Be sure to let your friends, family, and clients know about the surge in phishing:

"Phishing attacks involve the mass distribution of 'spoofed' e-mail messages with return addresses, links, and branding which appear to come from banks, insurance agencies, retailers or credit card companies. These fraudulent messages are designed to fool the recipients into divulging personal authentication data such as account usernames and passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. Because these emails look 'official', up to 20% of recipients may respond to them, resulting in financial losses, identity theft, and other fraudulent activity."

(from Anti-Phishing.org)

The problem is greatly exacerbated by the recent IE URL spoof bug mentioned in this space December 19.

David Weinberger is the best of good fellows. One of the first to contribute during the TinyApps fundraiser earlier this year, he has further endeared himself to me by posting Veggie Prop. David also points to The Meatrix, mentioned here in early November. It is still a must-see.

Here is my response:

THANK YOU, David. In their capacity to experience pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, animals are certainly no different than us. How anyone could support the needless abuse, torture, and slaughter of fellow sentient beings is simply baffling.

Please consider listening to or reading Bruce Friedrich's Veganism in a Nutshell for an excellent overview of the issue.

A few pertinent quotes:

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral." - Leo Tolstoy

"In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people." - Ruth Harrison

"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" - Jeremy Bentham

"Flesh eating is unprovoked murder." - Ben Franklin

"Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission--to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." - Saint Francis of Assisi

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein

"People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times." - Issac Bashevis Singer

Scott Leighton's Solving Not So Common Palm Series Problems has a number of excellent articles, including:

Reading the Palm Desktop Files Directly
Importing to the Datebook
The Inner Workings of Hotsync
What are the Hotsync BAK files for?

Mike (another wonderfully kind frequent contributor) sent links to these free virus & worm removal tools under 1.44mb:

avast! Virus Cleaner - Removes: Win32:Badtrans [Wrm]; Win32:Blaster [Wrm] (aka Lovsan), variants A-F; Win32:BugBear [Wrm], including B variant; Win32:Ganda [Wrm]; Win32:Klez [Wrm], all variants (including variants of Win32:Elkern); Win32:MiMail [Wrm], variants A, C, E, I-M; Win32:Nimda [Wrm]; Win32:Opas [Wrm] (aka Opasoft, Opaserv); Win32:Scold [Wrm]; Win32:Sircam [Wrm]; Win32:Sober [Wrm], including B variant; Win32:Sobig [Wrm], including variants B-F; Win32:Swen [Wrm], including UPX-packed variants Win32:Yaha [Wrm] (aka Lentin)

Stinger - Removes: BackDoor-AQJ, Bat/Mumu.worm, Exploit-DcomRpc, IPCScan, IRC/Flood.ap, IRC/Flood.bi, IRC/Flood.cd, NTServiceLoader, PWS-Narod, PWS-Sincom, W32/Bugbear@MM, W32/Deborm.worm.gen, W32/Dumaru@MM, W32/Elkern.cav, W32/Fizzer.gen@MM, W32/FunLove, W32/Klez, W32/Lirva, W32/Lovgate, W32/Lovsan.worm, W32/Mimail@MM, W32/MoFei.worm, W32/Mumu.b.worm, W32/Nachi.worm, W32/Nimda, W32/Pate, W32/Sdbot.worm.gen, W32/Sober@MM, W32/SirCam@MM, W32/Sobig, W32/SQLSlammer.worm, W32/Swen@MM, W32/Yaha@MM

There are also these two worthies, which, while requiring large pattern file downloads, can recognize and remove a far greater number of viruses:

TrendMicro Sysclean - "Stand-alone fix package that incorporates the Damage Cleanup Engine and Template."

F-Prot Antivirus for DOS - "Command line scanner for DOS-based operating systems" (i.e., works on Windows versions up to Millennium).

Besides the fact that they download quickly and easily fit on a floppy, here's another reason to love tiny apps from Quocirca at The Register:

"The basic USB storage 'dongle' does indeed have a number of obvious uses. Some uses are less obvious however - I have an email application that I can run from the device. It's called nPOPq, and the beauty of it is that it is self-contained - it doesn't use the Windows registry or any external files or directories to run. This means, I can plug my dongle into any Internet-connected computer and check email across all my email accounts, without having to specify them one by one and without relying on an email service provider... No doubt there is an IM client, an editor and a basic spreadsheet I could squeeze on, if I really needed..."

Yes, Quocirca, there is an IM client, editor, and spreadsheet you could easily squeeze on to a USB drive (or even a floppy).

Iain (frequent contributor and all-around swell guy) kindly informed us about Blosxom: "a lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application designed from the ground up with simplicity, usability, and interoperability in mind... Create, edit, rename, and delete entries on the command-line, via FTP, WebDAV, or anything else you might use to manipulate your files. There's no import or export; entries are nothing more complex than title on the first line, body being everything thereafter." It is free for the taking and according to Iain, a "cgi file of about 16kb does everything."

From K. Inaba (whose XacRett was featured on Sunday) comes word of OSASK, "a 32bit GUI Multitask OS in 75KB". The documentation is in Japanese only, though numerous screenshots are available.

Understanding MultiBooting and Booting Windows from an Extended Partition is an excellent guide, with information on fixing the 8-GB Boundary problem on Windows 9x/Me and BOOT.INI trouble on Windows 2000/XP. There is also a thorough list of partitioning tools.

Many thanks to the anonymous reader who submitted XacRett:

 XacRett [212k] {S}+ Drag-and-drop archive extractor with support for more than 40 formats: LHa, Zip, Cab, Rar, Ace, Arj, Yz1, Bga, Gca, Imp, Zoo, Arc, Cpt, Pit, Arg, Asd, Zac, MacBin, Tar, Cpio, Rpm, Shar, QuakePak, Ar(Deb), Gzip, Bzip2, Compress, Pack, Compact, Freeze, Belon, Splint, Jam, MS-Compress, Base64, UUencode, XXencode, BinHex, Ish, Boo, BtoA, Fish, Jack, Rez, Cab (InstallShield), Dzip, yEnc.

The author of XacRett, K. Inaba, has crafted many more tiny apps.

In case you missed the PowerBook which runs 55 operating systems from an external firewire HD, be sure to check it out. From ancient to advanced, you'll find 'em all here, with loads of screenshots.

Openwares.org, which released a controversial patch for the recent IE URL spoof bug (alternate solution), has a number of small freeware programs available, including: DeepDelete (secure delete), Arcade! Classic Arcade Pack (Asteroids, Packman, Pong, Snake, Space Invaders, Tetris) and Startup Mechanic (adware remover).

UPDATE: The apps from Openwares silently install their LiveUpdate software to Program Files\LIVEUPDATE . It is not removed when the original app is uninstalled, nor does it appear in the Add/Remove Control Panel, though there is an uninstaller within the LIVEUPDATE folder. Yet even the uninstaller leaves behind the following registry entry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"Openwares LiveUpdate"="C:\\Program Files\\LiveUpdate\\LiveUpdate.exe"

Mail without a mail client: Accessing your POP mail through TELNET - "An introductory article that shows how it's possible to check your POP email through Telnet, using the basic POP commands."

XnView 1.66 [898k] + Graphic viewer and converter with support for more than 400 formats. Many *nix ports also available.

Mark Robson wrote in about his GenControl app: "a free Windows (NT, 2000, XP Pro etc) remote control program that needs no separate server and cleans up after itself (as much as possible anyway)". It weighs 345k and is released under the GNU GPL.

Users cling to old Microsoft operating systems - "Windows 95 made up 14.7 percent of operating systems, and Windows 98 made up 12.5 percent. Windows 2000 was the most common OS, running on slightly more than half of machines, while its predecessor, Windows NT4, was still used on 13.3 percent of desktops. Windows XP, the most current version of Windows, was found on just 6.6 percent of the machines."

Martijn kindly sent word of his project: "I have written an application that may be applicable to your site. It's called Enumerator, and is a moduler batch processor, which, among others, can for example rename a batch of files. Only two modules are available at present, but more are in the making. It can be found at http://enum.sereneconcepts.nl . It is free and still in beta stage."

CSS (or rather, browser compliance) has come a long way... for proof, check out what Cameron Adams has crafted over at The Man in Blue. Turn off the stylesheets to reveal: pure, structural markup! CSS tableless sites offers further inspiration.

Have a message you want to share with the world? Check out The Helloworld Project - "Send in your message, and see how it is projected by a laserbeam onto a mountain overlooking Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, onto the UN building in New York City, onto the most prominent building in downtown Mumbai or onto a 140 metre tall water fountain in Geneva."

Paul Pratt kindly wrote in about his Mini vMac project:

"I maintain a program which may qualify for TinyApps, 'Mini vMac', a Mac Plus emulator.

"The latest Windows version is 76k, runs in Windows 95 or later, and the source is available under the GPL license. It doesn't require any additional files except a Mac Plus ROM image (so it can be legally used only by those who own a Mac Plus) and a Macintosh disk image to boot from.

"It does not require installation (except for expanding the zip archive), it does not not create any files, or modify files
(except for the disk images mounted with it), and as of the 1.0.0 version doesn't write to the registry.

"Mini vMac 2.1.0 has just been released, available at:
http:www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/unstable
This is the development branch. The stable branch can be found on the main page at:
http:www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac "

Renamer v6.0 final [256k] {S} Rename multiple files with change (very powerful), search/replace, insert, trim and many other batch operations. Features undo, preview, 'change'-operation and can work in sub directories on specified extension. Can also change name to ID3 v1 tags and modify files' ID3 tags which makes it perfect for renaming MP3's.

Ovidiu sent in link to ntsecurity.nu's collection of freeware security tools for Windows. While most of the apps are for NT-based versions, there are a number for Windows 9x and one for Windows CE. You'll find Tini (simple and very small backdoor for Windows), PEriscope (PE file inspection tool), and Inzider (port to process viewer) among many others. The author of these tools, Arne Vidstrom, is interviewed here.

Dariusz Stanislawek (creator of EDXOR) codes wonderfully tiny apps. When asked about his design philosophy, Dariusz replied: "(I)t's identical to your site's motto 'Small is beautiful'. I choose C and a bit of Assembler as my programming languages and use the free Borland C/C++ compiler. I find undocumented Windows API calls and every possible programming/linking trick to make my apps small, fast and efficient. My apps are very small, but please note that they embed info/help, so effectively they are even smaller :-)"

Three more apps from his collection will be listed on TinyApps today:

 PassPack v1.00 [15k] + Secure, streamlined and incredibly compact manager of passwords and confidential information. It features exceptional resistance to brute-force password search attacks. PassPack offers both import and export of unencrypted data.

 dsCrypt v1.00 [25k] + AES/Rijndael file encryption software with simple, multi-file, drag-and-drop operations. Features BruteHalt® and exceptional resistance to brute-force password search, Secure PassPad® and immunity to keylogger-infested environments, disclosed implementation and code details, secure use of system resources, and much more.

 CryptNote v1.00 [19k] + Secure text editor that transparently encrypts or decrypts user text with the AES/Rijndael algorithm.

This looks interesting: DeepBurner, a freeware CD/DVD burning app (with GUI) under 1.44mb! Features include:

* Create and burn audio, data, and bootable CDs
* Create and burn DVDs
* Buffer underrun technology "Burn-Proof" (if supported by drive)
* Overburning (if supported by drive)
* Creation of multi-session CDs
* Works with all IDE (Atapi), SCSI, USB and FireWire CDR/W DVD/RAM drives

(via ShellCity)

UPDATE: Many thanks to Miguel for sending in this information (12/22/03):

"I want to call it to your attention that the current version 1.1.0.89 beta, recently released is now 1.58mb in size, and from the license agreement it appears to be adware and probably spyware also. I have been reluctant to install it on my system, because even with AdAware these things are hard to get rid of sometimes. For your information, I quote from the license agreement in the installer:"

2. GRANT OF LICENSE.

(a) Freeware. You may use the SOFTWARE without charge. ASTONSOFT may place advertisements in evaluation copies of the SOFTWARE and keep statistics regarding your use of the SOFTWARE (e.g., number of daily unique users, average sessions per user, average session time, certain system information, daily ad displays and ad click-through). ASTONSOFT will not monitor the content of your use (e.g., sites selected or files used).

From Slashdot comes word of MandrakeMove, a Live CD distro like Knoppix. The review states that MandrakeMove "comes with more features, such as the capability to eject the MandrakeMove CD-ROM during its use", though this feature exists in Knoppix (enter "toram" at boot; see this page for more cheat codes). Be that as it may, this is a most welcome offering from MandrakeSoft, as it will certainly help introduce more folks to Linux.

A partial blurb from their website: "MandrakeMove lets you bring your Mandrake Linux system wherever you go, all on a single disc, so that you can connect to the Internet, create & edit Office documents, listen to music, watch movies, and just about anything you can imagine from wherever you happen to be... MandrakeMove features an impressive selection of first-class applications. In addition to multimedia and graphics software, MandrakeMove also includes a complete office suite for creating, editing and sharing Microsoft® Office compatible files (xls, doc, ppt). You'll enjoy hours of fun with highly addictive games (such as the famous 'Frozen Bubble'), 3D programs, educational applications for children, and much more."