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Show Notes > Show 211

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Saturday, January 7, 2006

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On today’s show…

Tech News

Microsoft has rushed out a patch for the Windows WMF vulnerability. Whatever else you do today make sure to run Windows Update.

Albert adds: Temporary fix for WMF exploit in 98/ME here.

News from CES

John C. Dvorak says he can do CES without ever stepping foot in Las Vegas — he’s certainly put together a great list of feeds — and frankly, given the dearth of interesting announcements this week, I’m thinking he might be right.

As usual, John is correct.. I too passed on CES this year.. Credentials in hand be darned. Leo, I had the pleasure of meeting you at CES a couple of years ago.. I was convinced I would be there every year.

Well, one of my servers crashed and I skipped CES.
Oh, well.. :-) P.S. Leo.. Any subsitute to Zonealarm? JDMeister, L.A.

Google didn’t announce a Google PC, but they did start selling video from CBS and the NBA. (Robin Williams joined Google president Larry Page on-stage to riff about it.) And they announced the Google pack a bunch of free software with a built-in updater. Windows only. Download it from pack.google.com if you need:

  • Adobe Reader 7 (doesn’t everyone already have this??)
  • Ad-Aware SE Personal (good)
  • GalleryPlayer HD Images (10MB of nice pictures - optional)
  • Google Desktop (I use it - but some privacy concerns)
  • Google Earth (must have)
  • Google Pack Screensaver (new)
  • Google Talk (ok - Skype is better)
  • Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer (ok - but unnecessary added baggage)
  • Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar (Firefox yes, toolbar ok)
  • Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition (ugh - includes 6 mos of updates)
  • Picasa (very good)
  • RealPlayer (double ugh but optional)
  • Trillian (very good also optional)

I think it’s a mixed bag made less desirable by the addition of Norton (who doesn’t pay for advertising with Leo) and RealPlayer (fortunately both are optional). How is this sack of junk any better than the lard HP or Dell lades into their systems? At least you can customize the list before you download it all. And the installer is smart, small, and can resume downloads. It detected that I had Firefox, for example, but needed an update which it installed. Now this they should give away.

Tivo announces their Series 3 - the first HD Tivo including support for CableCARD.

Palm announces the Treo 700w running *gasp* Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.

The Sony Reader may be the most interesting gadget at the show. A $300–400 eBook reader with a very readable screen and the ability to store thousands of books in PDF or Sony eBook format with a reported 15-book battery life. eBook readers will happen eventually, but this is still too expensive and bulky.

Microsoft announced some content deals with DirecTV and MTV - Justin Timberlake joins Bill on-stage. Vista will be great. This is the Digital Decade. Blah blah blah.

Intel announces something and Tom Cruise makes an appearance on Yahoo!’s behalf. Do you get the feeling these companies bring in these guys just to make what they’re saying interesting. Why does it all feel like the opening act for Apple’s (and maybe Intel’s?) announcements next week?

11a-Noon

QSteve in Murrieta - Adobe buys Macromedia

Which programs will survive merger? Flash, of course. Fireworks might be subsumed by ImageReady. Dreamweaver should eat GoLive. Almost certainly Illustrator will kill Freehand. The rest should live.

Hi Steve this is Carol in Anaheim Hills working on a Captivate project while listening to the show. I think Captivate is safe simply becuse it deploys its content as Flash files and I’m sure that Flash was the major incentive for the Adobe takeover.

QRyan in Tennessee - how can I get my Windows IP address from my Mac?

He can ping his Mac by name and get the ip address. How can he do the same from the Mac for his Windows machine?

Kirker writes: Use the samba command nmblookup [machinename]

Of course you can get the Windows IP by clicking Start→Run enter cmd<return> and entering ipconfig but he doesn’t want to get up.

Dan says: from the mac terminal, type “ping computername.local” without quotes - replace computername with your Windows machine’s name. This solution requires you have file sharing turned on with the windows computer.

Illuminati says: You can obtain the IP using the computer name from Terminal. Simply enter the command ‘smbutil lookup COMPUTERNAME’ where computername is the computer’s name. For example, if my PC’s name is ‘Virtualinferno’, I would type in ‘smbutil lookup Virtualinferno’ (without the quotes) and it will return the IP address.

CathyDoser says: To get the IP address by ping-ing the other machine, use Network Utility, go to the Ping tab, then type in the name of the machine with .local appended to the end. I would look like this: name.local where name was the name of the Windows machine.

owine says: go to the router’s page (probably http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1) and find the DHCP client table. it will list the computer name and IP address.

BobL says: Easiest way is to use the hosts file. Enter the name and IP and it works just like having DNS , but more manual. Mac’s must have something like a hosts file. :)

QBarry in Los Angeles - my USB scanners won’t work

Another casualty of the Service Pack 2 update to XP. SP2 is a must, but it does cause many problems. In this case two USB scanners he’s tried won’t work. That’s almost certainly a problem with the TWAIN drivers. Microsoft has replaced TWAIN with WIA (Windows Image Acquisition).

Noon-1p

QLainey in Claremont - buying a new TV

Sony vs Panasonic - I think they’re both good.

SparkieInParadise adds: Warning to those new to HDTV - standard definition (SD) TV will most likely look WORSE on the HDTV set you are drooling over, than the conventional TV that you upgraded from.

QAndrew in New York - poor image quality from website webcam

The quality of the image is dependent on the quality of the camera. Try using a DV camcorder connected to the computer or a still camera and software such as Apple’s Image Capture.

QAndy in Rodando Beach - has too many duplicate and unorganized mp3 files

Try the GodFather mp3 tool.

QBarry in Corona - doesn’t want to use Windows Media Player to manage his iRiver players

Barry has three iRiver T30s. Unfortunatley, the PlaysForSure technology in the player requires using Windows Media Player to manage the devices.

Bender says: Look at Red Chair Software’s Irivium Explorer.
It’s designed for the iRiver H series but, it may work and it’s free to try.
Find it at Red Chair Software.

I have an IRiver T30. It does show up as a hard drive on my computer but is not named as a hard drive, it is named IRiver T30. I can download mp3s to it and they will play.

QRyan in Oregon - wants to start a blog/website

Use Typepad or Blogger as a simple solution. Setting up your own server can be a daunting task.

If you don’t have a static IP address you’ll need www.dyndns.org.

Jeff Says: Visit apacheguide.org for step-by-step instructions on setting up Apache, PHP, MySQL database, and WordPress blogging software on a Windows system.

Shawn S sez For Ryan’s question, XAMPP at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html has a package for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X that installs Apache, MySQL, PHP, and FileZilla FTP, as well as various other items depending on the OS. It’s free, and I use and recommend it.

Leo responds: Wow - I’ll say. I just tried XAMPP and it’s incredible. Highly recommended. I had Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL, SQLite, and a bunch of other stuff installed and running in about a minute. Very very nice.

Derek Responds: Apache based websites can be a little tricky. I use a prebuilt blog called Geeklog which uses windows IIS, PHP, and mysql. You can see how I have totally customized the prebuilt templates and installed a few plugins on my site. Check it out here

QVictoria in Pasadena - what is Backweb?

She’s getting a request to update from something called Backweb on her HP computer. That’s normal (if a little annoying). You’re right to be concerned but in fact HP does use a program called Backweb to push updates to your computer. If possible I’d check to see what exactly Backweb wants to update. And do make sure to check the certificate to make sure it really is HP pushing the data. Read HP’s Backweb FAQ for more information.

1–2p

QJohn in Glendale - spooge error in DirectX

Believe it or not, Spooge is a DirectX driver. You can run dxdiag (click Start→Run and enter dxdiag) to get more information about the problem but usually updating your video drivers does the trick.

QMichael in San Diego - CES highlights

LED rear projection
HD-DVD on its way but no unified players yet

QGreg in Los Angeles - recording Sirius

He has an FM transmitter on his Sirius radio so he could pick it up with the Griffin Radio Shark.
http://www.timetraxtech.com/Articles.asp?ID=107
MusicMatch
Audacity
Dan M Suggests:
I’ve been recording radio and other line-in things for years. I used Cool Edit as my editor and Music Match to convert to MP3, but a year ago I discovered the MP3 Sound Recorder from Tong Soft. It’s fairly inexpensive and does simple recording in .wav or .mp3 formats. But the thing this does that other programs didn’t at the time was it can setup recording times. So you can tell the thing to record from 10:50am to 2:10pm from the line in on your computer. Or like me via KFI’s web feed from 1:50pm-5:10pm each Saturday and Sunday, then let it do it’s thing. Your file will be waiting where you told it to record to when you get back.

Dan Mastous

QBrett in Fallbrook - default Spam Assassin score

The default is five (and in fact that’s what I use) but you can set it as low as 4 and not have too many false positives.

I, in fact, use three layers of spam filtering (and I need it since I get over 1 million spam messages a month at leoville.com). All my mail goes through a commercial anti-spam service, mailroute.net. They catch the vast majority of spam with zero false positives. Then I use Spam Assassin on my spam server to get another chunk, and I use a local spam filter to capture anything that sneaks through. With this system I get only messages that are not absolutely spam (although I may consider them to be) and good email with zero false positives.

QLarry in Moreno Valley - Is EVDO a good alternative for high speed internet

Yes. T-Mobile offers flat fee data, you can use its phone for both calls and Internet. If you can get a good signal I think it’s a good choice. EVDO is not as fast as broadband but it’s a lot faster than dialup.

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Listener Comments

07 January 2006

10:33 by Larry?.

Leo, does one who has downloaded Ilfak’s temporary patch need to remove it once the Microsoft patch has been downloaded or will they live in harmony with each other?

10:59 by Francis?.

Remove it before you install the window update, even the author recommend it. a friend of mine installed the Microsoft patch over and had some issue with the whole thing even if the two are quite similar.

11:27 by SDTripp?.

Leo:

I put in the WMF patch from GRC.com that was installed via the contorl panel > Add or Delete. The other day MS sent me the auto-update file to fix the problem and I installed it before uninstalling the GRC.com temp fix. I then uninstalled the temp fix.

My question is did I uninstall the MS fix by uninstalling the GRC.fix? If I did when I go to MS update area it seems to think I have their fix and no problem. Just want a confirmation my box is still safe>? How can I prove to myself the fix is in my box and not uninstalled after uninstalling the GRC.com Ilfak Guilanov temp fix?

Thanks for your advice.
Steve

11:32 by Ed London England?.

There is a checker to make sure you are protected at grc.com:

http://www.grc.com/miscfiles/wmf_checker_hexblog.exe

11:39 by Bryce2?.

How can I copy KFI shows onto my Ipod?

11:47 by Francis?.

Go to KFi site and sign in for KFI on demand and this will allow you to download the whole show in mp3 format, from there you can go get your file with itunes and convert it

KFI on demand is a new service

11:50 by Nightwing?.

If you try some of the links from John C. Dvorak. The one for Cnet takes you BACK IN TIME to CES 2005!

11:52 by Albert.

Temporary fix for WMF exploit in 98/ME here: http://www.nod32.ch/en/download/tools.php

11:55 by Richard Tuttle?.

TN, identify the subnet for you mac ip address. then ping the broadcast address. All IP’s should respond.

11:57 by Tom.

Hey Leo: Great show!! Check out (in OSX Tiger), Applications/Utilities/Network Utility. You can do all kinds of network related things there (ping, etc.) — no need to use the terminal.

Hope that helps!

11:59 by kirker?.

On the mac, use samba command “nmblookup machinename”. Hope that helps

jkirker@kirkercom.net

12:02 by Cathy Doser.

To get the IP address by ping-ing the other machine, use Network Utility in the Utilities Folder, go to the Ping tab, then type in the name of the machine with .local appended to the end. I would look like this: name.local where name was the name of the Windows machine.

12:04 by :).

Pinging broadcast may not recieve reply from all devices. Results may vary, try pinging the network address as well. x.x.x.0 for a /24 subnet.

12:05 by Willby?.

Installed Windows update and now would like to re-register that Metafile .dll that was unregistered as part of the protection steps from the WMF Metafile flaw. Can someone post a script that would do this from the “Run” command.

12:06 by Andre Lauzon?.

RE: Scanner issues with XP SP2— I bet there are start up app issues- maybe he has turned off some start up apps in msconfig/ startup or there is a conflict with another start up app that hangs the twain drivers. Just an idea…

12:09 by Pat McNamara?.

Barry-

I think that you could just deleat the TWAIN driver from the WINDOWS/twain_32/. It should be protected by windows and the file will automaticly be replaced. Don’t try until someone makes sure the file will be replaced

12:11 by Listener 686?.

All you have to do is create a host file on each computer named “hosts”. Save it in the appropriate location. I don’t know where the appropriate location whould be on a Mac, but on Windows its C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetc. The content should look like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost ← Don’t change this
192.168.1.10 MacComputerName
192.168.1.11 WinComputerName
The IP numbers and names should reflect your real numbers and names.
Of course, you would have to know the right names and numbers ahead of time.

12:29 by owine.

686′s suggestion would work if you had a static ip address. but DHCP with routers can assign a different IP at each startup so this isnt the best solution.

12:30 by owine.

Brian -

rip the dvd into a compressed format and use the videora converter. you can also check ilounge who has a good guide on putting DVDs on the ipod.

12:34 by klokwkdog.

some routers have a DHCP that can be set to assign the same local IP to a particular PC via its MAC address, so you can have the convenience of universal DHCP with the convenience of static IPs. Lots less typing! D-Links do it, e.g.

12:34 by Johan, Sweden?.

Regarding Ryans problem, why not go about it the other way and instruct the router to give the PCs MAC address a reserved IP, then use the hosts-file on the Mac to specify a name for that IP, or something like that.

12:37 by Anonymous 686?.

owine’s comment is correct, but you can setup DHCP to assign the same address to a machine each time.

12:46 by Anonymous 686?.

For KIRKIR - I think it should be

 nmblookup -B (Broadcast address)
12:48 by Jeff Lundberg?.

For the caller asking about setting up a home web server, I wrote a guide http://apacheguide.org/ with step-by-step instructions on how to install the Apache web server, along with PHP, JSP, MySQL, along with WordPress.

12:59 by Justin in Fort Myers, FL?.

For other free webpage creators dont forget “Nvu” (http://nvu.com/) based in the mozilla engine and totally cross platform, win-mac-linux… also on windows there is the wysiwyg web builder (free version) from Pablo Software Solutions (http://pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/wysiwyg_web_builder.html)

13:00 by Shawn S?.

For Ryan’s question, XAMPP at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html has a package for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X that installs Apache, MySQL, PHP, and FileZilla FTP, as well as various other items depending on the OS. It’s free, and I use and recommend it.

13:06 by Albert.

Before Ryan in Oregon sets up his own web server, he needs to check with his ISP to make sure it isn’t against the “Terms of Service”. Some ISP’s will cancel your account if you run a server from your home.

13:41 by Glenn M?.

I suggest NOT using DHCP but assign the address into windows xp so that the same address will always be obtained from the router… (Windows computer will always have the same address) this site explains it well. http://www.hotcomm.com/FAQ/FAQ_staticIPXP.asp#static_assign

14:05 by Matt W?.

Sprint has EVDO phones that you can tether to the computer.

14:30 by Barry in Los Angeles?.

Thanks everybody for your help. This scanner issue is a pain. I will try the solutions suggested. All further suggestions will be most welcome and I will be monitoring this site hoping for a breakthrough!

15:14 by waldo?.

For a good Program to record, Play,Rip,convert or Burn Audio Look Here >>> http://www.cowonamerica.com/download/

16:27 by Ryan?.

Thanks to everyone for all of the good info on pinging from windows from the mac. I believe the nmblookup is going to be the ticket. Thanks for your expert advise!!

20:57 by Lurk?.

Re. Radio Shark

I was disappointed with it. It’s software was very elementary and the device itself was lousy on AM radio — very sensitive to placement and direction — nothing close to average reception quality of an ordinary AM radeo.

08 January 2006

00:34 by Doug Elliot?.

I am a regular podcast lister from the UK but could listen online. I would like to Skype you Leo with a query, but where do I find your skype address?

09 January 2006

19:56 by Jerry Dixon?.

Leo

You say Zonealarm has become bloated. Any substitute? And, I have a Linksys G router, and Zonealarm. Still I get pinged.. Any suggestions?

10 January 2006

21:58 by ffej2ffej?.

Among all the discussion about discovering one’s own IP address, I’m a bit surprised no one mentioned the website http://www.whatismyip.com/

I only know that this works on my Mozilla browser on RH Linux, I’m curious to see what it would say on a system that uses bridges, routers, firewalls, etc.

12 January 2006

13:32 by Art?.

I downloaded windows 98se patch for the IE security problem. It`s in the C drive listed as wmfpatch11.zip in a notepad or a wordpad icon. I can left clk. it or right clk., there is no unzip or INSTALL.EXE file. It is not in add/remove program. I have no zip utility,is this a must? The download didn`t ask for any direction. I don`t think I`m protected. What would be my exact procedure to correctly install this patch? Thanks.

26 January 2006

10:01 by rzarush?.

I purchased mobile phone tools for my cingular rzar. I can transfer MP3 and photos to and from my phone. I don’t have to pay for ringtones and it is nice to take pictures of my cell phone.

28 January 2006

18:32 by Allen?.

About pinging on the mac there is a utility called Network Utility that does pinging and other things like trace route ect.

20:52 by dubya?.

Lots of good iriver info at http://www.misticriver.net/ and firmware upgrades at

http://www.iriver.com/html/support/download/sudw_list.asp

29 January 2006

22:05 by David Zero?.

The problem Barry in Los Angeles reported with his scanner not working is not due to SP2. I had the exact same thing on a Win 2000 computer. Apparently a scanner’s TWAIN driver is installed. That scanner is “uninstalled” but the TWAIN driver remains. Subsequent scanners (I went through 4) will not work on that system. Seems the initial TWAIN driver somehow obstructs subsequent TWAIN drivers from communicating with the device. I’m a computer tech and I’m sick of hearing people dump on SP2. SP2 has replaced virus’ as the whipping boy of computer woes.

01 February 2006

10:26 by Kongdon DeOnte’ Tift?.

Using nmblookup -A [hostname] will convert the hostname into the actual ip address

Broken links in audio archives

Through some trial and error have found the correct addresses to be…
http://podcast.dslextreme.com/kfi/KFI20060107-211-1.mp3
http://podcast.dslextreme.com/kfi/KFI20060107-211-2.mp3
http://podcast.dslextreme.com/kfi/KFI20060107-211-3.mp3

Keep up the good work leo, you’re doing an amazing job there on KFI, unfortunately as I’m in the UK, I have to get this show second hand. Thanks

Subheading

Feb. 2, 2006
Mac user at UW-Madison listening via podcast - thus time delay.
Comments for Ryan about pinging his Windows XP from his Mac OS X computer.
On my network at our department, Network Utility can Ping my Windows XP computer by IP name and return the IP #. This may not work with a local router.

Followup on PING question
Feb. 10, 2006
Southsloper, also listening via podcast

Ryan’s question restated: “How do I get name resolution (Name→IP) so I can PING <windows_pc_name> on my Mac?”. Something mentioned in Show 210: Bonjour, could be the solution. Look at: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107174 to read about Multicast DNS. CathyDoser’s appending “.local” hint might mean she had Bonjour for Windows installed?


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