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Saturday, April 16, 2005

Show #135

I got this email the other day - I thought I’d pass it along. I haven’t tried the procedure but it might be worth checking into for folks who are experiencing slow downs after installing SP-2…

Bradley from Sydney, Australia writes:

‘I work in a call center working on the service pack 2 technical support contract for Microsoft. I have noticed you have gotten a few questions about windows xp being slow afer upgrading to SP2. Yes a lot of the times it is just spyware, however there is a flaw in the sp2 install that sets a registry key to an incorrect value. If this key is incorrect it will make a pc run real slow. The key in question is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RpcSs and this key needs to be changed from NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService to LocalSystem for it to run faster again. I have noticed that this will fix about 40% of the slow pc’s after sp2 install. Hope this info can help anyone out.

Thanks Bradley!

Today’s news items

Apple has announced that OS X Tiger will ship at 6p April 29. Tiger is the most significant update to OS X since it was shipped four years ago, and at $129 for the upgrade, it better be. Listen in for coverage today.

Microsoft has announced that it will unveil the new Xbox 360, May 12 in a half-hour special on MTV. The special will be hosted by Frodo, aka actor Elijah Wood, reportedly an Xbox fanatic.

The US music industry is going after Internet2 users. The prototype high speed network is restricted to campuses and research institutions so far, but according to the RIAA that hasn’t stopped students from taking advantage of the 100mbps speeds to share music. Lawsuits have gone out against 405 students from 18 campuses who use ihub2 to share music on the high speed network.

Internet casino Golden Palace.com has paid $650,000 to name a new species of monkey. This is the same company that paid $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich with the purported image of the Virgin Mary on it. The monkey will be named callicebus aureipalatii, that’s Latin for “golden palace.” CEO Richard Rowe said, “This species will bear our name for as long as it exists. Hundreds, even thousands of years from now, the GoldenPalace.com Monkey will live to carry our name through the ages.” What a ghastly thought.

Gordon Moore says time is running out on Moore’s law. That’s the one that says transistor density on microprocessors will double every 18 months. It’s held true since he coined the law 40 years ago, but Moore says it will stop working in another couple of decades. “Something like this cannot continue forever. The dimensions are small enough now that we’re approaching the size of atoms and that’s a fundamental block. I think the law has another 10–20 years before fundamental limits are reached.”

Intel’s eBay offer of a $10,000 bounty for the April 19, 1965 edition of Electronics Magazine where Moore first made his pronouncement has caused an uproar in libraries, where people are stealing copies of the magazine.

11a-Noon

Bob in Torrance - XP activation doesn’t stick

Windows stores the activation information in two files in the c:\windows\system32 folder: Wpa.dbl and Wpa.bak. If those files are locked, or permissions are incorrect, Windows may not be able to save its activation information.

You might also want to check the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFTNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
(change Activation Required value to zero)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion
(change RegDone value to 1)

Boot into safe mode, click Start→Run and type regedit then check these values.

Josh in Eau Claire, WI - router vs. Norton Internet Security

He says there’s an Easter egg in Halo 2: the Howard Dean scream! He also is replacing the Norton software firewall with a hardware router. I agree - a hardware router is very good firewall and eliminates the need for a software firewall.

Beverly in Thousand Oaks - new Mac, needs manual

Mac OS X: the Missing Manual by David Pogue is my favorite - the Tiger edition ships soon.

New Macs purchased after April 12 will get a $10 upgrade to OS X Tiger when it ships on the 29th. More info here.

Brian in West Hollywod - Internet radio drops out

He’s on dial-up and some stations work fine but Monster Radio drops out a lot. Make sure to choose the lowest quality stream they offer. You can’t listen to anything over 40kbps on dial-up. The lower the quality the less likely you’ll suffer dropout due to internet congestion.

Noon-1p

MacMerc’s Rick Yaeger shows us how to make a transparent desktop.

The idea behind the tutorial is to first capture the scene in two images (one that will be the source of the desktop you’ll be making and another to be the guide for cropping that image) and then take the final “transparent desktop image”. Before you take any pictures though, you’ll need to set your digital camera on a tripod where it isn’t likely to get bumped during the procedure—it can’t move.

You’ll want to take two shots now. The first with no computer, the second with the computer in place. Once the second shot is taken, you have to make sure that you don’t move your computer until you’ve completed the tutorial, applied the desktop you’ll have created and taken the final picture.

You’ll use Photoshop to overlay the two images then, using Photoshop’s Cropping Tool’s built in perspecive capabilities, you’ll use the photographed screens edges as a guide to cropping the perfect desktop wallpaper for your final image.

Apply the image as your desktop and take the final picture with your camera.

Read the tutorial for pictures and a full expanation.

Once you’ve wrapped your head around the basic tutorial, there’s a special addition to it that has been written especially for the Leo listeners: Extra Credit for Leo Listeners

Check out more transparent desktops at MacBidoulle and Flickr.

Also mentioned by Rick were The Comic Art Effect (with lots of pics of Leo as a comic book hero) and Comic Life.

Kevin in Palmdale - big “Windows error” on the screen

I have run in to this security warning before, its remenents of spyware, all you need to do is Right click on the desktop, and go to properties, then go to the Desktop Tab, click the “Customize desktop” button at the bottom and got to the tab that says web. look in the section that says web pages, and highlight the one that says security or warning, and then click delete. these instructions are for windows XP. you can also just turn off active desktop, and it will go away. added by mp3mooch from the chat room

Tom in NJ adds: It could also be because Windows Messenger Service is turned on. I’m not sure about WinXP, but on Win2000 it is on by default. To turn it off, right-click on My Computer and select Manage. At the bottom of the left pane expand Services and Applications and click on Services. Scroll down to Messenger, right-click on it and choose Properties. Click on the dropdown box next to “Startup type:” and choose Disabled. Click OK to save the changes.

As a side note, if you ever get another window that doesn’t have an “x” to close it, just hit Alt-F4. That will always close the current window.

David in Hesperia - scanning black and white negatives

2.5×1.75 negatives

Go to a Camera store or wholesale lab with professional equipment, such as A&I lab in LA. They will have the large format scanning service. You can also go to a pre-press shop, but will probably pay more.

David needs to check the scanner he buys to make sure the light in the top is large enough to cover the full negative. I use a Visioneer, and the top light is just big enough for a 35mm negative. He could cut his own holder from a black piece of plastic or matte board if needed.
-Steve from Ontario

Epson makes very good scanners that can scan medium format negatives (these are the negatives that are bigger than 35mm but smaller than 4″x5″. Check out the Epson Perfection 4180 PHOTO for about $200 and the Epson Perfection 4870 PRO for about $550. The Epson Perfection 4990 PHOTO is only $450 and can scan negatives up to 8″x10″, probably the best deal around.
-Solano from Covina

Here’s the CHEAP and pretty easy method… if you have a digital camera that will macro-focus and a tripod, build a very simple light table consisting of a small pane of glass -ideally frosted, but you can use an old picture frame glass and tape a piece of waxed paper to it … then put a 100 watt light buld behind it and shoot your negative. You can actually see if you like the results before going out and spending lots of dough for the tools listed above.
-Larry from Chatsworth

I have the Epson Photo Perfection 2450. I scan the same negatives that David wants to do, but I had to make my own template out of matte board. It works great. Just be sure to copy the template that Epson provides, including the little cutout at the top that tells the scanner that it is scanning via the backlight. The Epson can do up to 4 inches tall by something like 12 inches wide, so just about any negative will work. It does take some time to scan them in, something like 15 minutes per negative. The California Archival standard says negatives should be scanned in a .tiff format, and that they should be set to 8 1/2 inches on their smallest side. They should also be scanned to have 600 dpi at that size. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Most files are around 40 MB, however. Be sure to use a firewire connection to the scanner. USB is just too slow. You can get a firewire card for as little as $30. I use a Mac with this scanner, which comes with firewire.
-Kent in New Hampshire

1–2p

Robert in LA - Toshiba Satellite laptop stops

It seems to happen when the laptop is working very hard - in other words it’s overheating. Either slow down the processor with the Energy settings or try one of the cooling pads.
Palehorse says he had the same problem but the Targus Chill Pad worked to fix it
Bob in FL - fixed this problem on my Toshiba by cleaning the dust out of the fan and exhaust vents. Chill pad sounds like a good idea also, but you still need to clean. This is becoming a problem on ALL laptops, especially when you start running anti-virus/spyware programs.

I spent about $1 on a bookstand in the local container store, opened the laptop fully, and put it in the stand, attached a wireless keyboard and mouse; and now I have a desktop computer that is mobile, does not overheat, and takes up very little desktop real estate. (from Chris in San Diego)

Billy in Millville, NJ - Live IM always crashes

No matter what camera (or even if he doesn’t have a camera) or IM program. Sounds like either a video driver issue or an interaction between the motherboard drivers and video drivers. Update your mobo drivers and then try different video card drivers.

Or maybe try installing the Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility. Dont know weather it will work with Billy’s pc though. Or … maybe that his PSU has problems as it kept restarting due to unstable voltage. Maybe its just a coincidence when he’s turning on IM and plugging in USB Webcam. (the USB webcam might take some voltage power causing it to restart due to low watt/voltage in the PSU). Get a True Power PSU might solve the problem.
-Arsyan from Malaysia

This is Billy, I have an 420w True Power PSU. I do have my cpu overclocked and the voltage turned up on the cpu core. Most likely the reason that is does not work is that my computer is overclocked.

Arlene in Loma Linda - wants to buy a computer

Get a Mac. Start with email. Surf the web before you design web pages. Brochures are easy with Apple’s Pages program (part of the iWork package). Video editing is easy with iMovie. And no spyware or viruses.
Scott_AU adds:
Get an iMac G5, for dvd work get a super drive and get 512MB of RAM or it will run slow.

Reuben in Seal Beach - recording songs from Internet radio

He wants to record the streams from iTunes radio song by song. You can do that if the station is using Shoutcast or equivalent for its streaming. Use StreamRipper for Unix and Windows or StreamRipperX for Mac to divide the songs into individual MP3s, complete with tags. (StreamRipperX works with Jaguar through 10.2.8 and Panther too, although the site tries to imply otherwise so you’ll pay for their commercial spin-off, RadioLover. -tollie)

To get the audio from commercial DVDs use DVD Audio Extracter for Windows. Not sure what to use for Mac. Anyone?

I agree, DVDs are getting harder to copy. I think it’s because movie studios are using the same techniques game companies have used for years to protect the discs. Alcohol 120% works wonders on game discs and is now being used for DVDs.

Mactheripper seems to always work for me to rip into a DVD_VIDEO file. To burn to a DVD I use Roxio’s Popcorn which is commercially available. This is if you want to copy movie DVD’s.
I’m not sure about audio DVD’s since I have not purchased any.

Ernie in Reseda - antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall

what’s the diff?

Antivirus (or “anti-virus”) software is a class of program that searches your hard drive and floppy disks for any known or potential viruses. It looks for a certain pattern recognition in the files that could potentially be a virus code.

Antispyware removes spyware. Spyware is different from virus, spyware consists of computer software that gathers and reports information about a computer user without the user’s knowledge or consent. It also sometimes displays ads without the user’s consent which can be also known as adware. So antispyware removes these stuff. A little bit different from antivirus.

A computer “firewall” is a barrier between your computer and the outside world. What it does that it blocks and allows certain connection on your pc to get out from your pc and data coming in your pc. Basically a firewall is just something that allows whats coming in and out of your pc. Theres software firewall and hardware firewall. Both has its ups and down. However as Leo always says .. use a hardware firewall that comes with your router ;) its much safer than software firewalls.

-Arsyan from Malaysia (correct me if im wrong)

Scott_AU adds:
Software firewalls can do more harm than good.

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