Leo Laporte
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Show Notes > Show 341	Edit \| Read \| Hist \| Prt

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Saturday 7 April 2007

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Tech News

A flaw in Windows was discovered this week. It is a little file loaded in HTML that loads up an animated cursor routine that will allow for a buffer under-run. From there, malicious code can be injected into your system. Even Windows Vista was vulnerable. Microsoft learned of this flaw over 3 months ago. Once out in the open, Microsoft finally acknowledged it and released an out-of-cycle patch.

The company that made the public aware of the flaw, EEye, has a free Internet security suite: Blink that can protect you from the flaw.

Steve Jobs has announced that EMI’s entire library of music will start to be sold without DRM (copy protection) and at double the bitrate (256kbps AAC) for $1.29. Microsoft is soon going to follow suit with its Zune Marketplace. Hopefully this marks the beginning of the end for copy protection.

Speaking of Easter, software easter eggs were very popular years ago. They would be placed in by lowly programmers. The easter egg archive has 10357 easter eggs archived so far.

Leo’s Favorite Firefox Extensions

Firefox may no longer be the best or safest browser available, but it still sports the most useful and extensive set of extensions. Here are my current faves:

The new del.icio.us Firefox extension. This only makes sense if you already use del.icio.us for bookmarking. It might take some playing with but I really love it.
Google Browser Sync - keeps all your copies of Firefox synched for bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc. Very handy if you use multiple computers.
StumbleUpon - got a few minutes, want to find some cool new web sites? StumbleUpon is very cool. There’s an Internet Explorer version, too.
Customize Google - enhances your Google search results in subtle yet incredibly useful ways
CoLT - short for COpy Link Text. Right-click on a link and Colt adds extensions to copy not just the link but the text as well, in HTML, BBCode, and Wiki. I use it all the time for show notes.
AdBlock Plus - I don’t use this but Chat Mod Dan swears by it. Remove annoying ads from web sites (but not this one I hope!)
NoScript - alows you to selectively enable Javascript. A very important security update.

Guests

Q Dick Debartolo - Micro I.D. Rescue Collar

Has a USB key on the front that is waterproof
Key has all information about pet
- Owner must enter information on computer when purchased
- Software has several forms so its easy-to-use
Whoever finds the pet has all information
800 number also on collar that will act as intermediary to help find pet

Q Amber Macarthur - Viral Videos

The Bridezilla video has gotten millions of hits
The entire video was an ad for Sunsilk hair products
Amber thinks this is just the beginning of advertising like this

Q Steve Gibson - Windows Cursor Flaw

“Zero day” exploit
- Means it came to attention by being in use
Windows will still process infected files even if not installed
- Only had to preview email or go to a website by mistake
Then the “bad guys” could install any malicious software
Infected computers began sending spam email to all contacts
Safe if using Vista with Internet Explorer 7
Make sure you run Windows Update ASAP!

Hour 1

Q Christy from Temecula - Spam based from forwarded email

Getting spam related to topics from forwarded emails
Ask people to put your address in the BCC field (blind carbon copy)
Most spammers use scrapers on the Web to look for email addresses
Many mailing lists are archived on the net
- That’s where you can get in trouble
Be careful when mass forwarding anyways
Can look in the headers to see where email is coming from

Q Bill from Colorado Springs - Keynote animations very slow on MacBook/Google Notebook

Video subsystem in MacBook is not powerful enough
Buy a Macbook Pro
- Has an ATI X1600 video card
Google Notebook allows you to automatically copy little clips into the web application
Wants to know if Google reads through email information
- Read through the privacy terms
Stay with Hushmail if privacy is of your utmost importance

Hour 2

Q Ryan from Redlands - Moving from Windows to Mac

Been Windows user since Windows 3.1
- Sick of built-in DRM in Vista
Wants to know about 8-core in other Macs
- Mac Pro just went 8-core
No quad core in laptops in the near future
Leo’s Mac Pro has 4 cores, and never sees it max out
BootCamp and Parallels play nice with each other now

Q Doug from San Diego - Looking for a tube TV

Stores moving farther back and back on tube TVs
Can get an HD tube TV
Tube TVs in fact give you the best HD experience of all
Get a flat one
Leo likes the Sony TVs

Q Roxanne from Tuston - Norton error

Norton is a piece of junk
Take it back to the store
Norton was in a “war” with McAfee for features
- Kept piling on features
- Incredibly bloated
Can use the Norton Removal tool
Sponsor NOD32 is very lightweight

Q Tolly from Florence, AL - Leo’s Web Presence Move

Leo recently moved from Twitter to Jaiku
This was because Leo was the most prolific poster on Twitter and there was a possibility for some confusion between TWiT and Twitter
Follow Leo, the intern Shooby, and many other people on Jaiku

Q John from Honolulu - DRM

Bought music from MusicMatch
Then bought a Zune, and now can’t use music from MusicMatch
Music industry is making money from each time you purchase music from different formats
Morally/ethically, you should be able to get the music from any other source and use it