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Sunday, December 4, 2005
11a-Noon
Q Deborah in Simi Valley - Listening to podcasts
She’s having trouble getting podcasts copied over to her iPod. Connect your iPod, open iTunes, open Preferences, and click the iPod tab. Now select the Podcasts tab. You can have iTunes automatically copy all podcasts to the iPod, or selected podcasts, or do it by hand. You can also tell it to automatically only update unplayed podcasts, which is very handy.
If you need more help I recommend my buddy Chris Breen’s book “Secrets of the iPod and iTunes”.
QJeff in Miami, FL - backup strategies
He runs a business and wants to get back up fast. He uses a combination of disk imaging, incremental backups, and off-site backups online with eSilo. Good work, Jeff. But he doesn’t like the cost of the server based Ghost imaging program.
I no longer recommend Ghost - there’s a better program called Drive Snapshot, free to try for 30-days, 39 Euros for workstations, 89 Euros for Servers. It images while Windows is running. Steve Gibson told me about this program and swears by it.
QSteve in Burbank - how to protect a new computer
Read my article on Installing Windows Safely and follow the instructions.
See http://www.avast.com/eng/free_virus_protectio.html for free home user antivirus aoftware.
See http://www.free-av.com/ for free Antivirus
Free online scanner : http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
Online Spyware Scanner http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan.htm
Online Scanner : http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
Noon-1p
QJonathan in San Luis Obispo - my drives are shared
Windows XP does set up “administrative shares” by default for $C, $D, and $IPC. But Jonathan also say that NetBIOS over TCP has been enabled on his machine even though he always disables it. Does sound like he’s been hacked.
Microsoft explains these administrative shares here and Neuro-tech has an article on disabling them in the registry here.
QJoshua in Fullerton - Backing up my Mac
He bought a 160GB external drive (great idea) now what should he copy to it. I recommend just copying your Account folder. If you have multiple accounts backup the Home folder. Dragging it to the drive is sufficient.
bruceb tries to clarify—
Leo, what do you mean above by the “Account” folder? I know of no OSX folder with the name “Account.”
I think what Leo meant to say above is, “I recommend just copying your account’s ‘Home’ folder. If you have multiple accounts, back up the ‘Users’ folder. Dragging the folder to be backed up to the external drive is sufficient.”
(The “Users” folder includes within it the “Home” folders for ALL user accounts.)
You might want to look at the free Carbon Copy Cloner for creating disk images. I also recommend using an automatic syncing program to keep the Home folder on the external drive up-to-date. Something like Folders Synchronizer.
bruceb adds—
In addition to the Carbon Copy Cloner program, there’s also the free “SuperDuper!” program, which some folks seem to like, for creating disk images on the Mac.
QPatrick in Montrose, MI - Blue disk won’t play in PS/2
MechMan in the chat. He bought a new PS/2 game and it won’t work. It’s a purplish/blue disc. Any suggestions?
Nik from Australia suggests:
The Blue disk are the old PS2 CD’s used when the system was first released, many PS2’s have problems reading them, infact Sony has gotten so bad at compatibility with the PlayStation media and code that some PS2’s aren’t even 100% compatible with PS2 games and can’t run many big PS2 games like Tekken 5, especially the slim PS2’s. You have some options, but not many, try different PS2 systems, try modding your PS2 and burning a copy of the game, or try the suggestion on openalpha.tv the first episode has some fixes for this exact problems.
MechMan here. Well, I tried the repair options. Sadly, the ribbon cable that connects the reset and eject buttons to the unit got yanked out, so I have had to purchase another unit. I will keep this one, however, and see if I can get it fixed (Giving me a backup unit.)
QZach in Malibu - WiFi not working
Using range extender but it’s looking like two access points. Why?
QCarl in Toledo - solving adapter problems
He recommends the iGo for solving adaptor confusion.
He is recreating TechTV by watching:
Patrick Norton on www.dl.tv
Kevin Rose, Dan Huard, and Alex Albrecht on www.systm.org
Roger Chang on www.gamespot.com
and the whole gang at www.thisWEEKinTECH.com
whew!
1–2p
QBeverly in Orange County - Legality of emails
quantumBlog says
With the ubiquitous use of USB thumbdrives, one can run Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP. I still use version 2.6.3i for its security. And being an MS-DOS application, I use MailPGP as a window interface to make life a little easier. It all works flawlessly to this day, but running PGP is not for the faint at heart. There’s a bit of a learning curve to go through.
Wait if you can. Apple will almost certainly release the first Intel-based Macs at MacWorld Expo next month. Although I wouldn’t be the first to buy. You should probably wait until March. If you can’t the new iMac is really an excellent machine.
Just a thought - might rent/lease until the new machines are proven.
Read Walt Mossberg’s review in the Wall St. Journal.
QJared in Murietta - securing Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
There’s no one security program that will protect you. Read this article on IRC security and follow its recommendations. You are safer if you use the Java client in our chat, mostly because it’s so dumb. If you use mIRC or X-Chat you’ll need to be careful about your settings.
Using an anonymizer like iPhantom will protect you against Nuke attacks.
QGreg in USS Reagan - PS/2 problems solved
- Black disc PS/1 CD-ROM
- Blue PS/2 CD-ROM
- Silver PS/2 DVD
He says that the newer PS/2s use lousy DVD drives that often have problem with the older blue discs. Cleaning the lens might help.
Some Call of Duty servers are calling for a strike to protest Activision’s lack of anti-cheat system.
QKurt in Long Beach - external hard drive failures
The best way to maintain and recover hard drives is Steve Gibson’s incredible SpinRite. Nothing can do a better job in software.
QDennis in Rancho Cucamonga - monitoring my teenager
I recommend reading Larry Magid’s article on SafeKids.com about kids and the Internet. He’s got excellent, time-tested, suggestions.
There’s lots of software for monitoring internet usage like PC Activity Monitor, or SpyBuddy?.
You might also want to look at the iBoss from the iPhantom people. I’ve been using it for several weeks and it really does a great job of controlling my teenager’s Internet usage.
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