For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the TWiT Netcast Network

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Show #130

Happy Easter! Yes I’m live today so call in with your questions, comments, and suggestions: 1–800–520–1534 from 11a-2p Pacific.

I’m on vacation April 2–9, but we’ve pre-recorded a slew of calls so there will be all new shows on all three days. I’ll be back April 10 broadcasting live from Philadelphia. Then it’s back to the Leoville Labs From April 16 on.

Today’s news items

Looks like I missed a significant anniversary yesterday. Six years ago, on March 26, 1999, Melissa, the first email virus, swept the Internet. CERT issued its first warning about Melissa on this day six years ago.

The McAfee researcher who first discovered Melissa (and help catch its author) says that email borne viruses are on the wane.

Symantec, attemting to drum up sales for its security products, says that Mac OS X will soon become a target for hackers. I say, bring ‘em on. (And make sure you use secure passwords, gang.)

Banks must start telling customers about security breaches. They didn’t have to before?

Yahoo! buys Flickr; Barry Diller buys Ask Jeeves.

Yahoo! has also increased storage on its free email accounts to one gigabyte to match Google’s Gmail.

Sony may be willing to compromise on Blu-Ray.

Agence France Press has successfully sued Google to remove its news feeds from Google News. Yahoo has reacted by asking US courts for 1st ammendment protection. Google is also removing news feeds from an alleged white supremecist group.

Mac OS X is four years old. Apple started selling it on March 24, 2001.

On Monday Apple closed a hole in the iTunes Music Store that allowed users to buy songs without copy protection. By the end of the week, the hole was re-opened. Is there such a thing as effective copy protection? To my knowledge no one has cracked the Windows Media DRM. Yet.

Web Site of the Day

• The Easter Egg Archive of course!
• On the old Apple Quadra 660av System Install CD there’s a 90mb Quicktime movie that shows the developers celebrating.
• Backwards music Easter Eggs

11a-Noon

Lori in Costa Mesa - can’t send email from Outlook

If you’ve verified your outgoing email settings with your ISP then ask them if they’re blocking port 25. Many ISPs block the outgoing email port (SMTP) if they think you’re spamming. Your firewall may also be blocking outgoing email.

Read this FAQ to test your port 25.

Another Listener Writes: - Try Verizon’s DSL Email FAQ. Try the first link on the page: Fix my e-mail automatically. Also How to use Verizon Email - DSL Help and Support Email

Glich Adds: If the error you’re getting is a timeout error sending email go into your router and set the MTU to 1450. This is true for most PPPoE DSL as well for some cable and outher ISP’s.

Virginia in Southgate - her satellite Internet keeps dropping out

they told her she had malware on her system. OK. Run the Online virus and spyware scanners. If there’s no malware it’s got to be either the dish or the provider.

Andy writes: Here’s is an online virus scanner that supports Firefox.

bob writes: Virginia mentioned having 10 tcp addresses. The tech support people were talking about 10 active tcp connections. (ala netstat -a) She does have a single IP address. Each connection either TO or FROM her computer on that ip will show up in netstat.

Randy in Brea - what’s the deal with DRM

DRM or digital rights management is very simply copy protection. It limits what’s you can do with your music, movies, and software. In the case of music, protected songs have various limitations as to where you can play them or whether you can copy or burn them. In my opinion, copy protection only harms honest users. Pirates know all sorts of ways around it. And it creates a culture of “crackers,” people who figure out how to circumvent not because they want to steal but because they want to have full access to the content they have legitimately purchased.

His favorite Easter Egg: the Corel Draw flying Elvises

Noon-1p

John in Seal Beach - self-built computer

It’s slow. Why? He was getting an overheating indication from Motherboard Monitor I’d track that down first. It’s an Athlon 3000+ and that’s a hot processor, but you don’t want to see it running at over 60° celsius. If there’s a big differential between the motherboard and CPU temps, that’s a sign of poor cooling. I’d also try booting from a Knoppix disc to eliminate the OS or spyware as a source of the problem.

KC adds: I had a Micron computer a few years ago with an AMD Athlon and from the beginning it would restart on me without warning. Initially, Micron sent someone out to replace the motherboard and the video card but that didn’t fix the problem. John didn’t actually say what problems he was having other than the heat indicator but my notes may be of some help (below). They are the steps that tech support had me do, finally, and I wrote them down in case I ever needed them again.

One thing that Leo didn’t bring up is that AMD overclocks their motherboards in order to get them to be faster than Intel. You may get some relief if you can turn it down. The local computer builder that I use recommends against AMD because of this issue.

Here’s what I had to do to get rid of the problem:
1. Go in to BIOS, select Power Management Setup, change ACPI Sleep Type to S3 and disable PME Event Wake Up.
2. Run MSCONFIG, Startup tab and check scanregistry, pchealth, system tray and pchealth; uncheck taskmonitor, loadpowerprofile, tweakui, soundman, scheduling agent and *statemgr (I don’t know what the asterisk is for unless it’s a wildcard).
3. Run firmware upgrade of BIOS.
4. Download and install latest drivers for video card.
I hope that this helps.

Mike in New Jersey - Using Java 1.41 with Firefox on Mac

Safari uses the newest Java Runtime Environment (JRE 1.4.1), but Firefox is still using the older 1.3.1.

Firefox says it’s a known bug: “JRE 1.4.1 will not work with Firefox (Bug 197813). Applets will display using JRE 1.3.1″

Eric says: here’s the fix. Check out the Java plugin, which adds support for java 1.4 to non-safari browsers.

He also remembers the Commodore 128 Easter Egg

Kelly says: When I heard this call, my ears perked up because I just had a similar challenge with the java plugin using Firefox and Linux. I thought the solution for Mike would be the same solution I used on Linux, but now that I have read the info on sourceforge, I realize I am probably wrong about that. HOWEVER, just in case other Linux users were curious, here is the LinuxQuestions.org link that helped me. I am using Debian, so I had to modify the process slightly. I placed the symlink to libjavaplugin_oji.so in /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/

Nick in Hesperia - VoIP recommendation

I use and recommend Packet8.

DISCLAIMER: they’ve become a sponsor but that was after I became a devoted user.

Paul says: After listening to the show in Del Rio, I decided to get Packtet8. I cut $30 off my bill. I hardly use my phone in the first place.

quantumBlog in Santa Barbara, CA adds: We recently ‘fired’ our Verizon landline in favor of Vonage. We’re in our >90-days of service, and despite what others have said, it’s been smooth sailing so far. The sound quality is great and the price can’t be beat. There’s nothing like paying less than $28.00, including taxes, for unlimited long-distance to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. Now, we have only one cable which provides our data, television and voice. It’s a weird feeling not having a landline, but one gets used to it.

JohnDgeek adds: Check this artical out about the dirty business of what VoIP could be like and some ideas of how to keep it fair. by Robert X. Cringely

Rob from Monrovia - wireless print servers

He has an old Compaq with just 48Mb of RAM. He’d like to use it as a wireless print server. This looks like a job for Linux. All Linux distributions come with CUPS - an excellent cross platform print server. Make sure that you get one that supports your wireless card, too.

Stewart from Florida - PCI Express ready for prime time?

I think so. I haven’t heard any negatives. It’s certainly the future of PCs. If you’re buying an Intel-based PC today I’d get PCI Express.

1–2p

Mike in Palmdale - can I use one copy of Windows on two machines

Technically no, but practically you usually can. The Microsoft EULA forbids it, though.

Victoria in San Diego - remote access

She’s going on vacation and wants to access her home PC remotely. Our fine sponsor GotomyPC will do it, of course. They have a 30 day free trial that will cover your vacation plus. There’s also a free service called Log Me In that’s very similar.

Glenn writes: Leo, can I quote you here?? “please don’t put information in the show notes if you aren’t sure, don’t guess”. Leo, here is a direct, (pasted) quote (TODAY) from the gotomypc.com web page… “Your risk-free trial includes unlimited remote access to 1 computer and will expire after 60 minutes of connection time or 30 days, whichever comes first”

Leo responds: that’s why you have to use the KFI offer. ;-) Click on the link above or the graphic to the right. KFI listeners get a special offer after I complained about the 30 minutes deal. Weren’t you listening?

owine adds: you can try MyWebExPC. That is free too.

papa jo adds: mywebexpc did not work for me you can try TightVNC. Free and easy to use.

Davephan adds: I have been using Logmein remote control for a couple of weeks, available for FREE at www.logmein.com. Basic remote control is FREE, works with just a web browser, and there no time limit!

Mark in Cerritos - no volume on his Compaq Armada 7400
If you’ve checked the cable and speakers and you’re sure no sound is coming out of the sound card I’d try installing new Wikiped’‘’ia:device_driver drivers?. In fact, Compaq says there can be a problem with upgrading to Windows 98 and recommends updating the driver. You’ll find a driver for the ESS 1879 audio on that machine at Soundcard-Drivers.com.

Bob in Idlewild - how do I tell what programs are accessing the Internet

that’s a good use for a software firewall. I recommend Sygate’s free Personal Firewall.

Jeff in Michigan adds: If you’re willing to get a little geeky, try opening up a command prompt (Start | Run | type in “CMD”) and type in the command netstat -b. The -b flag was added in SP2. It will list the programs running on your computer that are doing something on the network. Visit Microsoft’s Windows XP Pro Command Line Reference for more information.

John in Burbank - Getting the video off Tivo

He upgraded his Series 2 Tivo to TivoToGo and it crashed. He has the bare drives and is wondering if there’s any way to get the video off them. I don’t think so. They’re encrypted and I know of no way to unencrypt. If there is a way it will be documented at the Deal Database forums.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

April 3, 1–2p

Rick - recording radio to VCR

VCRs need a video signal in order to record correctly. The video is what tells the VCR how fast to play the tape too, which explains the speed changes.

A simple method to get video into the VCR without tieing up your TVs tuner would be to connect a gaming console’s video out to the VCRs video in. To be really creative, you can dig out your old SNES and Mario Paint, and use Mario Paint to add a title to the video.
(-tollie)

08 November 2005