A common area of confusion among computer users is dealing with the prefixes we use to relate file sizes. Here is the easiest way I've seen to conceptualize these measurements.

Bit: the smallest unit of measure for data and space that holds it on your computer. This is the level at which all data is either a 1 or a 0.

Byte: made up of eight bits. A byte is equivalent to a character ("a", "b" etc.). The order and combination of the eight ones and zeros (bits) defines a character. eg. 00000001 etc.

Kilobyte: (K or KB ) equals: 1024 bytes

Megabyte: (MB, or M. or meg) equals 1024 kilobytes

Gigabyte: (GB, G or gig) equals 1024 Megabytes

How many bytes do we have in a gigabyte? 1024 x 1024 x 1024 = 1,073,741,824 bytes -- slightly over a billion.

That's a lot of one's and zero's that you have on your hard drive. Have you backed them up latley?

24 March 2003  |   permalink

By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com-- During an appearance on Thursday to ask a House panel for a fatter 2004 budget, (Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge) claimed that cyberterrorists were just as dangerous as physical ones. Ridge said his department would "monitor the Internet for signs of a potential terrorist attack, cyberterrorism, hacking, and state-sponsored information warfare."

"We will not distinguish between physical and cyber in this new unit," Ridge said. "We will pay as much attention to the Internet as we do physical."

What is this guy thinking?

Last I checked, it was physical terrorists who bombed the Marine barracks in Lebanon, who attacked the U.S.S. Cole, who took out the Oklahoma City federal building, and who suicide-bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Wily-fingered hackers had nothing to do with it.

more...

22 March 2003  |   permalink

21 March 2003  |   permalink

The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

Program aborting
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.

Three things are certain
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

I ate your Web page.
Forgive me; it was tasty
And tart on my tongue

Submitted by: Lonnie Facchina of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

20 March 2003  |   permalink

Last week, I was using my own computer to demonstrate to a client how they can use the Windows 2000 bootable CD to delete a partition on their hard drive. I managed to delete my own partition that contains all of my personal and business files! Skip diggity!

Thankfully, the bootable utlity that comes with Partiton Magic allowed me to restore the partition. All of my data was intact, although I had to reinstall Windows because I couldn't seem to edit the boot.ini file to find my Windows folder, which lives on my second partition. Grrr. So, I've spent the past while getting my system back up to speed: software and drivers installed, settings reestablished, etc. Another learning experience perhaps, but that is partially the reason why I haven't been posting to this site in over a week.

I'm back.

19 March 2003  |   permalink

"Mastermind™ gives you the ability to access your entire music and movie collection from anywhere with an Internet connection. Install the Mastermind application on every computer where you store your media files, then use the Mastermind web client to see a combined and organized view of your media. Play back your media from anywhere, to anywhere."

I've just started using this software myself; so far, I'm pretty impressed. It's currently in development, so I would expect there will be some glitches. If you're keen to try, its a free download here.

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As more people are buying LCD monitors, I’ve decided to put together a primer.

LCD monitors cost significantly more then their familiar CRT monitor brethren. Cathode Ray Tube technology, (or CRT), is the same technology used in televisions. The main justifications for the extra cost of LCD is reduced eye-strain and smaller case size, which leaves more desk space. LCD’s look slick and hip, and have a crisp image.

Many people mistakenly refer to LCD monitors as “flat” monitors. This is not a good label for them, because there are also flat screens on CRT displays. The flat screen is certainly a pleasant feature of an LCD, however.

Some LCD monitors have inputs for both PC and television, so they can serve double-duty. This is advantageous if you live in a small apartment or are on a budget. Some can also connect to game consoles and other devices. With their portability, LCD monitors allow for versatility that big-ol’ CRT’s lack.

LCD’s have a slower pixel response time, which can make for some blurry movie watching. This is a very real consideration for serious gamers in weighing the pro’s and con’s of an LCD over CRT monitor.

Another drawback is the viewing angle, which is generally less than a CRT. This would make it hard to share a monitor, and would mean that as a television display, the LCD would limit the seating area.

Higher-quality LCD monitors currently have viewing angles of 150-170 degrees horizontal and 130-180 degrees vertical.

Considerations such as pixel response time and viewing angle will become less important as the technology improves.

Here are the main features to look at in an LCD monitor:

Size: The majority of LCD sales are 15” and 17” models. As you look at 18” displays and up, the price rises dramatically. For many applications, which require multi-tasking, size is a very important consideration. A 15” monitor would make a lousy display for watching DVD’s. For some users a 15” monitor is adequate, however; and in some situations it is a perfect fit.

Image Quality: When judging an LCD’s performance, I’ll want to see it display a high-quality image and judge the colour and sharpness. Then I would watch a DVD on it. Finally, I would use it to view some plain text and observe how sharp and defined the text displays. Another consideration is the resolution settings that the display is capable of.

Features: Some LCD’s come with a remote control. Some can swivel on their base for portrait viewing. Other features may include: two component inputs; picture-in-picture; PC Card slot; USB ports; or speakers.

Viewing Angle: If you’re going to pay for an LCD, insist on a viewing angle of at least 150 degrees horizontal, 120 degrees vertical. 170 x 170 is a lot nicer!

Menus and Controls: LCD’s can be more troublesome to set up then CRT monitors. It is nice to have easy and intuitive controls, while having lots of features. Some LCD’s have many buttons while others rely on two or three.

Inputs: While you may know why you want an LCD monitor at this time, as a long-term investment, you may find yourself wanting to use the LCD for different tasks in the future. The uses of an LCD monitor are governed by the inputs that the unit has. They can include:

S-Video (used for high-quality video connections);

Composite (uses a single RCA jack to connect to a video source-- low quality);

Component (uses 3 RCA jacks to separate the three color signals to give you a much richer and more powerful video experience);

Optical (have a Toslink connector on each end and are used to connect optical audio connections, such as on a DVD or CD player);

RF (used to connect television monitors to antennas or video cassette recorders-- low quality);

DVI (enables high-resolution applications on digital flat-panel displays);

VGA (used by computer monitors to seperate the RGB signals).

Design: Elegant is a word that well describes the way an LCD looks on a desk. Some have bases of painted metal, while others are molded plastic. Some designs employ clean, straight lines; others are more fluid in their appearance. Consider the weight of the base, and how easy it would be to accidentally knock the display over.

Price: LCD monitors may cost more, but when considered in the perspective of the price of CRT monitors just a few years ago, they do not seem so bad. As a monitor will generally outlast a computer in terms of its usefulness, it is easier to justify buying a nice display. But with 17” and larger CRT displays becoming so inexpensive, LCD monitors are still a luxury item in most situations.

11 March 2003  |   permalink

Music has always been my first love. Even computers, which are the main focus of my life and career, are second to my love of music. I used to be very discouraged by what I perceived as a lack of good music being recorded in the past 10 or 20 years. The internet has changed all that for me, and introduced me to an endless amount of amazing music from all genres.

Some people would like to see that curtailed. Or, at least they want the distribution of music over the internet to be controlled by the old-school record companies. Thus, I sometimes feel the need to rant.

The sheet music industry tried to stop the manufacture of the phonograph for fear that with recorded music available, no one would attend live performances anymore.

The recording industry tried to stop the first "DJ" who spun rock'n'roll tunes "for free". They feared that no one would buy albums when they could listen to the songs for free. That is, until they realized that every time the guy spun a tune, the sales of that album would skyrocket. Soon they were giving DJ’s albums for free, and sometimes even tried bribing DJ’s with cash to play certain songs.

"The record industry is still pissed off that other people are making money off their business, even if it promotes their products and increases their sales. I think they're still mad about radio," Jonathan Potter.

They tried for years to block the sale of the audiocassette recorder, claiming once again that the technology would destroy the music industry. Sony and Phillips were in court for 8 years defending the Beta recorder and the VCR-- said to signal the end of the movie industry.

Now they have successfully put a harness on Napster, but not so easily on Gnutella and similar, decentralised Internet file-sharing services.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) doesn't want to prevent us from having new technology... but rather they are asking the law to prevent us from utilizing the technology that is already at our fingertips. In my estimation, this time they have very good reason to fear. I don't believe that this technology will destroy music or impoverish artists. It is revolutionizing how music is distributed, however. It begs to question: why do we need record companies?

If an artist can independently record and distribute material to the whole world, perhaps the record companies will soon be reduced to offering a service, for a fee, to musicians. Rather than saying “If you want a shot at success you have to sign the dotted line,” now they will have to solicit their services to independent and empowered recording artists.

With the endless stories of uncompromising, greedy and abusive record companies inhibiting the financial and creative freedom of our even the most famous of musicians, do you really care about the fate of the record labels?

Its time to rethink copyright laws, which were introduced with the advent of the printing press and don't really apply to our current technological capabilities.

08 March 2003  |   permalink

If I were putting together a nice system for myself today, I would look at including lots of DDR RAM (twice as fast as the familiar SDRAM); and making sure that the motherboard has Serial-ATA and USB 2.0 support.

In recent years, RAM has become so amazingly inexpensive. Also, processors just keep doubling in speed. When I bought a computer running at 800MHz two years ago, I had a friend ask me, “Why would you possibly need that?”. Within a few months they had 1.3 and 1.4GHz chips on the market. Very soon it was 2GHz. I really think that the speed has outstripped the demand from most applications on the market. To be honest, I think that CPU speed is no longer such an important consideration in the performance of a desktop computer. I am quite content with my 1.4GHz processor. I don't find CPU upgrades all that dramatic, whereas I find that increasing the RAM makes a computer run smoother and act more responsive.

The last great bottleneck in desktop computers is the hard drive. CPU speed and RAM price-drops have continued to follow Moore’s Law. While hard drives have dropped in price, and have grown in capacity, their speeds have remained the same for years. As you may know, hard drives continue to come in two flavors: 5400 r.p.m. and 7200 r.p.m.

My computer 3 years ago had 75MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, and a 7200 r.p.m hard drive.

The CPU of my current computer is 18.6 times faster, I have 16 times more RAM, and together they are stuck reading files off of my hard drive at the exact same speed that the old computer did.

Serial-ATA is the new specification for hard drives. These new hard drives are just now entering the marketplace—it's a safe bet they will be expensive. I would hold off on buying one just now. Perhaps a 20 or 40 gig drive at 7200 r.p.m. would tie me over. But I would make sure that I was investing in a computer that could accommodate a Serial-ATA drive in a year or so from now when they become affordable.

Read more about Serial-ATA technology here.

Serial-ATA hard drives will soon be available at 10,000 r.p.m., and promise to get faster as the technology improves.

In case you didn’t know, USB 2.0 is 40x faster than the previous USB 1.1 specification (what we’ve commonly referred to as just ‘USB’ over the past years). It is also faster than FireWire. In short, it is the fastest way to transfer data into and out of a computer, whether it be from a scanner, a digital camera, dvd burner, etc. It is backwards-compatible with USB 1.1 devices.

Learn more about USB 2.0 here.

If you are on the market for a moderate high-end system, or if you are putting one together for yourself, my advice is to think about Serial ATA and USB 2.0 support, and get a middle-of-the-road processor. Spend the extra cash on super-fast DDR RAM or put it towards a sweet monitor.

07 March 2003  |   permalink

By Tiernan Ray  If, as George Bernard Shaw said, democracy ensures a government only as good as its citizens, perhaps the current faults of the Internet lie in our own shortcomings as Internet users. Sure, the high price of broadband access is attributable to the obscure machinations of telephone lobbyists, but we have only ourselves to blame for the fact that we can't do neat things like exchange our business cards or calendars over the Web, or chat with anyone we like.

Things like instant messaging and the vCal standard for Internet calendaring don't have the widespread adoption they should have. In that sense, they have failed. And it's all because in our rush to build a dot-com world, we forgot about the Internet's first premise, to connect everything. It's time to re-examine our priorities and put some muscle behind the open standards that guarantee connectivity.

more...

05 March 2003  |   permalink

Reader JR from Boise, Idaho writes:

Hello,

I stumbled across your site. I like it and you seem very knowledgeable. I have two questions I have been seeking the answers to for years. perhaps you know the answer....

1) Is there a way to listen to real audio streams without installing Real Audio Player?

I share your disregard for Real Player and its intrusive tricks. Not only is it annoying-- it doesn’t work well and it isn’t very configurable. Therefore, I was glad when I stumbled upon a plugin for Winamp2 that enables you to watch to and listen to Real media.

"Tara's input plugin allows Winamp to play real audio, real video, real jukebox, mpegs, live rtsp/pnm streams like those from Spinner.com & Radio@AOL, and many other formats. Successfully tested with Real Player 6/7/8/G2 on Win9x/ME/NT/2K/XP. "

Download Tara’s Input Plugin here.

The catch is that you have to have both Winamp2 and Real Player installed. The nice part is that after you install Real Player and suffer through its registration process, you never have to see it again!

I’ve moved on to Winamp3 because I like all of the features that I’ve described here. However, I still have Winamp2 installed, and I have it configured to associate itself with all Real file-types: .ram, .rm, .rmm, .ra, .rmx, .rv, .rmj, .rpm, .smi, and .smil

2) Using the DOS xcopy command you can throw the /v switch to turn verify on. How can I do this using the GUI in XP? In other words I want to copy files, verify them and use the drag and drop method.

Great question. I suspect that the Windows GUI has become so flawlessly accurate that there is no need to verify files.

But seriously, you do know that the /v switch is still supported in XP’s Command Line? COPY and XCOPY still work with /v. Fire up the command line by holding the Windows key and pressing r, type "command" and press Enter.

When copying files, you will not be shown any status info to indicate that it has, indeed, verified the files. However, if you try copying a batch of files alternately with and without the /v switch, you will notice a subtle difference in the time it takes for the transfer.

As for dragging and dropping files with verification, I'm pretty sure that Windows does do this by default. I'm pretty sure that the o/s will perform a checksum equation on the copied files to make sure they jive with the source files. You should get an error message if something goes askew. However, not being 100% sure about that, I figured there must be some third-party software that would accomplish the same task, so I ran a search for “copy verify” at www.downloads.com and found the following:

WDiff 3.3
Verifying the integrity of files and directory structures when transferring.
OS: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000
File Size: 1.11MB
License: Free to try, $20 to buy

Of course, if this software works with NT and 2000 then it will also work with XP.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the copy/ paste functions without registering. I’m not sure how important this is to you.

As always, if anyone else has any ideas on these topics, please post your comments.

04 March 2003  |   permalink

Here is a new "feature" in Internet Explorer that I can't stand!

Scenario: You click a link that leads to an image. You know the image is rather large, because it takes a little while to download. As soon as it is finished loading, Internet Explorer resizes it so that it all fits in the browser window. The problem is, the image becomes distorted. If the webmaster intended the image to be smaller, he/she would have reduced its size before posting it on the 'net.

Solution: Open Internet Explorer. Go to Tools | Internet Options | Advanced | scroll down to Multimedia | and deselect "Enable Automatic Image Resizing"

You can test the setting by loading this super-huge image.

Now you are all set to enjoy this next post...

03 March 2003  |   permalink

A little late, perhaps; but Microsoft has released Windaz 2000 for Australians. The operating system, known for its stability, has been restyled in an effort to meet the unique cultural needs of Australian computer users.

"Don't be forced to use confusing software apps. Windaz Too Thowsand will soon be in shops"

Click here to learn more...

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FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- IDC predicts that the volume of Internet traffic generated by end users worldwide will nearly double annually over the next five years, increasing from 180 petabits per day in 2002 to 5,175 petabits per day by the end of 2007. To put these figures into perspective, the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress amounts to only 10 terabytes of information. By 2007, IDC expects Internet users will access, download, and share the information equivalent of the entire Library of Congress more than 64,000 times over, every day.

"Some industry observers have speculated that slowing growth in Internet traffic is at the root of the current telecom malaise, but IDC research shows that not only is Internet traffic growth strong, but it will continue at near triple digit rates over the next five years," said Sterling Perrin, senior research analyst, Optical Networks at IDC.

Source: lightreading.com

01 March 2003  |   permalink