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Show of 3-23-2013

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from Bethesda listener: Dear Doc Shurtz, I just heard about Wal-Mart’s no-contract Straight Talk plan, which will provide unlimited data and voice for $45 per month. I own an iPhone5 and just cancelled the Verizon serv. plan and paid their 320 cancel fee. Can I now use it with the Wal-Mart no-contract straight talk plan? Are there steps I need to make first? Thanks! Bethesda Listener and Fan
  • Tech Talk Responds: Wal-Mart’s Straight Talk plan purchases coverage from existing carriers and then remarkets the product. This has been done in Europe for years. You can buy either a CDMA phone and use the Verizon network or a GSM phone and use the ATT network. Their phone is not free. You have to pay around $650 for an iPhone5. You can pay for it on installments at $25 per month, interest free. Once you paid your cancellation fee with Verizon, you bought your phone. You should be able to use it on the Straight Talk plan, unless Verizon chooses to be nasty.
  • If you buy your phone at Wal-Mart, I would get the Verizon phone because it comes with both CDMA and GSM capability. In the US you could use the Verizon network which has better coverage than ATT. Make certain that the GSM portion is unlocked, so you use the phone for international travel.
  • Email from Richard Caputo: Good day Dr. Shurtz, I just checked the Stratford website. I’m happy that the radio show can be heard in California. The radio talk show had always been the most informative and entertaining show to my ears. Richard Caputo, CIS graduate and former instructor.
  • Tech Talk Responds: Thanks Richard. Always great to reconnect.
  • Email for Alex: Dear Tech Talk. Why was my computer locked by cyber cops when I did not do anything illegal? To unlock, I’m asked for a fine of $100. How do I know that it’s not a scam? Thanks, Alex.
  • Tech Talk Responds: It’s a malware scam. The Cyber Cops are scammers. The entire thing has to do with extortion. What you have is a malware infection. Unfortunately, removing it can be somewhat difficult. My suggestion is that you run a program such as Windows Defender Offline to scan your computer for malware before it actually boots. In other words, what you do is end up booting from the DVD or the CD that’s created by the Windows Defender offline installation process.
  • When you boot from that, you’re no longer running any software from your actual PC. You’re running the software that’s on that CD. That, then, may give you the opportunity to go in and clean any malware that’s on that machine.
  • Email for Roger in Alexandria: Dear Doc and Jim. My router goes offline quite often. The way I usually resolve this is to unplug it and then plug the router and I can get right back online. What can cause this sudden loss of internet connection through my router? Can you think of ways of preventing this from happening again? Love the show. Roger.
  • Tech Talk Responds: You just have a connectivity problem. I think that there are a couple of different things that can be diagnosed here. The first thing I would would try swapping that router for a different one. It’s very possible that the router is simply having an issue staying connected. The other thing that I would do is, of course, take a look at your internet connection itself. It is very possible that the internet connection itself is dropping out. That can happen for any number of different of reasons (loose connections, dampness, etc.). You might work with your ISP. They can remotely measure the S/N on the line and may be able to help. They may also be able help diagnose your router problem. They may swap it for you (and then register the new MAC address).
  • Email from Steve: Dear Tech Talk, I’ve a Windows 7 PC. My browser is IE 9. I’m using an external hard drive to backup files and hold files from a previous personal computer. My computer page shows my 750 GB external hard drive is full. Though I’ve added up all the files and there’s only 70 GB on it. I deleted 10 GB of duplicate files and it still reads “full” with only a few MB available. Thanks Steve
  • Tech Talk Responds: The first thing that comes to mind is: have you ever emptied your Recycle bin? When you delete files, by default they often get placed into a Recycle bin. What that means is the file is not physically deleted; the space is not immediately freed. So, first thing I would have you do is – empty your Recycle bin.
  • Second thing I would have you do is, in Windows Explorer, uncheck the option that says “Don’t display hidden files” or to put it the other way, make sure that hidden files are being displayed. My guess is that there’s actually a lot more on that external hard drive than you think and that those files are what’s taking up all that space. Make sure that option is turned off so that Windows Explorer will make all those files visible.
  • Finally, I would check what is taking up all the space with a program called TreeSize. It will allow you to actually see where, on that hard drive, that space is being taken up – which folder has all of these files that are taking up so much space. Even if you don’t turn on the view hidden files option in Windows Explorer, Tree Size is going to show you all of those folders that it can find on that hard drive.
  • Web address: http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/
  • Email from Graeme in Ireland: Dear Tech Talk. I just got my iPhone5 and love its feel and features. I am using the navigation system that came with it. It works pretty well except in the city. Yesterday I was trying to find the Shelburne Hotel and it directed me to a seedy part of town about 10 km from the Shelburne. My last phone was an Android and I did not have this problem. What can it do? Thanks, Graeme O’Toole, Virginia, Ireland.
  • Tech Talk Responds: Download Google Maps from the App Store. It is much better than Apple Maps that is natively run by the iPhone. It has an excellent interface and voice navigation. It is the same app that you had on your old Android phone.

Profiles in IT: Stephen Wolfram

  • Stephen Wolfram is the chief designer of the Mathematica software application and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine
  • Stephen Wolfram was born August 29, 1959 in London, England.
  • Wolfram’s father Hugo was a textile manufacturer and novelist and his mother Sybil was a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford.
  • Wolfram was educated at Eton, where he published an article on particle physics. He claimed to be bored and left Eton prematurely in 1976.
  • He entered St John’s College, Oxford at age 17 but found lectures “awful”. Working independently, Wolfram published a widely cited paper on heavy quark production at age 18 and nine other papers before leaving in 1978 without graduating.
  • He received a Ph.D. in particle physics from the Caltech at age 20, joined the faculty there and received one of the first MacArthur awards in 1981, at age 21.
  • Steve was on the verge of dropping out of the PhD program at Caltech when the senior faculty tricked him. They told him there were left over sandwiches in the faculty lounge and he was welcome to have some. He found Feynman, Gellman and several others there, who closed the door. While Steve was eating, they pulled out a few of his physics publications and asked him a few questions. Then they shook his hand and said he had just passed his PhD defense.
  • Wolfram’s work with Geoffrey C Fox on the theory of the strong interaction is still used today in experimental particle physics.
  • Wolfram led the development of the computer algebra system SMP (Symbolic Manipulation Program) in the Caltech physics department during 1979–1981.
  • In 1983, Wolfram left for the School of Natural Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he studied cellular automata. He produced a series of papers systematically investigating the class of elementary cellular automata.
  • In the middle 1980s Wolfram worked on simulations of physical processes (such as turbulent fluid flow) with cellular automata on the Connection Machine alongside Richard Feynman and helped ignite the field of complex systems.
  • In 1986 Wolfram left the Institute for Advanced Study for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he founded their Center for Complex Systems Research.
  • In 1987 he co-founded a company called Wolfram Research which develops and markets a computer algebra system, Mathematica, an extension of his earlier work.
  • From 1992 to 2002, he worked on his controversial book A New Kind of Science, which presents an empirical study of very simple computational systems.
  • In March 2009, Wolfram announced Wolfram|Alpha, an answer engine.
  • The engine is based on natural language processing, a large library of algorithms and answers queries using the approach described in A New Kind of Science.
  • Wolfram|Alpha is one of the answer engines behind Microsoft’s Bing and Apple’s Siri (along with Google and Yelp!) answering factual questions.

First Domain Name Was Registered 28 Years Ago

  • Symbolics.com was the first domain name ever registered .
  • The site was first registered on March 15, 1985.
  • Symbolics (the company) built computer systems in Cambridge, Mass., making workstations that ran on a software language called Lisp.
  • Symbolics was making computer workstations before the term “workstation” even existed.
  • The personal computing boom pretty much left Symbolics in the dust, though the company is still chugging along, making highly specialized programming environments.
  •  It’s now operating under a new domain, however—symbolics-dk.com.
  • A so-called “a virtual real estate investment firm,” XF.com Investments, snapped up the domain in 2009 for an undisclosed sum.
  • The company’s head, Aron Meystadt, has sinced turned Symbolics.com into an Internet museum, of sorts, that includes a brief history of the domain—but also his personal blog.

Why Don’t Snowstorms Produce Thunder and Lightning?

  • Nearly every summer rainstorm comes with thunder and lightning. Yet during even the blusteriest blizzard, there’s never any lightning.
  • It can occur (although snow lightning strikes just six times a year on average in the U.S.), but winter air doesn’t make for prime lightning-forming conditions.
  • During the summer, the lower atmosphere is full of warm, humid air. Above that, it’s cold and full of ice crystals. As the warm air rises, it carries water vapor with it, these molecules brush against the ice crystals, and this friction creates an electric field in the cloud — like scuffing your feet across a carpet.
  • The ice crystals gain a slight positive charge, and the updraft carries them to the top of the cloud, giving the cloud’s bottom a net negative charge.
  • Once the difference between the negatively charged cloud bottom and the positively charged ground becomes great enough, a bolt arcs between them.
  • But in snowy months, the atmosphere is cold and dry throughout, so there’s no updraft to create friction within the clouds. Wind stirs the molecules and crystals some, but that action rarely generates a strong enough electric field to spark lightning.

Senate Includes Internet Taxes in Budget

  • By a vote of 75 to 24, senators adopted an amendment to a Democratic budget resolution that, by allowing states to “collect taxes on remote sales,” is intended to eventually usher in the first national Internet sales tax.
  • The vote follows a week of fierce lobbying from the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represent companies including Wal-Mart, Target, AutoZone, Best Buy, Home Depot, OfficeMax, Macy’s, and the Container Store.
  • They argue that online retailers, which in some cases do not collect sales taxes at checkout, enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over big box stores that do.
  • The amendment, drafted by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), is nonbinding but nevertheless represents an important political milestone for Internet taxation.

Mac Trojan on the Loose

  • Dr. Web, the Russian anti-virus firm has issued an announcement regarding malware infecting Mac computers—called Trojan.Yontoo.1.
  • Once installed, it tracks the user’s Internet history and injects ads into websites, generating revenue for the people who created and unleashed the malware.
  • Dr. Web notes that that they’ve seen a steady climb in malware on the Internet targeting Mac users since the beginning of the year.
  • Impacted by this new Trojan are users of computers running OS X, with Safari, Chrome or Firefox browsers.
  • The Trojan is actually fairly straight forward, users wandering onto certain websites, attracted by the idea of watching movie trailers are told their viewing experience will be better if they install a program called “Free Twit Tube.”
  • If the user agrees, they are presented with a familiar looking pop-up asking if they’d like to continue.
  •  If they do so, the Trojan will be installed into all of the browsers on the computer.
  • Dr. Web notes that there are variants of the initial ploy used to entice users—some advertise a new media player, another promises to speed up downloads, etc.
  • The end result for all of them is the same, the user is redirected to another page where they are prompted to download the program, which actually does nothing except install its Trojan app into all available browsers.
  • Fortunately for Mac users, the Trojan.Yontoo.1 is both easy to spot and remove.
  • It shows up as an app in all three browser types as “Yontoo,” and thus can be disabled just like any other app, or deleted from the computer altogether.
  •  The purpose of the Trojan appears to be a means for providing those that made it a way to create revenue by creating false page views.

Apple Patches iForgot Password Reset

  • Apple’s iForgot password reset page is now back online, and has verified that the security hole, discovered earlier in Apple’s password reset page, has been closed.
  • Previously, after providing a victim’s Apple ID and date of birth, an attacker could send a URL to Apple that would change the password for that account, without needing to answer any security questions.
  •  In response, Apple blocked access to the password reset page, and a short while later took the entire site down in light of another loophole that still allowed the attack to be performed.
  • This vulnerability came at an interesting time, just a day after Apple began to roll out its two-step verification system. Users who had already enrolled in the new system seem to have been immune from the password reset vulnerability.
  • Activating a two-step verification process is much safer. The hacker must have access to you email account to complete the process. It is also available for Gmail.

Google to keep Android, Chrome separate

  • The recent replacement of Android developer Andy Rubin with Sundar Pichai, who already oversees Chrome OS, fueled speculation that the two operating systems were destined to become one.
  • Andy Rubin has been moved to some top secret project.
  • Eric Schmidt said: “There will be more commonality for sure, but they’re certainly going to remain separate for a very, very long time because they solve different problems.”
  • He noted that Android is more for phones and tablets, while Chrome OS is for desktops and laptops, pointing to Apple’s success at blending elements of its iOS and OS X operating systems without combining them.
  • In many ways this merging of experiences is already happening. Chrome can sync bookmarks, open tabs, history, and other data across devices, including phones and tablets.
  • Google is trying to standardize its look and feel across all screen sizes, as you can see in the new Google Keep note-taking app for Chrome and Android.
  • Down the line, dropping either Chrome OS or Android could make sense for Google, but only when the experience is nearly identical.

Google’s Self-Driving Car Update

  • Sensors
    • 64-beam laser rangefinder
    • Four radar units
    • Camera
    • GPS
    • Inertial measurement unit
    • Wheel sensors
  • Onboard computers use the sensor data create a 3-D map, apply custom algorithms, and compute a safe driving path —many times per second.
  • The cars have now been driven more than 300,000 miles, and there have been no accidents with a car under the computer’s control.
  • One of the insights that people often quickly have when they ride in these cars, according to people who have ridden in them, is that it’s obvious the computer can be a vastly better driver than a human ever could be.
  • With lasers and radar for eyes, the computer can monitor an extraordinary number of inputs and react much more quickly to surprises than a human ever could.
  • Google is facing a couple of interesting challenges with the cars right now, one of which I heard about from someone close to the company.)
  • The first challenge is driving in snow. When snow is on the road, the cars often have a tough time “seeing” the lane markers and other cues that they use to stay correctly positioned on the road. It will be interesting to see how the Google team sorts that one out.
  • A second challenge is when the car encounters a change in a road that is not yet reflected in its onboard “map.” In those situations, the car can presumably get lost, just the way a human can.
  • A third challenge is driving through construction zones, accident zones, or other situations in which a human is directing traffic with hand signals. When these hand signals conflict with a traffic light or stop sign–the cars get confused.