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In addition to NetPositive’s built-in filtering capabilities, there’s another technique you can use to block ads originating from most of the major web advertising services, and that is browser independent (i.e. will work with Opera, BeZilla, and lynx as well).
Visit this page and copy the contents to the clipboard. Then open up /boot/beos/etc/hosts and past the contents into the end of the file. Restart networking. This will effectively point all major ad hosts back to localhost, thereby causing them to fail.

BeatWare’s Mail-It can convert mail from Outlook Express to BeMail messages (for use in any BeOS mail client), but it doesn’t yet convert from Outlook Express 5. To do that, you’ll need a tool called IE2E.exe for Windows which is available for free from Mindware. IE2E converts .dbx mailboxes to .mbx mailboxes.
What you need to do is convert the proprietary .dbx OE5 mailboxes to the more widely used .mbx mailbox format. Eudora uses the .mbx format, so the conversion to BeMail is done via Mail-It.
First, in OE5, move all mail subfolders to the root /Local Folders (e.g. move /Local Folders/Friends/Gary to /Local Folders). Sub-folder structures aren’t preserved in the .dbx’s or .mbx’s, and moving them removes potentially problematic directory tagging in the .dbx. IE2E seems happier that way, and you lose nothing.
Empty the Inbox, Outbox, and Drafts. either delete messages or file them. finally, compact all the folders via the FileFoldersCompact All Folders menu command.
Exit OE and explore C:WindowsApplication DataIdentities* MicrosoftOutlook Express and copy the .dbx files to a temporary area (if you make this temp area the same location of IE2E.exe, it makes things easier). From the temp area, remove Inbox.dbx, Outbox.dbx, Drafts.dbx, Deleted Items.dbx, pop3uidl.dbx and Folders.dbx. They are either empty or unecessary.
Now run IE2E and point it at the temp area. It will do its thing and convert the folders you select. Go and delete the .dbx files from the temp area and only the .mbx’s will remain.
Back in BeOS, you can mount your Windows partition by right-clicking the Desktop and choosing it from the Mount submenu. Navigate to the temp location and copy your .mbx files over to the BeOS side. The .mbx’s can be imported as Win95/NT Eudora mailboxes via the Mail-It importer as is at this point, but I don’t know if Sent Items will reflect the name of the sender or the addressee. Addressee was certainly critical for me. Someone can try it and report back.
I went the extra step of downloading Eudora Lite 3, creating an Import.fol directory in /Eudora and putting the .mbx’s in there. I opened Eudora and let it index the mail, then imported the .mbx’s with Mail-It. The address field of Sent Mail is the addressee! Mmmmm…..attributes hoovered correctly.
I did experience some problems when converting large folders (Sent Mail especially killed me). IE2E reported the correct number of messages converted, but both Eudora and Mail-It had fewer messages, with missing messages appended to imported messages. I had no problems when the folders contained less than 100 messages. The obsessive-compulsive can chop up large folders into sections, but I just trashed a lot of messages, mostly useless stuff anyway.

In Gobe Productive 2.0, you can flow text around images. Try this:

1. Open a document (either a native doc or a Microsoft Word doc).
2. Tap Alt+Shift+T to make the toolbar appear along the left of the window.
3. Click the pointing hand button to toggle into selection mode
4. Drag an image out of the Tracker and into the document. Drag any corner to resize as necessary.
5. Optionally tear off the transparency palette. Drag the transparency slider back and forth to control the opacity of your image.
6. Click the Text Wrap icon on the toolbar (a blue diamond) and select a wrap style (tight wrap is good for most purposes). Text will wrap around the image.
7. Drag the image around on the page to see how text reflows dynamically around it.

Memorize this trick and use it in your BeOS demos.

If you want to chop huge WAV files up into smaller pieces (for instance, you might have recorded an entire album side and want to break it up into individual songs), you don’t need 3rd-party software — the built-in SoundRecorder app does a great job of this.

1. Drag the Wav file into SoundRecorder. Wait for a bit as it loads if the file is really big. You’ll know it’s completely loaded when the waveform display is showing.
2. Drag the semi-circular grippers at either end of the track indicator back and forth to mark the beginning and end of the sample you want to crop.
3. Right-drag or Ctrl-drag the waveform display to the Desktop or the Tracker and choose an output format from the context menu.

Some operating systems disable the CTRL-ALT-DEL sequence when a password protected screen saver is in use. Using CTRL-ALT-DEL twice on a BeOS password protected screen saver will reboot the system. Unless you’ve got BeChec kPoint or some other such utility installed, password protecting your BeOS machine via the screen saver is only partially useful — clever users will still be able to get into your system.

This tip is for advanced users only. Proceed at your own risk.
As you know, BeOS offers lightning-fast filesystem queries on arbitrary data sets by indexing attributes attached to your files. This is a huge convenience win for users, but can slow down some operations when dealing with zillions of small files, especially if those files have lots of attributes.
If you want to create an ultra-fast filesystem and are prepared to never be able to execute queries on a particular volume, you can create a volume without indices by using the mkbfs command with the -noindex flag. Remember that using this command will destroy all data on the volume in question.
Determine the device name where you want the filesystem to live (the df command is the easiest way to map volume names to device names), then type something like:

mkbfs -noindex 1024 /dev/disk/ide/ata/0/slave/0/0_0 speedy

This would create an index-free BFS volume with a block size of 1024 called speedy. If you later want to add indices to the volume, you’ll have to create it over from scratch. Some developers have noted great speed increases in compile time with very large projects.

Some people have trouble getting NAT (Network Address Translation) services working under BeOS. The following instructions work for me, and I hope they can be of some help to others as well. Before you begin, make sure you can ping your own machine as well as the IP address of the NAT host. Note that these settings are for my machines — addresses may be different on your own network.

1. NAT Host – Be sure the NAT add-on file (not the config file..the other one) is located at /boot/beos/system/add-ons/net_server.
2. Router Machine – ( 192.168.0.1 )
   Set Network prefs to the following:
   Domain Name – cantbeblank
   Host Name – adroid (what I use 🙂 )
   Prim DNS – your ISP’s primary DNS number
   Sec DNS – your ISP’s sec DNS number

3. Check your network card to make sure your numbers agree with these:
   IP = 192.168.0.1
   Subnet = 255.255.255.0
   Gateway – 0.0.0.0
   Click on the Services tab of your network prefs window and make sure the IP Forwarding box is checked.

4. Go to NAT Config
   Under Network Interfaces make sure the LAN box is set for 192.168.0.1
   The Internet drop down box should be PPP.
   NAT ON should be checked.

5. Restart Networking and then check ALL the settings above to make sure they took. I found that NAT did not save the PPP setting once or twice and needed to be redone.
6. NAT Client ( 192.168.0.2 )
   NOTE!!! YOU DO NOT put NAT on the second machine — only on the first.
   In Network Prefs:
   Domain = cantbeblank
   Host Name – froid
   Primary DNS – your ISP’s primary DNS number
   Sec DNS – your ISP’s sec DNS number

7. Network card settings
   IP = 192.168.0.2
   Subnet = 255.255.255.0
   Gateway = 192.168.0.1

   Restart networking on the 2nd machine.
   If you have a PPP session going, and initiate a PPP request on the 2nd machine..it SHOULD see the Net and go get it… but that’s in a perfect world.

NOTE – I have not been able to get the 2nd machine to actually cause the modem to dial out on the host machine. Don’t know if this is my fault or something that NAT can’t cause. John Varga (JVarga@mpival.com) replies:
You could always telnet into the host machine and run „duncontrol –up“. Not very elegant, but it should work in a pinch.

New BeOS users sometimes discover that audio is quieter in BeOS than it is in Windows or other operating systems. The reason for this is that Windows drivers add about +20dB of artificial volume to the output, while the BeOS driver is volume-neutral. This is very important to audio professionals, who will enjoy higher quality audio from BeOS than they do from Windows (Windows will distort output on high-quality hardware). Do not file a bug report — Be does not intend to „fix“ this situation. Just turn up your volume controls a little more.
However, there is a known bug with the Sound Blaster PCI 128 (and possibly other cards), which have especially low sound output. For instance you can have the volume at a normal level and you will hear nothing. This is a known BeOS bug which should be fixed in a post R.4.5.2 release.

Some people think ArtPaint doesn’t support colored text. Ah, but it does! Here’s how…

1. Add a new layer to your project.
2. Use the text tool to create your text.
3. Use the color balance add-on to make your text colorful.
4. You can even give each letter a different color by selecting only some characters of the text.

Sean Long (sean@hailstonesoftware.com) adds the following:
There is a much easier way to add color text in ArtPaint. You first select the text tool and click on the canvas to bring up the tool dialog. You type the text you want to display then highlight that text and open the palette window located in the Window menu. With the palette you select the color you want the text to be and the text changes to that color.

A question asked frequently around here is how to get ssh working on the BeOS. Here’s the answer, plus a handy tip on how you can download email through a secure channel.
I know your email comes in through the Net unencrypted, but at least this avoids exposing your password in plaintext. Also if a sniffer is between you and your server, rather than between your server and the greater internet, it will afford some protection.
It also serves the higher purpose of just making lots of traffic on the Net encrypted, which screws up hackers and government spooks.
First, download ssh from:
http://www.be.com/software/beware/network/ssh.html
or
http://abstrakt.ch/be/ssh-1.2.26-3_src.tgz
Note that the actual download server is in Switzerland, not in the US, so it’s available to anyone who can legally use encryption.
Read the instructions for building it, but after running configure, change the line in config.h from [missing] to [missing].
To use ssh, you need to have a mail server that supports ssh login. Most ISP’s don’t allow login access at all. Maybe your University provides ssh, or maybe you can convince your company admin to install it if you get mail from a corporate mail server – the Unix source for both the client and server are available free at:
http://www.ssh.org

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Now you need to make sure your /boot/beos/etc/hosts file is properly configuring your localhost networking environment. You can do this by adding:

127.0.0.1			localhost.your.isp		localhost
your.gateway.ip		localhost.your.isp		localhost

Now to see if ssh works, do this in a Terminal window:

ssh -l username hostname.com

It will say this host is unknown. Answer „yes“ to accept it, then enter your password.
Now I suggest changing your password at your account, and never again entering your password except through a secure connection.
Now set up port forwarding:

ssh -L 1000:hostname.com:110 -l username hostname.com

Log in again, and leave the Terminal window open. Go into your email client preferences, and change the POP server address to 127.0.0.1 (your loopback address). Change the port to 1000 and try checking your mail. (Update your password too if you changed it).
If you have mail configured to check several accounts, like I do with Mail-It, then you need to run several port forwards simultaneously. All of the forwards will come from the same localhost IP address, so you need to use different local port numbers – use 1000 for one host, 1001 for the next, and so on.
Note that ssh also supports secure XWindows by setting up a proxy display on your Unix host.
It’s best if you use ssh to always use it whenever at all possible. If you have to not use it (perhaps while logging in from a friend’s PC), then change your password afterwards.
US and Canadian residents can get a GUI SSH called SecureCRT from
http://www.vandyke.com
It’s $99 with a 30-day free evaluation download.
I believe there is a commercial windows SSH available outside the US with a link to be found at http:// www.ssh.org
Does anyone know where to get SSH for the Macintosh? I know NCSA telnet has a normally-disabled „encrypted“ checkbox; perhaps there is an SSH version of NCSA available?