PC Pickle: Help! There Are Lumps In My Ethernet Cables
PC Pickle is a randomly updated computer technical support column, where any and all questions, both hard(ware) and soft(ware) are answered by resident expert Henry Motzfuffle.
Dear PC Pickle,
Every since my filth-ridden neighbors moved in, along with their metric shit-tons of trash, my Internet connection has been suffering severely. It was only after my Internet was completely shut off that I decided to go rooting around my own ethernet cables. I found most of the cables had large lumps throughout the length of the cord – like a snake who had eaten a bunch of soccer balls. I’ve been constantly swapping out the ethernet cords, but like clockwork, in just a few weeks, it again is filled with these large lumps. Any ideas what the hell this is?
-Powerless Over Ethernet
Dear Powerless,
This is something I have witnessed in rural areas quite often. Those large lumps in your ethernet cables are rats who have gotten into your house wiring and then traveled through into the ethernet cables for warmth. The faster your Internet connection, the more heat an ethernet cable accumulates (due to the friction of the light particles passing through it), and although in most rural areas, the speeds offered by local ISPs are not that great, you can still get quite a bit of heat through the cables. There are specific “Thermal Cooled Ethernet Cables” that stop this from happening. For each tiny microfilament fiber hair in the cable, there is an equal corresponding microfilament hydrogen hair to cool it. These thermal cooled cables are always cool and never feel “warm” to the touch like normal cables. I’d suggest investing some money into the purchase of these cables for your network.
Dear PC Pickle,
I’ve been hearing a lot of noise on the web about “Megaflops.” What’s so great about having so much of it?
-Mega Confused About Flops
Dear Mega,
There’s a lot of debate right now about whether the future of computer space should be measured in “bytes” or “flops.” There are pros and cons for both the usages of “megabytes” and “megaflops.” This is not unlike the debate between HD-DVD and Blu-ray a few years back. Most computer scientists want “bytes” to remain the standard, given that you can make more accurate judgements about speed using bytes, like saying a hard drive has 1,567.45 bytes. Although a “flop” standard cannot be so accurate (such as down to the double decimal) it does allow for macro-measurements of space much easier than megabytes. For example, 1,000,000,000 megabytes would be read as just 10 megaflops, and this is the same amount of space. Only time will tell which measurement we end up with.
Dear PC Pickle,
I’m not a techno whiz like most of the PC users these days are, and I know it will be a disaster if I attempt to upgrade the RAM in my computer physically. What’s the best way to download RAM onto my computer?
-Unfit For Physical RAM
Dear Unfit,
There are many open source solutions for SRAM (software RAM). It all depends on what type of RAM will work best for your situation. Most physical RAM is “blank” meaning that the RAM can be used for whatever you want, so 75 terabytes of RAM (the industry standard) will get you a slightly faster loading screen in Call of Duty, or will load Youtube videos faster, etc. However, using open source SRAM, you are able to custom tailor what you want the RAM for, and then swap out the specific RAM you’re using, in real-time, depending on what you want to do. This allows you to use more than the allotted RAM your computer can actually physically use. For example, by setting up RAM only for Internet browser usage, you can use up to 150 terabytes without an issue. If you switch that SRAM to take advantage of your graphics card, you can use 200 terabytes instead to play Call of Duty, while none of it is being used for the Internet. Most of these open source solutions include programs that let you move around where you’re going to be using the SRAM, which functions just like the Materia system in Final Fantasy VII.