Computer Beginner Guide

Games today range from harmless edutainment and board games to first-person shooter games that feature scenes of intense violence and even sexual content. How are parents supposed to be able to tell the difference? It's a big problem because most homes nowadays have a computer, and many have separate computers for the kids. To solve the problem, in 1994 the Entertainment Software Association established the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), an independent regulatory body that applies and enforces ratings, advertising guidelines, and online privacy policies for computer and video games. The ESRB applies to each game one of the following ratings: Early Childhood (EC) - The game has no inappropriate content and is, therefore, suitable for ages 3 and older. Everyone (E) - The game has mildly inappropriate content (such as cartoon violence) but is still suitable for ages 6 and older. Everyone 10+ (E10+) - The game has some inappropriate content (such

In his 2005 book What the Dormouse Said , journalist John Markoff describes how the 1960s counterculture gave rise to and shaped the personal computer industry. At one point, he tells the story of how engineers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) decided to create their own version of Spacewar, the world's first computer game (invented by MIT hacker Stephen Russell in 1962). SAIL used a time-sharing system in which a number of terminals competed for the resources of a single minicomputer, and this often caused the Spacewar screen to freeze while it waited for processor cycles. To fix this problem, the Stanford engineers invented a new operating system mode that doled out processor resources in sixtieth-of-a-second slices, which improved the performance not only of Spacewar, but also of many other applications. Markoff concludes the story: It was called "Spacewar mode" and was one of the earliest examples of how gaming advanced the st

Previous versions of Windows could rip data from CDs and burn data to recordable CDs, but they had no support for ripping and burning DVDs. (The exception was XP Media Center Edition, which offered support for DVD burning through the Media Center program.) Windows Vista changes that by building DVD-burning capabilities into the following applications: Windows Photo Gallery Windows Media Player Media Center Windows Movie Maker But what about authoring actual DVD discs, complete with menus, chapters, and elements of a typical DVD disc interface? Until Vista, you needed to use a third-party program to author a DVD. Now, however, the Home, Premium, and Ultimate editions of Vista come with a new program called Windows DVD Maker, which you can use to author DVDs. The beta version I used had some rough edges but was clearly functional. As you'll see in the section, it's also very easy to use. (Windows DVD Maker is only available in the Home Premium and Ultimate e

The reputation Windows has as an audio playback and editing platform has been, not to put too fine a point on it, abysmal. There have been some improvements over the years. For example, the early audio infrastructure (often called the audio stack) seen in Windows 3.1 (16-bit) and Windows 95 (32-bit) supported only one audio stream at a time, but Windows 98 enabled multiple playback streams using the Windows Driver Model architecture. However, Windows audio has always suffered from three major problems: A poor interface for controlling audio and for troubleshooting audio problems. Tools such as Volume Control, the Sound Recorder, and the Control Panel Sounds and Audio Devices icon had difficult interfaces and limited functionality, and clearly weren't geared for the day-to-day audio tasks that users face. Poor quality playback and recording. The Windows audio stack has always been merely "good enough." That is, audio in Windowsparticularly playbackwa

Prior to Windows Vista, the Media Center program was available only as part of the Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE), which, in turn, was available only as a preinstalled OS on OEM computers. (XP MCE was also available to MSDN subscribers.) Why no retail version? Probably because the system requirements for XP MCE were quite high (particularly the GPU, which needed to come with hardware acceleration and support for DirectX 9). However, this separate Media Center Edition ends with Vista, which includes the Media Center application in its Home Premium and Ultimate editions The version of Media Center that ships with Windows Vista is not radically different from its predecessors. (Early prototypes of the program sported a drastically revisedand reviledinterface, but the protests from dedicated Media Center types forced Microsoft to back down and stick with more incremental changes.) The XP Media Center was widely praised for its simple, easy-on-the-eyes interface, and

Windows Media Player (WMP) is your computer's one-stop media shop, with support for playing digital music, audio CDs, digital videos, DVD movies, Internet radio, and recorded TV shows; ripping music from CDs; burning files to disc; synchronizing with external audio devices; and much more. Vista ships with a new version of this popular programWindows Media Player 11that offers a few nice improvements over WMP 10. The first thing you notice when you launch WMP 11 is that the overall interface is a bit simpler than previous versions. There are still a few too many small, undecipherable icons scattered around the window, but these are small blemishes on an otherwise clean look. One of the things that makes the WMP 11 interface so much simpler than older versions is that you see only one category at a time in the Library. By default, WMP displays the Music category at startup. However, you can change to a different category (Music, Pictures, Video, Recorded TV, or Other Med

The English language is a veritable factory of new words and phrases. Inventive wordsmiths in all fields are constantly forging new additions to the lexicon by blending words, attaching morphemic tidbits to existing words, and creating neologisms out of thin air. Some of these new words strike a chord in popular culture and go through what I call the "cachet to cliché" syndrome. In other words, the word is suddenly on the lips of cocktail party participants and water-cooler conversationalists everywhere, and on the fingertips of countless columnists and editorialists. As soon as the word takes root, however, the backlash begins. Rants of the if-I-hear-the-word-x-one-more-time-I'll-scream variety start to appear, Lake Superior State University includes the word in its annual list of phrases that should be stricken from the language, and so on. The word multimedia went through this riches-to-rags scenario a few of years ago. Buoyed by the promise of media-rich