December - 2003 *** Merry Christmas

Curious about the next Windows release?

First, don't stand inline for it yet.  This may be released in 2005 but some industry experts are saying 2008. Second, don't expect to upgrade your current computer as it probably will not be powerful enough for the new OS.  Still curious about the new operating system, start here.

Attachments

A reminder:  Unless you are expecting an email attachment from a specific person, be very careful.  If you are going to receive an infected attachment, it will likely be from someone you know!  

Viruses are launched on a victim's computer by opening an attachment.  The virus then reads the victim's address book, replicate and send the same or a modified version of the infected message to all addresses found therein.  Because the recipients see a familiar name they assume the sender intended to send the message.  The new victim then opens the attachment and the process begins again.

In the past, viruses relied on the "email engine" found in your email application.  You could actually see the messages being sent by watching the outbox.  Hence antivirus applications "inspect" out going messages for viruses.  But too-little, too-late...

Newer viruses have their own email engine and if they begin sending out infected messages, you would be unaware of it.

Fooling viruses

The trick of adding a contact in your address book with a name like "!0000" or "AAAA" may work on older viruses but not likely on the newer ones! More information here.

Symantec sends out a monthly newsletter recapping that month's virus activity and threats.  If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, click here.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft has release many Office security patches available by clicking here, then clicking Check for Updates.  Read all of the information and warnings on each patch before applying them!

Outlook 98 and 2000 users be aware:  One of these updates will prohibit you from receiving any email attachment - ever!  You should consider skipping this patch. 

Opening files

First a little about the files on your computer.  If you were to view all of the files on your computer you would find thousands.  These can be broken down to three major categories:

• System files.  Those that start the computer, the operating system and interface with the hardware.
• Program files.  Applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, Internet browser, Email, etc.
  • Application support files.  Supplemental files that are required by the programs (and there are a lot of them!)
• Data files.  Files that contain your data, e.g., accounting, word processing files, etc.

Most files have a three character extension, e.g., filename.ext  Windows uses these extensions to associate specific files with a certain application; e.g. the DOC extension tells Windows a file with that extension is a Word document.  Since Windows knows this association, double clicking a DOC file will launch Word which in-turn opens that data file.

But this works (properly) only from the Windows Explorer, My Documents or My Computer.

So for example, if you have Word open and from within Word go to open a file and double click a file not associated with Word such as a spreadsheet file, the file may not open at all but if it does would be gibberish.  

You would be allowed to open any file from within Word if, Word's File Open dialog box is set to view "all files".

To avoid the problem of seeing files that Word should not attempt to open, change the file type to show only Word documents:

Just to clarify; newer applications are (somewhat) extension aware so for example, if you have Word 2000 open and from Word's File menu, select Open then choose an Excel spreadsheet, Word will try to interpret and import the worksheet into a Word document.  But it would not open the spreadsheet in Excel as one would hope.

We have a little more information about files and extensions in our data backup series; click here. 
Also, here are two resources for the identification of (almost all) file extensions:  Whatis and Filext.

Word fields Do you use Word's "Insert Date" feature?  If so, you can have this field automatically update.   What this means is whenever you open that document, the date will update to show the current date and not the date you created the document. If you want the date to remain static, i.e., the date created, uncheck the Update Automatically option (or manually type your date.)
. Disk consumption Curious about what folders are consuming how much disk space on your computer?  Download and run treesize. Wonder about file sizes?  Click here	.

Date Codes

Ever wonder about some food packaging date codes?  They may be using "Julian dates"  where as the first number indicates the year, the second, third, and fourth digits indicate the day the product will expire. For example, a code reading “4182” indicates an expiration date of July 1, 2004 (the 182nd day of 2004).  Want to convert a date to Julian?  Click here