HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
Bill in Greenwood, Arkansas listening to the podcast asked: “We have a wired Internet connection going to the PS3 which works well for the most part. We were running wireless, but the wired connection reduces a minor latency issue. We’re running with a cable modem and a Belkin router. The PS3 occasionally complains that our NAT level is too high and we get kicked out of the online game we are playing. It says our NAT level is strict, actually NAT 3. It wants to see a NAT 0. I don’t know what all this means and don’t really know if I should mess around with the settings on my router. We had the same NAT issue when we were running wirelessly. What does all this mean?”
To keep it short what this means is that your firewall is blocking connections that your PlayStation needs.
What you need to do to resolve the issue is to tell your router that the PlayStation doesn’t need to be babysat by the firewall, and that it should let every connection that wants to get to your PlayStation, get to your PlayStation.
Unfortunately to do that you need to both change the settings on both the router and on the PlayStation.
On the PlayStation you need to go to settings, network settings and finally internet connection settings, there you have to assign a permanent address to whichever connection you want to use (wireless or wired), it’s gonna ask you for an IP address, if you don’t know what range of address the modem is configured to accept you can just give it the one it’s been using, use the same numbers your PlayStation was using up to now for the other settings, the important thing is to assign it one and write it down, you’ll need it.
The next step is to go to your router’s settings, and look for something called “DMZ”, depending on your router it might be under Home Network, Security, WAN settings or a hundred other places, but look for it, it’s probably there. The DMZ will have a field for an address, that address should be the one you assigned to the PlayStation.
And that’s the end of it, now your PlayStation is in the router’s demilitarized zone and the router will not extend any special firewall protection to it, in other words: it won’t block connections your PlayStation needs and you shouldn’t have any NAT problems.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Matt in Nashville, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 asked: “I was talking to an IT guy the other day and he mentioned something about computer makers going away from normal hard drives to flash drive systems. Wondering if you have any input on that.”
“Normal” hard drives — the ones we’ve had in our computers for years — aren’t entirely going away. They are, however, being replaced in many computers by flash memory, or solid state hard drives.
The main difference between the two is that the newer solid state drives have no moving parts. This may mean more reliability in the solid state drives.
Other differences are that the solid state drives use less energy than the traditional hard drives. Now the downside is that since they are newer and have more advanced tecnnology, they tend to be more expensive. Because of that, many manufacturers are not putting them inside their machines. At least not the lower-priced machines. One day all our hard drives may be that solid state drives, but probably not anytime soon.
Then there is the issue of capacity. Solid state drives, while using less power and operating many times faster than traditional rotating media drives, are far more expensive on a “dollar per gigabyte” basis. When you’re dealing with a large collection of media files, having a 1TB or larger drive is not out of the question. A solid state drive in that capacity, if one were even available, would be extremely expensive.
What you will likely see is a combination of three things: solid state drives used for the system volume where the operating system and applications run, hybrid drives that have some flash memory combined with a rotating media drive for somewhat better performance without breaking the bank, and traditional rotating media drives for archiving those collections of large files.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Brian in Raleigh, North Carolina listening on WPTF 680 AM asked: “Security for online banking: On a home PC, I know it’s safe. If I was to go to a Wi-Fi Internet connection in the house, I know that’s a little risky. Second question: to do banking on a cell phone, like a Blackberry, what are the negatives about doing that?”
For years we’ve been saying that — for the most part — you’re safer doing things online than in person. Take the example of handing your credit card to a food server who disappears for several minutes. Hopefully they’re only charging your meal and only once. But online, your financial transactions rarely have any human intervention. Dave’s been doing my banking online for many, many years and — so far — have had no problem. He has also used his WiFi connection many times and as long as he has his security settings in place, he’s had no issues.
There has been quite a stir lately about the Firefox extension “Firesheep,” that works by “sidejacking” your online accounts, and that has prompted a lot of concern over computer security. Any time we pay attention to security, that’s a good thing. Firesheep only works under two conditions. You must be using an unsecured Wi-Fi connection and you must be connecting to a website that does not establish a secure connection through the browser. Hopefully, your home Wi-Fi network uses WEP or WPA security to encrypt the connection generally. And, of course, any bank or financial institution that does not encrypt the browser connection would be in violation of numerous federal laws and standards. So while Firesheep may make it possible for the guy sitting next to you at Starbucks to post on your Facebook page as you, your online banking is likely to be just fine.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Ski asked: “I just have a question about online backup. I have a friend who has Mozy and he loves it. Is that brand just as good as the Carbonite product?”
Carbonite and Mozy are the two most popular and widely used online backup services right now. They dominate this market because they both are easy to use and very inexpensive. It doesn’t matter if you have a few files to backup or several thousand, Carbonite offers one, two, and three year subscriptions, Mozy offers a month-to-month plan and one and two year subscriptions.
If you have 30GB of data that needs to be backed up initially, it will take roughly the same amount of time using either one of these providers because of the constraints of upload speeds of most Internet connections. Carbonite takes the slight edge over Mozy because of its simple interface. Mozy has more advanced settings within its interface which may satisfy computer geeks but it seems to be overwhelming for some home users.
As for security, both of these online backup service providers use advanced technology to ensure that your files are encrypted on your computer before they are uploaded to their secured servers.
The best thing to do is to try both services to see which one works best for you and to decide which one you like the best. Carbonite backup offers a free 15-day trial than you can choose $54.95 per year or $99.95 for 2 years , Mozy it’s free up to 2GB, has a month-to-month option that costs $4.95/month and $54.45 for a year for unlimited space.
Personally, Rob says he’s never used Mozy, but Mac friends of his have and they’ve been happy with their service. Mozy is a reliable company just like Carbonite. Dave and Chris Graveline have used Carbonite before and haven’t had any issues with it.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
On our 2/4/11 show, Dave asked our audience what color is their cell phone and if the color matters. We shared some listener answers including a call Frederick in San Angelo, TX and several comments from Facebook listeners.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Group Discussion: Do you trust online back up services? Why or Why Not? (i.e. Carbonite, Mozy, MiMedia) What if they also offer instant on-demand access to your files from anywhere?
We shared some listener answers and discussed our opinions.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1928 the time finally had come for the world premiere of television, after many years of intensive research and development around the globe, with Germany as focal point. The venue: the 5th “Grosse Deutsche Funkausstellung” in Berlin, today as IFA the number one global show. The screen, developed by Denez von Mihaly, was as tiny as a postage stamp, just an inch and a half, square, with only 30 lines and 900 pixels. Von Mihaly received the first license “to build and operate” a television station from the German Post.
That’s this week’s IFA Update brought to you by Messe-Berlin. Be sure to visit IFA-Berlin.com.
Guests in this hour:
Tim Towster, VP of Marketing – BlueAnt Wireless
BlueAnt offers innovative Bluetooth peripheral devices and accessories, including hands-free, stereo audio streaming and wireless communication products.
Jeff Haas, President – Haas GPS
Haas GPS manufactures of GPS tracking hardware and a provider of GPS tracking services based on an annual subscription.
Clint in Delta Junction, Alaska listening on KFBX 970 AM and asked: “I got a problem with a virus, called “System Tool”. It took over my Vista machine. I tried a lot of these self helps. I can’t get it off. I tried “msconfig” and I can’t get it there. I tried to boot in safe mode and it blocked me there. I really don’t know what to do about it. The only thing I can think is upgrade to Windows 7 and wipe it off.”
We feel for you, System Tool is a nasty virus, or maybe we should say scam.
For those lucky enough not to know, System Tool installs itself on the victim’s computer and tries to convince them that they’re infected by several viruses that nothing will remove… nothing except for the paid version of their “program”.
There are several types of scareware going around that do basically that same thing, but System Tool beats everyone we’ve seen when it comes to nasty tactics. Victims will get constant popus telling them that unless they buy the paid version not only will their whole computer be destroyed by viruses, but also their credit card information will most likely be stolen. It also prevents other programs from running to make it look like the evil viruses System Tool is trying to help victims get rid of are rendering the computer and it’s programs useless and it changes the victim’s desktop wallpaper to a warning telling them they’re infected with dangerous viruses.
On top of all of that System Tool is a real pain to remove. It will hijack system files to do it’s nasty work, so the easiest way to get rid of it is to do a System Restore to a time when they virus hadn’t infected the system yet. Unfortunately, many victims will find that System Tool will block them from getting to System Restore. Still, if you’re infected it’s worth a shot, if it works your troubles may be over, if it doesn’t you’ll need to move on to more complex tactics.
If you can’t run System Restore, the next step would be to try to boot into Safe Mode (you can usually do this by holding down CTRL or F8 when your computer is starting up and before Windows loads), then try to restore the system to a previous date from within Safe Mode, or run a antispyware program (such as SpyBot S&D or CCleaner), if System Tool isn’t able to block them a lot of them can find it and get rid of it.
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info,
please email us here.
Into Tomorrow Product Spotlight with Rob Almanza
Motorola ATRIX 4G
The Motorola ATRIX 4G caught a lot of attention at the 2011 CES. Find out what features make it so special. Rob Almanza reports from Las Vegas.
It also made “Dave’s Top 10 @ 2011 CES” – Click Here
– By Rob Almanza, “Into Tomorrow” Correspondent
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Microsoft: Copies of Street & Trips Software with GPS receiver
Powermat: Several Powermat Power! Dual 1850 & Dual 1200 Portable Battery Packs
Que Publishing: Copies of the book: “My iPad 2” (Covers iOS 4.3)