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Sunday, December 31, 2006
- Tech News
- 11a-Noon
- Noon-1p
- 1-2p
- Dale from Highland - Windows not appreciating new motherboard
- Ted from Newport Beach - Using an XP disc to install on a second system
- Dan from North Carolina - Video streaming over the web
- Tolly - Universal influenza antiviral vaccine
- Ken - Windows and Mac emulation
- Dick from Los Angeles - Parallels vs. VMWare vs. Crossover
- Show Audio
Tech News
The Internet is exploding yet again with Web 2.0
There are dozens of applications on the Web like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk
The big thing in 2007 again, will be Google.
Leo thinks there will be a some meld of Google and Ubuntu and offerings of cheaper computers by Dell and other PC manufacturers with Linux and applications underwritten by Google.
Microsoft’s Windows Vista will become the new standard operating system. However, Microsoft’s system of a proprietary operating system is eventually going to die.
Check out the Google Zeitgeist. The top search of 2006 was “bebo”!
11a-Noon
Q Victor from Wichita - iPhone
He thinks he knows things about the iPhone. The says that the only thing that’s keeping it back are carrier agreements. According to him, the phone will be CDMA for the higher bandwidth. It will have Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR. $275 and $335 will be the prices for the 4gb and 8gb models respectively. Also, there will some form of .Mac application suite on it. Moreover, zirconium will be the material that the phone is made out of. Zirconium is lighter than titanium. Finally, there will be a landline version as well. Voice recognition will play a bigger role and the name will not begin with an “i”.
Q Bob from New Jersey - Microsoft Word completely freezing the computer
It’s unusual for a single application to take up that much power. Generally an application does not have access to that much memory. In XP, in theory, that should not happen. This situation tells me that it’s probably not the application, but rather a driver. Look at your device drivers. The two drivers to look at would be the video and printer drivers. Also, look at your fonts. If you can boot into safe mode and start up word without a crash, your video driver is good. If that is okay, your print driver is probably corrupted. If not, then check the fonts.
Noon-1p
Q Mark from Glendale - Linux LiveCD for iBook G3
Leo thinks Ubuntu is a great choice. They have PowerPC distributions. You can even order an absolutely free CD from them if you don’t want to download it. However, for your slower machine, look at Xubuntu. It uses a different desktop management system that is less intensive.
Q Brett from Moor Park - Wireless networking
His son who has a Mac cannot connect to the wireless network. He is using WEP encryption. WEP is not as secure. Try using WPA encryption. It is more secure and runs off of a simple password.
Q Al from Marina del Rey - Port probing
He’s got ports 23 and port 80 open. He found this out by going to grc.com Port 23 is telnet; it’s a port you may not want to have open. It also may be the Sunrocket voip box. What the “gizmo” is doing is prioritizing the voip packets. Sunrocket is using ports 80 and 23 for access and modification of the box for their own use. It does open your adapter for attack. Look at these posts from My Digital Life and Broadband Reports. The solution would be to put the gizmo within the router.
Q David from Florida - Digital-8 camera
He wants to move all of his brother’s old recordings to a hard drive. Unfortunately though the recordings on the digital-8 are digital, the output is analog. Try outputting the digital-8 camera to the DV camera to record onto tape. You can also buy a device that will do the digital conversion. Leo generally recommends the Pinnacle Moviebox (with Firewire).
She wants to know how Google gets all of their information. That’s easy; they track you! To receive any application from Google, they make you register. This can come at an advantage. With your account, they can save your recent searches which can come in help. Leo trusts Google; in theory they can outline a general image of your information. To list websites, they use “spiders” that constantly scour the Internet going through links on the web. If you have a website and look at your logs, you’ll all the search engines tracking the site.
Q Richard from Kansas - Ident ports
The reason why many router companies leave this port open is because some old software use it. It would be safe to leave it stealthed. Try a firmware upgrade. Most of the new routers at least give you an option to stealth the ident port.
1–2p
Q Dale from Highland - Windows not appreciating new motherboard
People don’t realize it, but motherboards have drivers as well. Most likely the drivers for your system are for the old motherboard, but the new motherboard has a different set. Try looking at the boot log boot item. You can find it in the C:\ root directory. Fixing it may be a little more complicated. If you cannot get the Windows XP install disc to run though, there has to be something wrong with the motherboard.
Q Ted from Newport Beach - Using an XP disc to install on a second system
What Leo’s found in reality is that Microsoft is fairly lenient with activation. Just call up Microsoft and explain your situation. It’s a moving target. For a long time, pre-SP2 you could install XP in a couple machines. Now with Windows Genuine Advantage, Microsoft has gotten stricter about the situation.
Q Dan from North Carolina - Video streaming over the web
He’d like to do a live video stream of his daughter’s wedding. There are two questions: how many people are going to watch and how much bandwidth is available. A cable modem, at best, 384kbps upstream. Upstream bandwidth is what matters. On TechTV, they had an Axis network camera. You don’t have the bandwidth to do 50 viewers. Another way to do it would be to use the VideoLAN Client to stream over the Internet. They estimate, with an MPEG-4 stream, you need .5mbps per user. You’ll need a camera, computer, bandwidth, VideoLAN client. Then you’ll have to get all viewers to configure it correctly.
Q Tolly - Universal influenza antiviral vaccine
There was an article in the Daily Mail about an anti-influenza vaccine that will be able to prevent all strains of influenza. Hopefully this will work out. Gina Kolata has a great book about the flu pandemic of 1918: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic.
Q Ken - Windows and Mac emulation
With Boot Camp, you rely on Apple to provide the drivers. If you can try before you buy that’d be good. If the device you’re using shows up as a standard USB device, it should work. If you need Windows only, get a Windows PC.
Q Dick from Los Angeles - Parallels vs. VMWare vs. Crossover
These are 3 different methods to run Windows applications on a Mac. The reason why your Wacom tablet is not working correctly yet is because USB support is not completely implemented yet. The Parallels forums probably have complete USB support as an objective.
Show Audio
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Posted one week after broadcast… | |
