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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.
"Know anyone who uses Windows Messenger as their instant messaging client? Me neither."
That's strange, because I don't know anyone who doesn't. Except for a new guy who uses Trillian, but he'll come around when he gets tired of fighting the firewall.
PC World seems to be in a kind of limbo. It's not technical enough for anyone serious about computers, and it's way over the head of anyone who isn't familiar with computers. I guess that makes it prime reading material for CIOs.
But seriously folks. I was at the bookstore the other day and picked up a Computer Shopper. When did this new thin format happen? What happened to 500 pages of advertisements?
I wonder why Slashdot never gets any links to Dr. Dobbs Journal.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
BITTORRENT...! o_O
// bleh, 3rd post!
/ bet you were expecting something creative like Linux eh?
We all know this but I can't believe that PC World are actually saying it. They are one of the hardest sellers of extended warranties that I know. They once tried to sell me a warranty for a £10 mouse. IIRC the warranty was £15 but covered me for 3 years! No I don't shop there on a regular basis I just needed a mouse quickly.
As far as I can tell they make their money from running virus scanners on ill informed customers PC's. Their customer service is awful at best even when they are taking large sums of your money. I suppose that is the result of them being the only show in town. The last thing that really bugs me though is that they always have a security guard on the door.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
every hacker or geek had to start somewhere -
maybe learning how to copy Ipod tunes to multiple computers is just what the Dr. ordered to start someone down the road to unlocking the next propritary file format -
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Your average user should not be doing that.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
The truth is that people who care and know anything understand the situation and are not fooled, while the people who care and don't know anything will never tell the difference. It's always seemed like a nonissue to me...
I think I once heard that they simply multiplied the actual Watt ratings for the speakers by the number of speakers. So a pair of 10W computer speakers would be 10W * 10W * 2 = 200 MarketingWatts!
I saw these from a brief Google search: "According how audio industry seems to use the term PMPO (peak music power output), in can be anything from 5 to 100 watts of PMPO that equals one real RMS watt." and "The vendor of the product calculates PMPO based on the maximum power output of the device under perfect conditions and 100% efficiency. These conditions are impossible to obtain, and no device can sustain the PMPO power for any significant length of time without being ruined. The PMPO power relies on the fact that amplifiers can provide short bursts of very high power. Over time, these short bursts when averaged with the lower output powers, gives the real value."
I have heard a lot less of PMPO in the UK in recent years, maybe they were banned from using it because it is purely a marketing term that has no grounding in reality.
As an aside, would most computer users be better off getting a real amplifier and real speakers and using them for 10 years rather than dealing with shitty PC speakers? I'm not talking audiophile stuff here, just stuff that you can pick up for a reasonable price. For gaming you'd probably want a decent surround system of course, but most other users?
I build all my desktop machines with crap parts and no extended warranties, but laptops need the 3 year full service warranty.
You're confusing "Windows Messenger" with the "Messenger Service".
MSN Messenger - instant messenger with a lot of doodads, a new version to be downloaded every day. AKA "msn".
Windows Messenger - instant messenger that can log on to the MSN Messenger network, but also to Exchange/SIP servers, doesn't have many doodads. AKA "that crappy ancient version of msn that won't go away even if you install the newest version".
Messenger Service - runs in the background on NT and higher, displays irritating "press OK" dialogs with spam from viagra sellers or system administrators. AKA "winpopup".
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
From TFA: "You Too Can Exploit Windows' Bad Security
My PC's firewall, antivirus scanner, spyware remover, pop-up blocker, and spam filter all agree: Windows is sorely lacking in PC security. That situation may not change until Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn) comes out sometime next year. Meanwhile here are a few ways to turn Windows' poor security to your advantage."
As most people here already know, Microsoft does not focus on bug fixes in their new releases. Their primary focus is on new features. Sure, some of the old bugs may be gone -- but some new ones will be sure to pop up with the new functionality. Just because Longhorn is newer, that doesn't make it better or more secure.
In my personal opinion, Microsoft deliberately ships shoddy software so everyone will flock to the new releases. It's human nature to believe that "newer is better" but that is not always the case. It has proven to be a highly successful business model for M$.
When you overclock your cpu, its "lifetime" will be reduced.
Like most blanket statements, that one is incorrect. In some cases, the difference between two different speed CPUs is nothing more than on-chip jumpers and markings. If the manufacturer produces 1,000 CPUs and all 1,000 of them can run at the highest speed, they label some for a high speed, perhaps after testing to verify reliable operation, and then label others for the lower speeds. Besides, very few enthusiasts are trying to keep a CPU working for seven years, so even in those cases where there is some reduced lifetime, it's seldom a concern.
This one its true, but AFAIK the difference will be in the tests that the product has passed. That way they set the brand.
Seldom is that the case. A Lite-On DVD+-R/W drive sold under the Lite-On name undergoes the same tests as one sold under the Sony name, Hi-Val name, or any other name. Sony, Hi-Val, etc. could not remain price-competitive if they had different, more expensive testing procedures -- especially when Lite-On has already come up with tests that confirm that the drives are functional. Who would you expect to be able to devise a more effective test suite; the manufacturer who designed the product or some third-party reseller who rebrands the drive?
But in general the article is poor and somehow little useful.
Another untrue statement. Did you know Amazon's phone number for customer service? Did you know the shortcut to reach a human operator at the list of over 60 cell phone, PC, and travel firms? Did you know that Philips had a zero-dead-pixel guarantee? Did you have a utility to reveal a Windows XP license key? The article provided a lot of useful information. I knew much of it, but that doesn't mean that everyone knows everything in it.
This is stuff the average nerd already knows.
Some is and some is not. I don't believe you already knew Amazon's customer support phone number, that Philips has a zero-dead-pixel warranty, how to get to a human on 60+ companies' phone systems, and where to download a utility to reveal a Windows license key. You may have known some of what was in the article, but I'll bet that you didn't know it all.
Sure, the article was not a revelation with each and every paragraph, but it probably provided some useful information to most of the people on Slashdot who read it. I even found one of the linked utilities to be handy.
This article is in the How-To section of the PCWorld site for some reason. They should write another article called 'How to paginate a 4 page article into 20 pages to maximize your ad revenue.'
Let's look at this from another perspective:
"I don't think any of us really choose our mailer. At work I use Compuserve because everyone else at work uses it. BUt I also use AOL, because my little sister is away at school, and she uses AOL. I hate AOL, but if I choose not to use AOL, I am only hurting myself because then I couldn't mail my sister.
The next logical Question- Why can't I get my sister to switch? All her friends use AOL. And so it goes."
If only there was some kind of simple message ttransport protocol that could communicate between servers, allowing the server type itself to be abstracted out of the equation. People on different ISPs could mail people on others! It'd be a miracle.
Why do we have the same problem we had with email in th 80s, now with IM clients? The Jabber protocol is designed to work just like SMTP was designed to allow messages between servers. Google's talk service is Jabber (mind you, their Jabber won't connect out to other Jabber servers, which is a pretty lame thing to do).
Personally, I'm looking into setting up a Jabber server on the same system that does my email/web stuff. When it's working, I'll begin to try and migrate people over (Kopete works with it just fine).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Reason #18774952 to not outsource: all your tech support will sound/read like this.