For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the TWiT Netcast Network

Saturday 13 October 2007

«Previous Show

Next Show»

Show Audio

Edited Audio
64kbps MP3	16kbps MP3

Scott Wilkinson - HD-DVD vs BluRay

• A person from Warner said they will be producing both as long as people are buying both
• Disney and Paramount have both gone with HD-DVD
• Paramount said that authoring BluRay is more difficult
• The main thing is how many copies you sell
• BluRay is outselling HD-DVD by a 2:1 ratio. Casino Royale and 300 are possibly responsible for this
• Apparently all the BluRay specifications were all done over a year ago
• PS3’s are about to be updated to Profile 1.1 of BluRay which adds a secondary video stream and also audio generated within the layer
• Consumers should wait until the new BluRay players out so that you have an Ethernet port for BDLive which will allow you to download trailers, and see extra content
• BluRay also has a couple of extra layers of copy protection. One of the problems they have run into is BDPlus… immediately the blogs are up in arms because BluRay disks won’t play in some players.
• HD-DVD is more forward looking than BluRay, especially when it comes to sound.
• BluRay uses Java, so manufacturers must code in Java

Dr Rick Web Alber - Legal Document esign service

They have found a way to get a document legally signed by applying their initials digitally via an email. You send the Echo Sign document to the user and they then re upload it to the server and it’s stored as a PDF.

This is pretty secure, and it is recognized by the courts as a legal way of doing this. There are a few different corporate customers who use this for sales, and other business.

Steve Gibson - Wireless Security

People aren’t turning their Wireless Security on. Whenever you use email, almost all email is not encrypted. That is to say your client provides your username and password in the clear. One of the most clear things that goes through if your email username and password. Then there are people grabbing users login details and spammers can then login to your account and send spam.

The spammers don’t care if you get shut down becuase they can just move onto the next one.

You have to realize that it is a radio signal and anyone in range can pick it up. So go into your router’s configuration and turn on WPA if it’s available, or WEP if not and make sure you use a difficult to guess wireless key.

More security advice is available at Steve’s Site GRC.com

Tech News

Leo turned his Blackberry on and he’s looking at a satellite picture of the sidewalk he’s walking down thanks to Google Maps. It’s amazing. It’s very useful, but this is a different way of doing GPS because as long as your on Google Maps, your going to be able to use this. It’s the little things sometimes that you forget. You forget your in the age of wonders.

There’s been a lot of attention this week to a candidate named Ron Paul. He’s very out spoken, and he tells it how he means it. Usually no one would vote for him. But the Internet has really driven his support. In fact, his slogan is “Google Ron Paul”. Leo’s not saying this as a Ron Paul supporter, but just to show you how this is all changing.

When Clinton got elected in 1992, the web was only 3 years old and only used by very few people. These days, the Internet is a mainstream way to reach people. Geeks like Ron Paul because he’s a libertarian. Digg which is a website that posts stories depending on how many “diggs” a story gets. It’s a true democracy.

The front page of Digg has the most dugg stories recently. In the last 30 days, the most popular article on Digg with 12,000 diggs is a video of Ron Paul. It’s the 15th most Dugg story of the year.

We’re here in the infancy of the Internet, and this is only the 5th Internet election. The Internet is becoming more popular, and it’s a great way to research a candidate. What did you do before the Internet? Maybe you read the pamphlet posted through your letter box? Now you just have to Google a candidate’s name.

Amazon, Yahoo! and the Microsoft Zune stores are all starting to sell DRM-Free music. The music labels are beginning to hear what we as consumers are saying. Apple has that seamless integration. You press one button and it’s bought, downloaded and synced into your iPod. Leo’s thrilled that Apple has made it easy, but we need to see some competition.

The band Radiohead has decided to sell their own music on their website. They ditched their label, and decided to sell it for what listeners thought the album was worth. Nine Inch Nails also decided to leave their label, Universal.

---

Hour 1

Q Amy from Newport Beach, CA - Do I have to have a phone line for Broadband?

There’s three main ways.

• Cable - which is a copper cable into your house
• DSL - which is a copper cable into your house with the phone
• Wireless - which uses the cell network or a satellite

What you want is known as Bare DSL. You need to ask your local phone carrier if they allow you to get Bare DSL.

The copper line will always be coming into your house. AT&T do Bare or “dry loop” dsl. Usually you get this by threatening to go to someone else, like Comcast.

Now you can get this by calling AT&T and there are instructions at the Consumerist Article here. AT&T will only offer this to you as a customer retention policy.

Q Tim from Ohio - ActiveX won’t load in IE7

Generally this is because there’s a security setting in Internet Explorer stopping it from being enabled. It sounds like there’s a problem with your Registry, which is a big lump of data. It sounds like it has lost the ActiveX Key.

All you can do as a user is hack the registry. Anyone who is a Windows user for a long length of time knows RedEdit.

There’s a Microsoft Article that shows you how to modify the key.

---

Hour 2

Q Tim from Upland, CA - Is there an FTP solution for sharing big files?

FTP is not a great solution for big files as it takes a long time for a file of 20gb. Getting a 20gb file over the Internet would take way too long.

It would be quicker to put a hard drive with the files in the mail. Their such big files, it’s not the download that’s the problem, it’s the upload. It could take several days to upload it.

Q Finn from California - Internet Connection Sharing via Wireless

In the sharing pane, you can turn on Internet Sharing. You have to say from what you are sharing to what you are sharing. There are some additional details that Leo is leaving out but it’s definitely do able.

If a URL has HTTPS at the beginning in the browser address bar, then it is generally secure. If you’re using a 3G wireless card then everything is encrypted and secure. It’s actually more secure than using a wireless connection in a hotel.

Q Nolean from Huntington Beach, CA - CD Burner isn’t working

XP is notorious for the CD drive disappearing or not working. It’s possible that it’s the hardware, but it’s unlikely.

It’s either Dell or Microsoft’s fault, but both will send you to the other one. The first thing support will tell you to do is run the system restore disk which will erase everything off your hard drive.

It’s possible since you never used it, that it never worked.

• There’s nothing to restore to because it never worked
• Try Nero.com and download their 30 day trial and see if that works
• If it still doesn’t work, you need to go to the device manager and delete the CD drive, when you restart the computer, it may then see that it is a CD Burner and it should work from then on.

You should take a look at the CD Burner XP site which can help you with some problems.

---

Hour 3

Q Anne in Ocean side, CA - Are WiFi waves dangerous?

These waves are so low power, there is no danger. It’s true at a high power can be dangerous. These routers are lower power than a cell phone.

Also do you need an Internet Service Provider to get an email address? No, you can get a free email address from both Google Mail (GMail) and Yahoo! Mail and then you just give that address out to people.

Technically if your living next to a cafe and your using their wifi it may not be illegal, but it’s generally a morale issue. Your using our free Internet, but not buying our coffee.

Also if your using a free or public access point, you can encrypt your password using GMail, you just need to type your https:// before the address in GMail. So it would be https://mail.google.com.

A lot of smaller cities are beginning to do municipal WiFi

Q Marleena - Is it save to backup stuff to a flash drive?

Although you can get flash drives up to 8gb, it can still be too small to store your data on. And although flash drives are probably more reliable than CD-R’s, they can only be used a certain number of times.

You should take a look at an external hard drive, as they store much more and are generally very reliable.

Second Question: What is a good laptop for school?

You should ask someone at the college if they have a preference between Mac’s or Windows, and usually the college bookstores have discounts on notebooks.

Also see what he’s doing. If he’s doing graphics and video editing then a Mac is the best choice. If it’s just using the internet, and doing much smaller work than high-end graphics and video editing then a Dell XPS 1330 may be the best choice.

If you get him a good sound system, then it can be his stereo and TV as well.

Q Dianne in Riverside, CA - iPhone acting weird

On the side of your iPhone, there is a little switch, when that is switched to red it means your phone is set to silent.

You should also install iTunes on your computer to update your iPhone. If your iPhone does begin to start really weird and funky, then you press and hold on that bottom button, and start switching that on/off button which turns it off and then you turn it back on by pressing the button at the top.

You can also use iTunes to restore your phone. Back to how it was when you origionally purchased it.

Q Judith from California - Moving Vinyl records to MP3?

You can get a number of turn-tables that allow you to do this. One is Ion USB Turntable, which is about $100, and is generally pretty good quality.

If you really want to make it sound as good as possible, then maybe a Stanton T90. All of these come with Audacity which is a free program that comes with the turn table.

If that doesn’t do it for you then try something like Garage band which comes with the Mac.

Q Eric - Why aren’t there any Mac viruses?

It’s a combination of two things. Because there’s such a lower amount of people using it, it’s not as highly targeted as Windows machines.

However the second thing is the fact that the Mac is genuinely more secure than Windows, so it’s harder to code viruses for it.

If Apple Macs were as popular as Windows, then the question is, Would people write viruses for the Mac?

---

«Previous Show

Back to TOC

Next Show»