Jul 10th 2005
This Week in Tech 13
Lucky Episode 13
Hosted by
Patrick Norton
TWiT: This WEEK in TECH, Episode 13, for Sunday, July 10, 2005.
Records live every Sunday at 5:15pm Eastern / 2:15pm Pacific / 22:15 UTC.
- Kevin has been working hard on migrating Digg to a whole new bank of servers.
- There's a picture of the old TechTV studios on Kevin's MoBlog. No, we can't afford to rent them.
- BitTorrent now in Opera browser Technical Preview.
- Is BitTorrent mainstream?
- There are lies, damn lies, and statistics...
- Are there non-voting based ratings for Podcasts?
- iTunes 4.9 ratings look to be subscription based.
- Windows Updates on Firefox? Try Windiz Update.
- Google wins typosquatting dispute hopefully there will be fewer nasty redirects out on the web.
- Cell phone cameras and image hosting sites such as Flickr are providing unfiltered documentation of world events as they happen.
- 3:51 PM Wednesday is the first Shuttle launch since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
- What do you call a Senator when they're no longer in office?
- Another millionaire is going to the International Space Station.
- Usually the pr0n0graphers lead the charge into new online mediums, but a Wired columnist notes that 'the market for erotic podcasts has been woefully underserved'.
- Roger forgot to mention the Wired online columnist is an ex-Screen Savers webmistress.
- Roger is happy running windows 2000, except for Adobe Premiere.
- Roger begs for new graphics cards from the office stash .... Patrick gets graphics cards from friends out of pity.
- Roger: if you recognize us from TV... don't stare, just ask.
- Robert Heron joins in around 25 minutes into the podcast.
- Have you read about the Florida man arrested for using open unecrypted WiFi and charged with a 3rd Degree Felony.
- Are you legally liable for what someody does on your open wifi?
- Robert: do you worry about broadband before you move? Don't assume the data online about availability is correct!
- Patrick and Robert have given up landline phones... but Verizon Wireless has reception issues in Patrick's new neigborhood.
- He's oggling a Wilson Cellular Amplifier
- Robert is right: the extra four pins on the new 24 pin ATX power supplies do snap off.
- Phrack.orgis shutting down... #63 is last issue and there's a call for papers.
- A number of TWiTs are going to DefCon 13.
- Yippee: Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica starts July 15th on SciFi!!!
- Prager and Roger and divided on War of the Worlds.
- We heart johhny depp.... but we're nervous about Willy Wonka.
- Alex wants to know if he does a clean install of Windows XP... can he still use is recovery CDs to restore his previous OS? (Yup.)
- Prager (not to mention the rest of the TWiTs) use external dries for backing up software or even full system images over a USB 2.0 or FireWire connection.
- Dave Mullins heard our conversation about backup software (especially Retrospect ) in Episode 12.... he suggests we check out Double Image or Double Image-O "Full or incremental backups are available. The backups are copies of the files, no proprietary software required to access your backup data. I like that because if my system is hosed, I can just grab the drive, plug it into another machine, and go."
- Patrick was thinking about getting a $40 Zalman CPU cooler to go with his new Antec TruePower 2.0, but found the $13 CoolerMaster XDream III that's 20 db quiet... Robert says: watch the $13 CoolerMaster. Make sure it's on right: otherwise it won't touch most of the cpu!
- Beware of Dust Buffaloes inside of a system... Yoshi taught Robert about Positve Case Pressure , ie, overpressurize your case to keep dust out... or you can use pantyhose to protect your system.
- John emails us and says check out Goo for turning a wall into a projector screen. (Warning... the goo biz is run by a buddy of Johns... relief: Robert's reviewed it and thinks it's excellent.)
- Erick, aka DJ NoirTech "ran into a deal over at Costco this weekend" and wants Robert's call on the Philips Ambilight 42 inch 16:9 HDTV-Ready LCD TV, 1366 x 768 $2,999.99.
- By the way, HDTV shoppers: Costco has a generous return policy on TVs. That makes it a great place to buy a TV you might return. Don't abuse Costco's return policy!
- Robert's been playhing with new HD video compression schemes for PCs.
- Some DVD players are quirky about brands of dual layer DVD media. .... and it's not cheap.
- TDK ARMOR PLATED DVDs are nifty. Tough to damage, very kid proof... and TDK licenses the technology to other companies. It's the reason BlueRay DVD burners won't need a caddy.
- Bad news: Wil Wheaton is out of the world series of poker. Good news: he's doing an audio book of Just A Geek.
- You can slipstream updates into Windows XP install disks.
- $7.5 million for the Texas Hold 'Em winner at the World Series of Poker.
- Robert's been having some problems with the QuickTime HD beta, it's working fine for Patick.
- Fun with FM tuners and iPods.