Saturday, March 4, 2006
Oscars are coming up. Who will win? Ask the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Last year they scored 100%! We’ll talk with the founder at 1p today.
Tech News
RIM settles with NTP for $612.5 million guaranteeing that US Blackberry users will still be able to check email instead of watching where they’re going.
Apple announces four new products: two Mac minis with Intel Inside, a $99 iPod case, and a $349 iPod Hi-Fi. Stunned journalists suffer Post Announcement Depression.
Microsoft is trying to get a little of that Apple announcmenet magic going with its Origami Project site. Speculation is that it’s a small tablet pc-style media device.
Researchers say in-flight cell phone use is a bad idea especially on take-off and landing.
11a-Noon
QDonald in Walnut - freezing PC
Kinda hard to diagnose something like that. Especially since the PC freezes in from 10 minutes to 10 hours. There’s no predictable cause. Since it’s four years old and used for business, I’d say it’s time for a new PC.
Q Peggy - getting JPEGs into Blender
She says she can only import DMX files into the free 3d program Blender - cmon there has to be a way to get JPEGs in. Anyone? I’d check the Blender forums.
Listeners Tim and bole carr say: Blender absolutely does support JPEG!
QGreg in New Jersey - old Mac as a RAID fileserver
And he has some usage questions:
- Partitioning? I like to separate the OS from Data, mostly on principle, allow 20GB for the OS
- Swap File? Put it on another drive for best performance
- Journaled or not journaled? Journaled is more efficient and more reliable - I don’t know of any issues that would cause problems with journaling on RAID disks
- Case sensitive? No. That’s just for UNIX compatibility. Not recommended with OS X.
QRichard in Fullerton - modem to use with BVRP Phone Tools
They recommend a Multitech Voice Modem - if BVRP recommends it I say buy it!
QKevin in Minnesota - Fell in love with the Digital Rebel
No surprise - point and shoot users who try Digital SLRs often fall for them. The Rebel XT is a great camera: fast, crisp, flexible. I highly recommend it.
Noon-1p
QKev in Ontario - streaming video over the Internet
He’s running an Ontario storm watch service at http://ontarioweatherservice.com and he wants to put up a video camera he can stream on the net. You could use Webcam32 - it does video as well as stills. Or buy dedicated hardware like Stardot Technologies Netcam.
QCheryl in Hemet - laptop recommendations for Korea bound daughter
I’d make sure to set up a system for communicating with her. South Korea is one of the most wired nations in the world, and she’s likely to have excellent Internet access. Both of you should download and install Skype now. Create accounts and learn to use it. You’ll be able to call each other free, and even video conference. You’ll want to get an inexpensive netcam for both machines like the Logitech quick cam. A good headset will help with audio, too. I recommend the Plantronics DSP-500. You’ll both need a set.
QMarian in Los Angeles - college laptop
Read my article on College Bound Computers
QTim in Santa Barbara - hardware for Quake IV
Unlike earlier video games Quake IV does benefit from dual core processors. You’ll also want a high end video card.
1–2p
QRon in Palmdale - getting music on the iPod
He has lots of MP3s and he wants to get them on his girlfriend’s iPod. Use iTunes. You’ll have to add the files to your iTunes library (use the File menu Add command - not the import command). You may want to adjust your Advanced preferences. If you check “Copy files tio iTunes Music folder when adding to library” the progam will make a copy of your files into its directory. Uncheck it to leave files where they are.
QMike in St Louis - laptop to plasma
He wants people to be able to come into the conference room with a wireless laptop and display their screen on the bigscreen plasma. I think the best way to do this is put a pc next to the tv and turn on Remote Desktop on the laptop. Log into the laptop from the TV PC and everything you do on the laptop will display on the TV. Whaddya think?
QJan in Temeculah - phone PDA and laptop and Mac sync
The Blackberry 8700 from Cingular is my favorite PDA phone for Mac. It syncs beautifully with PocketMac and yes you can look at your Excel spreadsheets with eCell from Dynoplex.
QEvan in West Covina - Windows Media Player 9 is broken
See if you have a system restore point that can take you back to a time when it was working. You might try downloading and installing the Microsoft codecs pack - maybe it will replace the codecs that seem to be missing.
Chat Logs and Show Audio
Listener Comments
02 March 2006
Many times friends call me to resolve their networking problems. Rather than having to ask them to open various tools (network settings, ping, netstat or try to use telnet on a specific port), I would like to be able to give them a freeware tool that will analyse the network like this: When you start the tool, it will show the network data as it is (IP, DNS, Gateway, etc) and put a check or X next to each entry. It can start
with pinging 127.0.0.1, then e.g. pinging the gateway. If anything is wrong here it will suggest how to correct this. It will then try to ping
e.g. www.google.com to check if the DNS resolution and the default gateway works. again if anything does not work it shows
suggestions on how to correct this. Then you can try to use the failing application and trace the network traffic. If e.g. the first IP-sync message never receives a reply (start of handshake), you can check the domain and IP, the ping, the traceroute, etc. etc.
In other words something that will walk the average Joe through connection/dns/firewall problems…
Does anyone have an idea? I have looked a packet filters (I have used snoop for decades, but this is way too complex for others) I also use ActivePorts (great tool), but it doesn’t help when a user has e.g. a vpn connection problem but the rest works fine…
Regards
03 March 2006
04 March 2006
06:37 by Jim?.
How is it possible in the Katrina affair that there wasn’t a secure website where emergency data could be posted?
It is beyond belief to read that Brown was dependent on the telephone to transmit his news that a levee was breached, and that 3 hours later the governor didn’t know about it.
What decade are these people living in?
10:10 by Syd?.
They live in the decade of the government. This did not happen to the private agencies that were faster than any govt agency except Coast Guard.
11:25 by d?.
what no stream today
11:29 by anonymous.
WHAT IS THE WIKI WORD?
What is the name of the song clip that was playing at approximately 11:26 just prior to the question about the PC freezing from Donald from Walnut?
Is it recommended to buy an extended warranty for a Sony Vaio laptop that covers accidental dropping, slipping liquids, etc.
it costs $300 for 3 years and will replace the battery once which costs $249.00. Is it worth it? Any thoughts? Thanks.
Blender does work with JPEGs.
Re: Blender - per the features listing it reads and writes the following file types:
TGA, JPG, PNG, Iris, SGI Movie, IFF, AVI and Quicktime GIF, TIFF, PSD, MOV (Windows and Mac OS X)
For the girl who wanted to conver here jpeg to something else, I would be suprised if XnView could not do the job. This was the best FREE picture utility program I have seen. It can be found at www.download.com. I haven’t used in a while because I just don’t do much with pctures anymore but I just check and it is still available.
“it costs $300 for 3 years and will replace the battery once which costs $249.00. “
Just buy another battery NOW and keep $50 in your pocket. The battery that you would get as a replacement would be a factory reconditioned or a refurbished one with a reduced capacity.
As a bonus, you can probably buy a higher capacity battery instead of the stock battery. All batteries die eventually and if you use it daily it could die within the 3 years.
Then again, if you are prone to accidents, maybe you should buy the extended warranty.
Hi.
Is anyone having problems with the KFI stream.
I get the advert at the begining, then nothing.
Thanks in advance.
Bob
I think I found spyware in HP software. It is called NetSpy and I don’t know where to report the spyware. Anyone has any ideas, please, tell me.
thanks Oepapel (re extended warranty)
Video Streaming to the Web.. How about video streaming to your Blog. Try using Vlog It!
Perfect for the caller that runs the weather station
Blogging is the ultimate form of self-expression - unedited and truly you. Vlog It! is the first software that helps you create the most powerful kind of blog - a video blog (vlog). It helps you make a personal connection with your audience in ways that a text blog simply cannot.
Check it out here at Serious Magic they have other broadcast tools also.
http://www.seriousmagic.com/products/vlogit/index.cfm
But for multicasting with QT Broadcaster you will need access to a streaming server or a multicast-enabled network.
For the lady that has a daughter going to Korea, there are buy one get one free web cams at Office depot for $30
12:44 by .
For Cheryl in Hemit:
Don’t buy anything before your daughter goes to Korea, could get lost or damaged in transit. Also, when I was in Korea you could buy the latest greatest tech stuff for less than half the price in the states.
take Ken’s advise and buy it there,why has somethings shipped to this country and then take it back to where it was made?
A bit different thought on 300$ 3yr warranty from Sony: If you use your laptop a lot it is worth it because of the battery alone. Battery will die within that period and I do not think Sony is allowed to give you as replacement anything but the new one (not true for some other comp.parts, but for batteries they can recycle the container at best). Also, more you use it, more chance for failure, particularly HD and particularly Sony… So about 50$ covers possible accidents and is worth it in my opinion. Now if you are using laptop slightly, you’ll likely sell it before the battery dies and the likelyhood of something else fails after the regular warranty (most real build problems will show within that time), is miniscule. Also, think about non-Sony options. Maintaining PCs for others I learned that Sony laptops, although glitzy, are toward the bottom tier in reliability (and even worse for support). That is from personal experience, interpret at your own…
why have something shipped
12:54 by Jon ?.
this is from quake4.ravengames.com
“A Beta update for Quake 4 is now available. This update is recommended for Windows users with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology) enabled processors, multiple processors, or systems with a dual core processor.”
thanks Dusan. that is very logical and I did not approach it from that aspect. thank you very much. I’m not working right now so that is a lot of money but by breaking it down as you did, makes a lot of sense.
Leo is now trying to emulate Mark & Marc with these trivial non-techie guests.
That’s one reason I stopped listening to their Windoze-only show.
Airport express
Im looking to use my speakers at the opposite of my room. Is there a way to play divx, dvd or anything else other than itunes via the Airport express ? If no… it’s a quite expensive toy to play music in wireless.
Streaming? DLink makes wireless HD media players - such as the DSM-520
Just for the audio, and i use a mac, is it compatible ?
@mabfab
I just did an online search for Sony Vaio batteries. (Google “sony vaio battery”). Depending on the model, the cost for a battery was $60 to $170. Not knowing which Vaio you are looking at, I can’t narrow it down any more but I think the $249 quote for a battery was a little high. I don’t know if this will factor into your decision or not. I just thought you might like to know. Good luck with your new laptop.
For the guy that wants to output the laptop to the plasma wirelessly, consider this.
With 1080p output, the dual link dvi cable can use up to 9.9 Gbps of bandwidth. Now right now 720p uses only about 2.5 Gbps of bandwidth or so. But this means that programs like VNC and RDP will ONLY work with showing the desktop and other stuff like powerpoint slides. But if you want to show video, you can’t do it wirelessly. There is simply not enough bandwidth available coming out from a laptop’s network connection to show video playing from a laptop over a tcp/ip network.
re the call re the Cell Phones at 1:40pm CA time. Leo mentioned the MDA Phone for T Mobile. Cingular offers the same phone. The Cingular version is called the Cingular 8125. The actual mfgr is HTC - it’s their product called the Wizard - I don’t have this phone, but two friends bought this recently and they love it
xp99 - ‘video’ isn’t what we’re after - we want to just simply show the laptop’s desktop and the program that is running on it. So, rather than running a 10′-20′ DVI cable strung across the table, I’d like to (from the point of view of the TV) take the DVI cable and convert it to Cat5, then pass that through an access point so my laptop can connect to it. Does that make sense? We’ll be running simple AutoCAD programs, and Google Earth for presentations. I like the idea of having a macMini sitting pretty just under the TV (maybe mounted), and just run Chicken of the VNC full screen. That just might work. The thing is, we want to present what is on the laptop, not just control the stuff on another computer.
I thought the top story of the week was the vulnerability at the MuckWorld Magazine where anybody could get all their subscriber info. Perhaps not as that has nothing to do with kissing $teve’s behind.
05 March 2006
How about GIMP? It is completely free.
There was a question about buying the damage warranty when buying laptops… my advice is to BUY the accidental damage warranty.
If you transport your laptop more than a little bit you will drop, or spill, or someone will bump your system eventually. This has happened to me a couple of times in the last 10 years and in the first instance the bill was over $1K (yike!), in the other instances (with warranty) it was $0 …
The last bit of “don’t forget” advice is to stick to brands that have good support for where you travel. There’s no point in getting a great store warranty from a San Diego eBay store if you live in Chicago.
07 March 2006
Hey Leo some info for you. an earl;y feburary episode from KFI had a lady with a computer that was getting spyware even after a RECOVERY disc install. Just wanted to let you know some info on this. First I am guessing as I only have what I heard on your radio show to go on but I THINK she is NOT having a spyware problem but a perfectly NORMAL problem.
I heard 3 issues. 1 popups 2 Messenger 3 Updates
First Popups. This is ESPECIALLY if she is on a cable modem. there is a function for sending messages over a network and they will appear as a windows popup. this is normal (not good but normal) for an unprotected machine especially one on a cable modem. IT is annoying but NOT dangerous more on this later
2 Messenger. Microsoft by default turns on MSN messenger. even when the user figures out how to disable it after installing SP2 microsoft DISABLES your uninstall and reinstalls it and turns it back on (cute ehh) so this is also NORMAL
Here is how to fix this goto the windows folder and then the INF folder (if you dont see inf goto view folder properties and enable hidden and system folders) find the file here calls sysoc.inf and open this in notepad goto edit and do a REPLACE for the word “hide” with no quotes and BLANK in the replace with and click REPLACE ALL
Save the file. NOW open add remove control panel. NOW you will see messenger in windows components and be able to delete it. (yup they HIDE it from you to make it harder to remove it and with windows file protection you can not just outright deletel it)
Third the updates. well also when you RECOVER a system windows UPDATE it both turned on automatically and WELL behind in its updates since your recovery CD was made some time ago. so yes your gonna get LOTS of updates notifications telling you new ones are available and or are being installed. so this is all perfectly normal.
Nothing sounded like spyware from what I heard except the pop ups which are not dangerous only annoying. I never have this problem because I am behind a firewall which stops that crap but also once she has windows fully updated it will also go away since microsoft turns off that “feature” which most users never have a need more anyway.
So tell her to just update windows all the way uninstall messenger and all should be well again.
Good Luck GREAT show and Great Podcasts!
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/
10 March 2006
About whether or not to buy the extended warranty for a Sony Vaio laptop that covers accidental dropping, slipping liquids, etc?
Take it from a person with experience, buy the accidental warranty insurance for $249.00. The standard warranty does not cover damage to the screen on a laptop. About 3 years ago I bought a brand new laptop for around $1200 from Dell and poo poo’ed the idea of accident insurance. Within a month my screen cracked. To this day I have no idea how, I never dropped it, I just pulled it out of the bad and there was a strange crack. Anyway I called Dell and of coarse it wasn’t under warranty. They wanted over $900 to replace the screen (nearly the cost of the computer itself). I finally found a place on the web that replaced it for $600.
Another friend of mine had a similar experience, he spilled the cup of coffee that he had sitting next to the laptop. Ended up soaking through the keyboard and he had to have someone replace the motherboard for a similar price.
Buy the accident insurance …
04 April 2006
05 April 2006
Another free 3D option would be Wings3D from http://www.wings3d.com It’s intended for sub-division modeling, but can make sharp corners. Also while it’s not free Lightwave 3D is possibly the best 3D program available and they’ve just reduced their prices quite a bit.
06 April 2006
Sorry this is so late, but I listen to the podcast.
Regarding Mac sync and PDAs, I own a Treo 650 and it syncs perfectly with my Mac with free software from Palm and Apple.
What Palm has said is that it will not continue to develop Macintosh compatible syncing, but the current version works just fine with Palm Desktop and Apple’s iSync.
If you like the Palm OS, go ahead and buy a Treo and don’t waste money on third party software.
-Julio Ohep
Caracas, Venezuela
WINFIXER Can someone help me with Winfixer. I have it on my computer and don’t know how it got there. Is it an OK program? I tried to remove it, but it won’t remove?
10 April 2006
This would portray to Peggys question if there are any other free 3D modeling tools out there, the answer to that is that yes there are, two of them include: XSI 4.2 Mod tool (http://www.softimage.com/default.aspx)
and milkshape 3D (http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/)
Personally i would high recomment the XSI 4.2 mod tool, I personally use 5.0 advanced but i found out that the mod tools works as good. It really all depends on what your doing, because again xsi is better for games, but again can be used for everything. (just listened to the podcast today, and thought i should mention that.)
