tinyapps.org / blog / 2003

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 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."

New Palm app: Strip (Secure Tool for Recalling Important Passwords) v1.0 [45k] {S} Password manager with 256 bit AES encryption.

A kind reader from Germany sends word of Searchy, a collection of simple .reg files that allow you to search various sites (like Wayback Machine, UPS tracking, Google, eBay, Daypop, Amazon, etc) quickly and easily through Internet Explorer's address bar. You can quickly add new sites via a handy plug-in generator. The German site apparently offers a version for Opera as well. Of course, Mozilla-based browsers (Netscape 6, Netscape 7, Mozilla, Beonex, Firebird, etc) have search plug-ins available through the Mycroft Project.

Pebbles Software has developed a number of applications that use PDAs (Palm or PocketPC) to communicate with PCs in novel ways. For example, SlideShow Commander allows PDAs to control PowerPoint, Remote Commander allows one or more PDAs to be used as if they were the PC's cursor and keyboard, and Shortcutter allows you to draw panels of controls (buttons, scroll bars, knobs and other widgets) on the handheld and then use them to control any PC application.

An anonymous reader sent in a link to RavenBlack, home to a number of tiny apps, including: Motepad (Notepad replacement), 'Peg It (image converter), RavenGet (download manager), and much more.

From Brian comes word of Weather Watcher Beta 5.0.28. This new non-installing version stores options in an INI file and is a 197kb download versus 1485kb for the installer version. Blurb: "Ad-free, spyware-free, hassle-free... Your weather, your way. View current conditions, hourly forecast, daily forecast, detailed forecast, severe weather alerts, and weather maps for almost any city world-wide!"

From the mail bin:

"I wrote some tiny apps I would like to share with you and your readers. Most of them are command-line utilities,
written in C/C++ using MS VisualC.
Of course, no reg, no DLL.

- chgcase (13 KB) [http://debrock.org/chgcase/]
can be used to change the case of dirname/filename

- launchat (17 KB)[http://debrock.org/launchat/]
launches programs from a list, waiting for a specified delay between each exec.

- msgbox (17 KB)[http://debrock.org/msgbox/]
displays a message-box, with specified text and caption (yet another one...)

- dumpver (5 KB) [http://debrock.org/dumpver/]
prints out version informations from given modules.

- dumplnk (6 KB) [http://debrock.org/dumplnk/]
prints shortcuts' properties (target path/filename, icon index, ...)

- notif (9 KB) [http://debrock.org/notif/]
Monitors one or more directories for specified events (file/dir name changes, file size changes, security attrib changes,...)

- OpenContainer (8 KB) [http://debrock.org/OpenContainer/]
Given a shortcut as parameter, opens the folder containing its target. Put it in the "Send To..." folder to
quickly find the target of a shortcut.

Have a nice day! And thanks a lot for TinyApps.org!

Best regards from Toulouse (aka Airbus City)/France
christophe debrock"

Audacity [1290k] {S}+ Audio editor that can record/play sounds, import/export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and much more. Windows, Mac, and *nix versions available.

The Meatrix (Flash required)

Many thanks to the anonymous reader who wrote in to alert us about Handy File and Replace, which was formerly listed on TinyApps. The software now includes NavExcel, a known browser hijacker and pest. This fact is not mentioned anywhere on Handy File and Replace's website; when contacted, the author replied: "NavExcel is NOT spyware. It is what it is - web navigation helper. 'Handy File Find and Replace' is freeware tool so we have an option to include any ad stuff in it. It is a common practice."

QuickTime Alternative - Play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player.

Real Alternative Play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. Supports RealAudio (.ra .rpm), RealMedia (.rm .ram .rmvb .rpx .smi .smil), RealText (.rt), ReadPix (.rp).

The folks at DriveSavers are simply amazing. Their service, performance, and communication far surpass the most optimistic expecatations. Based on my experience with them a week or two ago, they will remain my first and last call for data recovery.

Bart's way to create bootable CD-ROMs (for Windows/DOS) is hugely helpful for those looking to make custom, bootable CDs of their favorite DOS or Windows distributions. Bart has made an otherwise obscure process trivially easy, clearly explaining how to include service packs, disable the product key prompt, and much more. His PE Builder (which creates a bootable CD with Windows XP or Server 2003 environment) is back and definitely worth checking out if you work on NTFS volumes. It is particularly well suited as a rescue platform, though perhaps not as robust as Knoppix.

Monitor Tools has an extensive listing of network-related software for IT professionals in the following categories: Alerting, Application Monitoring, Enterprise Management, Network and System Monitoring, Miscellaneous Tools, Network Traffic Analyzing & Performance Monitoring, PC Monitoring, Protocol Analyzers and Packet Capture Tools, Security Monitoring, and Web Monitoring.

"Regex Coach enables you to try out the behaviour of Perl's regular expression operators interactively and in 'real time', i.e. as soon as you make changes somewhere the results are instantly displayed. You can also query the regex engine about selected parts of your regular expression and watch how it parses your input."

If you're still using Telnet or FTP, you need to know about SSH and SCP. The
Freeware SSH and SCP for Windows 9x, NT, ME, 2000 and XP page is a great place to start.

Many thanks to CoAX for pointing out ViceVersa Free a "Windows utility that Compares, Replicates, Synchronizes and Backups your data." It has an installer, but is only a 510k download. It saved me from some tremendous hassle this afternoon while syncing a slew of files and folders.

Thanks to Jeff (again) for finding TDIMon, a freeware port to process viewer which works under 9x and is a mere 95k download.

Ultrafunk's on-again, off-again Popcorn email client is now a hybrid freeware/shareware product. Apparently borrowing the concept from Jem Berkes (creator of JBMail), Popcorn 1.51 allows only one account to be stored in freeware mode. The last true freeware version was 1.50 beta 3, available for download here. (Thanks to Jeff for the update and download link.)

There are two excellent freeware apps for port to process mapping, though they only work under NT/2K (Active Ports works under XP as well):

Active Ports - Monitor all open TCP and UDP ports on the local computer. Active Ports maps ports to the owning application so you can watch which process has opened which port. It also displays a local and remote IP address for each connection and allows you to terminate the owning process. Active Ports can help you to detect trojans and other malicious programs.

Vision - Shows all of the open TCP and UDP ports on a machine, displays the service that is active on each port, and maps the ports to their respective applications. Vision allows users to access a large amount of supplementary information that is useful for determining host status by displaying detailed system information, applications running, as well as processes and ports in use.

Under Windows 9x, the only similar app I've found is shareware ($30/$40, 30 day trial):

Port Explorer - See all the open ports on your system and what programs own them. Also includes a packet sniffer, bandwidth throttling, country detection, and more.

Two apps added to the File section:

🌱 FMT [121k] + Format floppies to 360kb, 720kb, 1.2mb ,1.44mb, 1.68mb and 1.72mb. With seven special bootsectors.

🌱 Delpart [123k] + Delete NTFS partitions that defy FDISK.

The Computer TakeBack Campaign promotes clean design and brand owner responsibility for discarded computers and electronics.

eWeek has a roundup of Windows XP handhelds, including the OQO, Tiqit, Vulcan Mini-PC, and Sony's PCG-U101. Only the Sony is actually for sale at the moment... the other three have been delayed (OQO made Wired's 2002 Vaporware list) for quite some time.

Keyring for Palm OS is an open source app which lets you securely store secret information on your PalmOS handheld. It offers secure triple-DES encryption, a random password generator, export to MemoPad, and support for a number of languages.

Knoppix 3.3 was released yesterday. Among the new features is the ability to easily create a persistent home directory on a floppy, memory stick, etc. with optional AES encryption.

ShowText has been added to the Text page. Only 6k in size, it displays all ASCII text in a given binary file. This can be especially useful in scanning for cheat codes, dependencies, etc.

Computer First Aid Using Knoppix is an excellent guide for those new to Linux; it provides a clear, well-written tutorial on using Knoppix for basic recovery tasks. (Warning: one potential danger of Knoppix is becoming addicted to Frozen-Bubble.) You may find yourself spending more and more time enjoying Knoppix, and wanting to experiment with other distros (there are customized versions of Linux for virtually every conceivable purpose); if so, be sure to check out this extensive list of common and customized linux distros.

A new section on the file page for finding duplicate files has been added. DupeLocater has been joined by CloneSpy and DoubleKiller. All three received the Green Award, though DoubleKiller has an option to store settings in the registry (and easily remove them as well). Since the default behavior is *not* to use the registry, it is deserving of the Green Award designation.

While we're on the subject, just a few quick words on why the Green Award was created: I run an onsite computer consulting and repair business on Maui, and when working on client computers, follow strictly the dictum "first, do no harm". The software I install and use on their machines must not create, modify, or delete files or registry entries without my consent. At the very least, I do not want to leave behind a trail of clutter on their hard drives, nor do I wish to introduce new problems by installing software which overwrites key system files.

Hence, I had to create a database of applications which fit these aims. Tiny apps were sought, for two primary reasons: 1. the floppy drive is often the easiest or only option for access, and 2. dialup is slow, which is to say, the apps must be fast to download over any available connection (cell phone, land line, etc). This website is the result of these efforts.

Ben Jones has crafted a small collection of tiny apps, including several with assembler source code. The smallest is a mere 50 bytes! There is also a quick intro to OS/2 which has some interesting links.

The Intelligent Stick USB drive is truly tiny - 31.0mm(L) x 18.0mm(W) x 2.8mm(H) - and light (3g). It comes in capacities ranging from 8MB - 512MB, and requires no drivers under Windows Me/2000/XP, Mac OS 9/X, and Linux Kernel 2.4.0 and above (Windows 98 and 98SE drivers are available for download). The 128MB model (which I use and highly recommend) can be found on eBay for $30 - $40 and the 512MB model is available at ComputerGeeks for $121.

Drive imaging and cloning tools like Ghost are increasingly popular (if you use Ghost, be sure to see the Radified Guide to Norton Ghost by Symantec - A Tutorial on How to Create and Restore Ghost Images). But did you know that you can image and restore your hard drive with Knoppix via remote ssh server, Windows/Samba file share or another hard drive? Very handy.

Knoppix has spawned a host of customized versions, ranging from the tiny to secure. If you haven't given this Debian-based live CD a try, now may be the time. (Note: the official Knoppix page is currently closed due to proposed software patent legislation in Europe.)

WiNc and Pocket WiNc are similar to NetStumbler and Mini Stumbler, but provide wider hardware support. They also store personalized profiles, simplify setting up ad hoc connections, and work with 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g standards. For a few more days, you can get WiNc and/or Pocket WiNc free (normally $20) on this page at pcmag.com.

Freeware DOS utilities by Mike Wiering has a number of interesting little apps. PC-Santa (who sent in the link) used "Beat" (8k) to turn his 286 laptop into a metronome. EDMEM (5k) also looks interesting: "view, save and even edit the PC's memory. You can usually see most of the contents of the last program that has been run."

Free online computer books:

O'Reilly Open Books Project - Books published by O'Reilly & Associates with various forms of "open" copyright. Ranging from The Cathedral and the Bazaar to Learning Debian/GNU Linux.
Internet Public Library's Computer section - Massive collection. Subcategories include: Computer Hardware, Computer Science, Computer Software, Cyberculture, Internet, Platforms, Programming, System Administration, Computers & Internet News, History of Computers & Internet
Free Tech Books - Currently offers links to 130 tech books in the following categories: Programming Languages, Scripting Languages, Operating Systems, Computer Science, Miscellaneous.

Roberto Alsina's guide to turning a P75 with 800MB of disk space and 16MB of RAM into a modern workstation capable of performing: Graphical web navigation, E-mail, MP3 audio, GNUTella and MPEG video reproduction.

Raw HTTP viewing:

Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer - Free web-based app
Sam Spade for Windows - Freeware app that also offers nslookup, dig, ping, traceroute, whois, ip block checks, smtp port probing, port scanning, automagic header analysis, usenet cancel checking, and more.
HttpRevealer - Java-based shareware (you decide the cost).
Ethereal - Very robust network protocol analyzer. Can of course be used to view HTTP.

Added Google AdSense bar to the program, links, and blog pages. Any and all feedback appreciated.

Jargon's Driver Museum offers an "archive of drivers and hardware utilities maintained by Jarno Niemela. The purpose of this archive is to collect device drivers for devices no longer supported by their manufacturers. If it's old, it's drivers belong here."

BenchmarkHQ has an excellent collection of benchmarking and diagnostic tools. The RAM section mentions ctSPD, which returns detailed information on installed DIMMs.

The Tango commuter car is simply amazing: tiny (39 inches wide and 8 feet 5 inches long), electric (80 miles per charge), fast (0 to 60 in 4 seconds), and safe (jet-pilot seat belts and a racing-regulation roll cage). Read more about this wondercar.

"Freeware programs that either went commercial after these versions or were discontinued, or are hard to find or just plain good."

A kind reader points out that TinyURL should be listed on TinyApps. While the free service (which substitutes a short URL like http://tinyurl.com/l03w for a longer one like http://www.apostate.com/programming/bm-freesoftware.html) can be useful when sending URLs via email, what happens to the links if/when TinyURL.com disappears? It is essential to know the true URL for a given page when using the Wayback Machine, for example.

The Brother MPrint MW-100 Mobile Printer is a handy little (palm-sized) printer with USB and IR support. It runs under Windows, Palm OS, and PocketPC. Amazon has it for $284.99 with free shipping. Many more tiny printers can be found here and here. Before buying any of these printers, be sure to read the user manuals on the manufacturers' websites as there are a number of potential "gotchas" - software support, connection issues, etc.

Inspired by the tiny Windows 95 projects, Xhargh has created nano98: Windows 98 in 4.38MB (using UPX) or 7MB (without compression).

The Shrinking Windows and Micro95 projects are rekindling interest in Windows 95, which has long been the favored version here on TinyApps. Aside from support for new hardware, there is virtually no functional difference between Windows 95 and XP for single user systems. A well-crafted Windows 95 system is stable, fast, and will run on very old hardware (often available for the taking), making it a great choice for hobbyists, non-profits, etc.

The Complete Windows 95 Annotated File Listing might be of use to those playing with Micro95.

What then, is the universe and who governs it? No one? Yet how can it be that, while it is impossible for a city or a household to remain even a very short time without someone to govern and care for it, nevertheless this great and beautiful structure should be kept in such orderly arrangement by sheer accident and chance?

- Epictetus

Dare to look up to God and say, "Make use of me for the future as Thou wilt. I am of the same mind; I am one with Thee. I refuse nothing which seems good to Thee. Lead me whither Thou wilt. Clothe me in whatever dress Thou wilt."

- Epictetus

Howard Lyman is a 4th generation cattle rancher who won't eat meat.

Think you've got some serious hardware? Take a look at the top 500 supercomputer sites in the world. Maui's own High-Performance Computing Center ranks at number 71.

What's wrong with milk? Oh, you mean besides inhumane treatment, breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease, sick kids, fat, zits, gas, and mucus? Not much, I guess.

I say to thee weapons reach not the Life;
Flame burns it not, waters cannot o'erwhelm,
Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,
Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,
Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure,
Invisible, ineffable, by word.

- from the Bhagavad Gita, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold

Three blogs definitely worth visiting:

David Weinberger (Internet pundit, TinyApps supporter and all-around swell guy)
Jason Kottke (a collection of hypertext fragments, among other things)
This Modern World (you know, the funny penguin)

Thomas Jefferson: "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

It seems as if most folks are unconcerned about sharing their mail server username and password with anyone running a packet sniffer. According to SecurityFocus, "At the 802.11 Planet Expo only three percent of e-mail downloads were encrypted on the first day of the conference, 12 percent on the second day." This tutorial by John Fitzgibbon makes setting up an SSH tunnel for POP mail insanely easy.

from chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching (Steven Mitchell translation):

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds? ... It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.
- Plutarch

Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
- Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet

Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

You Do Not Belong to You. You Belong to the Universe.
by Buckminster Fuller

In 1927 my wife and I were living in Chicago, in a one room apartment on Belmont Avenue. We were penniless. Five years earlier, our first daughter had died on her fourth birthday, having gone through infantile paralysis, flu, spinal meningitis and pneumonia. It was a long and terribly painful thing for us when she died. About that time my father-in-law, an architect, had invented a new building material. I liked this man very much - and I thought his invention would be useful. I finally organized four small factories around the country making this material.

I worked terribly hard, but the minute I got through work for the day - I guess I was in a lot of pain because our child had died - I'd go off and drink all night. I had enough health, somehow, to carry on. But the company failed and some very prominent people had bet money on me. So I was in disgrace and utterly broke. At that moment a new life, our daughter Allegra, came to us.

I appeared to myself, in retrospect, a horrendous mess. I found myself saying, "AM I an utter failure? If so, I had better get myself out of the way, so at least my wife and baby can be taken care of by my family." At that time Lincoln Park, right on Lake Michigan, was one of my favorite places. I would run through the park at night, and I knew every inch of the lake edge. So I knew just where to go when I decided to throw myself into the lake, fully intending to commit suicide.

I stood by the side of the lake, hesitating. All my life, at home and in school, I had been admonished: "Never mind what you think! Listen! We are trying to teach you!" But by that lake side I was forced to do some thinking on my own.

I asked myself what a little penniless human being with a remaining life expectancy of only 10 years - I was 32 and the life expectancy of those born, as I was in 1895 was 42 - could do for humanity that great corporations and great political states cannot do. Answering myself, I said: "The individual can take initiatives without anyone's permission."

I told myself: "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage of others." So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me - each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinions, credos and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet earth.

I didn't want to waste a second, so I slept that way that certain animals sleep: lying down as soon as I was tired, sleeping a half hour every six hours. I also decided to hold a moratorium on speech. It was very tough on my wife, but for two years in that Chicago tenement I didn't allow myself to use words. I wanted to force myself back to the point where I could understand what I was thinking.

I decided to forget about earning a living. It seemed to me that humans are honey-money bees, doing the right things for the wrong reasons, just as the bee pollinates the flower.

Released from the idea of earning a living, I was able to address problems in the biggest way. I decided to commit myself to the invention and development of physical artifacts to reform the environment. I decided that a plurality of such artifacts had the potential to evoke humanity's most intelligent, interconsiderate qualities. It became obvious that if I worked always and only for all humanity, I would be optimally effective. I'd be doing what nature wanted me to do, and nature would literally support me.

Once I decided to do my own thinking, the first question I had to ask myself was: "Do you have any experiential evidence that forces you to assume greater intellect operating in the universe?" My answer was swift and positive. Experience demonstrated an orderliness of interactive, exceptionless principles. I was overwhelmed by this, and more convinced that my purpose was to abet the inclusion of human beings in the design of the universe.

I'm absolutely convinced that everything that has happened to me since that time has been through my commitment to this greater integrity.

Many times I've chickened, and everything inevitably goes wrong. But then, when I return to my commitment, my life suddenly works again. There's something of the miraculous in that.

Patrick Farley's electric sheep comix is definitely worth a visit. "The Spiders" Part 3.5 is due out any day now... in the meantime, here are two sneak previews:
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/00_prelude.html
http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/03_misfire.html

101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian
How to Win an Argument with a Meat Eater
Facts and figures from Diet for a New America

Just completed the new Palm section. Disable Buttons is truly indispensable, as it prevents the hard buttons from powering on your Palm device. Many thanks to Pasquale Foggia for creating this gem.