Home Computer Talk

So, the Max Headroom style of talking computer isn’t really something that is available for now. The text version of AI (Artificial Intelligence) doesn’t really fill the slot either. What we want is for our personal Computer to talk to us and hopefully, understand what we mean when we talk to it.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, we met the HAL 9000 computer, one which certainly fit the description of a computer that could talk to, and understand humans.

Text to Voice is one step along (more…)

Before I came to Australia to be with Mr JM, I’d never heard of Doctor Who. Now, after seeing three seasons of it, it’s one of my favorite shows ever.

It’s quirky, funny, thought provoking and English. Mr JM tells me the original Doctor Who, while definitely a must-see program in his early years, was very cheaply made and had non-existent production values. But these modern episodes are well made and very well written.

And that’s important to me – in my other incarnations (more…)

I asked Mr JM about his work – he does Helpdesk for an Aged Care company. He says he helps people to use their computers; they call him a Desktop Support Engineer. Specifically I wanted to know what is the best thing for people to do before they call for help.

His response? ‘If the computer is not responding, NOTHING!’

What he means is that, quite often, things are recoverable if help is called before anything changes. But mostly computer users will fiddle and try to fix things they know little about and in the process spoil the chances of getting back the document or data.

Of course, if your computer has given the much talked of BSOD, (Blue Screen of Death) there isn’t likely much you could have done.

He also thinks that not enough people (more…)

I’ve been having some fun playing around with Mind Workstation – it’s another program for using and developing holosync tracks for aiding meditation and health.

With Mind Workstation there is not only the chance to use your computer to guide your brain state (see What can a Computer Do?) using the technology of Binaural Beats and Brainwave Entrainment, but also use biofeedback to have the software respond to what is happening in your head and body. (more…)

Sesame Street knew more than they thought when they created the Cookie Monster. Cookies are truly a monster when it comes to personal privacy and computer security.

What are Cookies? They are small files that web sites create to track you. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if you’re on (say) Amazon and you choose your items and then want to pay for them and get them delivered, Amazon uses cookies to track your choices so when you arrive at Checkout, the site knows what you want to buy.

Other cookies might keep track of your preferences for your favorite sites, so when you visit, things are as you left them.

But cookies can also tell the world out there all about your (more…)

Recently Microsoft announced the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. They also released Service Pack 1 for Vista.
Seems strange to be updating the old Windows while releasing fixups for the new one, but there is more.

Microsoft was also planning on dropping support for WinXP in the near future, (more…)

As the technology of the Internet has spread across the world, the number of targets has grown for hackers, along with the nefarious uses to which illegally gained information can be put. Police forces have entire sections now devoted to what was once almost a misdemeanor, a ‘white collar crime’ that earned a slap on the wrist.

The first step to protecting your computer is to stop people from getting access to your system. There are various levels of this. People on the Internet, using what are known as ‘Exploits’ can reach across your connection and get hold of your system. Once in, they can strip your private information, read your private files and more commonly, use your computer to pass on spam, porn and, more significantly, launch attacks on other systems.

You’ve seen movies about hackers or people doing crime using the Internet. Do you want your computer to be one of those on the path the FBI trace back to the criminal? At best it will mean a visit from Law Enforcement as they make sure you aren’t connected to the case.

Your ISP is conscious of this and (more…)

One of the major tools in the grab-bag of a hacker is what is known as Social Engineering. There are formal definitions but it is all about how people will, unless given a reason to be suspicious, be open and unsuspecting and can be led into giving away information.

In other words, hackers quite often and successfully walk into a building, posing as (say) an inspector or even a cleaner and find supposed-to-be secure information that allows them to access the company computers.

A part of this is knowing about people. There are sites that list the most common things people use for passwords. Network security can insist on a regular change of login password from users and prevent them from using the same one for a set number of times.

This seems like good security but in practice, (more…)

Gmail has been hacked and the capcha program subverted. What is a capcha program? You’ve seen them, when you try to sign up for a site and they ask you to type in some numbers displayed as a picture or against some background pattern.

The idea of it is to make sure you’re a human.

They do this to capture ‘bots’ – programs that try to log in to sites to get access to user information and accounts. Gmail has had their spam numbers double already, so if you have a gmail account and you’ve been seeing more adult spam recently, that’s why.

But it brings up the question of how safe we are on our home PC’s. (more…)

It’s that time. You’ve finally decided to go and buy yourself a home computer. The first and probably most important question would be… For what purpose are you buying a computer?

It’s more important than you realize if you’re new to the computer world or if you’ve only ever used a work computer running Word. The use can determine how much memory (RAM) hard disk space, which chipset you need, whether you need a whiz-bang video card and if you need a network card.

What are we talking about?

Memory or RAM: The Computer loads instructions from programs and executes them to give you results. RAM is the area where it does the processing. The more RAM, generally, the less to and fro the chip (CPU) has to do to get things done, so the faster you get your results. (more…)

Going to the movies is fun; you can make a day of it, have lunch or dinner and spend a good percentage of a week’s salary. Getting DVD’s (or videos) from the shop can also add $20 a week to the budget. But there are other ways to get your entertainment.

You already pay for your Internet connection and these days, the deals range into the 10’s of Gigabytes per month for the equivalent of 2 – 3 weeks of DVD’s – unless you have a compulsive downloader in the family, it is unlikely oyou will be using all that capacity each month.

One technology in use involves what are called Torrent files. This is a Peer-to-Peer technology, where multiple Internet users provide access to particular files from their machine and the Torrent software reaches out and downloads the files from up to fifty or more computers, while simultaneously sending out parts of the files to others.

Torrent programs are available from the torrent sites, but a few of the best are uTorrent, BitTorrent and Azureus.

Torrents can allow you to download at a good percentage of your Broadband speed and the Torrent sites offer a mind boggling array of files, including games, programs, music and movies.

(more…)

Recently Mr. JM got an email that quoted the Ultimate HP PC. He read out the following… ‘Sporting dual ATI Radeon X2900 XT video cards, each with 512 GB of GDDR4 SDRAM, an Intel Core2 Extreme Quad-Core 3.0GHz QX6850 CPU, 2 GB 1066MHz Corsair PC2-8500 SDRAM, three hard drives in a RAID array, and liquid cooling for the video cards and the CPU,’ …as if I would actually know what it meant. Apparently it is high on the ‘Wow!’ factor and is seriously fast.

But it sells for $US6200 and you’d have to ask yourself, is a computer really worth that much to me?

How much does computing cost?

Well, it depends on your uses. If your ‘Oh Fuck!’ reaction is to do with using the internet for browsing and looking up weird facts, the cost of your PC will be low. If you want to play the latest games on a machine that removes the need for central heating, the above machine is for you. But in most Western countries, $US1000 (or equivalent) would buy you a very nice desktop or a fair to middling laptop.

(more…)

In Part One of ‘Old Age…?’ I talked about defragmenting and the speed increases it can give. There is another process which Windows doesn’t do well at and it has to do with the files most people never see.

Everyone knows about icons – those little pictures that appear on the desktop when we install programs. In fact some people think they are the program itself. Mr. JM has on occasion told me of clients being upset about deleting their program when in reality they simply removed the icon.

Quite a number of us know of, or have heard about the .EXE files; the executable parts of programs that are usually what the icon points to. But only the computer-savvy know about the libraries and other files that the programs use to perform their functions. Some of these files are common files – in other words, they are used by multiple programs.

The problem comes in because the programmers can’t be sure you actually have the correct version of such files on your computer – so they install their version, usually without bothering to ask you about it.

(more…)

If you’ve had a computer for more than six months I just know you’ll know the feeling – it seems that wonderful zippy machine you paid your hard-earned cash for has decided to ensure you work out your karma by learning the ultimate in patience. Everything takes time – it seems like each day the same tasks get slower.

One reason might be the Wintel game where the software bloat of the major companies is designed to ensure an ongoing need for upgrades, first of hardware, then of software, then hardware… you get the idea.

But unless you’ve just added the newest Microsoft bloatware to your cherished baby, the slowdown is more likely to have its source in one of two other problems. Actually three problems, but one of them you can resolve by shutting down and restarting your computer. You’d be surprised how many users don’t shut their computers down these days. They either let it run all night in powersave or, for a laptop, let it go into hibernate or standby mode.

Windows is not a tight Operating System; it doesn’t enforce good housekeeping from the applications nor does it reliably release resources once they are used. So a regular shutdown and restart can do wonders in restoring unallocated memory andclearing the swap file.

So, main source #1:… (more…)