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Saturday, May 29,2004

Show #43

Memorial Day Weekend. Let’s talk tech!

Read Rance and join the guessing game. Is it George Clooney? Ben Affleck? Owen Wilson? Or just some gaffer.

It’s not the first time an anonymous blogger has had the Internet buzzing. Salam Pax claimed to be an Iraqi blogging from Baghdad before the war. He was no fake.

We do know who the Washingtonienne is [caution: adult material], but people are still guessing about who her lovers were.

I don’t believe Andy Kaufman is back however, and this blog isn’t going to change my mind.

But the weirdest case of false identity has to be this story of a 14-year-old who tricked a 15-year-old into trying to murder him. [Link fixed]

 toc | toc 

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Noon-1p

Ron in Canoga Park

wonders what kind of TV to buy if you want to be forward looking but don’t want to spend a lot of money on HDTV. You don’t have to have a digital TV to keep up with the shift of broadcast television from analog to digital broadcasts - just a digital tuner. If you have satellite or digital cable you already have a digital tuner - and it works with any TV set. You’ll get a better picture with an SD or EDTV, and they’re cheaper than an HDTV.

Donna in Temeculah

wants proof that her family member was going to adult sites on his PC. First check the address history by clicking the drop down icon in Internet Explorer’s address window. Any address there was typed in - proof positive that the visit was intentional. Sites that show up in History or the temporary Internet files aren’t conclusive proof, however, since every page visited, even those displayed as pop up ads, show up there. A search for “computer forensics” on Google will turn up some companies that do this kind of thing. For a price.

Jerry in Valencia

wonders what that OEM software is. He also recommends Bo Dietl’s One Tough Computer Cop software for Donna.

Mike in Lake Arrowhead

says he can’t hear his sound card.

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1–2p

Michelle in Las Vegas

wants to network her home wirelessly.

Cassidy in Dana Point

wants HDTV recommendations. My favorite is the Samsung HDTV line.

Walt in New Jersey

says his cable modem connection keeps dropping out. It comes back when he reboots. First thing to do is uninstall Norton Internet Security - that program is the single largest source of Internet problems. Second, instead of rebooting try renewing the IP address. Click Start→Run and enter “ipconfig /release” and hit return. Then do the same thing with “ipconfig /renew”. I would also suggest buying an inexpensive broadband router both to protect yourself and to improve reliability.

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2–3p

Brad in Albany Oregon

wants to know if there’s a free Macintosh anti-virus. Not that I know of. Dot-Mac comes with a free copy of Virex, but Dot-Mac itself is $90/year. I think the benefits are worth it. You can also buy Virex, Sophos, and Norton anti-virus products for the Mac for under $50. There hasn’t been a virus in three years, though, so I wouldn’t bother with an anti-virus until it becomes a problem. None of the anti-viruses will protect you against the latest Mac URI exploit. Until Apple ships a patch use Paranoid Android.

Chris in Huntington Beach

booted her Windows 98 computer and it said “no operating system found.” That means the hard drive is either not starting or unreadable, or the operating system files are damaged. Open the case and touch and listen to the drive as the PC is starting up. Is it revving up? Do you hear it clicking? Any abnormal sounds? If all’s well there, boot from a rescue disk and see if you can see the C: drive. If you can, copy your data off and reinstall Windows. If you can’t, you might want to bring it somewhere for data recovery and diagnosis.

Steve in Newport Beach

ex-wife is stealing information from his email account. Is that illegal. The jury is still out. Read this article on Findlaw for a legal opinion that is a lot more informed than mine!

Hank in Los Angeles

wants to know about Network Addressable Storage. That’s just a fancy name for network file server, and that’s just a fancy name for a hard drive that is shared over the network. Many of them

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