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

Saturday, December 3, 2005

Tech News

Yet another design flaw in Internet Exploder allows a malicious site to run code from another site. The example is that a site could invoke Google Desktop to find files on your system. This is one of two serious IE flaws that affect all users, even those with fully patched systems. The fix, for now, is to turn off Javascript, or not to use IE. I recommend switching to Firefox if you haven’t already.

John Siegenthaler senior is assailing Wikipedia for spreading false information about him. Someone ought to tell him about the Edit button.

The mad dog RIAA is going after one of its own. Talking Heads founder David Byrne violated the arcane rules for streaming audio by doing a Missy Eliott special on his online show. Apparently it’s illegal to play more than four songs by the same artist in a three hour period. Wha?

11a-Noon

QLucky Phil in Sydney, Australia - iTunes kills my connection

If he tries to download more that one podcast at a time, his Internet connection drops out. This didn’t happen with iTunes 4.9. It happens with 4.6 on Mac and Windows. He has a wireless ISP called Wild Internet. He can open multiple connections in other programs.

Sounds like something iTunes is doing to open multiple download streams is choking your ISP. I’d ask them for help.

LuckyPhil: I can download files off the net in many segments and bittorrent works fine. Asking for help from my ISP is like milking a bull. This problem has continued after reinstalling windows as well as prior to the reinstall. Itunes 5 also worked fine.

TJ from Melbourne, Au: Wild Internet resell the iBurst wireless product which I’ve hammered quite hard in some recent testing and had no issues. As you have both Windows and Macs, I’d assume you have a router between your iBurst wireless modem and your machines. If so, remove the router and connect directly as the market is flooded with poorly functioning routers at the moment.

QEileen in Wisconsin - the future of PDAs

She’s a nursing instructor and is wondering if handhelds have a place in the curriculum. I admit I’ve said that PDAs are in trouble, but that’s in the consumer space where buyers are eschewing PDAs in favor of smart phones that do it all. But in vertical markets like hospitals and industry, PDAs and pen computing have a bright future. I think that Palm may be in trouble, but Microsoft has a big investment in PocketPC and Tablet PC and I am sure they’ll keep the platforms alive. Look at the iPaq with Wi-Fi.

Donald Burr of Borg says: You may want to re-think the “PDAs are dying” line. Sure, a lot of people are buying smartphones nowadays, but there are also a large group of people (myself included) that subscribe to the mantra “Jack of all trades, master of none.” In other words, we would rather have individual devices that perform specific functions, and perform them WELL, rather than one device that tries to glom onto multiple functions but often implements them poorly. Take Windows smartphones (Pocket PC Phone Edition), for example. Sure, they make decent phones; however, their PDA functionlity is, IMHO, extremely limited. The small size of the screen coupled with the lack of touchscreen input (only having the keyboard and a few function keys to input data makes it virtually worthless as a PDA, IMHO. I’ve also tried several Pocket PC phones (the bigger ones, more like PDA’s with bigger screens and touchscreens), but talking into one of these feels like talking into a bar of soap held up to my ear; they’re just too darn big for comfort. I’ve also experienced (and heard of others who also experienced) poor call quality with some of these units. My current combo of choice is an HP iPaq 2215 paired with a Motorola RAZR V3 and a Plantronics Bluetooth headset. The RAZR stays on my belt 100% of the time; when I want to make a call, I tap the number on my iPaq, it dials, and the call starts on my BT headset. I can also use the BT headset to voice-dial any of the numbers stored on my phone itself. I can also browse the Internet with a real browser (not a WAP or stripped down browser), check up on my eBay auctions, quickly buy a book through amazon that a friend I’m talking to recommended to me, etc. OK, so it makes me look like a Borg, but it all works and plays together nicely. Besides, it gives me an excuse for going around pointing at people and saying “Resistance is futile.” ;-)

Donald Burr of Borg adds: Whoops, forgot to mention one more practical reason why multiple devices are better than one. What if your fancy new smartphone breaks? Well, then you’re out of luck: your PDA, cell phone, mobile Internet/e-mail terminal, etc. are ALL DOWN. Whereas, with multiple devices, if your cell phone breaks, well just get another one. Or if your PDA breaks, borrow one from a friend until you can get yours repaired/replaced. And so on. Having multiple devices is a bit bulkier (although, now that many devices support Bluetooth, you don’t have to carry all of them on your person; you can stuff your phone in a briefcase or purse, etc.) but is a lot more versatile. Like I said, the phone almost always stays on my belt. In fact, the PDA only comes out when I want to dial a phone number NOT in my phone’s memory (I can voice-dial those) or if I want to surf the net/check e-mail/whatnot.

QJohn in New Mexico - Mac kernel panics

On modern operating systems big crashes like the Windows Blue Screen of Death or OS X and Linux’s kernel panics are caused by either hardware failures or driver bugs. Applications alone can’t cause those kind of crashes. He’s eliminated all the attached hardware and it still happens. When he boots to another boot drive it doesn’t happen. Nor does it happen when he’s pressing the shift key on boot to do a safe boot. That means it’s being caused by an extension.

Check form .kext files in the Library folders on your Mac. Look for one that was installed recently.

Mike in San Pedro, CA says
Hi Leo & Mac Lovers
To add & remove start up items in OSX go to system Pref (under blue apple) then go to Accounts then to login Items (tabs at top) also you need to be the administrator. At the bottom of the window you will see +or – sign to add or subtract start up items.
I hope this helps

bruceb adds—

I suggest you read this article first, for kernel panic background information from Apple: What’s a “kernel panic”? (Mac OS X). Then, go to this article for help from Apple on troubleshooting your kernel panic problem: Isolating issues in Mac OS X Be sure to follow any links in the above articles that might apply to your situation.

—bruceb

Noon-1p

QJason in Missouri - dialog boxes crash on his Mac

It doesn’t happen when he logs into a different account. That means it’s something specific to the way your account is configured. If you don’t want the hassle of tracking down which preference or extension is doing it, it’s easiest to create a new account, move your data over, and use that.
Tony in Orange, CA suggests that Jason should open his speech preferences and under the Spoken User Interface tab there is a checkbox that causes the OS to speak dialog box text and alert text. If there is a problem in his speech services for some reason, this is what could be crashing his machine.
solak agrees with Tony. This happened to me a while back, and turning off the ‘Talking Alerts’ fixed it (as a workaround). I don’t know what was wrong with the speech subsystem, because I never got around to diagnosing it fully, but after an OS upgrade, whatever was broken got replaced and now it works again.

…how do I wipe the music off my iPod

Launch the iPod updater and press the Restore button to set your iPod back to factory fresh settings.

bruceb adds—

The iPod Updater program can be found by going here: Applications folder > Utilities folder > iPod Software Updater folder > iPod Updater year-mm-dd.

—bruceb

…can he listen to music on his bluetooth headset with his Treo 650?

Apparently the Treo separates the music and phone audio channels (makes sense). Is there any way to pipe the music audio to the headset? I don’t know of one.

Donald Burr of Borg says: Why would you want to? Bluetooth audio is extremely low quality (about 8kHz sample rate if memory serves me right). Bluetooth headset designers did not envision piping anything other than telephone quality audio over their devices, so they didn’t give them hi-fidelity audio components. Also I’ve never seen a stereo Bluetooth headset (please correct me if I’m wrong) so your audio will come out as mono. Also due to the nature of radio technology, there will be some clicks/pops/dropouts/etc. I guess it’s OK for listening to podcasts or audiobooks, but I wouldn’t want to listen to music on it; you’d either get a really bad headache and/or your ears would bleed!!

Bon of Las Piņas City, Philippines says:

The Treo 650 doesn’t support the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), which is required to transmit Bluetooth MP3 audio to a compatible device. It does support the Handsfree profile, which is needed for normal Bluetooth headset use in making calls.

QKevin in San Diego - using Verizon’s EV-DO PC card for office Internet access

Since he’s already using it on his laptop the solution is to access the Internet through the laptop by turning it into the wireless access point. This is called “peer-to-peer” wireless access.

Donald Burr of Borg adds: Also known as “ad-hoc” wireless, and “Internet connection sharing” in Windows (go to Windows Help and search for the topic “Enable Internet Connection Sharing on a network connection”). On the Mac, go to System Preferences, choose Sharing, and click the Internet tab.

QEvelyn in Pasadena - laptop keyboard is broken

You can usually replace a laptop keyboard inexpensively - but first ask them to check to make sure the connection is ok. It may be that the ribbon cable just fell off.

QGeorge in Redlands - choosing an MP3 player

He bought a PC for his kids and wants to buy them MP3 players. I like the iPods of course, but you don’t need to buy them if you’re not going to use Apple’s iTunes Music Store to buy your music. Try the excellent iRiver MP3 players.

1–2p

QJoe in Tennessee - choosing a digital camera

He’s looking for one with good optics and low shutter lag times. I agree that those are two of the most important issues. I personally prefer the digital SLRs like the Nikon D70 (which I use) or the Canon Digial Rebel XT. Nikon also offers a lower price D50. They have effetively zero shutter lag and take beautiful pictures, but they’re more expensive - $600–900.

For point and shoot cameras I like Nikon, Canon, and Olympus. Try the Nikon 5900 or Canon G5. And make sure to read the reviews at www.digitalcamerainfo.com - they’re trustworthy and offer a lot of information about each camera they review.

quantumBlog says
Digital SLR’s (DSLR) are great; but due to their design, you won’t be able to preview the ‘live’ action using the LCD preview screen. Furthermore, movie mode is not available on any DSLR.

Donald Burr of Borg adds: I too highly recommend a DSLR. Despite the limitations mentioned above by QuantumBlog, they are unmatched in terms of picture quality. The thing with smaller “point and shoot” cameras is that they typically use smaller (1/8 or 1/4 inch) CCD sensors (the digital camera’s equivalent to film; i.e. the thing that records and digitizes the image), whereas DSLR’s use larger sensors. The smaller the sensor you get, the more “noise” is introduced in the picture, thus lowering picture quality. I wouldn’t give up my Canon Eos Digital Rebel for anything, and being an older camera, it can be found quite cheaply; check overstock/inventory clean-out houses and of course eBay. As for a point-and-shoot, I really like the Canon Digital Elph SD300 (4 MP with a 3x optical zoom).

QWill in Colorado - replacing his laptop

(Woden in the chat room.) He’s an IBM T-42 Thinkpad user but wants something lighter. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending one of the Lenovo Thinkpads - the quality seems to be holding up and they make great super lightweight notebooks. The X series are really small and very affordable.

quantumBlog says
If weight is a concern, you may want to consider the notebooks from Averatec. These aren’t desktop replacements, but are an alternative to the Apple iBooks.

QChristian in Washington, DC - iPod with Video encoding

Audio doesn’t work. He’s using the excellent Mac program Handbrake to convert movies for use on the iPod. That’s because Handbrake isn’t converting the audio to AAC. iPod can’t handle AC3. Quicktime Pro does it right, but it’s much slower and the file sizes are huge.

QTim in Ventura - moving from Norton

Does he have to uninstall anti-spyware? No. Just uninstall the anti-virus programs. You may get warnings, particularly from Microsoft’s Defender anti-spyware, but just approve them.

Recommended spyware solutions:

• Spybot
• AdAware
• Microsoft Defender

QJim in Laguna Nigel - Outlook Express disconnects when sending mail

He has SBC Yahoo dial-up and Outlook Express complains that the SMTP server isn’t responding. This is not an uncommon problem and can happen during busy times. Outlook Express is a pretty primitive email program. I’d try Mozilla’s free Thunderbird and see if that works better.

TJ from Melbourne, Au: What are you actually sending Jim? Email was never designed for transferring files and it tends not to work too well with certain file types - the reason? Files are re-encoded as text (see the MIME spec for further details) which causes them to inflate hugely depending on what kind of file they are. It’s not uncommon for a 3mb file to become as large as 18mb when it’s encoded for sending. I’d recommend clearing your outbox and trying to send a simple plain text email. Further, you can increase server time-outs in OE by going to Tools→Accounts→Double Clicking the Account and selecting the Advanced tab. There you will find a slider for increasing the timeout.

Robert from Minnesota: Look at the settings for your POP mail provider. Due to the frequency of SPAM bots on the net, ISP’s are blocking port 25, to help prevent SPAM from coming from their network. Your email provider should have a page to let you know what port now supports SMTP. With Yahoo, check Mail Options, Web and POP access, view POP settings.

Bob from Colorado: Anti-Virus programs get between Outlook Express and your ISP to scan your incoming and outgoing email. Try disabling the Real-Time Anti-Virus scanning. If that solves the problem, contact your Anti-Virus vendor.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

Listener Comments

30 November 2005

03 December 2005

 http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24815

    * Release notes
    * Can no longer function as a bootable startup drive
    * Cell phone interference
    * Problems playing back home-encoded video; compatible formats; more
    * Extremely slow iPod-ready exporting from QuickTime

    * Release notes
    * Some units dead-on-arrival
    * Scratches: How to protect from and fix
    * Cable connection may require more snug fit

04 December 2005

08 December 2005

13 December 2005

15 December 2005

21 December 2005

24 December 2005

Unknown date