kind of licensing is probably not going to happen, either.

Of course, I should have seen this coming. Over the years I've observed that the more arrogant and less responsive a company gets, the more likely it's about to fail. Oddly, when the going gets tough, most companies don't do a gut check and rededicate themselves to service. Instead, they circle the wagons and go into a preventive defense—and search for someone to sue.

In the early years of TiVo, I'd get instant service. TiVo even gave me the name of a special ambassador—a strategy meant to ensure that the company got a fair hearing in the press, on the Web, and in other public forums. Today my inquiries go unanswered—or even worse, I never receive a promised response. Hold times on the help lines are interminable: It took me over half an hour last week to determine why the company had charged me $14. And I'll wager that Dish Network is not the first company or the last to be sued for IP rustling.

It's surely not the product designers' fault. They've built a great new category and an incredibly useful and usable product. But a few dumb decisions, coupled with intransigent corporate arrogance and overweening lawyers, have doomed TiVo to death. I'll surely miss the poor guy when he's gone.
Jim Louderback - PC Magazine


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Experts Want Warning Network for Internet  


WASHINGTON - Computer security experts urged the Bush administration Thursday to set up a national early warning network and crisis center to monitor and respond to significant Internet attacks, suggestions aimed at staving off new federal regulations affecting the technology industry.


Experts also recommended a new campaign to educate computer users about threats they face online, designing a security tool to help consumers protect their own computers, and discussions with Internet providers on ways those companies might promote better online precautions. They also recommended that September be designated as "Cyber Security Month."


Experts said the crisis center — a centerpiece of their recommendations — could be created as early as 2005 with taxpayer funding and staffed equally by government and corporate employees who could review secret intelligence collected about major Internet attacks and outages.


Notably absent from the industry's recommendations were proposals for any new requirements or legal liabilities for companies, organizations or consumers to compel them to improve cybersecurity. The industry's approach is consistent with the Bush administration's stance that the nation's computer networks can be secured through voluntary efforts.


Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security, praised the recommendations as evidence that government and industry need to work together, and urged the administration to "take immediate action."


Critics said the industry's proposals failed to adequately blame software companies whose products are insecure.


Alan Paller of the SANS Institute in Bethesda, Md., compared the recommendations to advising motorists to wear football pads and helmets while driving "because the automobile manufacturers won't build in seat belts and air bags and better bumpers."


The industry groups made clear they functioned as coalitions under the government's National Cyber Security Partnership — not as formal advisory committees to the government, which would have required the groups to disclose many of their discussions and internal working papers.


On the Net: National Cyber Security Partnership: www.cyberpartnership.org



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Recipe for Disaster Recovery by Walt Mossberg 


March 2004


IN A TIME OF massive power outages, way too many natural disasters and daily computer breakdowns, it's more important than ever to have a backup copy of your important computer files. And it's a good idea to keep a second copy of the backup somewhere outside of your home or office.

But ever since the birth of the PC, backing up files has been such a pain that few people have done it faithfully. Today it's even harder. Hard disks have become huge, and so have the files people consider important. Multimegabyte presentations, photos, videos or songs can be tedious to manually copy to CDs or other backup media.

The key to backing up your files regularly is to use a system that (a) is unattended and automatic so that it doesn't depend on your memory or mood, and (b) provides some way to keep a copy of your data in a location away from the PC, in case of fire or other disaster.

This isn't hard in a large corporation or organization where all the PCs are on a network and the data can be centrally backed up every night. But in a home or small business without a managed network, you have to figure it out for yourself.

There are multiple ways to construct an automated backup system that allows for remote storage, but I want to highlight two easy, practical methods, one of which I use myself.

First, a couple of caveats. It makes little sense to try to back up your programs, because, especially on Windows PCs, they often consist of numerous files scattered all over your hard disk and it's nearly impossible to find them all. It's better to focus on items that, unlike programs, can't be replaced: data you have either created or collected, ranging from letters to financial data, from family photos to MP3 files.

Second, you want to focus on synchronizing this data — ensuring you have an up-to-date copy of it — to a backup medium, rather than backing it up in the old, traditional way. In the old days, when you were often backing up to space-constrained floppy disks or tapes, backup software compressed your data in some proprietary format, and you could retrieve it only by using the same backup software. But now that large storage media are pretty cheap, you can afford to just copy the files outright. That way, they can be retrieved without using any special software.

Here's how I keep my own data backed up.

First, about a year ago, I bought two identical 40-gigabyte external hard disks. I paid $99 for each, and you can probably do better today if you look for sales. These disks connect to my Windows PC through either of two fast technologies, USB 2.0 or FireWire. You can choose which one you prefer. Most new Windows machines have USB 2.0 ports, and some higher-end models have FireWire ports, which are often called by the geeky name "1394."

I keep one of these hard disks, which are fairly small physically, on top of my computer, plugged in via a USB 2.0 port, and the other in the safe-deposit box at my local bank branch, a couple of miles away from my house.

Next I downloaded a $35 program called SmartSync Pro, from SmartSync Software, at www.smsync.com. SmartSync Pro is designed to synchronize files on a computer's hard disk to some other disk or storage medium, either manually or automatically, directly or over a network. It can even synchronize data to CDs or Zip disks.

I selected the folders and files I wanted to back up and configured SmartSync Pro to copy that data at 2 a.m. every day to corresponding folders and files on my new external hard disk. The program took over from there, and I never worried about it again. All my financial data, my columns, my genealogical data, my music, my photos — all are copied faithfully every morning at 2 a.m. to the external hard disk. The program compares the original with the backup and updates the backup to reflect any new or changed files or folders.

Once a month or so, I unplug the extra hard disk, drive to the bank and swap it with the one in the safe-deposit box. Then I take the hard disk from the bank and simply plug it into the computer. The drives are literally plug and play, so swapping them requires no installation process. And the synchronization software brings them up to date quickly.

SmartSync Pro, while a very powerful program, is a little techie-oriented in some respects and may be a bit difficult for some users. But there are other low-cost or even free synchronization programs available. Just search on Google or on www.download.com for "file synchronization."

There are two weaknesses in my scheme. First, you have to remember to swap the disks once a month or so. And second, the hard disk in the bank can be up to 30 days out of date, so if my computer and my home backup disk somehow both get fried, I might conceivably be out a month's worth of data. But much of this wouldn't be hard for me to recover, since a lot of it is in e-mail attachments on my office PC or laptop, and copies of songs, for instance, are often sitting on my iPod.

Still, if you want to avoid these weaknesses and are willing to pay an annual or monthly fee, there's another kind of automated, unattended backup you can use: online backup. Several companies offer services that will reach into your computer via the Internet and back up key files and folders of your choice to their servers. If and when you need to recover the backup copies, you can download them from the Web or order copies on CDs.

In the past I have used one of these services, Connected.com, successfully. It's mainly aimed at business users, but it offers a home-user plan that ranges from $80 a year for 250MB of data to $800 a year for 30GB. You can exceed your limit, but at a cost of 4 cents per megabyte. The only problem, in addition to the cost, is that the service discourages audio and video files and limits the amount of data transmitted per month.

Others in the automated online backup business include @Backup, at www.backup.com, and Xdrive, at www.xdrive.com. With @Backup, you pay from $50 a year for 50MB to $995 a year for 2GB. Xdrive charges from $10 a month for 500MB to $50 a month for 5GB. Xdrive isn't strictly a backup service. It is more of an online hard disk that you can use manually, and it has features that allow you to share files with others. But it includes an automated backup option. Xdrive and @Backup allow audio and video files.

Unlike my simple synchronization approach, in which the files are backed up in their original form, some of these online services may compress or encrypt your data and then decompress and/or decode it when you want it back.

In addition to their fees, these online services have other downsides. You need a fast, always-on Internet connection to use them, and you have to trust the services to protect your privacy. Also, your data is only as safe as their servers are. If they have a disaster or go out of business, you could be in trouble.

But whether you choose my do-it-yourself approach or an online service, backing up your data, and keeping a copy offsite, is a smart thing to do.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Walt Mossberg's Mossberg Report column appears monthly in SmartMoney, The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business, published by Hearst Communications Inc. and Dow Jones & Company Inc.




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Ten Commandments for Your Computer Sanity 



1. Do not open any e-mail attachment coming from an unknown or
distrusted source.
2. Do not open any e-mail message unless you know what is it about,
even if it comes from a friend or partner. Most viruses spread using e-mail
messages. It is easier to prevent than to fix, so please ask for a confirmation
from the sender.
3. Don't open the attached files of messages with a suspicious or
unexpected subject. If you want to open them, first save them on your hard disk
and scan them with an updated antivirus solution.
4. Delete any chain e-mails or unwanted messages. Do not forward
them or reply to their senders. This kind of messages is considered spam,
because it is undesired and unsolicited and it overloads the Internet traffic.
5. Do not copy any file if you don't know or don't trust its source.

6. Be very careful when downloading files from the Internet. Check
their source every time and make sure that an antivirus program already verified
the files on the download site. If you are not sure about this, copy that file
on your hard disk or on a floppy disk and recheck it using your own antivirus.
7. Use a reliable antivirus program and update it permanently.
Select an antivirus that has a resident module, in order to monitor your
activity while using the computer.
8. If you have an antivirus program installed on your system, update
it regularly. Every month an average of 500 new viruses are discovered. The
antivirus updates must contain at least the files with the new virus signatures,
but it is desirable to keep scan engines updated too.
9. Make file backups on a regular basis. If a virus will destroy
them, you will be able to replace them. It is recommended to store these copies
in a separate location or even on another computer or magnetic support.
10. Any time you have doubts about a file or message, do not
download, execute or open it.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Top E-Mail Providers Sue Spammers Under New Law 


By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four of the nation's largest e-mail providers said on
Wednesday they had sued hundreds of online marketers under a new federal law
that outlaws the worst kinds of "spam" e-mail.

The lawsuits -- filed by EarthLink Inc. , Microsoft Corp. , Yahoo Inc. and
Time Warner Inc. unit America Online -- mark the first time the law has
been tested since it took effect in January.
Six suits were filed in federal courts in California, Georgia, Virginia and
Washington state. They claim the defendants obscured their identities and
used other deceptive tactics to send out hundreds of millions of pitches for
get-rich-quick schemes, pornography and other types of spam.
Company officials said the CAN-SPAM Act, passed last year, makes their fight
easier by imposing national standards and increasing penalties to force
spammers out of business.

http://tinyurl.com/3dkgu




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

New Tool Cleans Up The Messy Business Of Web Research 


By WALTER S. MOSSBERG


It's pretty easy to find things on the Web these days using Google or other search engines. But it's not so easy to capture, save and organize the information you find for later reference offline, especially if you're doing significant research.

Some people print out the relevant Web pages, but that can take a lot of paper and ink. Others cut and paste important passages into a word processor, a slow and clumsy method. Still others save the Web pages as files to their hard disk. But, depending on the method you use and how good your file system is, these saved pages can be hard to locate and open later.

Now, a new company based in Cambridge, Mass., Onfolio Inc., has come up with an inexpensive piece of software, also called Onfolio, which aims to solve this problem.

The software integrates seamlessly with the dominant Internet Explorer browser, and allows you to quickly store whole Web pages, pictures, snippets of text from the Web and other material, in a way that makes it a snap to find later.

Onfolio costs $29.95, and can be downloaded at www.onfolio.com. It requires Windows XP or 2000, and Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later. A Professional Edition that allows you to publish customized reports from the material you capture is $79.95. Before buying Onfolio, you can download a free trial version that has all the product's features but expires in 30 days.

I have been testing Onfolio, and I like it. Despite a few minor downsides, it does what it promises and can make a huge difference in the process of doing research on the Web. I especially like the user interface, which is clear and clean, and gives users multiple ways to do many key tasks so they can fit the product to their own styles of working.

Onfolio takes the form of a special panel on the left side of the Internet Explorer browser, with three main sections. At the top of this panel is a toolbar with a few simple command icons. Below that is a section showing how your information has been organized into groupings called collections and subgroups called folders. Finally, the bulk of the panel is a list of the Web pages, images, text snippets and other material you have saved in whatever collection or subfolder is selected at the top.

Capturing information is simple. You just navigate to a Web page of interest and click on Onfolio's capture button, which appears both at the top of the Onfolio panel, and in the upper right of the browser's main window.

Onfolio then pops up a window asking whether you want to save the page as a link, which would require you to be online to see it in the future, or as a "local copy," which is a file to whatever hard disk you want that can be viewed offline. You can also choose a collection or folder in which to store the page, add your own comments about the page, name it whatever you want and even assign it a color-coded flag. You then click Save and the page appears as an entry in the Onfolio panel.

You can also capture pages by hitting the F9 key, or by right-clicking on the page you want.

If you want to save only an image from a page, you just right-click on it and select "Capture image to Onfolio." To save a passage of text, you highlight the passage you want and right-click to select "Capture snippet to Onfolio." Or, you can just drag text passages and images onto the Onfolio panel.

Onfolio also allows you to capture files and text passages from your hard disk, from programs like Microsoft Office, or from other Web browsers with which it doesn't integrate.

To do these things you use a module called the Desktop Bar, which closely resembles the Onfolio panel in Internet Explorer, but functions separately.

In my tests, I was able to assemble collections and folders that included a mix of Web links, locally stored Web pages, text snippets, images and non-Web files. I was amazed to be able to save perfectly formatted tables yanked from Web sites.

Once you have all this stuff, what can you do with it? Well, if you click on any saved item, it appears right in the browser. If you assemble a large amount of material, you can use Onfolio's built-in search function to rapidly find any term or phrase in any of the documents.

Or, you can export the material to files on your hard disk and e-mail it to others, right from within Onfolio, in a variety of formats. If you have the Pro edition, you can turn the material into personalized, formatted reports.

So, what are the downsides to Onfolio? In my tests, I couldn't capture some Web content that was in Macromedia Flash format, including on Onfolio's own Web site. Some of the reports Onfolio created were blocked by my security software when I tried to open them, though that could be fixed by adjusting the settings. And a feature in which Onfolio supposedly keeps track of Web searches simply never worked for me.

But these are minor woes. Onfolio works well and fills a real need. If you do a lot of Web research, it's worth the $30.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at: mossberg@wsj.com

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Tech stuff - How to stop Messenger SPAM: Disable Windows Messenger Service 


No, this has nothing to do with the "Instant Messenger" from MS, or Yahoo or AOL or others. This is about the Annoying messages that show up on your screens and that are not pop-up ads. Well here's how to "stop" that. It's a Windows Operating Sys. thing. And there is "How to" for XP, Window 2000, XP Home Edition, Windows NT, and a note on 98 & ME that Windows Messenger Service cannot be disabled(just in case you need something to make you change to XP). There is also a picture of what the "Message Box" looks like. Just in case your not sure of what I talking about here. As soon as you see it you'll know what I'm talking about.

http://www.auburn.edu/oit/security/messengerService.html is the lick to the site.

Also see some of the other things of interest on the University web page.

And this is what one tech friend of mine had to say when we talked of this web page;

And tell them of how "unexpected" messages showup. And how someone can "sneak' into their computer system if it is not patched and secure.

Another note to get a "Patch" you have to go to Microsoft's update web page. Micorsoft doesn't send out emails to tell you you need to "get a patch". IF you get an email like that Delete it, it a virus. If you check with Microsoft on Wednesdays, in the late afternoon, every week you'll see if there are any new updates or patches. If there is something really Critical and you have any OS that can handle it, XP, they will send you an update notice to your Sys. tray. But that's only on the Critical updates. OK, there's their URL to the site http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and becareful there are URLs out there that are close to this in one way or another that you will not like if you don't get it right. Notice that there is no "www" in the URL. When you get there click on the "Scan for updates" link. This allows Microsoft to see what OS(operating sys.) your useing and show you the right "patch" for you and or that computer.

So, on Tusdays and Thurdays your update your anti-virus software and no Wednesdays you check on patches. Or maybe ya don't...

And again, by the way, now that I'm using Broadband I have put a "router" on my sys. and I running Zone Labs Zone-Alarm for a firewall, just in case you wanted to do that much to keep the "bad guys" out. And I've found it a very good thing to have both.




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Tech stuff & Money Matters- Kept yourself away from fruad 


Help kept yourself from fruad per;
http://www.techtv.com/news/securityalert/story/0,24195,3436618,00.html

Two things you probably haven't done to protect your identity: putting a fraud alert on your credit report and getting your name off the pre-approved credit card list.

If you haven't already done it, order a credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus:


Equifax Credit Information Services, Inc.
Call 800.525.6285/TDD 800.255.0056 and ask the operator to call the Auto Disclosure Line at 800.685.1111 to obtain a copy of your report.
P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241


Experian Information Solutions, Inc.
888.397.3742/TDD 800.972.0322
P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013


TransUnion
800.680.7289/TDD 877.553.7803
Fraud Victim Assistance Division
P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790

When ordering credit reports, ask each bureau to put a fraud alert on your account. This is a flag tied to your name and Social Security number that tells any credit card company or lender to contact you for approval if any new accounts are opened in your name.


This flag will hold you up a little if you are trying to get a quick low-interest credit card, but it will also prevent someone from opening an account in your name without you knowing about it. You can put a fraud alert on your account for 90 days or seven years. I recommend the seven-year option. This fraud alert was originally created for existing victims of ID theft, but it is also available for consumers to use.


Another tool to keep bad guys from getting a credit card in your name is to opt-out of pre-approved credit card offers, which you probably see in the mail. The promise of low interest rates doesn't entice you to get a new credit card so you toss the envelopes, unopened into the garbage or recycling. An enterprising ID thief needs only to make an early morning run through a neighborhood to pick up these papers.


The thief can then change your address to a post office box and they have a credit card in your name within days. They max the card out, dump the post office box, and you spend months trying to prove to the credit card company that it wasn't you. Bad guys in these schemes don't just steal the offers from your trash, they will raid your mailbox before you get home, so the best protection is to opt out of the offers entirely.




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

Monday, March 15, 2004

Sun's Not-So-Secret Weapon 


Sun Microsystems is about to begin a beta program for perhaps its most important development tool release in years. Java Studio Creator -- formerly Project Rave -- is Sun's attempt at corralling departmental-level developers who are looking for alternatives to Microsoft's .NET framework.

Sun has high hopes for the product; it believes that the potential user base is in the millions. But wooing developers to buy a Sun tool has not been easy in the past, and although Java Studio Creator seems robust enough, it will not have all the capabilities of Visual Basic out of the box.

The full story



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

PayPal Warns Its Customers To Safeguard Personal Data per By Mike Musgrove, Washington Post Staff Writer  


The full story
Online payment giant PayPal warned users yesterday that scam artists have obtained select customer aliases, mailing addresses, e-mail addresses and transaction data by using phony e-mails to fool retailers into revealing the information.


MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

KEEP YOUR PUTER KOOL, MAN 


Cool, Man!
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to prolong the life of your CPU is to make sure that it stays cool. Windows is a very CPU-intensive operating system, and adding heat to the equation just makes things worse. Most new CPUs have a CPU fan already built in. Always make sure that your computer has plenty of air flowing around it, and that nothing is blocking the cooling fan in the back. Heat is your computer's worst enemy--next to a nosy dog. And to that end if you put your puter on the floor at least put it on something that take it up a little, a 2X4 something to help kept out the durt. I use anything that gets it 6" above the floor itself.

And if you feel confortable with it, open up that computer and with a can of air clean it out every 6 mos. or so.

Just had a customer who kept the puter in a "puter disk" and in that little slot they have for the tower to seat in. Well after awhile his Monitor started blacking out. Just for a second. I had him pull the puter out and run it "in the open". Everthing is fine now. See what I mean. Heat is a killer of CPUs. God, I love it when I'm right the very first time. I thought it was heat and it was. I just couldn't charge him anything. I didn't send any real time on it with him.

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

MONEY MATTERS - Working for the Taxman (2003 info not sure as to changes for this yr.) 


Last year, 100% of the income the average American earned from January 1st to April 18th (108 days) went to pay taxes. Therefore, April 19th was “Tax Freedom Day,” the day on which the average American started working for anything besides taxes.

According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day would have been 5 days later if the tax cuts in 2001 and 2002 had not been enacted.

Tax Freedom Day would be one day sooner in 2003 if the President’s proposed economic growth package were enacted.

Americans spent more time working to pay taxes than they spent working to own a home, put food on the table, or pay medical expenses.

Number of Days in 2003 the Average American Will Work to Pay for:
Federal Taxes: 74
State & Local Taxes: 35
Housing: 61
Savings: 11
Food: 30
Clothing: 14
Recreation: 21
Medical Care: 44
Transp.: 27
Other: 46

Information provided by GAO, IRS, OMB, OPM and The Tax Foundation




MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

MONEY MATERS - Better prices on Prescription from Costco.com 


Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I
though everyone I knew should know about this.
Please read the following:

Steve Wilson, an investigative
reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story
on generic drug price
gouging by pharmacies. He found in his
investigation, that some of
these generic drugs were marked up as much as
3,000% or more. Yes, that's
not a typo..... three thousand percent! Mr. Wilson
did a thorough
research, and checked out all the major drugstore
chains, discount
chains, independent pharmacies, and even checked on
some Canadian
pharmacies. So often, we blame the drug companies
for the high cost of
drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case,
the fault clearly
lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example,
if you had to buy a
prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you
might pay $100 for 100
pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you
get the generic
equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you
think you are "saving"
$20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that
those 100 generic
pills may have only cost him $10! At the end of the
report, one of the
anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were
any pharmacies that
did not adhere to this practice, and he said that
Costco consistently
charged little over their cost for the generic
drugs. They gave the link
to Costco, which I will include here, so that you
can go and check prices
for yourself. http://www.costco.com/ Costco Online
pharmacy Costco Online
I went to the Costco site, where you can look up
any drug, and get it's
online price. It says that the in-store prices are
consistent with the
online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one
example from my own
experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which
helps prevent nausea
in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent,
which cost $54.99 for
60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and
I could have bought
100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I
paid $72.57. I could
have got 150 at Costco for $28.08. I would like to
mention, that although
Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT
have to be a member
to
buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally
regulated substance. You
just tell them at the door that you wish to use the
pharmacy, and they will let you in.



MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

New Car Jacking Scheme 



>Imagine:
>You walk across the parking lot, unlock your car and get inside.
>Then lock all your doors, start the engine, shift into REVERSE.
>
>Habit!
>You look into the rear-view window to back out of your parking

>space, and notice a piece of paper (some sort of advertisement)

>stuck to your rear window.
>
>So, you shift into park, unlock your doors, jump out of your vehicle
>to remove the paper (or whatever it is) obstructing your view...
>When you reach the back of your car, is when the car-jackers jump
>out of no where ~ jump into your car and take off -- your engine was
>running, your purse in the car and they practically mow you down

>as they speed off in your car.
>
>BE AWARE OF THIS NEW SCHEME:
>Just drive away and remove the paper obstruction to your window later.


MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

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