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Computers 101

Watch your magnets!

Have you ever had a 3.5 floppy disk (or zip disk) stop working unexpectedly? Granted those little 3.5 floppies are seldom accused of being reliable, but still, you'd like them to last as long as possible.

Well, the cause of the little guy's early demise may have been magnetic.

Disks are a magnetic storage medium. The head inside the drive arranges data on your disk through the precise use of low magnetic fields. If a magnetic source gets too close to your disk, it could cause all those little bits of data to be sent into a digital abyss.

Maybe you don't remember putting anything magnetic near your floppy disk. Keep in mind that your refrigerator magnets aren't the only ones in your house.

Have you ever set your cordless phone down on your desk, maybe even on top of a disk? The little speakers in that phone have magnets in them. I've also seen people stack disks between their computer monitor and speakers. Bad idea. Although computer speakers are usually shielded, they can still destroy a disk.

Oh, be careful when transporting disks too. Setting them on top a dashboard speaker or sliding them into a car door near a speaker are a couple additional ways to ruin data.

--Steve

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Tip of the Day

HTML Errors

It happens to all of us. We're surfing along, and up comes an error (usually 404). What do all those error codes mean? Here's a quick rundown of the most common:

400 - Bad Request - You probably typed in a URL wrong, the server has no clue what you're looking for, or you aren't allowed to have access. Usually, it's a matter of the URL being typing in wrong. Maybe you mixed upper and lowercase letters or something.

401 - Unauthorized Request - you tried to get to something on the web server you're not allowed to play with. In other words, you ain't on the party list.

403 - Forbidden - You can't access the page. You may not have access (it may require a password), or it may be blocked from your domain.

404 - Not Found - The page you were trying to look at was not found on the server. This is probably the most common error you'll come across. What has probably happened is that the web page you were going to has been removed or re-named.

500 - Internal error - Usually caused by a CGI error. You fill out a form, but the script used to process it is not working properly.

503 - Service Unavailable - The server may be overloaded, down, or have other similar problems. Try later!

--Steve

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Amanda's Cool Site of the Day

Figure This

Welcome to Figure This, Math Challenges for Families. According to the site each challenge features: “a description of the important math involved, a note on where the math is used in the real world, a hint to get started, complete solutions, a "Try This" section, additional related problems with answers, questions to think about, fun facts related to the math and resources for further exploration.”

This is definitely a site that will help make math fun for you child. Most of the problems start at middle school level, when math starts to get boring for kids. There are even fun cartoon characters – Polygon, Tessellation, Exponent, Tangent, and Axis who spice up the equations and think Math is GREAT!

http://www.figurethis.org/

Do you have a cool, non-commercial site that you want to share?
Send it to Amanda at amanda@worldstart.com