Byte by Bite

Digitize your LP records

by Marv Dealy

From the editors at Cyberguys.com comes word of a turntable with software for Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP or Mac OS X. The turntable can play either 33 or 45-rpm records (yes, grasshopper, they came in two speeds and really old records whirled at an astonishing 78-rpm) and comes with RCA cables to hook into your regular stereo, as well as the USB cables needed for digital recording. No guarantees whether the recording software will take out the pops and hisses that records unfortunately develop. That, and the fact that a good scratch could cause a hiccup in the playing of a record probably had something to do with the migration to tape recording and playback units and ultimately to digital recording and playback devices.

Look at Cyberguys.com for item # 131 0638; list price $139. Many decades ago, I sold high-end stereo gear at a San Francisco store and I remember the better cartridges for a record player went for that price without the turntable attached. I had one customer who, upon purchasing a new LP, would set up his ReVox reel-to-reel tape recorder and record the new LP on its first playing.

The LP was then transferred to a climate controlled closet where it was placed on a horizontal rod, not in its cardboard sleeve of course, for storage. This gentleman would play the tape until he sensed it was wearing out, at which time the record would be played a second time for re-recording. His theory was that each time you played an LP the needle drug itself around and around the groove in the record and was wearing away bits of the music, so to speak; therefore, his elaborate efforts to preserve the original source material.

Data Theft

It’s happened again – this time an employee of accounting megalith Ernst & Young lost a laptop that contained information on thousands of Hotels.com customers. The stolen laptop apparently contained reservations information from 2002 through 2004, and Ernst & Young has begun contacting more than a quarter million affected customers whose names and credit card numbers were on the stolen laptop. The accounting firm and Hotels.com are providing free credit monitoring for a year to affected customers.

According to an article at Internetnews.com, other thefts of Ernst & Young laptops have occurred, including a laptop stolen from a car in Jew Jersey that contained data about Goldman Sachs employees. Another laptop stolen in Florida contained employee information “from a number of companies.” (http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3610801)

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (http://www.privacyrights.org) has posted a chronology at their web site that lists reported data breaches since February 2005, the date of the infamous ChoicePoint theft wherein bogus accounts were established by ID thieves and 145,000 people’s data was stolen. About a week after that, Bank of America lost a backup tape containing 1.2 million folks’ private stuff. Other data losses have included the University of California at Berkeley (98,400 affected folks); Boston College (120,000); Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (8,900); Georgia DMV (465,000); Ohio Secretary of State (“potentially millions of registered voters”); Department of Veterans Affairs (26,500,000) – the list goes on and on and on. Read it at http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm

Last summer there were two huge data losses within 10 days of each other. The first, at CitiFinancial, involved 3.9 million customers on a lost backup tape, then CardSystems was hacked for 40 million customer accounts.

PrivacyRights.org’s list contains a total of 84,797,096 folks whose data has been stolen or lost – and some of the incidents report affected numbers of folks only as “unknown.”

The last listing as of this writing involved a YMCA in Providence, Rhode Island that had a laptop stolen containing personal information of members including credit and debit cards, checking accounts, Social security numbers, names and addresses of children in daycare, and medical information about the children.

I don’t tell this to make you paranoid – just be aware.

Mailbag

Last I looked, it’s still illegal to wipe one’s car with used underwear in San Francisco, but that’s not what reader Jim Hood wrote to report. Jim writes “I tried to follow your directions on speeding up my Windows XP, Home Edition. I right-clicked My Computer and found ‘Properties’ but when I clicked ‘Advanced’ I got two choices: ‘Run with different credentials’ or ‘Run in separate Memory.’ I couldn't find ‘Performance.’ Clicking the Icon above the two choices didn't do anything. Settings on the Control Panel didn't concern ‘Best Performance.’ Am I missing the obvious?”

I checked on an XP Home machine in the office, and the same clicks and settings are indeed there, in both “guest” and “administrator” modes. So I’m not sure what you did, Jim – I’d try again. If it still doesn’t work, send me a screen snap of the screen you’re seeing. Are there differences between Home and Pro? Yes indeedey – connectivity being a big one and if you need it a reason to upgrade from Home to Pro.

On the other hand, you may want to wait on that upgrade, what with the Jabba The Hutt-like shadow cast by the upcoming release of Vista, Microsoft’s first real update to their operating system in what, twenty or thirty years?

As long as they are taking so long for the update to the most widely used operating system in the world, I think they ought to call it Rainbow as in “somewhere over the” and use a singing and dancing Judy Garland to promote the release.

XP on a Mac

Or you might not want to wait, and opt instead for the new Mac laptop that I mentioned last week – dual processors and running both Mac OS and XP Pro. Sidekick Jason Niedens reports that the installation of XP Pro got off to a rocky start. He downloaded Apple’s free Boot Camp software, which allows for the installation of XP and lets you choose which OS to use on starting or restarting the computer (very simple to do) and lets you decide whether Mac OS X or Windows XP will be the default startup system.

Boot Camp installed easily but installing XP didn’t go as smoothly with “blue screens of death” appearing several times before it just installed and got on with it.

Once installed, the Mac ran XP far faster than young Jason had ever seen. He wants one, and coming from a guy who was afraid of Macs when I first showed him one, this is something.

By the way – you can read more goofy laws (such as it being illegal to shoot a jack rabbit from the back of a streetcar in San Diego) at www.CrazyLaws.com