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 NO Zentech show next week 5-13-15, due to a membership drive. Next show is on 5-27-15

Today’s show was more conversationally casual than usual & wandered a lot. Reflecting this, the notes may seem a little fragmented.

Both Glenn & Paul were in the studio today.

Paul observed that there seems to be a lot fewer viruses and a lot more malware these days. A virus can spread from machine to machine and can seem malicious to some but beneficial to others — the scammers.

Paul said that there’s no sign Windows 10 is any better at defending itself against virus than Win8 or Win7. Linux has become more user-friendly over the years and he likes it better than Windows or Mac.

He uses a lot more Android than he used to. Although Glenn settled on the 10″ iPad, Paul likes his Nexus tablet running Android. President Obama had been known for using a Blackberry, though its market share has fallen below 1%.

On a typical workday, Paul encounters, in order of popularity, Linux, Mac, Android and Windows. Windows 7 appears to be a relatively mature product, though it’s often subjected to malware.

Talk turned to audio equipment when Paul asked Glenn if he still uses CDs. Glenn said he rarely does though his car’s audio deck has a CD player as well as a USB port for playing .mp3 files and an AUX input for hooking up an external device.

Paul has a friend who’s CD player burned out and he had to figure out how to get out and what to replace with. Audio decks on cars, he said, have to put up with a harsh environment — moisture from the windshield, heat from heater vents etc.

Glenn has had to replace a number of audio decks. He’s found that replacing an OEM <original equipment> unit is often more difficult than an after-market unit.

Paul went on to say that many audio decks rely on slivers of metal that act as latches to hold them in the dash. It’s worth searching online for tips from those who’ve done replacements. A tip he found suggested making metal strips 1/2″ wide & 4″ long and forcing them thru narrow slots along the sides of the unit to disengage the metal springs that hold the unit in place.
<I often find forums hosted on a manufacture’s website have useful tips from other users — true for all sorts of products, not just audio decks.>

Once removed from the dash, you’ll see that the audio deck will have about 12 or 14 wires dangling out of the back. The replacement unit you’re about to put in, unless an exact replacement, will likely require a different arrangement of the wires. Newer audio units tend to follow a standard for the color coding of the wires. Cars older than 8 or 10 won’t follow a standard color coding. To be sure what wires go where, it’s best to look it up.

You can save a lot of money if you buy a replacement that doesn’t have a CD player like the one Paul got for his friend for only $25. It has an FM radio, a USB port and a SD card Another thing to look for in a replacement unit is the ability to read (from a CD, .mp3 or .wma file) and display the album artist & title of a song. Cheaper units will just say track 1, track 2, etc.

These days, the slot in the car’s dash for the audio deck comes in 2 standard sizes – din 1 and din 2. Din 1 is the smallest and is what you typically find. It’s about 1.5″ high and maybe 5″ wide. Din 2 is twice as high. Paul speculated about putting an Android tablet into the Din 2 slot and using all the functionality of the tablet such as internet radio apps, GPS, etc.

The control console in the KVMR studio is mostly digital and uses level 1 Ethernet packets, thus eliminating the need for a lot of wiring. Similarly, cars are starting to use in-dash networking thru which various components of the car communicate, including the various sensors. Going a step further, Paul wondered how great it would be if a car can anticipate and react to the change in driving conditions. He gave the example of a GPS unit knowing that there’s a hill ahead and autonomously downshifting when appropriate.

Paul mentioned how troubling it is to replace the little light bulbs in a car’s dash. Instead of using an old style filament bulb for a replacement, he said you can now get a pin-equivalent LED light bulb from Amazon. They typically last 100,000 hours and aren’t subject to breakage due to vibration, as with filament bulbs.

Paul asked Glenn if he’s ever used Uber, a taxi-like service involving private vehicles. Glenn said he’s never used it but he is an Uber driver. He’s gone thru the process of qualifying but hasn’t been in the position of picking up customers yet. He thought of driving for Uber during his trips to San Francisco.

It’s a simple process for the passenger to use the Uber service. You get the app for your mobile device Android or iPhone, put in your destination, ask for a cost estimate (if you desire) and push the button that summons a Uber driver. Uber drivers in the vacinity get the notification that you want a ride and can then accept or reject the job. The price is set by Uber and is subject to surge pricing — the price can change due to the change in demand like time of day or special events. Paul heard that the Uber price is usually about half that of a taxi.

Paul ranted a bit about how services like Uber should be subject the labor laws. He mentioned another service call something like Rent a Husband where you hire someone to do the work of a handyman or other household chores. He said many business are coming online that are based on the internet and social networking. He tried to remember a service that let you bid on a parking spot that’s about to become available. He couldn’t recall its name, MonkeyParking.

Paul talked about writing apps for mobile devices. If you write for an Apple device you pay $100 to be able to distribute it thru the iTunes store. The program that lets you write the app is called Xcode, which you can get from the Apple app store. It’s free and runs on a Mac using an emulator (it mimics the iPhone/iPad on the Mac). If you don’t pay the $100 to get your app into the iTunes store, you’ll be able to run it only on your own iPad/iPhone, you can’t distribute it. When you submit your finished app to the iTunes store it’s reviewed buy someone to be sure it’s not malicious. Big Brother also makes sure there’s no profanity and that it meets other social norms.

Things are a bit freer on the Android side. You can distribute your app freely or thru the Android Marketplace. When you go to download an app, read thru the comments other users have posted to get a sense of what it’s about. As with Apple, some apps don’t do what they claim, or they inundate you with annoying ads.
<Get the Google Android developer kit here.
For other Android developer kits see here:>

Saxon called. He has a 2012 vintage Mac Book Pro with a conventional 750meg hard drive <maybe he meant 750gig> that he uses for Cad drawings. He’s been advised to remove the CD drive and replace it with a (SSD) flash drive. He wanted to know if that’s a good idea and tips on doing it.
– It’s not easy to do on a Mac, unlike other laptops. The drive is an integral part of the machine.
– Most “Mac places would do that”. Inquire at an Apple store to see what they think about it.
– Consider replacing the hard drive itself (not the CD drive) with a hybrid drive. That’s something you can do yourself using a special pentalobe screwdriver to take the screws out of the back. It’s much easier than replacing the CD drive.
– Flash drives are expensive. Paul thought it would be over $1000 for a 750gig flash drive.
– First, make sure you have plenty of RAM. That’s the most obvious way to get a performance boost. Saxon said he has 8gig in his machine, which is the maximum.
– Paul quickly looked up the price of a hybrid drive. Amazon sells a Seagate 750gig 7200rpm SSD hybrid for $76. It didn’t say in this ad, but try to determine how big the flash drive is in relation to the total storage capacity. Remember, the bigger the flash portion the higher the price.
– Go to the manufacturers website and look up the specs of the drive you’re considering to get the full details, including the size of the flash drive portion.

Last update 12:20 AM 5-7-2015

Black Viper optimizing tips for Windows 7, 8 etc.

Antivirus Comparisons & Prices Here.

 A little about Solid State Drive– Upgrades for your Apple products!

 Ever heard of Abbey Road Studios hmm? Well how about a tour right now?

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 < >

The intro music was by Pentatonix.

Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio.

Dennis, a KVMR tech, was measuring the inclination of the CD players in the studio and Glenn wondered if the angle had to do with the problems they were having with the players. Shortly afterwards, an engineer did a firmware upgrade which caused a problem at the end of this show.

In the past, equipment wasn’t happy being used at an orientation other than what it was designed for, Paul said. There used to be an arrow on hard drives to indicate which way up they should be installed. As things improved, they could be installed in various orientations, but once formatted, they had to to be used in that orientation thereafter.

Paul asked Glenn what he thought about the makeover of the Zen Tech website, now that it’s running on WordPress. Glenn only had a chance to see it from a visitor’s point of view but he thinks it “looks really good”. Paul invited visitors to leave comments at the website.. The comments are moderated; please keep it civil.

Paul talked about the Black Viper website, which suggests tweaks to Windows to improve performance. The person running the website takes a systematic approach to test the suggested tweaks to evaluate their impact on performance. The tips on the site cover various versions of Windows, and there might be something for the Mac users. See the above link.

Paul talked about anti-virus programs. He said that some are worse than not having one at all because they can set off false alarms. You may then become complacent and ignore a real alarm when it happens. Some anti-virus programs demand much from your computer’s resources and slow it down. There’s a link at the top of this page to a site that evaluated some anti-virus programs. Apparently, Webroot got rated highly this time around.

The guys have found that the free versions of Avast and AVG are adequate. They are not less secure than the pay versions but they tend to nag you to upgrade. The pay versions usually have a lot of extra utilities that are unnecessary. No anti-virus is 100% effective. The common entry points for a virus is thru the Flash player & Java.

The Firefox and Chrome browsers are becoming more popular. Paul expressed some reservation about Chrome because it tries to get you to login to Google & it stores a lot of info about you. Glenn told us about someone at KVMR who logged onto their own account using Chrome, but then others were able to access that account when they sat down at that computer.

Paul mentioned the link he posted above for a tour of Abby Road Studios. It has photo spheres (3-D photographs). If you have a large monitor screen, you’ll have a very immersive experience, he said.

Apple was the first company to stop putting floppy drives into their computers. What Paul said earlier about the orientation of hard drives was also true of floppy drives. It was possible for a floppy drive to get misaligned and disks formatted in it would work OK in that drive but no other.

There were 2 types of <3 1/2″> floppy disks <and drives> — 720K & 1.4meg. The magnetic medium was different for each and they recorded in different ways. You were able to save money by buying the 720K disks and converting them to the 1.4meg type. There was a tool that would punch a hole in the plastic case of a 720K diskette to make the high density drive think it was a 1.4meg diskette. If you started with a used 720K disk and converted it to 1.4meg, the read/write head would eventually pick up the stray magnetism from the previously recorded tracks and you could lose data. In the end it was a false economy.

Paul talked a bit about solid state drives (SSD). They use flash memory, like in a USB stick, instead of mechanical components — there are no moving parts.
– They are “consistently unreliable” according to Paul. They will eventually fail because you can write to a memory cell only about 100,000 times.
– Up to 10% of the memory cells are set aside to be used by built-in circuitry to ‘repair’ defects. It’s a process that’s completely automatic and is handled by internal software.
– When the SSD fails it will be catastrophic. There’s no warning as with mechanical drives, which may make clicking sounds before failure.
– There’s no way to recover the data off of a failed SSD, to Paul’s knowledge, unless the problem is something superficial like a broken contact.
– An SSD is sturdy. Paul has had some survive going thru a laundry.
– A blowtorch or a sledgehammer would be required to reliably destroy the data, he said.

Apple has been putting SSD drives into the Mac Book Air. The first generation imitated the serial ATA electronics of the mechanical drives to make it easier to manufacture the motherboard. In 2013 Apple switched over to different format called PCIE (PCI Express). If you’re upgrading your Mac, you have to be careful which type you get. The link above should give you more information.

Glenn still hasn’t upgraded his iPad to version 8 of the operating system. He’s still at version 7.1.2. Apparently, there suspicion or rumor about ver 8 being slower. Paul said it’s almost impossible to go back to the earlier ver 7 if you upgrade to ver 8 and don’t like it — at least not thru Apple.

Bob called. He plugged an Apple into a new Comcast unit. It keeps trying to connect to the old Comast box and he can’t get it switched over.
– Click on the wireless logo in the upper right and open preferences for the network.
– Click the Advanced button and find the tab that says Wireless Network, where it lists the networks. Don’t use ‘delete’ to delete an old network, use the minus button instead.
– Paul suggested he delete all the ones that are listed.
– Then click OK and go to the wireless logo in the upper right again. You’ll be shown all the networks the computer can see. There you can choose your Comcast network and log in with your password.

Pam called. She has a PC with Windows 8.1. She’s tried using the internet with dialup and had no success. She was told that the animated tiles (icons) for her apps were causing the slow down — that she should stop the animation.
– Paul said the animated tiles have nothing to do with the internet connection.
– What can help is to use the mobile version of a website. Often you can reach an alternate version of a website by putting an ‘m.’ in the URL. For example, instead of going to yahoo.com, go to m.yahoo.com. The mobile-friendly sites don’t push so much data at you.
– Use the Firefox browser and get a plugin called Flash Block. That will stop Flash content from running automatically — a bandwidth hog.
– She thought Black Viper (mentioned before) might help but Paul said it won’t address the slow internet problem, it’s more about streamlining what runs in Windows itself.
– Try Classic Shell. It makes 8.1 look more like Windows XP — gives back a Start button & menus and an easy way to log off.
– <You can also try turning off javascript, images and style sheets (CSS), if your browser permits. Only turn them on as needed.>

David called. He said he’s never had a virus scanner find a virus. The problems he’s had were with malware. He was running AVG that had both a virus scanner and anti-malware and was told to only run the anti-malware because it was conflicting with the anti-virus. He said he’s now using a free program called “Anti-Malware” and it seems to work well. <This might be it.>
– Paul said any self-respecting anti-virus should catch malware.
– He also said some malware is on the borderline of being a virus because it pesters you so much you have trouble getting anything done.
– It’s not in the interest of malware creators to bring down your computer. They want it to continue running so they can sell you something.
<In my mind, malware is the broad category that includes viruses. Some people use ‘malware’ to refer to adware — pernicious advertising. I think that’s how David used the word>

Paul tried to play something from a CD deck in the studio but couldn’t get it to work. He speculated it had something to do with the firmware update.

Last update 12:07 AM 4/23/2015

Please check back around the time of the broadcast

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.

Paul posted some audio to test the podcasting system he put together for KVMR. He played a snippet of it on air. It’s open source music from a video game and it’s called Frozen Bubble. You can find it here.

Paul went on to say that the podcasts of KVMR programs you find at kvmr.org won’t contain music because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act prohibits it. The exception is music in the public domain, such as Frozen Bubble.

Paul changed the content management software that the Zen Tech website runs on.
– The site had been using Joomla 1.0 for about 9 years. At that time it was old software — it hasn’t been upgraded or otherwise supported since 1999.
– He found some software that allowed him to import all the old show notes into the new system called WordPress.
– Listeners can now post relevant comments, now that we’re using WordPress. The comments are moderated — someone checks them out before they’re made public.

Paul talked about TechSoup that makes popular software available at a discount. The KVMR workstations needed Windows 7 and Microsoft Office products that would have cost over $100 per station. TechSoup made them available at about $20 per copy. KVMR needed compatibility with Microsoft Office because that’s what’s used by much of the rest of the world — their underwriters, listeners, etc.

Initially, LibreOffice and OpenOffice were installed at KVMR, and they generally worked fine. But apparently, Microsoft Office has fewer compatibility issues. For instance, one of the staff uses Peach Tree accounting software, which expects Microsoft Excel when its data is transferred by the object link interface.

Glenn said he uses Microsoft Word and Excel for much of his work. He noted that the KVMR studio computer has LibreOffice and it looks similar to Word, but he hasn’t been able to find how to ‘Set Print Area’ as in Word, to create PDF documents. Paul said these MS Office suite look-alikes tend to mimic some of the quirks of Office because people have gotten used to them. Another place people may see a difference is in the formatting — fonts, spacing, margins, line intervals, etc.

The guys talked about how automation isn’t always a good choice for solving a problem. For instance, setting up a mail merge in a word processor may take longer than it would to make individual changes for each printout, if there are, say, less than 100 pages to print.

This was not the case when Paul tried to replicate in WordPress the SQL database Joomla uses. He wanted to use the same data but the layout was different for WordPress. He figured that many people have encountered this problem and that someone had found a solution. He did some searching and found a Frenchman had written the script <program> to do it. The result was that all the show notes are still available.

Paul said it’s easy to check a website, like Zen Tech, for links that don’t work anymore — because they’re old or the website was modified (e.g. converted to WordPress). After changing over to WordPress, he went here and generated a list of the bogus links.

You can also check the formatting of a webpage. This is to be sure the tags and style sheets are working the way they’re supposed to. Search engines don’t like invalid HTML code and will give your website a lower ranking because of it. Go here and enter the site you want to check. Be aware that it will aggressively access the website you’re testing and some webservers don’t like that. It’s like a stress test and you may want to limit it to your own site, assuming your host doesn’t mind.

You can also do a security check. Again, this check can be intense so limit it to your own website. Paul didn’t give any details.

If you want to see websites as they were in the past you can go to archive.org. It doesn’t always store an entire website, but usually a substantial portion. The first instance of zen.kvmr.org it has dates back to Dec 15, 2004.

Archive.org is not allowed to archive webpages if robots.txt forbids it. “It turned out to be a legal problem because individuals can have evidence used against them based on stuff their website said some time ago”.

Robots.txt is a text file telling search engines which parts of your website you don’t want scanned. Archive.org had to purge its archive (for each site) to comply with what robots.txt said when it first began to be used a few years ago, but much was retained. Paul said they’ve also archived a lot of audio, too.

Paul asked Glenn what he does for TV. Glenn said he’s still looking at his options. He has a smart Sony Blue Ray player that provides Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Crackle, etc. He’s been thinking about Apple TV.
– With your Apple ID, everything you’ve purchased will be available thru Apple TV.
– If the Apple TV is on the same network as a Mac, iPhone or iPad, the Apple TV can display what’s on the screen of those devices.
– It allows you to use your iPhone or iPad as a remote control.
– But then Glenn said when he was using a friends Apple TV, he couldn’t find Amazon Prime. Paul thought it might have something to do with competition, because Amazon tends to favor Google and Android.

Paul said he’s had a Roku 1000 for many years. It allows you to add apps. One of which is the TED app that allows you to browse and play TED talks. Several thousand apps are available for it.

Paul got a Chomecast unit for about $35. It’s a tiny unit about the size of large flash drive. It has an HDMI port on one end and a micro USB port on the other. You plug it into your TV’s HDMI port. All you need to do then is download the Chromecast app to your PC to be able to send your entertainment media to the Chromecast unit.

On the Mac you have to use the Chrome browser, download an app that runs on the Mac and provides the link to the Chromecast unit thru the local network, and then add a plugin to the Chrome browser. Having done that, you can then send to the Chromecast unit any tab you have open in the Chrome browser. You can also send Netflix content to the unit. If you’re watching a Youtube video, you can send that to Chromecast.

Glenn said he’s seen a Chromebook on a stick called Chromebit. It too is about the size of a large flash drive. It has 1 or 2 gig of RAM and 15 gig of storage. You just plug it into your TV. He said he doesn’t know how you attach a keyboard and mouse to it, but you end up with a computer using your TV screen.
<Google’s Chromebit turns any TV into a Chrome PC for under $100>
<Intel Compute Stick, a $150 HDMI dongle that does the same thing.
It has Window 8.1 with a 64bit quad core Atom Baytrail CPU and 2gig of RAM.>

Paul mentioned that Google is trying to converge the Chromebook operating system with Android. Chromebooks don’t have a lot of apps, just the basic stuff — email, browser and word processor. Android, on the other hand, has well over a million apps. Paul thinks this will be a “game changer”.

Paul mentioned that Microsoft might give away their next operating system, Windows 10. He thinks the value will not be in the operating system but the stuff they’ll be able to sell you thru the operating system. They plan to have their own app store.

Paul again mentioned Lubuntu as a replacement for older versions of Windows on older hardware.

Paul said Stan Freberg died yesterday at the age of 88. He played an excerpt from a CD of Stan doing a sketch about Alexander Graham Bell and the invention of the telephone.

Glenn thanked Zen Tech’s benefactor Quietech Associates. They’ve been providing local tech support since 1985. They’re at 465 South Auburn Street Grass Valley.

David called in from the Valley of the Moon near Sonoma, He has an old Acer Aspire 1 netbook with an Atom chip, a 10.5″ screen and Windows XP. The drivers need updating and he wonder if that was worth it.
– With XP it becoming significantly out of date and vulnerable to a virus.
– Some people have hacked the Android OS to run on netbooks.
– Glenn has seen a cut-down version of Windows 7 that runs on netbooks but it’s not sold retail.
– Try the Acer web to see if there’s a way of getting Android to work on it. <The forum section is often a great place to pick up tips>
– Keep using it as is. Just don’t keep information on it that you don’t want stolen.

Last Updated 10:40 PM 4/8/2015

– The site had been using

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.

Glenn said the check engine light in his car came on and he went over to Paul's house to borrow his OBD2 code reader to diagnose the problem. After some research and finding the right software, he discovered the car had a problem with the emission control system. He cleared it of the error state and decided to wait and see if it comes back, before fixing the problem.

OBD stands for on board diagnostics. The device works with cars made since about 1999 that have a socket for it to plug into. Garage mechanics have an expensive diagnostic tool that plugs into the socket to determine the condition of the car.

The software Glenn found for his iPhone communicated with Paul's OBD2 to find out what error codes his car was sending. His iPhone connected to the OBD2 using wi-fi. He wanted to use Bluetooth instead so he could then use wi-fi to get on the net and search for the meaning of the error codes. But he couldn't get his iPhone to talk to the OBD2 via Bluetooth, though Paul's Nexus tablet, running Android, had no problem connecting to the device. Glenn was not able to find similar software for his iPad.

Bluetooth has gone thru at least 3 manifestations since it appeared some 12 to 15 years ago, Paul said. But he had trouble believing that the OBD he got from China has Bluetooth so advanced that the iPhone can't talk to it.

The OBD operates in 2 modes. It stores any error codes that indicate problems and it can continually send dynamic info such as engine rpm, inlet vacuum, fuel consumption, etc.

Glenn mentioned that freight trucks here in the US have barcode on them and that weigh stations along freeways have barcode readers deployed a couple of miles before a truck gets to the scales. As a truck approaches the scales, its barcode is read, allowing the scale operators to decide if they want the truck to be inspected or to bypass the scale facility.

Paul had his Nexus 7" tablet with him. It's the 2013 edition <2nd edition as I recall>. They're now up to the 4th edition and is made by ASUS. It's the only Android tablet with the Google name on it and the one that developers tend to use. All of the editions are eligible for the latest operating system update — version 5.1 called Lollipop. Google staggers the updates so only a certain percentage of users will get the update on a given day. The updates tend to become slimmer (take less memory) and use less power to minimize battery drain.

Paul is grudgingly getting used to using the touch screen. Glenn took to it quickly but still prefers a full keyboard if he has much typing to do. If he uses the iPad in landscape mode (held horizontally), he can type pretty well, but the iPhone is just too small, Glenn said.

Always looking to reuse and recycle, Paul has settled on Lubuntu (a version of Linux) as a replacement operating system for computers currently running Windows XP.
– It doesn't have a great demand for hardware resources and is therefore more suitable for older computers. Be sure to get the 386 version, Paul said. <I think he meant the 32bit version>.
– It doesn't look like XP but it's familiar enough that people should be comfortable with the transition.
– He said it comes with Open Office or its offshoot Libre Office. Both are replacements for Microsoft Office.
– Glenn helped a computer illiterate friend install a version of Ubuntu and she's been getting along with it just fine.
<About Lubuntu (see "External links" on that page)>

Windows 7 & 8 are not, strictly speaking, multi-user systems. They are single user systems with multiple logins. To run some updates, like for the anti-virus, requires an administrator privilege. Ordinary users have a lower privilege. At KVMR there's software that runs as an administrator to do the updates while an ordinary user is also logged in and browsing the internet. This situation opens a computer to being exploited by malware, which elevates its privilege to administrator. This is less likely to occur on Linux and Mac machines.

Glenn said Apple services like iTunes do not let people with AOL email addresses to login. The same is true if your email ends in @me.com.

Ellen called. When she was working for a particular company, there was no company email so she used a her personal email to get an Apple ID <for company use, I guess>. Once she left the job, "the Mac continues to default to the old Apple ID". She changed her email address but she still gets notifications when the user of that computer tries to do something that involves Apple. She asked, "is there a way to disconnect the Apple ID from the computer".
– You need to log in to your Apple ID on a web page using a browser.>
– On that page click the button 'Manage your Apple ID' and use your former email address and the associated password.
– Then change the password on the account so that Mac can't log in as you any more. Or you can change the email address. But she said she's already done that.
– Paul asked if there's another device that uses that Apple ID, like an iPhone. She said no. She added that the notification she gets comes to a backup email address.
– Eventually Paul realized that what's happening is that the notifications come when the current Mac user tries to log in and fails. If they try that often enough, they'll be blocked, he said.
– "In order to get around this, would be to change the email address itself so that email address is no longer valid, so neither the email address nor the password is valid on that Mac", Paul said.
– Again, she said she's changed the email address. Paul said "it shouldn't be notifying you".
– The person currently using the Mac should create their own Apple ID at that website.
<It seems like she should change the backup email address, if that's where she's getting the notifications.>

Richard called. He's a former Windows XP user who switched to Linux (to Mint 16 Cinnamon). He likes it so far and it's pretty stable. He wants to know how to determine what hardware works with Linux. In particular, he'd like to get a sound card.
– If the hardware is pretty mainstream, Linux should work fine with it.
– At the command line issue the command 'lspci' <maybe ls pci> to get a list of devices plugged into the motherboard that it recognizes. Similarly, 'lsusb' <maybe ls usb> will list the devices using USB.
– Most stuff works without additional software. Typically you don't have to download drivers.
– Alternately, go to Ebay and get a USB sound card for $3 or $4. It should work without additional drivers on both Windows & Linux machines.
<New features in Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon
You can download it here>

Richard also said he hasn't been able to update the Flash player on his machine.
– Somewhere in the Mint menus, look for where it says update or upgrade Mint. That will usually get the newer Flash player, too.
– Get Chrome, the browser made by Google, which uses HTML5 — websites are gradually replacing Flash content with HTML5.

Richard asked if it's possible to run iTunes on Linux.
– No but you can use WINE to run some Windows programs. Then use iTunes for Windows.
– For more info, search for the words: mint wine.
<This webpage gives some guidance.>
<A little more about Wine here.>

Finally, Richard asked about listening to audio on Linux. Paul said try VLC (Video Lan). It's a great program that plays various formats and video too. It's available for Windows & Mac.

Last update 12:07 AM 3/26/2015