Around noon today 12-9-15 KVMR was notified of 2 lost dogs.
– 2 Doberman male & female
– Lost near Tylerfoot(?) Road and North Columbia School House
– These are service dogs. Please don’t touch them
– If found call 265-4356

 

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
– When what’s said is unclear to me (or I’m unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (” “) verbatim.
– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

For a limited time, the podcast of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.

 

Paul was in the studio. We didn’t hear from Glenn.

 

Paul reminded listeners that this show is about technology in general, calls and comments don’t have to be about just computers.

Paul asked the listeners what they use as a home page and also what browsers they use. The home page is the first page your browser goes to when you start it up. <Reply to zen@kvmr.org, I suppose>

Paul used to use news.google.com for his home page. This site aggregates news from various sources and presents it in one place. It can be customized to focus on the subjects you’re interested in — e.g. more technology news, less business news.

Paul likes the android app that streams KVMR radio shows.
<This looks like the app>

Paul noted that websites like Facebook know a lot about their users. When he first joined Facebook, he used a fake name so he wouldn’t be associated with the content posted there.

One of Paul’s favorite podcasts is by Radiolab, where a social media expert was interviewed about the techniques used by Facebook to gather information about their users. One of the experiments run by Facebook was to measure the likelihood users would click on news items with happy words vs. sad ones. Later, the participants were asked their feelings about being unwitting subjects. Paul wasn’t surprised that some objected, but Facebook is free and you don’t have to use it. The usefulness of a site like Facebook has to be weighed against giving up some information about yourself.

Your internet activity reveals more than you might think. Algorithms used to gather info about you are surprisingly good. You might innocently post a picture of a kitten somewhere but an algorithm can tell something about you from the context around the picture. For instance, the picture might be on a pet rescue site or a site devoted to animal smuggling. Or if you reshare a picture already on Facebook, that can put you in a particular demographic of people who Facebook already knows have shared the picture — you’re likely to be of certain age, live in urban areas etc.

Paul took some time to disparage Donald Trump and noted that his favorite homepage site at the moment, theregister.co.uk, reported that enraged British people have demanded that Donald Trump be forbidden from physically entering the UK on the basis of hate speech. There is an associated site in the US called theregister.com.

Paul’s technical roots go back some 20 years when he worked with an operating system called Linux, an open source version of Unix. These 2 systems run on servers that underpin much of the internet.

Under the hood of Mac computers is Unix-like operating system known as Darwin. It ‘evolved’ from BSD Unix (Berkeley Software Distribution). Unlike the past, when Apple tended to keep things secret, they published the source to the El Capitan/Darwin, the operating system. <Source is the more or less ‘english’ readable code before it gets put into 1s & 0s that the computer needs>.

You can see some of what’s going on under the hood of the Mac if you go to the upper right corner where the searchlight is and search for the word ‘terminal’ and then hit GO. You’ll then get a black screen with a prompt where you can type in commands like ‘date’, ‘time’ and ‘ls’. The risk of doing any damage with the commands exists but is quite low. If try to do something serious like delete some system files, it will ask you for a password.

Recently Paul went from using the Firefox browser to using Chrome. He’s noticed Firefox slowing down from continually added features and frequent updating.

Raymond called. He had contacted Paul before about upgrading a old Sony Vio. <I think he was talking about the upgrade to Lubuntu mentioned on the 9-23-15 show>. Paul said he’d like to have access to the computer to personally do the upgrade and asked Raymond to come to KVMR tomorrow. However, he’ll send the CD to Raymond so he can do the install himself if need be.

Joey called. He upgraded to El Capitan (version 10.11) and then started having problem getting emails into the Apple email program (that’s running on the Mac) from the email server (on the internet) (he uses Westhost). He’s noticed that the “incoming line” (account name) of the account settings is grayed out and can’t be changed.
– You can switch to another mail program like Thunderbird.
– Paul asked if he’s using IMAP or POP. Joey said it’s POP.
– You can try to reestablish the account. But if you use POP and delete and recreate the account, it may delete all of the locally stored mail, which may not exist on the server and will then be lost. Use the Timemachine facility to do a backup.
– In the last few years, most mail providers have allowed the use of IMAP, the preferred method. The providers don’t especially like doing it because they end up storing more mail on the servers.
– Use the web version of their service (using a web browser) and enable IMAP on the server. This is true of Gmail too. You have to go to your Google account, turn off POP & turn on IMAP.
– Do a Google search with the words: westhost imap. Paul did this and found instructions for setting up an IMAP account.
– Paul has noticed that with each incarnation of the Mac operating system there tends to be a problem with the Apple email program. He’s tempted to recommend just going to Thunderbird.

Lisa called with a tip for Joey’s problem. She said Godaddy has a discussion about this problem but didn’t give a web address.
– The fix was to go into the mail -> preferences -> advanced settings. Unselect “automatically enable this mail and account settings”, then quit the mail program and restart it. Then go back and reselect the item you had just unselected. This works for some people, but didn’t work for Lisa. What eventually did work for her was to go into the Apple tools settings (the gray cogwheel) and go to mail settings and reenter her password to the errant POP mail account. Do not recreate the account, just reenter the password.
– Paul added, if POP isn’t configured right, mail will be deleted on the server as it’s transferred to your computer. If you then try to read the mail from the server using another computer, you won’t see it. There should be a setting in your computer’s email program to tell POP to not delete mail as it’s being read (leave the email on the server).
– Lisa asked if it’s possible to use IMAP and POP with the same mail server. Paul implied that you can if you choose to ‘leave the email on the server’.
– If you want to use IMAP with a dialup connection and you have a lot of mail on the server, take your computer where you can get a high-speed connection. Then choose the ‘synchronize folder from server’ in your local setting. The first synchronization will be done high speed. When you’re back on dialup it will only have to synch any new mail, which should be manageable at the slower speeds.

Marilyn called. She’s been using MalwareBytes for a long time but recently has been annoyed by windows that keep popping up and scans that start by themselves, slowing things down. She thinks that it’s because she’s using the free version that she can’t get to setting that will change the behavior.
– The company might have just started doing things differently and it’s behavior may have changed with the last update. Paul suspected the company had been sold and the new owners decided to make some changes.
– Ditch this program and go with something else.
– Avast is both an anti-virus and anti-malware (malware as in foistware)
– Each brand of anti-virus can catch about 95% of the viruses (each usually a different 95%). Microsoft Security Essentials catches only about 70% <as suggested before, avoid Security Essentials>.

Last Updated 12:12 AM 12-10-2015