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Today's Featured Website: confluence.org
The Degree Confluence Project. The goal of the confluence.org (note .org, not .com) project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted on the website.
The people who have designed the Degree Confluence Project want to uncover every inch of this globe... "to plot all of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world." And, they need pictures from all of these places. That's where you can make a contribution, if you like. See if one of the confluences happens to be in your neck of the woods, notify the Project, then take your best shot. Or, just check out the sites to see some interesting pictures and stories.
http://www.confluence.org/
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Today's Featured Computer Term: Crippled Version
A crippled version is a demonstration version of a piece of software that has one or more important features disabled. Many software companies distribute crippled versions of their applications free with the hope that users will find that they can't live without the program and buy the full version.
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Today's Topic: Changing Page Margins
When you first start word processing program, certain assumptions are made about your page layout. These assumptions are called the default settings - the settings that are there until you, the user, change them.
One of these default settings has to do with your page margins. In most word processing programs, you can change your page margins at any time by following these steps:
1. Choose the Page Setup option from the File menu. You will see the Page Setup dialog box.
2. Adjust the top, bottom, left, and right margins as desired by clicking on the small up or down arrow to the right of the number.
3. Click on OK.
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Progressive Learning Series
Understanding Printers
In most cases, printers are much slower than computers. When you tell your computer to send data to a printer, it sends it much faster than the printer can print it. This could cause a bottleneck situation. There are two different ways of preventing that: printer buffers and print spooling. You won't have to do anything to make them work. But it is good to understand how they work.
The printer buffer is pretty small and may hold anywhere from a few lines to a few pages of data, depending on your printer. As soon as the printer buffer fills, the computer stops and waits before sending anymore data. If you're printing something very long, this could tie up your computer for minutes or even hours.
Windows solves this problem. It takes the data that's on its way from your computer to your printer and stores it on disk temporarily until your printer is ready for it. Since it's a file on disk, and not sitting in the wires and cables inside your computer, it doesn't tie up the computer - so you're free to get back to work. This process is known as print spooling, and the program handling it (usually Windows) is known as a print spooler.
The temporary file that Windows creates during printing is called a spool file. This is the file that's sitting on the disk, holding your print job. By giving the print command, your document is sent to the spool file. When finished receiving your data, the spool file sits in a temporary holding place known as the print queue. If no other print jobs are already waiting in the print queue, the new spool file is sent directly to the printer. If the printer is working on something else, it has to wait its turn. In either case, the actual printing is not tying up your computer, and you are free to do other work. |
