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Sunday, September 12, 2004

Show #74

At 1p today I’ll talk with Tess Taylor, founder and president of the Los Angeles Music Network (LAMN), established in 1988, and the National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP), established in 1998. We’ll talk about how the record industry is responding to file sharing. Call in with your comments and questions, 1–800–520–1534.

Today’s news items

The blogosphere is quivering with stories about the 60 Minutes II story about Bush’s National Guard duty. According to the right-leaning Power Line Blog the documents supporting the 60 Minutes story were forged - they have features of Microsoft Word (proportional spacing, smart quotes, Times New Roman, superscripted th) that would have been unlikely (but not impossible) on a 1972 IBM Selectric.

US Federal Court has overturned yet another law aimed at Internet child porn .

21 original Shakespeare manuscripts have gone online, thanks to the British Library.

Windows Media Player 10 is released.
Microsoft released Windows Media Player 10 for Windows XP.

Here are the reviews:
PC Magazine
Forbes

Download:
Windows Update
Windows Media

Noon-1p

Lily in Venice - her mouse cursor jumps when she types on her laptop

This is a fairly common complaint people have about Touchpad pointing devices - because their wrist rest close to the touchpad it can sometimes cause the mouse to move when you type. The Synaptics driver, among others, has a setting to turn off the touchpad when you’re typing. That solves the problem. Unfortunately, this is not a feature built-into Windows. I’m looking for a shareware program that will do this.

Westminster Dave writes:
This can be fixed by going into the control panel and into the mouse settings. Click on the “Pointer Options” tab and check “Hide pointer while typing.” Then go into the “Device Settings” tab and look for a way to disable tapping. I did this on my Dell and I have never been annoyed by it again.

Steve Cerruti writes:
A friend of mine solved the problem with a piece of cardboard. My laptop came with a built-in solution:

Jackie in Malibu - web design tools

Her web site has been created with Earthlink templates but she wants to move to another host and maybe more powerful tools. She already has Frontpage 98. I recommend against early versions of Frontpage because it generates such non-standard code (Frontpage 2003 is reportedly much better in this respect.) Instead try:

• Mozilla Composer - part of the Mozilla Suite (free)
• SJ Namo WebEditor 6 - ($79 - 30 day free trial)
• Macromedia Contribute ($79 - free for 30 days)
• Macromedia Dreamweaver ($299 - free for 30 days)
• Adobe GoLive ($399 - free for 30 days)

A listener writes: for many free HTML tools visit HTML-Kit.

Becky in Escondido - she has 7(!) dialer viruses but AVG won’t remove one

These dialers are installed by porn and casino sites. They typically dial up 900 numbers or numbers in other countries and put massive amounts on your phone bill. She’s using the free version of AVG. It removed all of them except Dialer Trojan.67. This particular trojan is designed to steal AOL passwords.

Try hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete to open the XP task manager and ending the process labeled −1023461758.exe then running the anti-virus.

1–2p

Tess Taylor - President of NARIP and LAMN

Tess Taylor, founder and president of the Los Angeles Music Network (LAMN), established in 1988, and the National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP), established in 1998.

Thanks to Frank, John, and Charles for calling in - excellent points. The entire hour is available for download as an unprotected MP3.

2–3p

Adrian in San Diego - PC specs for amateur movie maker

• 1GB RAM
• Athlon 64
• Fast hard drive - I recommend the Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM hard drive for digitizing and editing your video.

Jenny in Silver Lake - any improvements to broadcast TV antennas?

Hmmmm. Not that I know of. Any broadcast engineer have a recommendation?

jsks writes:
I am not a broadcast engineer, but this product has promise: Clear Vue™ TV/FM Amplifying Antenna

Krystovar writes:
From personal experience I can tell you that “powered” antennas make no difference what-so-ever in getting better over-the-air reception. I bought a $30 one and there was absolutely no difference in the reception I got from standard rabbit ears. Don’t spend extra money on a powered set because the extra money will not give you any extra benefit.

Chris in Santa Clarita - Windows won’t start!

Chris gets the following error message:

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

She can’t even get into Safe Mode to run System Restore. That’s because her registry is completely destroyed. Follow Microsoft’s instructions and good luck.

Trevor Evans says: Here is Microsoft’s article on “How to start the System Restore tool at a command prompt in Windows XP” that Leo was trying to remember, it was also covered in a Call For Help 2.0 segment.
This can be combined with booting via the CD into Safe Mode, since Chris cannot boot even into safe mode, to repair her system with the choice of Safe Mode with command prompt (and going that extra geeky step) or not and go into a user friendly GUI (which the majority of us would like).

A listener writes: Since she has a Dell computer, Dell defaults to boot to the CD first.

If she has Windows XP Home do this first TweakXP.com - Backup - The easy way only for Windows XP Home Also
How to backup the Windows XP Registry?

Daniel in Nevada - needs a driver for an obsolete gamepad

Try Input-Drivers.

Sherry in La Crescenta - does she need a router

Yes. She’s getting a cable modem - I recommend buying an inexpensive broadband router to protect you from the outside world. It’s just as good as a software router and won’t screw up or slow down your system. Try the Linksys Etherfast.

Debbie in Los Angeles - plasma TV buying advice

How Plasma Displays Work

Chat Logs and Show Audio