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Welcome to this week's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter. Today is Sunday, November 6, 2005
Tuesday is Election Day. Don't forget to vote!
In this Issue: Special Feature: Sp am Filtering - Killing The Patient To Cure The Disease? Tips & Tricks: Quickly Minimize All Open Windows This Week's Topic: My Recent Documents Question: Change Your Home Page Websites of Interest: Veteran’s Day; The History of Snoopy; Making the Modern World
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Special Feature: Sp am Filtering - Killing The Patient To Cure The Disease?
The following is from worldstart.com. Used with permission.
OK, everyone hates junk e-mail and wants to do something about it. Since we're in the newsletter publishing business, we deal with this on a daily basis and are noticing a disturbing trend.
Basically, anti-sp am efforts are choking the life out of e-mail.
Here's what's happening. Sp am is a continual nuisance and ISPs are pressured to keep it out of your inbox. In addition, a lot of companies think that "solving" the s pa m problem is the financial opportunity of a lifetime. Combine these two facts, and you have everyone trying to install mediocre s pa m filters as fast as they can be developed. Those filters are why those little extra spaces are inserted in the "s word" throughout this article. Some of these filters will block email just for mentioning the problem!
The problem is that there's no real good way to keep the junk out and the good stuff in. One person's s pa m is another's digital gem, and the filters are not even close to getting it right.
Look at it this way. Imagine if the post office had a filter set to only deliver the "good" stuff and destroy any junk mail. Should they throw out everything but bills and handwritten letters? What about magazines? Coupons? Requested information from a certain company? What if they mistake your tax return for a piece of junk mail?
That's a ludicrous idea, isn't it? There's no way anyone could sort your mail for you. They simply would not know what you wanted to keep and what you wanted to pitch. It just wouldn't work, and the same is true with all these s pa m filters.
It seems that ISPs are so obsessed about nothing unwanted landing in our inboxes that they don't care if any of the stuff we want gets there either. Unfortunately, a recent poll discovered that 88% of end users (that's us) don't care if legitimate e-mail gets blocked, as long as they don't get as much s pa m! I don't know about you, but I'm in that 12% that wants to get all of my e-mail.
To those who agree with the 88% who don't care if they lose legitimate e-mail, think about this. What if you placed an order with a company that was getting blocked by your ISP? What if you had a problem with your order and sent them an e-mail to get it straightened out? They get your e-mail and - being a good company - reply immediately. However, since they are blocked by your ISP (and probably don't know it) their reply to you never gets to your inbox.
You get all upset because an internet company you ordered something from never replied to your complaint. They did, but your ISP prevented you from receiving the reply. See the problem?
It's out of control, and I see three possible outcomes:
1. They come up with a s pa m filter that works. (Not likely, remember the post office analogy?)
2. E-mail filtering gets completely out of control and e-mail is no longer a reliable means of communication (the road we're currently on).
3. End users (that's us) complain to our ISPs that we are not getting our e-mail correctly. In my opinion, we should NEVER EVER have even a single piece of e-mail filtered that we wanted in our inbox, period. That's the standard we should set, and the way I think it will be.
What good is e-mail going to be if you can no longer rely on it?
So, before you jump onto a s pa m filtering system or complain to your ISP, be sure to keep this little sermon in mind. You may get more e s pa m without the filter, but at least you'll also get all your regular e-mail.
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Tips & Tricks: Quickly Minimize All Open Windows
If your desktop is crowded with open windows, you can minimize them all at once. Hold down the Windows key (that is the one with the Windows logo on it, usually found on the lower, left side of the keyboard) and press the d key. All the open windows will minimize.
To maximize or restore a window, click on its taskbar button. To maximize or restore all windows, again hold down the Windows key and press the d key.
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Today's Topic: My Recent Documents
Windows keeps track of the last 15 documents you have created or opened. Windows can display a list of those documents in the Start menu. This can be a very useful feature if you want to quickly open a document you used earlier in the day or within the last few days.
In Windows XP, you must enable this feature. Follow these steps to display My Recent Documents:
Right click the Start button and then click Properties from the resulting menu.
On the Start Menu tab, make sure that Start Menu is selected, and then click the Customize button.
Click the Advanced tab. In the Recent Documents section, click the List My Most Recently Opened Documents check box.
Click the OK button twice to close all open windows.
This will display My Recent Documents on the Start menu. Point to it; you will see a menu display to the side listing the last 15 documents you worked with. To open a document, point to it and click once. It will open in the program used to create it.
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Question: Change Your Home Page
How do I get Internet Explorer to open to a web site that I want?
Answer: The website that Internet Explorer opens to is called your home page.
To change your home page to the website you want, go to that website. Click Tools on the menu and then Internet Options. In the Internet Options window that you now see, make sure the General tab is selected. In the Home Page section, click the Use Current button. Click OK and you are done.
The page you are looking at will be your new home page. If you want to change it in the future, just follow the steps above.
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Websites of Interest:
Veteran’s Day Friday is Veteran’s Day. Learn the history of this day and this event at this website: http://www.patriotism.org/veterans_day/
Get the history of Veteran’s day, statistics and information on America’s wars from the American Revolution to the Iraq war. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/veteransday1.html
The History of Snoopy Since it began in the 1950s, Peanuts has been one of America’s favorite comic strips. Meet the gang, see a timeline, read a nice tribute to its creator, Charles Schulz, send a Peanuts e-card, and much more. http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/history/index.html
Making the Modern World At this website, you can read about inventions since the eighteenth century. Very interesting is the Everyday life section, where you will see familiar inventions that have changed our lives. http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/ |
