Leo Laporte
The Tech Guy
2–5p EDT Sat/Sun
- Home
- Saturday Show
- Sunday Show
- Past Shows
- Audio Archives
- Stations
- Chat
- Watch Live
- Forums
- Listener Map
- User Groups
- Tips
- FAQ
- Glossary
- Contact Leo
Sponsors
Leo Links
 |
For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
|
|
Saturday 15 September 2007
Show Audio
|
Edited Audio | |
Scott Wilkinson - Projectors at CEDIA
Lots of Furniture and Home Theatre companies are at CEDIA. Home Theatre has become a common place, and we even call our living rooms Home Theatres.
Some people still have rooms that are dedicated to being home theatres.
Scott saw ALOT of things at CEDIA that he wanted, and alot of his colleagues have said that they seem to be drooling more than usual.
At CEDIA there are alot of projectors usually, but at this CEDIA, Scott saw a 1920 x 1080 projector that was faily down in price compared to earlier projectors. Most 1080p Projectors are in the $3000 to $4000 range. You do however also need to buy a screen, and those are usually between $500 to $2000. Most lamps will last 2000 up to 5000 hours. Lamps are usually about $300 to replace.
Scott was very impressed with the Epson and Optimum LCD Projectors. The only problem with the Optimums was, they didn’t have a lense shift, so it’s very important where you place them.
Sony also introduced two new projectors based on their version of LCOS. One of the cheaper ones was from JVC, and their new generation of 1080p home projector was amazing when showing blacks.
The new Pioneer Plasma’s are dropping in price, but are very good Plasma televisions.
The Daily Giz Wiz - Purse Guard
You put the Purse Guard on the edge of the table at a restaurant/airport/hotel and then the weight of whatever you hang on it will pull down on the little armed tool, and if someone takes it the alarm goes off and you are aware someone is trying to take it.
It’s a safety hook you carry in your pocket. “Don’t touch my coat it’s alarmed”.
Steve Gibson - Rootkits
A rootkit is normally Malware. It means that some Malware has actually changed the way the operating system works. It hides itself in a way that even a guru wouldn’t even know it’s there.
The way a keystroke logger works is by hooking into the OS and then intercepts whatever you type and can even send it’s own keys in. Similarly a rootkit intercepts the operating system and can send it’s own requests into the OS. A rootkit can filter results… once it see’s itself is about to be revealed it stops that response from going through.
It breaks the os in a way that keeps itself concealed. It’s whole point is to hide itself.
Sony created a DRM system that when you put the CD into your computer, it transferred a rootkit to the computer. They even did it in a way that allowed other malware to use the Sony rootkit to hide itself.
Microsoft has released a rootkit finder tool called Rootkit Revealer. What this does is read the drive directly and ask the operating system what is there, it then compares it, and if something is different, then something strange is going on.
Another one is F-Secure’s Blacklight and also AVG’s Anti-Rootkit. All of which are free.
Tech News
A big story was broken by Windows Secrets this week. It’s raising alot of questions about Windows in users minds. Microsoft is pushing updates to XP and Vista without users permission. Even if you have disabled auto-updates or even if you told it to notify you first, it still installs. Secretly and silently.
Microsoft have said “well we’re just patching Windows Update”, Leo believes that it has been hacked and Microsoft is updating it before the hackers can get to it. Leo doesn’t believe that a company should be allowed to reach into your computer and modify files without your permission. What if Microsoft wanted to push out WGA without users permission? What’s to stop them? They pushed out 9 updates without users permission.
Is this Microsoft’s right? To modify files without your permission? OR should they have a legal requirement to let you know? Leo believes they SHOULD have to let you know.
The famous artist Prince gave out free copies of his CD using the British newspaper ‘The Daily Mail’ which was released in two parts on Saturday and in the Sunday version ‘The Sunday Mail’. Now however he’s saying “I want to reclaim my art on Youtube, The Pirate Bay…etc” - He had a 29 night gig, and every night was sold out as a result of the CD giveaway.
The Pirate Bay publish all the legal threats they get and mock them publicly. It’s very hard, in fact Impossible to stop piracy. No one has been able to shut down The Pirate Bay.
The RIAA is charging people for ringtones but not paying the artists. You can read more at Roughly Drafted
Hour 1
Q Phil from California - How can I make video files out of YouTube Videos?
You can get Vixy which will do this for you. You simply paste the YouTube URL into the Vixy site and it will email the video’s to you when they have been downloaded. Another one is KeepVid. Both are online, but you can get tools for your system such as the Firefox plugin DownloadThis.
The main point is, you need to get the flash file.
Second Question - How can I make a promotional DVD?
You can use tools like Windows Movie Maker. Any DV-Camcorder is good, and Leo really likes the Flash based ones becuase it’s really easy to get the video to the computer. It records to AVHD format. You then need a AVHD compatible video editior. Leo really likes Adobe Premiere Elements as it’s under $100 and it will even burn it to DVD for you.
Leo likes the Panasonic Flash DVCam and it records in High-Definition so it’s very good quality.
Phil likes the letter that The Pirate Bay sent to Microsoft.
Q Bob from California - Should he disconnect his NAS when it’s not being used?
Leo would just leave it on, but in the settings he can get the hard drive to sleep when it’s not in use. If he wants maximum reliability, the best thing he could do is to leave the hard drive spinning once it’s up.
The best hard drive study came from Google. Most hard drive’s die within the first and second year. After that each year puts the failure rate up 8%.
Leo prefers hard drives to CD’s. In years from now, you may not be able to find a CD drive. Also theres some doubt about how long CD’s can last and so CD’s can die within a few years.
Q Sue from Burbank California - Good phone on Verizon for the blind
It’s easier to unlock phones for GSM carriers. You need to find a friendly phone store that will activate that Jitterbug phone on Verizon. Look for an independant store that has the sign’s for all the networks on the front. They make money from your business as a user.
It is completely legal to unlock a phone. Leo would however recommend that you stay away from the Jitterbug as you have to go through them to setup your contacts.
Leo thinks you should look for a phone that has voice activation. It’s very unforunate that Verizon doesn’t have any specific phones for blind people. The LG VX4650 is very good as it announces who’s calling first.
Take a look at Mark Taylor Candleshore’s Blog which has a great piece about cell phones for the blind.
Q Kevin in California - How to shorten a URL?
There’s lots of ways to do it. The easiest way would be to sign up for a Domain from a registra such as GoDaddy, and then get it to Mask or Forward the domain.
Hour 2
Q Skip - Wants to invest in a Smart phone without all the bells and whistles.
Leo recommends the Blackberry Perl. It’s a very reliable and attractive phone, and it does have a keypad on it. Any Blackberry should do what you want, but Leo does think that the Perl would be the best option for what you want as it’s more of a business phone than a consumer phone.
Q Cary in New York - How do I manage my iPod Touch Library?
You will have to use Smart Playlists to sync it… otherwise there will be too many songs and you won’t have many of the songs. You can then manually copy songs over to it. However, a better way is the Smart Playlists… you can chose any of the catagories and you can then copy only that genre or similar. You could say “rock music, with playcount that is more than 3 that has a star rating of 4 or more” and it will only copy songs that come out of that query.
You have to manually order old podcasts. You can however create a special folder for the podcasts and then reverse order them and play the last 5 podcasts that haven’t been played. You can find a great guide from 43 Folders that explains smart folders in iTunes.
Cary really likes the iPod Touch. You can put contacts in, but you can’t enter calendar entries from the device. PC Magazine just reviewed the iPod Touch and gave it a great rating.
Hour 3
Q Bill in Los Angeles - How can you do a forensics search on your own hard drive?
The minute you modify the drive you lose your evidence. The best idea is to clone your drive and work on the clone, and then go through bit by bit on the drive.
The first place to look is Slackspace - all you need is a Hex Reader. Slackspace is excess space that is not being used where old data lies. Definately look at all the temporary internet files, look at the image cache.
It’s alot of work, and you need to go sector by sector on the drive. It’s harder to find binary data like a Word document. However it’s easy to find an email address as that’s a simple text string. You can find automatic software to scan the drive looking for the text string. You can specify a pattern such as “*@*.com|org|net”.
Leo is not an expert and these are the easy ways. If you don’t want people to find this stuff, the most important thing you could do is to whip it clean using a program such as Darik’s Boot ‘n’ Nuke (DBAN). That overwrites everything on the drive by writting random 1′s and 0′s to the drive.
Once you’ve overwritten it a couple of times will be random and no one will really be able to get back these things.
Q Robert in Florida - Can’t get his iMac to display a higher resolution on his DVI port
The problem may be that the card itself doesn’t have enough RAM to display two monitors at that higher resolution. It’s doing the best it can do.
There is a product called DualHead2Go that allows you to split the display.
Q Scott in California - What is an email client?
An email client is a piece of software that runs on your computer that talks to the email server and grabs your email.
A good example is Outlook that says to your ISP “gimme the mail!”, and then your server delivers the mail to your client.
There is a good definition on Wikipedia here.
Lately if you use Windows, Leo recommends Windows Live Mail. Ultimately you should leave AOL. A good mail provider is GMail which is free from Google.
