ORIGINALLY AIRED: 10/22/2004

PC Security Probing, Spy Gear, TRON Costume

Episode #2704

Alex was quite happy to report that he did indeed receive finally receive his free 20 GB iPod from freeipods.com. “Yes, TWO MONTHS later,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it’s free. So it works!”

In tech topics, Kevin and Alex were intrigued and appalled by the newest concept in bottled water: filtered toilet water(link requires registration). “A friend of mine told me it tastes like bongwater,” Kevin said. (Which begs the question: Why does Kevin’s friend drink bongwater?) Alex was wondering why people would choose filtered toilet water when they could just get regular, ol’ spring water – The Screen Savers, in fact, have their own water boy who flings a bottle at whoever says the word “water.” Alex proved this by getting pegged by several bottles in the course of the show.

Meanwhile, it may be payback time for the litigious music industry: the New York State attorney general is investigating how record labels influence what songs make it on the air (AKA “payola”). Eliot Spritzer has sent subpoenas to Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group, and the Warner Music Group to get their records dealing with music promoters. Perhaps the music industry must be saved not from digital downloads but from itself.

Finally, Alex was excited by a new USB thumb drive with a female socket on one end. No, it’s more exciting than that – it can share files with other USB thumb drives without having to be plugged into a PC first. Read about it an engadget.com.

James from Francois, Newfoundland, Canada is a principal of a K-12 school. His students use IM programs on the school network quite a bit, and he was wondering how he can disable them. 

The easiest way to disable IM clients and P2P apps is with a free program called IM Detector Pro. You can run this locally on each machine in your network or remotely from your own. It detects AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Skype, ICQ, Gnutella (Gnutella is Morpheus, Gnucleus, Xolox, Shareaza, LimeWire, BearShare) and FastTrack (FastTrack is KaZaa, KaZaa Lite, Grokster, iMesh and MusicCity). Blocking an IM client or P2P app couldn’t be any easier -- all you do is tick a box.

We also have a tip from Leo in the TechTV Vault.

Christopher Adams from LAMSA Weapons Systems brought in a collection of cutting-edge devices used by law enforcement and the military – ones that you can buy, too. (Though you can’t export them – sorry, 007.) LAMSA sells every sort of surveillance and detection device you’ve never heard of.

“If it takes batteries and doesn’t vibrate, we probably sell it,” said Christopher, adding that some products are back-ordered six months due to military demand.

The items he demonstrated include:

P3 Millennium Sensor – It can be used to create voice warnings when tripped, or trigger other devices (such as land mines).

Night Vision Surveillance Camera – It uses light amplification technology, but uses black and white video (rather than green) which creates a higher contrast image.

Doio Cadet 75 Thermal Camera – It can see especially well through smoke or pitch darkness.

Learn more at http://www.lamsa.com/

Viewers often ask how hackers learn about network or PC vulnerabilities, so Kevin demonstrated a free piece of software that does just that: It can tell you exactly what needs to be updated or secured. The free version NeWT will only scan your local subnet, while NeWT Pro will scan anything. (Note: The Pro version costs $6,000.)

To learn more and to grab your free copy of NeWT, go to tenablesecurity.com.

With Halloween around the corner, you might want to start planning your costume – and if you’re a computer user, what better costume is there than TRON? True, not many people can carry off wearing a body stocking with glowing circuitry as well as Jeff Bridges did in the movie, but that did not stop Paul Baumgaertner.

The recent college grad didn’t see TRON when it was originally in theaters (being around three at the time), but he became a fan once he got into computers. “I had never really watched it, but I became a computer science major, then sort of fell into it,” Paul said.

Thus, when trying to find a costume for a massive outdoor Halloween party in Madison, WI, he hit upon TRON. He and his rock band Baum Squad had toured Japan in robot outfits, so he had some experience making costumes. Constructing the TRON costume was but a simple matter of going to a used sporting goods store and locating various sports paraphernalia: a hockey helmet, soccer shin guards, and a catcher’s chest guard. Then he bought a lot of glow-in-the-dark paint and painstakingly recreated the circuitry.

It’s been a big hit at Halloween, and it was reported at Slashdot.org, which lead to some Internet fame for Paul. (Though, sadly, it hasn’t gotten much luck in one department: “It’s rare to find a woman who even understands TRON,” he said wistfully.) Now there are other TRON costume makers (such as Jay Maynard). "Maybe we should have you guys fight," suggested Kevin. Bring out the deadly flying hard drives!

For our web-exclusive interview with Paul about his TRON odyssey, check back here next week.

 

Allowing dust to collect inside your PC can cause performance slowdowns. “I have dust people in my PC, a whole dust colony,” admitted Alex. Of course, a lot of that dust gets into your system through the intake fan – yet many computers don’t have filters over them. A very easy way to install a non-obtrusive filter is to simply stretch pantyhose over the fan grating. Done!

For more info on PC ventilation and keeping the innards clean, read this Yoshi article from the TechTV Vault.

Want a simple, clean desktop without all that pesky text cluttering up your icons? Normally, Windows doesn’t allow you remove program names, but Sarah’s got a tweak that’ll do the trick. Just read her article for all the details.