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Tech Stuff guest columnist

by Kris ⋅ July 19, 2005 ⋅ Comment now ⋅ Subscribe RSS

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So hey, meet and greet Guest Columnist and my friend Al, who constantly surprises me. When we first met, he was this Goth who swore he was going to be a chef or something. He’s now researching techie and web news and has built up the rights to be called a fellow “nerd”.. just kidding! The boy has done his homework and I’m proud to present his first post, which I’m hoping will be a continuing series, so keep checking back, okay? –Kris

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I am not going to get into cracking MD5 hashes on my first post or even going into tools for the modern day software pirate. But before I start rambling on, let me move onto the 5 tools that I highly recommend you using.

1.) Firefox is the alternative web browser (to Internet Explorer) spreading like smallpox infected blankets given to the American Indians. Extensions customize your browser to your likes. A built in pop up blocker lays the smack down on those nosy ads, and what about tweaks and hacks to speed up your surfing while browsing for pr0n (porn for you non-leet speakers)

2.) Winrar-Although not a free application like Firefox, is a great compression tool that should not be overlooked.

3.) Gimp is the open source tool that is in many ways comparable to Photoshop if not better AND free. I linked you to the Windows download because I am assuming you are not using *nix. Forgive me if you are a 1337 h4×0r and have already defaced my site.

4.) Open Office. Who needs that pesky dog in Microsoft Word telling you what to do? I say, feed that son of a bitch some blue cooling liquid you use for your car. Open office is FREE, and can be replaced with Word.
Word…

5.) So you like spyware huh? Ad Aware will reign genocide down upon the unwanted leeches of the Internet.

–aL

Comments [7] for “Tech Stuff guest columnist”

Thanks for the links…What tips can you give for good music sites?

Mary on July 19, 2005
I guess it depends on what kind of content you are looking for. Mp3s, videos etc. Of course there are the big names like itunes and napster. A good site for internet radio is shoutcast.com. Then there are the less than legal ways using P2P apps like kazaa, limewire and winmx. Hope that helps a little.

aL on July 19, 2005
Why on the harddrives they sell it says 250 gigs but when you format them, there isn’t 250 gigs but a different size? What am I doing wrong? And why on some machines it shows up as only 137 gigs and on others it shows as 239 gigs? Where are my missing gigs?

Mufasa on July 19, 2005
Not entirely sure about the loss of space after a format, can you give me a size that you are seeing now? As far as a machine only showing a certain amount of hard drive space, you may want to update your BIOS so that that it recognizes the right amount of space.

aL on July 20, 2005
I can’t remember the reasoning for this, whether the disk space on the box is an estimated size, or whether some space is used in the formatting, but most drives do show less space once they have been formatted. I know most 40 gig drives on computers I use (both at home and at work) show a total capacity of 36-37 gigs. Where the 3-4 gigs go, I have no idea.

Chris on July 20, 2005
I consulted my friend kaspar who is quite knowledgeable in this area and this is what he said,”reason why it’s 239 and not 250 gigs is the definition of a
megabyte. manufacturers use 1000 bytes = 1 meg while engineers aka
windows use 1024 bytes = 1 meg. basically the diff is base2 and base10
mathematics. So in the end the total amount of hd space is correct,
just the way it is represented is different. That is why it says 250
gigs and windows only shows 239 or something like dat. And the larger
in size of hd you go, the bigger the descrepency.”

aL on July 20, 2005
Man you make me sound like a geek, which I am not. What it boils down to is money. Think about it, which would you rather buy? A 239 gig drive for X dollars or a 250 gig drive for the same price? Hrmmmm?

Kaspar on July 20, 2005