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Today’s news items

Why are IQs in the industrialized nations consistently getting higher? Some say it’s because of video games.

A new Sober virus variant is spreading like wildfire - and we thought people knew better than to click on attachments

11a-Noon

The anti-spam service I use is Mailroute. I’ve been very happy with it. Other enterprise spam filtering companies include Postini and BrightMail. These are enterprise solutions, though. They’re not available to end users.

Ask your ISP if they offer server side filtering like SpamAssassin. It makes a big difference!

Matt in Riverside - XP reboots when he tries to capture digital video

It’s very likely the device driver for IEEE1394. Delete it using the Device Manager then reinstall the card.

Craig in Whittier - broadcasting computer audio throughout the house

He wants to hack an FM transmitter, you can (instructions here) but it might break the law. I recommend one of the excellent Wi-Fi broadcast solutions like the Roku or SqueezeBox.
Tim from Torrance says: C.Crane Company sells an FM transmitter online at (http://www.ccrane.com/fm-transmitter.aspx)
Dave from Merced says: Might also try building an FM transmitter if you are handy with a soldering iron. Besides Fry’s, many electronic hobby shops will have these kit’s, like the one from Ramsey.
Todd from Oceanside says: Have been looking into the same thing for a while. Check out http://electronickits.com/kit/complete/radi/ck301.htm, they have a pre-built kit for $40 that’s supposed to broadcast 400 feet. I have one on order now, we’ll see…

Bill in Pasadena - fast user switching forces WEP login

He’s using Panther and every time he uses fast user switching he is required to re-enter the WEP password. He’s tempted to turn it off. He’s already using SSID hiding.

In my opinion, turning off broadcast ID will keep casual looky-loos from seeing you, but not the serious hacker. According to the experts at ICSA, there’s no need to turn off SSID broadcast to secure your wireless network. It doesn’t protect you and it can slow down the network. Read the white paper “Debunking the Myth of SSID Hiding” by Robert Moskowitz, Senior Technical Director at the ICSA Labs.

On the other hand, WEP, or better yet, WPA encryption is really required for true Wi-Fi security.

I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with your setup or if Apple is doing this on purpose for security reasons. Anyone know?

Noon-1p

Jan in Orange - unistall anti-virus before the new one?

yes. If you’re worried about being insecure disconnect from the net first. Make sure all traces of the previous program are gone, too.

Michael - choosing cable and ISP

cable vs satellite
cable modem vs DSL

Hey Leo, you’re a bit behind the times. On your show you mentioned that Satellite TV can’t get local channels if you are able to receive local channels over the air. I think for a couple of years now, that hasn’t been true. The rule is if Satellite offers one local channel, they must offer all local channels.

DirecTv offers all local channels in most of the large markets, Los Angeles being one of them.

Marty Backe

Alan - why is my web site not working?

He sells guitar picks at www.f1pick.com. There are some basics that all sites should have. I’d make sure to have a line at the top explaining who you are and what you do: F1-Pick.com - the place to buy a better guitar pick.

Read Jakob Nielsen’s great books, Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed and Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity for really practical tips.

Dave in Hesperia - hard drive is rattling

He wants to oil it. You can’t. That hard drive and its bearings are sealed for a reason. Even a single speck of dust looks like a boulder on the surface of the drive. That’s why companies like DriveSavers use clean rooms to disassemble hard drive. And why it can cost thousands of dollars.

I recommend buying an external laptop drive case and attempting to restore the drive that way.

John (MrBatman) in Hawthorne adds: I agree with Leo. You might want to check out Apricorn.com. They sell a laptop upgrade kit that consists of a drive case and cloning software (in case you want to just clone your drive onto another one). This has saved my tukas more than once already, well worth trying, especially if you’re a hardcore laptop user. (My laptop eventually died and now the hard drive is now in the Apricorn case, plugged into my desktop’s USB as a secondary drive.)

David - cell phone knocks off his cable modem

Must be radio frequency interference (RFI) - either Bluetooth or the phone itself. The good news is that RF drops off with the inverse of the square of the distance. That means even a slight repositioning of the modem might help a lot. Or you could cover it with tin foil.

1–2p

James in La Puente - airband radio recommendations

He’s going to be studying civil aviation and would like to listen to aircraft on a radio receiver.

James, I used to buy from AES out of Wisconsin for amateur radio equipment. I’m looking at one
of their catalogs now and they have some neat aircraft receivers. They give lots of information on their products. http://www.aesham.com Even if you buy somewhere else, their catalog and online site is worth looking at. (Bob in the Thumb of Michigan)
- - -
SmokyMtnz from Nashville gives his 2¢ worth: For a very inexpensive solution, check out the online LIVE feeds of air traffic, police, fire, etc. from scanners. Here’s a couple of websites that offer the feeds:

• http://www.scannerlist.com/
• http://www.scanware-fccfrs.net/sw_audios.html “(scroll down to ‘LIVE AIRCRAFT’)”

Enjoy listening!!
- - -
Also any cheapo scanner that recieves 118–132 MHz will work, most do.

Josh in Illinois - using XP as a router

headless XP pro system
Linux would be better: www.smoothwall.ORG

Larry in Irvine - his machine isn’t getting an IP address from the Linksys router

It might be a Windows XP problem. We know it’s not the router because the other computer doesn’t have this problem. Nor is it a network issue because a release and renew fixes the problem. You can do a workaround by creating a release and renew batch file and running it in the Startup folder or as needed. Create a text file named FIXDHCP.BAT with the following two lines:

IPCONFIG /RELEASE
IPCONFIG /RENEW

Here’s a registry solution that works with Windows 98 systems - might work with XP too

This IP address can be “released” on reboot with the help of a couple of registry hacks documented in Microsoft’s Knowledge Base Article 217035:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\DHCP
Value name: ReleaseLeaseOnShutdown
Type: DWORD
Value data: 0×00000001 (1)

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Shutdown
Value name: FastReboot
Type: STRING
Value data: 0

Note that you must disable FastReboot in order for “ReleaseLeaseOnShutdown” to actually work. You should also disable IPAutoconfiguration via the following registry entry (you will need to create this one), which will prevent Windows from assigning an IP address in the 169.254 address space:
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\DHCP
Value name: IPAutoconfigurationEnabled
Type: DWORD
Value data: 0×00000000 (0)

Bill D:
this is for Larry in Irvine regarding his problem getting an IP address when he logs on. I have a similar setup accept i have cable modem. I solved it by running spyware check with spybot and then rebooting my unplugging both the modem and the router. Then plug the modem in, let it do it’s thing then power up the router and after it has finished doing whatever it does, reboot your computer. I don’t know exactly what happened but after I did that I have not had any troubles. I expect it was a spyware problem. I also downloaded SP 3. Good luck.

MarkB:
Why not just assign a static address and end it at that?

Bill in Santa Monica - looking for cheap RDRAM

I usually buy my memory from Crucial, but they don’t do RDRAM. Check Pricewatch.

Dan in the chat room says he prefers to just buy everything from New Egg.

Always check www.resellerratings.com before buying from any online vendor.

Dean - ProTools on PC vs Garage Band on Mac

The pros use ProTools, usually on Mac, but for most folks Garage Band and a Mac is pretty close to music heaven.

Larry in Irvine - sharing iTunes and iPhotos

He wants to know if he can create a single music and photo database on a networked hard drive and link to it from all his Macs. In theory yes. You can put your iTunes library on any device. But there may be issues with more than one computer using the same database. And, of course, the network is going to be slower than a local hard drive.

You might want to try using the UNIX rsync utility to set the network drive up as a synchronizing mirror.

I use a free program called ShareAlike from If Then Software. I found it on versiontracker.com

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