WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio • Sunday morning from 8 until 9
Who's in the corner?
|
|
WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio • Sunday morning from 8 until 9 |
|
| Home
• Previous
page Who's in the corner? |
|
|
| |
Sunday, September 21, 2003 |
Random thought:
|
 |
|
TechX NY: The Latest from New YorkIt was the smallest show in 15 years or more -- maybe the smallest show in history. The PC Expo trade show portion of TechX NY could have been staged in one of the Javits Center's smaller exhibition hall, but CMP used the main hall. Even with the aisles shortened by two-thirds and larger areas set aside for food service seating and presentations, the show didn't take up the full width of the hall. As a result, TechX this year featured no more than 500 exhibitors, smaller exhibits, and a surprising emphasis on outsourcing that brought companies from Netherlands, Romania, Philippines, several former soviet bloc countries, and even Transylvania to the show. Companies such as Palm, Gateway, and Dell were absent. AMD had a small presence; Intel was absent. I talked to some of the guys at Drive Savers, the company that disassembles failed hard drives, repairs them, recovers critical data, and returns it to you, all for a hefty (but not in any way unreasonable) fee. The Drive Savers brochure starts with a warning about always having a current backup set, but the company has built a successful business dealing with people who ignore good advice. Your hard disk will failA catastrophic drive failure should be nothing more than a moderate annoyance. The computer will be out of service until you obtain a new disk drive, install it, and format it. From that point forward, restoration of the applications may be as simple as restoring them from backup, along with the appropriate Registry data. Or you may have elected not to back up applications. In that case, the programs must be reinstalled and, if you backed up the special settings files, restoring them from backup. If not, then you’ll need to configure each application so that it will work the way you want it to. The rest should be a snap – restore all of the data from backup. You may have one or more “full” backup sets and one or more “differential” or “incremental” backup sets. Incremental backups (those that back up only the files that have changed since the previous backup) are faster, but the restoration process takes longer. I prefer differential backups between full backups because each differential backup captures all files that have changed since the previous full backup. Or, if you don’t have a backup, you’ll be calling a company such as Drive Savers in Novato, California. You’ll then send them your disk drive, tell them what data you want to see again, wait a week (or just a day if you’re willing to pay for expedited service) and pay $1000 or more (sometimes a lot more) for a CD that contains the data you could have backed up. If you can't be bothered with backup, start saving money that you'll pay Drive Savers -- and keep this URL handy: www.DriveSavers.com. You will need it. Burning Down the HouseDoes it seem like everybody is burning MP3 CDs these days? Or at least finding new ways to use music. I have a Sony minidisc player hooked to an amplifier in my office at work. A stack of maybe 20 minidisks contains 1000 or more pieces of music -- the entire Beatles collection from my CDs at home, hours and hours of classical music, several Barenaked Ladies CDs, and on and on. The player runs all week on 2 rechargeable AA batteries. Whether you're using CDs, cassettes, or minidiscs, you have a lot of opportunities to take music with you today. There are legal questions. What if I download music from the Internet? In many cases, I've downloaded music that I already have on LPs. The RIAA may disagree with me, but I think that making CDs from LPs for my own personal use is legal, whether I download the music from the Internet or convert the sounds on the vinyl to digital. Likewise, if I've bought a CD, I can see no harm in copying tracks to minidisc for listening at the office or to CD for listening while I'm on a trip. I'm certainly not going to pack up all my CDs (or LPs!) when I go on a trip. Eliot Van Buskirk, who reviews MP3 players for C|Net has written a book called
Burning Down the House to explain in plain English what you
can do and how you can do it. I
had
the
pleasure
of
spending
45
minutes or so with him on the phone recently. I started by asking him to run
down what's legal, what's illegal, and what's in the gray area ... In talking with Eliot, I mentioned Sony. The company seems somewhat schizophrenic.
On one hand, Sony is one of the "Big 5" music companies that does everything
possible to keep people from "misusing" music. On the other hand, Sony
is the manufacturer of MD players and computers that are designed to
allow copying of music ... We'll continue the discussion with Eliot Van Buskirk in October. For more information about the book in the meantime, see Eliot's website, BurningDowntheHouse.net.
How the Technology Corner rating system works. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!The RIAA is now suing people who download files -- not just those who upload large numbers of files. One of their more recent cases involved a 12-year-old girl. RATING FOR THE RIAA:
How the Technology Corner rating system works. Give your ears a treatBecause we're talking about audio this week, this might be a good time to talk about headphones. "Cans" as they called in radio, which seems a little disrespectful for the devices that let you hear what you're doing. Many CD players and such come with "headphones" but you really do need something better. How many MP3 players come with those useless little "ear buds"? I'd prefer that the manufacturers drop the price by $2 and not include these. They're useless. You have a lot of choices and all of them are better than ear buds. The primary choice you have is whether you want earphones that block external sound or earphones that allow you to hear external sounds. You may, for example, want to use earphones that allow you to hear external sounds if you're planning to wear the headphones while walking or biking. But if you're sitting at home, you may want to block outside sounds. Lately I've been using a set of Sennheiser "cans" when I remember to bring them with me to the radio station -- Sennehiser HD570 are from one of the best known companies in sound. The HD570 earphones block outside sounds. They come with soft cushions on the earphones and this makes them surprisingly comfortable. For somebody who doesn't particularly like to wear earphones, I find these uncommonly comfortable. I remember spending a lot of money for some superior headphones back in the 1960s. They were excellent, but they were heavy and after wearing them for an hour or so, I felt that my head had been in a vise. The Sennheiser HD570 phones undoubtedly have better frequency response than the phones I bought in the 1960s and they're comfortable. I actually look forward to putting them on. Technology has changed in 40 years, too. (This is a surprise?) The HD570 set has a cable that plugs into a jack on the left earphone. At the other end of the cable is a stereo mini plug that plugs firmly into a quarter-inch stereo jack. These headphones work at WTVN and with any portable audio device I have. You won't find headphones like this selling for $12 at Radio Shack. The suggested list price is $150, although you can find them online (often "refurbished") at $100 or so.
Nerdly NewsA moderately convincing fraud
MICROSOFT NEVER SENDS EXECUTABLE FILES VIA E-MAIL. NEVER. Those who have read disclaimers from Microsoft or who have heard me say it already know this. Microsoft has made some dumb security decisions, but the decision to establish a coporate police not to send binary updates by e-mail was a good one because anyone can forge Microsoft's address. I saved the attached executable file and looked inside with Ultra Edit. It's clear that this file modifies the registry and then starts asking for information that will open your e-mail account to the sender. Just by reading the plain text inside the file, I saw that anyone who installs the "update" will be told that a MAPI (mail application program interface) file has been damaged and that you need to enter some "informations". (Misuse of "informations" for "information" is a common error made by speakers of Slavic languages when they are learning English. So that's a clear give-away this time, but they will learn idiomatic English. They will continue to send increasingly convincing messages "from" Microsoft. None of that should matter. YOUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE IS SIMPLY KNOWING THAT MICROSOFT NEVER, EVER, SENDS EXECUTABLE FILES AS E-MAIL ATTACHMENTS. IF YOU RECEIVE ONE, JUST DELETE IT UNREAD. WiFi moves along
T-Mobile's WiFi connections are priced at 10 cents per minute, 60-minute minimum.
Users will want to organize their on-line activities so that they can do everything
in one 90-minute session, for example, instead of 5 20-minute sessions. The
single session would cost $9 while the 5 shorter sessions would cost $30.
For those who will use the service on-and-off all day, there's a special 24-hour
rate. And those who travel a lot might want to choose a monthly rate.
Now Sprint is joining the race and plans to have more than 2000 locations in service by early 2004. So far, the only Columbus location is the Wyndham hotel in Dublin. Sprint is locating its WiFi operations mostly in hotels, where there is a $9.95 charge per day. Through the end of the year, the fee is $6.95 per day. If you're planning a trip to New York City, seriously consider staying in
Harlem where it's less expensive than staying Midtown and much
more quiet. Your stolen PDA can call for helpMaybe you already know about PC Phone Home or Mac Phone Home, applications characterized as "Lo-Jack for your computer." Install the software and when the person who steals it plugs it into a phone line, it will call Brigadoon Software and report the IP address it's sending the message from. With that information, Brigadoon can report the network the PC is on and, with the ISP's records, the location of the machine so that police can stop by and pick it up. Now Brigadoon is doing the same thing for the PocketPC with PC PhoneHome for PocketPC. The product isn't available yet for Palm devices, but that product is in development. Let us know what you think about this program! Write to: |
||||||||||||
|
|
Privacy Guarantee:I HATE SPAM and will not sell, rent, loan, auction, trade, or do anything else with your e-mail address. Period.
|
As if you didn't already get enough weather on the radio! Annoying legal disclaimer
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
||
To collect
e-mail while in New York City, I had to go to the House of Burnt Coffee
(otherwise known as Starbucks) to use a T-Mobile WiFi connection. That
was the first time I'd used WiFi outside my house and it worked well.
All I had to do was sit down, start the computer, enable WiFi, and log
in. The speed was more than acceptable, even for sending home some photos
of Calliope, the house cat at the 
The problem is that most providers don't offer service at more than a few
hundred locations. T-Mobile has service at a few airports, a few hotels,
and a lot of Starbucks coffee shops. Apparently T-Mobile has no WiFi
service anywhere in Ohio, though.
