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

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Tech News

Nintendo DS gamers will get free Wi-Fi in 6,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US. A similar deal is in the works in Canada.

Are there secret codes in our color printers that can be used to track documents? You bet. Tiny dots visible only under blue light contain the printer’s serial number, and the date and time of the printout according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The US Secret Service says they’re there to help fight currency counterfeiting.
Woden adds: The printers in question are color laser printers, not ink-jet. See the EFF printer page for more details.

Jack Thompson, virulant anti-videogame violence activist is embroiled in yet another battle.

Meanwhile, the latest FBI statistics are out and this is the least violent generation of kids the US has ever seen. Quoting the FBI report: As for trends in arrests of juveniles for violent crime, a comparison of 2004 data with those of 2003 indicated that the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes declined 0.8 percent, 5.5 percent compared with 2000 data, and 30.9 percent compared with 1995 figures.

11a-Noon

Ed - Removing rootkits

Discovered a trojan on his system: Hacktool.Rootkit. Steve Gibson and I did a podcast on rootkits. We recommend two tools to detect them:

• Sysinternal’s Rootkit Revealer
• F-Secure’s Blacklight

Neither of these programs removes rootkits. That’s a lot tougher. But they do detect them - and a number of programs that use rootkit technology legitimately including Norton’s Protected Recycle Bin and Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

Lately spyware like CoolWebSearch has been using rootkit techniques to hide itself from spyware detectors.

John D Geek adds: In order to remove the rootkits you have to copy down the file(s) name(s) and boot from a second operating system. Something like a live CD is easiest but you can also move the hard disk to a different computer as a secondary drive. Then add a hyphen or underscore to the extension (the stuff after the “.”). This is still dangerous however because you don’t know what effect removing bad rootkit software will do to the normal function of your operating system. So BACKUP YOUR HARD DISK BEFORE TRYING IT! If nothing bad happens you can delete the file otherwise you might be stuck with reinstalling your operating system.
Here is an article from Microsoft about rootkits. They recommend that you “wipe” AKA format the hard drive and re-install.

Marty - Putting a computer on an HDTV

He was looking for a scan converter, but if you have a digital TV (LCD, DLP, or Plasma) and a digital video card it’s best to stick with digital (with an inexpensive DVI to HDMI converter if needed). A scan converter takes a digital or analog computer signal and turns it into NTSC for TV. But you’ve got an HDTV which can handle the digital output from your computer.

Averkey makes decent consumer grade scan converters.

Noon-1p

Carol - monitor problem

Her old monitor died and she plugged in a new monitor but the resolution is messed up. She changed the settings and made it unusable. That’s because you have the old monitor driver installed. You need to tell Windows what your new monitor is capable of. Open the Display Properties control panel, click the Settings tab, press the Advanced button then click the monitor tab. Change the monitor driver to match your new monitor (Windows has a pretty complete list of drivers or download one from the manufacturer.) Then you’ll only be able to set that display to settings that work with that monitor.

Dan - modem on shortwave radio

He’s going to a remote part of the world and wants to stay online. Hams in the States use Packet Radio. I’m not sure what the restrictions are where you’re going, but this is probably the most economical way to do it.

Mark (W6MW) in Glendale - packet radio explanation

Hams use Winlink software, but don’t expect more than 300bps on shortwave. More local transmissions on VHF & UHF can achieve higher baud rates because they use FM rather than Single Sideband (SSB). Still we are looking at 9600 baud or so. Mark (W6MW)

Brad (N9NDS) in Cloverdale, IN - WinLink Hardware

The requirement to access WinLink stations via shortwave radio requires, in addition to a license everywhere in the world, a SCS Pactor modem which costs about $1300 for just the modem. There is only one place to get these modems as the Pactor III mode is a propritary mode and no other company makes these modems. This doesn’t account for the cost of the radio and computer. It is good compared to regular packet considering the ability to access the internet but speed wise you really don’t gain much over standard packet radio. Neither method was, in my opinion, meant to serve as a last mile solution to internet connectivity.

Stan (KE6ZC) in Pasadena writes:
There was a presentation with commentary about Broadband Over Powerline (BPL) last Saturday at Pacificon (Pacific Division ARRL Convention) in San Ramon by, Jerry Ramie, an EMC engineer who had wrote this it for EPRI. Much of that presentation can be found at http://www.conformity.com/0508/0508review.html . He said he was neutral about BPL. He also said he was also going to be making presentations to a number of amateur radio clubs in the Bay Area in the near future.

It seems unlikely that using HF BPL on MV (medium voltage) transmission lines can be done without causing harmful interference to licensed users of the spectrum in the HF range. What does seem to work is using other methods (e.g., optical fiber or 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands) for distribution along the MV lines and running BPL using Home Plug over the LV (low voltage) lines going to the customer.

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/08/29/1 has details of BPL tests at ARRL HQ with the Motorola Canopy system.

Judy in Huntington Beach - Buying a tuner for Media Center

She’s using rabbit ears and bought a Compaq Presario with Windows XP Media Center. It doens’t have a tuner. She needs to buy a tuner that can connect to an RF antenna and output a signal appropriate for Media Center - probably composite. She might want to try an HD tuner if the Compaq can support it (if it has component or DVI in it can).

BrianH from NJ adds:
Leo recommended adding a dumb external tuner from Radio Shack. I disagree, get an internal TV card. If you can’t install it yourself, get a geek friend to do it. The advantage: The internal tuner can be controlled by software, and you can make you own “TIVO” like recordings. Otherwise you must manually
change channels. By the way - your rabbit ears may not be good enough to
give you acceptable results on an internal tuner. Or - if this is all
too complex just get a real Tivo (or my favorite a ReplayTV).

Listener_RV adds:
The XP Media Center TV tuner software and PVCR features require that the TV tuner include a hardware mpeg encoder. This feature would be limited to an internal PCI tuner card. Such as the Sapphire Theatrix 550Pro, Hauppauge Win TV150 PVR-MCE, AVerMedia PVR 150 Plus, and similar cards with hardware mpeg encoders. One exception is: the ATI HDTV Wonder, which tunes only the over-the-air HDTV signals (but doesn’t tune cable HDTV signals).

Terry in Whittier - Internet Explorer error

There are so many things that could be wrong. Any suggestions for things to try?
If you type regsvr32 jscript.dll and regsvr32 vbscript.dll in the run line or command line this re-register the dll and stop this error message.

I’ve had similar errors show up related to the Google toolbar. Try uninstalling it from Add/Remove programs. Also see this MS Knowledge Base article for registering DLLs http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;813444 that I’ve used to solve some SSL issues. — Mark in Reno

1–2p

Mikkel Aaland on RAW camera formats and Apple’s new Aperture

Digital photography expert Mikkel Aaland joins us to talk about Apple’s new Aperture program and why you might want to shoot RAW format.

His new books are Photoshop CS2 RAW, Photoshop Elements 4 Solutions, and the classic Shooting Digital.

Andy in Redondo Beach - monitoring a web site for changes

His son is a motorcycle racing champion. They sign up for races online, but they never know exactly when the sign-up will open. Is there any way for him to automatically monitor a site for changes?

What about WebSite-Watcher? Free to try for 30 days. Or ChangeNotes.com a free service that will email you when there’s a change. That’s also how www.changedetection.com and www.timelyweb.com work.

Leo, Here’s a list of website change notification programs…
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/misctools/fwmoni.html
Enjoy…stu - madisonville, ky

Mark in Reno likes this Free e-mail service http://www.watchthatpage.com

Bob in Ventura - Burning DVDs

Pick one, and only one, DVD authoring program. DVD - or + doesn’t really matter.

Ken in San Diego - the new ZoneAlarm

It has fallen victim to the same mindset that makes Norton Internet Security and McAfee Security Suite so bad: bloatware. Keep it simple, use a router and the built-in Windows firewall. That’s all you need and is much less likely to cause slowdowns and connection issues. If you want to build your own hardware firewall I recommend .

Chat Logs and Show Audio