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Sunday, February 8, 2004

Show 12

Another show from the Anaheim Convention Center. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi!

Show notes will follow soon, but I wanted to get one correction up right away. Doug writes:

‘’I almost wrecked my car while driving and listening to your show today!!!

Leo….LATEST VERSION OF TURBO TAX FOR MACINTOSH HAS THE STATE COMPONENT!! I JUST DOWNLOADED THE CALIFORNIA VERSION!!

Please tell your listeners your buddy (or whoever gave you the erroneous info) was wrong. Misinformation like this hurts Macintosh more than other products because it’s just more ammo for the misinformed PC heads.’‘

Oops. I stand corrected. I should have checked my facts before spouting off.

Best place to upgrade your Tivo is Weaknees. They’re in LA and will even accept drop-offs but you should call to make an appointment before you show up, (310) 842–4700.

A caller using the Internet telephone service Vonage complained that it would kick him off the Internet fairly regularly. This does seem to be a common problem. Apparently the Vonage digital phone adapter - the device you connect to your network to get Internet telephony capability - is very sensitive to port scans. Almost all Internet users these days are subject to frequent port scanning by kiddy “hackers” who are looking for security holes. The adapter resets itself after a number of these scans according to users on the Vonage Discussion Board. The best policy is to put the adapter inside your router with port forwarding turned on.

[added 8/9: I have been using Vonage for several months now and have more to say on this. If you put the Adapter inside your router you do protect it from port scanning, but you also lose the Quality of Service capability that makes a big difference in phone quality. I haven’t been having any trouble with my adapter outside my router - perhaps they’ve upgraded the firmware (it’s automatic). I recommend sticking with the recommended setup:

High speed modem → Vonage Adapter → Router (set to bridge - the adapter does DHCP) → Computers

I’ve been very happy with Vonage. Occasionally service will degrade, sometimes to the point of unusability, due to Internet latency, but it’s generally very good. I’ve set it for lowest voice quality to conserve bandwidth (I have a 1.5/256 DSL line). I probably would hesitate to make it my primary line, but it’s a great second line, especially since I call Canada a lot and those calls are free.

- Leo]