Episode 104: Snow Leopard, Make Your PC a NAS, Spotify Preview, Time Machine Sucks and Stop Data Theft: Wipe your HD [Discussion]

[Serafina]

With Snow Leopard officially out in stores we share our opinions on Apple's latest OS. Convert that old PC into a something useful like a NAS, FTP, or SMB file server. Learn how to securely wipe your PC's hard drives before giving it away, and find out why Time Machine is a big fat lemon.

Watch or download this episode here (http://revision3.com/tekzilla/snowleopard)

[nav13eh]

Great show hilarious bloppers. never used time machine before, but it sounds cool untill your data is gone. I recomand Macrium Reflect.

[whoiseric]

I wonder what version of spotify Veronica was running? I'm using the UK verision and my version seems much more sophisticated. Artist radio for one thing is awesome with unlimited skips. Spotify links http://www.7digital.com to buy the songs, but why would you want to? Spotify has a huge catalog I don't see myself buying music again anytime soon. The only thing that spotify lacks is the ability to import your own music and a great UI. With just a little bit of work Spotify could truly replace Itunes, Pandora, Amazon Music store for me.

[mrflawless]

good ep, love the segment section just incase i want to rewatch a topic again

[davmoo]

For the average person, a single pass of writing random data to the drive is sufficient to wipe it, and considerably faster than most of the other options.

[fee]

Cool Episode! enjoyed the battery talk!

[filip007]

Nice show...

Very funny about erasing drives first you show on XP then as PowerPC download.

OK first of nobody erase main HDD if PC is for sale and secondly just load Ubuntu live use 4 types of FS formats or more then sell it as empty with no FS on it or just for erasing My Documents use some type of file shredder that will overwrite the data.

[acqua2]

Good work to the post-production for blurring out Veronica's Last.fm username in the Spotify segment:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/1108/snapshot1l.th.jpg (http://img257.imageshack.us/i/snapshot1l.jpg/)

Ok, I take that back:
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8476/snapshot2a.th.jpg (http://img7.imageshack.us/i/snapshot2a.jpg/)

[fee]

Good work to the post-production for blurring out Veronica's Last.fm username in the Spotify segment:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/1108/snapshot1l.th.jpg (http://img257.imageshack.us/i/snapshot1l.jpg/)

Ok, I take that back:
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8476/snapshot2a.th.jpg (http://img7.imageshack.us/i/snapshot2a.jpg/)

Well she don't mine people knowing her Last.FM username, i mean she got a link to it on her blog, where you can become friends, and when you add her you see it anyways!

http://www.last.fm/user/earlysound I think she even posted it her on the forums, in the "What are you listening to thread?".

[summerstormpictures]

There is a solution to the default 32-bit booting in Snow Leopard and it's called SixtyFourSwitcher. It's a Preference Pane and you can get it at VersionTracker.

The link is: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10967003

Once installed, you can default the booting to 64-bit or 32-bit indefinitely.

[Ajzzz]

Did Veronica say that Spotify is available on linux? There's a library I've heard about but haven't used, I had not heard of Testify (http://xtestify.sourceforge.net/). I would really like the Amarok developers (and Foobar on Windows) to implement the library into the player.

Spotify is really good at what it does, I was impressed that it had any songs from the bands I like, but it didn't have most of the songs from them. It has plenty of music from independent labels.

Veronica posts a lot of her accounts, she accepts friends requests from almost anyone. Pretty cool taste in music too, rocking the 80's new wave, and 90's pop-punk on the show.

[sdimm]

Hi guys,

Also you forgot to mention that Spotify is putting out a iPhone and Android version of their app. Those apps will have caching so you won´t have to stream it via 3G or wlan but insted you can just keep the songs on the phone in an offline mode.

I wouldn´t be supriced if the desktopversion would get caching as well which would make it a killer service.

// Mattias
Sweden

(Have the beta for iPhone and it´s really nice)

[gadget_nut]

Really? Using an open codec, ogg vorbis, then locking it with DRM? Bastardpeople.

[fishtoprecords]

To be a real backup solution, you have to verify that a restore works. Sounds like TimeMachine fails badly in that case. But in future shows, a quick note that you really need to test the backups would be good.

And Raid is not backup. No matter what Patrick says. I can tell you many horror stories about professionally administered systems where the sysadmin ignored the failure warning on the first disk, and lost it all when the second failed.

[mod_wastrel]

While the interface is different, Spotify seems to work a lot like the old MusicMatch OnDemand radio (v8.x) did--play whatever you want, whenever you want, as much as you want (for about $5.00/mo)... before Yahoo bought 'em and ruined the service (and the interface). So, if it turns out to be *that* good, then I might buy into it. Till then--or if not, Slacker still suits (better than the others).

[mod_wastrel]

Fun film (dare I say, "cult"? :D)

[drfyzziks]

Just watched the episode - good stuff as always. I've had no problems with Snow Leopard, and I'm really beginning to appreciate the little tweaks Apple included - like nice built-in network scanning support for my Brother MFC-7820N all-in-one.

Patrick's response to Trevor's question about rechargeable batteries did irk me a bit, although I'm sure Patrick was joking. Canada & the US share the same power system, all the way down to the standards for household voltage. You can plug stuff into the wall in either country & it'll work just fine, including battery chargers.

I'm not sure why Trevor was having trouble with his rechargeable batteries - unless he lives in a very rural area & has problems getting "clean" power. I've seen noisy systems wreak havoc with battery chargers & he may have damaged his rechargeables. But that's common to a lot of rural areas, in both Canada & the US.

[cogo]

Great episode, however I feel you failed to mention some of the major Spotify features.
- The open API.
- The collaborative playlists and how you can share songs using links.
- iPhone and Android clients with support for caching playlists.
- 320kb/s quality for paying users.

[baldmonkey]

The colaborative playlists is one of the best functions in Spotify.
And sharing spotify playlists is the new mixtape.

[jon426]

Spotify sounds interesting but my favorite online music site currently is Lala.com. Lala's mix it up feature lets me listen to similar artists and then allows me to purchase the tracks I like in non-DRMed mp3 format. Lala also scrobbles to last.fm, posts to facebook and is an online storage locker for all of my music.

[marcushast]

Did Veronica say that Spotify is available on linux?
Well, you can run it under Wine, and it works well like that.

I've been running Spotify for quite some time now, and I have to say it's pretty great. A lot of the US services (like Lala and Pandora) don't work anywhere else and this is were something like Spotify can pick up their slack.

Unfortunately all the music isn't available everywhere (IIRC they have their entire catalog available as a Google Docs sheet.) but that's due to licensing issues. Hopefully the license holders will realize that they have more to earn by making the music available through legal means so fans don't have to resort to *ahem* alternative channels.

Hopefully they will open up their APIs even more in the future to create some really interesting new ways of consuming and discovering music.

[mcuk]

Spotify's client is really powerful, way better than itunes because itunes lacks even basic play queue features.

The play queue in Spotify is essentially a more powerful version of the sort you get in WinAmp or Amarok. You can queue and reorder tracks on demand, whilst having a secondary queue for whenever the primary queue is exhausted.

As others have said, sharing playlists is indeed Spotify's main feature. A whole ecosystem of websites has developed around sharing playlists. Then there's the collaborative playlists, basically crowd sourcing for the best tracks to fit a theme.

Here's my weird rock/metal band covers of pop-ish songs (http://open.spotify.com/user/malcam/playlist/5hb8fHoDaJmxdtiqnAF2MW) - if anyone's interested, warning: it gets a bit dark in the middle. That reminds me, one problem with Spotify is tracks disappear - presumably because they are having licensing issues. It's annoying when something disappears off a playlist and you can't tell what it is. Grr...

[davidzero]

Patrick recommends Duracel NiMh AA batteries.

I have found these are some of the worst rechargeables. I have a Canon Powershot that takes two AAs. I had some new Duracells and charger. They give me about 20 - 30 shots then crap out. I bought some more Duracells thinking I had a bad batch. Same story with the second batch. Then again, I had some Fuji AA's that gave me twice the time. And these were well used batteries. Then I logged onto Amazon and ordered some of the Enelop batteries Patrick also recommends. These are excellent - much , much better than Duracells. Also ordered some AAs by "High Capacity Power Products" which are also excellent But save your money and forget about those lousy Duracells. I don't know what the problem is, but two packs is all it takes to convince me.

[davefriedel]

Windows 2008 (and I'm assuming Windows 7) the built in backup does a very simple thing. When you back up the whole machine, it creates the backup file as a .VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) image. This can then be spun up with Virtual PC or Hyper-V, and probably VMware's free virtual server as well.

[davefriedel]

The problem with any built-in "restore to a point in time" is that it is a battle of storage space against stale data. If it kept everything for exactly 30 days, and you decided to copy a bunch of DVD movies, it would suck up all the hard disk.

So Time Machine in Mac and System Restore in Windows, have to use special techniques to best estimate what to save and not to save, and just how long to save it.

Avoid all this. Use Mozy.com. Then you can pay for a level of archiving and space incrementally. The space is unlimited, so theoretically you can pay for whatever amount you want, for any length of time you want.

I've done restores of single files from Mozy.com without any problem. Some of them were nearly a year old... no problems.

[davefriedel]

Plus it's automatic off site storage. If your computer is stolen or destroyed by aliens, you still have your files plus all their earlier versions... even if you had deleted them.

[baldmonkey]

And now the official Spotify client is available on the iPhone and Android. At least over here.

[ghostborg]

Spotify,Invite code are you kidding. hmmm can you say PIA.
Yet another Buzz app.

[Ayeaux]

Patrick recommends Duracel NiMh AA batteries.

I have found these are some of the worst rechargeables. I have a Canon Powershot that takes two AAs. I had some new Duracells and charger. They give me about 20 - 30 shots then crap out. I bought some more Duracells thinking I had a bad batch. Same story with the second batch. Then again, I had some Fuji AA's that gave me twice the time. And these were well used batteries. Then I logged onto Amazon and ordered some of the Enelop batteries Patrick also recommends. These are excellent - much , much better than Duracells. Also ordered some AAs by "High Capacity Power Products" which are also excellent But save your money and forget about those lousy Duracells. I don't know what the problem is, but two packs is all it takes to convince me.


Make sure you've gotten the PRECHARGED Duracells. There are actually three types of durcell rechargeable batteries. The regular ones have a higher Mah rating but are not precharged. The Precharged ones have different flavors as well-- the ones with white on the very top of the cell and "Made In Japan" are believed to be Sanyo Eneloops with Duracell wrappers, the ones with black on the very top of the cell and "Made In China" are believed to be Rayovac Hybrids with Duracell wrappers.

Basically you want the Duracell Precharged with white tops that are made in Japan. The black tops are made in China, and while are good, are just not quite as good as the white tops. Or better yet, just get some eneloops. I've had some for about 2 years and have had no problems. I usually get several hundred pics from a Canon Powershot A720is.

[macskeeball]

The 32-bit kernel is in fact able to address more than 4GB of RAM. Also, only four of the apps included in Snow Leopard are not 32-bit, so if Roger has a 64-bit Mac he has indeed seen the 32-bit kernel run 64-bit apps. For example, the Finder is now 64-bit.

512px icons were introduced with Leopard, not with Snow Leopard. What's new is more convenient resizing icon view, as well as the ability to play videos and view multipage documents using those icons.

Don't confuse QuickTime Player with QuickTime the framework.

Recommended reading
John Siracusa's in-depth review (http://www.arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars) for ArsTechnica. Lengthy, but well worth it. Wikidot compatibility list (http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/)
MacBreak demos of Services + Automator (http://www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak235) with Sal Saghoian

[flightvector]

Yes, I'm dismayed this was overlooked, there is no tangible benefit to booting 64-bit kernel unless you want to address an obscene amount of RAM, and I'm talking over 32 GB (or even up to 32 Exabytes... um yeah...), which a Macbook Pro can't even do.

Look at Activity Monitor and you'll see you're running all the Apple apps in 64-bit; and yes, that means they can access more than 4 GB of RAM.

[veronicazilla]

Yeah, I'm earlysound (http://www.last.fm/user/earlysound) on last.fm, I share it on my website as well!

re: sharing playlists, that was actually a feature I missed! I'm not sure how to do the collaborative lists, can you tell me? I can right-click on the playlist and see that feature, but I'm not sure what to do with it now.

There aren't many US users, maybe that's the issue?

[masherscf]

So, my five-year old daughter puts on her Tekzilla T-shirt and laughs, "Now I'm smart and funny like Veronica..." I think I watch too much Tekzilla.

[baldmonkey]

Yeah, I'm earlysound (http://www.last.fm/user/earlysound) on last.fm, I share it on my website as well!

re: sharing playlists, that was actually a feature I missed! I'm not sure how to do the collaborative lists, can you tell me? I can right-click on the playlist and see that feature, but I'm not sure what to do with it now.

There aren't many US users, maybe that's the issue?

When you right clicked on it and made the playlist colaborative people who you send it to can edit the list. Perfect for when planning a party together or at the office so people can go in and add the songs they want to hear at the after work.

A good place to find playlist is http://sharemyplaylists.com/

[macskeeball]

Yes, I'm dismayed this was overlooked, there is no tangible benefit to booting 64-bit kernel unless you want to address an obscene amount of RAM, and I'm talking over 32 GB (or even up to 32 Exabytes... um yeah...), which a Macbook Pro can't even do.

Look at Activity Monitor and you'll see you're running all the Apple apps in 64-bit; and yes, that means they can access more than 4 GB of RAM.

As for reasons to avoid a 64-bit kernel for the time being, there currently aren't enough compatible device drivers for third party devices. Page 5 (http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/5) of John Siracusa's review that I previously linked to addresses (pun intended) the 64-bit/32-bit issue.

[veronicazilla]

When you right clicked on it and made the playlist colaborative people who you send it to can edit the list. Perfect for when planning a party together or at the office so people can go in and add the songs they want to hear at the after work.

A good place to find playlist is http://sharemyplaylists.com/

Cool, thanks!

[primateomega]

Maybe it's because they're Energizer, but so far, I've never been able to get Energizer rechargeable batteries to successfully power a Rock Band guitar. Patrick, have you tried this?

[veronicazilla]

So, my five-year old daughter puts on her Tekzilla T-shirt and laughs, "Now I'm smart and funny like Veronica..." I think I watch too much Tekzilla.

:p love it!!!

[masherscf]

:p love it!!!

I'll let her know that you approve.

[honza]

Btw: ScreenToaster reminded me FriendSea ( http://www.friendsea.com/ ), a small piece of software that allows you to present your desktop in realtime (no need for flash support for viewers - just web browser)

[maxhdrm]

Time Machine started out good in concept and initial implementation but I think there are a few apps that have improved upon them without the loss of data.

Also I have a better option to Screentoaster which is Camtasia Studio 6. I used it to record a PowerPoint presentation as it played (could'nt resolved my embedded avi video intro issues after conversion through PP) It was great and worth every penny. more formation options for output then ScreenToaster.