WED Sep 29, 2010
TODAY and more..
Live Theatre Relay from London via Sierra Cinemas / Theatres
Can you re sell USed Software? It Just Changed.
For once we will talk about CARS and a useful website to manage yours: that of AutoZone
QuiBids Fakery or Not… watch out.. More Info
Online Investing, Etc:
"Never Gamble what you are not willing to lose unless you are an addict"
"If your Broker is so great, how come she still needs to work?"
""your return reflects the value of the risk you took"
Shopping Around on the Internet?
Once you have physically researched or seen what you want, I would try these Sites:
http://www.shopper.com (CNET), http://www.tigerdirect.com and http://www.geeks.com and http://www.buy.com and of course the venerable http://www.ebay.com
Tiem Machine (MAC) Issues . Thanks, Mikail!
Additional notes
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Paul was in the studio; Glenn called in while on the road between Vegas & LA.
Azriel from Sierra Cinemas talked about digital projectors.
– Regular movies are delivered on a hard drive with a key code to unlock the content.
– Broadcast of live theatrical productions thru their digital projectors involves getting the content by a satellite feed. The least amount of compression is used to maintain quality.
– Their first such presentation is tomorrow at 7:15pm. Another one in October. Hamlet is coming in December. There will be 7 presentation continuing until next July.
– She said there have been other types of performances, like a Metallica concert, that have used this type of distribution.
– National Theater Live is the source of tomorrow's presentation. More info at ntlive.com
– At the Sierra Cinemas site you can sign up for email notifications. The link is up above.
Talk turned to the TimeMachine backup software on the Mac.
You can use it 3 ways:
1) With a Firewire drive.
2) With a USB drive.
3) With a TimeCapsule — a network connected drive. But you can't use another type of network drive along with TimeCapsule.
There are 2 conditions under which TimeMachine will run into trouble:
1) If you receive lots of mail with hundreds of separate files, TimeMachine will slow down because it's required to copy each of those incrementally different files at every scheduled backup.
2) If you have large graphic or video files.
But there is a tweak available which postpones the backups. See the above link.
Some TimeCapsules made in 2008 fail due to overheating.
People have asked Paul how he keeps up with all the products & services.
There are mailing lists and the website theregister.com
Apple stores around the country have the full range of products made by Apple, and recently they have started to get the i7 processor made by Intel which Paul thinks has 4 cores. He said it's rare that all of its horsepower is used.
He said there's now a choice of an anti-glare finish as well as anti-scratch finish, but you'll pay extra;
Mikail called to tell a story about ATM problems he had while on the Greek Isle of Crete.
Paul talked about quibids.com that looks a bit like Ebay. You can get cheap things BUT you have to buy bidding tokens. In effect, bidding is not free and you can end up spending more than you expect. On Ebay, on the other hand, bidding is free and the seller pays a fee to Ebay when the item is sold.
Paul said it's not an entire scam but a partial scam and thought the authorities may crack down on them. The above link explains it better.
Paul went on to admonish — like investing or gambling, never put in what you're not willing to lose.
Paul gave a couple of other witticisms:
If your broker is so great, how come she still needs to work?
Your return reflects value of the risk you took.
The above links point to sites Paul finds useful when shopping for a product.
– Shopper.com (owned by Cnet ) is a link referral site. If you search for a product there, you get links to retailers selling that product.
– Tiger Direct sells end of line goods — models that have been discontinued. Geeks.com is similar.
– Glenn, as well, likes buy.com because of what they advertise in their emails includes free shipping.
Google ads, called Adsense, can be found in the right panel of the Zentech page. KVMR gets pennies when someone clicks on them.
KVMR's programming for the rest of the day was mentioned.
Paul found Autozone's site useful. See the above link.
– You can sign up at Autozone, put in what kind of car you have and you'll receive reminders when oil needs to be changed, plugs replaced, etc.
– Glenn said Kragen & Napa do something similar.
Carol called. She has an iMac computer and wondered if it's worth repairing. <I think that's what she was getting at. Her phone connection was bad>
Paul said Apples more than 5 to 7 years old are not usable on the internet, especially if they don't have OS 10.
Nick walked into the studio to ask if there are any commercial backup programs for photos.
– Mac computers with version 10.5 or higher come with TimeMachine.
– You can execute iPhoto within TimeMachine. iPhoto should be a recent version like 8 or 9. iPhoto is photo organizing (not editing) software,
– There's also online backup service called Carbonite, but Paul's not sure it's available for the Mac. It also requires an always-on broadband connection.
– For the PC, Glenn recommended Google Docs for documents & Picasa online for photos.
– Paul suggested Western Digital hard drives that come with backup software. These don't archive your data but merely mirror what happens on your main hard drive — you can't retrieve something you've deleted on the main drive.
– Remember, being able to restore from the backup is just as important. Periodically check to be sure that you can restore what has been backed up.
Last updated 11:39 PM 9/29/2010