Is it already time to change the oil in my car? I guess that also means it's time for a friendly reminder not to use your e-mail account to forward messages that are Internet hoaxes, chain letters, or urban legends. Hoaxbusters estimates that, "if everyone on the Internet were to receive one hoax message and spend one minute reading and discarding it, the cost would be something like: 50,000,000 people * 1/60 hour * $50/hour = $41.7 million."

If you want to be able to detect a chain letter, urban legend or virus hoax, read Hoaxbusters How to Recognize a Hoax. Among other things, Hoaxbusters says:

"Hoax messages try to get you to pass them on to everyone you know using several different methods of social engineering. Most of the hoax messages play on your need to help other people. Who wouldn't want to warn their friends about some terrible virus that is destroying people's systems? Or, how could you not want to help this poor little girl who is about to die from cancer? It is hard to say no to these messages when you first see them, though after a few thousand have passed through your mail box you (hopefully) delete them without even looking."

Here's a real-life example of an Internet hoax that, beside clogging e-mail inboxes and wasting bandwidth, has turned into a nightmare for both the sender and her boss.

P.S. The only virus warnings you need to pay attention to are ones from WALS staff.

Annoyed by those "pop-under" ads for wireless video cameras and spycams? I've found them popping up (I mean under) at AltaVista, About.com and all over the Web!

First there were the banner ads. Then came "pop-up" ads that blocked your view, which many people closed before they even read them. Then came Shoshkeles, considered to be a "new benchmark for annoyance in advertising" by a poster to Plastic.com. And now some advertisers have decided to instead make their ads load "under" a web page so they appear when you close or minimize your web browser window.

Apparently so many people are ticked off by these ads that one advertiser has now created a web page just for people who want to opt-out of seeing its ads. Unfortunately, the opt-out isn't permanent, but ZDNet's "How to Get Rid of X10 Ads" explains that, " If you examine the URL of the link used to banish the ads, it looks like this: www.x10.com/home/optout.cgi?DAY=30&PAGE=http://www.x10.com/x10ads1.htm. You should be able to increase the period of banishment by upping that DAY=30 count to maximize its exile from your screen."

Modern Humorist has a delicious parody (and I do mean delicious) of this latest advertising craze.

If you're using Windows NT and find that one of your programs has frozen up so badly that it's slowing down your PC, or you're unable to continue or to close it (neither typing nor mouse clicking has any affect on the program), there is a way to cancel it without rebooting. The next time this happens, follow the steps below and you may be able to find the program causing the problem and close it. (Note: this would require first disabling security software on public workstations.)

1. Right-click on any open space on the Windows Taskbar.
   
   
2. This should open a small menu; click on Task Manager.
   
   
   
3. Click the Applications tab.
   
   
4. You should see all the programs you're running listed in the Task list. If something shows a status of "Not Responding", click on the misbehaving application once to select it.
   

5. Now click the End Task button and the misbehaving program should close. Note: unfortunately, any data you didn't save before the program started malfunctioning will be lost.
   
   
6. Lastly, close the Windows NT Task Manager window.
   
   
7. Try re-starting the software to see if the temporary problem has resolved itself.

A current buzzword in the library biz is the term "invisible web". This term refers to web pages and information that won't show up when you use a search engine. According to the Library Journal NetConnect article "Getting To Know the Invisible Web" a huge chunk of the Web can't be found using search engines.

Some of the pages that make up the invisible web ...

• intentionally rebuff attempts to be indexed by search engine spiders, or
• are graphic (like maps), or
• are in databases that are fee-based, or
• are require registration or login (like the New York Times), or
• are constantly changing.

So what can you do? Marylaine Block says it well in the NetConnect article:

"I want librarians to get in the habit of thinking, 'If I can't find my answer with a search engine, maybe it's on the web but hidden inside a database,'" says Block. "Sometimes I know what agency or organization will have gathered the data I need to search through, and I'll go directly to that agency, like the Corps of Engineers or the National Weather Service."

Read the Library Journal NetConnect article "Getting To Know the Invisible Web" and C. Brian Smith's article in Ex Libris "Disclosing the Invisible Web" to learn how you can find quality resources that are overlooked by search engines.

Good news for you fans of "Rupert Giles" (the librarian on the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") -- a spin-off series tentatively called "The Watcher" is in the works.

Unfamiliar with Rupert? Read GraceAnne A. DeCandido's Rupert Giles and Search Tools for Wisdom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "I am not alone in the belief that the appearance of school librarian Rupert Giles on television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer has done more for the image of the profession than anything in the past fifty years, with the possible exception of Katherine Hepburn in Desk Set."

"Summer reading" is a defensive attitude. Hey, I'm on vacation. I don't gotta beat my way through the sentences of Henry James with a machete and a headlamp. I am not required to endure metafiction so I can understand the future of the novel . . . Nothing translated from the Polish! I'm getting a tan here!

Both statistics and common sense indicate that reading patterns do not change that much, season by season. What you read in December is more or less what you read in July. But in winter, we can keep our book stack safely private, next to the bed. In summer, we have to lug it onto airplanes or have it next to us on the beach. We need a way of saying, "I am not really this kind of person," when in fact we are that kind of person.

     -- Jon Carroll. "The Books of Summer." San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2001

is Artichoke Pasta Salad

This issue of The Ides was written on July 16, 2001
Copyright 2001, Winnefox Library System

The Ides is written by Joy Schwarz.
Please direct any questions, comments or recipes to schwarz@winnefox.org

URL: http://www.winnefox.org/ides/idesjul01.html