NewsLine 2000: Tips, Tricks and Information

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In this issue:
• Welcome Back
• Cleaning up cut and pastes from the web
• Printing two pages on one sheet
• Quick access to Word Page Setup
• Removing the Favourites Menu
• When you REALLY need to re-boot fast
• Don't Get Caught!
• Sharpening Images
• Cable Speed Comparisons
• Slammer Speed
• Another Touch Tone Answer Menu

WELCOME BACK

 

Sorry we've been off the air for a while, various work and personal commitments has meant that I haven't been able to get the newsletter together for some time.

But, we're back again, with the latest news on Unix and Windows software, tools, tips and techniques.

Our subscription base is now over 17,000 readers, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all, and if there are any advertisers out there who would like to include a short message in our newsletter, then please contact us. (Don't worry, we'll never let the adverts get out of hand).



PRODUCT UPDATES:

The past few months has seen product updates in a number of areas from Centreline 2000

Our TUDOR, Uniplex to Word conversion tool has had some minor updates, support contract users should get in touch.

CAIRO, our new Committee Management system is entering phase 2 - with extended support for parish councils, external bodies and more.

We are also resellers for the GFI range, with new updates for Mail Security, Mail Essentials and FaxMaker available.

We have also been beta testing the latest version of PAINT SHOP PRO, some really nice tools included in this latest release - we'll have a full review of that in a future edition.

See http://www.c2000.com/ for more information  

CLEANING UP CUT AND PASTES FROM THE WEB

 

Here's a neat little trick, often when you cut and paste stuff from web pages into Word you end up with all sorts of leading spaces at the beginning of the lines. An easy way to zap this is click on Centre Justify, then Left Justify - voila - no more leading spaces.

See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information  

PRINTING TWO PAGES ON ONE SHEET

 

This is a nify feature introduced in Word 2000 but not commonly known about. The Print dialog has a "Zoom to Print" option down in the bottom right, where you can select upto 16 pages to be printed per single sheet.

This is great for condensing big prints, or even outputting thumbnail summaries of documents.

See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information  

QUICK ACCESS TO WORD PAGE SETUP

 

Here’s something I found the other day, you can double click on the the vertical ruler in Word to access the Page Setup.

I've always seen this shortcut given just for the horizontal ruler, trouble is I always seem to end up adding tabs by mistake, so this is quite neat.

See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information  

REMOVING THE FAVOURITES MENU

 

Outlook has a Favourites menu item which shows your Favourites list from Internet Explorer. Now, to me that's completely useless here - I've never used it - but more to the point, it can take an age to pull out the Favourites list, really slowing up the menus as you browse along them.

So, if you want to get rid of it: right click on a black part of the menu bar, select "Customise". Left click on Favourites and drag it off the menu bar until the cursor turns to an "X", then just drop it. It's gone.

See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information  

WHEN YOU REALLY NEED TO RE-BOOT FAST

 

Especially when your messing around with drivers and the like there are times when you really want a very quick restart. Well, use the three-fingered salute: CTRL-ALT-DEL, then hold down the CTRL key when you press Shut Down. You'll get a warning dialog "If you continue your machine will reboot and any unsaved data will be lost. Use this only as a last resort." Click OK and next thing you know your system is-rebooting!

Not something I'd recommend using on a regular basis, but useful for some tricky situations.

See http://www.c2000.com/mswindow for more information  

DON'T GET CAUGHT!

 

Ever been caught writing your CV, playing Lottery Finder on the spreadsheet, drawing insulting pictures of the boss, examining Health and Efficiency Weekly? Well, Uniplex has a "hide screen" option.

Enter ESCAPE-O-W to hide your screen
Hit to restore it

See http://www.c2000.com/uniplex for more information  

SHARPENING IMAGES

 

The best way of sharpening an image is to use the "Unsharp Mask" option. It takes its name from an old photographic process, and despite the "umsharp" bit in it's name it does actually do sharpening.

Sometimes, sharpening can introduce artifacts into the image, here's a couple of tricks to get sharper images without the artifacts.

Trick 1:

Split the image to HSL (in PaintShop) or LAB mode (in Photoshop) then sharpen the Lightness layer and re-combine the layers.

Trick 2:

Use the unsharp mask with half of the required setting, but then use it twice. So instead of unsharp once at 120%, unsharp twice at 60%

See http://www.justkiss.com/psp for more information  

CABLE SPEED COMPARISONS

 

If like me you've started to get a little lost in all the various network, cabling and WiFi options you might be interested in this short comparison of the various cable types.


Cable Type Speed

USB 1: 1.5 Mb/s - 12 Mbs
USB 2: 480 Mb/s

Firewire 1: 100-400 Mb/s
Firewire 2: 400-1200 Mb/s

Ethernet
10BaseT: 10 Mbs
100BaseT: 100 Mbs
Gigabit: 1000 Mbs

Wifi

802.11 2 Mbs
802.11a 54 Mbs "upto" First standard
802.11b 5.5 & 11 Mbs "upto" Most common
802.11g 54 Mbs "upto" Not yet standardised
Bluetooth 1 Mbs "upto"

Modem .052 Mbs
ISDN .064 Mbs
ADSL .5 - 2 Mbs download, 0.256 Mbs upload
T1 1.5 Mbs
T3 = 28 T1 lines!


Just for interest, here are assorted SCSI and IDE speeds too:

SCSI-1 5 Mbs
SCSI-2 10 Mbs
SCSI-3/Ultra 20 Mbs
Ultra2 40 Mbs
Fast Wide 20 Mbs
Ultra Wide 40 Mbs
Ultra2 Wide 80 Mbs
Ultra 160 160 Mbs

ATA/EIDE 133 Mbs
Serial ATA 150 Mbs


Now I know there are all sorts of variables in these speeds, but these do give you a baseline comparison.

See http://www.c2000.com/papers for more information  

SLAMMER SPEED How fast can a virus spread?

 

Slammer was a SQL worm (aka Sapphire/SQL Slammer) which basically attacked Microsoft SQL and Desktop SQL engines causing them to send zillions of packets on your internet connection.

By pure fluke we got hit, we were in the process of rebuilding a server, just loaded SQL Server, but not the Service Packs when suddenly the machine ground to a halt. Of course we assumed that it was something with our load, took as an hour or two to work out that something else was going on. . .

Over the course of a weekend Slammer almost brought the Internet to it's knees just because of the shear volume of traffic it was generating. Well Nicholas Weaver and his team at UC Berkeley worked out just how quickly it was proliferating:

After 10 minutes it had spread worldwide.

In its early stages it was doubling in size every 8.5 seconds

At its peak, only 3 minutes after it was released, Slammer was scanning the net at over 55 million IP addresses per second!


We've had some close shaves in the past, but sooner or later someone is going to release a really nasty destructive virus that proliferates at the same rate and a lot of people are going to be really badly hit. And protection nowadays means: firewall, mail filtering, web filtering, anti-virus controls and a lot more.

I just really wish Microsoft would really get on the case about security though.

See http://www.c2000.com/papers for more information  

ANOTHER TOUCH TONE ANSWER MENU

 

This is the answering machine message the Pacific Palisades High School (California) [Actually, I don't believe that for a minute - Ed] Staff voted to record on their school telephone answering system.

This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework. The school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes. This was voted unanimously by the office staff as the actual answering machine message for the school:

"Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting the right staff member, please listen to all your options before making a selection:


To lie about why your child is absent, press 1

To make excuses for why your child did not do his work, press 2

To complain about what we do, press 3

To swear at staff members, press 4

To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you, press 5

If you want us to raise your child, press 6

If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone, press 7

To request another teacher for the third time this year, press 8

To complain about bus transportation, press 9

To complain about school lunches, press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework, and that it's not the teachers' fault for your children's lack of effort . . . hang up and have a nice day!"

See http://www.c2000.com/fun for more information

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