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

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– 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

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.

Paul was in the studio. Glenn called in from the Bay Area. There were other KVMR personnel in the studio who remained pretty quiet during the show.

March 14 from noon (maybe 11am) to 4pm will be the official celebration of the new KVMR facility at 120 Bridge Steet. The public is invited

The Zentech show is made possible in part by Quietech Associates. They've been providing local tech support since 1985.
They're at 465 South Auburn Street Grass Valley

Glenn is still using IOS 7.1 on both his iPhone & iPad and has not upgraded to version 8.1 yet. His iPad is continuing to do updates but the iPhone has stopped updating because it's not using IOS 8.1.

Paul got a PCI diagnostic board (link above) from China for $13. PCI is a hardware standard specifying the way in which cards (circuit boards) are inserted into a slot in a computer's motherboard.

The diagnostic board, when put into one of the PCI slots, will display error codes generated by the computer when there is a problem. You can then look up the meaning of the codes online. It can report errors even if the computer is largely dead — as long as there are signals on the PCI lines. It also indicates the state of the power supply voltages.

The ATX power supply, that's widely used in today's computers, has a special line along which it sends a signal to the motherboard telling it that the power is good. Only then does the motherboard "fire up".

Lyle called. He accidentally lost the contacts on his iPhone. He also has an iPad where a copy of the contacts is still intact. And he's using the cloud <presumably iCloud>.
– On the iPad go to the settings (cog-shaped icon) and check to see if you have only one account on iCloud. Both iPhone & iPad have to be using the same account <as I understand it>.
– The iPhone may have "disconnected" from the iCloud account.
– Be careful. If you synchronize the iPhone without its contacts, it may clear the contacts off the cloud. Paul didn't explain further.
– Glenn suggested he call Apple for help to be sure he doesn't lose his contacts altogether.

Glenn said he was surprised to find out that Bluetooth speakers are not stereo. Paul said he's read up on Bluetooth recently and it "doesn't have a lot of facilities to make high quality audio". That's mainly because it's subject to "interference and fade". But he has indeed seen Bluetooth stereo speakers.
<The transmitting device & speakers must both have the A2DP profile for stereo to work>

Paul mentioned KVMR's podcast. Go to kvmr.org and click the 'Listen' button. You'll find podcasts of various shows, some going back about 5 years. <They are mostly talk shows. There are copyright issues with music shows, so you won't find many podcasts for them>

Paul talked a little more about the diagnostic board he bought. Unlike his old PCI board, this one displays the actual voltages coming from the power supply. The ATX power supply of the computer does a self-check after the voltage has some time to stabilize. "The on/off switch of the computer is not actually a power switch at all. It's a signal to the power supply: "we're good to go"". When you plug the power supply into the diagnostic board, the board itself gives the go ahead signal for the power supply to power up.

Paul then talked about smart meters — the kind used for domestic gas & electricity monitoring. He saw a $99 offer by PG&E for an in-home device to show electricity usage. That set him on learning adventure about the wireless technology used by smart meters.
– They use a protocol called Zigbee. The word comes from the dance honey bees use to tell the other bees where the nectar is. The bees learn the information and pass it on from one bee to the next.
– The Zigbee is a mesh network where each power meter relays information to a nearby meter, and that one to the next one. Somewhere in your neighborhood is a master router.
– The Zigbee protocol use encryption to keep the info secure.
– The protocol consumes little power, transmits intermittently (not continuously) and very little data is transmitted. So there should be no concern about the effects of radio frequency radiation from the meters.
– The information gleaned from the data allows power companies to monitor for voltage spikes, brownouts, outages, etc.
– There are units using Zigbee for other types of in-home monitoring — e.g. monitoring the temperature of the butter in your refrigerator. One such proprietary device is called Nova sold by Home Depot.
<A Zigbee tutorial here.>

Ross called to ask Paul if he actually got the $99 unit from PG&E. Paul said he didn't and that he's been trying to find a cheaper way to do it.

Ross also said that a SIM card maker in Holland was hacked by the NSA and a similar agency in England. The codes that allow the SIM cards to generate a cipher were stolen. He didn't hear anything more about it since the initial report and wondered of Paul knew anything about it. Apparently this is the first Paul's heard of it.
<NSA helped British steal cell phone codes from Gemalto, the world’s biggest manufacturer of SIM cards, a couple of articles here, here and here >

Ross said that someone in <our> government said there had been a ten-year effort to create an X code <OSX I guess> to mimic the Mac computer code <operating system>. Supposedly they were successful and now they are able to insert bogus apps that spy on people. Paul thought he might have been talking about the MAC address.

Ross also mentioned a "shark device" that can spoof a cell phone tower. Using it, the police can make a cell phone think it's connected to a legitimate tower while spying on people by recording the data being transmitted. <Sounds like he was talking about the Stingray aka IMSI catcher >
– Ross heard that the Stingray collects data even if the phone is off.
– Paul said that in standby mode a cell phone still communicates with the tower. If you turn the phone off completely they won't be able to intercept your data, Paul said.
<Some articles about the stingray devices here.>
<An app to detect a Stingray device
The download link for the app>

Last update 10:37 PM 3/11/2015