Sunday, February 26, 2006
Tech News
RIM is losing in court, but winning in the US Patent Office. Is it because of political pressure to save Blackberry?
11a-Noon
Q Terry in Round Lake, MN - unformating Mac drive
Micromat’s $100 TechTool Pro 4 should work. Stellar Phoenix says it will but it’s $200. I haven’t tried it. Anyone have any experience with this program?
Here’s another one that will work on mac formatted drives, but it runs in windows only it looks like. But it’s free to try so maybe it might work. Cost for it is $145.00 if you want to buy it.
QWendell in Winder, GA - Firefox won’t run on Linux
You’ll probably want to reinstall it. Download a fresh copy to your home directory, then open a terminal window and type the following commands:
cd ~
tar zxvf firefox*.tgz
cd firefox
./firefox
That should run the program. If it works fine you can make a desktop icon.
There is an standard install method for linux, but u gotta add it to your distro first, its called AutoPackage.
And to get the autopackage firefox install, its available here, just do a search on the page for firefox.
Ray in Indiana says: Wendell didn’t say which version of Linux he is using, but a lot of people use Ubuntu. To install the newest version of Firefox in Ubuntu, follow the steps at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FirefoxNewVersion.
QChip in Pennsylvia - video taping daughter’s wedding
He wants to get the audio into his video camera. You can buy wireless lavalier mics for this purpose for around $500. You should be able to rent them from any good AV store, too.
If you want to stick a laptop up front, an inexpensive USB mic like the MacMice MicFlex would work, too, but synching the audio and video could be challenging. I recommend using a clapper to synch them (just like in the movies). Try not to shout action when your daughter comes down the aisle, though.
The Samson C01U and Blue’s Snowball are uglier, but better quality, USB mics.
Bart suggests checking to see if you can tap into the church’s audio system.
QBart in Laguna Nigel - portable audio CD recorder
He wants a small unit his sister can bring to counseling sessions so that she can offer a CD to the client before leaving. The Tascam DP-01FX is $599 from Musician’s Friend.
A listener writes: Check out the Marantz CDR-300 - tiny and just the thing (although expensive).
Noon-1p
QTom in Vista - Mozilla doesn’t scroll with the trackpad
It will with a generic mouse - that’s the Windows driver at work - but trackpads use their own drivers, and they may not be Mozilla or Firefox aware. Look for an update to your trackpad software.
Later Synaptics Touchpad drivers is not compatible with non Microsoft IE/Windows Explorer. Windows XP has a generic driver support for Laptop touchpad, but without the specific drivers such as Synaptics’ advanced features will not work.
QBrian in Los Angeles - Norton didn’t remove the virus
Get a second opinion from one of these online scanners:
QEarl in Santa Monica - Linspire as a desktop Linux
He says the best Linux for novice computer users is Linspire $60 plus $19.95/year to subscribe to the CNR installer database. Well worth checking out. I’ll review it this week.
The problem with linspire is that you run as root, which is administrator, as default There is a way to run as a regular user, but is not on the linspire installation. Users behave exactly as other Linux, but programs such as CNR might use your root rights.
Linspire have on the other side, many advantages, such as commercial support, media codec support, discount on commercial software, VoIP and hardware support with partners such as Koobox.
Other service includes special software such as Lsong and Lphoto similar to Apple’s iTunes and iPhoto as well as services such as Mp3Tunes. And specialized products such as Mp3Streamer, and Linspire Laptop Edition.
QBill in Huntington Beach Prof3205?- recommended video codecs
He teaches networking at Orange Coast College and wants to know what codecs you need these days. I recommend sticking with open standards like MPEG-4 and H.264. XviD is open source, DiVX is proprietary; use XViD. I think if you download Windows Media Player 10, Quicktime, and XViD you’ve got 90% of what you’ll need.
Other opensource codecs are the OGG Vorbis audio format, OGM Vorbis Media format. And finally the Theora file format, which is also an opensource format for video at a speed comparable to mpeg4.
Dustin Cless Adds
I use VLC media player because it supports all the codecs expect for real. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
1–2p
QMary in Santa Clarita - Windows mobile cell phones
The best choices:
Unfortunately, she’s Cingular and they offer the clunky iPaq phones. The Audiovox with Smart Phone is probably a better choice there.
QEric in Covina - Pentium IV vs D
D, or dual-core, is great for multi-taskers and high-end graphics and video programs that are multi-threaded, but no benefit for gaming or most productivity software. The D is a faster chip in general, however, so it still might be worth it.
QCraig in Valencia - Dell wireless router with a Mac
He’s using WEP encryption and can’t get the Mac on the network. Macs don’t require Airport - they work fine with all Wi-Fi routers (I have never had trouble anywhere with my powerbook). WEP encryption is pretty funky to setup however. I recommend using the more secure WPA instead - it uses plain passwords instead of long hex strings and is simple to set up on Macs and Windows.
QLeslie in La Mirada - setting up a merchant account
She wants to take credit card payments on the phone and online. Check your local bank for a merchant acount. I use Paypal to take credit card payments and it works well. If you want an online store I recommend Yahoo Stores.
Q Chris in Riverside - PDF won’t open
Get the latest Acrobat Reader.
QTracy in Los Angeles - Flybook buyer’s remorse
Sure it’s expensive, but it’s very very cool. I’m jealous. If there’s a negative (aside from the price) it’s the fact that it uses the Transmeta Crusoe processor. This increases batterylife dramatically, but reduces the speed somewhat. It’s not a great choice for gaming or other demanding applications, but should be perfect as an ultraportable office/Internet machine.
Chat Logs and Show Audio
Chat logs available shortly after the show ends
Listener Comments
26 February 2006
11:36 by anonymous.
How do you make a mac pc? Whats the tutorial link?
www.hak5.org go to the episodes page and download episode 2 there is a tutorial in there to make a mac pc
Leo,
Just wanted to thank you for recommending Investintech’s Able to Extract. I was listening to episode 218 on my iPod this morning and heard you talk about it. I downloaded the free trial and it’s EXACTLY what I’ve been searching for for a long time. The OCR works really well and converts quickly and easily to Word, Text and Excel formats.
Thanks for all your great shows!
I’ve used Data Rescue Classic back in the OS 9 days when I lost a drive, but it only recovered about 50% of the drive. Most of the files it recovered were graphic (.jpg) files. The caller may try the demo and see what happens.
-Dave Merten - MacOSG.com
11:47 by .
Installing FireFox in Linux.
This is the main problem with Linux, it isn’t standardized, eg. one shouldn’t install .deb packages in Ubuntu if they weren’t made for Ubuntu.
Why does Leo say in his commercial for Go To Meeting that MS Remote Desktop is “Not secure” This is what Microsoft says about Remote Desktop security
“Remote Desktop is encapsulated and encrypted within TCP. The activity involved in sending and receiving data through the RDP stack is essentially the same as the seven-layer OSI model standards for common LAN networking today. Data from an application or service to be transmitted is passed down through the protocol stacks, sectioned, directed to a channel (through MCS), encrypted, wrapped, framed, packaged onto the network protocol, and finally addressed and sent over the wire to the client.
The returned data works the same way only in reverse, with the packet being stripped of its address, then unwrapped, decrypted, and so on until the data is presented to the application for use. Key portions of the protocol stack modifications occur between the fourth and seventh layers, where the data is encrypted, wrapped and framed, directed to a channel and prioritized.”
I think most amateur camcorders have problems with direct input of external mics. I have a beachtec adapter that allows for both xlr and line inputs and has the electronics to adapt for a more noisesless and safe miniplug external input.
I’m a Dj, I only Use wirless, when i recored my Demo video, i used a wireless mic.
The town I live in during summer uses a CD recorder that is about size of a small tape recorder to burn CD of meetings…not sure of who makes it…
Fostex VF80 is on sale for $499 at musiciansfriend.com
The marantz cdr300 costs about 700. It is a portable deck that records direct to CDr http://www.zzounds.com/item—MARCDR300
That link to zzounds didn’t work for me…
It’s the Wiki software screwing with links again.
Don’t click the link; cut and paste it.
Regarding the recorder cd burner, The Tascam DP-01FX is a unit which lists for $799, but is available at www.musiciansfriend.com for $599. If the user can’t wait for mail order, it is probably available at the local Guitar Center store. Before Garageband, I used Tascam products extensively and always found the quality and ease-of-use to be top-notch.
For a Track wheel might need a driver for firefox
But I found it via Google and that Marantz unit look quite similar to what I have seen used at these govt meetings
Curious Minds want to know? What viruses? OSX has no viruses. Buggy laptop? I have a G4 laptop and have had no viruses and no bugs. There are all these stories about supposed viruses and yet there is no proof and no reports of anyone actually getting any of these concept viruses or trojans. You can’t infect yourself unless you give permissions to do so.
LinspireLive!
-Contains the complete Five-0 feature set
-Is easy-to-use & runs from a CD
-Doesn’t remove or affect your old operating system
-perfect for Windows users
-Lets you safely test hardware compatibility
LinspireLive: http://media.linspire.com/cnr_linspirelive/
perfect for Windows users WHO ARE USED TO POOR SECURITY (default install).
Leo,
Great Info. I have Norton Ghost 10, I want to install an external hard drive on a system with RAID1 dual disk system. Will Ghost handle this? I already have ghost working fine on a non raid system
12:44 by JZA.
Earl in Santa Monica - Linspire:
Linspire have the following advantages:
- Support
- Documentation
- Integration and Services (Lsong, LPhoto, Mp3Tunes)
- Discounts
- Hardware support
The grief of the Linux community is really just 1 and is NOT that they charge for the CNR service. The grief is that it force users to run as administrators (root).
You can get a fully Linux/Linspire compatible machine like Koobox and also Laptops where they have locked down on issues such as hybernation and power management.
Also linspire has launched services that are pretty forward thinking like, Linspire Media center, Linspire for Kids, mp3Streammer, and the Linspire Mini and many other.
If you do decide to purchase Linspire, use coupon code: TryOutLinux to get linspire for only $20.
12:47 by Nik?.
Please leo, look at Linspire from a GUI useres POV. I can do anything on Windows, and used MS-DOS 6 for years into the win9x ear and I like that I can use Unix code as a tool in OSX. But Linux is so user unfriendly, if Linspire can reverse that, I’d like to try it out.
12:49 by JZA.
Wendell in Winder, GA - Firefox in Linux
If you have Fedora, SuSE or Mandrake you can download the rpm and do the following:
$ su
*****
$ rpm -Uvh mozilla-firefox-……rpm
mozilla-firefox ################################ 100%
Usually distro has package mangers but they change on ditros to distro:
Mandrake : urpmi mozilla-firefox
SuSE : yast2 mozilla-firefox
Debian : apt-get install mozilla-firefox
Ubuntu: apt-get install mozilla-firefox
If you have other distros like slackware or Linspire you might find information on the documentation.
For the CD I would first check the ide cables to see if they are not loose. Then maybe try a new cable and then a different CD or DVD. I have used the ide to usb2 adapter with included external power supplies to add drives, or you can get an external case using usb or firewire.
13:26 by Nik?.
Hey Leo, I’m a serious gamer and I’m regretting going with the Athlon 64 4000, when a service or whatever launches in the background it slows down my games, some services worse than others. When iTunes for instance cheks for new podcast my game stops for about 60 seconds. I never had that happen on my P4 because of the fact that the P4′s have there Hyperthreading that simulates dual cores.
Trust me dual core is best for gaming bause theres so much junk in windows in the background that dual cores is a massive help.
As Leo said, this is only true
if your OS and apps were WRITTEN to make use of a dual core.
The PFD problem… make sure his file is named .pdf
I have used Linspire for ten months now and have had very few problems. CNR is simple and well worth it. I had been on an original Imac and just when I needed a new computer Apple announced it was going to the PC chip eventually. I couldn’t wait so I jumped to a PC and set up a dual boot with Windows and Linspire. Since then I have used Linspire exclusively. I never open Windows. By the way I’m 75 years old and what you’d call a light intermediate computer user. Best Regards.
Re: Chris in Riverside - PDF won’t open
Chris get the FoxitReader from your favorite free download site. Works fast and simple, actually better than Adobe (whch isn’t saying much).
Opinions on the quality of Foxit differ.
27 February 2006
12:25 by Rob?.
The most serious incident was perhaps the public disclosure of a serious and easily exploitable flaw in the Apple operating system, which could be a conduit for intruders to install malicious code on computers running the software. Exploit code that takes advantage of the security hole was quickly posted on the Internet.
The problem lies in the way Mac OS X associates files with applications, and it could be exploited to hit a Mac via the Safari Web browser or Apple Mail, experts said. Apple has said it is working on a fix for the flaw. So far, no actual attacks that take advantage of the flaw have been reported as hitting users.
Firefox not running on Linux, Unix,…: Most typical reason for this is program crash that have left the “lock” file in your profile ex. /home/someone/.mozilla/default/something.slt/
Solution remove file named “lock” from there (no need for program re-install).
02 March 2006
09:47 by .
Terry in Round Lake, MN - unformating Mac drive
There was a bug in the iTunes version he is using that causes the problem in Disk Utility.
The fix simply involves reinstalling the 10.3.9 combo update. After that, Disk Utility will run as it should. The problem does not exist for users of 10.4.
Download the installer here:
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/8564
24 March 2006
15:41 by jcw?.
Leo,
Why no podcasts available since show #225? Have you stopped
putting them up on iTunes?
09 April 2006
08:54 by .
In response to:
“QBart in Laguna Nigel - portable audio CD recorder
He wants a small unit his sister can bring to counseling sessions so that she can offer a CD to the client before leaving. The Tascam DP-01FX is $599 from Musician’s Friend.”
Following link describes how to build a CD quality field recording rig.
http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/36AA3F56186B10299AD7001143E7E506/?ALLSTEPS
24 April 2006
Linspire is a neat distro, but for some reason I’m more of a Xandros person. I can’t wait for Xandros 4.0…anxious to see if being based on the Debian Common Core is a good thing.
