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Show of 05-21-2016

Tech Talk  May 21, 2016

 

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from James Messick: Dear Doc and Jim. All the podcasts work now, even the problematic April 16th New website looks great. Thanks James Messick
  • Tech Talk Responds: Glad you can finally get all the episodes. Thanks for being a loyal listener.
  • Email from Mike from Maryland: Hello “Classroom of the Airways”, For the home, Is there different internet speeds from the same internet provider? It seems like the marketers are just trying to mislead or trick us. Even if we pay them more money per month, is the speed just the same? How do I confirm the speed that I am paying for? On speed delivery, is there a government agency that is baby-sitting the Internet providers? If testing in my home, for accuracy, can I test the speed through my Wi-Fi, or do I have to do it through a physical cable? P.S. Please tell Mrs. Big Voice that I said hello. Thanks, Mike from Maryland
  • Tech Talk Responds: You can easily check you upload and download speeds. I like to use DSL Reports (http://www.dslreports.com/). Just select speed tests from the top menu. Your speed will depend on the quality of your Wi-Fi router and of your actual Internet connection. Speed will vary by time of day. For consumers, the vendor only provides speeds up to a certain limit, but does not guarantee those speeds. If a particular segment is over-subscribed your speed will drop. Commercial connections (that cost much more) have a guaranteed provision and will always provide the actual the required speed (or exceed it). I would test the speed both through Wi-Fi and physical cable to see whether your router is the actual bottleneck. I recently upgraded my router because it was the bottleneck.
  • Email from Arnie in Colorado Springs: Hi Dr. Shurtz, Soon after reading your 7 May Tech Talk Podcast notes, I bought the ResetPlug on Amazon Prime ($49.00) you mentioned on Tech Talk. It arrived yesterday; I charged it & installed it. I didn’t get up at 0400 to see if it worked, but everything to be in order when I did get up. I’m concerned that such resetting would affect Ooma with so many resets over time, but since I have to reset the modem & router so often anyway. Agree the price is a bit high, and the display is very dim, but it should save a lot of manual rebooting I’ve had to do with Comcast here. Hopefully it handles power outages although we don’t have as many here in Colorado as we did in Maryland. Thanks for mentioning ResetPlug on Tech Talk. Let’s see now, Ooma, now ResetPlug from your show. Great! Thanks, Arnie, Colorado Springs, CO
  • Tech Talk Responds: Glad to like the ResetPlug. Every time I reboot my router, I also reboot Ooma and my Phillips Hue controller in order to get a new IP address. Ooma reboots are not a problem.
  • Email from Mary Wilson: Shurtz, Apple has sent me the LaCie 1TB Porsche Design USB mobile drive to back up my documents. They now want me to reinstall El Capitan OSX. They say this can take from 45 minutes to 6 hours depending on my ISP speed! I have Verizon FiOS and am in Bethesda. I only have this one iMac so I’m a bit concerned about taking time to do this. Not to mention what ‘might go wrong’ though the Apple tech guy sounds competent. What do you think about doing this and benefits of doing this? Thanks much. Mary, a faithful listener and evangelist.
  • Tech Talk Responds: Apple must believe that you system is infected with a Virus or Malware and that the only solution is a clean install. They want you to back up your documents with a USB external hard drive and they offered to send it to you without charge. So they must know about this particular type of virus. I would talk their advice. You need to make certain that your documents are fully backed up and safe. You must also have the license numbers or disks for any additional software that you have installed. This is may be your biggest challenge. If you are uncertain about backing up your system, you could go to the Genius Bar at an Apple store. You will need backup software for the Mac, which should cost you around $50.
  • Email from David in Alexandria: Dear Tech Talk. I have several backup drives with critical data on them. Can data on hard drives degrade and be accessed without a warning about the damage? I would hate to be surprised with unrecoverable data corruption. Love the show. David in Alexandria
  • Tech Talk Responds: Yes, there is a thing called bit rot. But no, it will not affect a user unnoticed. When a hard drive writes a sector to the platters, it does not just write the bits in the same way that they are stored in RAM, it uses an encoding to make sure there are no sequences of the same bit that are too long. It also adds ECC codes (Error Correction Codes) that allow it to repair errors that affect a few bits and detect errors that affect more than a few bits. When the hard drive reads the sector, it checks these ECC codes and repairs the data if necessary (and if possible). What happens next depends on the circumstances and the firmware of the hard drive, which is influenced by the designation of the drive.
    • If a sector can be read and has no ECC code problems, then it is passed on to the operating system.
    • If a sector can be repaired easily, the repaired version may be written to disk, read back, then verified to determine if the error was a random one (i.e. cosmic rays, etc.) or if there is a systematic error with the media.
    • If the hard drive determines that there is an error with the media, it reallocates the sector.
    • If a sector cannot be read or corrected on a desktop’s hard drive, then the hard drive will engage in more attempts to read it. Depending on the quality of the hard drive, this might involve repositioning the head, checking to see if there are any bits that flip when read repeatedly, checking which bits are the weakest, and a few other things. If any of these attempts succeed, the hard drive will reallocate the sector and write back the repaired data.
  • At any rate, the hard drive will know if there has been bit rot, will typically recover from it, and if it cannot, it will tell the controller which will in turn tell the driver which will then tell the operating system. Then, it is up to the operating system to present the error to the user and act on it. If you get some errors, you can try a Disk Repair utility. If you get many errors, I would just replace the disk.
  • Email from Lynn in Ohio: Dear Tech Talk. I just got a new iPhone 6 because I needed more memory for my pictures. I am still having problems getting Verizon cell phone signal in my basement. I have Internet, but can get calls. I thought the new phone would help, but it does not. Is there anything I can do to boost the signal in the basement? It’s our party room and I don’t like to be out of contact. By the way, my battery doesn’t last throughout the day (especially when I take lots of pics). What battery pack do you recommend? Love the show, Lynn in Ohio
  • Tech Talk Responds: There is an easy solution to your connectivity problems. The Verizon iPhone 6 support Wi-Fi calling. That means that you can receive and make phone calls using your Wi-Fi data connection. The carriers that support GSM (ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile) have had this since the iPhone 5. Finally Verizon has gotten onboard. To activate Wi-Fi calling, go to Settings/Phone/Wi-Fi Calling. Then you can turn on Wi-Fi calling. You will be prompted to put in an address for 911 calls (probably your home address). Then you are good to go. When Wi-Fi calling is active you will see it in the upper left hand corner of the screen near the signal strength indicator. By the way, this will work even when you are travelling internationally. Just make certain Wi-Fi calling is active or you will be billed at a high rate. There a lot of third-party battery packs on the market. The all need a different charging cable and are not integrated with the OS. Finally Apple came out with one. I like the Apple Smart Battery Pack ($99). It uses the same charging plug, is integrated with the OS, and does not have any confusing buttons (to switch case on and off). Weight is the only drawback. The iPhone is 5 ounces; this case is 3.5 ounces. Together that weight a whopping 8.5 ounces (over half a pound).

Profiles in IT: Miguel de Icaza

  • Miguel de Icaza is an open source programmer, best known for starting the GNOME, Mono, and Xamarin (pronounced Zamarin) projects.
  • De Icaza was born in 1972 in Mexico City and studied at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM), but never received a degree.
  • He started writing free software in 1992. One of the earliest pieces of software he wrote for Linux was the Midnight Commander file manager.
  • He was also one of the early contributors to the Wine project.
  • He worked with David S. Miller on the Linux SPARC port and wrote several of the video and network drivers in the port, as well as the libc ports to the platform.
  • They both later worked on extending Linux for MIPS to run on SGI’s Indy computers.
  • With Ingo Molnar he wrote the original RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers for Linux.
  • In summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the IE Unix team to work on a SPARC port, but did not have a degree to get an H1-B Visa.
  • De Icaza started the GNOME project with Federico Mena in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux.
  • In 1999, de Icaza, along with Nat Friedman, co-founded Helix Code, a GNOME-oriented free software company that employed a number of other GNOME hackers.
  • In 2001, Helix Code, later renamed Ximian, started the Mono Project, led by de Icaza, to implement MS’s.NET platform on Linux and Unix-like platforms.
  • In 2003, Ximian was acquired by Novell. De Icaza was VP of Developer Platform.
  • In May 2011, de Icaza started Xamarin to replace MonoTouch and Mono for Android after Novell was bought by Attachmate and the projects were abandoned and Xamarin and Novell reached an IP agreement regarding the Mono Project.
  • In February 2016, Xamarin announced being acquired by Microsoft. One month later in Microsoft Build conference, it was announced that the Mono Project would be relicensed to MIT, Visual Studio would include Xamarin (even the free versions) without restrictions, and Xamarin SDKs would be open sourced.
  • De Icaza endorsed Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document standard.
  • He also developed Mono, an alternative to MS’s .NET Framework, for GNOME.
  • In August 2012, de Icaza criticized the Linux desktop as “killed by Apple”. In March 2013, de Icaza announced that he regularly used Mac OS X instead of Linux.
  • In 2014 he joined Anders Hejlsberg on stage during the announcements of the .NET Foundation and the open sourcing of Microsoft’s C# Compiler. He serves on the board of directors of the .NET Foundation.
  • Miguel de Icaza has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software. In March 2010, he was named as the fifth in the “Most Powerful Voices in Open Source” by MindTouch.
  • De Icaza was granted US citizenship in January 2015.

Stratford University Receives Presidential Award

  • S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker presented Stratford University with the President’s “E” Awards for Exports at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
  • The President’s “E” Award is the highest recognition any U.S. entity can receive for making a significant contribution to the expansion of U.S. exports.
  • “Stratford University has demonstrated a sustained commitment to export expansion. The ‘E’ Awards Committee was very impressed with Stratford University’s dedication to providing quality education to students around the world. The university’s investment in language training programs was also particularly notable,” wrote Secretary Pritzker in her letter to the university.
  • It was truly an honor to receive the President’s ‘E’ Award. At Stratford, we believe that everyone across the globe deserves a quality education to set the foundation for all they want to do in life.
  • We have a very diverse international student body here in the U.S., and we are so proud to be able to provide an American education at our campus in New Delhi and contribute to our economy.”

Unimersiv educates in virtual reality

  • Virtual reality is upon us. New apps are delivered on a regular basis, and it’s available commercially for both mobile and stationary hardware.
  • Unimersiv is one company focusing on education in virtual reality, and it’s just launched an application for the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift.
  • Unimersiv, a company focusing on bringing virtual education to the masses, believes teaching and learning can be as important to the platform as entertainment. It believes that VR education can bring a revolution to education.
  • Students remember 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see, and up to 90 percent of what they do or simulate.
  • Virtual reality yields the latter scenario impeccably — students can interact with the virtual environment in person and manipulate the various objects within it.
  • This supports ‘learning by doing’ and also results in creativity by constructionism.”
  • Today the app is available free of charge via the Oculus Store. It features three different scenarios.
  • The first gives you access to the International Space Station, where you can explore its innards.
  • The second features a detailed human body to teach you about the human anatomy.
  • Finally there’s a history lesson in the form of Wiltshire, England, and how it looked like 4,000 years ago. That’s where you’ll see Stonehenge and what it might have looked like originally.
  • Unimersiv’s website says the company plans to publish new educational experiences every month

How the Tech Behind Bitcoin Will Change Your Life

  • The Internet today connects billions of people around the world. It’s great for communicating and collaborating online. But because it’s built for moving and storing information and not value, it has done little to change how we do business.
  • When you send someone information like an email, PDF, PPT or JPG, you’re really sending a copy not the original. Depending on the rights granted to recipients, they may be able to print a copy of these files. But under no circumstances should you print, say, money. So with the Internet of information we have to rely on powerful intermediaries to establish trust.
  • Banks, governments and even social media companies like Facebook work to establish our identity and ownership of assets. They help us transfer value and settle transactions.
  • Enter the blockchain, the first native digital medium for peer-to-peer value exchange. Its protocol establishes the rules—in the form of globally distributed computations and heavy duty encryption—that ensure the integrity of the data traded among billions of devices without going through a trusted third party.
  • Trust is hard-coded into the platform. That’s why we call it the Trust Protocol. It acts as a ledger of accounts, a database, a notary, a sentry and clearing house, all by consensus.
  • Every business, institution, government and individual can benefit in profound ways. The blockchain is already disrupting the financial services industry.
  • How about the corporation, a pillar of modern capitalism? With this global peer-to-peer platform for identity, reputation and transactions, we will be able to re-engineer deep structures of the firm for innovation and shared value creation.
  • How about these billions of connected smart things that will be sensing, responding, sharing data, generating and trading their own electricity, protecting our environment, managing our homes and our health? And this Internet of Everything will need a Ledger of Everything.
  • And how about growing social inequality? Through the blockchain, we can go from redistributing wealth to distributing value and opportunity fairly in the first place, from cradle to grave.
  • As with all major paradigm shifts, there will be winners and losers. But if we do this right, blockchain technology can usher in a halcyon age of prosperity for all.

App of the Week: Paper Karma

  • This app came out in 2012 and I have been using it for quite a while and I love it.
  • Seattle software developers Brendan Ribera and Sean Mortazavi have taken their frustration with paper-based junk mail, and turned it into an innovative new mobile app called PaperKarma.
  • The free app, available on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone, is quite remarkable in that it allows recipients of junk mail to snap a photo of the flyer, catalog, magazine or other offer and, in a few simple clicks, unsubscribe from the distributor’s list.
  • There’s plenty of junk mail to eliminate, with estimates that each U.S. household receives 850 pieces of unwanted mail each year.
  • I was pretty amazed at just how simple PaperKarma was to use.
  • They have built up a huge database of U.S. companies that send mail of all types.
  • For each company, they have figured out who the privacy officer is, or who in customer service manages their so called customer suppression list.
  • So based on that we send the unsubscribe requests and thanks to FTC rules, they’re required to comply.
  • A few months later, they follow up with users to make sure that the junk mailers are honoring the initial request.
  • And it works. I have been getting rid of junk mail for the past few years.