The iMic USB microphone comes with software for ripping vinyl records, without having to connect a turntable to a pre-amp.

Bye-bye Aibo

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Checklist: 11 things to do after a hack (This is aimed at businesses.)

We preach quite a bit on this site about how to prevent security breaches, and hopefully you take it to heart and play an active role in hardening your systems. But sometimes even that ounce of prevention and pound of cure isn't enough to defend against a predator and the resulting penetration of your protections can be a mind-boggling experience.

Where do you begin? Here's a brief list of some steps to take "post-hack" to ensure you have the best chance of determining who did what and how it was done.

ISTR someone showing a device at CES that ripped 78s.

Our Olive Symphony will rip anything you attach to its audio input -- a turntable, a cassette player, an 8-track player, whatev.

I'm about ready to throw out my wireless router and get rid of Verizon DSL.

Wednesday night I came home late, and Emily informed me that we had no Internet. I was too tired to deal with it, so I called Verizon Thursday morning.

We established that their modem was working fine, and it was a Netgear problem. So, I called Netgear.

They quickly established that it was a DSL modem problem, so I called Verizon back.

Netgear told me that we needed to switch the modem to bridge mode and disable DHCP service. So, the Verizon guy, Al, walked me through how to do that. Then, Al helped me try to reconfigure the router for these settings, and I was supposed to be good to go.

But, we're not. The Internet is slower than slow, and some pages refuse to load at all. I've been able to check hotmail once since all of these changes. I am frustrated and don't know where to turn or what else to try. It was fine for three months as it was, and now the connection is just weird.

Anyone have any suggestions or things I could try? I don't want to have to call Verizon or Netgear again, because they just send me to the other.

We established that their modem was working fine, and it was a Netgear problem.

Did they have you connect to just the dsl modem (bypass the Netgear wifi) with one machine? Many times the so called techs at these centers are just following specific tests.

As far as the router is concerned, I'm assuming they had you go through the usual "turn everything off" then start up the DSL modem, wait for it to be fully up, then turn on the router?.

Also, I find that usng DHCP on the router seems to work better than depending on the DHCP on the DSL box. Your DSL may vary.

It seems that they should not have had to change your settings if it was working before. Make sure the phone lines are securely in place, and that no one has swapped lines or put phones somewhere without a filter dongle, if Verison requires them.

Most of this I'm hoping has been tried, but it's best to ask than to assume when troubleshooting.

Did they have you connect to just the dsl modem (bypass the Netgear wifi) with one machine?

Yes.

As far as the router is concerned, I'm assuming they had you go through the usual "turn everything off" then start up the DSL modem, wait for it to be fully up, then turn on the router?.

Yes. I'v done this three or four times.

It seems that they should not have had to change your settings if it was working before.

I know. But, it wasn't working at all, and I guess this is at least better than that.

Make sure the phone lines are securely in place, and that no one has swapped lines or put phones somewhere without a filter dongle, if Verison requires them.

Checked.

Make sure the phone lines are securely in place, and that no one has swapped lines or put phones somewhere without a filter dongle, if Verison requires them.

You're correct, but thank you.

Sorry about your DSL, vw. My experience with Verizon DSL is that they're a bunch of incompetent morons. (My eventual solution was to switch to Earthlink's cable internet service, which has been mostly flawless.)

I just purchased an ergonomic keyboard, and I'm wondering if there's any way to tell OSX that I want to use the Ctrl key instead of the now-nonexistant Command key? Right now, it thinks the Command key is the Windows logo key, which is better positioned than the Command key on the Mac keyboard, but still not ideal.

[eta: Found it! I lurve my keyboard now.]