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A program for viewing .pdf (Portable Document Format) files. These files are usually used for storing hardware documentation or software manuals in an electronic form.
Documentation for programs can be either in plain ASCII .txt, Word .doc, windows help, HTML, a mixture of both - .chm or Adobe Acrobat .pdf (Portable Document Format) files. I personally like plain ASCII .txt documentation the best. The only disadvantage is that it's just pure text, so you have no possibility to choose a font or embed graphics into it. On the other side you don't need any special program to read it. I think all operating systems have something to show the contents of a file in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). To explain what ASCII is, simply think of it as a table where the computer can see which letters the ones and zeroes represent. For instance 1000001 is the letter 'A'. So when the computer is required to show something on screen - the contents of a file for example - and on disk there is 1000001 1000001 1000001 then it knows it should show 'AAA' on the screen. OK, this far for ASCII. Word .doc files need a program to be legible. The one shipped with Windows is WordPad, but it can't handle more complex structures in the file, like tables. WordPad isn't able to draw a table so the file looks crippled. Therefore you need either Word or at least WordView to have the file shown correctly. Its disadvantage (along with the previously mentioned) is its incompatibility with Macintosh systems. Who needs that anyways... right Microsoft ? Windows help files, ending in .hlp are only for windows, as the name states, and they are fine, except for the structure which makes it difficult to search sometimes. And windows needs to create a new file, to search through the original one. This can take up a lot of space. HTML is fine, just the differences in the browsers make it a little bit difficult to make the HTML files look the same on most (I don't dare to say all) of the browsers. And it's quite difficult to view it in DOS. The mixture, .chm, is something between HTML and windows help. I think it was introduced with Windows 98, but I am not sure. It is used very rarely, and except the windows' help itself and UNDU (The Unofficial Newsletter of Delphi Users) I haven't seen it anywhere else. Last but not least, here comes the Adobe Acrobat .pdf format. The people at Adobe have decided to make a program, which can be used on all important platforms (PC and Mac, I am not sure about Unix and Linux), to create and spread documents. The Adobe Acrobat Reader is the program you need to read the .pdf files. The files viewed using the program look all like graphics, as if you would be reading a book, though it's just text with embedded images. It looks strange, but cool. Some of the cross-platform programs like Pretty Good Privacy are using it, because you can read it relatively easily on both PCs and Macs. It is also used by the programming language Delphi and actually everywhere where you want an online version of a printed book, e.g. hardware manuals. If you use your computer for more than writing letters in Word, you will need the Acrobat Reader.
On this site you can help fight the world hunger. All you have to do is to click on a button on the page. Sponsors, whose advertisements you will see afterwards, don't pay money for showing their adds to the site owner, but to an organisation providing food to countries, where it is needed most.
This one is really special. I bet you know advertisement on the net far too good. All those banners and annoying pop-up windows. You could really do without them, you think. The only purpose it serves is that the sites get paid and you get bothered.
But there is this one ingenious idea. What if the money from the advertisements on a site wouldn't go to the site's owner, but to someone else, for instance, an organization providing food to those who need it ? Wouldn't that be great ? The more people would see the banners, the more money would the organization get, the more hungry people would be able to eat. Simple and brilliant.
What are you waiting for ? Go there, click the button, see the advertisements and maybe you will save a life !
This is a document, or more of a book, describing various terms from the world of people whose passion are computers. Full of terms, but also of stories and a description of their culture.
Here is the reason why I haven't called this page something like 'cool programs' or 'great applications'. This is not a program. Neither an application nor a utility. It is a HTML file (respectively its text version). It's The Jargon File.
Would you like to know more about hackers ? Who they are, how they live and especially how they talk ? Well, here you will be served. It is "a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor. ... This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate." Indeed. It is a huge lexicon of speech used by hackers all over the world (though I have not verified that). In addition, there are some, let's say, typical hacker stories. But the best thing is, it's funny. Have you ever heard of a distance unit called "attoparsec" ? It equals 3.1 cm (1.22 inches). The scientifically educated ones are laughing already, the other ones - please, give me a second. ;-) You know what a "light-year" is, don't you ? It is the distance that light travels in one year. That is 9 460 800 000 000 kilometres (or 5 913 000 000 000 miles). A parsec is 3.26 light-years. That means 30 842 208 000 000 kilometres (or 19 276 380 000 000 miles). Parsecs are used to define distance in astronomy. And atto is a prefix like mili or micro, but not 10^(-3) (mili) nor 10^(-6) (micro) but 10^(-18). That means that while with mili you divide a number by 1000 and with micro by 1 000 000, with atto it is 1 000 000 000 000 000 000. Hence, a distance unit used in astronomy and a prefix used in nuclear physics together make a normal unit of length - ca. 3 cm (or one inch). Isn't that great ? Or, I bet you have heard about protons, electrons and neutrons. But how about bogons ? Derived from the word "bogus", these are the elementary particles of nonsense. Therefore someone, who is talking nonsense, is emitting bogons. To measure the concentration of bogons a device called "bogometer" is used. So imagine listening to someone who is talking nonsense and showing it to your friend by saying 'I am registering a high concentration of bogons on my bogometer from that direction.' and pointing at the nonsense-talking person. These ideas are just great. There are 2225 entries in the Jargon Lexicon and all of them are worth it. I wish you as much fun as I have everytime I am reading it. :-)
One of the world's best rated encryption software for everyday use. Free for non-commercial use.
The best encryption software I know. (After Encoder, of course. ;-) I think its main advantage is that it's freeware with available source codes. This way many computer security experts have had the chance to review the sources and check them for any weaknesses or back doors. That means Pretty Good Privacy is safe. Very safe. And you may use it freely and don't have to pay anything, unless you want to use it for your company.
The password usage is a bit different from usual encryption programs. Usually you would type in a password to encrypt something and the same password to decrypt it back again. PGP is different (lol, sounds like a commercial :-). The idea is using so-called "keys" (which are files, not that you think...). When you install PGP, you enter you secret passphrase and two keys are made. One is your personal, secret key which you should never lose or give to anyone. The other one is a public key. People, who want to encrypt something for you need your public key. PGP uses the information in it to encrypt it. When you receive the encrypted data, PGP uses your personal key and your secret passphrase to decrypt it. This means that everyone who has your public key can encrypt data for you. Therefore you should make your public key widespread and easily available. The recommended place is a PGP public key server or you can for example put it on your homepage as I did with my PGP public key (5,420 bytes, ZIPped, because AngelFire doesn't accept files with the extension .asc). On the other side, protect your personal key well and never give out or forget your secret passphrase. Only the one who has your personal key and knows your secret passphrase can decrypt the data. Without these two you and no one else, including the programmers of PGP, will not be able to decrypt it.
PGP however does not only encrypt data. It can also sign data or encrypt and sign at the same time. Signing is a procedure used to verify that the data you received is really from the person you think it is. You can use signing for example to safely verify who sent you a mail or a file. As I said before, you can also encrypt the and sign the data and the receiver will get them encrypted and can be sure it is you who sent them.
PGP has one little disadvantage, too. It is not totally understandable at the first sight, so you will need to take a look at the documentation. On the other side I have to say the documentation is very well written. It is fun to read, very comprehensive and easy to understand. Even a Shadow Knight would understand it. ;-))) It doesn't only deal with the program and its functions, but also with cryptography in general, so you can learn the basics and the principles. The documentation is in PDF (Portable Document Format) so you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to read it. Despite the obstacles it is worth reading so you can take advantage of all the features of PGP.
Give it a try.
A project which uses the computing power of your computer for analyzing radio signals from space, searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
I've been into universe since I was born I guess. I've eagerly watched every TV show dealing with this topic and read every article I got into my hands. Scientists discovering the secrets of the Final Frontier of today (who knows what the Final Frontier will be in 200 years). Black holes, dark matter, neutron stars, the relativity theory, time travel, the in February 2000 reproduced quark-gluon matter... it just fascinates me. If I may quote Delenn from one of my favorite science fiction series Babylon 5, "The smallest particles from which stars are made of are the same particles you are made of. You are the universe.". And this expresses my motivation quite perfectly. In knowing and understanding the Reality, we will understand ourselves. We will understand the Purpose. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe never, but nobody will be able to say we haven't tried.
One of the greatest challenges that science faces today is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. There have been many interesting ideas about how to let some intelligent species in outer space know that we are here, most of them funny from today's view, but it was a start. As we discovered radio waves we started to listen to the universe. At first it was just to study stars. Then someone came with the idea, that if someone would want to contact us, he would probably use radio waves. They are easy to create, easy to focus and travel at almost the speed of light. OK, so let's look for radio signals. But where ? The spectrum of frequencies is quite wide. It was decided that the signal would be somewhere between the natural oscillation frequency of hydrogen and water (though I don't know at what temperature). Hydrogen because it is the first chemical element in the periodic table and water because it is the basic substance needed for life. This area of the spectrum is also quite quiet compared to the rest, so they took a try, but found nothing. (At least that's what we are expected to believe. ;-) Despite being unsuccessful, they haven't stopped. They started to gather data, but not too much, since the computing power at that time wasn't big enough to process it all. Now we are able to build fast supercomputers, however, we also improved the radio telescope technology, so we have much more data to evaluate. And that's where you join in. The world's most powerful supercomputer is the combined power of all the computers connected to the Internet. If the scientists could use this power it would be much easier. So they wrote a program, actually a screensaver, which downloads a small amount of data - about 350 KB - gathered from the Arecibo radio telescope - the biggest in the world - and processes it. Since it is a screensaver it doesn't slow your computer down, because it is only active when you aren't using your computer. If you have a fast enough computer you can switch the program to run in background. By distributing the data to hundreds of thousands computers around the planet it is processed with speed uncomparable to any of the supercomputers in the world.
And it's working. I am part of it. I am part of a scientific project searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. I am part of something BIG. I might change the world. You might, too. Together we can change the future forever. And all it takes is a screensaver.
A program for an easy yet powerful file-management. Includes copying, moving, comparing, viewing, searching, splitting, deleting, packing, folder synchronizing, an FTP client and much more. My choice.
I assume you have already tried to copy files from disk to disk or diskette. Move them, create new directories (folders), delete unnecessary stuff or look for the I'm_sure_I_have_it_somewhere file. You might be using Explorer or My Computer. Those of you who remember the good old days of Norton Commander, Volkov Commander or Dos Navigator realize the pain Explorer/My Computer causes. You wish you would have something similar for Windows. And the others may not know that it can be done easier. Here I have the solution for both needs. Total Commander. In my not so humble opinion the best windows file management program you can find. Similar to Norton Commander, it uses two separate file windows where you can copy from one to another, so it's much easier than this one-windowed Explorer and much more convenient than the My Computer copying. But please don't think it's limited to copying. All file management operations are supported - moving, renaming, creating new ones, comparing, searching (even inside archives). Of course, these operations can be performed with directories (folders), too. But this alone wouldn't be very interesting, there are many programs which can do that. The specialty of Total Commander are its specialties. ;-) Packing into ZIP archives, splitting files - so that a large file can be copied onto diskettes without the need to pack it, synchronizing directories (folders) - especially useful for networks and notebooks, working with network drives as if they were your own - just select them in the disk drop-down list and, one that is very useful - an integrated ftp client. You just type in the address and according to your access rights on the server you can download and upload files and all the usual stuff. You can also save the connections to "sessions" so that next you only need to select e.g. "Packers" and Total Commander will automatically connect you to ftp.elf.stuba.sk/pub/pc/pack with all the parameters saved as they were set the first time you were there. Total Commander also features a "Button bar" where you can put all the programs you need to run frequently. You only click on their icon to run them - as usual, but directly from the program - no need to go into the start menu or desktop or whereever. And that is not everything. I mentioned the file operations capabilities already, but not that they can be done in background ! No need to wait until that large file copies onto the other disk, no need to wait until the files are downloaded - just send these operations to background (for experts - other thread) and go on doing other things. Easy and powerful. These words fit Total Commander the best. So go get it, try and see for yourself !
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