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Sunday, October 17, 2004

Show #84

Tomorrow is the last day for Californians to register to vote in the presidential election. Make sure to register by Monday, and vote on November 2!

bruceb sez: Deadlines for other states can be found here.

Once again, for the last time, I’ll be keeping the lines open after 3p today. We’re taping ahead and I need your help! Call in 1–800–520–1KFI from 3–4p today after I get off the air. I’ll be answering calls until around 4:30pm.

Today in the 1pm hour, Alex Burack, Editor in Chief of www.digitalcamerainfo.com joins me to talk about buying a digital camera.

Interested in the history of the digital camera? Take a look at this article from About.com.

 toc | toc

Today’s news items

Microsoft has released 10 new security fixes - seven of them critical. Run Windows Update kids. One of the patches fixes the JPEG patch released last month because it didn’t work on machines with Office XP. Surprise! Run Windows Update now. Windows SP2 has made it much easier to update your computer, it usually updates on a regular basis, or whenever you set it.

Netflix is announcing that it’s cutting its monthly fee from $22 to $17 because it expects Amazon to enter the business soon. Earlier this year Netflix raised its fee from $20 to $22 - but I guess that didn’t work. The DVD by mail company’s stock tumbled 41% in after hours trading on the news. Blockbuster responded by dropping its monthly fee to $17.49. Analysts say neither company can expect to make money at that price.

More troubles for Bungie. Just days after announcing that Halo 2 for the Xbox is ready to ship, a pirated copy has leaked onto the Internet. The French language version is for PAL television sets and won’t play without a mod chip.

Apple’s iTunes Music Store sold its 150 millionth song on Thursday. The store is averaging four million tracks a week. Beth Santisteven of Ignacio, Colorado bought the 150 millionth song: Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor.” Apple sold two million iPods in Q4.

Trivia question of the day

What is John von Neumann most famous for? ¹
A) Tripping over an ottoman on a 1960′s sit-com.
B) Designed the first IBM PC.
C) Proposed the design that all modern computers are based on.
D) Invented the hard drive.

Noon-1p

Blake in Huntington Beach - How do you open the Xbox?

There’s a great step-by-step description for opening the Xbox at llamma. Remember this will void your warranty if you do it yourself.

John in Tustin - GPS for off-roading recommendation

I like the Garmin units, but you’ll want to find one that can load third-party maps. There’s a growning community of GPS mappers for off-roading. Check www.travelbygps.com for maps and hardware info.

Trevor Evans says: Well until the great Norton comes on the show here are some links to on the GPS subject. Just before Patrick left TSS he did a review of computer maps that you can find here (if I recall correctly he liked the De Lorme Topo USA maps as there were vector maps and do waypoints) and also there is his 2003 holiday wish list with a section on a Garmin GPS he liked at the time.

Michael in New York - What is podcasting?

It’s a way a web site (like mine) can offer audio broadcasts that you can automatically download and move to your MP3 player. For instance, I offer a podcast of my radio show several days after each show airs. People who use podcasting software like iPodder will automatically receive the audio file and be able to listen to it on their mp3 player as soon as it’s available. To get it working, download podcast software from iPodder.org then subscribe to a feed or two. Another good source of podcasting info is www.podcast.net.

1–2p

Recommendations from Alex Burack, Editor in Chief of :

Around $300:
Best looking: Sony Cybershot T1, Olypmus Stylus Verve
Sony Cybershot P-100/150 for performance
Kodak DX6490 for ease-of-use

Around $700:
Canon Digital Rebel
Canon Powershots

Digital SLR:
Canon Digital Rebel
Nikon D70
Pentax IstDS

What does he use?
Canon 20D

Bill in Santa Clarita - Nikon Coolpix 3200

Alex says: small and compact, feels good in the hand, not the best image quality
Recommends the Sony DSC-W1.

Mark in Winnetka - skydiver and base jumper, needs high-quality rugged SLR

Olympus Evo-E300 designed for photojournalists, weatherproof.

Mike in New Jersey - pixellated AVI files

DXDiag - the Direct3D diagnostic test - reports insufficient memory in Direct3d

2–3p

Bob in San Pedro - mouse won’t respond in SuSE Linux

Exit X Window (control-alt-backspace) or startup in the command line and run Xconfigurator to choose a generic mouse. Test it before you write the settings.

From X window, go to one of the 6 virtual consoles Ctrl+Alt+F1 through Ctrl+Alt+F6. Login as root. I use Mandrake-Linux, and the configuration programs are xf86config or xf86cfg. You can type x (tab) key or X (tab) to see all the possibilities. Unlike windows, Linux is case sensitive. These programs just edit the XF86Config−4 file. If you run into trouble, you can usually kill a program with Crtl+C. Alt+F7 will get you back to X window. If this doesn’t work, try booting off of your SUSE install disk and enter an update or upgrade mode. You should be able to skip through the various steps until you get to the mouse configuration.
The best place for linux support is usenet. Get yourself a good newsreader, like Pan for Linux or Free Agent for Windows. comp.os.linux.misc or alt.os.linux.suse would probably answer all of your questions.

Rhonda says - linux is about choices - so here’s another way to get your mouse going under SuSE. Get to a virtual console (eg. ctrl-alt-f3) and logon as root. Use the command “yast”. When the modules are loaded, use the arrow keys to navigate to Hardware-Select Mouse Model-enter and take it from there. Logout as root when done and get back to your GUI with ctrl-alt-f7 (or maybe ctrl-alt-f8, etc.). Logout, then logon to restart X - your mouse should be working.

Steve in New Zealand says - This question was about KVM switches with Linux/Windows if I recall correctly. I’m a linux dabbler, but I have a set up similar to the one described and I share video/keyboard and use a second mouse (as I understand this mouse issue is common with manual kwm switches). However as regards the mouse not working at all in linux, I’ve found it is tempting to flick the kvm switch to the other drive when installing linux (work on something else while you wait) and this generally kills the mouse but for some reason not always the monitor or keyboard. I know it might seems obvious that you shouldn’t use the switch during the linux installation but I can tell you it took me a bit of trial and lots of error before I got the mouse working in Mandrake. I won’t even begin on modems - which are a whole story by themselves.

Sebastian in Burbank - suggesting a fix for Mike in NJ

Try nastyfileremover from www.guru3d.com - it deletes all the old unused video drivers. A great idea since the old drivers can cause problems. I suggest running it, then installing the absolute latest WHQL approved driver.

Suzanne in Asusza - Wants a WebTV

It’s called MSN TV now - get the new MSN TV 2. It should be in stores this month. It’s $200 for the box and $21.95 per month for the service. It’s very limited, but if you just need a simple email and web computer it’s not a bad choice at all.

Troy in Tustin - Service Pack 2 install problem

The install stops with 34 mintues to go asking for a file named pcouffin.sys. That seems to be a low-level CD driver. It’s not on my XP machine, but if you have it it should live in C:\windows\system32\drivers\.

Mark in Anza - Having trouble receiving streaming MP4 video on some Windows machines

First make sure that .mov files are associated with the Quicktime player, not Windows Media Player (WiMP can handle MP4 but since these are .MOV files it’s probably better to use Quicktime). Then make sure you have the proper codecs for MP4 playback. I recommend Gspot for detecting codec support on Windows machines.

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