CNET Live: February 5, 2009
CNET Live: February 5, 2009
30:30

CNET Live: February 5, 2009

Culture
[ music ] ^M00:00:06 >> Coming up on CNET Live, smiling stacks of poop? >> And I think we got a cell phone that's a real piece of garbage too. >> And it really is actually, literally, but it's a good phone. And we'll get the latest BUZZ on Bill Gates, BUZZ in capital letters. CNET Live starts now. ^M00:00:19 [ music ] ^M00:00:27 >> Oh well. >> Good grief, there you are. I was wondering where you'd been standing. >> That old stick. [inaudible] >> Told you to stop that. All right, it's CNET Live. I'm Brian Cooley, he's Tom Merritt. >> I'm Soupy Sales. >> I'm one of the Smothers Brothers. And Brian Tong is out today with some nasty bug, he ate some who knows what last night and got sick. >> Yeah, probably a hamburger. >> But it's all, it's all to the good, cause guess who's here? We got Molly. >> Hey. >> Hello. >> Hey Moll. >> I gave him some poison peanut butter because I like you guys so much. >> Aww. >> She spread around the salmonella butter. >> I said I wanted a salmon sandwich, not a salmonella. >> Not that. >> Hey. >> Anyway, so we're here taking your calls, triple eight, what, do you make these up on the fly? >> Yeah. >> Good, triple eight - >> It shows, doesn't it? >> - nine hundred CNET. Triple eight nine hundred two six three eight. You call, we answer as best we can. But before we get to those, a couple of things we Crave. ^M00:01:17 [ music ] ^M00:01:22 >> These are some of our favorite things from the Crave blog. You can find your own favorites at crave.cnet.com. Mine involves Sony pointing a finger at security. >> What? >> It's a replacement for a thumbprint. So instead of rolling that thumb all over the thing and getting it wrong, you just hold your finger down by the CMOS sensor, and it reads the scattered light off your veins. >> Yuck. >> And apparently it's really fast. Molly used it, right? >> Yeah, I actually got to try this out at the Wired [inaudible] fest. I think it was from a company other than Sony. But evidently it's in somewhat wide use in Japan. And they say that one of the better things about it is that unlike those fingerprint scanners, you can't actually defeat this by cutting someone's finger off, cause then there won't be any more blood in the veins, and [inaudible]. >> So if you're gonna cut someone's finger off to fool this, you have to keep it full of blood. That's the lesson we've learned. >> I think I know why Brian Tong is sick. So it's a refraction technology. >> Yeah. >> Using your finger as like a prism. >> And the pattern of your vein stays pretty consistent throughout your life, so. >> Who knew? >> And it's much faster. >> Who knew? Well - >> That's what's key for me. >> Boy what I got is so much less biological. This is a really cool GPS tagger that goes on the hot shoe of your camera. From a company called Jo-Bo [assumed spelling], which is well known in photo circles for good quality accessories. And it picks up GPS coordinates, and we've seen these products before. But this one, unlike the one that I had about a year ago, actually works. And it comes with software that I think is impressive, because it will allow you to convert the raw GPS coordinates into town, street, address, country. So it actually puts readable information on there, and automatically translates it, not just putting pins on a map like Google Earth, and say here's where you took your photo, now zoom in to figure out where that was. >> Uh-huh. >> So it's a nice combination of software and gadget. >> That's pretty nifty. >> Two hundred dollars list is a little steep, but I found it for as low as one fifty nine if you shop aggressively. >> I was gonna say that's a good use of your two hundred dollars there, because it's actually doing the labeling. So that's worth the money in labor alone. >> For a vacation, when you go on a trip somewhere, it's great. For everyday shooting, that thing sticking up on the hot shoe might get old, and it might break off. >> And you might not want those pictures to be located. >> Right, there's always that. >> There's always that, yeah. >> Okay, let's get to your calls, that's why we're here for crying out loud. We always start where we like to start, that is line one. Whether it's a tough one or an easy one, this is gonna be an interesting one. >> Hola. >> Fred, hola Fred, como se llama? Oh wait, I already know your name. Hey Fred, welcome to CNET Live. Yeah, we'll shut up. Go ahead and tell us what your question is. >> All right, I got the holy triumvirate today, huh? Cooley, Wood, and Merritt? >> That's right. >> Si, es verdad. [ laughter ] >> I'm going to Barcelona this summer Tom. >> Awesome, have some jamon for me. >> I am going to. >> You are a jamon. >> And I took high school in Spanish, but I've forgotten almost all of it. I thought I remembered that there's some online services that'll teach you Spanish, either via podcast or online, or something like that. >> Yeah. You, there's actually lots of great ways to learn Spanish. If you want to spend a few hundred bucks. Rosetta Stone will get you up to speed really quickly. It's a CD-rom you buy, put it in your laptop, and roll with it. It's really good, I recommend it, but it's also really expensive. If you're wanting something a little more casual, you don't need to become fluent in two weeks, then you could look around for podcasts. There's lots of great services out there, just search Spanish podcast. But one of my favorites is Coffee Break Spanish. It's a fun podcast, you'll want to start from the beginning, and just kind of go through it with them. And I think it's at CoffeeBreakSpanish.com, if I'm not mistaken. >> These are free podcasts - >> I'll tell you, it's at radiolinguamedia.com. >> Of course. >> But Coffee Break Spanish is a Scottish Spanish teacher. >> This is getting good. >> So you get to hear, you get to hear a Scottish take on the accent. But the teacher actually speaks fluent Spanish, so the accent that you learn from him will be accurate. >> So no Spanish with a brogue. >> No, but you can get that from the, he has student on with him, so you can get a little of the brogue from her. >> You go ahead, and you let us know how that works out, okay? >> But no, I recommend it. It's a really - >> When you get back from Barcelona we'll see what you actually got for lunch, and then what you ordered also. Let's take a look here at, this one's interesting. I want to stay on unusual topics for a moment. We've got Teresa calling in from Irvine in southern California. Hey Teresa, welcome to CNET Live. >> Hi guys, this is, I'm also [inaudible]. >> Oh hey. >> Hey I've got a question that's sort of like closing the barn door after the horses have gone, cause it happened to me. But what is the, what are the best alternatives for insuring your tech gadgets, both large and small against breakage or loss? I know with phones you can get extra monthly insurance, extra insurance for a monthly cost with carriers. But what about for other stuff, like the iPhone or GPS devices, or even computers. >> Well now Molly we were talking about this, cause we saw Teresa's question in the lineup before the show. >> Mm-hmm, yes. >> What do you think is the best way to go here? >> Well this is something that's come up for me somewhat recently, because I've discovered that one great way to insure your gadgets, kind of almost without even realizing it is your home owner's insurance, and I think even renter's insurance. Cause it'll, you can actually, when you do sort of a home inventory with your home owner's insurance, you know, application process, you can put in the serial numbers of every gadget you own, and then they're basically protected, even when you're traveling. So if your laptop gets stolen out of your car, that is covered under your home owner's insurance. It's actually pretty comprehensive. The problem is I don't think that it covers all breakage. It probably mostly covers loss. So there are a couple companies that do gadget insurance, and it totally depends on the value of the gadget. Like I'm thinking it would have to be pretty expensive, the device, to make it worth it, but there's a company called Safeware.com that actually does electronics insurance specifically. If it's something like the iPhone, everything I've read says that you're gonna get a better value if you go with the Apple Care plan, the extended Apple Care plan over insurance because of the premiums and that kind of thing. But for other devices, this is certainly worth looking into. But honestly, like I think the home owner's insurance is a great kind of blanket thing to know about, and renter's insurance, get that. >> Is there a big like deductible or is there a balance in the amount of the premium with the deductible, or is that, that just really depends on the company, I guess. >> I think it depends on the company, yeah. Like Safeware I think if you go through something specific, they have about a ninety dollar deductible. And then with your home owner's it probably depends partly on the value of the device. >> And even if you get insurance on your handset from your carrier, read the same fine print. They're gonna have a deductible on there, they're going to also have a frequency with which you can make a claim. And sometimes, I want to recall last time I did a claim on my phone insurance through my carrier it was only one claim per year. That's kind of a long time in a way, and the deductible was relatively high. So it'll vary by carrier however, so make sure you read that, and compare that against like this Safeware we're talking about. >> Great. Thanks so much. >> You bet. >> All right, coming up we'll talk to CBS Technology correspondent Daniel Seeburg, who is attending the TED conference in southern California. But first, you've heard about the importance of recycling your old cell phone. What about a new recycled cell phone? You heard me right, take a look. ^M00:08:12 [ music ] ^M00:08:15 [ background music ] >> Hi, I'm Kent German, senior editor here at CNET.com. Today we're gonna take a first look at the Motorola Renew W233. This is a new phone that debuted at CES just a few weeks ago. The story about this phone does not lie with its features, there's really not a lot there actually. But it is what Moto is billing as the first carbon-free cell phone ever. What that means is the phone is made from recycled water bottles, and also the box is made from recycled paper. So pretty much everything that goes into the phone is recycled. Moto is trying to bill it as a real green phone, as a earth friendly phone. They are trying to push the talk time as well, that's promised up to nine hours, so they're trying to say that it's pretty energy efficient. We haven't tested the talk time yet, but certainly nine hours talk time is on the longer side. Does have pretty decent call quality. I tested it a little bit, and had pretty good clarity, pretty good volume. The design isn't bad either, it's just a candy bar design. And of course it is green here on the sides, white here on this, up on the top, white down the bottom, and it has a black cover. So it has a little bit of a different design. The display is a little small, not the highest resolution. The menu is easy to use. The navigation array, not so bad. The toggle is raised above the surface of the phone. Keypad buttons, they're fine, pretty spacious. The numbers are a little small, but that's just because the phone is a little small. The only thing I don't really like is there is no exterior volume rocker, so when you're on a call, you have to use that toggle to adjust the volume. Really prefer having something here just on the side. Inside, not a lot there. There is a very basic music player, organizer, features, a speaker phone, but no camera, no real high end multimedia features. It's not a 3G phone at all. But it does have that serviceable call quality, basic messaging. [ background music ] So if you're looking for a basic phone that makes calls, and maybe you want to feel good about buying it, certainly the Motorola Renew is not a bad option. I'm Kent German, and this is the Motorola Renew W233. ^M00:10:11 [ music ] ^M00:10:15 >> It's back to CNET Live. Keep those calls coming, the phones are open at triple eight nine hundred two six three eight. >> Joining us on the phone right now is CBS News technology correspondent Daniel Seeburg who's at the TED Conference that's underway now at Long Beach, California. Daniel, first of all let's start off by telling people what the TED Conference actually is. >> TED is, it's a little unusual. TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design. And basically you've got about thirteen hundred attendees, all fairly well [inaudible] CEOs, scientists, [inaudible], and a few celebrities thrown in there for good measure. And they all come to listen to these rather amazing presentations from people like Bill Gates, Al Gore, Sylvia Earl who's an oceanographer, just to name a few. And these presentations get posted on the ted.com website, and then we go viral over time. They're just really compelling and interesting ways of looking at the world. >> Well we appreciate you sneaking in there and giving us a little peek at what's going on. What's some of the cool things you've seen so far? >> You know, there have been a few. I mean I would say notably the first presenter [inaudible] who's actually worked with the Mexican government to try and control some of the [inaudible] uprisings, he had this really interesting way of looking at the way the economy is going, he's heard [inaudible] dancing in the flames right now, and that there are ways to look at [inaudible] smaller firms to try and stimulate the economy. He hasn't really got it off on an interesting note, if a little sobering at the beginning. One of the favorite presenters here is a guy named Hans [inaudible] who runs, there's a website called gapminder.com, which I really recommend people look at. And he pulls data from health issues, population growth, and presents it in a way that's part ESPN sportscaster, and part scientist. And so he looks at these trends over time in ways that you just had not thought about before. And so you see where these countries are getting these certain diseases [inaudible]. It really alters your preconceived ideas of where the world is going. >> And TED is really known as sort of a weighty issues driven thing. But I guess Bill Gates sort of kept it a little light, right? >> He did keep it a little light. The Bill Gates incident you're referring to, he was up there talking about you know, he's obviously a big philanthropist, and now that he's left Microsoft full time. And so he was up there talking about the Malaria crisis in Africa. And to demonstrate how we should all be thinking about this, he released what I have to say is really a handful of mosquitoes out into the audience. >> Well so it wasn't a big huge cloud? >> You know, I would, it was false, it fell short of a swarm. You know, from where I was sitting, which was honestly about twenty rows back, I didn't see if there were more than a few. But you know, there were a couple of people who I think were a little taken aback. But he assured everyone they were uninfected mosquitoes. But it's sort of become internet legend already I think. And you know, the idea that Bill Gates released some more bugs in a while was not lost on anyone. >> You didn't get bit, did you? >> No, I made sure. You know, I was gonna bring a [inaudible] or some bug spray, but I forget. >> Hey Daniel, this show has you know, it's in the lines of several other major conferences of its kind. How would you put it in the array of you know, there's Demo, there's CES of course, is this a very exclusive show? Or is it one that you think is trying to become more well known around the world? Cause some of these shows like to remain fairly insider, so they don't lose their cache. >> You're right. I mean it's different than any of these other shows that you mentioned, and very exclusive. I mean you know, I've been to Demo and plus you know, we've all been to CES. And I'm not sure it's really, I like product, and to talk about the latest and greatest that's coming out. This show, TED is much more driven by ideas, concepts, data. It's the kind of stuff that if you read it on paper you would think why would you bother going to this conference. You sort of have to see these presentations to really grasp how compelling this stuff is. The speakers are selected very carefully, they're really from the upper echelon of the tech. >> Yeah, clearly. >> [inaudible]. So it is a very, it is a very tight knit bunch. Every time you turn around you bump into somebody else, and you say oh my gosh, there's so and so. It's so sort of exclusive, I can't even tell you who's attending. I'm supposed to keep this all secret. >> But Robert Scovil [assumed spelling] was one of them, right? >> Now the idea of people getting their hands on this information, us unwashed masses, after the insiders like you are done seeing them, this is all released, right, these presentations and papers? >> Exactly. They all go up on the ted.com website. It takes I think you know, several weeks to get them all up there, but they really are very popular once they get up there. I mean I think they've been viewed somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen million times. >> So they're intentionally keeping these presentations exclusive for attendees for a while, right? >> Yeah. They're exclusive to attendees for a while, they can sort of talk about them and tell stories about them, but they really aren't available to the public so much until you know, several weeks afterwards. You can read about them online, but that's about it. >> Odd. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, but you know, it's a long-term thinking I think is what they're saying. >> Right. >> You know what? It's not about being there unless you're rich and we can get money for you. >> Yeah. >> It's about getting these ideas out into the public. >> And this idea about how hey, us rich smart folks talk about it first, then we'll let them comment is a little bit odd, unless I'm just reading wrong. >> You know what? They did something different this year. Daniel do you know about the fellowships that they were giving out? >> You know, I know something about the fellowships. They had rewarded, awarded these fellowships in the past, I think there are forty TED fellows, if I'm not mistaken. And these are people that they're highlighting their research, their areas of development, and they come from all different places around the world. And they're quite an elite group in and among themselves in terms of the research that they do, which could range from wildlife forensics, to health, mathematics and tracking diseases and that kind of thing. So it's really a broad mix of these people who [inaudible] highlight their work in science. >> Thank you so much Daniel, we appreciate your checking in. >> Absolutely. Thanks guys. >> Have a good time at the rest of TED. Time for us to take a quick break, but we will be back with a way to explore the oceans right from the comfort of your couch, to the new Google Earth right after this. ^M00:16:54 [ music ] ^M00:16:59 >> Watch every game from the NCAA championships, live online, for free with NCAA March Madness on demand. But please use with caution. ^M00:17:07 [ music ] ^M00:17:26 >> When the biggest stars meet the biggest laughs, they come to Dave. [ laughter ] The Late Show With David Letterman. >> Why are we laughing? >> I'm not sure. >> Weeknights on CBS. ^M00:17:40 [ music ] ^M00:17:45 [ laughter ] >> That Dave Letterman. Anyway, back to CNET Live, good to have you here. Brian Cooley, Tom Merritt, special guest Molly Wood. Phones are open at triple eight nine hundred CNET. >> That is correct. But we have to take care of the Download of the Week, do we not? >> We do, let's do that thing. >> Download of the Week time. [ music ] >> Download of the Week's brought to you from our good friends at Download.com. It's Google Earth five, as I told you before the break. And the cool new things about Google Earth are the ocean and Mars. So they've added a ton of ocean photography and ocean information, not only, Tom is underwater. >> Look at that, Tom is underwater. >> Where am I? >> Okay, so here we are above the water, right? I see a peninsula to the left, and all that. >> Yeah. And you can see there's some little dots and things here and there. >> Yeah. >> Those are points of interest that are laid out on the map so you can find out things about the mapping of the ocean, or squids that live in certain parts of the world. But the cool thing is you know, that you can go underwater. >> Oh yeah, look at this. Now we're under. See how it goes from sky to - >> Yeah, so there's the water above us. >> A little creepy, right? >> And there's the ocean floor. Wherever they've mapped the ocean floor, which is only 10% of the ocean - >> Oh that little. >> - you can see what the ocean floor looks like. >> Pretty cool. >> Then there's also Mars. They've added Mars to Google Earth. So you go up into this menu, you choose Mars. >> Yeah, there's the Mars selection. >> And it'll flip you from being on Earth all the way to being on Mars. >> Look at that. >> And there they've got as much mapping as they have in different places, it's different details. For instance, where the Phoenix Lander is you can actually see the area around the Phoenix Lander that was mapped. There's where the Viking Two Lander went. You saw these little green guys, those are hiking spots, where they say you know, once Virgin Galactic is flying there you might be able to - >> This is where you want to go. >> - have some good views. >> Yeah, see Molly's gonna get all teary eyed cause we're gonna talk about some lander that just recently switched off. >> That's not funny Cooley. >> Yeah, we need to stop. >> That was heartbreak. My heart was actually broken, and you mock my pain. >> You were, you actually were misting up when that little robot space thing - >> It's true, it was really sad. >> We should warn you - [inaudible] >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you download this thing, pay very close attention. We're talking about Google Earth here. Pay very close attention to the options, cause Google's getting nasty with this stuff now. They'll change your home page to Google, or AOL, they'll change your home page to Google, they'll try to get you to install Chrome if you're on Windows. Didn't happen to me on OSX. >> Right. >> But that's only cause they don't have Chrome for OSX yet. So pay good attention when you're installing. >> And what part of this doesn't work on Chrome? >> None of it. Oh well it doesn't embed in Chrome anyway. >> Unbelievable. >> Yeah. >> All right. >> All right, let's get to your calls. On line two is Pinto from Oregon. Hey, welcome to the show. >> Hey, how you doing? >> We're doing good, what can we help you with today? >> I'm thinking about installing Windows Seven beta on a MacBook, but is it best to install it via VMware fusion parallels [assumed spelling], or just on boot camp. >> That's a question of taste. I don't think I've heard of any difficulties on parallels or VMware. Whichever one you're running, that's the one I would use, if you want to do it in a virtualized environment. Or if you want to be able to boot directly into it, I would put it on boot camp. That's probably going to be the more stable way. We've done it both ways. Ina Freed did it on a Mac Mini, both with boot camp and VMware. I'm doing it right now to actually take your call, through VMware. So I would say if you want to get the most stable installation do it in boot camp, you could always virtualize off that if you want to, using VMware or parallels. If you want to save space though, you could put it into a virtual image and not partition and do boot camp. And that way you could just delete that image if you ever want to get rid of it. >> Okay? Thanks for the call there Pinto. Let's see, Eric's been on hold for three and a half years, let's get to his call. He's calling from Ontario, Canada with a laptop port question. Hello Eric, welcome to CNET Live. >> Hi, how are you guys doing? >> We're doing good, what can we do for you? >> I've got a Dell 1525 laptop that has an HDMI output. And I have five operating systems running on an upgraded one terabyte hard drive. It's got XP, Vista, Windows 7, Ubunto, and OSX all running on this. >> Sounds like fun. >> And I'm trying to hook the HDMI up, and I've only had success in Windows 7 beta. >> That's interesting. >> Huh. The only OS that'll support it is the one that's not officially out. >> I receive no audio. And the other two I haven't even bothered to try yet. >> Yeah, you said in Vista you see no audio? >> No audio or video. XP only video. >> XP only video. This particular Dell that you have doesn't support audio in its HDMI chip. Even though it's capable of it, the driver they wrote for it doesn't. So you'd have to go to Intel to get a new driver from Intel for that integrated graphics chip to make the audio work with the video. Now it should work in Vista, but I only got a little bit way into doing research here. There are some different drivers in Vista for it than the driver that comes with it. So if you've allowed the Vista driver to take over or vice versa, one of those isn't working. So you might want to rip those drivers out and go get it directly from Intel again. >> Cause I know Windows 7, their beta, the drivers aren't supported for it, but it works - >> But it works fine, right, because it's not conflicting or trying to use that Dell driver. It's probably just doing like a basic drive, which works better. So you might try just turning the drivers off, and doing a basic driver, see if that worked. But I'll put a link to the show notes. There's a nice forum thread on notebookreview.com where people are having that same audio issue that you're having, and that'll give you some good links in there. That'll be at blog.cnettv.com. >> Oh, okay. >> Okay, Eric thanks for the call, appreciate it. >> Brian Tong is home sick today, but he did leave us a quick tip on how to increase your iPhone's vocabulary. Take a look. ^M00:23:22 [ music ] ^M00:23:28 >> If you have an iPhone and you like emoticons, you know all those fun smiley faces, then this quick tip is for you. I'm Brian Tong with CNET.com, and I'll show you how to get access to the Imoji [assumed spelling] icons that are extremely popular in Japan on your iPhone. Now there are a few ways you can do this, like jail breaking your iPhone, or importing the v-card file. But we're gonna show you the easiest way, even if it costs ninety nine cents. Now first up, make sure you're running the iPhone 2.2 firmware. Go to the app store, find Frosty Place, and install it. It's a Chinese RSS reader, but there's more to it. Now open the app and just play around with it for a few moments, clicking on the buttons and links. Now once you do that, exit the app, and go into your settings, select general, and scroll down to find the keyboard. Then select international keyboards, and you'll see a long list of languages, but find Japanese and press on it. From there you should see the word Imoji, so switch that to on. Now if you don't see it, reopen the Frosty Place app, and just play with it a few more times to unlock this option. Now you guys are ready to roll. So let's jump into a text message, and you'll have a globe button next to the spacebar, representing international keyboards. Press on that, and you'll have a huge collection of Imoji icons that you can use in your text messages or emails. We're talking animals, foods, and even smiling stacks of poop. It's the Japanese, you name it, they got it. Now the person you're sending messages to with Imoji icons needs to have an iPhone, and we know Apple is known to change its mind, but this works right now. So [inaudible] for giving me the heads up on this trick. I'm Brian Tong for CNET.com with a quick tip for the day, use it wisely. [ music ] >> All right, now a good thing to know about that is if you've upgraded to the new firmware, if you heard, he mentioned that you had 2.1 firmware. If you've upgraded to the new iPhone firmware, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna give you those emoticons. So you either need to downgrade to the previous firmware, then install Imoji, and then upgrade your firmware, and then it'll work. Cause if you've already done it in the old firmware, it'll stick in the new firmware. Or wait for Imoji to actually update their application to work in the new firmware. >> Okay, we got Chris in Florida. Chris has a Tivo question. Don't get a whole lot of those on this show, hello Chris. Welcome to CNET Live. >> Thank you. I appreciate you guys taking my call. >> Sure, what can we do for you? >> I'm having an issue, and I actually ordered a Tivo HD, partly because of the great reviews it received on CNET. So I figured I might call you guys and see if the [inaudible] you have there can - >> It comes back to bite us in the ass, I knew it. >> Yeah. Well the issue I'm having is in the setup of Tivo. I've tried to do everything I know to do, run through the menus, had everything set up. And I'm in Florida, have Brighthouse Cable, and they use single stream cable cards. I've had them come out, install them, they say everything's working fine. Was having some intermittent channel issues where I would tune to a channel, sometimes it would come in, sometimes it wouldn't, I'd get a black screen. Searched forums, did everything I know to do, called Tivo. They inquired about if Brighthouse used switched digital cable, which as far as I understand allows them to utilize their bandwidth better for being able to broadcast HD programs. It kind of lets them on demand send out their signals, instead of just kind of - >> Yeah, frankly you've gone through almost all the channels that you can go through. Molly had a similar experience with Comcast, not quite as involved though, right Molly? >> Yeah, mine didn't go on and on like that. But I did, when we got Tivo HD with cable card, we definitely had that ongoing channel issue. And the fact is, I hate to say it, I think the best thing you can do is stay on the phone with your cable provider nonstop until they get it fixed. Cause it really is, it's a problem on their end. Like we were, we had Comcast come out three or four times, and then ended up fighting with them about taking those visits off our bill. But it is, I am almost certain that it is a transmission problem from them to you, and they're the ones that are gonna have to fix it, I'm really sorry. >> They're just not motivated to fix those things. >> Yeah. >> That's the problem. >> You're one of those technology elite with your fancy Tivo HD and all that. Guess who's gonna be our last call of the day. It's gonna be Nick in New York, and for one simple reason. Because he's playing to the crowd here. He has a question on how to mix his Linux and pin drives. Of course we're going to talk to Tom Merritt, what are you kidding me? Nick, welcome to the show. >> Hey guys. First of all I just want to say I love to be on the show. And I know this is a really big Tom Merritt question, I'm just saying you guys are all welcome to answer it. >> Oh don't worry, you'll be hearing from Cooley on this one, let me just tell you. >> Yeah, okay. Anyway. Well I'm gonna have to run boot camp on my Mac which unfortunately broke down the other day. Anyway, anyway I also wanted to try out Linux, and so when, so, but I was originally gonna do Fusion, but then you guys told me to switch over to boot camp during the holiday help desk. But anyway, and so then, so I want to do pin drive Linux, and I've - >> I didn't know you had a son, Tom. >> Let the boy get his question out. >> Anyway, so what was I gonna say, oh yeah. >> You want to do pin drive Linux. >> Yeah, and I have like a, anyway USB drive that's like two hundred fifty six megabytes. >> Yeah. >> But me and my dad said we'll use that one for like files, and we'll use the other one for pin drives. But - >> How big is the other one? >> I told you, two hundred, oh we don't have another one. >> Okay. >> We're gonna buy another one. >> But we want to know how big a drive you recommend. >> Well you know, just for the, for the you know, for the files as big as you can get. For the Linux, depends on which [inaudible] you're using. Just go look at whatever distribution of Linux you're using, and see how big it is. That's how big of a drive you need. But frankly, two fifty six is plenty big for most of the distributions. In fact Dan's small Linux is one of my favorites for a pin drive. It's only sixty four megabytes. Now you'll want a little extra in there, a little more room, so like one twenty eight, two fifty six, plenty for that. So just take a look at that. I'll put pindrivelinux.com, and I'll put the link to Dan's small Linux in the show notes at blog.cnettv.com. >> All right, whew. >> We got a lot - >> And then I'll put Linux on this pipe. >> That's next. The first installation of Mirshom [assumed spelling] Linux, the new distro you haven't heard of, we'll talk about it next week. Who else have we got on the show next week? >> Next week we also have Linda Avey [assumed spelling], the co-founder of - >> Oh the DNA thing. >> Yeah, she's gonna do a DNA test of you find out what breed you are. >> Oh good, links point Siamese. >> Yeah. >> I can save you some time. [ background music ] >> Oh well we don't need to do that, maybe we'll do me instead. Anyway, that's at for p.m. eastern time next Thursday. >> Which I believe is still one o'clock pacific. >> And that is two p.m. Montana. >> Ooh Montana no less. >> Oh fantastic, excellent. See you guys. ^M00:30:20 [ music ]

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