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20 Things They Don't Want You to Know
theodp writes "PC World spills the beans about a bunch of things technology companies would rather you didn't know, including the lowdown on exploiting Windows' bad security, unlocking cell phones, using an IPod to move music and useless specs." Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.
http://pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,ai d,122094,00.asp
Windows Messenger != MSN Messenger.
Trillian supports MSN Messenger as well as AIM/ICQ/Yahoo!/IRC/Jabber etc. It's basically the same as GAIM, and supports most protocols (also supports plugins).
:)
What I don't understand is what the grandparent is talking about, why would he have to change to MSNger to stop having to fight the firewall? Trillian mimics MSN Messenger in order to connect to MSN servers. The only problems with Trillian for me are high memory usage (although not so bad when compared to MSNger 7.0), slow interface, and Audio/Visual capabilities that only work half the time.
I've switched to MSNger exclusively because I don't have anyone I chat with regularly on AIM or Yahoo, so the benefits of Trillian/Gaim are much less than the frustrations of incompatibility with MSNger buddies. Besides, you can always break the EULA and remove the ads and such from the MSN client, I recommend SpeedyMSN. Really cleans up the interface, if you can find the download for 2.0 (both speedymsn.tk and speedymessenger.net are down at the time of this writing.) You can bet Microsoft doesn't want people knowing that they can get rid of that pesky ad....
They recommend buying things from Dell. For those who are already stuck with things from Dell it is possible to get replacement parts from third parties (even Dell laptop batteries) without having to spend hours on the phone.
I always wondered where they got this shit. The first time I encountered it, I literally did a double take. I was poking around computer speakers, I don't remember why, and I came across a little set of desktop speakers. Nothing remarkable except that they were rated to about 300watts.
Ok now WTF? As it happens, I own professional speakers. They are about 5 feet tall, dual bass drivers, 3-way, etc. Serious speakers in other words. I check on them and they are rated to 200 watts a peice. Sounds reasonable for their size, but would still be pushing it. I'm sure they could handle 200 watts of RMS power, but I really wouldn't want to try it.
So how the hell can these little speakers handle 300 watts? I mean I can't even figure out a peak computation that would figure it. So I find that it's "PMPO" power. I don't know what PMPO means, Peak Momentary Power Output I've heard but I think SWPOOA would be a better term, Shit We Pulled Out of Our Ass. It seems to have no relation to reality, purely somebody's fantasy.
For that matter I can't figure out why you'd want that kind of power out of computer speakers. I drive my speakers with a 150 watt amp, that's 75 watts per channel so a little less than half of what they are rated to take. It's overkill in the purest sense of the word. For normal, modern music I rarely drive them beyond 1 watt each. For classical dynamic music, maybe 5 watts. This drives it to nearly painful levels.
More power is useful in large venues but for computers, who the fuck cares? Speakers are right next to you.
There's a difference between Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger.
WM is bundled with XP, and is hard to kill; MSNM needs downloading. Though they both run on the same network, MSNM is far more up to date, so everyone downloads that and uses it, while WM sits in the system tray using resources. Hence the point in the article.
HTH
Nothing groundbreaking, but might be a good primer for the non-techie in your life.
Most geeks can read however.
Actually,
r _power.html)
they usually are true.
But most users don't know how to interpret the numbers.
For instance, when they said you speaker system is "1000 Watts" I'm pretty sure they meant the PMPO (Peak Music Power) rating, which means:
(According to http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/amplifie
"So called "music power". This power figure tells the power which the amplifier can maximally supply in some conditions. PMPO rating gives the highest measuring value, but this info is quite useless, because there is no exact standard how PMPO power should be measured.
The reason for this power rating was to show the max capability of equipment for recreating strong musical transients like kettle drums and the like. Similar thing (music power rating) was used in the sixties, and I think it assumed a square wave that swung the whole supply range of the output stage. This alone gives them a factor of two over a clean sine wave note. But the ugliest thing they did was to assume that the high power lasted such a short period of time that the power supply caps would hold the voltages steady without any drooping. In the real world, an under powered PS could be hidden by this ruse and the PMPO might be a factor of 10 or more higher than what could be sustained on a nice instrumental performance.
Forget what adverts say about peak power or other "power terms" because they are not standardized and anyway comparable between equipments. Just look for "RMS continuous Power" or other reliable power rating (like DIN power). "
Generally, there isn't any direct mapping between PMPO and RMS (Root Mean Square) since every manufacturer formulates his own PMPO measurements....
Most of the time the RMS value of a speaker is about 10 times lower than the PMPO rating.
Which in your case, Means ~100 Watt RMS (This is VERY good for a single channel... but it's kind'a low for a large multi-speaker system).
Hope this helps.
Sigs are for the weak.
i found the find-a-human section quite helpful:
https://www.quickbase.com/db/bam6rdiey?a=q&qid=5
You Can Get a Human on the Phone
Follow the directions at Paul English's Find-A-Human IVR Phone System Shortcuts site to reach a human operator at any of more than 60 cell phone, PC, and travel firms.
when i know i can find the info online, i won't bother. i need some help that an automated system can't provide or wastes too much time trying to get it to recgonize what i'm saying.
another winner i thought was:
Useless Specs: Digital Zoom
definitely the most useless spec i can't think of at the moment. it tricks unsuspecting buyers into believing their digicam has more 'zoom' than it really has.
HD Trailers
There are inkjet printers where it would have been cheaper to buy a brand new printer than buying ink to the old one...
The manufacturer has to replace any defective part. That's the starting point here.
The question is what constitutes a defective part? Luckily for LCD manufacturers (and not so luckily for consumers) is that LCDs are specified to allow x number of non-working pixels and still be considered non-defective.
The same holds true for Flash RAM. Bad memory blocks are a fact of life in Flash RAM. And you can't get a replacement if the number of bad blocks isn't above the technical standards document.
Also, when comparing speaker performance, Watts are definitely not the complete picture.
The first thing you need to find out is the efficiency of speakers. For instance, my speakers have an efficiency of 92 dB/W, which means that at a power level of 1 W, they will produce 92 dB of sound. As dB is a logarithmic scale, doubling the wattage will increase the number of dBs by 3, so a power level of 64 W will get me a 92 + 3 * 6 = 110 dB sound level. However, a speaker with an efficiency of 80 dB/W will only produce 98 dB for the same amount of power. I've seen efficiencies ranging from 70 dB/W up to the high ninety-somethings, so be careful to check these numbers.
The second thing you need to find out is the impedance of the speakers, combined with the impedance your amplifier is rated for. For instance, my amplifier is not simply rated as 50 W, but as 50 W for speakers with an impedance of 8 Ohms, and 100 W for speakers with an impedance of 4 Ohms. This can make some difference. Watch out with getting a speaker with very low impedance though: if your amplifier wasn't designed to handle that, they will probably draw too much power, causing the amplifier to get overheated. In addition, you will not be able to open up your volume knob more than a couple of millimeters -- and volume is probably something you like to have detailed control over.
Many spammers have taken advantage of "windows messenger" spamming by throwing packets at windows messenger in hopes that it will appear on the users' desktop. Disabling the messenger effectively eliminates this.
The average small to medium hi-fi loudspeaker tends to have an efficiency in the mid eighty-something dB/W. With something like 50 W of power, this is is quite sufficient for moderate volumes.
If you want something loud for the party cellar, look for something with 90 dB/W or better. This kind of efficiency is usually found in larger loudspeakers, which can also handle 100W RMS or more. I guess Handyman's speakers belong in that category and would do fine in the party cellar.
Big P.A. systems for rock concerts tend to have around 100 dB/W, combined with a few thousand watts of power. The resulting volume is quite impressive even in a large hall.
C - the footgun of programming languages
TRANSLATION
A few weeks ago, while at a friend's house, I heard the local DSL company's salesman trying to convince by friend to purchase their product. When trying to explain how fast an ADSL line could be when compared to a standard dial-up modem, he said that "DSL is like having your own leased line".
On another occasion, I overheard a conversation in a shop between a salesman and an old lady. The salesman was trying to explain the difference between 2GB and 2GiB. Rather than use numbers, he said the difference in space was due to a "driver" on the pen.
True, but Windows Messenger != Windows Messenger, either :-)
There's MSN Messenger. We all know what that is.
Then there's Windows Messenger. Which is a sibling of MSN Messenger included in Windows XP
Finally there's that other Windows Messenger. The one which used to be called WinPopup.
It'd be nice if different parts of MS could at least make sure this sort of naming confusion didn't happen. Oh well.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Secret #576:
That if you switch to the printer friendly version of most websites you can read the full article without switching pages or having to go through tons of advertisements.
Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
The difference is: with digital zoom, the image is enlarged before compressing. If you just take the image, and enlarge it in Photoshop afterwards, you're also enlarging the compression artefacts. Here's a test with a simple Canon Ixus-i camera:o mDigital.jpg o mPhotoshop.jpg
Digital zoom: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~athomas/images/Zo
Photoshop: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~athomas/images/Zo
The 'stains' you see on the car's hood in the digital zoom image are not artefacts, but raindrops. As you can see, modern cameras do have quite good interpolation algorithms, maybe even better than Photoshop's bicubic interpolation. The contrast in the digital zoom image is also better because the camera can adapt to the zoomed part only, instead of having to make sure all the irrelevant parts of the image look good as well. In the photoshop image, you would need to increase the contrast to have the same effect, further amplifying the artefacts.
Nevertheless, the use of digital zoom is never justified unless optical zoom is not available, like with my Ixus-i camera. Or, when you really want to photograph something tiny in the distance and you're already at the maximum of your optical zoom.
You say "a 10 MB+ hard disk cache" like it's a huge capacity, but it really isn't.
.1-1% range.
.001% of the drive capacity.
It's a good rule of thumb in caching systems that a fast cache memory should be close to 1% of the size of whatever memory it's caching from for optimum performance. For instance, a meg of cache for every hundred megs of ram, or a gig of ram for every hundred gigs of disk space.
In real life cost-conscious consumer systems, we rarely see quite that much cache because the faster media is so much more expensive. There the ratio tends to drift downward, but still remains in the
But the hard drive cache is miniscule compared to even the smallest of other caches. Today's highest capacity drives have 4 or 5 hundred gigs of drive space, but a mere 8-16MB of cache. That's in the neighborhood of
And that small number becomes even more irrelevant for read performance when you realize that the information in that cache is usually duplicated in the operating system's filesystem cache in main ram. In fact the filesystem cache can generally be expected to contain a good deal more relevant information per unit of capacity, simply because the OS has more knowledge of file structure, and open files and access patterns than the drive's hardware can.
The hard drive's cache is useful for two reasons, write caching so that writes can be made to disk in large blocks at convenient times, and track-caching so that the drive can read all of one track in a single revolution. And while both of these are essential for a decent performing hard drive, neither of them benefit all that much from larger caches.
Yet Another Translation, by a professional:
"Sometime Fibs are Good"
An example of a bad fib:
Marketing representatives often use fibs to misrepresent the speed of communications service. For example, while visiting a friend a few weeks ago, I heard a local DSL company's sales representative pitching his company's service. He began to explain the advantages of DSL over a dial-up connection, and in doing so he told a fib: he said that DSL is the same as having a leased line. I interrupted him and asked him for confirmation, using the standard acronym "LL" for "Leased Line" to make it clear that I wanted to know if he was suggesting that DSL and a Leased Line were equivalent. The marketing representative replied that DSL and Leased Lines were the same thing, which is patently untrue.
This example of a bad fib demonstrates the underhanded marketing tactics some sales representatives choose to employ. These fibs lead the customer further from the truth, in the hope that the customer will make an ill-informed and unwise purchase. This tactic is unwise, however, because customers will grow unhappy with their service once they learn the truth.
An example of a good fib:
Hardware salespeople, especially the owners of stores and technically oriented sales representatives, sometimes tell less harmful fibs. Once, a merchant was pitching a 2GB USB pen to an older woman who did not seem to understand much about storage space. The merchant, being at heart an honest man, did not want to give his client the impression that he was selling her a full two gigabytes of storage space, because that was untrue, despite the manufacturer's claims. So, he disclosed the truth by telling a small fib: he told her that some of the space on the USB device was already used by software needed by computers accessing the device.
Although the owner said did not fully explain the difference between the product advertisement and the truth, he did make an effort to show his client that the packaging was misleading and that the product would not fully live up to the expectations advertised. By telling a small fib, he avoided allowing a client to believe a larger lie or allowing her to become confused by technical jargon and unfamiliar concepts. In this case, the result of telling the fib was to bring the client closer to the truth so that she could make an informed purchase.
The probable cause of your problem is that you don't use your printer very much and it dries out/gets full of dust/gets dropped.
Most cheap all-in-ones are actually designed for low use SOHO owners, but a Canon LIDE series scanner, a cheap base model photo printer and a basic laser together are more capable, more reliable, and cheap to fix if something goes wrong (replacing one item is cheaper than buying the extended warranty on the all-in-one.)
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Hard to kill? You right click and exit out of it in the taskbar, then rename C:\progra~1\Messenger to C:\progra~1\M. There, dead.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Everything you wrote is true, but I have to nitpick just a little ;)
The effeciency of a speakers is given in terms of output per watt at a reference distance (e.g. 92 dB 1 watt at 1 meter). It's generally understood that the sensitivity is measured at 1 meter, but if a loudspeaker specification doesn't give the distance, you might want to be a little suspicious - for example a speaker with an sensitivity of 92 dB 1 watt at 1 centimeter is going to be a lot less efficient than a speaker with an efficiency of 92 dB 1 watt at 1 meter.
Also, you may sometimes see the speaker sensitivity given as xx dB at 2.83 volts instead of 1 watt - 1 Watt is 2.83V into 8ohms, so a reference voltage of 2.83V is used for non-8ohm speakers.
One last point for people who buy separate amps and loudspeakers: you're more likely to damage your speakers by using a amp that outputs too little power than too much power. Most speakers can handle a lot of juice for short periods, given enough cool-down time. However, a low-power amp played loudly can cause clipping, and clipping will fry your tweeters pretty quickly.
Windows Messenger is included in Windows XP and can be used for IM-ing through Microsofts servers (they connect to the same servers as MSN Messenger), but can also be used for IM-ing on your own network using an Exchange Server. MS also has an Exchange IM client if you're using win2k or below.
Now for the Windows Messenger #2... this is actually called the Windows Messenger Service and is indeed used for popup messages (intended for networks). You can use WinPopup, but on the command line "net send \\IP.here.x.x "message"" will work too. I can remember doing a txt adventure game with one of my collegues using this before IM-ing was invented.Heh... those were good times... Anyway, I definately agree with you on the naming convention, but the Windows Messenger Service was around way before Instant Messenging was even invented, so what were they supposed to come up with after AOL and Yahoo! both created a product with "Messenger" in the name (yes I am aware that Google uses the name Talk, but I think that's because their future plans with it are in the voice/VOIP arena)?
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
There is a (rather indirect) relationship:
High efficiency is promoted by either
1) light membranes or
2) a horn
Unfortunately, 1) translates into a high resonance frequency, below which the response curve falls off. And 2) requires uncomfortably large enclosures to work for deep frequencies.
If you don't mind going for big and expensive speakers, however, huge enclosure volumes help with 1) and 2) becomes an option as well. Especially as a "corner horn" that uses your walls as an extension of the horn:
http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=2
C - the footgun of programming languages
I didn't get those once I started opening each page in a new tab instead of simply clicking the next page link.
HTH
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
The talk manpage says that the talk command appeared in 4.2BSD, which was released in August, 1983, according to this history of BSD. Does Windows Messenger Service predate that?
"I keep my Windows system pretty well secured, but somehow that doesn't prevent Windows' Security Center from informing me that 'Your computer might be at risk' every morning when I turn on my computer. That message gets old fast. To banish it for good, go to Start, Control Panel, Security Center. Then click Change the way Security Center alerts me in the resources box and uncheck all of the boxes on the resulting screen."
Another way is to disable Security Center all together...
Go to "Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services" and find the one for Security Center, then disable it.
Also in the services window you can disable many other annoying features, like messenger, not the IM client, but the client that lets any one send those annoying messages to your desktop... You know, the grey boxes that say "Go to this website and pay us $50 to stop these annoying messages with our message blocker!"