Showing posts with label Computers and Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Computers and Technology. Show all posts

Friday, September 16, 2011

Why 3D Artists Can Make More Money Than You !

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3D developers have the opportunity to see their designs come to reality through 3D printing. When artists print 3D models, they create physical figurines out of their designs. As in, artists can actually hold their designs! How does this work? There are quite a few printing companies that will print 3D models for artists. These businesses will take the 3D model, send it to the printing manufacturing plants, and the plants will create the objects, and ship it! This means, artists don't have anything to worry about after designing their work. They can print 3D models with ease, as companies take care of virtually everything else.

How do these manufacturing plants print 3D models? This technology is known as 3D printing. This process can create virtually anything from a design. The system with these companies works like this. An artist will send a design to a printing company. The printing company will then send the model to a manufacturing plant, and the plant will create the model into a physical product. When the model arrives at the manufacturing facility, the model will be created layer by layer by 3D printers. The companies will deal with everything when it comes time to print 3D models. These printers can use a large variety of materials to choose from. For example - printers can use metals, plastics, ceramics, rubber like materials, mechanically strong materials, and even precious metals. Essentially, these machines will lay down layers of the material, and will fuse these layers together on top of each other. After the manufacturing plant has finished printing, the model will be shipped to the customer. These companies take care of every detail when it comes time to print 3D models, you and your customers don't have to worry about anything! Customers?

Through these 3D printing companies, artists have the opportunity to make a large amount of money, through commission work. One a design is created it is available for anyone to print 3D models out of it. This means that artists can post designs online across these companies, and consumers can buy them to be 3D Printed. Once the design is uploaded, that is it for the designer. Companies will deal with all the work when it comes time to print 3D models. All he or she has to worry about is collecting commission checks per each sale that is made. These companies take care of every other detail. There is no communication with manufacturing facilities, warehousing, or shipping involved. So in a nutshell, artists can make money! They simply upload their designs, and that is it!

This is great for consumers as well; if a company were to print 3D models, the consumer simply has to purchase the item, and wait for it in the mail. No dealing with manufacturing plants, warehousing, and shipping. Another cool thing about this process - 3D model printing is much more concise than other forms of manufacturing. 3D printing can create objects that can't even be competed with by other forms. For example - objects like a ball within a ball can be created. Mechanical functioning 3D Prints can be created in one piece. There are a wide variety of options!

Monday, September 5, 2011

How to Build a Desktop

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The most important components within a desktop is the motherboard and processor. These components will usually cost more than the others. One thing to be sure of in picking what processor and motherboard your going to use, you must make sure that they are compatible. Both will specify either on the box or on the webpage your purchasing from which processors or motherboards they will be compatible with. The newest generation of processors is would be either the Intel i series (i3, i5, i7), or the AMD Phenom Series II (x2,x3,x4).

The next set of important components would include the hard drive, audio/graphics cards, RAM, and disk drives. These also have compatibility needs, but these are more general than a motherboard and processor. The hard drive and disk drive have many different ways to connect to the motherboard, but the most common is the SATA connection. Make sure if you are using an old motherboard to determine what type of connection it uses in order to connect the hard drive or disk drives. Almost all audio and graphics cards will fit in all motherboards. One thing you must make sure of is that your computer has the proper processing power to handle the extra workload in cases of High definition gaming graphics cards, or high definition audio cards. The easiest way to determine what type of RAM you need to purchase is to read your manual or go online and do some research on your motherboard. You can also look directly at the motherboard above the RAM slots and see it printed on it. DDR, DDR2, DDR3. These are listed from oldest to newest type. Most everyone uses DDR3 now.

The last components you would to obtain would be the power supply, fans, and casing. The casing will depend on what size your motherboard is, but its pretty easy to figure out what size to get (small, medium, large is the best way to look at it). Fans are just for cooling purposes, and they are needed but you don't have to go overboard with fans. Your power supply is very important as well. Everything will be directly or indirectly affected by your power supply seeing as how everything uses power. The best for a beginner with nothing to special inside of their desktop is a 500 watt power supply. Some may say this is too much but I its a safe bet. The individual components, if bought new, will come with a manual that will inform you of how much power it takes.

This is only the beginning of building a desktop. It may seem overwhelming, but as you progress you will realize it is quite simple to get the hang of building a desktop.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Building Walls Instead of Bridges in Relationships?

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In this tech savvy age, we have all sorts of gadgets for staying in touch 24/7. We have smartphones, pagers, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc. You name it and we have it. While contacting a person has become easier than ever, why is it that people are actually lonelier now than when we didn't have any of this fast paced technology to keep in touch?

Maybe being accessible 24/7 is not as fantastic as we thought it would be? Being accessible all the time limits our opportunity to have some peaceful 'down' time. We need that time to maintain some personal freedom and to allow our minds to take a breather, unwind, and just relax.

To gain that much needed freedom, more and more people now avoid answering their phones. Thank you caller ID. We are having a relationship with each other's voicemails instead! People are also interacting more via text, Twitter, or email than actually getting together in person. Are you guilty of this? Aw come on, let's face it, how many times have you avoided seeing a person face to face and emailed or texted them instead?

Technological advancement has actually created a new age way of 'building a wall' between others and us. We simply turn off our gadgets to end communication. The same gadgets that were meant to make communication simpler and faster are the same tools we use to avoid closeness with others.

The need for face-to-face interaction is becoming obsolete and reliance on technology continues to isolate us further from one another. "Getting together" is now done via teleconference calls. We get together with others who share a common interest or common challenge and provide 'support' that sorely lacks within our communities, families, and friendships. Relationships end via text or get posted with a change of status on Facebook!

It is a shame that the more technologically advanced we get, the more isolated and lonely we become as a society. While it's wonderful to be able to connect with someone who lives thousands of miles away, it's sad that those who live within driving or even walking distance from one another opt to communicate via techs than in person.

If you find yourself feeling more isolated than before, put down the phones, walk away from the computer and make plans to get together with friends and family in person. Get to know your neighbors, reach out and form a connection with another. You'll be surprised how many people are craving the same but afraid to step outside their increasingly limited comfort zones.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Getting Satisfactory Results in the Manufacturing and Finishing Process

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Many people dream of having their own factory to make this widget or that gadget. Some items are dead easy to make an a manufacturing and assembly line can be set up in the garage. These items will tend to be fairly low tech with only a few steps in the process. And example of this would be something like a metal pressing shop where Step 1 would guillotine the metal sheets to the optimal size. Step 2 would punch out the blanks, step 3 would be to press the blanks into the desired shape and step 4 would involve machining the rough edges.

But other items require a far more sophisticated design with various components being created in different streams and being assembled elsewhere. For example take a mobile phone.

There is a production line that is going to make the LCD displays 
Another line would mould the casing (both front and back) 
Another line is setting up the keypad 
Another will be etching the PC card 
Then the PC card must be stuffed with the components and chips and resisters and diodes etc. 
That has to be soldered and tested, 
Then the streams start flowing together where the body has the LCD screen fitted, then that moves along the line where the keyboard is fitted, these two are then connected to the PC board which is then affixed.

After that of course comes the battery and the back and the test before the finished product can be packed and shipped.

At various stages during this process some items will be particularly sensitive to dust. This is true of the etching of the PC boards, the component stuffing and the soldering process. And so to maintain a high quality most manufacturers have these processes within clean rooms

Clean room technology ensures that there is no dust or any fumes or anything else that can contaminate the product. A clean room may be very small just covering a conveyor belt where critical processes take place or can be huge involving whole assembly lines with specially filtered air-conditioning and all staff wearing over shoes, and surgical gowns and masks. Everything depends on the requirements of the process.

Certain food factories have this requirement as do drug manufacturers where sterility in the manufacturing is vital to the end product. So one will often find clean rooms is these places.

The same is true of spray painting. Everyone at some stage or other has bought a can of spray paint to paint something, and usually the results are less than satisfactory. The reason for this is that spray painting and airbrushing requires consistency in distance and coverage and requires and even steady touch. The slightest air current or dust particles floating around and the desired finish is lost.

So professionals always spray in spray booths. This allows them to get a clean and even finish with a coat of consistent thickness. For a truly fin job and item will be sprayed, baked, a flattening sander will take off all the high spots. This process will be repeated and only the third coat, which will be a very light touch provides the final high gloss finish which can only be achieved by professionals in spray booths.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Choosing the Right Open Source Mail Server

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When we consider the suitable Open Source Mail Server for a business organisation, it depends on many factors. Below are some factors that you might need include in your studies: 

A good track of security records
Good performance under high load
Hardware requirement
Flexible to interact with databases in many formats
Compatible to many SMTP variants in use
Easy to customized
Quality 3rd party plugins available
Quality documentation is available
Communities Support
Similar to Qmail MTA, Postfix is created by a modular design (similar to Qmail) rather than a monolithic design (such as Sendmail). This make Postfix to have various advantages or strength compared to Sendmail.

Below are some of reasons why some Email administrator prefer Postfix than other MTA system:

Flexibility

Due to Modular Design, Administrator can pick and choose what module to be activated. This feature not only just increase the performance but also tighten the security of Mail Server.

Performance

Postfix consumes less system resources than most other MTAs (or at least, with standard configurations). The minimalist design of Postfix Mail Server has make outstanding performance over many MTA.

Security

Postfix provides a better security than Sendmail. You can have a quick search on CERT Advisories and quickly turned up more than a dozen Sendmail incidents. The is because the services of Postfixis NOT executed as root services. This make it is the entire Operating System security more safer and harder to be compromised by hackers.

Another reason that makes Postfix more secure is because Postfix is only allows each process to use necessary rights to function, unnecessary rights are eliminated.

Other than that, Postfix Mail Server's processes are ONLY controlled and initiated by master daemon. It eliminated the risk of using child processes design when prompt to inter-process communication exploitation.

Ease of Administration

As compare to Sendmail, the configuration files on Postfix are far more easier to be configured.

Support Use of Milters

Postfix allow administrator to deploy 3rd party software to filter email from Postfix Mail Server to anti-virus and anti-spam filters. Administrators can integrate Postfix Mail Server with many quality 3rd party plugins.

Community Support and Documentations

There far more many community support forums, articles that share the knowledge of setting,performance tuning and troubleshooting of Postfix as compare to other Open Source mail servers.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Computer Network Solutions for Small Plus Medium Business

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Your company is increasing. As well as all employees are difficult about the increasing complexity of sharing files. Your statement database is on a computer which container simply be accessed by your managerial assistant, plus you are anxious concerning not having a central backup of the files life form saved on each workers computer. If this every one sounds recognizable, it might be time to realize a computer system. In this conversation, we'll appear major processor network solutions for little as well as medium businesses.

Networks start at what time two or additional computers are linked so that information can be shared. In arrange to attach to some type of network; a computer requires a system certificate plus CAT6 wire. If the computer has a wireless system card, broadcasting signals can be used in position of the cables. A network too requires an element of equipment called a control, which acts as a middle direction-finding center for the information life form collective. A button is type of similar to a mail room in a big corporation. It makes certain the addressed messages obtain to the correct receiver.

An additional ordinary type of network is called a client server network. This kind of network uses a middle server plus particular network software. The server is devoted as well as is merely used to store files plus run server tasks. The computers which attach to the server are identifying clients plus these are the equipment the corporation employees would use. The server acts as the "hub" of the network, as well as does the majority of the "after the scenes" preservation plus storage. Ordinary server network working systems comprise Windows Server or else Linux operating system.

The server supplies each of the common files for every user. Server runs the file backups which are able to be planned in the center of the nighttime, minimizing system interruptions. The server manages consumer safety, as well as insures that every users who admission the complex are official to perform so. Server manages copier allocation in addition to acts as a middle repository for the copier drivers plus settings. The server manages other common tasks such as internet right of entry, email direction-finding, Windows update as well as anti-virus meaning organization. The server is able to also share software applications absent to manifold users. The server preserve also give for an Intranet, an internal website which holds common corporation in order such as information announcements, HR policies, preparation ID, plus extra.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Do you know what That's MAC Address?

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Computer networks are amazing things. They are a complex matrix of circuits and links forming webs of virtual communications. These networks give way to unimaginable and almost instantaneous virtual applications. Either through games, video streaming, chat, telephone or the internet, the link between the physical world and the virtual world sometimes seems like magic.

But how do computers bridge that gap between the two worlds. Where on the network does the physical realm meet the virtual.

How Do Computers Communicate?

Every computer or device that needs to get on the network to talk to another computer needs a network interface card (NIC). Most NIC's are either built-in, like a wireless connection, or are installed in the computer. When a NIC is made, the manufacturer permanently encodes a unique hardware address into it. This permanently encoded hardware address is stored in the read only portion of memory with in the card and is known as the MAC (Media Access Control) address.

A MAC address is a 48 bit hardware address that's used to physically identify the computer on the network. This 48 bit address is usually displayed in hexadecimal (base 16) as a 12 digit number.

This is an example of a MAC:

MM:MM:MM:HH:HH:HH

A real MAC would look something like this:

00:1b:21:44:eb:8d

The first half of the MAC, the first 6 digits (24 bits), of the address represents the vendor portion or manufacturer of the NIC card. Every network card manufacturer is assigned a unique identifier by the IEEE for all of their network cards. The last 24 bits (6 digits) are a unique identifier that represents the card itself. Each manufacturer will number their NIC's to be unique. No two MAC addresses are alike.

This entire 48 bit MAC address represents the physical computing device on the network. It is the bridge between the physical world and the virtual world of computing. It is the link between the physical hardware and the virtual operating system.

All computers communicate using the MAC address. Most people believe that computers use IP addresses to communicate. And they do, but beneath the IP address lies the MAC address and this is where the true communication takes place.

So the next time you need to find a computer on your network remember to look for the MAC address. Once you find the MAC address you will find the computer itself.