When you meet someone for the first time, do you ask their ASL? Do you LOL if they come out with something funny, and say ‘CU L8er’ when you finish the conversation? If you know what I’m talking about, then you are probably already a user of Instant Messaging, or IM.

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Bit & Bytes

A bit is a smallest unit of information that a computer can work on and can take two values “1” and “0”, although sometimes depending on context the values of “true” and “false” are used. On most modern computers, we do not work directly on bits but on a collection of bits, sometimes called a word, the smallest of which is a byte. Today, a byte by default means 8 bits, but technically it can range from 4 to 10 units. The odd values are from either old or experimental CPU architectures that aren’t really in use anymore. To be precise, many standards use octet to mean 8 bits, but we’ll use the more common byte. Modern CPUs operate on much larger word sizes: the term 32-bit microprocessor means the CPU operates primarily on 32-bit words in one clock cycle. It can , of course, operate on 8-bit words, but it doesn’t mean it happens any faster. Many CPUs also have special instructions that sometimes can operate on larger words, such as SSE and similar instructions for multimedia, as well as vector processing , such as on the PowerPC.

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Before the Google deskbar, there was Dave’s Quick Deskbar. The two tools look and act remarkably alike, but Dave’s has a handful of features Google’s doesn’t, and-geeks take note-Dave’s is open source, so you can add your own features or tweak existing ones. (If hacking the tool appeals to you, bear in mind that its underlying code is in Javascript & HTML, with a smidgen of C in the mix, too.)

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Why do some pop-ups appear even when the pop-up blocker is on ? The pop-up blocker slams shut all windows that open when you click a link or buttom . But some Web sites install a small program on your hard drive that randomly open pop-ups for its pages – a behavior that outsmarts the blocker and leaves you with a field of pop-up windows even when you’re turned on the blocker.

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