Internet radio has been around since the late 1990s. Traditional radio broadcasters have used the Internet to simulcast their programming. But, Internet radio is undergoing a revolution that will expand its reach from your desktop computer to access broadcasts anywhere, anytime, and expand its programming from traditional broadcasters to individuals, organizations and government.
In this article, we’ll explore the Internet radio revolution in terms of equipment, transmission, programming and the alterations in the listener/broadcaster relationship.
Continue reading...27. April 2008
Overall, laptop and desktop computers are very similar. They have the same basic hardware, software and operating systems. The primary difference is how their components fit together. A desktop computer includes a motherboard, video card, hard drive and other components in a large case. The monitor, keyboard, and other peripherals connect wirelessly or with cables. Whether the case sits vertically or horizontally, it has lots of space for add-in cards, cables and air circulation.
A laptop, however, is much smaller and lighter than even the most compact PC tower. Its screen is an integrated part of the unit, as is its keyboard. Instead of a spacious case with lots of room for air circulation, a laptop uses a small, flat design in which all the pieces fit together snugly.
Continue reading...15. April 2008
When it comes to home theater, a lot of people think big — a big picture and lots of sound coming from a widescreen TV and an array of speakers. But the typical home-theater setup, with its surround-sound speakers and subwoofer, won’t work for every home. Some people don’t have enough room for all of that equipment. Others don’t want their living rooms cluttered with cables, or they don’t want the hassle of adjusting the placement and height of lots of speakers.
That’s where virtual surround sound comes in. It mimics the effect of a multi-speaker surround-sound system, but it uses fewer speakers and fewer cables. These systems come in two primary varieties — 2.1 surround and digital sound projection. Most of the time, 2.1-surround systems use two speakers placed in front of the listener and a subwoofer placed somewhere else in the room. These recreate the effect of a 5.1 surround-sound system, which has five speakers and a subwoofer. Digital sound projectors, on the other hand, tend to use a single strip of small speakers to produce sound. Many digital sound projectors do not include a subwoofer.
Continue reading...7. April 2008
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Since its introduction in the 1980s, paintball has become a worldwide phenomenon. Enthusiasts have formed teams, set up leagues and organized game tournaments. Paintball is still a long way from the popularity of older sports like basketball or football, but new paintball playing fields and organizations are popping up all the time.
The main thing that sets paintball apart from other sports is the equipment involved: You don’t find guns and paint projectiles in too many traditional sports. In this article, we’ll look at this equipment to see what is involved in a paintball attack. We’ll also find out about the basic game of paintball, as well as some of the other uses of paintball equipment.
The Way of the Gun
In the last section, we saw that paintball guns propel paintballs with a quick burst of compressed gas. In the animation below, you can see how this process occurs in a conventional pump-action gun.
The most basic piece of paintball equipment is the paintball itself. Just as in tennis or soccer, the ball is the central element of a paintball game. But unlike these older games, paintball has dozens, often hundreds, of “balls” in play at any one time. As the name implies, these balls are actually tiny containers of paint.
Paintballs have an incredibly simple construction. They’re actually a lot like gel-cap pills, or bath-oil beads. They consist of a glob of colored liquid encased in a gelatin capsule. The “paint,” which comes in many colors, is non-toxic, biodegradable and water soluble (so it will wash off skin and clothing).
Basically, a paintball is like a small water balloon, weighing only a few grams and measuring only 0.68 inches (1.7 cm) in diameter. The capsule holds up if you handle it or drop it from a short distance. When you shoot a paintball from a gun, however, it bursts on impact and leaves a 6-inch (13-cm) splatter of paint.
The job of the paintball gun, sometimes called a marker, is to get the paintball moving at a high rate of speed. In the basic gun, the propulsion system is compressed gas. This gas, which can be compressed carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2) or ordinary air, is stored in small cartridges or larger tanks that can be attached to the gun. The gun is also attached to a hopper, which holds the paintballs.
Continue reading...5. April 2008
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If you have read the HowStuffWorks article How CDs Work, you know that the basic idea behind data storage on a normal CD is simple. The surface of the CD contains one long spiral track of data. Along the track, there are flat reflective areas and non-reflective bumps. A flat reflective area represents a binary 1, while a non-reflective bump represents a binary 0. The CD drive shines a laser at the surface of the CD and can detect the reflective areas and the bumps by the amount of laser light they reflect. The drive converts the reflections into 1s and 0s to read digital data from the disc. See How CDs Work for more information.
Normal CDs can not be modified — they are read-only devices. A CD-R disc needs to allow the drive to write data onto the disc. For a CD-R disk to work, there must be a way for a laser to create a non-reflective area on the disc. A CD-R disc therefore has an extra layer that the laser can modify. This extra layer is a greenish dye. In a normal CD, you have a plastic substrate covered with a reflective aluminum or gold layer. In a CD-R, you have a plastic substrate, a dye layer and a reflective gold layer. On a new CD-R disc, the entire surface of the disc is reflective — the laser can shine through the dye and reflect off the gold layer.
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29. April 2008
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