MaximumPC 2007 09

110 MAXIMUMPC SEPTEMBER 2007

We tackle tough reader questions on...

Eastern Europe PCooling Your Optical Drive

PEnhancing Ads PNet Nanny Redux

WE’RE KEEPIN’ IT COOL

In “Target Your Hotspots” (July 2007) you say many

times that optical drives do not need any extra cooling,

and the thermal images in the story concur with that.

I was wondering what the drives were doing when

the images were taken? Were they idle? Reading a

disc? Writing a disc? Optical drives are not used as

extensively as the rest of a PC and therefore can stay

significantly cooler. When they do go into action, how-

ever, they can get hot. With drive speeds getting faster

and faster, more heat is generated, albeit for less time.

If heat could cause a DVD burner to “die,” maybe a little

cooling is in order if you use the drive a lot.

—Yonasan Resnick

ASSOCIATE EDITOR DAVID MURPHY RESPONDS:

For all of our thermal shots, we were running

Oblivion with all the details maxed out. The

computer was accessing the drive as it nor-

mally would through the course of gameplay.

While an optical drive will get warmer when

you’re burning to media, virtually any part on a

computer will get warm if you run it at its peak

operating capacity for a long time. If we were

to run the CPU at 100 percent for 24 hours a

day, we’d recommend more powerful cooling

for all of the motherboard hotspots. We’d also

call that computer a server and stash it in a

frosty room.

With average use, though, an optical drive

needs no cooling. If you plan to spend the

entirety of your day burning DVDs, then yes,

you might want to reconsider the airflow of

your case just a bit, if for nothing else than to

ease your own cooling fears.

OUR APOLOGIES

I have been an avid reader of Maximum PC for

more than two years. Last month’s issue (July

2007) had an advertisement for male enhance-

ment pills. At first I thought to myself, “What does a

man’s sexual life have to do with fast computers?”

Then I thought that it was possibly a mistake and

wasn’t supposed to be in there. Well, I read through

the next issue (August 2007) today and there it was

again. Now I know it was not a mistake. As of now,

I am terribly upset with Maximum PC for putting

this advertisement into the magazine on purpose.

What gives?

—Ryan Hankins

EDITOR IN CHIEF WILL SMITH RESPONDS: As a

general rule, it’s a good thing that we maintain

a healthy separation between the editorial

staff and the advertising staff at Maximum PC.

That prevents advertisers from influencing the

editorial content of the magazine. It also means

editors don’t have any control over the ads that

run in the mag. This is also a good thing.

We do, however, forward readers’ com-

plaints to our publisher. After hearing from

you and many other people, our publisher

pulled the ad from the September issue (and

all issues going forward). You can rest assured

that we won’t be running ads for those types of

products again.

FREE HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE

As an avid (albeit amateur) photographer, I was

thrilled to see your how-to article about high

dynamic range photos (July 2007). However, in

my capacity as a crusader for free software, I feel

obligated to let you know that you can create HDR

images without taking out a second mortgage for

Photoshop or Photomatix.

There’s a lovely program called FDR Tools

(http://tinyurl.com/olpot) that does the job nicely

and is free. While it may not have all the bells and

whistles of Photomatix, it does create perfectly fine

HDR images (you can see an example at http://

tinyurl.com/2ewusx).

Thanks for taking the time to listen to the ranting of

a cheap photographer.

—Ken Bauer

PROTECTING YOUR KIDS, PART 2

Kudos for your story on cracking parental-control

programs (July 2007). Now, can we have the rest of the

story? I would really like to know how to help programs

like Net Nanny become uncrackable, preferably without

having to reverse engineer your article. My challenge

to you: What can you do to make these programs as

secure as possible? I know nothing can be completely

secure, but how close can you come? Some steps

seem elementary, like using a secure Windows pass-

word not known to everyone in the family. That makes

it harder to do anything requiring a reboot. Your article

was quite eye-opening; now how about something that

really helps.

—Jo L. Will

E-ducation on

Estonia

While reading the August 2007 issue

of Maximum PC (a great one, by the

way), I could not help but notice that

the previous 68 years didn’t seem to

elapse in Estonia. The map below your

article about Estonia’s recent DDoS

trouble (“E-strike on Estonia,” Quick

Start) shows the boundaries at their

1918–1939 locations, not their present

ones. Have I missed a hole in the time-

space continuum?

—Tom Fahey

SENIOR EDITOR KATHERINE

STEVENSON RESPONDS: Seems like

our attempts to better educate readers

inoutYOU WRITE, WE RESPOND

on Estonia’s whereabouts only served to expose

our own shaky grasp of the geographic arts.

Unlike you, Tom, we don’t really focus on bor-

ders—you know, the global village and all. But

just so we’re all on the same page, and in the

same era, here’s an updated map of the region.

Our apologies to Estonia and its neighbors.