Archive for the 'References' Category

Life Beyond Tera (or a Yottabyte is a Lotta Bytes)

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

SpaceThanks to computers, most people are now familiar with the mega- and giga- prefixes, as in megabyte and gigabyte. Many know that terabyte comes next, and the chosen few are familiar with petabyte (1015) and exabyte (1018). There are hard drive farms in the low petabyte range, and it’s estimated that the total amount of yearly data creation on the internet is about 161 exabytes. So these prefixes have a practical use. But what comes next? The official SI counting system defines two more powers of 103: zetta- (1021) and yotta- (1024). I’m not making these up. To get an idea of the scale involved here, the distance of the farthest visible star (13.7 light years) is approximately 130 yottameters.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/…

“Best” Freeware Utilities

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

Freeware

The linked web site has a nicely categorized list of freeware utilities.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/…

For The Internet Geek

Monday, September 4th, 2006

InternetHere are some nice tools for the web site developer or networking geek. The first is a comprehensive color chart with the corresponding HTML color codes (beats my method of guessing until I get something close to what I want). Second, are some quick-reference header diagrams for the various internet protocols (IP, TCP, UDP, and ICMP). Both of these links are courtesy of digg.

Cousin Geneology Made Simple

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Family Tree

Ever wondered what is meant by first/second cousin, or “once removed”? Wikipedia has an explanation, along with a chart, that makes it simple. The Neatorama link also includes great/grand aunt/uncle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/…
(via Neatorama)

What Are Those Unused Keys On Keyboards?

Saturday, August 19th, 2006

Keys

This article explains the function and history of unused keys such as Scroll Lock and SysRq. I never realized that the SysRq key is tied directly into a BIOS interrupt (although it appears to be disabled under Windows). And some programs still use the Scroll Lock key.

http://www.straightdope.com/…