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Friday, December 17, 2004 (Happy Birthday Jason)

Show #101

 toc | toc 

At 2pm, Dennis Lloyd, Founder & Publisher of the supercool iPodlounge joins us to talk about iPods and iPod accessories for the holidays.

Today’s news items

Would you pay $26,500 for a virtual island? An Australian gamer named Deathifier has, in the Project Entropia RPG.

Microsoft has entered the anti-spyware biz.

And make sure to run Windows Update. There is a critical update to Windows you’ll want.

Careful of clicking on links in your emails. The Zafi virus appears as an email greeting card for the holidays. But if you click on the link you’ll get the virus!

Mike B’s trivia question of the day

In 1980 Microsoft introduces the Z-80 SoftCard, a circuit board, marking Microsoft’s first foray into the hardware world. What computer was this piece of hardware designed for? ¹.
a) Commodore PET 6502
b) Apple Macintosh
c) Atari 400
d) Apple II

Noon-1p

Rich in Irvine - plays Project Entropia

He likens it to gambling, since the real dollars players invest can come back to you as income. But he thinks most people lose money - just like gambling I guess.

Alice in Riverside - big screen TV shopping

You’ll definitely want a digital television, but not necessarily an HDTV. An EDTV may be enough for most people if you only watch DVDs and regular TV. If you think you’ll be watching mostly HDTV then an HDTV might be worth it. Look for 1080i or 720p resolution. As for technology I think DLPs give you the best bang for your buck, but stay away from plasma. They’re expensive and probably won’t look very good in just a few years. Tune in tomorrow between 2 and 3p to hear what Scott Wilkinson of Ultimate AV has to say about choosing the best big screen TV and other holiday home theater delights.

MartyIowa:
For info on over the air HDTV broadcasts in your area try Antenna Web or check HD.
You can see the broadcast schedule for your area at TitanTV.
This CRT HDTV is $647 with off the air HDTV tuner built in: Walmart

1–2p

John in San Jose - accessing your work Mac from home

Of course the best product for this is Apple’s own Remote Desktop but it’s over $200. Timbuktu is also very good. I would take a look at RealVNC first though. It’s not as fast, but the price is right: $0. I recommend the server from Redstone Software and the Chicken of the VNC client. Both are free and open source.

To use remote access software with a router you’ll need to port forward the traffic to the system behind the router. Open the router configuration and look for “port forwarding.” Tell the router that traffic coming in over the remote access ports should be forwarded to the machine running the server (by local ip: 192.168.x.x).

bruceb sez—

Apple/Mac remote desktop accesss—

To allow VNC access to a Mac (running Jaguar or Panther) while that Mac’s firewall is turned on:

Go to System Preferences - Sharing. Click the Firewall tab. If the firewall is off, turn it on by clicking the “Start” button. Now, enable VNC: Scroll to bottom of the list. Check the box labeled “VNC”. That’s it!

To set up a router to allow VNC:

Set the router to “port forward” ports 5900 through 5902 for the local IP address of the machine running the VNC server. (Details vary by router; consult its help files or documentation for details.)

Ports for VNC: ports 5900 thru 5902

Ports for everything else, including Apple Remote Desktop (ARD)—see the complete list of Apple TCP ports and UDP ports here:
“Well Known” TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Software Products

Here’s another related article you should read:
Apple Remote Desktop: Connecting through a firewall or NAT

In addition to Leo, I also use and like “Chicken of the VNC” (client software) and Redstone Software’s “OSXvnc” (server software). Good luck!

—bruceb

For your reference, check out www.PortForward.com and List of well-known ports. —Kalic

Mark in Santa Ana - system blue screens on boot

High school friend is blackmailing Mark to remove spyware from her system. I’d try getting to the boot menu (press F8 while starting) and selecting the Bootlog mode. Then reboot. You’ll get a bootlog that will end abruptly with the last thing it tried to load. That’s almost always the culprit. You can try the System file checker, but it’s not going to help if you have a non-system file causing the crash. At the command prompt enter windir\system32\sfc /scannow and have your install discs ready.

Oliver Wine Says:
Try slipstreaming your SP2 with your XP disc. There are instructions here.

From LunaHa1o:
Somehow I always end up answering the questions where the only viable solution is to reinstall the operating system. I have had this exact problem and know how frustrating it is to read what is on the blue screen white text display before it disappears. I also tried staring at a specific spot trying to get a word and rebooting to get the next word. Have you recently been doing any partitioning that might have caused this? Also it may be that your boot.ini file has been altered in a way that won’t let the machine boot. Either way you should be able to copy the original files over the other ones. Also it is reccommended to get Partition Magic to create a rescue disk set in case this very thing happens. I usually do not advise anyone to use Norton products when there are free (better) alternatives, but Partition Magic is the best in my book for working with partitions.

Melissa in Whittier - has old movies on DVD, wants them in iMovie

DVDs store video and audio in a bundled file with the extension .VOB, and, naturally, iMovie can’t read them. You need to convert the VOB file into a readable format. I recommend the free DIVA to do this. Another application that does a good job of converting VOB files to iMovie compatible DV files is MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5.

A Listener writes: Another good DVD to DV converter is DVDxDV. My school’s TV station archives all of our shows to DVD and we needed an easy way to covert them back to DV to be used in another show and found this.

David in Hacienda Heights - burning DVDs from Tivo

Of course you could pick up my wonderful book on hacking the Tivo to support digital video extraction - but it’s a lot of work. I recommend buying the Humax Tivo with DVD burner - it’s under $500 and much easier to use. You’ll get better results, too.

2–3p

Dennis Lloyd, Founder & Publisher of the iPodlounge

iPod accessories for the holidays

	Cases Contour design Kate Spade iskin ipodarmour - full metal case Karl Lagerfeld Burton iPod H2O audio waterproof housing Vaja Leather cases[[http://www.vajacases.com | toc 2		FM Transmitters iTrip from Griffin
	iPod Holders DLOs transpod Belkin mini-holder Griffin mount		Headphones Sony EX-81 ipod ear buds $50 B&O
	Speakers Altec-Lansing IM3 Bose Sound Dock
	Antartica pictures The iPod desktop by Shag →

Jim in Laguna Woods - why do people recommend against XP SP-2?

Sp-2 is a must have but it can be problematic installing it on a machine riddled with spyware. Read my instructions on Installing Windows safely.

Joanna in Anaheim - buying her first computer

Make sure you get 512 megs of RAM. Save by buying an Athlon instead of a Celeron.

Larry in San Bernardino - where’s the date and time stamp?

He’s a private investigator who wants the date and time stamp on the video he shoots. It’s there in the camera, and when he outputs it to an analog device, like a VCR, but it disappears when he dumps it as digital video. The camera is doing this - it’s assuming that because the date and time are in the time code for DV you won’t want it on the video. You can override this though.

Serpent in the chat room says this how you do it on a Sony TRV460:

1. Set “DATA CODE” menu item to “DATE/TIME”
2. Set “DISPLAY” menu item to “V-OUT/PANEL”
3. Exit the menu.
4. Press “DISPLAY” button on remote control to make all the extraneous camera information disappear.

Patrick in Agua Dulce

He’s also a PI and says that low end Sony camera will not output the time stamp to digital video - he knows because he called the manufacturer. Sounds like you’d better stick with the analog output.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

¹ Answer is d) Apple II (↑)

² A Listener adds. (↑)