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Happy Holidays from all of us at Tech Support Guy! Thanks for being a part of our community as we celebrate another year. We have big plans for 2008 and will keep you updated as things progress.
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Bletchley Park – England by Bob Hobbs Apparently the place was full of all kinds of people from university professors to chemists, librarians and so on. All with one object in mind: to break the Enigma code used by the Germans in the war. These code breakers were the best around, but even they could not break an Enigma code fast enough to warn shipping in the Atlantic against German subs or any other kind of operation being actioned against the allies. There were a number of code breakers one of which was Alan Turing and together they produced what we would be known today as an electronic computer. Its name was Colossus and was referred to as the thinking machine. It had no memory but fed in the data from one end and two hours later it produced the answer from the other! This was astonishing as it was taking the code breakers around two weeks to crack the codes put in front of them. Part of the basic idea seems to have come from a telephone engineer who realized that valves were the answer to the success of computing at high speed. Colossus, of which they have a replica at Bletchley Park, was enormous and full of valves. More like a free standing wall. It took so long to boot up and caused so many valves to explode (where the term CRASH comes from) due to electricity fluctuation that it was decided to leave it on constantly! The heat from Colossus being left on 24/7 was quite something and it was said that the Wrens and Wrafs who looked after it would strip off down to underwear just to keep cool. Churchill had it destroyed after the war. Why, is a mystery, but the basis of it was taken back to the US and the rest, as they say, is history. There are still some rooms on the estate that are not open to the public because they contain information still regarded as official secrets! I can well recommend anyone living in England or visiting to make time for this fascinating place. Bletchely Park Website
Google Documents by Daniel McCarthy I have several laptop and desktop
computers. Depending on where I am and how well prepared I am I could
be working on any of the three laptops I own, or on my father's
desktop, my brother's laptop, etc. Having these varied machines to work
with has necessitated a review of how I author documents.
One of the jobs I have is a contract position paying for work hourly. When using so many different computers it has been very difficult for me to keep track of the hours I work. To overcome this I have begun using Google Documents. I have created a spreadsheet in Google Documents that keeps track of all the hours I work for the contract position. Regardless of where I am or what laptop I am using I will have access to my Google Documents. Google Documents was first introduced in 2006. The Document editor was acquired from a start-up company, while the Google Spreadsheet editor was created by Google. In addition to spreadsheets and documents, Google Documents also supports the creation of presentations. I have not had the opportunity to play with Google Presentations as of yet. There are limits to the features in the Google Application suite. With the free account users are limited to the number and size of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Google Spreadsheets has limited formula capabilities when compared to Microsoft Excel. Users of any office application suite will feel very familiar with the user interface of each of the document editors. Pressing CTRL+S will save a document. Pressing CTRL+P will print the document. Right-clicking will provide the normal cut, copy, and paste functions. Google Documents also has the ability to export in many different formats including OpenOffice, Word, RTF, and PDF. These built export features ensure compatibility with other office suites. In addition, the ability to collaborate on documents in built in to Google Documents. The collaboration features are similar to Microsoft's Sharepoint without the headache of having to administer the software and the ability to reach out to a much a wider audience. The only major hassle I have experienced with Google Documents is the right-click capabilities in Firefox. Right-clicking brings up both the Firefox context menu as well as the Google Documents context menu. To check out Google Documents click here. Recover Your Valuable Data Since 1985, DriveSavers has recovered data from hard drives and other storage media that has crashed, been physically damaged, infected by viruses and worse. This has earned us our reputation as the most advanced and progressive data recovery service in history, with clients like ABC News, Adobe Systems, American Express, Apple Computer, Boeing, Cisco, FedEx, Google, Kodak, NASA, Yahoo, and many more! Hold on to this email, and next time you or a friend needs data recovery, use discount code DS16823 and receive a 10% discount, and there will be no charge if your data isn't recoved! For more information, visit www.drivesavers.com or call 1-800-440-1904. |
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What is your real name? |
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by Laura Martlock
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