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The Geekcast #115
The Geekcast #115 
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.co
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
AT&T/Cingular May Give Away 18 Months of iPhone Service. Jim Cramer from RealMoney.com has notes from AT&T regarding their plans for the iPhone. His column suggests that AT&T will be using the iPhone to aggressively target customers and implies that they will provide significant discounts in service. He believes a strategy is coming where the iPhone's $500 price is preserved but the service contract is greatly reduced.
Dell Begins Selling Desktops Without Windows Pre-installed. The n Series Desktops come with a Pentium D or Athlon X2, and an unformatted hard drive ready for Linux, BSD, or any other free OS. Dell advertises that their new open-source n Series desktop solution provides customers with a DimensionTM E520, E521 or C521 desktop without an installed or included Microsoft OS. An added benefit to this program is that it will help reduce the price of this system. Dell's n Series will ship with a copy of FreeDos.
One in five Windows installs are non-genuine. Microsoft disclosed Monday that over one in five Windows installations were deemed non-genuine through the company's Windows Genuine Advantage program, which requires users to validate their operating system before downloading updates from the company. Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent. 56,000 reports have been made by customers of counterfeit software, which grants that user a free replacement copy of Windows. While high, that number is less than the average software piracy rate around the world, according to the Business Software Alliance. The BSA reports that 35 percent of the world's software is pirated and a Yankee Group study noted that 55 percent of organizations report instances of counterfeit or pirated software.
Universal and Sony prohibit Zune sharing for certain artists. Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that certain tracks you've purchased from the Zune Marketplace will not be able to be transferred to another Zune via it's highly-touted sharing feature. It looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.
Music industry divided over digital future. With global music sales down for a seventh straight year, the talk at an annual industry meeting in Cannes, France, has become heated over how to develop digital sales against competition, particularly illegal downloads. Global sales are expected to be down again for 2006 despite digital sales almost doubling to $2 billion and the popularity of music being as strong as ever. Critics of the major players in the industry argue that they have been distracted by the fight against piracy and in doing so, hindered the growth of the legal business. In response, the accused argue that they had little choice.
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Test a geek: Enjoy another edition of Test A Geek on this episode.
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How To: Send anonymous text messages
If you've ever wanted to send a text message to someone and you didn't have a cell phone, this website is the place for you. AnonTxt is a simple website that allows you to send a text message to anyone's cell phone in only 3 easy steps. The advantage of using AnonTxt is that the message is sent anonymously so you don't need to worry about anything being traced back to your phone. The website is straight forward and simple to use.
The first item you fill in is your name or an alias. It's important to remember that AnonTxt appends their name to any message they send, so be sure to remember this before you send it. Once you put that in, place a subject into the second spot. Finally, enter their 10-digit number. Once you're done, hit send and it's off to their phone. You can have some fun with your friends and send them some funny messages using this service.
As always, AnonTxt is free and can be found at www.anontxt.com
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: Recover missing Address Book data in OsX
A person's address book is one of those items that is very hard to replace. With these databases carrying all our data, we don't remember phone numbers anymore and it's tough to keep track of everyone we come in contact with in our lives. It's important to backup the data in your address book but unfortunately, many of us don't backup. Luckily for all OsX users, you can recover lost data from your address book even if you didn't back it up. BTW, to back it up the folder you'll want to include is ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.
Recovery of your address book is simple if you didn't do this. Here's what you can try:
Address Book is smart. It keeps a little backup of its own in a AddressBook.data.previous file inside the directory mentioned. To restore it, all you need to do is quit Address Book, delete the dead AddressBook.data file and rename the backup to AddressBook.data.
At this point when you re-open the application, your data should now be back. Good luck!
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The geek's view:
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Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.co
**************
Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
**************
Tech news:
AT&T/Cingular May Give Away 18 Months of iPhone Service. Jim Cramer from RealMoney.com has notes from AT&T regarding their plans for the iPhone. His column suggests that AT&T will be using the iPhone to aggressively target customers and implies that they will provide significant discounts in service. He believes a strategy is coming where the iPhone's $500 price is preserved but the service contract is greatly reduced.
Dell Begins Selling Desktops Without Windows Pre-installed. The n Series Desktops come with a Pentium D or Athlon X2, and an unformatted hard drive ready for Linux, BSD, or any other free OS. Dell advertises that their new open-source n Series desktop solution provides customers with a DimensionTM E520, E521 or C521 desktop without an installed or included Microsoft OS. An added benefit to this program is that it will help reduce the price of this system. Dell's n Series will ship with a copy of FreeDos.
One in five Windows installs are non-genuine. Microsoft disclosed Monday that over one in five Windows installations were deemed non-genuine through the company's Windows Genuine Advantage program, which requires users to validate their operating system before downloading updates from the company. Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent. 56,000 reports have been made by customers of counterfeit software, which grants that user a free replacement copy of Windows. While high, that number is less than the average software piracy rate around the world, according to the Business Software Alliance. The BSA reports that 35 percent of the world's software is pirated and a Yankee Group study noted that 55 percent of organizations report instances of counterfeit or pirated software.
Universal and Sony prohibit Zune sharing for certain artists. Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that certain tracks you've purchased from the Zune Marketplace will not be able to be transferred to another Zune via it's highly-touted sharing feature. It looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.
Music industry divided over digital future. With global music sales down for a seventh straight year, the talk at an annual industry meeting in Cannes, France, has become heated over how to develop digital sales against competition, particularly illegal downloads. Global sales are expected to be down again for 2006 despite digital sales almost doubling to $2 billion and the popularity of music being as strong as ever. Critics of the major players in the industry argue that they have been distracted by the fight against piracy and in doing so, hindered the growth of the legal business. In response, the accused argue that they had little choice.
**************
Test a geek: Enjoy another edition of Test A Geek on this episode.
**************
How To: Send anonymous text messages
If you've ever wanted to send a text message to someone and you didn't have a cell phone, this website is the place for you. AnonTxt is a simple website that allows you to send a text message to anyone's cell phone in only 3 easy steps. The advantage of using AnonTxt is that the message is sent anonymously so you don't need to worry about anything being traced back to your phone. The website is straight forward and simple to use.
The first item you fill in is your name or an alias. It's important to remember that AnonTxt appends their name to any message they send, so be sure to remember this before you send it. Once you put that in, place a subject into the second spot. Finally, enter their 10-digit number. Once you're done, hit send and it's off to their phone. You can have some fun with your friends and send them some funny messages using this service.
As always, AnonTxt is free and can be found at www.anontxt.com
**************
Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
**************
Hack: Recover missing Address Book data in OsX
A person's address book is one of those items that is very hard to replace. With these databases carrying all our data, we don't remember phone numbers anymore and it's tough to keep track of everyone we come in contact with in our lives. It's important to backup the data in your address book but unfortunately, many of us don't backup. Luckily for all OsX users, you can recover lost data from your address book even if you didn't back it up. BTW, to back it up the folder you'll want to include is ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.
Recovery of your address book is simple if you didn't do this. Here's what you can try:
Address Book is smart. It keeps a little backup of its own in a AddressBook.data.previous file inside the directory mentioned. To restore it, all you need to do is quit Address Book, delete the dead AddressBook.data file and rename the backup to AddressBook.data.
At this point when you re-open the application, your data should now be back. Good luck!
**************
The geek's view:
**************