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

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 guys were broadcasting from the Nevada County Fair today.
Listeners were invited to visit the KVMR booth at the “back of the fair”

There wasn’t as much tech talk as usual so the notes will be sparse.

Paul talked briefly about LPs (music records) and hi-fi aficionados.
– Having left & right speakers set up correctly matters especially with classical music because the various orchestral instruments are expected to be on the correct side.
– When the Beatles recorded their albums, they used, at most, 4 tracks which were mixed together to produce a mono recording — their early stuff was in mono. But later, because of their foresight to record 4 tracks, they were able to create stereo recordings.
– Original records, going back to Edison were in mono and the needle went up and down. When stereo came out, the grooves were made with lateral movement, which still allowed mono players to play the record.

Glenn got an email saying the 32kbps audio stream of the KVMR broadcast isn’t working. Normally KVMR sends out 2 live streams of their programs on the internet — 32kbps & 64kbps. The 32kbps stream is used by those with a dialup connection that’s still popular in the rural areas around Nevada City and the foothills.

Glenn brought up an email he got during the last show. A listener who’s using Windows 8 was trying to do an update and “it will not go”. Sherri was wondering if she should do a system restore — she meant reinstall Windows and all of her programs.
– Paul said that without more info about how the update is failing, he wouldn’t recommend a full restore.
– When you get an error message, it’s a good idea to take a picture of it. <Use the printscreen button (prt scr) or even a camera>. Don’t try to second-guess what it means, when you ask for help.

The guys talked about portable battery packs for mobile devices. Glenn has one that’s rated at 5 amp hours — enough to charge his iPhone twice. Paul said some people don’t realize that their mobile device can be charged when it’s not on, when the screen is black. It will charge slower when it’s on because some of the current goes to run what ever you’re using it for at the time.

The portable battery packs aren’t expensive. Glenn paid $11 for his and it came with a double-headed LED flashlight. He recently saw 2.5 amp hour units on sale at he’s favorite store, Fry’s, and was thinking they would make good stocking stuffers.

These units generally come with standard USB A type port and they work with all sorts of gear that requires up to 1 amp at 5 volts. The iPhone & iPads require special connectors, which you’ll have to buy separately.

Paul said you can put together a road warrior charging kit which will include a USB car charger, 2 USB cables (an A connector on one end and 1 each with a mini & micro plug on the other), the two types of connectors for the Apple products, a portable battery pack and a wall charger (get one rated at 2 amps, to get a faster charge).
<How to make lithium-ion batteries last for years
 I’ve found much useful info at Battery University, too
>

Glenn was disappointed that there was no wi-fi at the KVMR booth at the fair so he could use his iPad. Instead, he was getting a 4G cellular connection from PureTalk on his iPhone. He said he pays either $40.95 or $41.95 <per month>. He’s been with them for at least 2 years. So far, he’s been able to avoid overage charges even though he has only a 500meg data plan. He uses free wi-fi when he can.

A young fair attendee and 4H member named Alison came to the microphone to tell us that she’s raising a male lamb named Guppy. He’s a Hampshire breed and he was 2 weeks old when she first saw him and was impressed. Paul mentioned the website backyardchickens.com, which he’s used to learn about domestic fowl.

Paul responded to an email from someone using Windows 7 on a computer that’s connected, by Ethernet, to Smarter Broadband. The user complained that sometimes the computer doesn’t register keystrokes or mouse movements. It happens in all programs.
– Paul thought it was because the computer was too busy doing other things.
– To see what’s taking up the CPU time, press Cntrl + Alt + Delete to bring up the task manager. Click on the tab called CPU <‘Processes’ on the XP>.
– Often it’s an anti-virus program that’s putting a great demand on the CPU.
– It’s safe to kill processes even if you can’t identify what they are. But first, make sure you don’t have anything important running. Save your work before proceeding.
– The busiest thing on the process list should be Idle process. The machine should spend more than half of the time just waiting.
– The second busiest is the Task Manager itself.
– If there’s anything as busy as the Task Manager, try to identify it and decide if you need it running. If it’s an anti-virus, try to temporarily disable it to see if the problem goes away. <I’m guessing he meant using the anti-virus program’s settings to suspend it — not the Task Manager>.
– Check how much hard drive space you have remaining. If it gets above about 90% full, both Macs and PC will start to slow down.
– Paul likes to use Crap Cleaner (Ccleaner) to get rid of unnecessary files that accumulate over time.

<At about 1:41p the internet feed cut out and came back on at about 1:49. I suspect the over-the-air broadcast did as well. There wasn’t anything particularly useful after the signal was restored.>

For sponsoring today’s show, Paul 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

And…
Beam Easy Living Center
A purveyor of whole-house fans and air purifiers
Website: beameasy.com

Changelog:
added links: caring for your Lithium-ion battery, here

Last Updated 5:11 PM 8/13/2015

MacPaint OSX Drawing Program Clone! Free!! http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net
More advanced needs? Try the Gimp. (Also for MAC & PC)

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 Paul & Glenn were in the studio today.

Noting the he and Glenn are not early adopters of technology, unless it’s free, Paul said he still has an iPhone 3GS. Glenn has an iPad 4 that’s almost 3 years old, And his iPhone 4S is showing its age — its battery runs out in less than 3 hours after a charge.

For sponsoring today’s show, Paul 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

Glenn had an issue with doing a backup of his Apple devices to iCloud. His iPad has not been backing up and Paul helped him discover that he had only 1.6gig of the original 5gig of free space available on iCloud — which isn’t enough to backup his iPad. He went to iCloud and under ‘Storage’ found out how much space was available. Many people who use Apple products find they can’t upgrade their mobile operating systems without freeing up memory. And they can’t off load their data to iCloud because there’s not enough room there either.
– If you’re using Photostream, You can turn it off to conserve space. BEWARE, you can lose the photos on your device and possibly on iCloud, too.
– You can buy more space on iCloud. “It’s not that expensive”. You can get an additional 20gig for $.99/mo.
– Remain aware of what’s being backed up or that extra 20gig will fill up quickly and you’ll be looking for even more space.

Assuming most listeners are using some form of Windows, Paul admonished those using XP to avoid using Microsoft’s anti-virus program and Internet Explorer. Get a third party anti-virus. And be aware that soon there will be no more Flash updates.

Windows 7 & 8 users may have noticed a blue icon in their system tray at the bottom of the screen that offers a free copy of Windows 10. If you click on it, it allows you to reserve your copy, which when available, will be download to your computer. It’s about 2gig in size but it won’t be installed until you decide. Paul said Win7 still has a lot of life left in it and will be supported for quite a while.
<Here are some Windows 10 article links I’ve collected in the past few months. I didn’t read them all but hope someone will find them useful.
You don’t need the Windows 10 free copy icon anymore

Can I Cancel my Windows 10 Reservation and Reserve Later

How to Clean Install Windows 10 using Windows 7, 8 License

Will Windows 10 Install Automatically; or wait for Windows 10 ISO

Windows 10 Upgrade: Can I choose 32-bit or 64-bit

How long will free Windows 10 upgrades last?

Which Version of Windows 10 Will I Get
>

Apple users are allowed to turn on or off the “Find My Phone” option. When it’s on, the GPS on the device will relay to Apple the current location of the phone. <Keep in mind the issue of privacy>.

If you lose track of your device, you can go to icloud.com and sign on with your Apple ID. One of the options there is to find your device — including a Mac, Mac Book, Mac Mini, iPhone and iPad, as long as it has wireless and logs on to iCloud.

Using this service, you can cause your misplaced iPhone to emit a sound to help you locate it. You can remotely lock the phone or wipe out all of its data. The phone can be in sleep mode but must not be off to do this.

James called. He tried logging on to a government website to renew a FA Medical and kept having his password rejected. He found out that they don’t support the iPad. He had the same problem at the “My Healthy Vet” website. At this point Paul pushed the wrong button and dropped the call. James called back later, see below.

Jeff called with more details about the Win10 upgrade.
– It’s coming out on July 29 (today). You can download it immediately or choose different time.
– It’s available free for a year, after which it’s $119.
– There will not be new version numbers (Windows 11, Windows 12 etc.) — Win10 will be perpetually updated.
– Paul suggested going to a local retail store (Best Buy etc.) and having a look at it before deciding to upgrade.
– The update is irreversible. You’ll lose the Win7 or Win8 you have now. So, reserve it now and decide to update later.

James called back and said the websites he mentioned only support Firefox or Internet Explorer. He couldn’t find Firefox at the Apple app store. Paul explained that Apple restricts mobile email programs and web browsers to using Apples webkit. Where such apps are available, they only change the appearance; underneath they all use the same webkit. He added that the Apple mobiles do not support Flash.

Paul noted that Apple Macs are more expensive that other brands with the same horsepower, even in the used market. However, things are starting to change because around 2006 or 2007 Apple switched over to using an Intel CPU. Now those older machines are showing up on the used market. He’s seen a 13″ Mac Book capable of running the Yosemite OS (version 10.10) for $229 with a 90 day warranty (extended warranty is available). It comes with version 10.6 and with the software it had on it the day it was originally sold new. He found it at macofalltrades.com. With a $5 adapter from China ($49 from Apple) you can use a DVI display with it. The hardware is PC compatible and you can install Windows on it.

Paul told us about his two favorite sites for used Mac computers: powermax.com and macofalltrades.com. They sell used reconditioned Macs, not refurbished, though macofalltrades uses that word. Refurbished means the computer went back to the manufacturer to be reconditioned.

Martin called to complain about the Magsafe power adapter for the Apple products. He thought they are pretty shoddy because the cord tends to fray. At $80 each, he expects better quality. He asked for some tips to deal with the problem.
– There was a recall of some Magsafe versions.
– Paul said suggested using Shoe Goo, either preemptively or after the fraying starts.
– Martin said, handle the adapter gently — no twisting or bending. They’ll go bad without any external signs of damage.
– Paul’s seen after-market adapters that are cheaper, but their magnet is not as strong.
– There are 2 types of adapters — 65 & 85 watt. It’s ok to use the 85-watt adapter on a machine that only requires 65 watts, but not the other way around.
– Search on the internet for the ‘pigtail’ (that’s just the Magsafe piece). Then you can resolder it yourself using heat-shrink tubing.
– Paul searched the net for the words: Magsafe pigtail fix. He found, on instructables.com, instructions to fix a Magsafe connector.
– Paul cautioned those trying their own repair against the possibility of shorting out the power supply or ending up putting too much current thru the computer.
– Glenn thought that the Maker Shed might have what’s called something like Sure Goo. It’s putty that hardens after you mold it around what you’re repairing.
– Listeners were asked to mail in better suggestions.

Matt called. He’s been using Windows 10 for a few months and gave his opinion about it. He said he really likes it.
– If you’re using Windows 8 or 8.1 then definitely upgrade. It’s much easier for mouse and keyboard users. Win8 and 8.1 were designed for the touch screen and are a bit tricky to use with mouse & keyboard.
– The Start menu is back and the ‘apps’ run in their own windows. They don’t take over the whole screen, as in Win8.
– The apps you get from Microsoft (some free & some not) are checked for viruses.
– Besides ‘apps’, you can run regular Windows programs. Matt hasn’t run into compatibility problems with older programs.
– If you’re a Win7 user who is a techie type, then you’re the right person to upgrade. If not, then wait a few weeks.
– If you plan to get a new computer, wait until mid August. Intel is coming out with a new CPU called Skylake. That will cause retailers to discount existing computers.
– Best Buy and Fry’s are a good place to shop, but Microsoft has their own stores — at the Westfield Galleria, for example (off highway 65 in Roseville). They can give demos of Win10. And the PCs they sell don’t have bloatware on them (pre-installed promotional programs). Microsoft’s online store is at microsoftstore.com.

Someone called to complain about the 2.1 amp limit for charging iPads. He asked if there’s a faster way to charge. Paul said that charging at higher rate could destroy the battery.
<Here’s a droid widget to keep track of charging and usage current: CurrentWidget>

Changelog
added Win10 article links here.

Last Updated 1:53 PM 7/30/2015

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 < >

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

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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