| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| 1029usr078198 |
Posted - July 28 2010 : 05:30:02
Listen now. or Download the archive.
Question: Sylvia writes, "I wrote you about a year ago and you were so gracious to help me with that problem. Now I have another situation and I don't know what is causing it. For several weeks my computer has been making humming or racing sounds while I'm on the internet. I can't really describe it but it is weird. It didn't do this in the past but it does it every time I'm on the internet and it even affects my printer. It does that racing noise and takes longer than usual to print something. I know this may sound vague or strange but have you heard of anyone's computer doing this? Thank you David for whatever info you can provide."
Answer: Good question Sylvia. The sound you're hearing can be coming from three possible places. The first is the optical drive (CD or DVD). The second is a fan. Humming is usually a fan, especially if its a "bumpy" hum, but racing is usually the optical drive. When you hear that sound, look for a light on the CD/DVD drive; if it’s on or blinking, you might try putting a disc in the drive to see if that helps. Once we figure out where the sound is coming from, we'll know what, if anything, to replace. The third is a floppy drive if you have one. I've seen situations where for no apparent reason, the floppy drive light will come on and stay that way while the drive bumps and hums for a few seconds and then it stops.
Cool Site: ReasonableFaith: Have you ever wondered how to answer the objections of atheists? If so, take a look at ReasonableFaith.org. This is the website of Dr. William Lane Craig. He's written several books, the latest being On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. I've read portions of that book and it's got great arguments that don't necessarily depend on first believing that the Bible is true, which atheists won't. If you haven't read it, you'll find the first chapter of the book on the site. There's an excellent Q&A archive that gets a little technical at times, but is great. You'll also find a newsletter, podcasts, a blog, a forum for discussions, and many different articles. If you register to use the site, much more material will be made available to you, like the forums for instance. Registration is free and doesn't require much time. For those who are interested, the site also has information on how to set up a Reasonable Faith chapter at your school or church. If you'd like to see Dr. Craig in person, his speaking calendar is also available at the site. ReasonableFaith.org
Cool Gadget: Antenn-Aid: Their site says "Apple made a boo-boo. Make it all better". If you're not familiar with all the brouhaha, it turns out that Apple's new iPhone 4 has a design flaw. A week or so ago Apple CEO Steve Jobs came out and said that the problem was in software. It's not. What happens is that if you grip your iPhone 4 a certain way, your signal strength will fall off and calls will drop. Apple says they'll give free bumpers to any iPhone 4 user that wants one. This week's gadget isn't included in that giveaway, but Antenn-Aid is a bumper that's similar to the duct-tape remedy others have mentioned. It's little more than a piece of duct-tape dressed up as an adhesive bandage. As such, it claims to be for entertainment purposes only and may not work. But many people say that the duct tape thing works, and this looks better than that. You get 6 for about 5 bucks plus shipping.
It's All "Geek" To Me: Metadata: This week's term is metadata. You often see this term around music files because when it comes to some kinds of files, you have data, and then you have the data about the data. By that, I mean that you have the music file, and that's the data. On the other hand, you also have information about the song. Information like Album Title, Artist, Track Number, Musical Genre, and even the Album Art are all data items about this file. That's the metadata. Pictures might have the date and time they were taken, the kind of camera used, even your GPS coordinates when the picture was snapped. That's metadata – the data describing the data.
Links
Reasonable Faith:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org
Antenn-Aid:
http://antenn-aid.com/
Metadata on TechTerms:
http://www.techterms.com/definition/metadata |
|
|
