Spy software now includes a feature to activate a victims web cam and take pictures.         http://www.winwhatwhere.com/w3i4/index.htm

     Major privacy hole in Windows/MSN Messenger

A nifty feature in MSN and Windows Messenger which apparently was intended to identify IE users (without their knowledge or consent) on Microsoft Web sites can easily be abused by any Webmaster with a bit of Javascript or VBscript, a clever empiricist has discovered.

           http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23936.html

If you are running MSN messenger (and have JavaScript enabled) you should see your name displayed on this page, http://raburton.members.easyspace.com/msn/

along with a list of all your contacts. This information could be placed in a cookie. The next time you request an item from the server (page, image, etc.), this information would be sent back to the server, allowing Microsoft to know who you are and who your friends are. By default, everyone has access to your display name and those of your contacts, but only Microsoft can get your email address this way. However, third parties could get access to the e-mail addresses, by simply adding a single entry to your registry.

"Windows 98, ME, NT and 2000 operating systems will NOT recognize the full capacity of hard drives larger than 137 GB.  To solve this problem you need the ATA/133 PCI Adapter Card." It goes on to say: "Certain tools built into Windows 98, such as Scandisk and Defrag will NOT function properly with these large drives. Partitioning the drive into two equal parts will allow these utilities to function properly."

Rumors are going around that Safedisk and Plextor cut a deal to make the drives fail to copy Safedisk2 protected cds. Here is some info:

               http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php3?ID=1082

List of Safedisk 2 compatible writers due the new CloneCD function "Amplify Weak Sectors” There are some Plextor models on this list.

              http://www.driverforum.com/cdrom3/3643.html

    Bryan informs us:

I came across a freeware MP3 encoder, LAME.  One website with all

information about it can be found at either www.lame.org or www.r3mix.net. The latter link has many tech details about the encoder, which they say the LAME encoder produces the best possible quality MP3's.  I'm no audiophile, but it does please me to know that I've made the best archive quality MP3's from my collection of Metallica CD's. And they sound good too.

He also mentions:  Concerning playing DivX/avi movies with Windows Media Player ... it's not the program that mysteriously makes Media Player work, it's that the DivX codec gets installed with it.  A better solution would be to download and install the DivX codec from

             http://download.divx.com/divx/DivX412Codec.exe

OfficeMax has the Cendyne 16x10x40 CDRW Drive for $45 after discount and rebate. Lowest price listed at Pricegrabber is $92. See http://www.slickdeals.net/#p2142 for the details.

These note are from Terry Blount's Crack Talk Newsletter dated  2-7-2.
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