A month or so ago, I noticed port scanning on my router, which turned out to be coming from Mindspring's own DNS servers! Mindspring was absorbed by Earthlink some time ago, so I tried to report this ongoing port scan via Earthlink's network abuse online form, and after dealing with the usual useless form letter responses, I end up with this gem:
Subject: Re: Abuse Issues - Hacking/Denial of Service by Earthlink customer (******) From: "epasupport@earthlink.net" <epasupport@earthlink.net> Reply-To: "epasupport@earthlink.net" <epasupport@earthlink.net>
Dear [me],
Thank you for your reply.
We understand that your concern regarding the Hacking attempt on your computer.
We regret to inform you that we do not support routers. So please bypass the router and then try to connect. If you face any issue then let us know.
Unfortunately, Earthlink does not support the networking of multiple computers to our broadband services without our Home Networking Plan. For more information please visit: http://www.earthlink.net/home/broadband/ho menetwork/
We appreciate your understanding.
For further queries, please feel free to get back to us.
So the bottom line is that since I don't pay for their connection sharing service (basically renting a router) and use my own router/firewall, their solution is to bypass my router and put my PC directly on my DSL line to see if the port scanning continues...
I have a Sony DVD burner (DRU-510A). It was bundled with a basic version of Sonic MyDVD. MyDVD has an option that would make it transcode audio to AC3 stereo for imported MPEG2 video files. I would post a image of the options window, but I don't want my site to get slashdotted.:)
As a DVD authoring program, I wasn't too impressed with the bundled MyDVD. After digging around for other software, I ended up purchasing the DVDlab/EditStudio/MPEG XS codec bundle mediachance offers. I have been very pleased with DVDlab and EditStudio, especially for the price of the bundle. Most consumer-level DVD authoring and video editing software seems to be very basic with a dumbed-down interface. DVD-lab and EditStudio have a lot more features and don't treat the user like a simpleton.
My current process of building a DVD (mostly from home movie captures) is to edit the video in EditSTudio and render an MPEG2 stream with PCM audio. I use MyDVD to build a 'dummy' DVD project to the hard drive. I have MyDVD set to transcode imported MPEG2 audio streams to AC3 stereo. After that is complete, I use DVDlab to demux the vob files created by MyDVD and then proceed to build my 'real' DVD project with DVDlab. Compressing the audio to AC3 stereo results in very compatable DVD discs (MP2 audio for DVD is not part of the standard for NTSC and not all players will support it. See the DVD FAQ) and the compression of about 12:1 on the audio streams leaves more room for higher bitrate (i.e. higher quality) video streams.
I have looked at stand-alone AC3 encoders, but they are very expensive, even for basic stereo encoding. The freeware encoders seem to be very buggy and are probably illegal since they aren't licensed by Dolby Labs. So far the cheapest AC3 encoding solution for me has been using the MyDVD bundleware.
I have used BackupMyPC for a while now. It works well enough. I have several issues with it though:
It only supports 32 media per backup session (I have yet to figure out how this works out over multiple incremental sessions... 32 for the entire series, or 32 per session?), regardless of whether the media is CD-R, DVD, tape, or whatever. The exception being backing up to a large, single file. I think the software only estimates the number of media based on what it expects to get from its compression efforts. There has been one case where I managed to burn 32 coasters because the estimate was way off and the selected files didn't compress as expected.
The other problem I have is that the software doesn't recover very well if verify mode is turned on and one of the CD-Rs used for the session turns out to be bad. I have to delete all of the images from the 'catalog' for that backup session. Plus, you have to close and reopen the software even after deleting the images from the catalog, because it still 'remembers' the images you deleted and will not back up those files again, even though it needs to.
The verify phase is rather annoying. Instead of burning a CD-R then immediately verifying the one currently in the drive, it will burn up to 32 CD-Rs in a row, and then ask you to insert them all again, one by one, to verify the data.
Slashdot Mirror
Not super-great but it seems to have some usefullness (for Windoze):
http://www.simpleocr.com
I have a Sony DVD burner (DRU-510A). It was bundled with a basic version of Sonic MyDVD. MyDVD has an option that would make it transcode audio to AC3 stereo for imported MPEG2 video files. I would post a image of the options window, but I don't want my site to get slashdotted. :)
As a DVD authoring program, I wasn't too impressed with the bundled MyDVD. After digging around for other software, I ended up purchasing the DVDlab/EditStudio/MPEG XS codec bundle mediachance offers. I have been very pleased with DVDlab and EditStudio, especially for the price of the bundle. Most consumer-level DVD authoring and video editing software seems to be very basic with a dumbed-down interface. DVD-lab and EditStudio have a lot more features and don't treat the user like a simpleton.
My current process of building a DVD (mostly from home movie captures) is to edit the video in EditSTudio and render an MPEG2 stream with PCM audio. I use MyDVD to build a 'dummy' DVD project to the hard drive. I have MyDVD set to transcode imported MPEG2 audio streams to AC3 stereo. After that is complete, I use DVDlab to demux the vob files created by MyDVD and then proceed to build my 'real' DVD project with DVDlab. Compressing the audio to AC3 stereo results in very compatable DVD discs (MP2 audio for DVD is not part of the standard for NTSC and not all players will support it. See the DVD FAQ) and the compression of about 12:1 on the audio streams leaves more room for higher bitrate (i.e. higher quality) video streams.
I have looked at stand-alone AC3 encoders, but they are very expensive, even for basic stereo encoding. The freeware encoders seem to be very buggy and are probably illegal since they aren't licensed by Dolby Labs. So far the cheapest AC3 encoding solution for me has been using the MyDVD bundleware.
I have used BackupMyPC for a while now. It works well enough. I have several issues with it though:
It only supports 32 media per backup session (I have yet to figure out how this works out over multiple incremental sessions... 32 for the entire series, or 32 per session?), regardless of whether the media is CD-R, DVD, tape, or whatever. The exception being backing up to a large, single file. I think the software only estimates the number of media based on what it expects to get from its compression efforts. There has been one case where I managed to burn 32 coasters because the estimate was way off and the selected files didn't compress as expected.
The other problem I have is that the software doesn't recover very well if verify mode is turned on and one of the CD-Rs used for the session turns out to be bad. I have to delete all of the images from the 'catalog' for that backup session. Plus, you have to close and reopen the software even after deleting the images from the catalog, because it still 'remembers' the images you deleted and will not back up those files again, even though it needs to.
The verify phase is rather annoying. Instead of burning a CD-R then immediately verifying the one currently in the drive, it will burn up to 32 CD-Rs in a row, and then ask you to insert them all again, one by one, to verify the data.