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Saturday, December 17, 2005

Tech News

So much for fingerprint recognition. A Clarkson University study says that most fingerprint scanners can be fooled 90% of the time by a Play-doh finger.

Are the big guys choosing up sides? Google is taking a stake in AOL to keep it from switching to MSN search.

I love this list of the top 10 weirdest USB devices ever.

11a-Noon

QPeggy in San Diego - first computer

She’s an artist who wants to use Photoshop. She bought a Windows laptop to save money - it cost her $900. Now she needs Photoshop - another $600. Her brother is recommending Linux with the GIMP (it works with Windows, too)- a very powerful but quirky graphics program. You might find the GIMP easier to use with Scott Moschella’s gimpshop plug-in.

or Photoshop Elements- $100 and has most of the features of full blown photoshop, just not some high end pro tools.

WOW that was cool Leo. Thanks for talking about the Photoshop thing. I hope it helps all the listeners out there, and keep up the good work.

Another great free application is Paint.NET. It started as the senior project for a student at Washington State University, and is now a continuing project supported by the department and their Microsoft mentor: the original author! I’ve used it quite often and it works very well for the types of uses most people would associate with Photoshop (Cropping, resize, color/contrast balance, minor editting, etc). -Charles H

emperor_hsu@hotmail.com adds
Hey Peggy, you can get the full blown suite of Adobe Programs, which includes Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, and a bunch of other useful programs for about $300 in the retail box. I bought the suite LEGALLY from my local community college. Just sign up for any class and you become a student, which allows you to get student pricing for new software. If you sign up for the Photoshop class, you will be killing two birds with one stone. Community college classes are usually about $30 or so per unit, and the photoshop classes are like 1 or 2 units, so you will spend $60 for a class you should take anyways, and get a $300 discount for the entire photoshop suite. I have used mine and registered with Adobe LEGALLY. Just go to your local community college bookstore and make sure they have the program or can order it for you before you sign up. I go to Mt Sac community college in the City of Walnut. If you need Office you can get it from Microsoft on a special webiste for only $80, this is the entire Office Suite and it is completely LEGAL. The big software companies offer this pricing to students, because they want them to use their programs when they are learning so when they graduate, they will want to use these programs for work, which drives demand for their software. Well if you need any more help let me know. My email address is: emperor_hsu@hotmail.com Put your name and the KFI 640 so I won’t delete it thinking it is spam. Good luck.

CalExplorer@aol.com adds …

Peggy: You might want to check out the graphics program called Paint Shop Pro X. Its very easy to use, much cheaper ( $99) than Photoshop, has the ability to save files in PSD Photoshop format. The new version also works with raw photo images as well. It comes with tutorials and and has a large user group following on the net and elsewhere. Its been around for years but was recently bought by Corel.
You can even get a 30 day trial version via download to try out before you buy 30 day Trial of Paint Shop Pro X. If you need any more info or help feel free to email me…. Seasons Greetings to all.

Yes, if you are a student or teacher at an accredited school, you can get Photoshop CS for about $280 online, no tax or shipping. At that price, it is for Mac OR PC (one platform per disc). Unfortunately, Leo’s first response before knowing that you bought a Vaio, was correct. You are perfect for a Mac laptop… they start at $999 and you will find that, at that price, it will be much cheaper than the PC you just bought and the insane world of spyware and viruses you are about to enter. I would suggest making the switch to Mac, if at all possible. It is not for everyone, but I know from what you said, that you would be much happier with one… - Bill Jackson

QBob in North Hollywood - How important is a strong Administrator password?

He’s got a new iMac and cable modem, but he’s worried about security. Of course a good administrator password is very important, but I’d also recommend buying an inexpensive broadband router to act as a firewall.

QMark in Santa Ana - splitting cable

How important is the splitter? I’d say it’s fairly important - don’t use cheap splitters. Even more important is minimizing the length of the cable. I bet we can find a good article on this… anyone?

Don’t get anything less then a 1000MHz splitter, also look at the loss of each leg of the splitter…for a 2 way it should be 3dB on each leg, a 3 way 3dB on one 7dB on the other two, and a 4 way 7dB on all.

Yeah, I would look at Tru-Spec, Channel Vision, or Monster. The DC-Pass type are ususally high quality. I use the 2Ghz type, but make sure it passes all the way down to 55Mhz, for cable. - Bill Jackson

QJohn in San Diego - saving Windows streams

You can always record the audio with a program like Audacity, but if you want to save the digital stream as it comes in I recommend SDP.
Not mentioned on the show, but recommended by listener Steve in Irvine is Replay Radio by Applian Technologies.

If you can spend some money, try Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer. It works with more than just MP3’s and it has a free trial. It’s similar to Audacity, but to some it’s easier.

Mac users besides Audacity try Wiretap Pro, an excellent program that works with all streams and all audio that you can hear from your mac

kevin_from_akron:
I record Leo’s radios shows so I can burn them to CD and listen to them at work during the week. (I don’t have money for an iPod right now).Since I work on the weekends, I use Goldwave’s Digital Audio Editor available at http://www.goldwave.com . It’s inexpensive and has timer record features. I can save it to mp3 later for burning. Yep me to.

Darrell from Goshen, IN:
I really like Total Recorder Pro from www.highcriteria.com. It can record any streaming format into wave, mp3, wma or many other file formats. It has a timer to automatically record your favorite streaming programs and can be set to keep the id tags from Realaudio, etc. It also has some nice editing and processing functions available.

Noon-1p

QBruce in Beaumont - floppy hinge lid

He has an old Apple laptop - sounds like a Wall St - and the hinge lid is floppy. You can get them replaced, but the labor will cost ya.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~kenao/unhinged/

Donald Burr of Borg adds: I am not sure (from listening to the caller) what kind of Apple laptop he has; however, if he has a PowerBook or an iBook, he might find the following tools from RadTech helpful: Glide Kits and Service Tools. RadTech also has a wide variety of other Mac-related products, and they are a very good company to deal with - I’ve bought many products from them and they have always been fast and courteous.

QAdriana in Santa Monica - can’t get out of safe mode

Her Windows 98 PC will only boot to safe mode. That’s usually because there’s a missing DLL or corrupted driver that Windows requires for a normal boot. Reinstalling Windows 98 on top your existing installation usually fixes this problem without losing data.

Vet4peace says
XP tip: Regarding broken and/or non-bootable Windows XP installations:

Contrary to popular [& Leo’s] belief, one can indeed perform an XP repair installation in much the same way as is possible with Windows 98. That is, Windows XP can be loaded on top of the existing XP installation, and will maintain all the current program installations, serial numbers, custom tweaks and the like.

I used instructions found on Michael Stevens’ web site. Instructions — contributed by XP MVP Doug Knox — can also be found on the helpandsupport section of Microsoft’s site. Do a search on “XP repair install” and take your pick.

Without quotes, Microsoft’s link is the fourth hit; adding quotes puts Leo’s friend the Lockergnome about halfway down the page. Chris’ site has a comment stating the repair install works only if your Windows Install CD has files dated after 2001. (XP was released on 10/25/01 — I used an 06/03 Pro disk that was “slipstreamed” with 04/04 SP2.)

Note-1: I’m batting a thousand — I’m exactly one-for-one. Last week I moved a [backed-up] hard drive from an ECS/SiS chipset motherboard to an Asus/nVidia mobo. Worked perfectly, after all the normal pre-swap Registry tweaks, hair-tearing and head-banging proved fruitless.

Note-2: You’re gonna need the appropriate XP install CD and a valid 25-character, five-by-five product key to do the repair install. I do NOT know whether the “valid” key has to match the previously installed key. (Mine did.) Personal experience has shown that the key on the external Certificate of Authenticity (COA) hologram doesn’t always match the installed product key — even on major-brand systems and laptops. (For a “keyfinder, try Magical Jelly Bean: “Software spawned from sheer boredom.”)

Note-1a: Windows Product Activation (WPA) — and letter-of-the-law legality will still be concerns when moving an existing installation to new hardware. Be (p)repaired to be giving MS a call to reactivate.

Yes, you are right, I re-install over XP OS’s all the time. You proceed as if you are going to do a new install instead of an upgrade, but you choose not to use the recovery console… after hitting “enter” you will eventually come to a screen with “repair” as an option.
As far as her using the Windows 98 CD… CD’s are not supported in Safe Mode on 98, so, unless your computer will still boot to a CD, I would try… if you get a screen right after booting that says your computer did not start properly, you may just need to select “1″ for a normal boot, instead of going through the Safe Mode cirlce of booting. If you don’t get that screen, you can try holding down F8 to get the screen, then try to boot normally “1″. If it is more serious than this, you may need a tech, unless you want to reformat and start over, which I don’t recommend. You can also try booting to a 98 or ME floppy and running “scanreg /autofix” from DOS. - Bill Jackson

QJohn in Riverside - installing USB hardware before the software

It’s always best to install the driver first then install the hardware, but lately this seems to be less of a problem than it used to be with USB. I’m not sure why.

If the printers are fairly simple and a few years old, you can probably just plug them into XP and they will work. But for newer and more complicated printers, I would install a driver from the Internt, first. - Bill Jackson

1–2p

QTony in Covina - laptop keeps dropping out

Turn off Wireless Zero Configuration

Yeah, you can easily turn this off from the screens you get from the little double-computer wireless icon in your lower-right tray. Then, it will use the configuration software that came with the wireless adapter or computer, if the software is installed. - Bill Jackson

Mark in Reno adds: When I installed my Linksys PCMCIA card, I chose not to install their configuration utility. If I disbable WZC, when I re-boot my computer I cannot connect to ANY wireless network. If this is your case, you could manually turn off (but not disbale) WZC each time you start your computer by going to Run > services.msc and Stop the service. I recall seeing a batch file on the pcmag.com that you can place on your desktop to simplify stopping and starting the service.

Scott adds: It seems that Windows has a provision for this in its “Preferred Networks” settings. Dbl-click on the Wireless Network Connection icon in the system tray, click on Properties, click on Wireless Networks tab. Find the wireless network you prefer, then click Move up so it’s at the top. This should then “Automatically connect to wireless networks in the order listed.” Check this from time to time because when you’re away from your normally used networks, new networks are added on the top.

QGreg in Calabasas - Free CES tickets

You can usually find these online. If you find a source, share it here!

QStewart in Kentucky - sharing external drives with Macintosh

He can see the Home folder from the PC, but not other drives. What am I missing?

I think what you’re looking for is Sharepoints
- Tollie

Leo replies: Of course, Sharepoints! This freeware program makes it easy to share mountpoints on OS X just like on OS 9.

bruceb adds:

Without needing additional software like Sharepoints, the answer to your SMB question can probably be found in one of these two articles, or in one of the articles linked from within them:

Mac OS X: Setting up Windows File Sharing
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107083

Mac OS X 10.1 or later: How to Connect to Windows File Sharing (SMB)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106471

Note in particular that one of the above articles mentions that, “The name of the ‘share’ (the shared disk, volume, or directory) must be specified. You will not be prompted for it.”

—bruceb

You could also create a symlink to /Volumes/[DriveName] in your home directory.

—msloan

Q Stephen in Edinburgh, Scotland - mobile phone connection issue

His new Bluetooth Moto phone can bond with his PC, but he can’t establish a connection because it says it can’t create a COM port. I’d open the Device Manager and delete the existing COM ports. I suspect that the previous phone’s port is bound to the previous phone and won’t work with the new one.

You may be able to change the port in the Motorola Mobile Phone Tools software preferences. - Bill Jackson

QKris in Lakewood - scarey music sites

She has a new iPod but is afraid of downloading songs and getting spyware. That’s a very real possibility with illegal filesharing programs, but if you use legitimate music stores like Apple’s iTunes Music Store you’re safe as houses. Remember that your iPod cannot play Windows Media Files, so stores like Rhapsody, Yahoo, MSN, and Napster are off limits to you, but stores selling unprotected MP3s are ok. Try Magnatune .

Doug In Alaska
If you don’t want to get movies from the ITunes Music Store, I reccomend staying at ITunes 4.9, as anything over version 5 seems to have problems, or so I hear. While I can not be absolutely sure, I think ITunes might slow down hibernation on a Compaq laptop running XP Pro SP2, but that is a minor glitch.

Chris from Wrightwood adds

For those of you that have an MP3 CD player in your car or truck and want to make MP3 CD’s, don’t count on using the music you buy legitimately from sites like ITunes, Real Player, and Windows Media Player. I have an MP3 CD player in my truck. I bought music legitimately from the internet, but every time I tried to make an MP3 CD for my truck with the music that I had purchased on the internet, it wouldn’t let me put the music on the CD. You can only burn MP3 CD’s with music that you bought on a CD from a retailer.

This begs the question, how is it that everybody said that buying music online is the best way to go, when you can’t even put the music on a MP3 CD that you can listen to. You can still burn the songs that you buy online onto a regular CD, just not on an MP3 CD.

Robert from Garden Grove:
Burn to a CD the Rip Again into a MP3

Donald Burr of Borg adds: I don’t have any problems with the latest iTunes on both Mac and Windows. I have several machines, both PC and Mac, both desktop and laptop. As far as burning mp3′s of burned music, there are several ways to go: (a) burn it to CD, then re-rip as MP3; (b) use an audio capture utility like Audio Hijack (Mac), Audio Hijack, WireTap Pro (Mac), and HotRecorder (Windows): play the downloaded song while running the audio capture utility, then encode the resulting file as MP3. I believe all of the above have free “try-before-you-buy” versions that you can try out. As for downloading “legal” Mp3s, a site that Leo & Co. have mentioned previously (e.g. on Screen Savers, etc.) you might want to check out is AllOfMP3. The site is hosted in Russia (but the site itself and the music it offers is in English) and offers some amazing prices for downloaded, unencumnbered (i.e. no DRM) MP3’s. Whether it is “legal” or not is not known (though some may take solace in the fact that, though the site has been around for quite some time now, it has yet to be taken down by the RIAA).

Chat Logs and Show Audio

Listener Comments

17 December 2005

 16 February (1998) 

 GIMP is an initialism (all caps):  GNU Image Manipulation Program

 This wiki is entitled “ShowNotes”
 That means SUBJECTS THAT WERE DISCUSSED ON THE RADIO SHOW.
 If it isn’t about that, it doesn’t belong here.

01 January 2006

10 January 2006

22 January 2006