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Woody wrote in “Why the U.S. needs better privacy laws, now!” Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 447:

For most users, “off” really means the phone is in standby mode — the screen is dark but the phone is still ready to receive calls, messages, and data. Possibly more frightening are reports that a phone could be secretly modified to look like it’s fully powered down when in fact it isn’t. For the truly paranoid, the best solution is to fully remove the battery (which rules out using iPhones.)

This is not the only way, and for iPhones not quite correct.

All you have to do is put your cell phone (ANY mobile phone and/or GPS) in a Faraday cage and the phone will be fully inert to the outside world. (read the Wikipedia article)

You can test it for yourself. It’s trivial!

1. I wrapped my cell phone (on stand by) in kitchen paper, to make sure it was electrically isolated. (though there’s probably no need)
2. I put the phone in an old plain iron sigar box and tried to call it from my land line phone. I was switched to voicemail.

3. Same as 1.
4. I wrapped the phone in 2 layers of plain aluminium foil. Again I got voicemail. The cell phone simply did not respond.

When inside a Faraday cage your phone can NOT be tracked. Unfortunately your phone is also useless.

…
One computer (the working one) has the old pop server (pop.charter.net)

The other one (that is giving me the problem) says IMAP mail server. (mobile.charter.net).

I am really hesitant to change any settings, since everything is working except for this one person

You don’t have to change any settings.

On the affected computer, ADD a Thunderbird E-mail account which uses your old pop server. (That new account must have a name different from the existing accounts.) The settings of your other Thunderbird accounts remain untouched, even if you subsequently remove the newly added account.

Though Thunderball starts a new outgoing message with the default account, you can easily switch to a different account before, during or after composing, or immediately before sending. Just don’t forget to switch before you hit the [Send] button.

Of course this doesn’t correct a remote erroneous blacklist, but it’s a useful local workaround.

I remember them especially with Microfocus Cobol.

The dongle was plugged into the parallel port of the PC that the software was being used on but had a passthru function to allow printers to perform as normal.

Yes.

In German folklore cobolds (Heinzelmännchen in Cologne, Germany) were gnomes with a big d… erm … dongle, and they performed the same useful chores as the English and Scottish brownies. :B):

Microfocus borrowed the name but because they wanted to avoid upsetting any sensitivities, they dropped the d from cobold, hence Microfocus Cobol with a separate dongle.

My friend has an XP SP3 computer that has been sitting in her house unused for a couple of years and it doesn’t boot up, no beeps, no video and she told me she has always had many problems when she was using it and doesn’t want to keep this computer.
— However there are pictures on there that she would like to get
…

[*]Have her (your friend) spring for an external enclosure compatible with the drive in question. Go for an eSATA cable if your and her working computers have such a connector, otherwise a USB cable.

[*]Copy the pictures and whatever else she wants off that drive to your computer.

[*]Wipe or (low format and) format that external drive.

[*]Put the pictures and whatever else back.

[*]Give the external drive back to her for continued use. (80 GB is a lot of room for pictures, so why should she discard a perfectly good external hard disk?)

P.S. Use all anti-malware procedures at your disposal.

…

Who’d have thunk youse guys would fall for my little prank!
Your legs came right off.

(for Windows 7, and maybe 8 too)

– Make sure the Powerpoint window is the active one (click the titlebar),
– Press [Alt] + [PrtScr] (to put the screenshot in the clipboard),
– Open your graphics program and paste the clipboard content as a new image,
– Crop the image if needed and save to whatever name.jpg and folder you prefer,
– With Image Resizer[/url] (free) resize the image TO THE SAME SIZE; this results in a smaller file by compressing only the jpeg colour palette, which is not noticeable on-screen. Of course you may reduce the image size too. (this procedure is most useful for large photo’s)

BTW, pressing [PrtScr] puts the whole desktop in the clipboard.

I just started getting about 10 “return” emails a day. …

Depending on your setup (any Windows version, a local E-mail client and pop3 E-mail server required) Robin Keir’s K9 anti-spam may help a lot.
NOTE: Do not confuse Robin Keir’s K9 with the K-9 Mail app for the Android operating system.

Gmail + K9 make a formidable anti-spam team.

Also read this thread here:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//142525-Junk-e-mail-can-I-retaliate?p=829352&viewfull=1#post829352

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Hi All,

I just joined this forum, found it to be interesting and informative. I hope I’m posting in the right thread. Mods, please move if incorrect.
Here’s my situation – I need to scan around 2 million documents into PDF and index based on the bar code printed on them. I would be using Kodak Scanners and the only software I have tried is Kodak Capture Pro Trial which is insanely expensive to buy. Any other alternatives someone could recommend? Appreciate the help.

Er … I’m confused.

Assuming you work alone and
it takes 30 seconds per document to scan (which is optimistic I think),
you work 8 hours per day,
you work 5 days per week,
you work 40 weeks per year.

Then to scan 2,000,000 documents you’ll need 10.41 YEARS.

32553-IDBoF_sig

… I have empathy for the rest of you with your DSL, cable, and other service providers. As for me – I’ll take glass any day!!!

My computer’s network card’s top speed is 100 mbps (megabits or million bits per second).
I have a coax cable (copper to home) connection with my ISP Telenet.be. It offers me telephone (POST telephone set), analogue TV channels, interactive digital TV channels, on-demand TV programs, internet access (Telenet promises 120 mbps down and 5 mbps up) with uncapped down/uploads.

Just today I downloaded a 508 MB file from a GigaNews server in 46 seconds, or 88 mbps, which is typical. I usually get GigaNews download speeds between 85 and 90 mbps. :bananas:

For this service subscription Telenet.be charges me € 73,- per month (+/- $ 95).

Not all that bad, eh?

Need Web hosting with good spam filtering

To compare prices and specs, checking out Priorweb‘s offerings may help (you may have to switch to their English page).

I’ve found it to be a very reliable company (with an efficient spam filter), but I have no idea how its pricing compares with others.
(their helpdesk is NOT outsourced to India, but run by Flemings who, as most Flemings do, understand and speak English very well)

I’m not satisfied with the scanning software that came with Canon Scanner LiDE 210; is there any better software available that won’t break the bank? Thanks.

There is no scanning software.

There’s just:
1. scanner hardware drivers
2. a TWAIN interface

Then there are applications – graphics software, OCR tools, word processors, graphics to pdf converters, etc. – that can communicate with the TWAIN interface and thus use the scanner.

The quality of scanning jobs depends on the instructions you gave to the TWAIN interface. For best results you need to address the TWAIN interface in “advanced mode” to fine-tune the commands sent to the scanner.

You need to know the correct TWAIN settings to reach the optimal result you’re aiming for. And there is the rub. Every different kind of scan job requires different settings.

Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, publishes the best and most exhaustive free tutorial I’ve ever seen.

There is a ‘tutorial_English.pdf’ downloadable, but the online version is better because of the interactive nature of the reality checks.

I use Alarm:

http://bluefive.pair.com/alarm.htm

So … computer permanently ON while governments and power suppliers keep nagging consumers to save power?

…
Never, ever, ever, ever, NO NEVER put your real name out there, ANYWHERE! Not on email, NOT on any forum, not anywhere that becomes public information. Once they know your name and ISP, they can trace you down to ‘where you live’. That gets extremely dangerous.
…

Good advice, but unfortunately it’s not always possible.

My professional union provides a free mailbox for all its members. So most of my colleagues and myself have an address with a syntax like firstname.name @ our_union.eu and they all, without exception, have at least one public phone number. A spammer only has to check the yellow pages of the online telephone directory to get valid addresses for 70 % of all of my Flemish colleagues.

We’re all highly trained to apply vanguard technology in our field, and sure we can use our professional software. But concerning other software, hardware, internet and its (lack of) security, many are barely better than total dummies and their education proceeds snail-paced. Doubtlessly several have been or still are infected by address-reaping trojans, thus putting us in spam lists. :(:

Especially the last six months I’ve often received spam allegedly sent by myself at myfirstname.myname @ our_union.eu. I’ve been thinking of sending that spam to SpamCop, but I’m afraid they might put *me* in their blacklist. :huh:

Still, an address with your name in it isn’t bad per se. But it’s imperative to use a totally different address for your bona fide correspondents. Meanwhile use the mailbox at your.name.address as a honeypot to collect-and-forget spam. Only don’t let the honeypot exceed its quota, otherwise innocent people would get bounces because spammers spoof their sender-address anyway. And don’t lean out the window …

… Fred, did you see this one?

Who? Flintstone?