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Put your idle computer and games machine to work

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When you are not using your computer or game machine, what are they doing? Just for the cost of electricity, you can contribute to worthy causes such as protein folding or searching for ET. Organizations from Stanford ( Folding@home ) and Berkley ( SETI@home ) have small programs that you can download for your computer, that will only run when your computer is idle. Folding@home and SETI@home are able to do this through using Grid Computing technology. The Folding@home project started in 2000 with assistance from Intel, Google, and others. What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery. So with the help of the Folding@home project, researchers are able to process data faster t

Who has the best gas prices?

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As we have all been struggling to keep up with the rising gas prices, one service Internet service has been developed to help you find the lowest price in your area. That would be GasBuddy.com . GasBuddy has any easy interface (despite the busy distractions): click your state and enter your zip code - that's it. You can also find the average price for gas in each state plus Washington DC. Here in Oregon, we're currently averaging $4.268, 45th of 51. The lowest average goes to Missouri at $3.854 and the highest goes to Hawaii at $4.552. With the gas temperature map , you can see the range of gas prices within your state (or for the country). And finally, you can view the trend of gas prices for up to 3 cities over the last 6 years.

Microsoft Update + ZoneAlarm = No Internet Access

With the last Microsoft patch this past Tuesday, if you were a user of ZoneAlarm , you were no longer able to access the Internet. I happen to be one of those users. I could get to my router, but not the Internet. Other devices on my network, of course, also were able to access the Internet. When I finally discovered that ZoneAlarm was the problem, I found a reference on the ZoneAlarm site . Apparently the patch was fixing quite a serious flaw in Internet addressing. "You'd have the Internet, but it wouldn't be the Internet you expect. (Hackers) would control everything." - Securosis analyst Rich Mogul I find it funny that fixing the flaw caused ZoneAlarm problems. Anyway, if you're finding this post, then you were not affected or you have solved the problem.

Dell sucumbs to the pressure from the RIAA -- Hmm, one more reason to buy a Mac

First it's Microsoft that bloats Vista with MPAA DRM protection software , and now PC manufacturers such as Dell are bowing down to the RIAA . These manufacturers seem to forget who their customers are, and are ripping off unsuspecting buyers. Can you imagine spending $1000 of your hard earned dollars on a laptop to find out later that you cannot record audio -- even though the sound card supports it? Of course teech savvy people like Chad are going to find a solution; and the real copyright violatetrs are going to as well. But the average consumer who wants to dabble in a little audio and video, perhaps for their church or their son's or daughter's sports team, are left with a bag of bolts. So next time you need a new computer, start with your objectives -- what do you want to use it for -- and then do your homework before you buy to make sure the hardware will support it. If you're thinking about audio, photos, and video, you might give Macs a hard look. Using their

Bill Gates and Microsoft stories on TWiT

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Just one more of many tributes to Bill Gates, TWiT (This Week in Tech) this week, episode 149 , spent significant time talking about Bill Gates and the history of Microsoft. Leo Laporte had on old time industry followers John C. Dvorak, Jerry Pournelle, and Bill Machrone. If you have any interest in personal computer history, this is a great podcast to catch. You can download it on the TWiT site or subscribe through your podcatcher.

Lorem Ipsum, huh?

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I have always wondered what the story was behind "Lorem Ipsum" used as filler text on website mock-ups. Well there's a website that has the story, http://www.lipsum.com/ . Website builders will often use this Latin text to give the previewer a feel for what a page will look like once the content has been added. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC,.. Visit Lorem Ipsum at lipsum.com and learn the entire history. Also from the site, you can have it generate your own Lorem Ipsum text to put in your next website mock-ups.

Faster and more reliable web surfing with OpenDNS

For the past week or so I have been using OpenDNS instead of the DNS service provided by my ISP. Huh? When you enter a URL into your browser, a [DNS] system must translate that into a computers [ip] address so you may visit the website. If you have ever input a bad URL and were returned a web page with search results that included your ISPs name or logo, that is the ISPs DNS "helping" you find what you were looking for. Just a month ago Comcast's DNS systems was hacked , so whenever a user using Comcast's DNS system tried to go to Comcast.net, they instead received a web page loaded from a different website ( see picture ). The typical complaint from users in regard to DNS is that some web sites take a long time to respond. When I was a Comcast user, I do recall having problems whenever I tried going to Yahoo!. Perhaps a coincidence; perhaps not. Back to OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a DNS service that you can use instead the default service (most of us use) provided by your