You must wait 15 seconds before rebooting your computer
“I’d say 5 seconds is [OK],” Matos said, “but 15 seconds to be on the safe side. If you want peace of mind, then 15 seconds is OK, but it’s not a rule that’s set in stone.”
Size matters (in megapixels)
As photographer and self-described photography expert Ken Rockwell puts it, “sharpness depends more on your photographic skill than the number of megapixels, because most people’s sloppy technique or subject motion blurs the image more than the width of a microscopic pixel.
You have to run your nickel-cadmium battery all the way down before you charge it
Matos said that, ideally, we’d all run our batteries down all the way every time, but he acknowledged that’s not realistic for most people. So he nods to reality: “It’s recommended, so whenever possible…just let the battery drain completely before you charge it up.”
Anything stored digitally will last longer than that on analog media
And the same seems to be true of online recordings. “I think we’re assuming that if it’s on the Web, it’s going to be there forever,” Sam Brylawski, the co-author of a Library of Congress study on sound, told the AP. “That’s one of the biggest challenges.
One part of the dilemma surrounding digital storage of audio and other important records, is that we’ve become trained to use such media given its ubiquity and its ease of use. “But the problem,” Brylawski told the AP, “is they must be constantly maintained and backed up by audio experts as technology changes. That requires active preservation, rather than simply placing files on a shelf.”
Turning a computer on and off regularly is bad for it
As well, he said, it’s recommended that if you’re going to be away from your computer for small periods of time, you let it go to sleep while you’re gone. But in any case, he said, a regular on/off pattern is definitely good for the computer, not bad.
Macs are immune to viruses.
This myth is one that is pushed relentlessly, both overtly and subtly, by Mac fans, and, of course, by Apple. Everyone knows that Windows machines are constantly being bombarded by malware and that keeping them secure is a never-ending task.
But you rarely hear about such things from Mac users, and the common theory is that it’s because Apple’s computers are simply safe from being attacked.
Your ISP is tracking everything you do
Your ISP “is your local link to the worldwide computer network known as the Internet,” Dave Roos wrote on Get Stuff. Every page request you make and every e-mail you send must travel through your ISP’s routers first. It would seem, therefore, that your ISP has the power to scan and save every piece of data that flows through its system.”
But before you get alarmed, Roos also wrote: “The truth is that it does have the power. Fortunately for us, it doesn’t have the money or the desire to archive every bit of information that comes its way. ISPs in the United States don’t routinely save the Web surfing histories and e-mail conversations of their users. It would simply be too expensive to save all of that data and the public outcry from privacy rights and civil liberties organizations would be deafening.”
Girls don’t play video games
Indeed, women and girls make up a very large bloc of gamers–they just are a little more quiet about it.
“Girls and young women are a ‘pot of gold’ for the [video game] industry,” George VanHorn, a senior analyst at market research firm IBISWorld, told Reuters. “The gaming industry has market characteristics that many would die for.”
Anything you delete from your hard drive is gone forever
Given that we lay our lives bare on our computers–what with doing personal banking, storing family photos, researching our medical conditions, and so forth–it would be comforting to be able to believe that if we erase something on our computers, we don’t have to worry about that data being available to anyone who might want to access it later.
Sadly, that would be a naive assumption. The truth is, it’s very difficult to permanently get rid of your data. And if you want to do so, you probably need to go get a drill.http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20026047-52.html#ixzz19qUL0Fem
Related:
Released this week, Zogby’s study found that 28 percent of those polled tagged broadband Internet as the one technology they can’t live without; e-mail came in second at 18 percent. Facebook was lower on the overall list at only 3 percent, but among the younger crowd (18-24), 15 percent said they can’t live without Facebook.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20026405-93.html#ixzz19qVKp8hG
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