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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday 29 March 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Scott Wilkinson - Blu-ray Live
- It’s hard for disk manufacturers to make a Blu-ray Disk that’s compatible with BD Live
- HD-DVD had a set of rules that was mandatory for all players
- Different Blu-ray players have different rules
- Sony has announced that the PS3 will be upgraded to the new Blu-ray Profile
Tech News
Amazon has done a deal with the folks who do Grand Theft Auto, to include songs from the Amazon MP3 store. GTA has always had a radio in the game. If you hear a song you like, then you’ll have the capability to download music from Amazon.com store.
It’ll actually being delivered within the game, using an in-game’s character’s mobile phone. You simply tag the track using the phone, which also figures into managing contacts and missions within the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV is planned for a simultaneous release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems at the end of April.
New Jersey consumer-affairs officials announced on Tuesday that they are investigating whether Juicy Campus, a campus-gossip Web site, violates state laws that protect against consumer fraud.
Juicy Campus has sparked outrage on campuses across the country for publishing hateful or malicious comments about students, posted by anonymous users. New Jersey is taking the lead in a possible legal approach to forcing the site to become more accountable for the content it provides.
Hour 1
Q Marco in Beverly Hills, CA - Digg taking other users content?
Digg was started by Kevin Rose, and it maintained by many coders and server administrators. Most of the Web 2.0 sites were a new way of doing stuff.
The idea behind Digg is the fact that the users / readers are the editors and chose the news stories. Users can vote on stories from around the web.
In order to write code, you use an existing programming language. It’s written in PHP using a MySQL database. People use libraries of existing code in operating systems.
Few people write a program from scratch these days, it’s hard to do it.
Q Frany in California - Reinstalling Windows
It sounds like the company is being very aggressive about their copy protection. It seems like anything that changes on the system triggers a call to them.
It seems like if you reinstall Windows, you’ll have to call them to activate and use the software again. If you reinstall Windows, you will erase the serial number again.
Copy protection is frustrating. The company that makes the software doesn’t have a lot of money, and they need you to pay them.
Hour 2
Q Mark in California - Moving iPhoto Library
The images in the “Origional Images” folder in iPhoto are the unmodified photo’s. That has all the photo’s sorted by years in that folder. For example, 2005, 2006, 2007..etc.
Leo suggests that you take the entire iPhoto folder, and copy it to the new drive. Then just move or rename the origionals folder. iPhoto won’t find the library it’s looking for.
All you really care about is the origionals, unless you’ve made a lot of changes.
Q Ken in San Diego - Windows software on the Mac
You can use Bootcamp if you want to run ONLY Windows at any one time. If you want to run Windows side by side with Mac OSX, and run the Windows software inside the Mac, use Parallels. If you get infected in Windows, you just delete the old copy and use the new one.
Q Brandon in California - AMD a good processor?
The Intel Core 2 Duo processor is great, the AMD Processors aren’t that great anymore. On board graphics aren’t that great, however a stand alone video card is much better.
If your a gamer, then a stand alone graphics card would be much better, and also better for video. Memory will really speed it up. If your going to be using Vista, then you’ll want at least 2gb.
LogMeIn.com is a great remote desktop solution. It’s not going to be as quick as though you were right in front of it however. You’ll need a good upload speed otherwise it’ll lag.
It at least allows you to remotely control your desktop when you need to.
Q Divane in California - Mini DV Cams?
Quality is great with Mini DV compared to DVD camcorders. The number one thing to look for is low light capability.
Camcorder Info has excellent ratings and specs. They are completely independant and they have a very strong wall between editorial and advertising.
They also have low light ratings. The Canon cameras are very good. For recording home movies, both Panasonic and Canon will be fine.
Q Robert in California - Computer slowing down
It may not be spyware slowing down the computer. If a drive is hard to read, it won’t give up, it’ll continue to try and read it. One thing you might want to do is scan your drives and see if there’s any bad sectors or errors.
Spinrite is a great choice if you have it. Run Spinrite overnight to see if everything is going ok on those drives.
Try turning the services on and off on MSConfig, turn half of them off and half of them on, and whatever half is the slowest, continue to turn half on and half off to narrow it down.
Your browser renders webpages so long as they are basic HTML pages, by itself. However as soon as it doesn’t understand something, it calls in “help” from other software and plugins.
In this instance, USAA uses Flash. It then loads the flash plugin. You should uninstall and reinstall Flash. Go to the Adobe Flash site and see if it works for you, if it crashes, then you’ll need to uninstall and reinstall Flash.
Otherwise, you need to install Flash if it says you don’t have Flash.
Q Jujana in California - When playing Game, computer shuts off
The computer is probably overheating. The beeping usually means it’s overheated.
It might have a little dust inside, and it’ll heat it more than it did in the past. Open up the side, and get all the dust out of there. Make sure the fans are working.
Games really make the machine work hard, and that heats it up.
Hour 3
Q GJ in California - Vista SP1
Right now you don’t have to have Vista Service Pack 1. Right now it’s nothing that you can’t get via Windows Update through Patches and Updates. Microsoft’s plan is to slowly overtime patch those drivers that don’t work.
Eventually you will get Service Pack 1, but it’s up to the manufacturer to create those drivers. Microsoft will help them, but it’s not really up to Microsoft.
If HP is telling you it’s never going to be updated, then they may know that the company may never plan on updating it. It does fall on HP’s shoulders, as they sold you a Vista machine, and they need to make sure that all future service packs for Vista will still work.
Q Jonathan in Vermont - Copying recorded shows from DVR
They don’t like you to copy music right off the DVR for copyright reasons. However there are some ways.
You need a Video Capture card or an external video capture box. You can get a really cheap one or a more expensive one. The easiest way to do this is the Neuros device. It connects up to your TV, DVD Player, VCR…etc. You then hook up your computer or a hard drive or flash cards, and it records to them in a veriety of formats.
You can connect it to the computer via USB. The encoding is done through the Neuros, so the quality is just fine. It just needs storage on another device. An external hard drive or a flash card, you can even hook up an iPod.
Q Tony in California - Online tool to create a database
There are Database programs online that are designed to this. Zoho has an online Database tool, which supports sharing to other Zoho users.
File Maker also allows you to create a Database locally and then publish it to the web in PHP.
Q Chris in California - Chosing the right TV
You’ll probably want to watch High-Definition TV, and if so, then you’ll want a 1080i or 1080p TV. Standard definition was about 480p. A good HD-TV will draw all the lines in one pass.
You should ask them in the store if you can look at a DVD and a standard definition TV channel. Plasma is best for Home Theatre, so long as the room is darkened.
If it’s for a living room that’s pretty light, then LCD is the choice. You really need to look at the TV, and decide for yourself.
