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When asked about a train schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits. When you are counting objects, you go "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D...". When you dream in 256 palettes of 256 colors. When your spouse says "If you don't turn off that damn machine and come to bed, then I am going to divorce you!" and you chastise her/him for omitting the "else" clause. You try to sleep, and think sleep (8 * 3600); /* sleep for 8 hours / When you are reading a book and look for the scroll bar to get to the next page. When after...

From a 1999 email... At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry to the car industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics: 1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day. 2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road,...

When I try to look at a foreign news website, I get this box that says download either uniscribe of arabic text display. What will it do if I download those?

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 27 Accretion Disk Simulation Credit: Michael Owen, John Blondin (North Carolina State Univ.) Explanation: Don't be fooled by the familiar symmetry. The graceful spiral structure seen in this computer visualization does not portray winding spiral arms in a distant galaxy of stars. Instead, the graphic shows spiral shock waves in a three dimensional simulation of an accretion disk -- material swirling onto a compact central object...

Online 'Smiley Face' :-) Turns 20 Thu Sep 19,12:58 AM ET By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was 20 years ago today that Scott Fahlman taught the 'Net how to smile. The IBM researcher has devoted his professional life to artificial intelligence, the practice of teaching computers how to think like humans. Fahlman is known for his work with neural networks -- a computer technique designed to mimic the human brain -- and helping develop Common Lisp, a computer language that uses symbols instead of numbers, but the bearded scientist is perhaps best known for a flash of inspiration...

Typically software makers like Microsoft provide a simple means of uninstalling software--particularly software such as Media Player 9 Series that has yet to be officially released. The Redmond, Wash.-based company released the public beta version last week amid much fanfare in Hollywood. Windows Me and XP users must rely on a feature called "System Restore" to roll back their Windows installation to a time before they installed Media Player 9 Series if the want to uninstall it. The clunky alternative doesn't really remove all Windows Media Player 9 Series files and could potentially wipe out other system changes. David Caulton,...

...I have a question....we're changing my email address - will I also have to give up my FR name and sign-up date? How do I go about changing all this on FR - but hopefully, keep my name/date ...searched and couldn't find an answer, altho I'm sure there is a solution. Sorry to be so stupid about all this, but I'm in a panic since I thought about it.

<p>Mind control: Do companies own the thoughts of their employees? According to one Texas judge, Alcatel, the French manufacturer of telecom equipment, does.</p> <p>In a case tied up in the Texas court system for five and a half years, Judge Curt B. Henderson of the Collin County, Texas, District Court found that Alcatel owned a former employee's software idea that had never been written on paper.</p>

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 30 A Star Cluster in Motion Credit: Adam Block (NOAO) Explanation: Star clusters are a swarm of complex motions. The stars that compose globular clusters and many open clusters all orbit the cluster center, occasionally interacting, gravitationally, with a close-passing star. The orbits of stars around the cluster are typically not as circular as the orbits of planets in our solar system. Cluster stars frequently fall...

Reading an interview with Neil Trevett from 3D Labs, in Maximum PC (August 2002). He is talking about the technology of the new 3D Labs graphics proccessors and its uses, when this question comes up: MPC: What about in a 2D application? Will virtual memory Make your desktop faster? NT: Yes, it'll definitly make your desktop faster, particularly as we go to the new generation of Windows. Longhorn [the code-name for Microsoft's proposed 3D operating system] proposes a really intractable problem when you think about it. If you have a high-resolution screen that's double-buffered, you can absorb 64 megabytes of...

The monopoly of foreign office software over Chinese market will be broken, as domestic software developers have jointed hands to start a project of "Chinese version" office software. The Beijing IT Industry Promotion Center announced on Thursday that two programs named "Yangfan" and "Qihang" (both means to "set sail") were kicked off, aiming at working out an operation system equivalent to Win 98 within a year. The Center said that 18 companies and universities joined the programs and its first desktop operation system "Yangfan 1.0" had been gradually put into use in offices of government departments. As reported, in...

New Computer Model Promises Detailed Picture of Worldwide Climate Capping two years of research, a nationwide group of over 100 scientists has created a powerful new computer model of the Earth's climate. The model surpasses previous efforts by successfully incorporating the impact of such variables as ocean currents and changes in land-surface temperatures. Researchers will use the model, called CCSM-2 (Community Climate System Model, version 2) to probe how our climate works and to experiment with "what-if" scenarios to predict what our climate may be like in the future. The model will also look at past climate. For example, researchers...

Has anyone any experience with the IncrediMail Email program? Are there any known problems or security issues related to the program? Thanks for any input you can provide.

WASHINGTON -- Attempting to woo computer-savvy young people, the Army will release on July 4 the first installment of an ambitious new computer game that will let players be all they can digitally be. The game, which will be free on many gaming Web sites and www.americasarmy.com, lets a player assume the role of a new recruit on an Army team pitted in an online battle against terrorists. While it is meant to be fun, the two-game set also was designed as a recruitment tool. "With this game we hope to educate young Americans and present them with a realistic,...

My Life As An International Arms Courierfrom mab@research.att.com (Matt Blaze) Fri, 06 Jan 95 as posted to the RISKS digest Under an obscure provision of US law, devices and computer programs that use encryption techniques to hide information from prying eyes and ears are considered ``munitions'' and subject to the same rules that govern the international arms trade. In particular, taking such items out of this country requires the approval of the State Department, which decides whether exporting something might endanger national security. In the past, these restrictions were of little concern to the average citizen; encryption found most of...

Record makers could win the right to carry out hack attacks on music sharing services if a US proposal becomes law. Californian congressman Howard Berman has drawn up a bill that would legalise the disruption of peer-to-peer networks by companies who are trying to stop people pirating copyrighted materials. If his idea becomes law, record companies will be able to carry out a variety of attacks on the sharing services to make them unusable or so irritating to use that people abandon them. Existing legislation makes it an offence for anyone to carry out many of the attacks mooted in...

A couple years ago, due to missing phone calls, while I was on the internet, I got a second phone line. I need to cut back on expenses now. So, what are the options? Software? Hardware?I'm especially interested in your personal experiences with the various solutions. Costs?

Thank you for clicking on this thread, and I beg your indulgence to read further. I am looking for a database-management-type software package on behalf of a children's summer-camp in Michigan. My problem is that I don't know where to begin my search, or whether an off-the-shelf product of this sort is even available. The requirements are quite simple, and I would imagine similar to the software one would use to run a baseball Little League. This software would have to have fields for such information as:name; address; phone; sex; age; birthdate; have forms been sent?; have forms been received?;...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 24 The Sun's Heliosphere & Heliopause Credit & Copyright: P. C. Frisch (U. Chicago) et al., U. Indiana Explanation: Where does the Sun's influence end? Nobody is sure. Out past the orbits of Neptune and Pluto extends a region named the heliosphere where the Sun's magnetic field and particles from the Solar Wind continue to dominate. The surface where the Solar Wind drops below sound speed...

<p>Maury Troy Travis, accused of killing two women and linked by court documents to the deaths of five more, was found dead Monday night in his cell at the St. Louis County jail in Clayton, sources said.</p> <p>A 10th (victim) was found May 25 when the letter to the Post-Dispatch led police to a skeleton in the West Alton area of St. Charles County."The letter was critical to our case," Hegger said.</p>