Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
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– 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 but he should be back soon.

Paul said he’s still trying to implement his project to install Linux on older computers for people in the vicinity of Nevada City.

There’s a particular distribution of Linux called Debian. Paul said Ian Murdock participated in producing that distribution. He died at the age of 42. The Debian name is the mashup of his wife’s name, Deborah, and his. The Ubuntu version of Linux, and a few others, have their roots in Debian. Their distribution files end in .deb. He read about this at theregister.com.

Paul has seen refurbished computers with Windows 7 for as little as $99. Maybe not real fast game-playing, video-editing machines, they do come with reasonably useful software and 1 year warranties. The best deal he’s seen was a 4 or 5 year old off-lease computer at overstock.com. If you want a new computer, you wouldn’t go wrong at paying about $250 for what Paul called a “domestic grade” computer — one that’s not a slouch but still not great for more demanding video games.

Christy called. He has a Mac running El Capitan. He got a popup offering the download of the latest version the Flash player. As per previous warnings on Zen Tech, he didn’t want to download. The other option he was given was to delete Flash. He chose to delete it and now can’t play some media. He wanted to know if he could use HTML5 instead.
– Increasingly, websites are switching to HTML5. Flash is being phased out.
– If you use the Chrome browser you ‘usually’ don’t need Flash. Chrome handles most of the job. Christy uses the Safari browser.
– Paul had him go to Youtube and Ctrl-click (maybe Command-click) on any video to find out whether Flash is required or whether HTML5 is being used. Paul said you can do this on any site that’s trying to show you a video.<Momentarially forgetting Chris uses a Mac, Paul first said right-click on the video, so maybe that’s what to do if you have a PC.>
– HTML5 is so prevalent that if you get a message that says Flash is required, be suspicious.

Kim called. She’s happy with her Dell PC running Windows 7. She keeps being prompted to upgrade to Windows 10. She wanted to know if that’s a good idea.
– If you’re happy with Win7, don’t upgrade. Paul said he doesn’t see a compelling reason.
– Since about April, Microsoft has suggested people upgrade. They have become progressively more insistent.
– If you’re using Win8 and are not happy with it, many people aren’t, then go ahead and do the upgrade. It takes a couple of hours.
– Paul said he hasn’t seen the Win10 upgrade cause many problems.
– Win10 is very similar to Win7 but has remnants of the Metro interface that Win8 had. Metro allows Microsoft to sell apps to go with it.

<Here are some articles about the Win10 upgrade. Some may be a bit dated.
Get Windows 10? Microsoft’s push comes to shove
Microsoft to Force Windows 10 Download by Default
Shield yourself from coerced ‘Get Windows 10’ updates
Get ready for Windows 10 as an Automatic Update (how to turn off update nags)>

Kim also said she uses Avast for an anti-virus and keeps getting popups saying “everybody can see what you’re doing. You better upgrade now for privacy”. Paul talked about it later in the show, see below.

Preston called. He doesn’t have good internet options near Loma Rica Airport and wants suggestions for getting a service at a good price — maybe in the $50 range. There is no cable or DSL service in that area.
– See if any of your neighbors have wireless service and if they’re willing to split their bill with you for letting you use their connection.
– Preston looked into terrestrial wireless service but it was $114/mo.
– Another choice is a mi-fi unit. It’s a small box that connects to a cellular phone service and converts it to a local wi-fi connection. It’s a data only service, no voice, and typically costs about $50/mo.
– Costco sells mi-fi at membershipwireless.com. Click the ‘mobile hotspots’ link. You can get plans from all the major cellular providers.

Uncle Nick called to encourage people to do the Linux upgrade Paul talked about earlier. A variety of free Linux software is available to meet most needs.

Nick said he’s done an number of upgrades to Win10 for his clients and has notice significant glitches with some applications. In particular, the email program that comes with it has had many complaints when used with Usenet (a service for discussing many topics). Paul said the Thunderbird mail program works fine and can import the data from Outlook Express, which the guys don’t think too highly of.

Nick thought that development for Thunderbird has or will stop. Paul said it’s not the development that will stop, but that new features will no longer be added.

Nick suggested slipstick.com as a resource for import, export and conversion issues with Outlook and Outlook Express.
<Their site says: Our major activity is researching and solving problems with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server>

Nick said there is a local newspaper whose website automatically plays Flash videos when the user just wants to read the news. He wished there were something that stopped Flash from playing.
– Paul said there is a free plugin called Flashblock that works with Firefox and does just that. Do a google search with the words: firefox plugin flashblock.
– Blocking the videos helps reduce data usage for those with limited data plans because you’re not downloading the videos you don’t want to watch.

Getting back to Kim’s concern about the Avast anti-virus, Paul said Avast and AVG are among the better programs out there.
– An anti-virus is not the way to go to protect privacy, as the Avast popup implied.
– Instead, use the incognito mode of your browser to prevent a track record of where you’ve been going or doing on the internet. This mode is available in many modern browsers. <Also known as private tab or private browsing.>
– Incognito mode won’t retain the history or the cache from your browsing activity. It will keep bookmarks and “several other things”.
– It’s not “private or secure” Paul said. Your internet provider can still know where you’ve been. It does not make you anonymous.
– What Paul looks for in an anti-virus is just virus protection. He’ll choose to do a ‘custom’ install to avoid installing more than he wants.

Paul said KVMR is open to visitors, during normal business hours, who want to see what goes on in the studio. Contact the particular broadcaster you’re interested in.

Bruce called. He wondered if upgrading to Win10 would improve anything if you’re running Win7 and it’s working poorly.
– Paul wasn’t sure but “it would not be a bad move. Just make sure you’re backedup”.
– The resources required by Win10 are equal to or less than for Win7 or Win8.

Bruce also said he has a Linux partition and he deleted a file he thought was unnecessary and now Linux won’t start.
– Just reinstall the Linux. First reformat that partition.
– Then choose the “something else” option during installation. Linux will find the previous partition.
– After installation Bruce be able to dual boot again. On bootup he’ll be given a choice to run either Window or Linux.
– Linux has a great memory tester. Paul has been known to run it over night so it has time to go thru many iterations of the test.
– You can find the memory tester, by itself, at memtest86.com

Marilyn called. She’s been shopping for a laptop and noticed that one would say it has xxx bytes of memory and yyy bytes on the hard drive. Another would say yyy bytes of ‘storage’ (instead of ‘hard drive’). What’s the difference?
– Storage will probably refer to SSD, a solid state drive. A lot of laptops now come with flash memory for storage — no moving parts.
– SSD drives are expensive — up to 10x that of hard drives.
– Some come with hybrid drives that use a combination of flash memory and a spinning disk hard drive.

Joey called to say he finally got his Mac working. He had called on 12-9-15 about a problem he encountered after upgrading the OS to El Capitan. He spent about an hour and a half with an Apple tech and after tweaking port numbers and other minor things they got it working.

The other problem Joey had was that his Safari browser sometimes crashes. His brother in-law had the same problem with his wife’s Mac. It was determined that the Invidia video card in the computer is not compatible with El Capitan. It worked well with the previous OS, Yosemite. Joey doesn’t have a backup of the previous operating system so he can’t go back and undo the operating system update.
– Paul said there’s no big reason to stay one version behind the latest operating system.
– Paul will do some research on this issue.

Last Updated 11:27 PM 12-30-2015

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 < >

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.

The hidden features inside of movies as well as software are called easter eggs. Paul mentioned eeggs.com as the site he uses to discover these easter eggs.

A particular type of ransomware virus called Cryptolocker has gotten Paul’s attention recently. This is a bit of software that gets on your computer and encrypts your valuable files, making them inaccessible to you. Then comes a demand for money, the ransom, in return for the key that unlocks the files.
– If you’re a victim, you’ll notice some of your filenames will have a different extension (e.g. familyphoto.jpg.XYZ). A plain text file will be placed in the same directory giving you instructions on how to regain control of those files.
– If you have backups of your files you should be ok except the ransomware will look everywhere including any backup drives you have connected to your computer. Keep your backup drives (like flash drives) separate and disconnected from your computer until you remove the ransomware virus.
– Don’t be hasty in removing the virus. You may be cutting yourself off from ever decrypting your files, even if you then pay the ransom.
– An FBI report notes that there is no known way of independently decrypting your locked files.
– The ransom demanded doesn’t involve a credit card and can’t be easily traced. The instruction will have you use a Tor browser and pay by bitcoin, an anonymous payment system.
<Here are a couple of articles to get you informed…
CryptoLocker ransomware – see how it works, learn about prevention, cleanup and recovery
CryptoLocker: A particularly pernicious virus>

What can you do to protect yourself against ransomware?…
– Anti-virus software is not perfect. It may catch about 95% of the malware. Don’t depend exclusively on an anti-virus.
– Be especially careful of email attachments. They can be an executable ZIP file, typically ending in .exe. Being a zip file makes it difficult for and anti-virus program to detect them
– Gmail typically catches these things. It looks inside of zip files and warns you.

The Flash media player and the Java plugin can let in ransomware, too.
– If you must use Flash, the Chrome browser does Flash rendering that is somewhat more secure. Most websites, like Youtube, are starting to use HTML5 to play video and don’t need Flash.
– Search using Google for Plugin Check, if you’re using Firefox. “That will tell you what to do. If you use Internet Explorer you can do Plugin Check and it will actually check that the thing is up to date”.
– Beware of popups telling you that your Flash player needs updating. The popup itself may lead you to installing a virus.

Scarewareis another type of fraud but don’t confuse it with ransomware. You may get a popup telling you that you have a virus or that you need to renew the license to your anti-virus software. And you’ll often see Better Business Bureau and FBI logos in the popup to gain your trust.

Another type of fraud affects Mac users more than others. It involves bogus domain names. It takes advantage of typos when entering a web address. Warning, just because Paul talked about this doesn’t mean you should do it. Don’t do this he said. Don’t go to facebook.cm <not .com>. If you do, you’ll get what looks like the Facebook website except your address bar will have a different web address, if you’re careful enough to notice. From there you can be asked for all kinds of personal information or induced to download malware.

Paul knows someone who was a target of a Craig’s List fraud. She was asked to make a payment up front for a Mac computer. Be careful of using an untraceable payment like Western Union. Such payments can be negotiated immediately, whereas a personal check can have a stop payment put on it.

Paul moved on to talk about shopping locally. If you go to local.google.com you’ll get local search results. Google will figure out where you are and suggest things close to you. If your machine is set up not to reveal your location, you can type in your zipcode, or postal code in foreign countries. If you run a business and you’re not already in Google’s business database, you can register with them as a local business.

Paul mentioned the website freecycle.com. If you subscribe to their newsletter, you’ll be informed of items being given away for free. Locally, there is a Freecycle group for Auburn & Grass Valley.

Christian called. He got a virus on his HP laptop and had trouble getting genuine HP tech support. Apparently seaching Google for tech help (and not just from HP) can lead to third party or even fraudulent websites. So he tried to fix it himself. He tried Fixme Stick, which seemed to help but his machine still wouldn’t run. He then tried to reset his computer to factory condition and got some warning about a [hard drive] partition.
– Christian has been backing up his important files, so trying to do a system restore was the proper thing to do, Paul said.
– Go directly to hp.com and look on that site for help or support. Get an 800 number that you can call and get a CD with the system restore files. You’ll be charged a nominal fee of about $10. You can then reload your operating system from the CD.
– There are 4 or 5 local computer shops in the Nevada City area to service the laptop. This is a good time to use local.google.com and type in the words: computer repair
– Get Combofix to do a general cleanup. Be sure to get this program from bleepingcomputer.com.
– Once you get your computer cleaned up, get the anti-virus program called Avast.
– You can switch to a different operating system. When we’re past the holidays, Paul will try to arrange a community service to put Linux on machines that are old or misbehaving <or still running XP>. If you’re interested send an email to zen@kvmr.org with the word linux in the subject line.
– Paul said he’ll put information about dealing with viruses on the Zen Tech site.

Paul said he just got an iPhone 4s, an upgrade from 3gs he’d been using. He went on to say that when you get an iPhone from someone leaving their service and giving it to you, don’t lose track of that person. If their phone has “locate me”, you (or they) have to log with their Apple ID and disable “locate me”. And if it’s off its contract, get the former owner to communicate with AT&T to get the phone unlocked. It’s a free service.

Last Updated 12:24 AM 12-24-2015

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

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
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– 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.

The Flea Market, hosted by Glenn, will not be on tomorrow.

Glenn was in the studio with Buzz (Dave Barnett) KVMR’s studio engineer.
Paul called in from Slab City near Niland in Southern California.

Alan called. He has Mac Book Pro with a collection of music in iTunes. His stereo system has a network player that can receive UPnP He thought he needs software for the Mac that uses UPnP that can send the music out to the player.
– Paul said he could use iTunes to do the job. He just needs to turn on “library share”.
– He’ll have to be sure the Mac & the player are using exactly the same network.
– iTunes will then send plug ‘n play messages, also known as DLNA messages
– Check the documentation of the player to be sure it is DLNA capable or iTunes capable. If so, one of the settings on the player should say “play from network music server”. Network music players have been DLNA capable for several years.

Glenn asked Paul how far he had to go to be able to use his cell phone. That led to talk about radio transmission — cell towers & low power FM radio. I’ll just note the highlights.
– Paul was in a pretty remote, flat area. The nearest town, Niland, has 2 cell towers. He was under the impression that if you can see a cellular tower, you should be able to connect to it. He thought a reasonable range would extend to the horizon — 8 to 10 miles. Buzz said it could be farther, depending on the gain of the system. The signal drops off at the rate of 1/radius^2
– Paul wondered how many calls a cell tower can handle at one time. Buzz said it’s not a matter of how many calls but the bandwidth of tower. The number of calls is unlimited if a tower is connected using fiber optic cables. And it also depends on how many antennas a tower has and how they reuse frequencies in different directions.

Paul said there’s a low power FM station at Slab City. Buzz said such stations, called LP100, broadcast at 100 watts if they’re below 30 meters <antenna height, I guess>. If they go higher, they have to reduce the wattage. They’re able to transmit for a few miles or up to about 20 miles if there’s no interference. They cost about $10,000 to set up, including certification and an emergency alert system.

The reasons people start a low power station…
– They think the commercial stations just “don’t cut it”.
– They want to provide a community service.
– Many are associated with churches, religious organizations and people with a social goal.

Paul wondered of internet radio will supplant low power FM. Buzz said there are pluses and minuses to each.
– Internet radio reaches far more people.
– If you use cellular to listen to internet radio, it can be costly.
– Cellular service can be suspended during emergencies and remain reserved for emergency personnel.
– With FM radio information flows only in one direction but is more consistent.

Gordon called. He has a Droid Turbo phone and an old iPod with 2000 songs on it. He wanted to know if there’s a simple way to move the songs from the iPod to the Android phone.
– You can get the music off the iPod but not with iTunes — it won’t allow you.
– If you don’t have copies of the music anywhere else, you’ll need what’s called an ipod ripper. Paul suggested the one by Xilsoft. That will get the music from the iPod and put it on the PC.
– Then get the Google Music application for the PC. It will take the music on the PC and copy it to the internet.
– Next get the Google Music app for the droid device. It will take music on the internet (stored at Google) and either play it directly or copy it to your droid device.
– You can even play the music directly on a web page from its stored location on a strange machine by going to Google Music and signing in.
– There doesn’t appear to be a limit on how much music you can upload for free. It sounded like Paul said he has uploaded 160 gigs.

<Get Started With Google’s New Music Store
Google Music: 5 Things You Need to Know
Use Google Music to listen to your music everywhere <An overview & getting started>>

Douglas called. He has a 2010 iMac with OS 10.11. He’s not happy with Apple taking away some features.
– You can no longer color-code files and folders. There’s only a small colored dot to the side. It’s hard to line the dot up with the file.
– Paul noticed that with every new version [of the OS] things become more “subtle”.
– Also, Douglas said, the files don’t sort correctly when he renames them. He can’t “click away” from a file he just renamed.
– Try a search for the words: El Capitan old folder behavior. Use the words “old behavior” in your searches when you’re looking for similar solutions.
– Try holding down the ‘option’ ‘control’ or ‘shift’ keys while performing an operation. Sometimes that forces it to work like it did in a previous version of the OS.
– Buzz just did a quick search and found “How to Fix OS X El Capitan’s Annoyances” on lifehacker.com.

The reason Douglas called was that the new system really messed up his Mac Mail — it wasn’t even working. He had to delete and than create accounts to get it to work. Now, the email that’s identified as spam keeps getting put into the inbox even though he has his preferences set correctly.
– Paul said he didn’t like the Mac Mail program and switched to Thunderbird. But then he said it’s not a Mac program, at all. The point he was making is to use a different email program.
– All the mail program out there now work better if you choose to use the IMAP protocol rather than POP.
– With IMAP if you delete the account and then put it back, it won’t lose any of the mail because it’s synchronize off the server. With POP you may lose the mail.
– Knowing that all of Doug’s accounts are IMAP. Paul suggested he delete the accounts and then create them again. Also delete <I think he meant reset to default> all of the preferences.
– Up to this point Douglas has only be disabling and reenabling the accounts and not deleting them. He wondered if his email was in jeopardy if he actually deleted the accounts. Paul, speaking wearily, said he’d be ok if the folders actually existed on the server and Time Machine was running as a backup.
– Newer mail programs work better with IMAP

Last Updated 12:20 AM 11-26-2015

Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They’re tagged with #Zentech.
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– Editor’s comments are delimited by < >

The podcast of today’s show is here:

The intro music was by Pentatonix:

Paul was in the studio today with his guest John Paul of Spiral Internet. We didn’t hear from Glenn.

They talked mostly about a project that Spiral Internet is about to start that would bring 1gigaBit/sec fiber optical cable service to the area. No calls from listeners where answered.

Paul has lived in Nevada City for 20 years. When he first moved there, there was no internet. Dialup became available around 1994 or 1995.

Now there’s an initiative to provide funding to bring 1gigaBit/sec fiber optical cable thru the Nevada City area. That’s orders of magnitude faster than the 36kbits/sec, or so, of dialup speed when it was first available. With speeds of 1gigaBit/sec, a file coming from across the country would open instantly in your application as if the file was sitting on your local hard drive.

John said this all started when Google announced it would deploy 1gigaBit/sec service to one community in the USA back in 2010. <Talked about on the 12-26-12 show> Kansas City was the first place picked for the Google project, in part, because Google was given access to the [telephone] poles. Though Nevada City submitted a request, the local [telephone] poles were in poor shape and maintaining the cables would have been daunting. The current project will put the cables underground.

Additional info about the fiber cable…
– An individual optical fiber is thinner than a human hair.
– There is a protective covering over the bundle of fibers.
– The conduit (1 inch to 3/4 inch dia.) is laid first and the fiber is blown thru it with air pressure
– Paul heard that orange conduit is sometimes mistaken for tree roots and that people attempt to pull out.
– Comcast & AT&T already have optical fiber cable in the Nevada City area, which they don’t share with any other company.

In 2010 a project called something like Central Valley Independent Network was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to lay fiber cable from Bakersfield to Colusa, passing thru Nevada County. It’s an open project that independent service providers can hook into. <John implied the current funding initiative, mentioned above, is part of this ARRA project.>

2 high schools, a middle school and a library are being connected as a result of the ARRA project. Local service providers, like Spiral Internet, are expected to hook into that cable and bring the service to individual houses. This is a dedicated cable connection and is not shared with other subscribers like, for instance, Comcast cable. John also said Spiral’s fiber cable will come directly into the house. It won’t terminate outside with Ethernet providing the final link.

Fiber cable is used for more than just carrying internet traffic. Chattanooga Tenn. is using it for their smart grid electricity service.

Cloud storage services like Dropbox will be easier to use with fiber because when you collaborate on editing a document, the response times will be so short.

Current internet speeds, including [wire] cable, are not symmetrical. Download speeds are much faster than upload speeds. A Comcast cable with 100megaBits/sec download speed will have about 5 or 10megaBits/sec upload speed. With 1gigaBit/sec fiber cable is that same speed for both uploads & downloads.

John said the latency would go down to zero. Unlike raw speed, latency is the time it takes for the network to respond to your request for a page. This is important for game players who want the game to respond quickly to joystick movement. It’s also important for stock traders who want their orders to transact before other traders have a chance.

Paul again mentioned speedof.me. This site tests your internet connection speed. It uses HTML5 instead of Flash. For more info see the notes for the 9-9-15 show.

Paul asked if the internet is a utility but is not officially recognized as such. John said that though the service providers have opposed it, earlier this year the FCC declared that the internet is a utility, like water or electricity.

Paul wondered what companies benefit from fiber cable. John said that everyone benefits but especially those who use cloud services. Increasingly, software, as well as storage, is provided on the internet. Rather than use software running on their local computers, businesses are turning to the internet where software is provided as a service. Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office 365 are examples. Companies started to provide software as a service, in part, because people became reluctant to buy new version of software that offered only a few improvements.

Paul speculated that the light used in fiber optic cable is infrared. John said different laser light frequencies can be used in a fiber, each at 1gigaBit/sec.

Paul told of a guy he had spoken to who repaired fiber cables. He would use a microscope and a microscopic furnace to butt-join the ends of the fiber. The fibers are actually a bit dangerous, they can get under the skin like thorns.

Paul mentioned the Global Village software. Written to run on Berkeley System Distribution Unix for Berkeley students to use in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was a discrete system, not on the internet. It was like a blend of Facebook & Wikipedia. Arguably, this began the transition from face to face interaction to virtual interaction.

Spiral Internet applied for a grant to begin phase one of the fiber optic project in Feb of 2013. 2 weeks ago John received notice from the California Public Utilities Commission that they will likely fund 60% of the project. He already had 40% in matching funds. The PUC will vote on it on Dec. 3.

John said the project areas have been delineated and you can see where they are if you go to spiral.com/fiber. You can enter your address and see if you are in one of areas of the initial phase. This will also tell them you’re interested so they’ll know where to expand to next.

If the PUC votes to fund the project, Spiral expects to start laying cable in the spring. Notices will go out to homes in the area and local meetings will be held to promote the coming service. Go to the spiral.com/fiber page to see area where the project will start.

John wasn’t prepared to say what the price of the service will be. Fixed wireless or DSL typically costs about $10 or $11 per megbit/sec <per month, I guess>. Spiral’s service will be about $.06 megbit/sec. Google fiber is $120/month and AT&T is closely matching that price. Spiral hasn’t decided what to charge.

As more TV content is being provided over the internet, John expects people to drop services like Direct TV and Dish. He also thinks that people will be able to fine-tune the content so they only pay for what they really want.

Telemedicine is another area poised to expand on the internet, facilitated by higher speeds. Various health monitors communicating over the internet will help in diagnosing physical conditions.

Cellular phone service can be improved because cell towers can be installed in more places when there’s high-speed fiber nearby to carry the signal.

Listeners can help in getting the PUC to vote for the funding by sending emails to the commissioners. Go to nevadacountyconnected.com and you’ll find an on-going blog about the project. There you’ll find instruction on how to send supporting emails. And you’ll be able to keep track of the construction as it progresses.

Paul said he’ll put up the podcast of today’s show. Go to kvmr.org and then click on the items that “indicate streaming and past shows”. <I couldn’t find what he was talking about. I did find where KVMR’s has podcasts of past shows stored for a limited time. Today’s Zen Tech show is already there. You can find podcasts of various KVMR shows by going to kvmr.org and following the link called ‘Archive‘ located toward the bottom of the page

Contact info for Spiral Internet:
support@spriralinternet.com
530-478-9822

Last Updated 12:54 AM 11-12-2015