Seems there has been a massive breach of security at a Credit Card processing firm in the US. They don’t know how long they have been compromised – could be months or years. As they process 100 million transactions per month that is one hell of a lot of credit card numbers the thieves probably got! With the incredible amount of data that is processed electronically every day world wide it is amazing that we don’t hear more about these things. I think the truth is that the big corporations make so much money on some of these systems they just treat these problems as minor and pay up . The cost of keeping systems really secure is just to high – cheaper to pay out when/if it breaks.
Won’t effect us here in Oz but I bet a few US banks and consumers aren’t having a great day
Reading ebooks is a fantastic way to save money. You can find text/ebook copies of even current bestsellers online. For ‘official’ versions of new books you need to pay but there are lots of copies available free if you know where to look – torrents, filesharing sites such as Rapidshare and the like. Of course some of these are of questionable legality and maybe associated with virus/spyware so check you moral compass and check your security.
These texts can be read on your computer screen, on your phone or PDA or even on one of the new generation fancy ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle (pictured)
Personally I probably spend too much time in front of a computer already. But I do have a bunch of Computer ebooks I use for reference material. Just think if you took out the pictures and maps the text of say the Encyclopedia Britannica would probably fit on a floppy drive AND be searchable! Amazing really
You might be surprised by how many good free ebook sites there are out there. Nowadays, you can find pretty much any popular (and not) book online. You just need to know where to look. Here are my favourite free ebook sites.
1. Ebook Search Engines
These are simple Google-like search engines but for PDF files. I usually start my ebook search using one of these sites. Type in the title of the document or book name you’re looking for and click on the search button. Find your book in the search results and click on download link. Done.
In case you have never heard of this one before, the simplest way to define Scribd would be to call it Youtube for documents. People can upload whatever text documents they want and easily share them with others.
You’ll find lots and lots of free ebooks here. You only need to know what to look for. For instance try searching for George Orwell, Leo Tolstoi, etc.
And obviously it gets copyrighted ebooks much like YouTube gets copyrighted videos. I am not sure if they are doing anything to deal with them, but the fact is there are plenty of them on Scribd.
Oh and as we have mentioned before, Scribd is also an excellent resource for free document templates.
3. Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (aka PG) has the largest collection of public domain books. These are the books that out of copyright and available for anyone to use for any purpose. Lots of books from the world’s greatest fiction authors such as Dickens, Joyce, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Anton Chekov and Edgar Allan Poe fall into this category.
This site is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. PG is an extremely popular site and now has over 20,000 works. If you’re not sure where to start check out their Top 100 page.
4. Free Ebooks For Your iPod, PDA, Smartphone, Blackberry etc.
For those of you who like to have ebooks on their portabe device we got some sites as well. Below are what I believe the best websites for books that can be read on mobile devices.
For iPhone users in particular there is a website called TextOnPhne. It’s a great ebook site that comes with its own ebook reader app. There are over 30,000 free books for your Apple device. Check out the demo video here.
5. Free Tech Ebooks
These sites are mainly for tech books, covering everything from computer science, engineering and mathematics to programming and web development.
DailyLit is a bit different from the rest but I really like what they’re doing there. DailyLit can deliver a small excerpt from the book of your choice to your email on a daily basis. One excerpt per day, and so untill the book is finished.
The reason it wroks so well is that it only takes around 3-5 minutes to read each excerpt. If you feel like reading more you can request a next excerpt with a click of a button.
While more than a half of all books cost about $4.95 per book others are free. There are plenty of good titles among the free ones as well, some of my favorites include My Life and Work (by Henry Ford), Siddhartha (by Herman Hesse) and Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (by John D. Rockefeller). Check it out.
Can you help me with "grounding" I wish to add RAM to my computer but whilst reading up noticed numerous references to "grounding" I don’t want to stuff it up, what's the easy way to eliminate the chance of a spike? Cheers Brian
Hi Brian – good question! Whenever we stick our hands (or heads) inside a computer case we should be very cautious about the possibility of zapping the components with a static electricity discharge. Static electricity can cause quite a lot of damage to sensitive parts, such as ram, inside your computer.
Professional repair shops probably have specialised equipment for grounding themselves and the simplest of these is an ‘earthing strap’ which is basically a little wrist strap you put on your wrist and attach to the computer case. This basically levels out the static charge between you and the components so you don’t zap them. Really professional operations might have grounding mats and all sorts of other devices including temperature and dust controlled environments.
I have been fiddling with PC bits for years. I have never used a strap or other device and to my knowledge I have never stuffed anything. Just be aware of course that once you open your computer case you do need to be cautious. No only could you damage the components but there could be residual current and you could injure yourself. I have scratched and cut myself on sharp corners in there and your blood will do nothing to lubricate the performance of your PC!
The only precautions I ever take is to have clean hands and to touch the case and power supply before touching any other parts like the ram or motherboard. Unless you have been running on the carpet and rubbing a balloon on your tummy this should discharge any static electricity difference between you and the PC.
Below I have linked a couple of articles that may give you some more information on the topic. The first link is the Google search I did to find the other sites.
Of course you know that upgrading your ram will probably be like getting a whole new computer. Win XP struggles with less than 512mb of ram but will really fly with 1G or more. Vista needs at least 2Gb but that's progress for you! Let us know how you go Brian
Have you ever lost a user manual or instructions for an item? Of course you have – I know I have!
It could be a TV or a DVD player, a food processor, an air conditioner or some other complicated piece of equipment. Or maybe you bought it second hand and the booklet didn’t come with it. And the frustration mounts!
There are a number of places on the web you can look for a copy of the user manual. An educated Google search can often turn one up and of course try the manufacturers own site too. But there are also some places on the net that accumulate the manuals for you and one of these is SafeManuals.com. Apparently they have over 800,000 guides saved and growing.
I have included their search function in this post – click the buttons below and give it a try. You might just find something you are missing!
I thought this was very interesting – especially the way the phones ‘morph’ into one another. The video perspective doesn’t really show you the changing scale of phones though. Those early phones were over 1kg – we have whole laptops that are lighter now.
I also noticed the time lag – we must get our mobiles here in Oz a lot slower than their release in the US, etc.
Check out the stats on the number of phones sold and messages and stuff. Amazing really.
A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Dr Nigel Bannister’s calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches programme “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off”.
He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble – and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text. He said: “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.
The world is a fascinating place sometimes. I think this sounds amazing
A man with severe brain injuries who spent six years in a near-vegetative state can now chew his food, watch a movie and talk with family thanks to a brain pacemaker that may change the way such patients are treated, US researchers said on Wednesday.
The 38-year-old man is the first person in a minimally conscious state to be treated with deep-brain stimulation, a treatment that uses a pacemaker and two electrodes to send impulses into a part of the brain regulating consciousness. His awakening may change the way doctors think about people with severe brain injuries, who are largely unresponsive but still have some level of consciousness. These patients typically spend the rest of their lives in nursing homes, with little efforts at rehabilitation and slim chance of recovery. "This is a group of patients that are really, in many ways, forgotten about," said Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurological Restoration. "We have to do more research, obviously, but I think down the line it will change the way we are treating or even looking at people with severe brain injury." Rezai and a team of specialists from the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute-Center for Head Injuries in Edison, New Jersey, and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York detailed the patient's progress in the journal Nature. They used a device made by Medtronic. Like a heart pacemaker, the device is implanted in the chest under the skin, but electrodes deliver stimulation to precisely targeted areas deep in the brain. Researchers think the electrical stimulation may be enhancing the brain circuits that are still capable of functioning.
LOVED TO DRAW Before his injury, the man -- whose identity was not disclosed -- loved to draw, collected comic books and fancied movies about superheroes. He was attacked and robbed in 1999. "His skull was completely crushed and he was left for dead," his mother told reporters in a telephone briefing. He spent the next five years in a nursing home with no hope of recovery. He would occasionally mouth the word yes or no, but could not communicate reliably or eat on his own. His parents agreed to try the experimental treatment in August 2005, and doctors saw immediate results. He was alert and could move his head to follow voices. He can now drink from a cup, recall and speak 16 words, and watch a movie. Rezai said he is engaged with his family, playing cards with his mother and taking short trips outside the facility. Because of years of immobility, he may never walk. "He still has got a long way to go, but given where he was, he is dramatically improved," Rezai said. The man is the first of 12 patients who will undergo the treatment as part of a pilot study approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Experts believe about 100,000 to 300,000 patients with traumatic brain injury may be in a minimally conscious state. Most do not receive active therapy, but Rezai and colleagues think this may need to change. "Judging from the results, we are very encouraged about the potential of this technology to improve the function of these brain-injured patients," he said.
At Mulligrubs last night a few members discussed the new MS touch screen computer. Go to this site and read the article to find out more about it. Pogue suggests that while it might be a good gimmick and functional in some situations in general it won't be practical for a majority of PC applications. And in typical MS style they are copying and adapting the ideas of others and using there massive market presence to sell it to us. Ultimately they are the world's greatest marketers and salesmen and are often selling software that isn't as good as the opposition yet they outsell them 100 to 1. You have to admire that skill! :)
What it was, as the world found out yesterday, was a new touch-screen computer. The 30-inch screen sits 21 inches off the ground, as though it is the top of a fancy coffee table. You manipulate objects on the screen with your fingers. Drag virtual photos to sort them, flick an on-screen globe to spin it and so on.
This new “surface computer,” as Microsoft calls it, has a multi-touch screen. You can use two fingers or even more — for example, you can drag two corners of a photograph outward to zoom in on it. Here’s an article in yesterday’s Times about it.
