Can you answer the computer, hon?
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You may have seen ads for services offering cheap &#39;&#39;Internet phone calls,&#39;&#39; or heard someone bragging about how little they pay for long distance because they have an Internet phone, and wondered what they were talking about.
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The question you've always asked is now answered.
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I don&#39;t know how many times I&#39;ve heard the question asked of Dell Computer and, similarly, I don&#39;t know how many times I&#39;ve heard the same answer.
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By Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle  Feb. 27--Sick puppy that I am, I love a good computer problem. When issues arise, it's an opportunity to learn something new.   However, I'm not so warped that I don't want to find a solution eventually.
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Thanks for your thoughtful gift! Can I get the receipt from you?
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The long-standing joke in computer help desk circles is that the best question to ask those having trouble with their computers is &quot;Sir, is there a child in the house?&quot; For a particularly hilarious riff on this idea, watch Wes Borg&#39;s &quot;Internet Help Desk&quot; video on YouTube.
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Make the moo jokes, make the methane jokes, make any joke you like -- but the One Laptop Per Child project is pondering the prospect of using cattle to generate electrical power for their low-cost computers. Has Bossy got what it takes to roam the information superhighway?
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Inspired by an online discussion where the question was raised, could Microsoft's Windows Vista's new vocal command feature inadvertently respond to a word spoken by an audio file played remotely, perhaps through a Web site, ZDNet blogger George Ou discovered through his own tests that a well-recorded voice command could be played back through the speakers of a Vista-endowed computer, and that the computer would respond as if commanded by its own user.
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Question: We're in the early stages of startup and beginning to shop for technology. We'll need basic hardware and software, plus many other technology and Web-based services to sell online, service customers and keep it all secure.
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Today's rude question: When does your money manager cost more than the taxman? Answer: Sooner than you think.
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A softball tech question: Can you name the innovator whose gorgeously distinctive products earn praise from reviewers and almost cultish devotion from customers? The answer: Apple Computer.
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The jury's still out on whether a computer can ever truly be intelligent, but there's no question that it can have multiple personalities. It's just a matter of software.
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Comment is free: Mark Lawson: Anyone stupid enough to do a computer's bidding is not losing civil liberties so much as their marbles.
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By Bill Husted, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  Feb. 11--QUESTION: At your recommendation, I purchased a battery backup  for my PC. Also at your suggestion, I was planning to buy one for my HDTV as  well.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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Q: I'm thinking about offering wireless Internet access at my restaurant, but I'm not exactly a technical person. So where do I start?  A: Good move, especially if you're competing with big-name coffee chains and sandwich shops.
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When I suggested in a recent column that a problematic 5 percent of employees account for 75 percent of the IT support burden, I expected a wave of âright on!â letters from IT support staffers. After the column was published, the letters did come â most of them disagreeing with my premise, with one reader suggesting that the real whiner was yours truly. I still think itâs outside the realm of overextended IT departments to provide training on basic computing skills (which I defined as âmanaging and finding files, and basic working knowledge of suites such as MS Officeâ). But my thinking was adjusted a bit by the thoughtful feedback.