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Sunday, August 1, 2004

Show #62

I’ll be working an extra hour or so, taking your calls from 3–5p this afternoon. Keep calling after the show goes off the air: 1–800–520–1KFI.

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

Holy Spider Bite. The PC version of Spiderman 2 is significantly inferior to the game console versions, but Activision is using the same packaging, causing some gamers to cry foul.

Get ready to spend some bucks - Doom III arrives August 3. Read HardOCP's Doom III hardware guide to see if you need to upgrade your PC to play it. If you want Heat Haze you’ll need a DirectX 9 capable card, otherwise a GeForce 4 MX-440 or better will do. Kyle and the gang say the game looks surprisingly good on even low-end equipment.

Have you downloaded the trailer yet? Our poll question of the day: Are you upgrading your computer to get ready for Doom III?

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Noon-1p

Tim in Downtown LA - wants to download binaries from the newsgroups

I recommend Hogwasher for the Macintosh and Agent for Windows. And if your ISP doesn’t have the best quality news feed (lots of missing messages) try Supernews. Another great provider is NewsHosting.

Search the newsgroups with Google.

Dan recommends NewsBin over agent on Windows, also a free one called GrabIt.

Dave recommends MT Newswatcher, a Mac OS X newsreader based on the original Newswatcher, originally written by John Norstad. It handles binaries seamlessly.

Dennis recommends XNews. Not too hard to use, and free.

Jim recommends Binary News Reaper for binaries and XNews for text.

Chris in Oceanside - hears his DSL line…

…when he’s online and listening to music at the same time. Try repositioning the DSL modem. If that doesn’t work separate the network interface card from the sound card.

Remember the text adventures? You can play all the original Infocom adventures again with Frotz. Start with Zork - the classic. But Zork was based on the original Crowther and Woods Adventure. I played Colossal Cave endlessly - read all about it (and download a version for your system) at the Colossal Cave Adventure Page.

Bob in NJ - still has the Linux loader on his PC…

… but will it mess up his new Windows install? No Windows will overwrite the Master Boot Record (Wikipedia:MBR) when it installs, replacing Lilo completely. If you like having a boot loader (which is usually required for multiple operating systems) try GAG - it’s a gas! Another one for multiple OS’s is XOSL.

Scott in Thousand Oaks - something called DPMS is rebooting his sytem

DPMS is the display power management signalling system, used by PCs to signal the display to switch into one of four power states: normal, standby, suspend, and off. Not sure why it would cause your machine to reboot unless there’s a serious electrical error. Replace the monitor cable.

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1–2p

Carlos in San Dimas - buying a laptop for his college bound daughter

Read my college guide.

Remember that you don’t absolutely have to go with Windows! Consider going with an iBook or Powerbook and running Mac OS X.

James in North Hollywood - want to extract video from a DVD

He has a home made DVD - wants to extract one track. DVDs store video in VOB files containing both MPEG-2 video and AAC audio. Open the DVD on your computer and copy the VOB files to your hard drive. (Commercial DVDs are copy protected so you’ll ned to use a program like DVD Decrypter to copy the files.) You can use a VOB editor to modify the files directly or demux the file into the separate video and audio streams and edit them with any video editing program.

Brian in Placentia - are LCDs OK for gaming?

I use LCD displays on all my machines and they're just fine for me. You should probably try one with your favorite game before you assume they're not fast enough. I use a Samsung Syncmaster 191T with a response time of 25 milliseconds and it's just great for a fast paced game of Unreal Tournament 2004.

The response time is the amount of time it takes a pixel to go from all off (black) to all on (white) and back again. Slow response times will make your games look smeary, or show visible ghosting on fast moving objects.

It's true that the tube displays are much faster than LCD displays with response times that are close to 0, but the newest LCDs are getting faster. Sharp has a series with 16 millisecond response time (the LL-172G and LL-172A) as do some Sony's and NEC monitors. 12ms LCDs are on the way. You should look at more than response time, though. Some of the highest speed LCDs have other problems like poor viewing angles that may make them less than desirable.

Read this article on LCD vs CRT monitors for a checklist of features to consider in addition to response time.

Viewsonic also makes a gaming LCD which is the VP201b

Samsung currently makes 12 Millisecond responce time LCD monitors, but they only come in 17″.

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2–3p

Yvette in Cypress - Outlook Express crashes when she opens her mail

She suspected a virus but can’t install Norton Anti-Virus. That is often a symptom of a virus - they try to keep you from installing anti-virus programs. I’d suggest scanning with an online scanner like

• Housecall from Trend Micro, makers of PC-Cillin
• Panda Active Scan from Panda Software

If they don’t work then you’ll need to boot from a CD with an antivirus on it. Once you get rid of the virus, if Outlook Express still doesn’t work you should backup your files then try some recovery software.

Listener recommendations: I recommend first downloading (from another computer) McAfee Stinger. This is a program that tests for the trickiest viruses. Those that tend to make installing your regular antivirus programs. Best run it in safe mode too.

Justin Wallace recommends using Panda Active Scan, and then downloading AVG Free Edition.

Good tips for proper security can be found at Security Tango

Ann in Santa Ynez - has a problem talking with her Linksys

James in North Carolina - new Mac user

Invisible Airport
DLink Wi-fi router
MAC filters
wants to create profiles

Dave in Tujunga

Still struggling with Windows 95…
He says that his taskbar floats around the screen when he’s online, the mouse cursor gets sluggish, and everything gets very slow. He may have a trojan or possibly a bundle of Spyware.

Listener advice:

Justin Wallace says…
To remove trojans that may infect anti-viral tools, go to Panda Active Scan. At the Panda Active Scan site, you can scan your system for viruses online. When you run Panda Active Scan, go to grisoft.com and download AVG Free Edition. When you download AVG Free Edition, go into safe mode by restarting and tapping F8 to get the advanced startup menu. From the advanced startup menu, select “Safe Mode”. Once you’re in safe mode, scan your system completely with AVG. Also scan your system with some Spyware removal tool. See the Spyware Removal tutorial from Leo here. I have created a Spyware Prevention page here.

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