Hi Y'all,

Trying to find a middle ground typeface and font size which works for various monitor sizes and resolutions as well as for those of you with failing eyesight and those of you who use Web-based e-mail such as Yahoo, Juno, and Hotmail or Web-mail like mail readers such as Juno and AOL, has been very frustrating.

Web based mail readers scrunched the typeface and size I was using down to barely readable size. If I increased the font size, then it became overly large and bold in Outlook Express. With this issue I'm changing typeface again to one which may be easier to read in Web mail and still work for everyone else.

If you read this in Outlook Express or other full fledged mail program and find this font too large, use your View menu to make it smaller. If it's too small in Web mail, use your browser's View menu to make it larger. If the text becomes trashed, all I can suggest is clicking on the link at the top of the newsletter and reading it as a full Web page where changing the font size via your browser's View menu won't trash the page.

Does this typeface work for you? Is the size okay? Should I return to the face and size used in the last newsletter? Please give me some Feedback.

I hereby Declare a National Day of Celebration in America on July 1, 2003 in Honor of the Opening of the National Do-Not-Call Registry.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html

If you receive e-mail at home via POP3 (Post Office Protocol, Version 3) service (see below) and one or more of your mail accounts does not offer Web-based viewing, try using Mail2Web.com when you're not home. No registration is necessary. Type in your e-mail address and password, and up pops a Web-mail looking page with all your waiting messages listed. It behaves like a regular Web-mail account – Read, Delete, Reply, Forward, Compose – plus you can choose to read a message as plain text (the default) or as HTML formatted (this newsletter is HTML formatted.) In plain text mode, a link in a message won't work unless the blue text contains a complete URL (Web page address.) The only quirk I've noticed is that some punctuation characters are displayed as square boxes. If you don't delete a message, it will still be there when you get home and open your e-mail program.

E-MailAnywhere.com is similar, but offers only bare bones plain text viewing and no links in a message will work.

POP3 Mail: If you receive your e-mail at home using Outlook Express or other main line e-mail program, most likely most or all of your mail receiving is via POP3. In Outlook Express, click Tools | Accounts and double-click each account name to see its Properties. Click the Server tab. If the top line says "My incoming server is a POP3 server," then you can probably access that e-mail address from Mail2Web.com.

Try it before you leave home just to make sure you can. Back when POP3 access to Yahoo mail was free, one could retrieve it with Outlook Express just fine, but it couldn't be retrieved using Web2Mail.

To see one, go to Johnson Solids. After reading (or skimming) the stuff at the top, scroll way down to Number 89 and click the link for some fun (but then it doesn't take much to amuse me.) Click and hold on the shape and move your mouse to view it from different angles. Move the mouse in any direction and let up on the button as the mouse is moving, and the shape will revolve on its own in the direction the mouse was moving. The faster the mouse was moving, the faster the spin. Move the mouse pointer away from the spinning shape and it will pause. Move the pointer near it and the spin will continue. Click the shape to stop the spin completely. Those of you with a photo editor will (should?) immediately know how to enlarge and print the diagram (pattern) to make your own toy.

After playing with some other Johnson Solids (if you're so inclined,) go to Polyhedron Explorer. Choose one of the shapes from the first set of buttons. Rotate and spin if desired. Click one of the "modifier" buttons. Some pretty, and interesting, shapes pop up. To jump to a really neat one, click the Icosahedron button, then Stellate 200%.

Finally, when you are done playing, check out this beautifully intricate crochet work. Okay. So it's a portion of a graph of some sort of mathematical function. It's still pretty.

The Theban Mapping Project is an amazing site. Not so much for the subject matter, Egypt's ancient city of Thebes and the "Valley of the Kings" (area view from Space Station), but for its design, which is quite unique. Because it is so unusual, use and navigation aren't immediately apparent, but if you click on the General User Guide and How to use the Atlas right off the bat, getting around is a snap.

Even if Egyptology and archaeology aren't your bag, give this site a visit anyway – just because it's different.

In my Dec 31, 2002 Newsletter, see Pirates - Pay Up, I noted how the Danish recording industry had forced ISPs to divulge the names and addresses of some people downloading copyrighted music from Kazaa and other file swapping services and commented I suspected it would be happening soon in the US.

Immediately after that I began seeing stories of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America Inc.) trying to get names and addresses of alleged pirates from their ISPs (Internet Service Providers) under provisions of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Some ISPs put up a mild protest but knuckled under. Verizon, with support from 40 consumer groups, privacy advocates and ISPs, is fighting all the way to keep from releasing four subscriber names to the RIAA.

The DMCA allows subpoenas for subscribers' records to be issued by a court clerk. Verizon Internet Services is claiming the subpoenas are invalid and unconstitutional because the alleged pirated files aren't hosted on Verizon's computers (they are on a subscriber's own computer) and they were not issued by a judge who, in theory anyway, would view proof of copyright and supposed evidence of copyright infringement before deciding there were grounds for a complaint. Any stocker, pedophile, or other no-gooder can walk into a court clerk's office and fill out a form in which he claims someperson@anisp.net is infringing on a copyright he, or someone he claims to represent, holds and request anisp.net be subpoenaed to release someperson's name, address and phone number to him.

So far, Verizon isn't faring too well in the court system. In January 2003 a U.S. Federal District Court judge ordered Verison to turn over a name because the subpoena was legal and valid and he also ruled that clerk-issued subpoenas are "administrative procedures" and thus not covered by the Constitution. Verizon appealed the decision and asked for a stay of execution. In April 2003, after Verizon refused to release a name requested by another RIAA subpoena, the same judge ordered Verizon to turn over that name. Verizon filed an appeal and asked for a stay of execution on the order until the appeal was heard. In June 2003 a 3-judge appeals court panel denied the stays and Verizon released to the RIAA the two names the judge had ruled on, plus two others the RIAA had subpoenaed.

Verizon vows they'll continue the battle as far as they can go up the Federal court system, hopefully to the Supreme Court, while also urging Congress to amend the DMCA and replace the clerk-issued with a judge-issued subpoena. That could takes many years. In the mean time, if you're into "file swapping," take care. The RIAA may be watching you.

Do you get spam from SuperOffers.net and/or SuperOffers.com? The messages are usually trying to sell you software at very low prices. These people are crooks and run an e-mailing service for other crooks. The software being offered is stolen (pirated.) As listed on their Domain Name registrations, SupperOffer's phone number is right out of the movies – (555)555-xxxx.

If you receive any spam from them, or any other company, offering Symantec or Norton programs, Symantec wants a copy of that message. Please attach it to an e-mail addressed to spamwatch@symantec.com before you delete it.

And for gosh sakes, never click the link to get removed from a spammer's mailing list - you're only confirming they reached a valid e-mail address and that you actually eye-balled their spam, which makes you a prime candidate to get on even more spam lists.

Windows 2003 is an operating system for servers, not desktops or portables, in case you were wondering.

Microsoft's next version of desktop Windows (as yet unnamed) is tentatively scheduled to be released in 2005. Right now it's going by the code name "Longhorn," and is supposed to be a completely new from the ground up operating system, requiring completely new from the ground up computers and programs (and monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, scanners, and other external hardware?)

One interesting "feature" of Longhorn is that it won't have Internet Explorer, per se. The browser will be fully integrated into the operating system rather than being a semi-separate program; the same may be true for Windows Media Player, though it may still be a separate program in the first version of Longhorn. Microsoft is being wishy-washy about whether it will continue support for the Internet Explorer (IE) we use today. They steadfastly claim IE 6 is the end of the line as nothing new and/or improved can be added to it because it's reached the limits of what it can do under current Windows operating systems, so the remaining question is: for how long will bug and security fixes be produced? Apparently "not very."

Support for Internet Explorer for Windows is tied to the operating system on which it's being used and to logic known only to Microsoft. All versions of IE lower than 6.0, with one exception, have already been declared dead. All Internet Explorer support for Windows 95 and 98 Gold has ended. Windows 98SE ends June 30, and ME ends December 31, 2003. That leaves only IE 5.01 on Windows 2000 SP3 (Service Pack #3,) and IE 6.0 and 6.0 SP1 on Windows XP left to support, and the death of those operating systems is on the calendar.

Microsoft has been saying there would be a Windows IE 6.0 SP2 which would essentially be a package of all the security and bug fixes issued, and yet to be issued, for IE 6. Now they are saying there will be no SP2, which means there will be no "new version" which they must commit to support for X years. So it looks to me that Internet Explorer will get no more fixes after a couple of years, and if you want a "more secure" Windows browser you're going to have to come up with however many thousands of dollars it will cost to replace your present system with one of the new ones running "Longhorn," or hope all the Internet Explorer problems will have be discoverd and fixed by then, or install the Netscape or Opera browser (if either of them is still around) and hope they don't have larger security problems than IE, and will perform at least as well (they presently don't.)

The future of Internet Explorer for Macintosh is pretty clear. Microsoft's contract with Apple to provide Mac versions of Internet Explorer has ended and neither party sought to renew it. There will be a minor IE update for OS X (IE 5.2.3) on June 16, and a minor update for OS 9 within the next month. Security patches may, or may not, be produced for a while. Other than that, IE for Mac is dead. Apple is developing its own Macintosh browser, called Safari, but it has not been going well and no release date has been announced. I don't know whether Safari will be only for OS X, or also for at least some earlier operating systems.

Apple Computer seems to be finally giving up on its dreams of re-becoming the important hardware and software company it once was and is focusing on trying to hang on to its "niche markets" of schools and specialized computer graphics computers and software (3-dimensional modeling, movie special effects, movie editing, etc.) But I'm not holding out much hope they will succeed. Microsoft is starting to eat deeply into classrooms, and specialized new Windows XP systems with 3 and 4MHz processors cost less and run rings around equally specialized new Apple OS X systems when performing the same graphics creation and manipulation tasks. Macintosh processors (who makes them now? IBM?) are much slower then the Intel and AMD brand processors in Windows systems, and no meaningful speed increases are on the horizon.

Apple has a hard row to hoe if it hopes to regain its popularity. In April, only three percent of visitors to Google.com, a hugely popular search engine, used a Macintosh operating system. The installed base of Macintosh systems world wide is estimated by Apple to be 5% of all personal computers and "research" firms estimate 3-5%. In comparison, ninety-two percent of Google visitors used Windows 95 and up⁽¹⁾. Apple (or rumor mongers?) has been making noise about converting its operating system (OS) to run on Intel (and clone) processors and chip sets. If they actually do that successfully, and sell their Apple OS for less than a Microsoft OS, I think Apple has a chance of staying alive and reversing its long trend of a declining user base.

There are a lot of people who don't like Windows, but use it because Mac's are too expensive and/or there are no Mac versions of programs they use. If they could make their Windows computer into a Macintosh by spending only $100-150, they would jump on it. On the heels of a growing "Macintosh on Intel" base will come software houses again willing to gamble on Apple and port (rewrite) their Windows programs to run on the "new Mac's" and it could snowball to the point of Mac on Intel becoming a real competitor to the current world dominant Windows on Intel.

But today that's all wishful thinking. If I used a Mac now and was thinking of buying a new computer, would I stay in the comfort zone and buy a Mac OS X system, or enter the wild world of Windows XP? I think I would go for the Windows machine, for no other reason than I'm pretty sure Microsoft will still be around and going strong in 5 years, whereas, as much as I dislike the thought, I fear Apple may not be.

⁽¹⁾ Chart of Google visitors by OS. The Windows 95 visitors comprise only 2% of the total. That surprised me. Are there that few Win 95 users remaining, or is it that they don't visit Google very much?

Feeling lucky? Win a 37, 30 or 22-inch Sharp Liquid Crystal TV. Sweepstakes closes June 30. Rules at bottom of page.

Do you like Bratwurst? Are you "creative?" You have until July 7 to enter a contest to be the Johnsonville Sausage Honorary Grand Marshall in the Sheboygan (WI) Brat Days Parade and get a grill and other goodies. Two runners up get a years' supply of Johnsonville Brats. Entry form and rules. Must be 21+ and U.S. resident.

If you have trouble finding something on the IRS web site, try entering a pre-programmed "key word" in the Search box. Go to IRS Key Words for a list of the words and the categories of topic links they'll bring up.

Flying E-Mail: By the end of the year, United Airlines (scroll down) will let you patch your portable computer into that cell phone on the seat back in front of you so you can send and receive e-mail at a flat-rate cost of $17/flight.

How Google determines which pages are the most relevant to your search.

Why computers sometimes crash. Thanks WUF; something I've always wanted to know.

'Til next time,
Pete