2005 October

A friend of mine is going to Las Vegas with high hopes of being a net winner this trip. The last couple of time he went there, he ended up a net loser, so he is convinced that by the law of averages, he is due to win. I asked him if the cards have [...]

As Gulf Coast residents begin the cleanup process after the recent hurricanes, there are many possessions that people will go to great lengths to salvage. Among those possessions with the most sentimental value are family photos, stored either in traditional albums, or for digital photos, on computer hard drives, CDs and DVDs. While CDs and [...]

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
While voice frequencies are linear or sequential, human voice has unique characteristics. That is, quantization levels according to a logarithmic, instead of a linear, process provides smaller quantization levels at lower signal often lower frequency - bass voice. The result is a higher level of reproduction for [...]

Urban legends. These spoken myths have been around for as long as I can remember. And since the popularity of the Internet took hold back in the 1990s, it seems like they have managed to grow exponentially. Over the past few years, my repair clients have made a point out of calling me in a [...]

When you open a new document, Word applies the font style, views, and so on found in the Normal.dot template. If you do not care for the formatting and other options configured in the template, they can be changed. However, before you can do this, you need to know how to find the Normal.dot template.
If [...]

CIO Today magazine offers news, analysis, and special reports for technology’s top decision-makers. Each issue is packed with high-level insight into the latest trends defining the world of technology, as well as interviews with CIOs from today’s leading companies. Topics include enterprise hardware, software applications, data storage, networking, security, CRM, Web services, supply chain management, [...]

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From SearchSMB.com:
We’ve gathered 10 of our most popular SMB Check IT Lists for your convenience. From choosing VPNs to detecting spyware on PCs to getting certified, SearchSMB.com’s Check IT Lists offer quick, at-a-glance information for on-the-go IT professionals who need timely, hands-on information. Check out the [...]

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
There are six major call signaling control protocols (depending on how you define signaling):

Electro-Mechanical Tip & Ring Signaling

Digital PBX [Private Branch eXchange]

SS7 [Signaling System 7]

Skinny Protocol - Cisco proprietary call control

SIP [Session Initiation Protocol]

MGCP [Media Gateway Control Protocol]

H.323 International Standard Multi-Media - ISDN [Integrated Services Digital Network] protocol

To be honest, I have not followed the news on Windows Vista with the same anticipation that I did with Windows XP. Now in some way, I suppose that is because I have not really heard anything yet that is giving me reason to ‘get excited’ about the next release of Windows. At first pass, [...]

Much like any class out there, not all of the students in attendance are going to necessarily follow that exact career path set forth by the offered curriculum. Regardless, by following the example being set forth by Pinckney High of Detroit, Michigan, we as mentors/teachers have an opportunity to educate kids on just [...]

Do you struggle trying to locate items in Outlook? Do you spend far too much time searching through your Inbox and various other folders in Outlook trying to find the item you are looking for? If so, you might want to consider using Categories.
A category is a specific word or phrase that you can [...]

When you use Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 or Microsoft FrontPage 2002 to reverse publish from a remote Web site to a local Web site, you receive one of the following error messages.

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
CALEA [Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act] compliance is a legal obligation imposed on all carriers covered by the statute. According to the FBI, “lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance is considered to consist of both the interception of communications content (commonly referred to as wire taps) and the acquisition of [...]

Is new technology truly a boon to our lifestyles? Or is it instead, a problem waiting to happen? For a number of weeks now, I have noticed that depending on the generation that you belong to, chances are that you have strong opinions one way or the other regarding how technology affects each us.

Axiom Journal is devoted to delivering hard-hitting editorials, case studies, and insights from the best storage experts, analysts, and end users. This thought-provoking periodical delivers the fresh perspective you need to navigate through your infrastructure challenges. If you’re a thought leader, we invite you to experience firsthand what an impact it will have on you [...]

Start the Group Policy Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

Select the Security Options object in the Console pane to display the security policies in the Details pane.

In the Details pane, double-click the Recovery Console: Allow Floppy Copy And Access To All Drives And Folders policy.

Click Enabled, and then click OK.

Quit the MMC. You can save the [...]

Client computers do not use the Windows Indexing Service when the computers search for a network-shared file on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer.
Note: The client computers are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Windows XP Professional.

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
Parallel OADMs [Optical Add Drop Multiplexers] are easy to manage but often have a high insertion (add-delete) loss. Serial OADMs have a lower pass through loss but often have a higher add/drop insertion loss also known as grooming for wavelength and sub-wavelength control or routing. Grooming is [...]