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VANITY: computer assistance :( my addled brain | 05/05/06 | Spacetrucker Posted on 05/05/2006 1:56:46 PM PDT by Spacetrucker I am having a difficult time figuring out a problem with my laptop (HP pavilion zv 5000). It powers up fine on AC power, but will not run on battery power at all. The control panel says the battery is in good working order, at 100% charge, and I have run the troubleshooter on it several times to no avail. I am hoping that this may be some kind of program thing that has the battery switched off (before you ask...

Here's a paragraph from a longer Washington Prowler feature of The American Spectator: "What makes Weber's cynical support of the legislation even worse, say Republican Hill staffers, is that his activities also aid MoveOn.org, the extremist, left-wing organization, which is now being financially backed by Google so that MoveOn can help Google with "Net Neutrality." Google has become the single largest private corporate underwriter of MoveOn. According to sources in the Democrat National Committee, MoveOn has received more than $1 million from Google and its lobbyists in Washington to create grassroots support for the Internet regulation legislation. Some of that...

Revealed: The identity of the BBC's latest star 13/05/06 A computer expert has described his astonishment at seeing the BBC's 24-hour news channel interview supposed taxi driver Guy Goma in the mistaken belief it was him. Guy Kewney - a white, bearded technology expert - was astonished to see himself appear on screen as a black man with an apparent French accent. He was even more shocked to see himself unable to answer basic questions about the legal battle between the Beatles' Apple Corps and Apple Computer over the use of an apple symbol. Mr Kewney, an IT journalist, watched...

25 uses for your old PC If you've replaced your old computer, don't just throw it away. There are some great things it could do. Read on for a few ideas. If you have just bought yourself a replacement computer and find yourself with a spare heap of hardware in the house, what are your options? It's tempting to get rid of the original PC once and for all but, on the other hand, it served you well once and surely you can find a productive use for it now. Then again, having just splashed out on your new kit,...

My wife has a Toshiba Salliete R15-S822, Running XP Home2 SP2. It has built-in wireless. Up unitl now, it has worked fine. Now, all of a sudden, it has lost wireless capability. I know that Fn-F8 is supposed to toggle the wireless capability on and off However, nothing happened. Nothing appeard on the screen to indicate that sysstem was reacting to the keybard presses. What else can I look for? thanks.

I am having a difficult time figuring out a problem with my laptop (HP pavilion zv 5000). It powers up fine on AC power, but will not run on battery power at all. The control panel says the battery is in good working order, at 100% charge, and I have run the troubleshooter on it several times to no avail. I am hoping that this may be some kind of program thing that has the battery switched off (before you ask I looked - the battery is enabled) because until next week I cannot afford to buy a new battery...

The Antikythera mechanism The clockwork computer Sep 19th 2002 From The Economist print edition An ancient piece of clockwork shows the deep roots of modern technology WHEN a Greek sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny island of Antikythera in 1900, it was the statues lying on the seabed that made the greatest impression on him. He returned to the surface, removed his helmet, and gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women. The ship's cargo of luxury goods also included jewellery, pottery, fine furniture, wine and bronzes dating...

Have you ever spent 15 or 20 minutes or more on the telephone trying to speak to a real live human while getting the runaround from the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system? If so, this blogsite and database is for you. It has ways to bypass the IVR and speak to a human for 356 companies and goverment organizations as of today. Everyone from American Express to Bank of America to Verizon is on the list. I give it two thumbs and a salute!

A Rockmart family is being sued for illegal music file sharing, despite the fact that they don’t even own a computer. Read more in source: http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?show=localnews&pnpID=728&NewsID=713614&CategoryID=11575&on=1

Lawmaker Puzzled by Obscenity in Letter By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer Wed Apr 19, 10:23 PM ET WASHINGTON - Nobody expects to get a letter from a member of Congress that ends with an expletive. But that's what happened when Rep. Jo Ann Emerson , R-Mo., recently corresponded with a resident of her southeast Missouri district. The letter ended with a profane, seven-letter insult beginning with the letter a — "i think you're an. ..." Emerson says she can't explain how the offensive language made it into the letter, which otherwise reads like a typical response to a citizen's...

RMS - a man who can polarize a room into warring factions just by walking by. (Joe Barr) If You're Livin' On The Edge... MOVE OVER!..There are people waiting to Jump! You gotta punch the clock, so why not punch your boss? Please don't call IIS unstable, it's simply uptime challenged. As for the philosophical stuff, think of it as broccolli: it's good for you... (Brian Germain) When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray. There's no place like 127.0.0.1 How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a light bulb? "That...

I am using FrontPage 2000. Here's what I would like to have happen: After the page loads, have an image on that page automatically dissolve to a second one (in the same position), then dissolve to a third, or fourth, then repeat back to the first. I know I can add DHTML effects in FrontPage, but the effects seem to work only when the page is loaded, or when mouse-over or mouse click occurs. In my case, however, I would like the transitions to occur automatically, without any action by user. In other words, I would like to have the...

The Stanford University Symbolic Systems Program and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence announced today the Singularity Summit at Stanford, a one-day event free to the public, to be held Saturday, May 13, 2006 at Stanford Memorial Auditorium, Stanford, California. The event will bring together leading futurists and others to examine the implications of the "Singularity" -- a hypothesized creation of superintelligence as technology accelerates over the coming decades -- to address the profound implications of this radical and controversial scenario. "The Singularity will be a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its...

Afghan Shops Searched for Stolen Files By DANIEL COONEY, Associated Press Writer A shopkeeper outside the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Afghanistan was selling computer memory drives Wednesday containing seemingly sensitive military data stolen from inside the base — including the Social Security numbers of four American generals. This shopkeeper was apparently not the only merchant in local bazaars trying to get some cash in exchange for hardware and software containing such files. The surfacing of the stolen computer devices has sparked an urgent American military probe for the source of the embarrassing security breach, which has led to disks with...

LONDON, November 13 (IranMania) - US intelligence officials have shown leaders of the International Atomic Energy Agency a stolen Iranian laptop computer containing nuclear designs as proof the country is secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported on its website. The newspaper said that during the demonstration, which took place in Vienna in mid-July, officials displayed selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, saying they showed a long effort to design a nuclear warhead. The Americans acknowledged that the documents do not prove that Iran has an atomic...

When I turn my computer on and the screen appears, all I get is the hourglass (The mouse pointer turns into an hourglass whenever I move it towards the START menu or taskbar) and I'm unable to access my START menu. I usually turn the power off several times before it works again. I just did a virus and spyware scan and they came back clean. Yes, I have Windows XP (Cue the "Get a Mac!" responses). Please advise.

It’s a sad state of affairs when you buy a new computer these days and it comes pre-loaded with a ton of garbage software that brings your new machine to a crawl. If anyone’s bought a Dell PC in the last few years, you probably know what I’m talking about. Just recently, I was helping a friend set up his brand new Inspiron 1300 and it took FOREVER for it to boot up. It’s a very dissatifiying experience to pull a brand new computer out of the box and be spammed with a bunch of trial software. After removing all...

I received an email yesterday pointing me to a bill, introduced on March 27, that would require all Executive branch agencies in the state of Minnesota to "use open standards in situations where the other requirements of a project do not make it technically impossible to do this." The text of the bill is focused specifically on "open data formats," and would amend the existing statute that establishes the authority of the Office of Enterprise Technology (OET), and the duties of the states Chief Information Officer. While the amendment does not refer to open source software, the definition of "open...

Naked PCs: Free software supporters are angry that Microsoft is putting pressure on PC vendors not to sell machines without an operating system installed Microsoft has urged UK PC vendors not to give customers the opportunity to buy a PC without a pre-installed operating system.... The FSF Europe is alarmed by the prospect that customers who request a base systems would risk a visit from Microsoft's investigators. "It looks like a private sniffing service which is supposed to spy on these who do not want to pay the Microsoft tax anymore. It is an incredible piece of impudence which any...

A DEVICE that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed. One of the problems facing people with autism is an inability to pick up on social cues. Failure to notice that they are boring or confusing their listeners can be particularly damaging, says Rana El Kaliouby of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's sad because people then avoid having conversations with them." The...