David L. Farquhar, computer security professional, train hobbyist, and landlord
What does compressing a file do? There are several ways to describe it, from eliminating redundancy, to just thinking of it as digital shorthand. The goal is to make the file take up less space on disk and in transit. How it works is a bit more complicated.
You hear the word “bot” thrown around a lot today. It’s in conversations, on the news, and even in stand-up comedians’ routines. So everyone assumes you know what it means. But what is a bot in computer terms?
Don’t be afraid to ask. I’ll explain it.
Zero clients and thin clients are two ways companies deal with the problem of sprawling computer infrastructure its associated costs. Instead of putting an expensive computer on every desk, you put something small and cheap on every desk and share that expensive computer. Let’s look at zero client vs thin client, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Cloud computing is all the rage right now, and it’s created a mess of jargon that can make your head spin. Don’t worry though. No one was born knowing this stuff. So, what is public cloud, and what makes it different from other clouds? Assuming there are other clouds?
Public cloud is a booming business. In Q4 of 2017, Amazon’s cloud business accounted for 60 percent of the company’s total operating income. Amazon made its name selling books, but today it makes its money renting computer time. A lot of people don’t know that. Or at least it seems that way.
From time to time you may find a reference to something mysterious and computer-related called machine language. Most people just assume you know what it means, if you care. But what is machine language in computer terminology, and why is it important?
I had an odd question come up the other day: Who still uses Wordperfect? It’s a fair question. Wordperfect, as you may know, is still very much in production. Corel releases new versions every year or two. It’s the #2 word processor in the market, still. Someone is still using it, then.
Wordperfect is a software classic, especially the old version 5.1 that ran under DOS. For a time, Wordperfect 5.1 was one of the two most famous programs for IBM compatible PCs. The other was Lotus 1-2-3.
Why is Publisher hyphenating my words? That’s probably one of the most common questions I hear about Microsoft Publisher. There’s a good reason for it, but I understand if you want to disable it. So I’ll answer both questions.
Sometimes you need a way to find capitalized words in Libreoffice or Openoffice. This can make it easier to figure out if the word needed to be capitalized, in the case of a poorly written or edited document. Then you can make a decision whether the capitalization was appropriate.
Another time you would need to find capitalized words in Openoffice or Libreoffice would be when you’re creating an index. I’m sure there are others.
It’s easier than it sounds.
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I’ve seen a lot of gimmicky hacks to speed up Firefox, and you probably have too. But chances are Firefox ran just fine when you started, then it slowed down over time. Here’s my collection of tips to restore Firefox’s performance if Firefox is slow.
I had a big problem with Chrome running slowly and lots of aw snap errors. It took me a while to fix it, but I’ll share my secret with you.