newsletter

Infopackets Reader Bill S. writes: " Dear Dennis, [Why does it cost] $4,500 a month to maintain your website? That seems very high. I realize I run a much smaller site than yours [150 users / published once a month], but I paid $192 to register my ... [website via registrar] and have my site hosted by GoDaddy for four years. That works out to four dollars per month. I also subscribe to Windows Secrets Newsletter and frankly get much more information from that newsletter and associated site than from yours. It's contributions only by the year and I send them $25. " My response: Respectfully, I ... (view more)

It's been nearly one week since I last sent out the newsletter. Apparently I didn't make myself clear when I said that the web site reconstruction effort wasn't yet completed and that it was going to take some time, because a handful of folks ... emailed me over the weekend threatening to unsubscribe from the newsletter if I didn't hurry up and put things back in order. Talk about taking things for granted! I would agree with these sentiments if (and only if) I had a team of developers working around the clock and I paid them the going rate of $65.00 an hour to get the project completed ... but ... (view more)

It's been one heck of an enduring battle, but after waging war with the new web server gremlins -- and after standing vigilantly for the last 5 days in hopes that the hosting company could resolve a number of outstanding issues -- I finally decided ... that "enough was enough" and had the system re-imaged [formatted] all over again. Of course, this meant that I had to reinstate all the dedicated web server software and web pages by remote command-line. Not fun. It was a royal pain in the neck, but it appears that the second walk-thru has cleared the path and things *seem* to be much ... (view more)

I have been *extremely* busy as of late and am having a hard time keeping up with my regular schedule (and subsequently, the regular newsletter schedule). Just before the holiday break, I mentioned that the newsletter layout would be changing. Well ... -- no surprise -- it looks like I jumped the gun again. As I was adding the finishing touches to the new article format, I decided that it would be extremely beneficial to include links to related articles [previously posted in our newsletter], immediately following the feature article. So, for an example: if I wrote a new article on XP Service ... (view more)

Last week, I wrote about a free anti-spam solution called 0Spam.com. Recall -- " I recently stumbled across a web site that offers a free, seamless anti-spam solution: all without the need to install special, third-party software or to configure ... complex mail filter rules ... The free 0Spam.com service can be used for 1 email account and is compatible with any computer (Linux, Mac, or Windows) ... works with POP3 email, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail accounts ... 0Spam operates silently and works by standing in-between your email server(s) and the Internet, and scans your incoming email for ... (view more)

I can't imaging what my life would be like if I didn't know how to program in PERL. Side note: PERL stands for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language, and is a robust programming language frequently used for creating programs that run on web ... servers. (Source: wmo.ch ) Perl's elaborate support for regular expression matching and substitution has made it the language of choice for tasks involving string manipulation. The language's highly flexible syntax and concise regular expression operators, make densely written PERL code indecipherable to the uninitiated. The syntax is, however, ... (view more)

I'm stoked. For the last 3 months, I've been nibbling away at a special web script (project) that reformats all the previous Infopackets newsletters into a simple, clean layout. Why all the excitement? There are a lot of great things to come now ... that this daunting task is nearing completion. With article layout standardized, I can now move forward with: a) splitting articles into separate pages: it is important to split the articles so that potential web visitors can locate our web site through search engines (such as Google). As it stands now, 95% of all traffic to our web site is from our ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Denise D. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows XP and currently subscribe to the Road Runner high-speed Internet service (offered by Time Warner). I have tried to install Windows XP Service Pack 2, but after installing it, I ... could no longer access the Internet. I kept receiving a message 'cannot find server' on all sites through Internet Explorer. Subsequently, I had to uninstall the Service Pack in order to regain access to the web. What do I need to do in order to install the service pack and have access to the Internet? " My response: This has been a ... (view more)