Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 21 October 2007
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Chris Marquardt - Looking at assignment - “Frame”
- All “frame” pictures
- Maddox by loritheflowerlady
- Quitting by nahlinse
- Wellington by Wellingonian
- Lighthouse Stairs by jyunte
- Guatemalan Child by Leo Laporte
We’d love you to participate in our new assignment. Take a picture illustrating the concept fake then upload it to the Tech Guy group on Flickr
Dr Rick Web Alber - Consumer Consequences
It’s part of American Public Media’s™ special series, “Consumed,” which explores whether the modern American lifestyle is sustainable in the long run. (Stay tuned to this site for more “Consumed” content).
Consumer Consequences will ask you a series of questions about your lifestyle, and as you play, it will show you how many “Earths” of natural resources it would take to sustain all 6.6 billion humans… if everyone lived like you.
Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the Week
Sprint USB EVDO Solution Model U720 Rev. A Adapter
Now only $49.99 with 2 Year contract
Verizon’s USB EVDO Solution Model USB720 Rev. A Adapter
Now only $49.99 with 2 Year contract
Give your iPhone, iTouch, PSP and Nintendo EVDO Wireless Network in your car or Elsewhere.
Kyocera KR1 Mobile Wi-Fi Router
Can use with the Sprint or Verizon USB 720 EVDO Rev. A Adapter
Price $150.00
Tech News
Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally. Bit Torrent Traffic, which is perfectly legal, (even though it is sometimes used to distribute illegal materials), and has been blocked by Comcast.
The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.
Comcast is slowing down traffic, and in some cases, blocking it completely. This is known as Packet shaping. Leo believes it may be the fact that Comcast is a big cable company and they have ties with the movie industry.
Many people don’t know about Net Neutrality, but maybe if we used the term Net Discrimination, more people would understand. Comcast has denied this in the past, but it is clear that they are doing this now.
Hour 1
Q James from Ohio - Pictures on Web Page too big
The thing you need to look at is making sure you don’t use images that are too big. There’s lots of software out there to make the images smaller.
Photoshop is one, and also Paint.net. If you want something very simple you can use to re-size the images you can use Irfanview.
Q Ed in Michigan - New monitor?
You’ll get a much better bang for your buck if you go with Dell. Leo really likes the Dell 24″ Monitor.
However for $850 you may want to go for an Apple monitor. The larger the monitor the more efficient you are, but considering you are visually impaired you might just want it to set the resolution to bigger.
As per performance and look, both Dell’s and Apple’s are very nice. All the rumor sites are expecting a new cinema display.
The 23″ Apple Cinema display is $899, so that would be about right for you.
Q Terry from Seal Beach, CA -One Laptop Per Child Program
They are starting a 2 for 1 deal from November 12th. Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time in North America. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home.
These Laptops run Linux. This laptop is specially designed for people in the third world. The interface is built for kids, so it’s mainly icons not text. The interface is called sugar, built from Red Hat Linux.
The hardware is built to allow a mesh network. What this means is, several people in one area can all connect to each other, and there may be a few users who are close enough to an Internet access point, while the others aren’t directly connected, however can connect via other users.
Hour 2
Q Jan from Beverly Hills - How should I upgrade my Mac?
The best option is to completely erase and do a fresh install. All the archive feature does, is take your old system and move it into a folder named “old system”. They do this so you can drag your stuff over.
If you are getting ready to install the new Leopard on Friday then it’s always a better idea to backup and format your hard drive ready for the new operating system.
Q Craig from Belgium - USB devices not working
You should go to the ASUS site and get the latest motherboard drivers and BIOS firmware. The USB driver is a very basic driver, that’s never updated.
Leo’s suggestion is “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”, updating drivers will sometimes break things.
The boot log is the thing to check. The last driver it shows is the one that caused the crash.
Q Matt from New Jersey - Using PHP for my website
You won’t be writing in PHP, you can use a CMS that’s written in PHP and you’ll still be working in HTML or CSS at worst. The good thing about using a Content Management System such as Drupal or Wordpress is the fact that eventually you won’t be writing in HTML, you’ll be using it as a normal word processor.
It will handle all the page changes for you.
Hour 3
Q Craig from Ontario - Checking Hard Drives with Spinrite
To check a hard drive that you don’t think there’s anything wrong with then you should use Level 3. That should only take a few hours. If there are bad sectors then it can take a really long time with, weeks or even months.
Spinrite reads and writes to sectors to check their working.
Q Marty from Boston, Mas - Can’t boot into Windows
Considering you can’t get into Safemode, there’s really nothing you can do. If you can get into DOS, you may be able to use a restore point.
Otherwise, you’ll just have to reinstall Windows.
Q Henry in California - If I use a 80+ Power supply will I see a difference?
You should see a difference. Leo hasn’t tried it but he will try to find out more.
