Yes, I *could* but don't. I blow canned air (not so high a pressure as to break stuff) INTO the air vents in back so that as you said, the dust comes out the way it went in. Air pressure seems to get "into the cracks" better than vaccuum, and yes, I have a "toner vac" (tiny attachment) to get into the cracks.
Here's a test - take a crappy old 3" floppy drive full of dust and try sucking out the dust with a vaccuum cleaner, then try blowing it out with a can of air. Which one do you think is going to work better? Hint - it has to do with not getting a good seal with the vac hose vs. being able to direct canned air with pinpoint accuracy.
Oh, and taking the computers *outside* keeps dust from going everywhere, plus it gets you out of the house and into the sunshine, even if only for 5 minutes.
Every 6 months or so, I take the computers outside and blow out the "Ghost Turds". I have a fairly dusty house, and when they are full of "Dust Bunnies", I know by the fact that my temp-controlled fans kick up speed at inappropriate times.
It's designed with the good 'ol look and feel of the old windows Media Player from version 5 or 6(?). It will call Quicktime or Real (for those files) or the actual WMP core (only to play.WM? files), but it plays everything else standalone via system codecs.
It is GPL, small, lightweight, nicely configurable, and ISN'T FILLED WITH DRM-ly BADNESS!
It comes bundled with many of the "mega" codec packs, like ACE, Tsunami, or K-Lite, or you can find it standalone via Google.
It doesn't, unfortunately, do ripping or conversion; I use more capable standalone utils for that like EAC, EZ-CD DA, and Goldwave.
Think of it this way: If you have a 20 KHz signal, at 40 KHz you get 2 sample periods per cycle. Only 2 - fine if your signal is a perfect square wave, you get 1 sample at -max and the other at +max.
Now, how would a sinewave look? Exactly the same as far as the sampling can see, at the sample points the wave is at +/-max. The slope detail of the sinusoids would be lost completely, and it would falsely reproduce a square wave. As you approach the 1/2 sample rate frequency, more details are lost, and your distortion approaches 100%.
This is why "oversampling" is done - 2x sample rate is the minimum required to reproduce a waveform, it doesn't say it reproduces it well.
.My point is not that individuals should throw themselves on the fire. My point is that there should be more outcry about this. Women yelled for years about inequality and they were heard. Now apparently, it's the male gender's turn.
Right... That's like a white male in an major urban area trying to complain because now he's a "minority". Sorry, it ain't gonna happen...
It has to make morale suffer. It also means men and women aren't going to form teams that function as well. Basically every American company is running at some percentage of efficiency lower than they otherwise could be simply because the justice system is fucked.
It wouldn't be the first time something got "over-fixed" to the detriment of all involved, nor the last. Also, just about everything everywhere is running at minimum efficiency thanks to our fucked justice system.
We use the PNY 4GB's at work to contain a Ghost image for our standard workstation image, XPSP2 + Hotfixes + Office 2k3 + More Hotfixes + Standard Apps = almost 2GB exactly, then we have the other post-install files hanging around w/ room to spare.
Right now we are using BartPE (XPE) to boot XPSP2 and run Ghost, I'm looking at putting Bart on the USB drive too, if possible.
Re:Well, one old brute I have...
on
Computer Voodoo?
·
· Score: 1
The old original Compaq "luggable" suitcases were notorious for this too.
It's because of a power supply circuit called a "crowbar", an SCR that triggers (shorts) on transients from turning off the supply. Once triggered, the SCR stays shorted across the PS output until ALL the voltage stored in the filter capacitors drains off, to less than.7 volts. This can take some time depending on how big the caps are.
Have found the tweak utility to remap it to what it should be and always has been before "PC"'s: The CTRL Key. That, and turning off those damn Windows keys!
It looks like he didn't properly set up the software that automatically sends out the "Why your anti-spam idea won't work" list, as there's no payload and everything is blank!
I get 5-10 a week from idiot spammers who haven't figured out how to use their drool-proof spamming tools. They typically either have totally blank bodies and subjects, or have "Message Subject" for a subject or some similar default field values in the from or subject fields.
I figure the morons are installing the spamware and the "hit list", and then hitting the big "SPAM" button with out R'ing TFM.
At least those types of messages are easy hits for the filters...
IIRC, every key hit in a PC actually sends 2 "packets" or bytes - called "scancodes". Normal ASCII characters send the MSB as 0, with normal ASCII code as LSB. Non-printing scancodes are things like Pause, Keypad Arrows, etc. with the MSB nonzero.
Point being, even single keystrokes send multiple "packets".
Before there was Spyware, before there were viruses, before the Mac-centric (at the time) Symantec bought out and pussified it, there was:
{brief fanfare}
"The Norton Utilities"
The finest and mightiest system utils evar. They had a nice collection of about 15 programs, all tiny.exe's, that did great things. There was a direct hex/ascii editor for files AND raw disk sectors. There was the first practical unerase/undelete for files and dirs and much more - a superb hacker's toolkit, everything you needed except debug (and that came w/DOS).
Peter Norton was a god to us then. The moment Symantec bought up all his stuff they completely hosed them, they probably didn't know any better being Mac heads, but they drove what was the strongest techie software franchise in the PC world right into the toilet.
They don't. I got a real laugh from TFA, where this MS goof is ranting "our house", "our house"; then further down, IBM and Oracle are described as the other "competitors" they will be taking on. Sounds to me like they don't have Jack, and are frothing about this arena they "own" but somehow aren't competing in yet. Huh? Hello? Pass the Prozac, please!
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Yes, I *could* but don't. I blow canned air (not so high a pressure as to break stuff) INTO the air vents in back so that as you said, the dust comes out the way it went in. Air pressure seems to get "into the cracks" better than vaccuum, and yes, I have a "toner vac" (tiny attachment) to get into the cracks.
Here's a test - take a crappy old 3" floppy drive full of dust and try sucking out the dust with a vaccuum cleaner, then try blowing it out with a can of air. Which one do you think is going to work better? Hint - it has to do with not getting a good seal with the vac hose vs. being able to direct canned air with pinpoint accuracy.
Oh, and taking the computers *outside* keeps dust from going everywhere, plus it gets you out of the house and into the sunshine, even if only for 5 minutes.
It also describes Scotsmen who fail to detonate on impact...
You forgot a very likely possibility:
4) Your computer is full of dust.
Every 6 months or so, I take the computers outside and blow out the "Ghost Turds". I have a fairly dusty house, and when they are full of "Dust Bunnies", I know by the fact that my temp-controlled fans kick up speed at inappropriate times.
Check out MPC - Media Player Classic.
.WM? files), but it plays everything else standalone via system codecs.
It's designed with the good 'ol look and feel of the old windows Media Player from version 5 or 6(?). It will call Quicktime or Real (for those files) or the actual WMP core (only to play
It is GPL, small, lightweight, nicely configurable, and ISN'T FILLED WITH DRM-ly BADNESS!
It comes bundled with many of the "mega" codec packs, like ACE, Tsunami, or K-Lite, or you can find it standalone via Google.
It doesn't, unfortunately, do ripping or conversion; I use more capable standalone utils for that like EAC, EZ-CD DA, and Goldwave.
There is. I'm sorry but I can't remember the name, but one of the commercial cordless phones (Uniden maybe?) supposedly does it.
Think of it this way: If you have a 20 KHz signal, at 40 KHz you get 2 sample periods per cycle. Only 2 - fine if your signal is a perfect square wave, you get 1 sample at -max and the other at +max.
Now, how would a sinewave look? Exactly the same as far as the sampling can see, at the sample points the wave is at +/-max. The slope detail of the sinusoids would be lost completely, and it would falsely reproduce a square wave. As you approach the 1/2 sample rate frequency, more details are lost, and your distortion approaches 100%.
This is why "oversampling" is done - 2x sample rate is the minimum required to reproduce a waveform, it doesn't say it reproduces it well.
.My point is not that individuals should throw themselves on the fire. My point is that there should be more outcry about this. Women yelled for years about inequality and they were heard. Now apparently, it's the male gender's turn.
Right... That's like a white male in an major urban area trying to complain because now he's a "minority". Sorry, it ain't gonna happen...
It has to make morale suffer. It also means men and women aren't going to form teams that function as well. Basically every American company is running at some percentage of efficiency lower than they otherwise could be simply because the justice system is fucked.
It wouldn't be the first time something got "over-fixed" to the detriment of all involved, nor the last. Also, just about everything everywhere is running at minimum efficiency thanks to our fucked justice system.
We use the PNY 4GB's at work to contain a Ghost image for our standard workstation image, XPSP2 + Hotfixes + Office 2k3 + More Hotfixes + Standard Apps = almost 2GB exactly, then we have the other post-install files hanging around w/ room to spare.
Right now we are using BartPE (XPE) to boot XPSP2 and run Ghost, I'm looking at putting Bart on the USB drive too, if possible.
The old original Compaq "luggable" suitcases were notorious for this too.
.7 volts. This can take some time depending on how big the caps are.
It's because of a power supply circuit called a "crowbar", an SCR that triggers (shorts) on transients from turning off the supply. Once triggered, the SCR stays shorted across the PS output until ALL the voltage stored in the filter capacitors drains off, to less than
Hmmm... OK, I promise not to tell all my Linux boxes what they're missing!
Seriously, I keep all my older PC keyboards that don't have Windows keys for that purpose, and they work just fine without them.
There's an icon to clear the desktop on the taskbar that's adequate so as not to require an extra key on the keyboard just for that rare use.
Turning them off is pimarily for games. If you _really_ need the extra Meta key then you can always UN-map it.
Hahah - I call him that too! (dingdong) "What a twist!"
Have found the tweak utility to remap it to what it should be and always has been before "PC"'s: The CTRL Key. That, and turning off those damn Windows keys!
You forgot Oregon: Hawaii's Europe!
That red sticker wouldn't be in the shape of a large letter "A", would it?
You'd just hear all the hoots from your PDA and Laptop, whispering behind it's back, "How Cheap, for Shame!"
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Props to all the Hawthorne fans...
It looks like he didn't properly set up the software that automatically sends out the "Why your anti-spam idea won't work" list, as there's no payload and everything is blank!
I get 5-10 a week from idiot spammers who haven't figured out how to use their drool-proof spamming tools. They typically either have totally blank bodies and subjects, or have "Message Subject" for a subject or some similar default field values in the from or subject fields.
I figure the morons are installing the spamware and the "hit list", and then hitting the big "SPAM" button with out R'ing TFM.
At least those types of messages are easy hits for the filters...
IIRC, every key hit in a PC actually sends 2 "packets" or bytes - called "scancodes". Normal ASCII characters send the MSB as 0, with normal ASCII code as LSB. Non-printing scancodes are things like Pause, Keypad Arrows, etc. with the MSB nonzero.
Point being, even single keystrokes send multiple "packets".
Or a strip of black electrician's tape - hey, it always worked for VCR's flashing 12:00!
Yes, it once was a LONG time ago (DOS days). To avoid being redundant, see my other post here.
Is in yer ass. He's talking about way long ago...
.exe's, that did great things. There was a direct hex/ascii editor for files AND raw disk sectors. There was the first practical unerase/undelete for files and dirs and much more - a superb hacker's toolkit, everything you needed except debug (and that came w/DOS).
-- You probably weren't even born yet --
Before there was Spyware, before there were viruses, before the Mac-centric (at the time) Symantec bought out and pussified it, there was:
{brief fanfare}
"The Norton Utilities"
The finest and mightiest system utils evar. They had a nice collection of about 15 programs, all tiny
Peter Norton was a god to us then. The moment Symantec bought up all his stuff they completely hosed them, they probably didn't know any better being Mac heads, but they drove what was the strongest techie software franchise in the PC world right into the toilet.
After all, Oregon is just Hawaii's Europe...
That's Shawn Hogan. Paul Hogan plays "Crocodile Dundee".
One Laptop to Rule Them
One Laptop to Find Them
One Laptop to Bring Them All Together
and In The Darkness Bind Them?
OLPC = One Leg PC?
They don't. I got a real laugh from TFA, where this MS goof is ranting "our house", "our house"; then further down, IBM and Oracle are described as the other "competitors" they will be taking on. Sounds to me like they don't have Jack, and are frothing about this arena they "own" but somehow aren't competing in yet. Huh? Hello? Pass the Prozac, please!