10:32 by A Listener?.

Note: The “MacMania V” cruise is actually Western (not Eastern) Caribbean.

11:23 by Leo.

Oops! Thanks! I’ll fix that.

11:26 by Jim?.

Leo… Thanks for the Firefox comments a few minutes ago. I’ve been using it (as I recall) for well over a year and think it’s fantastic. A couple of my friends think I’m a fool as they continue using “Explorer”. I wish they’d heard what you had to say…

Regards,

11:37 by NJ Tom?.

Just got an Ipod 5g and stumpled into Podcasts. Heard on show 202 you can put DVD’s on Ipod. How do I do this with Windows XP. Have DVD shrink and Decrypter. PS just got power back. Been out since 1am. 13″ of snow so far!

11:37 by Scott.

I appreciate all the help that you have provided us. I was wondering the if you would talk about using an external hard drive as the boot drive on a mac (pros/cons). Quick scenario is I got a mini to hold me over for a year or so until the swich is complete. I got a Lacie 250GB external that is quicker than the internal.

By the way I use Firefox on all my computers. Any words on Safari on that topic.

11:40 by Janet.

Thunderbird has a “Show Images” button as well.

11:51 by Arizona Steve?.

Worked4Apple, you seem to have a lot of hostility there. Better get back on you meds dude!

11:54 by Laser Tech?.

Playing with lasers can cause permanent eye damage.

The beam can hit your eye faster than your eye lid can close. Green is the most dangerous color as it gives the sharpest focal point on the retna, but all colors can cause blindness if the power of the laser is very bright. I have been in the laser business for many years.

11:59 by David “O”?.

Mac Virus? Mac Spyware? Mac Adware? Mac Malware? Mac Key Logger?

Are there any current issues such as a virus, spyware, adware, malware or key loggers that Mac users need to be aware or afraid of?
If so, what “must have” Anti-Virus or Malware programs should a Mac user install onto their system?

And on that note… Besides using the Apple Utility to fix permissions (whatever that is) and running the “FSCK” file system check upon start up in addition to running freeware programs like MacJanitor, what third party Disk Utility program is a must have for Mac users?

And on a side note… Has anyone else on a Mac noticed a hidden window in Netscape 7.1 that resides on the users desktop whenever the brower is in use and isn’t able to be closed by the user until the browser is actually shut down?
What the heck is that all about?
Thanks for the feedback!

David “O”
(A Leo Fan since 1882… who almost lost me during that live TWIT show with Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick from Starbucks in Las Vegas… Oh my Dog! Don’t get the Woz started on Lasers, Ceramic Knives or anything “Ultra Uber Geeky” and did we really need to know what they ordered from Starbucks? Talk about Chinese Water Torture… Arrrrrgh! My ears wouldn’t stop bleeding. No wonder Patrick dropped the car on himself)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Arrrrrrrgh! Yet another worthless tagline.
“Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure”

12:03 by Alex.

Hi David O,

There are currently no “must have” antivirus programs for the Mac. There are antivirus programs for the Mac, but they aren’t a must have.

12:17 by Marty - Van Nuys?.

Much Fun at the SoCal LINUX EXPO Sat & Sun Feb 11–12 9am-5pm at Radisson LAX.

See Exhibits such as:
bread toaster that really runs NET-BSD!
KnoppMyth HDTV PVR with new tabbed GUI installer
KUbuntu live CDs free at KDE booth
New Novell 9 LINUX desktop free CD
LINUX Chix Users Group
Free SSL Certs with verified chain (THE HUGE BARGAIN!!!)
SoCal Wireless Users Group - Great prices on WLAN stuff & long distance antennas
LINUX & CinePaint (GIMP for film sequences)
Digium Asterisk LINUX PBX system
SmallVOX bundled Asterisk PBX as whole appliance PBX system with safe-options Web GUI config.
Great Discussion Program - all about WINE Windows Emulator for LINUX
MANY friendly LINUX Users Groups
Mention Leo LaPorte at registration and get 40% off program price. Exhibit Admission is $10.
www.SoCalLinuxExpo.ORG

12:18 by waldo?.

Jet Audio Has A Good tag editer in the album creater section of the player

12:20 by Patrick?.

FYI, iTunes is using an xml file to store the tag info. In Windows (don’t know about Mac), it stores tag info in the /MyDocuments/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml. Just play around with this file you can get whatever tags you want in there.

12:21 by DaveJazzHound?.

BitTorrent clients …

uTorrent vs Azureus
When I decided to learn how to use Bittorrent, I followed Leo’s advice and began with Azureus. It was a great tool to get into all the details and settings. I learned fast. After heavy usage, the Java started bogging my system, became intolerable and locked up frequently. Resource hog

I switched to uTorrent. It is super small, stable, friendly and smart. Trouble free for me. I’ve been using for about four months. Freeware,
Check it out! www.utorrent.com

12:25 by Anthony in Somerset, MA?.

Editing the metadata in iTunes is easy on the Macintosh. I use a simple command line tool called Atomic Parsley. Available at http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/ It’s simple, open source, and has tons of plugins. A Windows version is also in the works.

12:26 by GGGVT?.

A few shows ago a caller said that he was having trouble repairing permissions on his Mac. He was getting the message “Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility.” Leo ended up recommending the user reinstall the OS.

I don’t know if anyone has brought this up yet,There may be a simpler fix. There seems to be an issue with iTunes 6.0.2. If you get that message, go to Library/Receipts and delete all iTunes receipts except iTunesPhone.pkg, if it is installed, and iTunesX.pkg. For some reason, Disk Utilities doesn’t like those old receipts. You can trash the old packages.

This fix came from http://discussions.apple.com and has worked on countless units in our school system.

12:27 by KANSAS?.

Hey Leo Your Slipping on Posting the AUDIO Files YOUR a MONTH behind

12:30 by klokwkdog.

possible Google-DCMA item Leo refers to…can it be:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=2225

12:33 by LynnInWisc?.

Do a Google search on “jim-rosen sucks” for more accurate results.

12:37 by Stephen in Thousand Oaks?.

Search on google with this:

“jim rosen” sucks
and plenty of negative sites appear.

12:38 by Arizona Steve?.

It doesn’t look like Google is blocking anything or influencing the search results. If I put in “jimrosensucks” I get most of the same results as Yahoo, even one entry that said: “This is a private page and URL of JIMROSENSUCKS.COM and should not be given to anyone not authorized to be here. Thanks. Robert”. However, if I searched for jim rosen sucks one of the first items that came up mentioned Dell. LOL

12:45 by Spokavriel.

http://www.broderbund.com/jump.jsp?itemID=4710&itemType=CATEGORY

The Broderbund site is still there and maintains links to software that use to be under the banner.

13:12 by Santa Rosa Seve?.

Welcome Back To Google, BMW — Missed You These Past Three Days

Search Engine Watch http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060208-104027

13:23 by Michael?.

David O,

“Are there any current issues such as a virus, spyware, adware, malware or key loggers that Mac users need to be aware of?

No viruses; no spyware. The only malware, AFAIK, is Openor, but that caused less of a problem than alarmist news articles implied it would:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39164062,00.htm

“If so, what “must have” Anti-Virus or Malware programs should a Mac user install onto their system?”

I’d advise none. Since there are no viruses *what* would you be scanning for? Extra software only wastes diskspace, slows a machine, adds to complexity - hence instability, and introduces another source of possible security holes in the shape of bugs in the AV software.

But if you really want to run an AV program, use the free and open source program ClamXav - http://www.clamxav.com/

But it’s not necessary, at present, to run AV software at all.
More useful strategies:
1. Keep up-to-date with patches
2. Enable the built-in ipfw firewall (in Sharing preferences)
3. Think twice before installing any software that has an installer that requests your administrative password.

“… Besides using the Apple Utility to fix permissions (whatever that is) and running the “FSCK” file system check upon start up in addition to running freeware programs like MacJanitor, what third party Disk Utility program is a must have for Mac users?”
None.
Furthermore, you don’t need to keep running fsck and you certainly don’t need MacJanitor. Here’s why not:
http://www.rixstep.com/4/2/macjanitor,00.html
Waste of time, no?

As far as 3rd party disk utility programs go: Leave well alone. Most of these are just AppleScript wrappers for a couple of commands you could run in terminal yourself. Many are badly-written; and some are positively harmful:
http://www.rixstep.com/4/2/cocktail,01.html
Avoid such stuff. Use Apple’s own built-in utility DiskUtility.app (in the Utilities folder in Applications) if you encounter any problems - or as a prophylatic measure, if you wish.

Sorry, I don’t use Netscape 7.

13:23 by .

Hello Leo,

Is there a reason why my latest podcast of your show is 2 to 3 weeks behind? The lastest one I have is show number 213. Have you released a later show?

13:24 by Ventrua Bob ?.

Regarding Dragon Naturally Speaking, I have been using it for years. However, I think that the basic version that you suggested is not enough. Any user should get the “Professional” version, due to the “recorded playback” that is available with that version. In proof reading the dictation, it is very, very helpfull to be able to highlight the dictated text and have the dictation actually played back. In that way, one can easily determine what was said, in case the dictation does not come out correctly. Otherwise, your dictation may instead read line a “Norm Crosby” routine.

13:49 by WITechGuy-Marty.

CORRECTIONS:

A well known Free Remote Computer Service better then Windows Remote Service can be found at http://LogMeIn.com
LogMeIn has a Free service for perasonl use, As well as a Free 30 Day trial of LogMeIn Pro that’s like being right in front of the remote computer & working on it.
Check It Out!!

13:59 by Marty - Van Nuys?.

Swap File performance

Best results are obtained when using a DEDICATED FireWire Drive as Windows can simultaneously read and write swap file. Windows treats FireWire as a SCSI device, so the limitations of IDE half-duplex data flow are no longer an issue. TMP & TEMP vaiables should also reside on the FireWire Swap Drive. This gives WICKED fast performace, especially on video editing!
I would never go back to waiting on C: drive to swap data.
Here’s how to do it and IDE-to FireWire adapters
http://www.datoptic.com/PDF/Improve.pdf
http://www.datoptic.com/PDF/Improve2.pdf
http://www.datoptic.com/
http://www.caloptic.com/
The rep, Sam, is usually at the Pomona LAcomputerfair.com showing & selling the HDTV media PC’s and other CalOptic products at middle of West wall opposite the entrance

14:00 by Waldo?.

Keyloger Hunter Is a Program I Use

08:13 by Chuck?.

Ok, I’ve been happy with Internet Explorer, it does what I want and I didn’t have to do anything to make it work. And it’s free.

But, lately I’ve heard of all of the security holes using I.E. I’ve also heard the incesant rants on the podcasts by Leo Leporte, a tech guy I respect. So, I relented and took the plunge and installed Firefox 1.5. It has tabs, is safe because it doesn’t run ASPs, etc.

I’ve been using Firefox for about 2 weeks and eventually had to give it up. Yes, I loved those tabs, kept everything neat. Yes, I felt safer. But, dang it, it simply didn’t render many pages properly. It didn’t handle CSS very well and some pages were completely unreadable.

We often create web pages, without frames, where we hold the column titles fixed and scroll the data. Doesn’t work in Firefox. Some rollovers don’t work in Firefox. You can see an example of this at www.excelsystems.com. Roll over the words Application Development. A list of choices should appear in the grey bar below those words. They simply don’t show up in Firefox. I wouldn’t have even known those choices existed had I not been an I.E. user.

How can a bunch of so called “experts” laud a product that just plain doesn’t work properly? It’s incredible what Lemmings many of the mainstream media and press are these days!

In any event, I found what I think is a good solution. In installed I.E. 7 and now I have tabs and what Microsoft has claimed is a safer and more secure browser.

 The idiots who constructed this whiz-bang site of yours
 have no clue about “Standards compliance”.
 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.excelsystems.com/

 It doesn’t work in non-IE browsers because that’s the way it was built.
 Don’t blame Mozilla for the errors
 of people who don’t know what they are doing.

09:09 by Brian?.

Regarding the MacIntel with the speaker issues, try plugging the speakers into a Line Out port. Some speakers don’t do well in the headhphone ports, instead needing to be put in a port with different levels of audio out.

14:48 by Ron Zastovnik?.

Speaker Issues on Mac: The audio out on some devices require a load to work. Some speakers with internal amplifiers do not put a load on the device. Try getting a Y adapter, plug earphones in one and the speakers in another.

If you are handy, solder a couple of resistors of around 20 to 100 ohms across the left and right channels to ground on the speakers input line.

16:49 by dryan?.

An <b>easier</b> way to edit the special iTunes mp4 tags is <a href=“http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20183”>Lostify</a> a GUI wrapped around Atomic Parsley. I use it myself and it works great

06:56 by Bradley?.

http://home.comcast.net/~lowellstewart/lostify/

GUI based interface for OS X on editing mp4 tages

21:50 by Jordan?.

If you do the Jim Rosen Search on Google now, the first result is this page. :)

05:18 by Johan?.

Windows editor for those mp4 tags, WinAP, also uses Atomic parsley. http://www.abstractvoid.com/content/view/17/33/

13:05 by KDawg?.

Regarding the woman who wants to print out her address book - I know you don’t like Microsoft Outlook, but for keeping and printing contacts, there’s nothing like it. Although I use Thunderbird for e-mail, I keep Outlook because I can have multiple address books (I keep one separate book for synching with my cell phone through BlueTooth) and it has great options for printing out the books as well - you can even highlight names (or not highlight them) to choose which names get printed, so you only print what you need.

Most Dayrunners are either full 8.5 x 11 pages, or they’re 5.5 x 8.5 - which is a standard sheet, cut in half. All you really have to do is print 2 pages per sheet of paper, print on the back and use scissors or a paper cutter to cut the sheet in half. If you’re lucky enough to have a 3-ring binder, you can get an adjustable 3-hole punch and adjust the punches to the DayRunner size. If you have more holes, you can actually buy 2 (or more) ADJUSTABLE (the fixed-spaced ones don’t help) punches and you can actually move the punchers onto a single punch.

If worse comes to worst, you can use a word processor, set up the document to print 2 pages per piece of paper and type in the address book into a document.

12:46 by Dwight A Hunt, Sr?.

I’ve listened to several of your podcasts of Tech Guy, TWit, Security Now, and Inside the Net. As an IT Professional that started out with an Atari 800XL (which is stuck away in a closet) I have one big disagreement with the advise you give in your KFI Tech Guy show.

Telling people that they don’t need to run anti-virus software. The average user won’t even notice the difference in performance/resource hit with or without it running.

For the past 7 years I’ve been working at the University of Michigan Health Systems. Because of HIPAA our computer are locked down as much as possible. I’ve only run into 1 program that wouldn’t run with user permissions, Sierra’s Master Cook version 5 & 6. It was written for 9x and they never re-wrote the program for NT/2K/XP and makes calls to admin only resources.

As for all other program, I’ve found changing file permissions on the folder tree of the program to “Modify” for everyone, and giving full control to everyone to the HKLM keys the app creates allows any applications to run as a standard/restricted user I do this with a command or VB script that calls Secedit and an .inf file I created with the MMC security plugin.

I’ve also knew the answers that you didn’t to some of your caller’s questions, and at the same time, I picked up a few tips from you.