The Personal Computer Radio Show  WBAI-FM 99.5
New York City



April 2008 Show Summaries
April 16, 2008  April 9, 2008  April 2, 2008 
April 16, 2008 Show

Just us talking. We were pre-empted over the air, but recorded this new show anyway. No listener phone calls, no guest.

 

April 9, 2008 Show

Our guest was Dale Dougherty, Editor and Publisher of MAKE Magazine.

A new version of the Adobe Flash player was just released. You can test the version used by your web browser at www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/. The latest version is 9.0.124.0. If you have multiple web browsers installed, each can be using a different version of the Flash player so you need to run this test in each browser.

Before installing a new version, you should un-install the old version(s). Doing so via the Control Panel Add/Remove programs may or may not work, depending on which version of Flash you already have. Better, is to use the Adobe Flash un-installer program available at kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157&sliceId=2. There are different versions for Windows and for Macs, there is no un-installer for Linux. After un-installing, go to the version test page to verify that the un-install worked correctly. Then you can install the new version availabe at adobe.com/go/getflash.

 

April 2, 2008 Show

The Torrentspy search engine shut down, but there are still other BitTorrent search engines to help people find files to download using BitTorrent. We may have given the impression that BitTorrent itself shut down, this is NOT the case. Because so much copyrighted material is available via BitTorrent, the Torrentspy search engine was being sued and they gave up fighting.

To clarify things, the term Bit Torrent has multiple meanings. First, it is a protocol for sharing files in a peer-to-peer network. Second, it is a software program for sharing files using the protocol. There are many programs, such as uTorrent, for sharing files using the BitTorrent protocol. Third, there is a company called BitTorrent that was founded in 2004 and maintains the protocol. See Wikipedia.

A Macbook laptop was hacked easier than Windows Vista or Linux. Sony BMG in France got caught using lots of stolen software. Apple is being sued for mis-representing the technical specs of a 20 inch monitor. Dell is closing a plant in Texas. Finding the free ZoneAlarm firewall. The NLite and VLite programs help lower the disk space used by Windows. What will Microsoft do about low-cost laptops that now run Linux?

 

 
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