HP Pavilion dv 6915nr laptop not booting, all lights on steady

I saw an HP Pavilion dv6915nr laptop that was basically not booting. When it was powered on all lights stayed on on steady, no beeps, blank screen. The problem was one of the ram slots is bad. There was one 2gb stick and one 1gb stick installed. In the slot higher off the board both sticks work but the system fails to boot if either stick is placed in the slot closer to the board. The system is stable with one stick so the 2gb stick stays. The machine is running Vista 32 bit SP1.

Trinidad poverty rate

I heard the minister of finance last night saying Trinidad is not being mismanaged and that we have money in the bank and high employment rate. She backed it up with particular numbers from the Central Bank and International reports.

She failed to mention that Trinidad also has a high number of people still below the poverty line. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_pop_bel_pov_lin-economy-population-below-poverty-line

Over $400 BILLION spent and people still suffering. That is gross mismanagement.

We may have a happy and healthy economy but not a happy and healthy population.

How to check for Wifi interference

Many people set up their own wireless networks without being aware of other networks in the area. There are basically 3 non-overlapping channels available. You can use any one but how do you really know which one to choose or which is the least congested and at what times. The most obvious symptom of interference is not seeing the network at all or intermittent dropping. These can also mean a defective access point (AP) or wifi card but I am assuming they are working properly.

You also need to minimise and be aware of interference from other electrical devices as outlined here.

Wifi has intelligent features to be able to work in an area with multiple networks but with more congestion you lose bandwidth and throughput. Your AP will transmit at a slower rate when other AP's are in the area and using similar frequencies. Multiple AP's using the same frequencies is as if each AP is a person talking to someone next to them in a small room. If both talk at the same time(transmit) they will not always be understood by a listener (your computer).

If you stream data via wireless in a congested area you will be bottle necked and might have regular breaks in the video or music as it buffers. If you are just browsing the internet of opening work files via wireless you will probably not notice the bottleneck as these are not as bandwidth intensive as streaming videos or music. The default on most access points is channel 6 so it will probably the most common as most people will not change it.


 inSSIDer is a tool that lets you check for other wifi networks using the wifi card on your own computer. It does not matter who the owner is, your neighbour, work, apartment building, etc. It gives a visual representation of other wifi networks in the area and what channels they use. I am not sure if it detects 'a' and 'n' networks but I am sure it sees 'b' and 'g' networks. Choose a channel that is empty or that has the least activity. If you do not stream from one computer to another via wifi you should at least get your full internet throughput on your wireless device. Check your throughput on www.speedtest.net on a wired computer and then check it on your wireless computer, they should be very similar.

Check out this article to boost your signal strength: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cover-home-find-remove-wireless-blind-spots/

If you like what you read please leave a reaction or comment!

TTD being wasted

http://www.newsday.co.tt/businessday/0,119127.html
http://guardian.co.tt/business/business/2010/01/24/trini-train-track
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/trinidad-chooses-trinitrain/305605.article

Lots has already been spent by the government on the Rapid Rail project and the people of the country have YET TO BE consulted with and the project is destined to cost 10's of Billions to build and maintain. The farmers and their families are unlikely to be fairly compensated and the country will further suffer from a lower supply of crops. I was listening to 103.1 and they had the man who made the original 2020 plan for the PNM government and he said Patrick is not following the plan. First you develop utilities and infrastructure, the people and other assets etc. Lastly, closer to 2020, you build your showpiece capital. Patrick has only used the parts of the plan that suits him best, why was his house the first to be fixed and not the rest of the country. Yes a lot has been spent on community projects and education, but too much wastage and corrupt deals with foreign entities is not what the current government should be asking us to let them keep on doing.

The God of data

           

                  VS

 http://www.alexpooley.com/2008/03/26/google-the-god-of-data/

For some reason I have been wondering who(or what) is the God of Data, or who it should be, as in a mythological person type thing (is that proper English?). I did a search (on google, yes) and found the link above as the first hit, because it seems to be the only page with that title. From the old days you have other Gods as explained here. Currently there is no question that Google is the biggest data monger and is the company others are trying to be. Google has crawlers for the whole net and cached versions of pages kept for who knows how long, no doubt in redundant locations. This along with millions of users' emails accounts each with a capacity of over 7 GB put them in control of an almost unimaginable amount of data. I really hope those negative predictions of them from years ago do not come through. Those predictions were from 5 or more years ago, before Latitude, Maps, Earth, Sky, Blogger, Youtube, Books, Voice, Chrome, Android, Docs, Calendar, Video, Apps marketplace, Code, fee based storage, free email and Sites, etc etc... I probably missed a few too but that is a long list of well used services that has given them more reach than anyone else right now. Microsoft has tried and failed with their remade search engine aka Bing, it looks and maybe even 'feels' better than Google but it does not return results as well. The fact that 'google' was officially made a verb says the company is a household name.

This young generation does not know a world without it, and nothing is wrong with that. Knowledge should be easily accessible to everyone.So far they have seemingly managed to walk the right path for data management. Apps for every kind of device have been put out to make accessing Google easier. They have followed orders to censor sites by the Chinese government although they turned that around recently. It is also quite likely that they work hand in hand with the US and European governments to at least monitor traffic. The Gmail service went down twice that I remember last year but with no reported loss of data, though I'm sure some productivity was lost. Android has so far been a big hit and looks like it will continue to gain momentum as more people see it in action from friends and devices start to come down in prices. I am a fan of their services as they usually get it right, although Wave and Buzz have seemed to not quite cut it.

This article talks about Facebook vs Google. It has been and will continue being a bitter battle as both companies offer unique services but both are chasing revenue from targeted ads. Facebook has work hard to hide its data from Google and you can't blame them as Google digs pretty deep into sites. I can see that the Facebook version of search in the future will be more useful as search results will be more 'localised' with opinions from friends and other people in your region. If they add the depth and scope of a Google search they may have the winning formula down the road. Facebook too keeps data cached and with over 400 million active users it has an astonishing amount of data to dig into. I think one key selling point for both companies is their services are mostly free, you pay for extras but even then it is still cheap.

In the future we can expect apparently a much more diverse set of services from Google. Health (or whatever the name is) will likely be a place to keep your medical records and related data in a central place easily accessible when you need it. Google Energy is going to expand most likely into something on a grand scale and at least allow Google to perhaps be self sufficient and maybe even be able to sell the excess energy. Facebook will eventually allow parental controls and be a serious search engine. It is definitely something exciting to follow.

Both companies trace your movement on the internet, keeping note of where you go, when, for how long and what you say as in the case of your emails being read in Gmail and ads displayed accordingly.Neither of them will ever give up ownership of their data, Google is more open about letting users transfer out and export data but it still keeps it afterwards, Facebook locks you into their site and keeps all data indefinitely.

Right now Google is probably the winner but the battle is on and it will be one of the greatest battles ever.

Trinidad speaks English

I was looking a laptop on the TT version of the Dell site and realised they had a bug in their site, on one page part has English and part Spanish. I of course am perfectly fluent in Spanish so I had no problem with it, but I am sure many other people would be lost. Trinidad is put under the Latin American dell site which is the source of the problem. Dell is not the only one with language problems, I have seen many others in much worse conditions, supposedly localised sites for Trinidad without an option to switch to English from Spanish.

Bulging(swollen) capacitors on Dell motherboard

I worked on a Dell Dimension 8400 with some bad capacitors on the motherboard causing random freezing and crashing. The chip is a P4 with HT and ram is 512mb DDR2 400mhz.The dell board is on a plate that can be removed from the case to work on the motherboard but the holes on the board and plate are non standard. I planned to just switch the board and use the same case but the non standard holes did not allow it so I had to use a new case. I only realised I had to get new ram when the new board would not boot with the dell ram and I checked to realise the board needs 533mhz ram at least and refused to use the Dell 400mhz stick. Thankfully DDR2 is cheap right now so it was easily fixed. The heatsink on the dell was a large heatpipe stack and large fan but with custom holes and mount for the dell board so I am using a stock Core2 Duo heatsink which is a freebie from a friend who used an aftermarket cooler instead.