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 < >

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today.

When New Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006, Pluto was still thought of as a planet. Shortly afterward it was demoted to planetoid. The some of the ashes of its discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh are on board.

Paul reminded us that comments are welcome at the Zen Tech website. You first have to show that you are not an automated bot by passing the captcha test. Captchas are meant to stop computers but don’t do so well against cheap overseas labor that’s hired to defeat them. Ultimately, they may not always stop the miscreants, just slow them down.
<I’ve had varying degrees of difficulty with the Zentech captcha. Paul has tweaked it to make it easier. Remember, you can keep reloading a different captcha image until you see one that’s less challenging.>

Jake called to say the word ‘planet’ meant wanderer in Greek. They wandered or moved among the stationary lights in the celestial sphere. Paul noted that if you live long enough, you’d see that the stars also move around. Paul’s found a free program called Celestia that shows what the sky looks like in the future or the past. You can use it to animate the stars’ motion over the eons.

JC called and asked Paul what surprised him about Pluto. Since it’s essentially an asteroid, Paul was impressed by its roundness. JC was surprised by the heart-shaped region.

A NASA researcher was repeatedly asked why the craft couldn’t linger in the vicinity of Pluto, instead of rushing by in a matter of minutes. It’s because it would have taken an Atlas 5 rocket, its original launch vehicle, to slow it down enough to enter orbit.

<Some resources for those interested in the Pluto mission…

New Horizons Delivers First Close-Up Glimpse of Pluto and Charon

Slide show including historic images:

A recent NOVA episode, “Chasing Pluto“, was about the New Horizons project.
Or see it on Youtube if you’re thinking about downloading it:
>

Because the signal from the craft is weak, it has to be transmitted at a slow pace. <About 4000 bps, I heard>. And since it takes about 5 hours for the signal to reach earth, the data is sent in big chunks before error correction is applied.

Glenn thanked loyal listeners who’ve supported KVMR. If you’d like to become a member, please visit the KVMR webpage.

Scott called from Topanga in Southern Calif. He once met and shook the hand of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto. He worked at Hughes Aircraft at the time and attended a lecture Tombaugh gave. Scott said Tombaugh had to flip back and forth between photos <in an image comparator> of the night sky taken at different times. If a point of light seemed to jump during the image flip, that would indicate a moving object and potentially a planet. There’s a good article about this in the current issue of the National Geographic, Scott said

Paul asked Scott how well he receives KVMR broadcasts. He said it’s pretty good now but he gave up listening yesterday because it was “dropping out” too often.

Scott said there is a delay between what he’s now hearing over the phone and the KVMR signal he’s receiving. Paul explained that what said in the studio is delayed by a couple of seconds as it’s digitally is sent to the broadcast tower and out thru the FM radio signal. If you listen over the internet, the delay is 15 to 30 seconds.

Marilyn called about a problem she’s since resolved. But last night she was getting an error and “cgiredirect.ha” in the address bar. Neither the Mozilla <Firefox> nor Chrome browsers would allow her to go to any website. She cleared her cache & cookies to fix the problem. She wanted to know what caused the problem and how to avoid it.

Paul explained that if her particular router loses the internet connection it will bring up a redirect page that says your broadband connection is down. It does this with a scirpt <a program in plain text>, which ends in “cgi”. CGI means common gateway interface and is a scripting language. The script, which in this case, “resides in the router whose purpose is to bring up a page saying there’s a problem with your internet connection”. When this script was created the programmer neglected to keep it from being cached so it persists in a browser page. That’s why it went away when she cleared the cache. Paul said it may also be necessary to restart the browser. This is a bug in a couple of specific types of routers that are provided by the company with whom she has a DSL account.

Marilyn also asked if router can wear out and needs to be replaced periodically. Paul said it can and there’s no good way to tell if it’s about to fail except to replace it and note if performance improves. They are reasonably inexpensive and he’s had good luck with buying them over the internet.

Paul asked Glenn if he’s done any upgrades recently. Glenn said he doesn’t do much upgrading and he just gets by with his iPad that he’s had for almost 3 years. He rarely uses a computer anymore. Paul said he’s recently been taking things apart, mostly because he likes to tinker and fix things. He suggested ifixit.com as a great source of information for such projects. There’s much info about taking smartphones apart.

Paul had a chance to tinker with a 2006 era Mac Mini. Original versions had a Motorola CPU. Around 2005 or 2006 Apple started using the Intel CPU. Paul discovered that the Intel Core Duo & Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs are pin compatible and there are instructions at ifixit to replace one with the other. Some salient points…
– Do not try this at home, it’s not for the faint of heart and you may break it.
– The difference between the 2 CPUs is that one can run in 64bit mode full time.
– You’ll need a silver thermal paste to use with the heat sink.
– You’ll need spring-loaded plastic clips to hold the heat sink down.

Paul bought a set of jewelers tools from china. The set included drivers for torque screws. He noted that tools are way cheaper than they used to be.

He suggested that hobbyists invest in a magnifying glass — one made of glass not plastic. He also mentioned a UVC USB microscope that magnifies 300X. It plugs into the USB port of a computer and doesn’t need any drivers. Most cameras are now UVC, too — he wouldn’t buy any other type.

During the show, Glenn encountered a problem with his iPad. He went online to do a search and it locked up with a square on the screen saying “facebook.com claim price dot click”. It said he won a price and to “click here to get it”. He couldn’t do anything, even after restarting the iPad and the Safari browser. He’s going to consult with Paul to resolve the problem after this show.

Glenn said Apple TV is coming out. According to rumor it’s “going to replace everything” — home TV, cable, satellite, all the way down to local TV broadcasters. All you’ll need is the internet. Apple is still negotiating with the major networks.

Paul talked a bit about IPTV and that Netgear is selling a device to providers like Netfilx to cache and stream video content from different locations around the country. This is to reduce the delay caused by sending data over a long distance from one central location.

By email, Marilyn asked for opinions about RabbitTV.
– The guy tried it at one time. Glenn paid $5, Paul $1.
– It’s a device that you plug in and it takes you to a page with a bunch of links you could just as well have found on your own.
– Many of the links don’t work. Many are worthless.
– It’s not really free TV, as advertised.

According to this review, Rabbit TV is dropping the USB stick and becoming online only as RabbitTV Plus:

<I haven’t tried and can’t vouch for this, but IPTV looks interesting.>

Last Updated 11:00 PM 7-22-2015

Shows After This: July 22nd & 29th!

A free, bootable operating system for your PC that looks JUST like a MAC (but is not)
http://trentaos.org/

StingRay 2 Cell Phone Monitoring and an OpenSignal App:  for Apple & Android to detect Signal status

MACKEEPER Fraud- Lies about Some Things, Lies about Everything?
Detecting well marketed (albeit fraudulent) obfuscated behind bogus reviews, etc..
a good explanation HERE. Sites are even registered to mis direct you: http://www.malwarebytes.org/ is NOT the Free MalWareBytes!

USB Flash Drives: As backups, movie mules and music porters. How do hey stack up $/mb/speed

New, Used or Refurbished– We Discuss..

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 < >

Sorry for the delay in posting these notes. I had trouble trying to login

Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio today.

Paul noted that he and Glenn bought ASUS EEEPC netbook computers a few years ago. That model had 1gig of RAM, 13″ screen, used LED rather than a fluorescent back light, weighed under 2lbs, and ran on Windows XP. To conserve power it had no CD-ROM drive and used an Intel Atom CPU running at a relatively low clock speed.

Since older XP computers like these are now a security risk, because Microsoft stopped supporting that operating system, Paul has found a replacement OS called Lubuntu. The ‘L’ in the name means it’s a light version of Ubuntu, a version of Linux. It comes with a lightweight window manager, a component similar to Explorer on the PC or Finder on the Mac. It’s responsible for generating the menus and launching the apps from a menu and file system.

After installing Lunbuntu on his netbook and upgrading from 1 to 2gig of RAM, it ran faster than it did with XP, Paul said.

Lubuntu uses about 2gig of hard drive space to run and comes as an ISO 9660 image. <You can think of it as a bit-for-bit copy of operating system as it would normally be installed on the computer>. ISO 9660 is a CD-ROM standard so you’re expected to install Lubuntu on your computer by booting it from a CD (download Lubuntu, burn a CD with it and boot from the CD).

Since his ASUS didn’t have a CD drive, that caused a problem. After much searching, Paul discovered ways to make a bootable image on a USB drive, instead of using a CD. You can’t just copy the downloaded ISO image to the USB (or the CD for that matter), you’ll have to use special software. If you want to look up the information yourself, he suggested using the search words: iso to bootable usb. Using a USB drive should be 2 or 3 times faster than a CD.
<There was talk about ISO images & software for burning to CD on the 7-13-11 show>

When you’re ready to boot the USB drive (or CD), you’ll need to go into the BIOS settings to change the device you boot from — change from hard drive to USB drive. Getting into the BIOS settings varies by computer and you’ll usually hold down the ESC, F9 or F8 key as you start the computer. Typically, you need to have the USB drive plugged in or you may not see the option in the BIOS menu. From what Paul said, it seems like newer machine don’t require going into the BIOS settings, the menu is presented to you just by holding down one of those key. Google your machine if you need to find out which key to hold down.

Glenn said he had a friend with Xubuntu on their machine and said the look and feel of it is not anything like Windows. Paul said it’s a matter of what you get used to and implied that it’s not hard to get used to Ubuntu. Using LVWM (Low Power Volume Windows Manager) should make it easier.

Paul warned those who choose to install Ubuntu that they’ll lose the data on their hard drive with no chance of recovery. <Ubuntu can be used from the USB or CD without installing, or you can install it permanently.> Otherwise, it doesn’t require a much technical knowledge to install and it took Paul only about a half hour to do it. Expect to do online updates after installing.

If you like a Mac but can’t afford one, there’s an operating system that looks, runs and feels like a Mac. However, it won’t run Mac programs. It uses quite a bit of resources to look like a Mac and is not recommended for older, slower computers.

As an example of the race between hardware and software Paul again mentioned that his old iPhone 3GS is very sluggish on Facebook. If you have an iPhone 4 you can’t use anything newer than IOS7. An iPhone 3 can’t use anything newer than IOS6. An iPhone 4s can load IOS8 but it bogs down and is slower than IOS7 and you can’t easily go back to IOS7.

Again, Paul talked about keeping track of Zen Tech show dates. Check the webpage with the show notes. The dates will be entered manually — the Google calendar has been abandoned.

Paul talked about the Stingray device <used often by the cops> that intercepts cell phone signals to gather certain information. The signal is then relayed to the legitimate cell tower so the call seems normal. It’s hard to tell if your call is monitored, but there is an app for that. See the link at the top of this page. The OpenSignal App keeps track of the signal strength and the identity of the tower your phone is connected to. You can google the tower’s identity number to find out about it.
<There more about Stingray in the 3-11-15 show notes and a link to another app>

Similarly, you can google the model of your iPhone to find more info about it. Go to Settings -> General -> About and look for ‘Model’ and use the number for your Google search.
<Droid users go to Settings -> About Tablet>

Don called to talk about Linux. One of his favorite versions is Mageia.
– Mageia has multiple ISO images that can be used on a CD, DVD or USB.
– Not all ISO images can be used on a USB unless they’ve been “fiddled” with a bit.
– Mageia originally was an off shoot of Red Hat long ago — used to be called Mandrake. Then it was called Mandreva. Then it morphed into Mageia.
– There’s a “live image” that lets you boot from CD, etc. without installing. If you want, you can install it later. You can use it if your hard drive has gone bad, Paul added.
– If you boot from CD or DVD you don’t have to worry about infection from malware when you’re online.

Paul asked if Mageia allows you to devote a portion of the USB to store configuration information (persistent storage), as some other versions do. Don said it does not yet have that feature. Paul said there’s no reason you can’t plug in a second USB drive to store it on. The only version of Linux with persistent storage that Paul is familiar with is Puppylinux.

Paul wondered how well Mageia runs on old & slow computers. Don said it does pretty well, it will run on an old Pentium 3 computer. The big problem on s P3 and older machines is that you’re limited to 512megs of memory, which can be a problem if you do much graphical stuff. He said Mageia offers 4 or 5 desktop setups that can be matched to the resources your computer has. If go thru the permanent installation process, you’ll be able to choose the window manager you want to use at each bootup.

Don said the whole process of getting started with Mageia is very approachable by the novice user.

Paul said recovering data from a bad Windows hard drive is possible if you first boot to a version of Linux. But if the drive has a physical problem and is clicking, you’d do better getting it to a data recovery company rather than messing with it.

Don mentioned reading the “smart data” from a failing hard drive to get some idea of what went wrong with it, and also mentioned the Linux tool called Ddrescue for recovering data from a hard drive.

Paul said if anyone is interested in doing this, send him a USB drive. <I presume he meant he’d put Lubuntu on it and send it back. I’m guessing that at least a 2gig USB is preferred>

Paul recalled that Emachines used to sell computers with a distribution of Linux on them called Lindows. Microsoft went after them because it sounded too much like Windows.

Paul mentioned Mackeeper, whose affiliates hound you with annoying ads trying to get you to buy it. It’s basically useless, Paul said. Mackeeper dissociates itself from the affiliates when people complain. Paul doesn’t think that’s right. See the above links.

Paul noted a problem with flash drives — they’re easily lost along with your private data. They can be used to infiltrate local networks for corporate espionage where one is dropped in the parking lot of a corporation and picked up by an employee who then plugs into the company’s computer, delivering a payload of spyware.

Flash drives vary greatly in speed. The hardware in your computer can affect the speed, too. There’s a link above for testing your drives. The site also has data on drives already tested.

Brand name drives tend to do better but even they may produce a budget version of their products that are slower. Paul found that to be true of a SanDisk drive he bought. For a couple of buck more he could have gotten a version that was 3 times as fast.

If you go to userbenchmark.com, you’ll find benchmarks for other hardware components. If you plan to replace your conventional hard drive with a solid state drive, check out ssd.userbenchmark.com

Paul thinks the Computer Museum in Sunnyvale is a great place to visit. They have a lot of original hardware including an Enigma machine (used by the Nazis for encoding messages). It’s $15 to get in but $7 if you go to Groupon first.

Last Update 1:11 PM 7/9/2015

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 < >

NOTE: This is last show this month. “See Jane Do” will air on 6-24-15 in place of Zen Tech. Next show should be on 7-8-15

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today.

It was on Sunday or maybe Monday that Glenn used his iPhone to check his email and found that only his Yahoo mail was available. His 2 Gmail accounts just “went away” — it wasn’t that the mail wasn’t received, “the accounts were gone”.

Paul said that Google has noticeably become less tolerant of 3rd party applications. Thunderbird will sometimes relay a message, generated by Google’s Gmail, saying “you need to log into the web-based Gmail before you can continue in Thunderbird”.

Paul asked Glenn if there had been an upgrade. Glenn said that’s the only thing he could think of, because a couple of days later everything was back to normal.

Paul said that his nearly 7 year old iPhone 3GS has trouble receiving text messages when it’s in sleep mode (phone is on but the screen is off). He thought it’s because of the weak cellular signal he has at home, only 1 bar, and that’s not enough to wake the phone up.

He went on to explain reciprocal backoff. When he first puts down the phone, it will poll the phone network every minute. If there’s nothing happening, it starts polling every 5 minutes, then every 10 minutes. <Reciprocal backoff was also mentioned on the 8-28-13 show>

When a phone does this polling, interference can sometimes be heard on a nearby stereo system that’s not properly grounded. It’s a screeching sound followed by periodic bleeps. Some people are fooled into thinking there’s a call coming when it’s just the phone checking in.

Glenn still hasn’t upgraded his iPhone 4S to iOS8. He has to clear enough space on the phone for the upgrade and hasn’t got around to it. Glenn’s also read reviews suggesting that iOS8 would be pushing the capabilities of his phone rather hard.

Paul said his iPhone 3GS can’t be upgraded beyond iOS6. Some apps are still being created to run on iOS6 but are progressively putting more demand on older phones. His phone bogs down horribly when using Facebook because new features are continually being added.

Paul noted that cooking has become more interesting with the availability of all sorts of technical gadgets in recent years. For instance, an infrared thermometer allows you to take the surface temperature of your food at a distance simply by pointing it at the food.

A number of years ago Paul was at a science museum in London and saw a beautiful damask sword on display. These types of swords were made in modern day Syria. They are a scientific mystery because nobody in the West had ever figured out the process by which they were made. The technique and the steel originated in India before coming to the Middle East. After careful analysis, scientists have only been able to imitate the result in the lab.
<You can read more about it here.>

Similarly, Apple computers have been hard to imitate. At one time Apple licensed their technology to 3rd parties who then made comparable computers.

There is no big secret to what goes into an Apple computer. Technically, their computers can be analyzed and copied, but at the risk of violating patents.

For historic background, Paul said that up until 1995, Apple used the Motorola 6800 family of CPUs. Then they switched over to the Power PC architecture, a product of the cooperation between IBM and Motorola. Then, about 8 to 10 years ago, Apple started using the Intel CPUs.

What makes Apple special is the SMC chip on the motherboard. It’s made by Intel and is known as the System Management Controller. Independent of the operating system, it manages the fan that cools the computer, the backlight beneath the keyboard, the display light behind the screen — it manages the environment in which the operating system runs.

In spite of this controller chip, it is possible to run the Apple operating system on an non-Apple computer. The trick is to make it look like the chip is there. However, this isn’t allowed to be done commercially — you’re not going to find a Chinese knockoff of the chip, for instance. The jury is still out on whether you’re allowed to legally install a legitimate copy of the Apple operating system on a non-Apple machine. For more info, Paul said to google: hackintosh.
<To get you started, I found these two websites…
http://www.hackintosh.com/
http://lifehacker.com/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh-o-5841604>

Glenn thought he heard that there’s a new Apple operating system coming out. Paul said he hasn’t heard anything and that the current version is Yosemite ver 10.10.3. The two main Apple operating systems (for mobile and desktop) are still quite different but are slowly converging. Glenn checked the net and found that there is indeed a new OS on the way called El Capitan.

Paul invited listeners to call in to this show and noted that there is no longer a KVMR 800 number. After the move to KVMR’s new location, most of the equipment is now digital. The in-house PBX is called Asterisk and the system connecting to the outside world is called VOIP.MS.

Paul warned people who still use Windows XP machines that they shouldn’t use it on the internet because of security issues — it’s no longer being updated.

Marilyn called. She said she’s been getting an error message when using email and asked for an explanation of “POP server“. The actual error message is “the operation timed out waiting for a response from the receiving (POP) server”. Additionally, she doesn’t receive her mail unless she “shuts down” and starts back up.
– POP is an older protocol initially used when most people had dialup modems to access the internet.
– Now days IMAP is preferred.
– POP doesn’t like multiple attempts to login in quick succession. This is likely to happen more with the faster connection speeds we have now than with the dialup of the past.
– She said she has it Outlook to check the mail every 5 minutes and wondered if that was too often. Paul said that should make little difference unless you manually clicked “get mail” right when it automatically checked the mail, the two events may come too close together.
– Paul suggested she stop using Outlook for her mail, which she likes because she likes the way she can format her mail (fonts, colors, etc). Paul said Thunderbird can do much of the same stuff if she sets it to use HTML formatting. Also, Outlook works poorly with IMAP.

Paul said that when using Outlook to compose an email message, you end up using Word to do the composition. Word then passes the HTML formatted message back to Outlook to send it on its way. Word is notorious for producing terrible HTML that can be rendered poorly when the email is read.

Michael called. He’s relatively new to smartphones. His phones memory is full and he can’t find anymore files to delete or move to free up space. His phone is running on the Android operating system.
– Make enough room to get the free Cleanmaster app.
– Usually you have 2 ways to look at your apps — listed alphabetically, and draggable on the widget screen.
– Use the alphabetical listing and find some of the apps you’ve installed on the phone. Drag the app toward the upper left and a little box should appear that says “Remove”. Drag it to that box to delete it. Later, after the clean up, you can reinstall the apps you’ve removed.
– Cleanmaster will remove cache files and temporary files that have accumulated with use of the phone.
– Cleanmaster works on most phones and tablets. Paul said he’s never seen it fail or delete critical files.
<This might be the Cleanmaster Paul referred to:>

Paul noted that Google is recommending that manufactures not have external memory slots because people run into trouble when they remove the memory card after installing apps on it.

Michael asked if there’s an app for moving files from the built-in memory to the external memory card. Paul said there are file managers that can do this. The one he mentioned is called Xfile, but do the clean up first.
<I haven’t tried it but I saw CCleaner while searching for Xfile. It comes from those who made Crap Cleaner for the PC.>
<Also, I do use and love ES Explorer>
<ES Explorer instructions for storing to the cloud:>
<ES Explorer manual>

Last Updated 11:00 PM 6/10/2015

Doing business over the Internet? check for previous problems
http://www.ripoffreport.com
Bust if this is a NEW business– it won;t be listed– YET!

New Firefox offline mode, Will also talk about BookMark SYNC

Additional notes

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 < >

Next show will be on 6-10-15 and no more shows this month. See Jane Do will be on 6-24-15 instead of Zen Tech.

Paul was in the studio and Glenn called in from Richmond, CA.

Paul said last week that WordPress, which runs this website, hooks into KVMR’s Google Calendar to display the upcoming schedule for this show. That’s no longer true. Because it’s been unreliable, he’s made some changes to the website and now we’re back to the way it’s been for years — go by the date in the title of each show. <If I remember, I’ll also note any changes to the schedule in the show notes, as above.>

Paul reminded listeners that they can leave comments on this website. You’ll have to create an account and login first.

Paul next talked about Freedom Pop. When he signed up for it about a year ago, he received a mi-fi unit for $19. When he first looked at their webpage, he signed in but didn’t think the price was attractive so he didn’t go for it. They kept sending him offers, each time lowering the price until they got to $19.

The mi-fi unit connects to the internet using a cellular <phone> network up to 5mi away from a tower — in this case the Sprint network. He liked the idea of having wi-fi when he’s on the go. The service provided 500 megabytes free <per month, I assume> and there weren’t any other charges. He assumed they made money from overage fees when people go over the 500 megabytes.

Since there was no 4G service in his area, they charged $3.95/mo to make it 3G. When he signed up, he unchecked a box so as not to be charged the $3.95 automatically every month. Several months later he checked his credit card statements and discovered he was being charged $10 & the $3.95 every month.

The lesson is don’t assume the webpage where you sign up won’t change, he said. <Apparently they changed the terms of service without notice.> Do a screen capture of the page to document exactly what you sign up for. Use your camera to take a picture of the screen if you don’t know how to do a screen capture. To their credit, he said the service worked fine, it’s just that they were deceitful about the charges.

<Freedom Pop was mentioned in the show notes for 2-11-15, 10-9-13 and 9-25-13>

The steps to take in a case like this is to first talk to the company. If they won’t resolve the issues, talk to the credit card company to dispute the charges. His credit card company was willing to reimburse past charges but for no more than 6 months in the past.

Paul then mentioned Ripoff Report. It’s one of the better places to go to spot potential problems with shady companies, he said. Of course, new companies won’t have a history of complaints.

Ed called to ask about internet providers in the Nevada City area besides Comcast & AT&T. Paul suggested Spiral Internet, which provides service via terrestrial wireless.
Spiral Internet
416 Broad Street Nevada City
530-478-9822

Nick called to espouse the value of local internet providers and suggested Smarter Broadband. He also mentioned xwire.com, which is not very local but still in the general area and their customer service is not as good as some of the others. They have offices in Forrest Hill & Colfax. Paul added colfax.net and, out of Chico, Digital Path. Nick then remembered naactel out of Marysville.
<Xwire looks like a hardware company rather than a service provider>
<I didn’t come up with anything for naactel>

Paul talked about the ads that come up when people search for help on Microsoft products (try to google: outlook problems). They look like toll free numbers to Microsoft when, in fact, it’s typically some place in India that will want to charge you on your credit card. Paul’s heard nothing but bad reports about these places. There’s nothing especially sinister, it’s just that they never fix the problem or make it worse. Paul suggested using social media, like Facebook, to find people who’ve had good service and take their recommendations. Paul said there are at least 3 local companies with a good reputation, including his own.

Glenn said he’s never seen a phone number or email address to get in touch with Microsoft directly. Even for a new product under warranty you may be asked to pay for technical support.

Glenn he likes to use Firefox for his web browser but on his iPad he uses Safari the most. He rarely uses Chrome.

Paul noted that Firefox has had many updates in the recent years and that they are at version 39 now. Firefox has traditionally been a ‘slim’ program with functionality enhanced by addons <or plugins> that you can get by going to Tools -> Addons. The latest incarnation of Firefox as added a couple of functions to the task bar in the upper right — Save To Pocket (saves a page for off-line viewing) and Share This Page.

Paul has had many people ask him about Chrome popping up a warning when accessing the Chase Web Bank, saying that the ‘security certificate is only 64bit encrypted’. It turns out that Chrome is being conservative. The warning, though significant, it’s not very significant, he said.

Paul asked Glenn if he’s seen the warning ‘your security certificate is not valid’? Glenn said not very often but restarting the browser or the computer takes care of it.

The other thing that causes this certificate warning is if your computer’s clock goes wrong and reverts back to an earlier time & date. It’s likely the battery on the motherboard has run down and needs to be replaced. You can test it by <setting the correct time/date> and turning off the computer and then back on again. See if the time/date is wrong.

Paul said he takes responsibility for the way the Zen Tech website looks now. He makes no claim of being a great web designer. He said the site works the same, it’s just that he changed the theme.

Paul said his brother, who still uses FTP websites, rightfully claims that there have been many breakins into content managment websites — most run the popular WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. Consequently, Paul’s been getting notifications that the WordPress he’s using needs updating. There have been 4 updates since Easter.

Firefox, like Safari on the Mac, has a feature called ‘sync’ that synchronizes your tabs, bookmarks and passwords. It saves these items to the cloud so that when you use the same browser on a different machine, you get the same bookmarks and passwords while using the same account. In Firefox go to Tools -> Setup Sync to get started.

Paul has thought about what it takes to kill a facebook account. He said if you don’t want to lose all of the stuff you’ve posted there, you can download it before closing the account. In Europe you have the right to your own data <that the company has>, so any company that provides a service in Europe has this feature, Paul said.

Paul said that even if you kill your Facebook account, if someone has the links to your pictures, video or other content that you’ve posted, they can still access that content for some time after you’ve killed your account.

Glenn said he uses his iPad but rarely uses the iMac — he uses his PC laptop instead. Paul then said, that if you want to run PC software on the Mac, he would avoid installing any version of Windows. Instead consider a piece of software called Crossover <works for Linux too>. He’s had a fair amount of success of copying software directly from a PC to the Mac without having the original installation disks. This is on a MacBook Pro running the latest version of Yosemite. Crossover facilitates running the PC programs without any version of Windows installed.

Nitiom called. Using Firefox and clicking on a link, sometimes the page she gets has no menu at the top. But entering the link address manually into the address bar doesn’t cause the problem.
– Bruce, on a previous show, had a similar problem and the guys suggested he uninstall and then reinstall Firefox.
– At the top of Firefox the 4th menu item is ‘History’, use that to clear recent history.
– Backup the bookmarks. One way is to use the sync feature mentioned above. To test if the data synched properly, use a different machine running Firefox, login to your account and see if the bookmarks show up. After the test, turn the sync off and delete the bookmarks.

When you uninstall Firefox the application is deleted but the data is left behind. Next time you install Firefox, it should be able to use the old data. If you want to delete the data as well as the application…
– either “Create a new profile in Windows because it will then get nothing of the original install. That’s a little extreme”
– or use Revo Unstaller. It deletes the data, files created by the application and registry entries as well, It’s the only thing that reliably does a complete uninstall.

Last updated 11:49 PM 6/3/2015

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 < >

If there are no last minute changes, Zen Tech will air on 6-3-15 & 6-10-15. See Jane Do will air on 6-24-15. The wrong dates were given during today’s show.

Intro & outro music was by Pentatonix.

Glenn was in the studio, Paul joined in by phone.
Paul was in Los Alamos in Santa Barbara County (not the town in New Mexico) on his way to San Diego

Paul noted that the Zen Tech website, now running on WordPress, hooks into KVMR’s Google Calendar to display the upcoming schedule for this show. He said there is a lag time of about 2 days. And indeed, when Glenn looked at the schedule, it still showed See Jane Do in the 6-3-15 time slot.

Paul lamented that his Toyota Corolla station wagon is nearing the end of its life. It has over 330,000 miles on it. He’s been driving it for some 20 years and the oil light has been coming on at low revs and there are signs of small quantities of oil in the coolant. He thinks the repair cost, especially the labor, is too great for such an old car. He said he’d like his next car to be an import that’s no older than about 1998, when onboard diagnostic became common.

His Toyota has a ‘diagnostic plug’ but it’s too old to have onboard diagnostics and he wondered what it was. He did some research on the internet and found a instructions about shorting a couple of pins together in the plug. If you then turn on the ignition, the check engine light would flash in a sequence to indicate if something was wrong. When Paul tried it, there was no indication that there was a problem. He thought the electronics were too primitive to sense trouble with the oil pressure.

Glenn thanked the listeners who’ve supported KVMR. And he mention the Nevada County Library Read Up Learning Center which offers an adult tutoring program in math, English reading, writing and speaking skills. Call 530-470-2772 for more info.

Paul noted that WordPress allows website visitors to leave comments on the Zen Tech site. Listeners are welcome to leave comment or even start a discussion. Critiques are allowed but keep things civil. The comments are moderated, which means someone will look at them before they are made public. There’s also a Zen Tech Facebook page.

Unlike the Zen Tech content on the internet, the web content of a commercial enterprise needs to be curated more diligently in order to attract customers. A great example of such an enterprise is The Outside Inn, Paul said. Their Facebook page is managed by a photographer who has posted interesting pictures of the Nevada City area. <The only local Outside Inn I found on Facebook is here.>

Paul has noticed an increase in the number of people accessing the podcast of the KVMR evening news — several hundred downloads every day. He reminded listeners that the podcasts can be subscribed to so each broadcast can be picked up automatically. He said KVMR would like some feedback about their podcast system.

Glenn said he hasn’t been putting up podcasts of the Zen Tech shows lately but intends to resume doing so. And Paul said that he was able to preserve the show notes from previous Zen Tech shows when switching to WordPress. The are some 240 searchable show notes.

Bruce called. He uses Firefox and Thunderbird on a Windows 7 machine. Sometimes these programs would say ‘do you want to do this in safe mode’ when he starts them up. If he tries to run them again, he doesn’t get the message.
– There have been a flurry of Mozilla upgrades in recent years and sometimes a new installation will not “clean up after itself”. So try uninstalling and then reinstalling the programs.
– Uninstalling should preserve the data (passwords, history, bookmarks, etc). <Pay attention. During the uninstall, there may be a check box you need to tick to preserve the data. I don’t remember for sure.>
– In Firefox go to Tools -> Addons and then remove or disable any addons you don’t recognize.

Bruce also complained that in Windows 7, if he opens an app and tries to access a file, he has to do it as an administrator or it won’t open. Paul said, as an example, there’s a program the guys like to use called Spybot 1.6.2 (Paul would not recommend a newer version) that should be run as an administrator. To get it to do so, right click the shortcut and select ‘always run as administrator’.

Bruce then said he’s unable to run the Chrome browser. It would start to launch and then quit.
– “You want a system-wide check disk”. <Run the check disk program, I guess he meant.>
– Create another user and try running these applications under that user’s account (profile).
– If things run OK under the new profile, pull in everything from the old profile then drop the old profile.
– Bruce said he might get a new machine and then import the apps from the old one. Paul said that’s not a good idea and that it’s best to do a fresh reinstall of each app. The data you can import but not the apps themselves, Glenn said.

Chris called. In Windows 8, when he slides his finger the “wrong way” on the trackpad “the thing pops out on the side”. “Is there any way to get rid of that”. Paul thought it’s call the Charm.
– You can move it to the top or the other side, but Glenn wasn’t sure if you can get rid of it.
– Do a Google search for: disable charm. You might find tips to make it less obtrusive.
– Reduce the sensitivity of the trackpad. Go to the Control Panel and try reducing the acceleration setting. Or move/swipe your finger slower so the Charm doesn’t come up.

Paul asked Glenn if he’s heard much about Windows 10. He hasn’t heard much except the general consensus that it’s great and everyone will want it. Paul said there’s rumor that it will be free so as to encourage those who create applications for it. With more people using Win10 there’ll be more incentive to write and sell apps for it.
<It’s Official: Windows 10 Free For Many Users
Didn’t pay for Windows? You might still get Windows 10 for free
>

Douglas called. He had to do something at a Fedex store and logged on to one of their computers with his Gmail account. He then started getting email saying people have been logging into his Gmail account. He changed his Gmail password and wondered if that’s enough to fix this security problem.
– That should be sufficient. Paul said he should have been notified by Gmail that the password has been changed — he was.
– Don’t go back to that store again.
– Gmail doesn’t allow weak passwords so it’s likely no one guessed it, it was likely stolen. There might have been a key logger (hardware or software) at that computer that recorded your password as you typed it and sent it to the culprits.