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 < >

The intro music was by Pentatonix:

Glenn & Paul were both in the studio today.

A few weeks ago, Paul got an Apple TV 4. He’s amazed by the quality. Youtube is increasingly making available feature-length documentaries and other content for free, and Paul sees no reason to subscribe to any video provider. It takes as little as 1.5 megabits/sec to stream Youtube video, he said.
<A few more details about Apple TV are in the notes for the 9-23-15 show>

Glenn recently installed a router at home, but when he tried to access it with his iPad, he got the message the “router is not connected to the internet”.

Glenn has AT&T DSL upstairs but the wireless signal wasn’t making it downstairs. He ran an Ethernet cable from the upstairs router to the router downstairs that he installed. Paul helped configure the downstairs router by turning off DHCP and assigning an appropriate range of addresses, thus turning it into a switch. He’ll need to look at it again, apparently.

Many residents in Nevada County have DSL and a beige-colored modem made by 2Wire. Some parts of the county have switched to DSL 2 Plus — called Uverse by AT&T. It “hands out the same kind of address range as the original” DSL, Paul assumed, so it shouldn’t look that different.

When routers are configured, they sometimes have 2 buttons, “save” and “activate”, and you need to do both for your changes to be stored in the non-volatile memory. Paul typically reboots the router and then checks to be sure the changes took effect.

Not all routers are the same. They vary in the power of the radio transmitter, the sensitivity to low power and the rejection of stray signals.
– Some routers perform channel hopping over the 11 channels assigned to the 2.4 gigaHertz band. <To find unused channels, I guess>.
– Ideally, you want to set your router to use a channel not used by other nearby wi-fi networks. Diagnostic software can tell you which channels are in use.
– 5.4 gigaHertz routers have a stronger signal and a shorter range. <Higher frequencies have less penetration, as I recall>
– You can use the less common 5.4 gigaHertz band to avoid interference from nearby routers, but the router has to be installed and configured to do that.
– Newer tablets and phones can use the 5.4 gigaHertz band but some older equipment can’t.
– The order of preference in connecting to a router: use a wired connection (not possible with most mobile devices), use 5.4 gigaHertz wireless if your device can use it or use 2.4 gigaHertz (typically used by most mobile units).
– Paul likes the app called Wi-Fi Analyzer, which tells you the channels nearby networks are using so you can configure your router for an unused channel.
<I found 2 called Wi-Fi Analyzer. The more popular one is here.
the other one is here:>

Raymond called about the offer Paul made to people with older computers running Windows XP who’d like to change to Lubuntu — a version of the Linux operating system. Paul was hoping to provide a way for people to bring their old computers and have Lubuntu installed. He said he’ll figure out something before the next show
– It takes about .5 hr to install.
– Make sure you’ve backed up what you want to keep as the hard drive will be wiped clean.
– Go to lubuntu.net to see an animation of what to expect from Lubuntu.
– There’s a version called Edubuntu for people who like science & math and leans toward educating your kids.
– <He talked about this in the 9-23-15 show. See those notes for more details>

You can order a CD with Lubuntu <or other flavors of Linux> for about $10. You can then boot from the CD each time you want to use it, or permanently install it from the CD.

Ubuntu <and Linux in general> allow you to create accounts that have lower privileges than the top level administrator. These accounts, which you can assign to your child, make it difficult for malware to get installed. Viruses generally need administrator access to install and your child won’t have the administrator’s password.

To run Lubuntu your machine has to be able to boot from a CD, some older machines can’t. On Ebay you can find people selling Ubuntu on a flash drive. But, again, not all older computers can boot from a flash drive. You can test if your computer can boot from flash. You have to first insert the flash drive and then boot. While booting, keep pressing the F2, F10 or F12 key (depending on your computer) to get to the menu where you select the device to boot from. <For some computers, you’ll have to go in to the BIOS settings to pick the boot device>. Just remember to have the flash drive plugged in before booting or you won’t be offered the option to boot from it.

For those without an CD drive, there are external units available in the $25 to $35 range. That should get you a CD reader/writer & DVD reader/writer.

Around the time that manufacturers stopped providing CDs, containing the operating system, with new computers, they started providing a recovery partition on the hard drive, From that partition you can create bootable CDs in case you need to restore your operating system.

This is true for the Mac operating system, too. There are command line tools that let you create a bootable flash drive.

Paul talked a bit about monitors.
– You can buy a 24″ LED screen for about $139.
– LED monitors give off very little EMF.
– Negative features of CRTs (tube type monitors): they produce alternating magnetic & electrical fields, soft x-rays, ozone, they warm the air and produce static electricity that makes dust stick.

Ralph called. He has an XP machine that’s been having problems with some websites. He wondered if running Lubuntu will let him access the internet. And he wanted to know if his only choice is to overwrite everything on his hard drive.
– Lunbuntu comes with Firefox. It’s the same version that comes with Windows so there’s nothing new to learn.
– When you boot Lubuntu from a CD or flash drive, you’ll be given a choice of installing it on your hard drive or just run it for a single session while preserving the hard drive content.
– If you choose to only run from the CD, it will be slow (because it’s accessing the CD). And you can’t save things like browser bookmarks because the CD is not writeable. But you’ll have a chance to try Ubuntu before committing to it.
– Ubuntu gives you a third option when you boot it called memtest. This will run a diagnostic program to check the memory chips in your machine.
– Try speedof.me to test the speed of your internet connection. It can test multiple connections at once. It uses HTML5 instead of Flash. <Mentioned in the 9-9-15 show notes>
– There are times a website is accessed by a lot of people at once and it becomes slow for everyone.
– <You might try restarting the browser. If it’s been running for a long time, it can bog down>

Last Updated 10:59 PM 10/14/2015

/p

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 < >

The intro music was by Pentatonix:

Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio today.

Paul kind of rambled a lot today. No callers got on the air.

When Paul switched the Zen Tech website from running on Joomla to WordPress, he wanted to preserve all of the content including hundreds of show notes. He found a plugin for WordPress that was made to import from an old version of Joomla that the site had been running on for some 10 years.

Plugins for WordPress, as with many programs, are generally written by third parties who may not update the plugins in a timely manner, thus leading to security problems.

Some time back, LinkedIn had a security breech due, in part, to the users’ passwords not being properly encrypted. If a person who logs into LinkedIn uses a password that they also use at other sites, that makes it easier for the password thief to impersonate the user on those other sites. <don’t reuse your passwords — especially on critical sites like banks & brokerage companies.>

Captchas (text made so only a human can read) are often used during a login to make it difficult for robotic software to continually entering user name & password combinations until they gain entry. People from third world countries, who are paid paltry wages, are sometimes used in place of robotic software to decipher captchas.

Paul recently updated the version of WordPress at the Zen Tech site. After doing so, he found that the theme (the part that controls the appearance — the lettering, background, etc.) also needed updating because, apparently, of a security issue.

WordPress has become pretty mainstream now. If you go to a hosting company like 1and1.com, they already have WordPress websites ready to go, all you need to do is pay them their fee. Paul said, the easy way to find out how WordPress works is to go to wordpress.com, where you can quickly set up a website. He said, just start creating the site and things will become self-evident as you go along. You don’t have to give an personal information, you can even use a fake name and a throw-away email address.

There’s a trick you can use with Gmail by putting a period in your name. You can use one or more periods in the name (yo.urnam@gmail.com your.na.me@gmail.com) and you’ll still get email at yourname@gmail.com. You can use a name with periods when you sign up for some service, and later set up a filter at gmail to trash any emails with periods, thus disposing any spam that service may send you. You can also use this to find out if a service violated its promise not to give out your email to advertisers.

It once was, and may still be, true that you could use the plus sign in your email name. This was deliberately designed into Sendmail so that if you use yourname+randomletters@mail.com the +randomletters would get truncated and the email would be delivered to yourname@mail.com.

The domain naming system is not case sensitive, Paul said. You can use Kvmr.Org and it will still work like kvmr.org. In most cases you can use mixed case in the user name, too — yOuRnAme@kvmr.org for example.

The CAN-SPAM Act required that when you sign up for a mailing list, your request had to be confirmed. An email is sent to confirm your intent to join. And every email from then on has to have a link to let you unsubscribe. Some services make the unsubscribe link hard to find. And some will claim that it will take time to process the unsubscribe request, giving them time to sell your address to some other service.

There was a brief mention of the “Do Not Call List“. After Glenn first put his name on the list, the number of calls went down, but they’ve increased lately. He said he’d have to check if his name is still on the list.

A company can claim they’re calling from outside of the US and therefore not breaking the law regarding the do not call list. “There’s no way of figuring out where the call came from”, Paul said. Caller ID can be faked easily and is not trustworthy. Email addresses can be faked too.

If you get a call from someone claiming to represent your bank, it can be a scam. Hang up and call your bank at the phone number you know is good, <like the one on your monthly statement.>

Domain names that look similar to that of your bank can be created — bofamerica.com or bankofa.com or welsfargo.com etc. An unsuspecting user can mistakenly type in the wrong name and end up at a bogus website where they end up revealing their username and password.

Glenn asked the listeners if anyone has gotten the new iPhone 6 or 6+ or the new iPad. He’d like to hear from you.

Apple has issued a new operating system, iOS9. Often they’ll have a new iOS to go along with the new hardware. Paul said there some wisdom in waiting to upgrade, there may be some bugs that will be corrected with revisions. Paul thought iOS9 can be installed on an iPad as old as version 2, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Apple has a tendency to abandon older hardware as it improves the software or firmware.

Glenn’s iPhone 4S still has version 7 of iOS and he’s found some of his software won’t update unless it has version 8, and version 8 on a 4S is sluggish (as mentioned on a previous show). Paul’s iPhone 3GS running the Facebook app is so slow it’s unusable.

Paul got a new 20′ RV with a solar panel. Its interior lighting comes from tungstun filiament light bulbs that have a color temperature of 4000 to 5000 Kelvin. You can get direct plugin replacement LED lights on Ebay. Daylight (or warm white) LEDs are 5000 to 6000 Kelvin. Paul found some daylight 12 volt LEDs for $1 each.

The battery used to crank the engine doesn’t like being discharged more than about 10% so a separate, deep cycle battery is used to run the lights. It’s made to discharge as much as 80% without being damage. He found one for $99

There are other gadgets RV campers can get on Ebay like a voltmeter that tells you the house battery voltage. The discharge of a battery vs. voltage is not linear. Most of the time the battery is about 12 volts, it can be as high as 13 volts. “Anything below about 11.5 volts means it’s on the way out”. There’s also the type of indicator with just color bar graphs to indicate the state of the battery.

Paul found a 100watt solar panel that delivers about 17volts to charge a 12volt battery. A charge regulator has to be used between the solar panel and the battery to charge the battery properly. Paul paid $16 for a 20amp charge regulator. If there’s more electricity coming from the panel than is needed to run the equipment in the RV, the excess is used to charge the battery.

Glenn invited people to write to zen@kvmr.org.

Paul again offered Windows XP users whose machines are working OK, a CD with Lubuntu (a version of Linux). He talked about this in the 9-23-15 show. See those notes for more details.

Paul told us that while NASA was looking for solution for ballpoint pens not working in space, because they rely on gravity, the Russian solution was to use pencils, or so the story goes

Today’s Zen Tech show was made possible in part by Vermicrop Organic.

Last Updated 10:06 PM 9/30/2015

TODAY is the first day of Fall!

Repairing things like an Apple TV 4 using IFIXIT.COM

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 < >

Note: There will be another Zen Tech show this month on 9-30-15

Glenn & Paul were both in the studio today.

Paul started by talking about the Fall Equinox, which occurred today. During an equinox the length of the day and night are expected to be exactly the same everywhere on earth. But things are not so simple. Discrepancies in the length of day and night occur due to how you measure sunrise and set. For instance, the day can start when either the first light from the Sun, the middle of the Sun or the trailing edge of the Sun is on the horizon. The above link explains further.

Paul has recently been working on a VHS tape deck. Earlier models had a lot of belts driving pulleys. The belts would stretch and cause problems. Later on, manufacturers began using gears to avoid that problem. It used to be easier to find a replacement belt that would work, but the specificity of the gears made it hard to find replacements.

Paul went on to talk about cars that had progressive or continuous transmissions — such as the variomatic. Such a transmission “has to slip between the ratios” and the slippage tends to generate heat. Cars with this type of transmission never got a significant market share.

Last week Paul helped Glenn transfer some data from a Fujitsu laptop with Windows 7 to a desktop with Windows 8. Paul said there is a facility built into Win7, Win8 and possibly Win10 called Windows Easy Transfer. It didn’t come with Windows XP but is available for it. Search for the words: windows easy transfer xp. Using it is fairly straightforward.
– Execute the Windows Easy Transfer and it will ask if this is the old machine or new machine. <Apparently, you use it to transfer out and then use it again to transfer in.>
– Then it asks you if the two machines are connected by cable, or if you want to use a hard drive or flash drive.
– It then copies an archive of the entire profile of the user. It doesn’t copy the operating system itself.
– You then run Windows Easy Transfer on the new machine and let it know you’re on the new machine when it asks
– It will again ask if you’re using a cable connection or a drive.
– Then it will ask if you want to merge the copy of the user profile with an existing profile on the new machine, or if you want to create a new profile. If you’re starting fresh on the new machine, Paul recommends creating a new profile.
– Additionally, he said you can Windows Easy Transfer as a way of creating a backup. But it backs up all of the user data at once and it’s not the same as a file backup where you can pick and choose individual files.

As mentioned during the last show, Apple has come out with a new iPad, the iPad Pro. Glenn said it’s only availble in the 12″ model.

A new version of the operating system iOS 9 was also released and Paul thought it’s a good idea to wait before upgrading — see what others think of it, first. It can be installed on an iPhone as old as a 4S. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should upgrade to older iPhones. As an example, iPhone 4 suffered badly when you went from iOS 7 to 8. There tends to be a greater burden on the older hardware when you install newer versions of iOS. This is unlike Windows where, Paul noted, that a PC running Windows 7 would generally be able to handle Win8 and Win10.

Paul said he liked using the Apple TV 4.
– It’s a box about 4″ square.
– It has it’s own 110v power cable.
– It has an HDMI output and series of apps on board so you can watch Netflix, Youtube and such.
– Version 5 of Apple TV will have the ability to subscribe to content, similar to how iTunes subscription works on the iPod.
– Paul heard that the CPU inside is an A4, which is equivalent to the CPU found in some of the iPads.

The Apple TV 4 he received had suffered lightning strike before he got it and it’s power supply was fried. When he tried to take it apart he found, as with many modern devices, it had plastic latches holding the enclosure together. The plastic latches can get broken when you take it apart if you haven’t done some research ahead of time. Paul said ifixit.com is good place to learn what you need before you proceed. With second hand parts from China, he was able to get it going.

Glenn said he’d consider posting podcasts of the Zen Tech shows, like he did before. Podcasts of some KVMR show can be found on at kvmr.org. Follow the link called ‘Podcasts’.

Brian called. He has a fairly modern laptop with an I7 processor and 32gig of RAM. It had Windows 8 on it when he bought it new. He has Pro Tools 11, which isn’t compatible with anything but Win8. He kept being asked if he’d like to upgrade to Win8.1, which he declined. Eventually, it automatically upgraded to Win8.1 and started asking if he’d like to upgrade to Windows 10. He figured he might as well go ahead. Now he’s experiencing odd behaviors — the screen goes black when he unplugs the AC power and Chromecast will play the sound but not the picture.
– Unless it says specifically that it won’t work with Windows 8.1, check with the Pro Tools company to find out if it can.
– Brian said they don’t “support” it on Win8.1. Paul said that doesn’t mean it won’t work in 8.1. Win8 and Win8.1 are not that different and Pro Tools will likely work on both.
– When you bought the laptop, it normally would have had the facility to restore the operating system to how it came from the factory. It’s often not well documented. It usually requires holding down a specific key when booting. Sometimes you’re given a chance to confirm the procedure, sometimes not. BACKUP before proceeding.
– Brian hadn’t yet even tried using Pro Tools in Win10. Paul suggested the try it and also to see if there are any patches for Pro Tools to make it compatible with Win8.1 or Win10.

William called. He called during the 9-9-15 show asking about exporting the address book from Thunderbird in vcard format. He has since found out that if he exports the address book in .csv format, he should be able to use Gmail to convert it to vcard. When he tried that, he got the file into Gmail but now he can’t seem to open it there.
– If the .csv values were incorrect it may have imported nothing (into Gmail).
– After importing it should have said how many contact were actually imported. That should confirm that there’s data there.
– The 1st line in the .csv files should have the names of the fields – FirstName, LastName, PhoneNumber, Email, etc. You can use a simple text editor to make sure it has correct field names — it might say StreetAddress when it should say Address, for example. Somewhere in Gmail it should tell you what it expects those field names to be.
– William took a closer look at his .csv files and found it had no data in it — so that’s why Gmail didn’t import anything.

William did not have Thunderbird set up to use his Gmail account. Paul said Thunderbird can have multiple accounts and asked William to set up Gmail by going to Tools -> Add Account (or something like that) and fill in his Gmail account. And the next step is to add the addon called Gcontacts, then “it will use Gmail to “funnel the addresses back and forth”.

William also wanted to know why the empty folders on his Windows 7 desktop “show the ghosts of images”. He said even that if he transfers the images out, it would show that the images are still in there. Paul said that’s because the images really are still in there. Paul wasn’t sure he understood the problem as William explained it. He wanted to move on and suggested they use email to continue troubleshooting.

Paul said Google has increased their security considerably. Now, when you configure things to hook up to your contacts, like Thunderbird, “it sends you back to the webpage to log in to your Google account”. Google did this to foil robots that continually try login to Google in an effort to break into an account. It’s easy for a robot to login to an IMAP or POP mail account. You’ll now see a login procedure that requires human input.

Paul touted the value of noise canceling headsets. They’re normally expensive, but he’s found some for about $19. One place they’re used is on the tarmac of an airport. The ground crews need to talk to their superiors amid the noise of the airplanes. The headsets have a mic on the outside which takes the noise and causes it to be 180 degrees out of phase as it’s fed into the earcups. The waveforms then cancel each other out, deadening the noise.

They work so well that if you use the headsets without the sound you desire to hear, like music fed in from an mp3 player, it can be an odd experience — the brain starts generating sounds for you to hear.

A surprising number of people are still using XP even though it’s been some 18 monthssince support for it had stopped. Paul said if you put an anti-virus on it, like AVG or AVAST, and don’t use Internet explorer, “it won’t be too bad”. Over time, however, more and more problems will arise.

For listeners with an old computer running Windows XP that’s approaching the end of life, Paul offered a free CD with Lubuntu <a version of Linux> that you can install and prolong it’s usefulness.
– It will have Firefox, Thunderbird and a word processor <and other programs, I’m sure>
– Installing it will wipe all content from computer, so beware.
– The window manager is similar enough to XP that you’ll be comfortable with it.
– Send email request to zen@kvmr.org.

Last Updated 11:46 PM 9/23/2015

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 < >

There will not be a Flea Market show tomorrow (9-10-15) at 1pm. There will be a special broadcast on homelessness.

Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio today.
You’re welcome to send them email: zen@kvmr.org

Glenn started the show by telling us about new Apple product announcements. There’s the new iPad Pro. It’s about 12″ in length and uses a new processor. It starts at $799.

Paul noted that the iPad is still running iOS, not Mac OS — Apple has not yet merged the two operating systems. And, unlike Windows, there seem to be no plans to make the Mac OS touch oriented.

Paul never met anyone who thought the touch-oriented Windows 8 was a good idea. His review of Windows 10 can be summed up by “I don’t hate it”. Coming from him, he said, that’s “not bad”.

In Win10, Microsoft moved things around. He compared it to rotating your car’s tires and imagining having a new car. On that sidetrack, he noted that if do a polarity tire rotation, you’ll go from having white walls to not having them and the tires will spin in the other direction. <The side with white walls no longer faces outward>. Paul wondered if this type of tire rotation is advisable. With modern tires, you’re not supposed to do that, Glenn said. “How ever you install the tire, as I understood it, is how it should remain for it’s life”, Glenn added.

Glenn wondered if people eligible to get Win10 should download it now even if they plan to install it later. Paul said he clicked the Windows 10 upgrade icon on a client’s computer and, past a certain point, you can’t turn back. He noted that the ability to do the free upgrade will exist thru July of 2016 and there’s no reason to do it now.

If you have Windows 8 and like it, just keep it. If you want to upgrade, be sure you have you important files backed up first.
<There are several articles about the Win10 update in the show notes for the 7-29-15 show>

Glenn thanked the supporters of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a supporting member, visit kvmr.org.>

Glenn had more to say about the iPad Pro.
– It has a 12.9″ screen.
– You can edit 4K video.
– You can design presentations and run a business on it.
– The screen has what’s called 3-D touch, it responds differently according to how hard you press. Paul said that would make it more like the current Wacom tablet that graphic designers use.
– Besides the full-sized software (on-screen) keyboard, there is an external keyboard available. Glenn said he uses a PC with a regular keyboard, if he needs to do much typing.
– Models with cellular network capability <Verizon, AT&T, etc.> in a wide range of LTE bands, are also available.

Paul went to apple.com/ipad and found more info. He said the Apple Pencil is now available. It allows for more precise touch control and should be handy for those doing technical drawings.
<Here’s the breakdown of the new $800 iPad (picture) (picture)>

In about 2008 or 2009 Microsoft started using a standard called XML — Extended Markup Language. XML had been around for quite a while but didn’t get much traction. Now when you save a document in Office (Word, Excel etc.) you’ll see filenames ending in .docx, for example. The x means it’s using XML.

Paul had to do some trouble shooting for a volunteer at KVMR who couldn’t get an Office 2013 document to open. He looked at the .docx file closely and found that it’s actually a .zip file. He renamed the file from .docx to .zip and then opened the file to discover it was composed of .xml files and directories with images etc. that all go into making the complete document. The .xml files are readable with a simple text editor and look similar to HTML files. He never did figure out why the document couldn’t be opened.

In an Office program <like Word> you can go to the ‘About’ menu item <I think it’s usually under ‘Help’>. Then look for an item that says something like ‘check and repair this installation’. This will verify if all the components of this program <like Word> are working correctly without have to reinstall it. Paul tried this without success.

He then used Revo Uninstall to remove all trace of Word and then reinstalled it. But it still wouldn’t work. He finally was able to open the file using Wordpad on a machine running Windows 7. Wordpad is a simplified version of Word but is not able to render all of the components of a Word document. Paul asked the listeners for a solution.

Paul suggested OpenOffice or LibreOffice for those who don’t have or want to buy Microsoft Office. These are open source projects and are free to download. They create documents that have much compatibility with MS Office. In fact, Glenn creates spreadsheets in LibreOffice for this Flea Market show and they open just fine in MS Office.
<The last I heard, LibreOffice gets updated more often than Open Office. I suggest going with that first.>

William called. He uses Thunderbird (a free email program) on a PC and he wants to transfer its address book elsewhere. Thunderbird exports an .ldif (Lightweight Directory Interchange Format) file and he wants to convert it to a vcard file.
– Paul thought he found an addon (plugin) for Thunderbird that does the conversion. It’s called Thunder Synch. William had already tried it but it seems to only synchronize 2 computers running Thunderbird but doesn’t export in vcard format.
– Paul thought he needed to restart Thunderbird to get the addon to work. Then look for the export option under ‘Tools’ or ‘Export’. However, it looks like you can only import vcard files, not export.
– There are other addons that allows you to save your address book in an email message format. It’s a specially formatted message that then can be imported into Thunderbird on another machine. <But this doesn’t meet his need to have it in vcard format>.
– Keep experimenting with other addons. Hopefully you’ll find one that does vcard.

William’s other question is how to synch address books on 2 PCs that both run Thunderbird. He wants the one with the older address book to gain the addresses from the newer address book.
– Thunder Synch will merge the address books.
– Then you’ll need another addon that will remove duplicate addresses.

Paul talked about paid ads on various sites like Facebook. Some of them entice you to click on something that initially seems interesting. While you’re waiting for that to load, your browser is told to go to dozens of websites in succession (if you use Firefox, you can see their names in the flash by in the lower left of the screen). Each of these sites sends you a single pixel image and loads a cookie onto your machine. You can’t see the pixels go by so it seems like the original page is just taking a long time to load.

So, now you have all of these cookies on your machine and a third party site that keeps track of them. When you go to one site, you may be sent an ad from another. They don’t know who you are unless you’ve filled out a form using your name on one of the websites. If you do, you might then be greeted by name on another site. For amusement, Paul will sometimes give an funny name to see how it propagates among the affiliate sites.

To avoid being tracked you can use the incognito mode of your browser. In Firefox go to the ‘File’ menu -> ‘New Private Window’. Other browsers have a similar function. Using this mode won’t save any cookies, sessions or history — they’re cleared when you close the window <or tab>. Incognito doesn’t mean you’re anonymous. Any bookmarks you made or links you dragged onto a toolbar are saved,

The ‘Do Not Track’ function in browsers is just a request — the websites you visit are not required to comply.

Speedtest.net has been recommended to test your internet connection speed but it requires Flash. Paul has found the new site speedof.me that doesn’t need Flash. It uses HTML5 instead.
– It forms 4 or 5 different connections to different locations to give a more ‘real world’ test.
– It keeps running to produce a continuous graph.
– Don’t forget to turn it off because it eats up the bandwidth

Last Updated 11:04 PM 9/9/2015

Last Show Here

What’s with all this Flash Crap?

What’s with Windows 10? Should I Get It? then how to get my PRIVACY BACK?!

Internet and home network speed tests https://iperf.fr

 Psst wanna See Unix on yer MAC?! Try Terminal– Then try free MACPORTS

 How To Be Tracked by “Ten Best” type sites and “Do Not Track” requests.

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.

Talk of staying cool lead to a couple of observations…
– Any more than 12 or 15 feet underground the temperature, as miners have found, stabilizes and stays in the upper 50s for several thousand feet downward.
– Even in a crawlspace, as Paul has under his house, the temperature is noticeably cooler. The air there provides some insulation from the heat of the day.
– Paul cautioned that crawlspaces, especially in Nevada County, should be ventilated because of a toxic gas called radon.

Glenn highly recommended the Miners Picnic at the Empire mine that will happen this weekend. Even when there’s no picnic, it’s a good place to visit when the docents are present.

Eventually, talk turned to the early electrification of houses…
– In the early days, electricity wasn’t on all of the time. When it was on, it was used just for lighting. There wasn’t enough energy to do much more.
– Back then, you had about 1 to 5 amps available. Today, Paul guessed, 200 to 300 amps are available. <I don’t think house wiring can handle more than about 30 amps>.
– The original Edison power plants that were put into cities were franchises. They produced DC current that couldn’t travel more than a few miles. The more efficient AC current, promoted by Tesla, eventually supplanted DC.
– Today, some trains use diesel & electricity to produce power. The diesel runs the generators that produce electricity, which then runs the motors. Diesel engines run most efficiently in a narrow rpm range that’s not great for turning wheels. On the other hand, the electricity generated from diesel can be switched in such a way as to produce optimum torque.

Glenn reminded listeners that they can email their questions and comments to the station using the address zen@kvmr.org. Or you can call in at (530)-265-9555.

Paul thanked those who made the last Zen Tech broadcast possible. They were at the Nevada County Fair at the time. He noted that they went off the air for about 9 minutes due to a power loss at the fairgrounds.

KVMR broadcasters are increasingly using software for meant DJs. During the last show, Paul didn’t get a chance to talk about a free program mentioned in the last show notes.
<Excerpted from those notes…
Be your own MAC DJ for Free!|
http://mixxx.org
Available for Windows 32/64bit and Linux, you aren’t limited to the Mac.
Download page…
http://mixxx.org/download/#stable
>

KVMR has the ability to play audio from a playlist, but the DJ software allows more flexibility. You can preview a track on a playlist thru your headphones before it plays. Or you can crossfade between tracks or control the mic volume, etc.

There are many DJ programs available. Many of them work with iTunes and can arrange your music into folders named according to the artists, albums, songs, etc. There is a database created by iTunes called iTunes.xml that has this information and is read by the DJ programs. iTunes compiles the .xml file into a file called itunes.itbl for faster access. Don’t mess with these files, Paul said.

This is the 24 anniversary of the Linux operating system. It was designed by Linus Torvalds of Finland, but he wasn’t the one who came up with the name. He was given some space on a server for his files and a folder called ‘Linux’ was created for him. The name is a combination of his name and UNIX, a proprietary name & operating system.

Paul talked about the Flash player. See the above link.
– There are still many sites that use Flash.
– Glenn often visits a website that requires flash though the iPad can’t run Flash.
– There’s a popular website run by Jacquie Lawson who creates animated Flash Christmas cards.
– If you use Youtube, you don’t need Flash. They use HTML5 now.
– The Chrome browser is able to natively, internally play Flash but it’s turned off by default. To turn it on, Paul suggested you do a Google search with the words: flash in chrome turn on.
– Flash has been a vector for many malware infections.
– Flash updates have been so frequent and people become too complacent that it’s become easy to mistake an update link that takes you to malware.
– A better explanation of Flash problems can be found by following the link at the top of this page.

About Windows 10…
Glenn said if you’re getting a new computer with the option to download it, go ahead and download it. Paul said a new computer will likely have Windows 8, which many people don’t like. The sooner you can get away from Win8, the better. Win10 is not as bad as Win8 and is on par with Win7, he said. You have until the end of July 2016 to do the upgrade.
<There are several articles about the Win10 update in the show notes for the 7-29-15 show>

Hardware requirements for Win10 have not increased. If your machine can run Win7, that makes it a candidate for Win10.

Jeff called. He’s starting to look for a new computer, which he plans to get after Window 10 has been out for a while. He’s seen an all-in-one computer that has no keyboard. It was bigger than a laptop with a 19″ monitor. He wondered if the guys have seen such a thing.
– Paul said there are machines that use Windows Runtime. They are essentially tablets that you can use vertically. Microsoft pushed the idea of large tablets and geared Win8 for people who’ll want to use a touch screen.
– Personally, Paul doesn’t particularly like the touch screen, preferring a keyboard instead.
– Check to see if it has an Intel CPU and a regular Windows operating system, or if it has the Runtime Window (Windows RT).
– Glenn recalled that Windows RT can’t be upgraded to Win7, Win8 and likely not Win10 either.
– Jeff said the one he saw had Win10 on it. Paul guessed that it might be running a specially made Win10 — a Win10 RT.
<My understanding is that the RT version of Windows was developed to run on CPUs other than Intel compatible. You may have trouble finding the wide selection of software that’s available for the standard, Intel-based Windows.>

Glenn mentioned that Jeff donated some of his hair to Locks of Love. Glenn wondered how long the hair has to be to qualify for donation and asked listeners who know to call in.

Pam called. She has a laptop with Windows 8.1 and uses dialup for her internet. She hasn’t been able to connect to Yahoo, Google and some other sites because there is “no security certificate”. But if she goes to a wi-fi hotspot in town, she’s able to get to those sites. She’s been told that it’s because dialup is too slow.
– At first, Paul thought it’s not a speed issue.
– Glenn said, just by visiting those sites on wi-fi she should be getting the certificates. So he thought it might in fact have something to do with her connection speed.
– Paul backtracked a bit and talked about the extra time it takes to get redirected from http://www.google.com to https://www.google.com. This is done automatically but may take so long on dialup that the certificate has a chance to expire. He suggested she test this by typing directly into her address bar https://www.google.com so there is no extra time needed to do the redirection.
– Another way to speed things up is to use the mobile version of websites. Many sites use “m.” in the URL to take you to a simplified webpage that loads faster. For instance, to get to Yahoo try https://m.yahoo.com.
– Using an dialup accelerator can interfere with certificates. Accelerators compress data at the ISP and decompress the data after it gets to your computer, so you get faster throughput.
– In you browser settings, turn off the loading of pictures. That will speed things up. You’ll end up seeing rectangles where pictures would ordinarily be.
– There may be a plugin for your browser that keeps the images turned off and allows you to load an individual picture if you really want to see it.
<Other things you can do to speed things up is turn off Javascript and style sheets (CSS) in your browser settings>

Caroline called. She’s using a PC with Windows 7. When she edits a photo in Picasa and tries to attach it to an email or post it to Facebook, the original pictures is used, not the edited version.
– Be sure you have the latest Picasa — version 3.9. Use the ‘Help’ menu to find the version number.
– Paul asked listeners familiar with this issue to call in.
– Paul speculated that Google, makers of Picasa, might want you to save the picture to their online service and use its address in your email.
– After you edit the picture in Picasa switch to Facebook (use Alt + Tab) and pick ‘upload image’. Now instead of ‘browse’ or Control-E, go to Picasa and drag the image to where it says ‘drag images here’. For more information, Google the words: drag and drop from picasa, or the words: picasa drag and drop images.
– Try the similar process for email. In Thunderbird you can drag the image directly to the ‘attach’ button itself.
– A good thing to know — often you can drag things to items on a menu that have names like ‘attach’, ‘open’ or ‘export’
– Paul said he’ll do some more research on this a post what he finds on the Zen Tech website.

For sponsoring today’s show, Glenn thanked…
The Cell Phone Repair Shop
534 Brunswick Rd. in Grass Valley
They fix cell phones and other personal electronics. They also sell used phones and pre-paid cellular.
Website: thecellphone-repairshop.com
530-278-8864

Paul said that on the next show he’ll talk about the items at the top of this page he didn’t have a chance to get to.

Last Updated 11:55 PM 8/26/2015