Thanks DelBoy.

The Block-a-country link that zzaxx provided was, I thought, really helpful. I'd previously obtained a list of the ranges from a different website yesterday, but I didn't know how to implement them other than inputting them one by one through the cpanel. This would have clearly taken ages as this list is many lines long and it prompted my question yesterday to enquire if the list could be simplified with wildcard characters in any way.

What I had overlooked was that the list could be simply copied and pasted into the .htaccess file in a matter of seconds.

I know that anyone can route through a different server if they wish and I'm never going to stop that. I'm not even worried about it. Zzaxx's method is good enough to stop the vast majority of scavengers dead in their tracks.

This database seems to have been updated more recently than the Blockacountry one.

IPAddressLocation.org

The link you've just given gives me a '403 Forbidden Access' result, Hils.

I'm now using IE8 and these days it has a tool, which is used to give alternative 'Suggested Sites'.

It suggests: http://www.proxyserverprivacy.com/ipaddress_range.php

and also, the following interesting article on 'IP Address' at Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

It obviously works then, Doc. I told the webmaster to block you!!!

:o)

And here's another web site on IP Addresses and which covers Proxy Surfing. I guess it mostly looks at things from 'their' point of view rather than 'yours'. It is very thorough.

The stuff on Identity Hiding looks exceedingly interesting. It has an array of 'Tabs' and 'Tools' and loads of other stuff. I also see it has a 'Forum' and a 'Tutorial'.

http://www.proxyblind.org/

Here's Country Update and Country Update II obtained from the Forum at the above site. In the post they mention Charon and AAtools.

The link for Country Update II above appears to be broken and corrects to HERE

Exec: Any comments on IE8? Is it fit for download by a numbskull or should I wait a while?

TOK

Well, speaking from the very forefront of the latest Internet technology.....

Yeah. No problems. :-)

And if you want to check your other programs out for 'up-to-dateness', I'd recommend downloading the Free Update Checker from:

http://www.filehippo.com

and from where you can download just about every program update, inluding IE8 for XP.

(after clicking on the link to filehippo.com, see the link to the Update Checker at the top RHS of the web page)

If you want to check your hardware drivers out for 'up-to-dateness', I'd recommend a Free program called DriverMax. You can get that here:

http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/

The people who do DriverMax are a bit aggressive with their marketing so do take care. I think their 'aggression' is why you don't see it available on FileHippo.com. By the term 'aggressive', you will see they push to make you have other things too, and they do this far too pushily. So pushily, it makes you a bit suspicious. Nevertheless, Driver Max is a truly excellent program. But there's no real need to use it really frequently. Just 'now and again', I feel.

Excel: Many thanks for all of that. Busy evening coming up. TOK

I've gone over to IE8, and the only site I've had any issues with is Bloglines, which opens in Edit mode rather than read, for some reason.

I too are now on IE8,
just upgaded to vista 64 with 4 gig ram,was thinking must be faster then xp,
IE8 is slower to load pages,it maybe AVG internet security doing this,

when you open a page or open in another tab,is it instant,i have to wait a few secs befor it loads,
i like the way when you highlight a arrow comes up,click on it and it shows some programs that you can use,like highlight a place and you can go to a map,

firefox is faster with general stuff but iam so used to IE,

Scussy

You would be better upgrading to Windows 7 Beta x64 which is much better. the RC release is out Tuesday.

iam in 2 minds opty,
i liked vista home,so went x64 for the extra mem,i think its IE 8 thats slower,
now using firefox which is much faster,this is on my laptop,xps m1710,

i now have my trader PC to upgrade and my Gamming PC,both going 4 gig mem,

i have seen and heared good thingsabout windows 7,the thing is
when the release comes out in sept/oct will i have to clean install again,
thats a bit of a pain,and i norm wait for the 1st service pack to come out before i upgrade,so all the bugs have been sorted,and i dont fancy paying 180 x 3 in 6 months,

is there any differance beteen vista business x64 and vista ultimate x64
apart from media center,

Scussy

You are correct that Vista Business is almost the same as Ultimate. It's worth getting one of them if only for the disc encryption.

As regards Windows 7, the current beta version appears better and more stable than Vista SP1. The release candidate is out on Tuesday and I can't believe that that that will be any less reliable than the beta.

You can upgrade Vista to either the beta or RC version but not beta to RC, although there is a workaround. I'm not sure about upgrading XP.

Win 7 will also have an XP virtual mode (Business and Ultimate) which should cater for any old apps. I don't know whether this will be in the RC.

A google killer? Wolfram Alpha

I tried IE8 yesterday after another format, and eventhou it was faster it stopped me visting a lot of sites, and these were norton, trendmicro virus sites for online downloads couldnt find an option so quickly went back to 6.5 and now IE7

If you can tell me why or how to stop it from blocking them in the future I might give it another try

Also I've been looking for reviews of the best virus checkers free or pay, basically over the last week or so, the ones I've tested seem to pick up some more than others

RG

The bereviewd st virus checkers, as of a few months ago, are generally rckoned to be Mcafee with Norton a close second. I always found Norton good but it took a lot of resources. I will no longer use it because they swindled me on a renewal and refused to communicate with me. I haven't tried Mcafee, I'm using Panda at present which is cheap and appears to work well.

RG

The bereviewd st virus checkers, as of a few months ago, are generally rckoned to be Mcafee with Norton a close second. I always found Norton good but it took a lot of resources. I will no longer use it because they swindled me on a renewal and refused to communicate with me. I haven't tried Mcafee, I'm using Panda at present which is cheap and appears to work well.

Edit

Your experience is very different from mine, I rely on a less than top rated AV program, a very good external firewall and always patch the OS. I doubt that I have one virus warning a year yet I run a network of computers that are theoretically liable to pass viruses between them but this has never happened. I'm as sure as I can be that they are not going undetected.

Is it possible that some of your alerts are generated from the virus signatures in your multiple AV programs?

I have used Mcafee and found it to be the most hungry of resources of all the ones I have tried. I currently use Avast.