Saturday, April 29, 2006
Tech News
11a-Noon
QBob — Fighting spam
I recommend using a two stage approach. Use server side filtering to block the worst spam and reduce the amount of junk you download. Many ISPs offer server-side filtering with programs like Spam Assassin. If your ISP doesn’t, switch IPSs, or subscribe to OnlyMyEmail - a $3/month service. Then use local spam filtering. Outlook and Apple Mail have built-in filters, although I prefer aftermarket filtering like SpamBayes or Spam Sieve for Macintosh.
QRobert in Fullerton - Outlook Express has locked me out
I’d try a better email program like Thunderbird. But there are OE repair utilities like OE Mail Recovery .
Noon-1p
QJames in San Diego - video for grandpa
I recommend one of two encodings for the best quality and lowest file size for streaming video:
- DiVX or XVID
- MPEG-4 or its sccessor H.264
For DiVX you might want to try the new, free, open source Dr. DiVX.
For MP4 or Quicktime, buy the pro version of Apple’s Quicktime.
For free storage, try www.Box.net.
QKevin in Burbank - ibook is slow to start up
change the channel on the base station - and make sure your station is the primary Wi-Fi choice on the laptop
QLouie in Arleta - Windows on Mac
We had some fun comparing the 1961 state of the art in voice synthesis to the latest from AT&T.
He’s also looking to increase his wi-fi by putting an big antenna on the roof. Here’s a local guy who sells long-range wi-fi antennas: http://jefatech.zoovy.com/.
QMargaret in Ventura - Putting ring tones on her LG Phone
BitPim works well for LG phones (and many others). You’ll need a USB cable to connect to the phone.
1–2p
QKelly in Orange - I can’t upload to my web site
The problem is that she’s trying to create and upload it in Microsoft Publisher. I tried uploading a plain text file using standard FTP and it worked fine. Here’s my recommendation. Continue to use Publisher to create the files. Save them as HTML. But use an FTP program to upload the files to the proper locale. I recommend the free Core FTP.
QBrian in Apple Valley - Turion changes speeds
He has an AMD Turion notebook processor but the speed is constantly changing. That’s normal. It’s one of the ways the processor increases battery life - it slows down when not needed.
QBruce in Murietta - Photoshop on a MacBook Pro
Even though Photoshop CS2 is not Intel native, and won’t be until CS3 some time next year, I think it runs adequately on Intel Mac hardware. Pro photographers might prefer to stick with G5s until 2007, but any casual user will be more than happy. I am.
QJane in Fullerton - Word and WinFax are fighting
I recommend using an online fax service instead. Efax is $12/month and works great.
Chat Logs and Show Audio
Listener Comments
28 April 2006
29 April 2006
06:44 by .
I have an ALESIS MultiMix16 fire wire mixer and Adobe Audition 1.5. I would like to record the 18 tracks that come down the fire wire individually. I have set the device order in options but have not been able to figure out how to assign each the tracks coming from the fire wire to individual tracks in Audition, can some one point me in the right place? Thanks
Correction: MacMania V is actually Western Caribbean, (not Eastern Caribbean, October 28-November 4, 2006).
11:22 by anonymous.
looks like the links are a little wacky
11:46 by anonymous.
bounce-back email systems are best to fight spam
11:47 by anonymous.
Mailshell.com allows you to have as many email addresses as you want. Each address can have a whitelist, and they have spam filtering.
I use http://mailwasher.net/ to bounce-back and blacklist and delete mail from the pop server before I download it.
11:49 by .
Here’s a question about eBooks. I want to publish them with video clips that can be read on both Mac & PC computers. Can you recommend a good way to do this? Thanks.
11:50 by .
I don’t use a spam filter or anything. I protect my real email addresses, six of them, and get no spam because I’m careful. Now for the places you go on the net that demand a valid email before you get what they are giving you, there is a solution. Mytrashmail.com is the site and it’s free. You can make up any email name you want @mytrashmail.com and it creates an account under that name as soon as it gets an email. You can view it as well as the resultant spam that it generates at mytrashmail’s website. Free is good. And it cans the spam you would otherwise get.
The most effective spam control: Most ISP’s allow 5 or more e-mail addresses per account. I use one for personal, one for business, and a third for those cases when I contact someone for information on products or whatever and newspapers that your e-mail address in order to read their online editions etc. This third one catches almost all of my spam.
11:53 by anonymous.
bounce-back anti-spam is the best so far because it makes you email address “stealth”. Spammer’s may not use your address if they think you email address is dead.
Leo - I’ve tried Thunderbird mail and it’s great with one important exception; will not show/display inline images. I’ve googled the problem and it’s a well known failure of Thunderbird that everyon says that Mozzila is ignoring. For that reason I won’t use it.
Regarding the caller that can’t get e-mail, but can send: If he can’t get e-mail in Outlook Express and Outlook it sounds like a server address issue. Make sure to check the POP-3 and SMTP setting.
11:59 by anonymous.
11:53 anonymous. There is one flaw in your idea. You assume that the spammer is actually going to receive your bounce. A lot of spam is sent via open relays, spam zombies, etc. that are unrelated to the person trying to send the spam.
I use G-Mail, and despite not protecting my address that much, I still get almost zero SPAM (averaging 5–10 messages a week in my SPAM folder, usually computer related.)
So I guess my point is that SPAM isn’t as inevitable as we usually think it to be.
12:01 by anonymous.
I’m so tired of getting spam maybe I should switch my email address to a GUID. :)
“And Leo tells us every week how Safe and Secure and Perfect Mac OS X is …. unfortunately, these reports of FLAWS are news every week too!”
Leo never, ever says Macs are flawless, but he gets tons of calls every week from people driven made by the Windows flaws. Do a survey of Mac users, and I’d be astonished if you got any reports of viruses or spyware.
12:07 by anonymous.
Wonder who the above post is from
12:08 by anonymous.
Truth in radio maybe
Leo, your camera is not updating.
12:15 by anonymous.
I think box.net’s free account only allows 10MB files to be uploaded. He would have to use a splitter/joiner to use the 1GB.
Hey Leo for the iBook question. The iBook uses 802.11b while the newer ones have 802.11g. The airport might be set to accept only 802.11g.
How about turning off the airport completely and seeing if his ibook logs on to a variant wifi network..
Please comment on Symphony OS
LEO - Show notes not updating
If you don’t like the Mac, NO ONE is forcing you to use one. And no one is forcing you to listen to this show, either. If you don’t like it, DON’T!
12:46 by anonymous.
I agree with Janet
12:47 by anonymous.
Get the Heck out of here
12:47 by anonymous.
Get the Heck out of here
12:47 by anonymous.
Hey MacAintSoHotAfterAll,
Please post a link, rather than copying and pasting a whole article in here. Perhaps you could find another program to listen to—you don’t seem real happy here.
Anon.
12:50 by anonymous.
its kind of rude copying someone eles work instead posting the main link to it..
12:51 by anonymous.
I dont even read his postings. They’re just too long winded and just reposting what he posted before. BOREING
12:52 by anonymous.
I don’t feed the animals.
Yes, Apple sucks. The thing that makes Windows so awesome is my having to pay a technician for 4 hours work to hook up a Zip Drive to my PC! At the end of that time, he could not do it either. On that silly Mac, I just plugged it in, and it worked. I also love spending all my free time fighting viruses, trojan horses and spyware and popup’s on Windows. It’s like a full time job. I LOVE IT!
You don’t want 25W on wifi. The max ERP is 1W (in general). The max output changes on antenna type. I run a point to point link at work spanning 2.5 miles. Standard wifi gear. 50mw output with 14db antennas
12:55 by anonymous.
Is ther a way Leo could block his IP address from posting anymore just to spare us from his propaganda
12:56 by anonymous.
I don’t know about blocking, but they are logged.
My just got a new computer and wants to transfer all his recived emails to the new computer. He uses outlook express, but when he did an export he gets a “mapi” error, I dont know much more about this because I was not there when he did this. Is there a way to get around this (without moving to thnderbird), thanks.
25 Watt WiFi, probably will get you a vist from FRANK CHARLIE CHARLIE. Not a good idea. The frequencies used are under part-15 regulations for low (microwatt level) power.
13:04 by anonymous.
someone eles who uses IE beside me had no problems with it.. i dont click on evey popup window i just hit alt f4 to cloes it out + I use norton apps so no slow downs on my pc…
Loe what is the program U mention for the cell phone MP3s?
13:10 by anonymous.
Eric, the problem is, not everyone knows all of the tricks to keep windows running smoothly, i never have problems either, but i am constantly getting asked to fix everyone elses problem. the mac eliminates the need for the technical knowhow that you have to have to stay running smoothly. it just works.
There are tons of Wi-Fi antennas on ebay, some that take high power. If a high-gain unit such as a dish is used you can get several miles of range without using an amplifier though.
13:20 by njs?.
As Leo has said all OSs have their good points and their bad points. The only difference is, which OS, at that particular time, has as a bigger bulls-eye painted on their backs.
13:25 by njs?.
As for front-page and pubisher causing problems with FTP, I am not surprised! The permissions on on ipowerweb may have to be reset.
The permissions on the client side and on the server-side obviously do not agree with each other. So the server maybe choosing its own permissions to use.
13:27 by anonymous.
Make sure that you check your settings in publisher and make your that its set right that my be the problem…
Some other posters gave a good part of the answer to drastic reduction in the SPAM: have one e-mail from some free on-line service (ex. Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape, Google,…) you use for all generic Internet transactions. You WILL get a load of SPAM there even after quite good filtering done by those sites, but that’s the price of the exposure. Your “private” e-mail ideally would be from your work or home internet provider (where people have more incentive to do a good filtering at the server). Expose this one only to the “friendly” correspondents and do not post it anywhere on the web. Finally, for both (or more addresses) pick random username (letters and numbers) if possible. Many SPAMMERS send loads to “common_name_or_last_name_or_term”@anyplace.anywhere
My personal results with such setup are almost J.Dvorak like. Typical loads of spam to my “private” address are one in couple hundred of good messages (couple per week) despite no spam filtering. Typical loads of spam at my Hotmail “spam lightning rod” address are about a hundred per day filtered (I do not see them, filtered by Hotmail directly to Junk folder) and about 20–30 per day that escape Hotmail filters and I see/delete them, representing about 50% of all e-mail I receive there. With more addresses one can customize this even more at the price of more complexity. If your address is already heavily exposed, abandon it…
i don’t do anything special for spam. I have a Gmail account and it puts 90% of spam correctly into my spam folder. maybe even 95%
For Kelly with the webpage problems, I use a free account at www.netfirms.com and that wouldn’t work with Publisher either so I just switched to WinFTP to upload the files and it works great!
Patrick is having lot’s of trouble with his live streams over at DL.TV Help them out Leo!
I use Taco HTML I have no problem with it
13:42 by anonymous.
BTW if anyone would like to use GoToMyPC, but don’t want to pay, https://logmein.com/ offers the same ability, but they have a free version. I use it all the time, works great.
Use SPAMGOURMET.COM!
My Spam fighting trick is a free SpamGourmet.com account. You get free “disposable” on the fly email addresses that are valid only for a configurable number of emails to be forwarded to your main email account. For example, if your SpamGourmet user name is BillyTheKid you can safely give away ABCD.4.BillyTheKid@spamgourmet.com and SpamGourmet will forward you max. 4 emails from whoever you gave that address to. Anything after 4 will be eaten and you never get it.
13:44 by njs?.
I agree with Arizon Steve, WinFtp is great!!! However, but what happens if there is something unique to FrontPage or publisher, like a web bot that is Microsoft specific? Or something like a re-index or update is needed before posting? And the web server being used is Microsoft based?
Mac OS 9.2 “classic” OS dual-boot OS X PPC G4 Native
13:50 by anonymous.
SmartFTP is another idea to use for ftp.
Here is the website link http://www.smartftp.com/
This one has no adware or spyware plus their have a free one..
13:51 by anonymous.
Most photo people I know use DVI. I think that’s all that counts.
I think FileZilla allows FTP uploads and downloads. (Well, I know it does downloads great. Never tried uploading anything.)
As for licensing with Adobe CS2: You can register 2 NONCONCURRENTLY running licenses for each copy of Adobe CS 2.
Each copy you need to activate with Adobe. It’s loosely referred to as “1 seat and 1 laptop” license. As long as you DO NOT run them both at the same time. No problem.
AceFTP usewd to have straight freeware versions. i am running an older non expiring version of it and it always works great
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.asp
This photo of what looks like a bunch of long-haired hippies has been circulating through email accompanied by the caption “Microsoft, 1978: Would you have invested?”
Is the photo real? Is this really what the management of Microsoft looked like in 1978? Yes, on both counts.
The photo was taken December 7, 1978 in Albuquerque, New Mexico before the company moved its offices to Washington. The people in the photo are (from left to right, starting at the top) Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, Jim Lane, Bob O’ Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin, Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, and Paul Allen.
The photo is posted on Microsoft’s website on Bill Gates’s biography page.
If you had chosen to invest your money with this bunch of scruffy looking characters back in 1978, you’d be quite rich now. But how rich did the people in the photo become? Here’s their estimated wealth, listed in descending order:
Bill Gates: Still with Microsoft as it’s chairman and chief software architect. His fortune is somewhere in the range of $50 billion.
Paul Allen: Left Microsoft in 1983 but remains a senior strategy advisor to the company. Worth around $25 billion.
Bob O’Rear: Left Microsoft in 1983. Is now a cattle rancher and is worth around $100 million.
Bob Greenberg: Left Microsoft in 1981 and then helped launch those Cabbage Patch Dolls that were so popular in the 1980s. Last time anyone checked, he was worth around $20 million.
Jim Lane: Left Microsoft in 1985. Now has his own software company and is worth around $20 million.
Gordon Letwin: Left Microsoft in 1993 and now devotes himself to environmental causes. Is worth around $20 million.
Steve and Marla Wood: They both left Microsoft in 1980 and Marla then sued the company for sex discrimination. They’re worth around $15 million.
Bob Wallace: Left Microsoft in 1983. Worth around $5 million.
Andrea Lewis: Was Microsoft’s first technical writer. Left the company in 1983. Worth around $2 million.
Marc McDonald: Was Microsoft’s first employee. Left the company in 1984, but recently rejoined the company when Microsoft bought Design Intelligence, the company he was working for. Has the honor of getting to wear badge number 00001. Probably worth at least $1 million.
Why does my computer with Windows XP Pro everytime I run Window washer and Spy Sweep my Computer keeps asking for a disk in the CD drive?
Any ideas on how to fix this problem?
1 hour and 15 minutes before the end of the show my kfi stream quit working whats UP and it would not start again
Hello…
I use windows for gaming.
I play Counter Strike Source (all the time)
This is part of the reason, besides my work
that allows me to help
all of those that havent encountered
The problems I have.
I dont use a mac,
only because…
im not editing or doing music.
Mac’s are cool too.
& those penguin guys..
They got it going on.
My “HAT” is off to them
:)
But I must say this
Leo you rock!
Because of the info and fun he provides
To all of us listening
We get a reward we may share with others.
&
To bad to all those ‘Evil tech hackers’
That charged my mother and grandma
$60.00 an hour to defrag a windows 98 pc.
Your outta buisiness my friends.
and All LEO BASHERS
your post…
I agree.
seey@ the Killing feilds
of Counter Strike Source all…
Oyea…
That Bitpim…
OMG Leo tytytyty
i love it
wow
i am giving it to everyone!
(with a verizon LG phone ofcourse)
and where is Heydriver?
Waldo, that’s not unusual, the kfi stream goes down all the time. It happens more often at night but also around noon too. They are on the third streaming service company since I started listening and they still can’t keep it working all the time. It’s got better for me though.
Hey does any one know the differance beteewen (DVI - to - component video) cable vs HDMI what the story,with his new cable?
About Color Calibration with LCD vs CRT.
Originally, LCD’s did not have the ability to be calibrated. So Graphics Pros always used CRT’s hence the advice not to use LCD’s for best color. Modern LCD’s, (Last 3 years or so), can be calibrated. In fact, they are actually more stable and remain in adjustment better than CRT’s do. Pros calibrate CRT’s at least once a month, sometimes weekly. LCD’s can go for months with little or no color shift. And so calibration is needed much less frequently.
Spam. Leo is a special case when it comes to spam as are all known, high use email addresses. A better solution than any filter for the average home-user is a long email name with a number or two in it, almost like a password to prevent any random hit, and then only share that address with the people who do not spam. No free sign-ups, no e-greetings type emailings, no leaks! Keep a seperate spam address if its a must. I’ve had the same email address for over 3 years, zero (.0000000000%) spam. In fact, an account like that will get a little lonely if one doesn’t have enough prose-minded friends :)
01 May 2006
06 May 2006
I got an HP docking station on ebay for my hp laptop with a broken AC input jack. I can’t get the ds to fire up. Any suggestions?
17 May 2006
Kelly Website Issues: Use vDeck filemanager to upload files. If using FTP, I suggest filezilla http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ Also, via filemanger or filezilla you can change the permissions of the folders and files.
18 May 2006
For Louie in Arleta wanting to put a big antenna on his router… Increasing the power and range will prove to be little benefit unless you also increase the range and power on the other end as well. Your laptop may be able to hear the router from miles away, but your laptop wouldn’t have the same range to talk back to the router.
