This week on Deemable Tech, Ray and Tom have so many questions they decide to have the first ever “Deemable Tech: Lightning Round.” In the Lightning Round, Ray, Tom and guest host Elizabeth Pampalone try to answer as many questions as they can off the top of their head. Sean Birch is the judge, and whoever gets the most questions right gets the grand prize of absolutely nothing!
Episode 38 – The Lightning Round
DRAFT TRANSCRIPT
RAY: From WJCT studios in Jacksonville, Florida, I’m Ray Hollister,
TOM: I’m Tom Braun,
RAY: and this is Deemable Tech, tech help worth listening to.
TOM: Got a question about your computer, smart phone, tablet or the Internet? Give us a call us at One Eight Eight Eight, Nine Seven Two, Nine Eight Six Eight, or send us an email at questions@deemable.com.
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And, from All Florida Insurance Options, an authorized Progressive agency, helping people shop for insurance at 904-757-3288 or at their office in Highland Square on Dunn Avenue in North Jacksonville.
RAY: This week, back in the studio once again, we have a special guest, Elizabeth Pampalone, owner of JaxComputerChic.com, a small business computer consulting and computer training company. Welcome back to the show Elizabeth!
ELIZABETH: *vamp response*
RAY: Today we are going to do something a little different. We have a backlog of older questions to get through.
TOM: Why didn’t we answer those questions?
RAY: Laziness? Stupidity? A lack of organization?
TOM: Yeah, that sounds about right. So what are we going to do about them?
RAY: I thought we should just run through them, as fast as we can, answering them off the cuff, gameshow style. In fact, I thought we could call it.
*THE LIGHTNING ROUND*
TOM: Wow, what are we calling it again?
RAY: *THE LIGHTNING ROUND*
TOM: Awesome! But before we dive into The Lightning Round –
RAY: You mean, *THE LIGHTNING ROUND*
TOM: Yeah, that. Before we do that, we have a couple of ordinary questions to answer. And, Elizabeth, feel free to dive in on these at any point.
ELIZABETH: OK. Looks like the first question is from a guy named Ryan.
RAY: Cool, can you read it for us?
ELIZABETH: Ryan writes, For some reason, I can’t find 1channel or icefilms as add on options on my XBMCHub on my Windows 7 laptop. They are amazing on the unlocked Apple TV, and I want to put them on my laptop. Any thoughts?
TOM: *laughs*
Now I know how listeners to our show must feel when we start going on and on about things they’ve never heard about.
Before I yell at those pesky kids to get off my lawn, does anybody know what a 1channel or an icefilm is? And what is an XBM-whatever and what does it have to do with unlocking an Apple TV? I didn’t even know you could unlock an Apple TV.
RAY: Well, in the Apple world we call it jailbreaking. And yes, you definitely can jailbreak your Apple TV. Just like Jailbreaking an iPhone or iPad, you are simply taking off or breaking the code that keeps iOS shackled.
TOM: Why would you want to?
RAY: Well, normally your Apple TV can do two things: mirror the desktop of your Mac, iPhone or iPad, and stream media from iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube or one of the other authorized Apple TV channels, to your television. If you want to play any other kind of media through it, you’re out of luck. But an Apple TV is actually a powerful little LINUX-based computer in its own right, and by losing it from its shackles, you can use it to stream just about anything you want to your television.
TOM: OK, what is XB-whatever?
RAY: XBMC. It used to stand for Xbox Media Center because that’s what it started out as, but now it is a free, open source media player which can be run on a variety of devices.
TOM: Including, let me guess, a jailbroken Apple TV or a Windows 7 laptop.
RAY: You got it. The XBMC platform support third-party add-ons which allow you to do things like stream movies through it and watch ripped DVDs.
TOM: So if I jailbreak my Apple TV, I can install XBMC and watch my ripped DVDs on it?
RAY: Yep.
TOM: Cool. But Ryan didn’t just say XBMC, did he? He said XBMCHub.
RAY: OK, so despite the fact that it was originally designed to be installed on hacked XBoxes and jailbroken Apple TV’s, XBMC is supposed to only access legal content. But since it’s open source, someone has created a separate version called XBMC Hub which is a little more – open – about what content you access through it.
TOM: I’m guessing 1channel and icefilms are ways to get free content that you’d normally have to pay for.
RAY: Well basically they are free services that host links to all kinds of TV and movies… some of which you should technically be paying for. But they don’t actually host the content themselves, so they’re in a legal grey area. There’s no law that specifically says what they are doing is illegal, but that’s never stopped a copyright lawyer before.
TOM: Riiight. So, just to recap, Ryan has jailbroken his Apple TV and installed XBMC Hub on it so he can stream free TV shows and movies to his TV. And now he wants to do the same thing on his Windows laptop, but he’s running into problems.
RAY: I think that sums up it up.
TOM: And… we’re not going to help him, are we?
RAY: No.
TOM: Here’s the deal Ryan, and all our other podcast listeners. Here at Deemable Tech we have a policy of trying to stay neutral on the topic of copyright, piracy, DRM and that sort of thing.
On the one hand, it’s your laptop, it’s your Apple TV, you are welcome to try and do whatever you want with it. And we’re not going to pretend that there aren’t lots of ways to get, say, pretty much any movie or television program for free and stream it to your television.
RAY: But we’re also not going to tell you how to do it. At least in the US, distributing copyrighted content for free without the author’s permission is technically illegal. Do people do it all the time? Yes. Should the laws about this stuff be different? Maybe. Are movie and TV studios technological dinosaurs with their heads stuck in the sand? Probably. But right now the law is the law and we can’t be in the position of encouraging our listeners to break it.
TOM: If you decide to stick it to the man and circumvent the official channels for this kind of stuff, well, that’s your business. I mean, we’re geeks, we get it. It’s like rooting or jailbreaking your smartphone – it’s your device, we think you should be able to do what you want with it. Fortunately, rooting and jailbreaking smartphones is legal. We’re glad to answer questions about that on this podcast. But with other devices you’re getting into a gray area and we can’t help you. And as far as copyrighted content goes, well, we’re not even going to touch that issue with a ten foot pole.
Ryan, I’m sure with a little technical know-how, Google-fu and maybe asking some questions on the right messageboards you can get your questions answered. But it’s up to you to face the legal or technical consequences. So you’re on your own with this one!
TOM: Fabio writes – Hi Tom and Ray,
I’m Fabio and I’m writing you from Italy. I’m Italian so please forgive me if I make any mistakes. Here’s my problem: I have a desktop computer with windows 7 and sometimes while I surf the web, (I use the latest version of firefox) the screen freezes for a couple of seconds and then on the system tray this message appears: ?Display driver stopped responding and has recovered?. I tried to update the video card driver (I have an ATI Radeon 5700) but the problem continues. I hope you can help me with this because it is really annoying. I really love your show, it’s useful and entertaining and I’ve downloaded every podcast of the program on Itunes.
Thank you in advance
RAY: Awesome! Thanks for your question Fabio. That’s a hard one. *PAUSE* Did you ever watch Eureka, Tom?
TOM: Like, one time. For five minutes. And then I changed the channel.
RAY: *Explain what Eureka is.*
TOM: OK, did you just completely change the subject? Aren’t we going to answer Fabio’s question?
RAY: Of course we are…
TOM: So what does this have to do with Fabio’s question?
RAY: Explain how every episode of Eureka works.
Here’s the formula for a perfect Eureka episode:
They’re having a normal day, *example*
then something wacky happens, *example*
Then, they find out that that wacky thing has gotten worse, *example*
Then they find out that the wacky thing was caused by some experiment, except the experiment wasn’t suppose to work like that, *example*
Then, they find out that the wacky thing happened because the first experiment interacted with a second experiment *example* and the interference of the two experiments caused the wacky thing.
Then, they find out the wacky thing is going to (A) kill someone, (B) destroy the entire town, (C) kill everyone in the country, or (D) destroy the entire world, and they only have five minutes or less to fix it.
So, then they come up with some ridiculously complicated method of changing the wacky thing described with technobabble by the geeks, and the sheriff describes it with an simple analogy, and it will probably result in an amazing new achievement in science if it works.
And then, they do it. It almost always works, unless it’s a ?very special episode? in which case the worst case scenario does happen, but even then there is a twist that makes it a good thing that it happened. *example*
So that’s how it works. And Colin Ferguson, if you’re listening, when you guys decide to make the Eureka movie, I am totally ready to write the script.
TOM: OK, Ray, while that was *vamps*, what does that have to do with Fabio’s question?
RAY: I don’t know? What was Fabio’s question?
TOM: Remember, his display driver stopped responding? I knew it, you were just changing the subject!
RAY: *Explain how PCs are like Eureka. Everything should work together well, but they sometimes don’t and it’s really complicated to explain why.
TOM: Anyway, this one’s pretty easy, you just
Open Catalyst Control Center and switch to ATI Overdrive
Unlock and enable Overdrive
Go to Options/Profiles/Profile Manager and create a new profile called, let’s say, STABLE.
Save the new profile. But DO NOT ACTIVATE the profile.
Now go to C:\Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles folder ( I assume C: is your system drive )
Note: You should have ” show hidden files ” turned on to see the folder.
Open the .xml file named STABLE with notepad.
Change the values of the idle Core clock and Memory clock speeds below
Feature name=”CoreClockTarget_0″
Property name=”Want_0″ value=”40000″ note: previous value should be “15700”
Feature name=”MemoryClockTarget_0″
Property name=”Want_0″ value=”90000″ note: previous value should be “30000”
Save the file and close it.
Go back to CCC and activate the profile. This will make the card idle at 400 MHz core clock and 900 MHz memory clock.
Boom! You’re good. Hopefully.
RAY: So… Yeah there is a possible solution, but it is very complicated and no one else in the world will get any benefit out of it. So, Fabio we are going to send you an email with a link to the information. So you can try it out for yourself, and let us know how it works out.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/276896-33-radeon-5750-display-driver-stopped-responding
RAY: OKay guys, we’ve gotten through the regular questions, so do you know what time it is?
TOM: I think it’s time for *THE LIGHTNING ROUND*
RAY: Yes!
ELIZABETH: So how’s it going to work?
RAY: *explains*
Question 1:
Anonymous – I LOVE my Windows Phone. I just don’t know why the business world doesn’t use them more often. The OS is better than the ?cutesy? Android system that seems more teenager/unprofessional like. It has Office (word, PowerPoint, Excel), and more over Outlook ?.everything we may use in the business world. I just don’t know why I can’t sync my Outlook calendar at the office with my Samsung Smartphone Windows OS? I have an “Microsoft Exchange server” – the Phone asks for this but it always asks for a “domain name”? What are these and what do I type into make this work?
Question 2:
Hey guys,
I have my laptop hooked up to my LCD tv via HDMI so that I can watch Netflix. However, recently I have noticed that if I’m watching a show that’s longer than 30 minutes the audio and video will suddenly stop being sent to the tv via HDMI, and instead it starts playing directly from the laptop, almost as if the HDMI itself went into sleep mode. If I move the mouse, then the HDMI audio and video goes back to the tv.
What gives?
Also, after trying to hook my laptop up to my tv via the VGA connection, now it doesn’t recognize my tv as an LCD, but thinks its an analog CRT and won’t allow me to set the proper resolution!
Arrrrrrrgh!
-Joel
Question 3:
Melody – I recently heard a piece where you all recommended the Find My iPhone app and was wondering about something. I keep my Location Services off unless I need them, since they seem to be a huge battery suck. Will the Find My iPhone features still work if the Location Services are off?
Thank you.
Question 4:
Voicemail transcript: Dan this jacksonville beach florida… I’m calling to see if you do house calls … and if you do … please call me back and let me know otherwise I guess I maybe have to call … I’m making some call again but thank you very much I appreciate hearing from you and enjoy your programs on … on the radio thank you bye bye.
Question 5:
Scott – Dear Ray & Tom,
I have windows internet explorer version 8 and everytime I bring it up, it gives me the error message, ?A program on your computer has corrupted your browser preferences? and then I have click on ?OK? or change my preferences. I can’t seem to get rid of it. I have re-enabled Google as my default browser and I still get the error message. I tried picking another browser and I still get the error message.
Is there any way I can stop the error message?
Thank you.
Question 6:
Jennifer writes, I listened to your show this morning on WJCT about protecting the iPad & iPhone. I have the Blackberry Bold 9900 & Blackberry Playbook 64gb tablet. I would like a recommendation for apps to protect, lock down & secure the Blackberry Bold & Blackberry Playbook tablet.
Thanks for all your help!
Question 7:
Alan – Hi Ray/Tom,
My iphone sends my incoming mail to the trash. The messages appear briefly in the in box, then go to trash. ATT says it is a problem with my computer settings, Apple says it is a problem with Yahoo. I have cleared and reset the account information to no avail.
I went online and spoke with some guy in India who said he could fix it for $50.00. I was irritated and did not take him up on it. I would rather pay you or someone local.
Please advise.
Question 8:
Mel – Hi I am using an HP laptop with Vista. My account is with AT&T (bellsouth.net) for my email. Yahoo is only my choice as my search engine. I would like to use Google as a choice. How can I do that with out messing up my email?
Love your spot on NPR’s morning edition.
Question 9:
Michelle – I have an LG Thrill from AT&T that has been unlocked. I’m using it on T-Mobile, but I can’t get the data to work on it. What do I need to do to get the data working?
Thanks for all your questions, and keep them coming. Call us at our toll-free number, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email at questions@deemable.com. Also, subscribe to the show! Search for Deemable Tech on iTunes or point your favorite podcast app to dmbl.co/pod.
Our producer is Sean Birch. I’m Ray Hollister, I’m Tom Braun, I’m Elizabeth Pampalone, and this is Deemable Tech.
Thanks for listening. Have a great week.