Preston Gralla
1 some annoyances are dangerous
For most of us, a huge value of our computers is being able to hook to the Internet. This once science fictional dream has now become an everyday reality. Alas, as this book mentions, such a reality also includes many annoying problems.
One way to read this book is to divide those annoyances into two groups. The first group is the little things, like tweaking the various Microsoft Office products. The second group of annoyances can be more troublesome. Like viruses/worms and spam. Malware.
Consider spam. The universal scourge. The book has a good, quick discussion of the main antispam techniques, like Bayesians or hashing. Plus advice that is a little cynical, but realistic. Like how the Can Spam act has largely proved useless. Or how you should not use naughty words in your outgoing email, to minimise chances of it being tagged as spam by your recipient's email provider.
Hotspots are also discussed heavily, due to their popularity and often insecure mode of operation. There is a great danger of someone running a packet sniffer. So your key communications should use https, if you are engaged in sensitive matters, like using your credit card. But the book does not go into how a phisher could launch a deadlier man in the middle attack. Where she replaces the hot spot device with her own, or subverts the device's software. Then, she runs a pocket universe, where she might have copied the websites of various banks, and she directs http queries to those banks to her fake websites [pharms]. This method totally negates https. Granted, it is technically quite hard to do and so is still somewhat uncommon. But the book should warn of it, if you want to stay ahead of the curve.
2 Another outstanding Annoyances book...
I recently had the chance to read and review the book Internet Annoyances by Preston Gralla (O'Reilly). All I can say is that I'm really getting hooked on this Annoyances series. Internet Annoyances is no exception...
Chapter List:
Chapter 1 - Email and Spam Annoyances: General Email Annoyances; Spam; Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express; Gmail; Eudora 6
Chapter 2 - Making The Connection Annoyances: General Connection Annoyances; Broadband: Cable and DSL Connections; Routers and Home Networks
Chapter 3 - Wireless Annoyances: Home Wireless Networks and Routers; Cell Phones and the Net; WiFi Security; HotSpots
Chapter 4 - Web Hosting, Design, and Blog Annoyances: Domain and Hosting Hassles; Design and Maintenance Help; Blogging
Chapter 5 - Browser Annoyances: Pop-Ups, Ads, and Flash; Favorites and Bookmarks; Working the Interface; Speedups and Shortcuts; Cookies
Chapter 6 - AOL Annoyances: General AOL Annoyances; Email
Chapter 7 - IM Annoyances: General Instant Messaging Annoyances; AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Windows Messenger; Yahoo! Messenger; ICQ
Chapter 8 - Searching Annoyances: General Search Annoyances; Government and the Law; Google; Amazon; eBay; Yahoo!
Chapter 9 - Security Annoyances: General Security Annoyances; Spyware; Trojans, Worms, and Viruses; Firewalls
Chapter 10 - Shopping and Auction Annoyances: General Shopping Annoyances; eBay Annoyances; Amazon Annoyances
Index
As you can see, this book covers quite a bit of ground. Each chapter/subsection consists of a number of annoyances in the form of "questions" from readers or contributors. Imagine a weekly newspaper Q&A column and you get the idea. Gralla then answers the question in a straight-forward, understandable way that often includes a liberal dose of humor. What's even better is that he often includes links to websites that offer some unique service or twist on the subject (like using Teoma as a search engine for tech subjects) or a lead to a piece of software that will dramatically change the way you do something (like the Asterisk Key utility to show you the passwords behind the asterisks in a password field). And sometimes its just letting you know that Amazon.com *does* have a 1-800 number for customer service where you can speak to a real person (1-800-201-7575).
You won't necessarily learn something from every tip included in the book. You may even skip entire chapters (don't ask me questions about the AOL chapter, OK?). But that's OK and to be expected. Odds are that you'll pick up at least 10 - 20 tips or tricks that will make the whole book worth every penny you spend on it. Just the fact I don't have to continue to see IE launched as a quarter-size window any more was worth the price of admission for me!
Great stuff here, and a recommended read...
3 Outstanding selection of helpful hints
This is an outstanding selection of hints and tips for everything from fighting spam, to blocking popups, blogging, searching, buying, and a host of other activities on the Internet. The book has around 300 annoyances, each with an explanation of the problem and a solution. The annoyances, and the explanations, are all in play english for laymen.
Some of these hints are given several pages to play out. One particularly good one discusses the selection of a web hosting service. There is even a table with prices, storage sizes, bandwidth amounts, and more. It's great information presented in an easy to use form. Other hints, like the explanation of why you can't return a TV that is greater than 27 inches, seem out of place. But those are few and far between.
There are a number of books out there for Internet users looking for helpful hints. This is the best one I have seen so far. The writing is engaging, the content is great.
