This newsletter is available online at http://prcox.org/newsletters/sometime_2003-02-21.htm.

Hi Y'all,

Next time you drive by an alfalfa field, get the farmer to sell you 10 pounds. Take it home, smash it to a goopy mass, centrifuge it, and you might recover a pound or two of very expensive nanoparticulate gold. No kidding. Read Alfalfa loves metals.

So, are you feeding your pet horse or cow gold... or arsenic... or just plain old alfalfa? It all depends what's in the soil where it was grown.

Here is a list of over 50 sites some PC Magazine employees liked the best last year, with their reasons. You'll probably recognize many of the names, even if you've never been to them. However, the very last one you may have never heard of, I hadn't anyway. It's The WebMuseum, which contains large photos of paintings from the early 1400's to 1986 with lots of commentary, and historical and cultural background information – a free Art History course.

One of the Favorite Sites in Best of the Web 2002 (above) is FreedomList. It provides links to dial-up ISP's world wide offering services priced from Free to about $10.00 (in the US,) and posts Reviews of many of the services written by past and current users.

One "lower cost" national dial-up ISP subscribers love is PeopleStar (user comments). They offer 1 month contracts and "only pay for what you need." Don't need e-mail and 150 hrs/mo is enough? The price is $8.45/mo. Need e-mail and unlimited time online? That sets you back only $9.95/mo and 1st month is free. There are other options and discounts for longer term contracts.

After discarding reviews written by those who haven't yet half-way mastered 5th grade English, I would say it best to pass on the national Free ones. But if you live in the right city, county, or area, you might want to follow the links to free ISP services offered by libraries or local organizations, after reading any reviews.

My Web site hosting plan allows 5 Gigabytes of traffic per month. PRCox.org generally receives very few visitors and serves up less than 1GB/month. On Feb 9 the number of visitors started to skyrocket, and about 11pm (US Central) on the 10th my host shut PRCox.org down. It was put back online about 6am after some emergency surgery.

Why was I shut down? Because on the 10th alone, my site served up 12 Gigabytes! What was giving me my "15 minutes of fame" was that little 195KB Flash cartoon of the Bear Hug; you know, the one reached through the "Something to Get You Started" link on the Home page. The bear has been replaced with a page explaining why he went into hibernation, and offers three links to other sites which still have it (I really had to hunt for those) plus instructions for copying it to your own computer. The replacement page went up about 6 hours after the site was reactivated.

An amalgam of some of the comments received after the bear disappeared:

"'Something to Get You Started' is broken. Hope you can fix it soon."
"Someone sent me a link to this bear that gives you a full screen hug...."
"I came back today for another Bear Hug. Where did he go? I need a hug!"
"The Valentine my boyfriend sent me doesn't work. Please fix it."
"A lady posted a link to [the bear] on [an Internet bulletin] board."

Going from essentially no traffic to 12BG in one day boggles my mind! Shows how fast word travels on the Internet. How much did it cost me to have furnished Valentines gifts to the world? Don't know yet. My host indicated I might not be charged if the traffic quickly drops back, but then again....

If you're a heavy Web-mail user (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) and use Windows and Internet Explorer, check out http://www.oddpost.com/. This is like no Web-mail you've ever used. It works and looks like Outlook Express, plus the address book and an appointment calendar are implemented as folders! Even if you're satisfied with your current Web-mail account(s), take a look at the future (I hope) of Web-mail.

Oddpost is a new company, and the program still has a few items which aren't implemented yet, most noticeably the Drafts folder, but I'm very impressed. If I changed ISP's often, were on the road frequently, or for any other reason used Web-mail a lot, I'd sign up today.

Oddpost isn't free, but there is a one month free trial. After that, it costs $30/year, but you get 50MB of storage (Yahoo Plus at $30 only gives you 25MB), no advertising taking up screen space, Spam filtering, POP3 and IMAP access from your Outlook Express or other desktop mail program, and, because it works like Outlook Express, it's fast; no waiting for pokey new page loads every time you do something. You can import address books from Yahoo Mail, Outlook, and Outlook Express. If you don't have a credit card, or don't like using it on the Internet, you can snail-mail them a check. Minimum Requirements: Windows 98 Original, Internet Explorer 5.5 (5.01 works, but some features aren't available or don't work well under that IE version), and if you're the cautious type, you can leave Scripting disabled in Internet Explorer as Oddpost does not use it – but it does require Cookies to be enabled.

Californians watch out now, everyone else get ready if this flies.

California eyes taxes for Web access, downloads

A former EBay vice president-turned state government executive thinks it's time to tax the Internet. Controller Steve Westly told Silicon Valley business leaders yesterday, "I think the Internet ought to be taxed like every other part of the economy." He hinted at plans to recommend sales taxes on e-commerce, as well as surcharges on Internet access and software downloads. "This is a time when we have to put everything on the table," he said, according to the Mercury News.
CBS MarketWatch newsletter, Feb 7, 03

Mr. Westly: With over 50% of the homes in America having Internet access, it's a little late to institute a Luxury Tax, isn't it? My monthly cable bill includes separately listed charges for Internet Service + Tax on it. If I lived in CA, does that mean you'd tax me twice for the same thing? What if one uses a free ISP? There's no bill, so how's the tax to be collected?

Comments by Senator John Kerry about some of the "pull the wool over America's eyes" phrases used by Pres. Bush in his January 2003 State of the Union message (From the Boston Herald, excerpted by LCV.org):

"Healthy Forests" initiative

"that's where you kill the trees to save the forest."

"Clear Skies" program

"the premise that our air will be cleaner when you let companies decide how much they can pollute."

If you've been playing ostrich and don't know what this is all about, please visit this short page for an abbreviated Fiction vs. Fact about some of President Bush's underhanded goals.

On Feb 5, 2003, Microsoft issued a cumulative security patch for Internet Explorer (for Windows) 5.01 SP3 on Windows 2000, 5.5 SP2 on Win 98 up, 6.0 on XP, and 6.0 SP1 on Win 98 up, which I applied to my IE 6.0 SP1 running on Windows 98 Gold on Feb 6 via the Windows Update site.  On Feb 12, they issued a fix for the Feb 5 patch. It seems the original patch made it impossible for some people to access their MSN Mail accounts and/or subscription-based Web sites, and made Help functions in some Web pages inoperative. The Help function problem was discovered in time for a separate fix for that to be released along with the Feb 5 IE security update, and if you've been making your obligatory weekly visits to Windows Update you've already applied them both.

But were they applied in the correct order? Windows Update allowed me do download both the Cumulative Patch and the Help fix together. I have no idea whether it installed the Patch before the Help fix, which is the required order in order for the Help fix to be effective. If you downloaded both together from Windows Update and aren't sure whether they were installed in the correct order, I suggest reapplying the Help fix. You can get it at the Microsoft Download Center. This page has links which will connect you with the correct version of the Help fix for your operating system.

Now Things Get Messy. On Feb 19, Microsoft issued the 4th Revision to Security Bulletin MS03-004 which originally announced the "Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer (810847)". The sum total of the revisions is to say the patch was not meant for Windows 98 Gold (oops - Windows Update presented it as an update for Windows 98 Gold and I've already installed it), and the Feb 13 fix for the inability to log onto MSN Mail or subscription Web sites only applies to Internet Explorer 6 SP1, as that was only those version of the patch which was messed up in that regard.

How interesting. Knowledge Base Article - 810847 about the Feb 2003 Cumulative Patch and Knowledge Base Article - 813951 about the MSN Mail, etc, log on problem, both dated Feb 12, and Knowledge Base Article - 811630 about the Help bug, dated Feb 19, all say the patch and the two fixes to it are for Windows 98 Gold.

And More Messy. Windows Update, it appears, should not have fed me the Febuary 2003 Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer, or any other Internet Explorer patches for the last eight months. According to Footnote 3 buried at the bottom of this Microsoft Product Life-Cycle page, Microsoft stopped support of all Internet Explorer versions running on Windows 98 Gold on June 30, 2002. Somewhere between Feb 7 and 13, 2003 they seemed to have finally "fixed" Windows Update so that it won't present Internet Explorer updates to Windows 98 Gold machines, because it didn't show me the IE 6.0 SP1 fix for the MSN Mail log on problem. Thank goodness I located that "fix for the IE 6 SP1 patch" at Internet Explorer Downloads. It installed without a hitch.

Epilog: I wish Microsoft had followed their own rules and hadn't let me download and apply the Feb 2003 Internet Explorer Cumulative Patch on my Windows 98 Gold machine. Since applying it and the two bug fixes for it, my Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Explorer, and, indeed, Windows 98 itself, have been very unstable; frequent crashes, lockups, and BSOD's (Blue Screen of Death.) I may delete IE 6.0 SP1, fall back to 5.5, reload 6.0 SP1 and not apply any patches to it and cross my fingers the bad guys don't find me until IE 6.0 SP2 comes out (whenever that might be,) and double cross them that SP2 will be available for Windows 98 Gold, or even Win 98SE (Second Edition)!

Expecting a Federal Income Tax Refund? There are now three ways to check the status of that refund. Call 1-800-829-4477 (Automated), 1-800-829-1954 (Hotline), and Online.

The online form is at https://sa.www4.irs.gov/irfof/lang/en/getrefundstatus.jsp – you only need to know the SSN, Filing status, and exact amount of expected refund.

If you have a less than recent version of your browner (or AOL if you use their browser), or have tweaked it to make it "more secure", go to http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=96596,00.html and click on Requirements (near bottom of page) to see the minimum requirements for using the online form. Briefly, you must have 128-bit Encryption, allow Java Scripting and Session Cookies. There are instructions for telling how to check whether your browser meets these requirements, and enabling Scripting and Session Cookies, for Microsoft, Netscape, and AOL browsers.

A sneak peek at a section of my Web site which isn't open to the public yet.

'Til next time,
Pete