Date: July 18th, 2008 7:17:01 a.m.

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)
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CFS Weekly Newsletter #482
[ISSN 1441-6840]

Web Site: http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com
E-mail 1: editor@completelyFREEsoftware.com
E-mail 2: cfs@people.net.au
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Welcome to the 'Completely FREE Software' Weekly Newsletter.

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HOWDY

Great to be back with you for another week of fabulously fresh freeware.

We will be taking a short, well-earned vacation for two weeks starting August 4, so there won't be any newsletters on August 8th and 15th. We will be back in the office again, ready to work, on Monday, August 18. During those two weeks we will still have a skeleton crew working to answer emergency e-mails and ensure that everything runs smoothly.

We have a great line-up of programs for you this week -- 3 games, a Vista enhancement, a program that creates movie DVDs from a huge number of video file formats, a hard disk partition manager, an FTP client, and lots more.

We also have our regular columns -- Dr T's excellent Computer Tip of the Week, and our ever popular Smile of the Week. The Tip this week is a little larger than normal but I think you'll enjoy it.

To get access to the best downloads, why not take a minute and become a member of arguably the best freeware-only site in the world. More details from our members' page:

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What are you waiting for -- become a CFS "lifer" now, or try out the site with a 1-month, 1-year or 2-year membership. We are still half the price of most other members-only sites and I think we offer the best value for your hard earned dollar.

One small point. If you sign up for a Lifetime membership through 2CheckOut.com you might be surprised to see that, according to them, a "lifetime" is only 12 years. That is because the number 12 is the highest number option they have -- 12 weeks, 12 months, 12 years. Don't worry, at the end of 12 years you will NOT be cut off if you are a CFS 'lifer' -- your membership will continue indefinitely...

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'Till next week...

Keep smilin'

Regards

Graham Pockett
Editor
Completely FREE Software


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COMPLETELY FREE SOFTWARE

Marathon -- Win9x/ME/XP/Vista (5 doves)
Marathon is a retro 3D corridor, first person shooter, released for the Macintosh in 1994. It features 6 chapters over 27 levels, 7 weapons (fist, pistol, assault rifle, fusion gun, rocket launcher, flamethrower & an unidentified alien weapon), 7 levels of difficulty (from "Kindergarten" to "Total Carnage"), multiplayer deathmatch mode, challenging obstacles & puzzles, strong characterization, excellent gameplay with coherent storyline, good 3D graphics, and more. This is an awesome corridor shooter that goes to the next step beyond Doom by being more than just a "blast 'em" type shooter. In Marathon you have some tough obstacles to overcome, some tough puzzles to solve, and you will need some luck to work your way right through to the end. Fortunately there is a "save game" function which means that you can keep saving your game so you have a reference point to return to when you crash and burn. There is a huge variety in the environment in which you will be fighting but, fo
r the first half of the game, you will be aboard a large, multi-generational colony spacecraft called the UESC (United Earth Space Council) Marathon. Later levels will find yourself on the alien mothership. Most Marathon levels involve the player executing objective-based missions. You can play on your computer in single player mode, or across a LAN in multiplayer deathmatch mode (up to 8 players on the same network connected to a single host machine). We suggest that you modify the controls in the game as the default has you moving around using the NumLock keys rather than just the normal arrow keys. You can also use the mouse for turning though, again, this is not the default setting. Because Marathon has been released for the Macintosh operating system, you must play the game in an emulation program called Aleph One. CFS has combined the original game, and the emulation, into a single ZIP download (which includes the full, original, PDF manual), though you can get them separately from http://source.bungie.org/get/ with instructions at the "Marathon (on Windows) for DUMMIES" site at http://www.calormen.com/mwd.htm. However, it is easier just to download the CFS file and simply run AlephOne.exe to play the game. We loved Marathon. It is an awesome, full length game that will give lots of pleasure to its players. A "must have" if you enjoy 3D corridor-style shooters -- specially if you enjoy some challenges along the way. Grab a copy now! Get this 40,6MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/gg3_w95.html#Marathon32

Windows Sidebar Styler v2.0.6 -- Vista (5 doves)
Windows Sidebar Styler is a tool that tweaks the Sidebar's User Interface. It features resource-related & preview mode views, Sidebar resizing, add or modify Gadgets (mini applications managed by Windows Sidebar), and more. CFS was unable to review this program. The author says: "Windows Sidebar Styler takes advantage of the new technologies introduced in Windows Vista in order to provide extensions to the existing functionality of Windows Sidebar. Custom styles allow for resizing and customizing the appearance of Windows Sidebar so that it fits other UI elements, such as the Aero Glass colorization or an actual third party theme. Gadgets can now take full advantage of Windows Presentation Foundation -- the powerful managed code-oriented framework for presenting rich visual compositions such as vector graphics, 3D drawing, animations and more. In addition to that, it could be used in conjunction with Windows Communication Foundation in order for the Gadgets to connect to serv
ices and provide frequently updated information." Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME -- with limited functionality on XP. Access this 6.87MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/we3_w95.html#WindowsSidebarStyler32

SC DVD-Video Maker v1.0.0.0 -- Win9x/ME/XP/Vista (5 doves)
SC DVD-Video Maker is a program that creates movie DVDs from a huge number of video file formats. It supports over 45 file formats, supports over 60 video codecs, supports over 40 audio codecs, you can add subtitles, burn to ISO file or disk, it has options for advanced users, there is an easy-to-use interface, and more. This is an excellent tool for anyone who wishes to convert video files into movie disks playable on DVD players. The major video formats it supports are 3GP, AVI, FLV, HDMOV, MPG, MP4, MKV, MJPG, NUT, QT, MOV, SMK, OGM WMV & ASF. Subtitles can be added from a normal TXT file. SC DVD-Video Maker uses the free ImgBurn program to effect the actual disk creation and, apart from a message telling us that there was a later version of ImgBurn available for download, it was seamless marriage between the programs. Disks (or ISO disk images) worked well though we were disappointed that the program only recognized one of our two DVD burners -- and that, of course, was o
ur secondary unit not our main burner. That aside, SC DVD-Video Maker conducted itself perfectly and created a DVD disk that played exactly as expected. Unfortunately, its authors have chosen to include RelevantKnowledge advertising which integrates with the Internet Explorer Web browser. This toolbar was automatically removed by our anti-virus program. We loved SC DVD-Video Maker. It is an excellent program that does exactly what it claims to do, and does it well. Grab a copy now! Access this 8.96MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/mp1_w95.html#scvm32

LopeEdit v5.4.2 -- Win9x/ME/XP/Vista (5 doves)
LopeEdit is a powerful tab-based programmer's editor and replacement for Windows Notepad. It features global search & replace, user configurable syntax highlighting (pre-configured for 16 programming languages), unlimited undo/redo, UNICODE & UTF-8 support, several docking windows with utilities, text string search & replace across an entire folder (not just open documents), and more. This is an awesome ASCII text editor which has been designed with programmer's in mind. It has all the usual features, plus some, packaged together in a very workable tool. We particularly liked the search & replace of text strings across a folder -- a feature that assists greatly when changes are required to multiple files (too many to load into the program). It has no filesize limits and handled our 10MB test file, with 470,000 lines of text, easily. It took only a couple of seconds to load that entire file! Unfortunately, LopeEdit lacks a spell checker, though there are a number of add-on spe
ll checkers available if you need this facility. LopeEdit comes in two formats -- a free "lite" version for non-commercial use, and a shareware "pro" version with some additional features not included in the free version. Both versions are included in the download and you must decide which version you want during installation. We were most impressed with LopeEdit. It is not only a highly functional ASCII text editor for programmer's, but a worthy replacement for the terrible Notepad editor included with Windows. We loved! Access this 3.40MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/tp1_w95.html#LopeEdit32

Golden Classic Mahjong -- Win98/ME/XP/Vista (4 doves)
Golden Classic Mahjong is a Chinese-character "traditional" Mahjong solitaire boardgame played in a Web browser. It features good graphics, timer, and more. This is a standard Mahjong solitaire tile game where you must match up the tiles to make them disappear, the idea being to remove all tiles from the board. The game uses the traditional Chinese characters which is great if you read Chinese, but not so easy on non-Chinese reading players as some of the characters are hard to differentiate. Golden Classic Mahjong changes your Internet Explorer's homepage during installation. Of course, you can change it back immediately after and still play the game but we felt it was an unwarranted intrusion on our right to choose our own homepage. Apart from the graphics, Golden Classic Mahjong has little going for it unless you are an ardent fan of the traditional Chinese character set, don't mind the fact that the game is played in a browser and is therefore not resizable, and has no ot
her options. Mahjong solitaire is a fabulous game, but Golden Classic Mahjong is not our favorite version. Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 1.05MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/gg19_w95.html#GoldenClassicMahjong32

Easeus Partition Manager v1.6.4 -- WinXP (5 doves)
Easeus Partition Manager is a hard disk partition manager, with an easy-to-use user interface. It can resize/move partitions without losing data, can create & delete partitions, supports FAT (FAT12, FAT16 & FAT32) plus NTFS partitions, supports hardware RAID, supports USB drives, and more. This is one of the best partition managers we have seen. It allows you to do a huge number of tasks on your hard drive partitions, including changing their size and also moving them. The best part is, you can do that without destroying your data! Other functions are also carried out through an excellent interface that makes it so much easier for users than trying to use FDISK or other DOS tools (which probably won't read NTFS partitions anyway). Easeus Partition Manager cannot display partition information from secondary operating systems, like Linux, so this is one small problem for people with dual OS computers. We found Easeus Partition Manager to be an excellent tool for working with pa
rtitions through a Windows GUI. A "must have" for all serious PC users. Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95, 98 or ME, and the author does not state if it is suitable for Vista. Access this 4.53MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/gp1_w95.html#epm32

i.Ftp v2.11 -- Win98/ME/XP/Vista (5 doves)
i.Ftp is a simple FTP file transfer program. It features SFTP support, runs from portable media (like USB pen drives), offers the ability to change permissions (CHMOD), download scheduling, binary & ASCII transfer modes (file types can also be specified as ASCII only), multi-lingual interface (8 languages), and more. This is a neat little FTP client that makes up for in speed and simplicity what it lacks in fancy bells and whistles. We found i.Ftp to be a little too austere and we did miss some of the functions we enjoy in other FPT clients. That said, you may not need more than its limited functionality and, if that is the case, then it will do exactly what you want without a lot of waste features. A "must have" for anyone who wants a portable FTP client (it doesn't write anything to the Registry), i.Ftp is worth checking out. Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 839kB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/ir4_w95.html#iftp32

RainBall v3.48 -- Win98/ME/XP/Vista (5 doves)
RainBall is a blocks-based puzzle (like a cross between Lines & Rubik's Cube). It features 3 levels of difficulty, 3 block sizes, 3 grid sizes, 9 block faces, 8 textures, 4 effects, excellent animated graphics, and more. This is a surprisingly addictive, and quite challenging, puzzle game. You must used the large square cursor to rotate the four blocks under it so that same images appear in a line (either 4, 5 or 6 depending on the level of difficulty). These lines can be horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Once you match them up, the lines disappear. However, while you are deleting lines of similar blocks, more blocks are falling and they will soon fill the window. It sounds confusing, and the rules change depending on what options you select, but you quickly learn them and it isn't anywhere near as confusing as it might be. The Help page is a "must" read when you first start, though it may also confuse you as the author's first language is not English. RainBall is an ex
cellent puzzle, and one that will keep you playing long after you should have gone and done whatever else you had to do. The one thing that spoilt the game for us was the author's insistence that you register it. While this is free, it is still an imposition and we are unhappy giving our e-mail address out to everyone who asks. That said, RainBall is worth the effort to register and learn. We loved! Note: we have been advised that this program is not suitable for Windows 95. Access this 8.10MB download from:

http://www.completelyFREEsoftware.com/gg9_w95.html#RainBall32


COMPUTER TIP OF THE WEEK
from Dr T -- RTemlak4dds@aol.com

=: Keep It Real :=

Spot Fake Sites

Phony Web sites are nothing new. Identity theft was one of the first major security challenges of the Internet era, and Web-masters have been fighting sites that attempt to trick users for years. What has changed recently is the sophistication and the brazenness of online scammers. Phishing has become the preferred tactic to separate the unsuspecting from their personal information.

Phishing today involves actively seeking out victims (usually through spoofed emails) in order to trick them into providing passwords, credit card numbers, or personal information. Unlike old malicious sites, phishing emails and Web sites today more accurately mimic genuine sites. Getting tricked by a phishing scheme can waste time, cost money, and compromise your personal information. We'll help you avoid those fates by becoming adept at telling real sites from the fakes.

Email Tells

The most common exposure to phony Web sites is via email. The cheapest and easiest way for scam artists to get you on their sites is to send emails with embedded links that lead you astray. Phishers make these emails extremely realistic in order to overcome your hard-earned skepticism, and they send millions of them in order to overcome your spam filters.

Treat any email with links as suspicious, even messages about auctions you've bid on or companies you regularly do business with.

The first thing to check on any link in an email is the URL. We're all familiar with the basic www.companyname.com address structure, but there are other legitimate ways to structure a URL. Fake Web site operators take advantage of that uncertainty. Be suspicious of addresses that include the company name anywhere except immediately before the top-level domain (such as .com, .net, or .org).

A URL such as paypal.somesite.com doesn't belong to PayPal -- it's a subdomain of somesite .com. Similarly, www.mycorp.com/paypal is just a page on the www.mycorp.com site. You can't look just at the address displayed in the message, either. In HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) messages, you can easily create a link to one site with text that shows a different address entirely. Hover over the link to see what address it's really directing you to. If the destination address isn't the same as what's displayed in the email, you know you're being led astray.

Apply the same scrutiny to any email's sending address. It's easy to spoof a sender email name or address, but red flags should go up if the sender's domain doesn't match the site they're directing you to. Phishing scams and virus writers can even hijack or spoof email accounts from your friends and family. Don't blindly trust anything.

Site Vigilance

The familiar yellow padlock icon helps identify sites with security certificates and encrypted connections.

The bottom line is simple: Avoid following links from emails. For most well-known sites that require a logon (eBay, PayPal, your bank, your email provider), your best bet is to simply type the address or follow a Favorite you saved personally. Find other sites from reputable search engines or, at the very least, copy and paste URLs from other sources instead of following the links. Pay close attention when typing addresses. Unscrupulous impostors occupy misspelled versions of Web sites.

Even when you're careful about getting to Web sites, you can't stop paying attention once you get there. Whether you typed the address in yourself or followed a trusted link, typos, viruses, site hijacking, or simple confusion can still land you in the wrong place. Pay attention to the graphics and layout on any site requesting a password, a credit card, or any personal information. Animated or flashing clip art should be a warning, and not just as a sign of questionable professionalism.

Eye-catching (even if hideous) graphics can act as a diversionary tactic meant to draw your attention to the terrible design and away from the rest of the site. In any case, do you really want to entrust safe electronic storage of your credit card number to companies that are too clueless to develop a professional-looking Web site?

Internet Explorer's built-in Phishing Filter, controllable from the Internet Options dialog box, checks the sites you visit against lists of known fakes.

Wherever you enter credit card or personal information, train yourself to check for encrypted (or secure) sites. These avoid transmitting data in the open, instead creating direct and encrypted connections between a browser and a server. Internet Explorer denotes such sites with a padlock icon on the status bar or (in IE7) next to the Address bar. Secure sites aren't automatically safe-the certificates required are not hard to set up-but scam artists are less likely to bother with the process.

External Checks

Plenty of companies promise to keep you safe from phishing scams, but no filter is foolproof. Nevertheless, you should enable the phishing protections bundled with many antivirus and firewall software products. And check out IE7's Phishing Filter. It adds one more layer of security.

Online certification programs, like those from the Better Business Bureau and TrustE, provide a level of reassurance but can be faked. Confirm with the licensing entity if you're unsure.

Regular updates to the software you already have are vital to the overall safety of your system.

Visit Windows Update and ensure that it's set to update automatically. In Vista, click Start, All Programs, and Windows Update. Then click Change Settings and make sure Install Updates Automatically (Recommended) is selected. In Windows XP, click Start, Control Panel, Security Center, and Automatic Updates at the bottom of the window and click the Automatic (Recommended) radio button. You should also turn on automatic updating for security software.

The vast majority of technical loopholes exploited by scammers have been closed, but without allowing updates, you may not be fully protected.

Many legitimate Web sites join consortia of third parties working to promote security and privacy online. You'd probably recognize TrustE and BBB (Better Business Bureau) "seals of approval", even if you've never paid attention to what they mean. Companies and sites that legitimately comply with such certification programs should be considered safe. However, it's no harder to slap a fake TrustE logo on a site than it is to make a fake company logo.

It sounds too easy, but sometimes the best way to make sure you're heading to a company's real site is to search it out online. Use results from Google or other reliable search engines to gain confidence that you are finding a company's true online location. But be careful about following any sponsored advertisement links that come with search results. Scammers sometimes buy Google ads for fake sites that appear alongside the real site on sponsored search results.

In the end, no single precaution will guarantee security. But by staying vigilant and combining the tools available, you can dramatically reduce your chances of being tricked by fake sites.

Source:Gregory Anderson * The Angellmore Newsletter]


SMILE OF THE WEEK

(contributions for this section are most welcome)

=: The Wisdom of the Ages :=

The five most essential words for a healthy, vital relationship: "I apologize" and "You are right".

If you tell a lie, don't believe it deceives only the other person.

Never continue dating anyone who is rude to the waiter.

Any and all compliments can be handled by simply saying "Thank you"...
(though it helps if you say it with a Southern accent.)

Never give yourself a haircut after three margaritas.

Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

When you make a mistake, make amends immediately. It's easier to eat crow while it's still warm.

I've learned to pick my battles; I ask myself, Will this matter one year from now? How about one month? One week? One day?

If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance!

Being miserable because of a bad or former relationshipjust proves that the other person was right about you.

Be really nice to your friends because you never know when you are going to need them to empty your bed pan and hold your hand.

Never underestimate the kindness of your fellow man.

You are the only person who can truly make you happy.

And finally...Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect, it just means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections.

[author unknown]


COMMENTS

We would like to thank the regular visitors to the CFS site who have told us their favorite freeware. If you have a favorite program which isn't listed on the CFS pages we invite you to share that information with everyone through this site and this newsletter.

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