8th March 1999

Subjects: Information is Power, Scarey Filums, Windows 98, My Computer Spec, Year Two Thousand Problems, a.k.a. Millenium Bug!.

Information is Power

You know, imagine if, or rather, knowing that they have microphones that are small enough, and cameras that are small enough to be placed on or in people, in their rooms etc, and imagine that they actually did this stuff whereby they monitored every person in every country and collected that information. They would know everything about you, things you thought no-one else knew. They would know how often, and at what times you went to such and such a place. They already know which web sites you visit, what you type, what you email to other people. The University of Huddersfield openly admits (School of computing and maths) to colatting information about it's computer users, what web sites they visit, what times etc. Who knows whether companies such as Microsoft monitor your email, through Hotmail? Through Outlook? What better way to combat software piracy to "listen-in" to your email about it?? Hmmm... just some thoughts, just some facts.

Scarey Filums.

Was watching a bit of "Wes Craven's New Nightmare", though I thought it a bit scarey so decided not to watch it.

Windows 98

Yeah, it's pretty hip! I like it, it makes it look more futuristic and swanky with the new title screen, and the gradually changing colour title bars. But like, you still have to install your Dos cd-rom drivers and dos sound card drivers to get full Dos gaming compatability, say if you haven't got enough memory to play de games under Windows. Oh, it also makes all the icons look nice too.

It does seem to have a bug though, whereby if you have a window maximized in one resolution, say 800 by 600, and then you change to 640 by 480, it leaves the windows at 800 by 600, and you can't do anything with them except click the button on the taskbar at the bottom to re-size them.

My Computer Spec

Many have asked, so I thought I'd let you know about dis stuff, Janet's Stats (or rather specifications)... and hey, check this out for neat, it's a table within a table, cool huh? (I really do have to get a life, don't I?)

Component Date of purchase Place of purchase Cost at purchase
TX Pro II Mb, with VGA and Sound 6th Jan 1999 Micro Direct £42
Cyrix / IBM pr233 MII* Dec 1998 Emit (time retail) £35
Mini Tower Case Dec 1998 Target Computers, Queensgate £20
16mb EDO Ram Phil's mate £30
1GB W. D. HD S/H £40
14" Elonex Oct/Nov 1998 S/H £40
16x CD-ROM 04/07/97 BBB (3B systems) £65
Keyboard 14th Nov 1998 Computer Fair £1
Mouse BBB (3B systems) £5
Heatsink/Fan 29th Jan 1999 Ram Computers, Huddersfield £5
TOTAL £283**
** excludes price of software.
BIOS Flash upgraded to 09/01/1999 version Feb 1999. 1.44 FDD was free.
* currently overclocked to core of 200mhz (66 * 3) - which is PR266! (as stated at start-up) - normally 166mhz (83 * 2)

Year Two Thousand Problems!!

You know how I bought the motherboard on the 6th of January 1999? Yeah? You think that by now, motherboards being sold in January 1999 would have no year 2000 problems? Yeah, well no, actually my motherboard's RTC (Real Time Clock) will FAIL roll-over to year 2000 if it is left on!!! I was quite definitely very shocked by this, I did this test after the bios update - the motherboard is an M571 by PC Chips. (version 3.2a)

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