Bits and Pieces as the Year draws to a end

Appleinsider.com notes that the top selling piece of audio hardware this past Christmas was…an old-fashioned turntable with built-in amplifier and two speakers. Congratulations, we’re back in 1962, although the electronics have hopefully improved over my old portable recorder player. 

 

In a nod to modernity, this device includes a USB port so that you can use your computer to make MP3s and a line-in port so that you can amplify your portable digital player.  This probably means a complementary CD burned with the Audacity software. That you have to learn to use yourself.  

So if you got one of these, it’s time to mine the trove of records you got from inheritance from dead relatives, living relatives downsizing, checking the local used CD and LP stores and their on-line counterparts, and maybe a purchase or two of some of the new issues on 180 gram vinyl. 

If you wonder what is the next step beyond vinyl, that step is to go to open-reel tape recorders. The kind of tape recorders our parents grew up with in the 1950’s and 60’s.  You can still get them as refurbished units for over a grand. Apparently they’ve become quite chic among audiophiles with the bucks to buy one. 

The last one I owned was a relatively cheap Akai that I bought in 1984 for $250. I had to unscrew part of the capstan in order to change speeds, but the fidelity was OK. I gave it to a relative. 

Onto other topics. An analyst who kept make predictions that Apple’s stock would crash and burn has received his walking papers. 

Obviously he should have gone into bloviating about politics. There you can blog without paying any consequences for wrong decisions.

Oh, by the way, if you wondered what came in second in Amazon’s sales of audio hardware, that would go to a very nice Yamaha receiver that works with AirPlay. Share your iPhone’s audio selections!  It sells for $380 plus tax and shipping.

As for your editor, I have a good turntable from Radio Shack that I need to use. My radio receiver these days is either my Safari or Chrome browser or iTunes Internet Radio.  My speakers at best are a 10 year old set of Creative Labs 2.1 computer speakers. I have thin walls in my condo complex and a good set of Monoprice headphones. I have friends on the HOA board next door and I intend to keep them.

 

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog

 

 

 

 

 

Installing Windows 10 over a Linux drive

Hi, these are my experiences installing Windows on a PC that only ran various distress of Linux before. Read this end to end before beginning.

To begin with, this is what I used . Your computer set up will vary.

The Windows & Linux computer is a ZT Systems Pentium Pro. It originally came with a 1 TB SATA drive with Windows 7 installed on it. 

I scrounged 3 more disk drives to install onto this system:

A 500 GB PATA drive. This became sda in linux terms. 

The 1 TB SATA drive. This became sdb in linux terms.

A 300 GB SATA drive. This became sdc in linux terms.

A 500 GB SATA drive. This became sdd in Linux terms and I installed Windows onto this drive.

 

What did I need to acquire Windows 10?

As I wrote, this ZT Systems Pentium Pro came with Windows 7 when I bought it in 2010. I tried to upgrade it from Windows 7 to Windows 10, but I screwed up. So I set up four different versions of Linux. 

Drive #1, sda, has Zorin OS 9 Ultimate. It has worked wonderfully and I wholeheartedly endorse Zorin OS for those of us who want to use Linux either as a Windows XP replacement or in addition to Windows. I have used Zorin 9 Ultimate, which cost less than $20, and Zorin 9 Core, which I installed on a friend’s old Window XP Dell laptop.

Drive #2, sdb, has Kubuntu 15.10 installed on it. I wanted the latest version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu so I could run the latest version of forked-daapd on it. I have written about forked-daapd here. 

Drive #3, sdc, has LinuxMinut 17.2 KDE installed on it. I like LinuxMint.

Now to the main attraction, Drive #4, sdd. I installed Windows 10 on this 500 GB SATA drive

Now as to acquiring a legit copy of Windows 10, I need two items.

The first was a authentic Windows 7 or 8 license from Microsoft. It’s on an adhesive label stuck on the outside of my PC. I took a picture of it with my camera so that I would not need to contort myself to see it.

The second was  the Windows 10 .iso disk image. This was easy. I Googled for “Windows 10 ISO” and Microsoft’s Web site popped up. 

Microsoft will make you go through several steps, such as confirming the version you want and the language you want to install it in. You finally end up with a Web address from which  you can download the Windows 10 ISO for 24 hours.

Depending on how good your Internet connection is, you can start to download the ISO. 

 How to make installation media from the Windows 10 ISO

I used my Mac and an external $30 DVD burner to make a DVD installer.

I used a single-sided 4.7 GB DVD to make the installer. A CD is too small.

Now if you use OS X 10.10 Yosemite or below, you can use the Disk Utility to burn a DVD.

If you use the latest and greatest version of OS X, 10.11, you’ll find that the Disk Utility doesn’t include the ability to burn a DVD from the graphic interface. 

To burn a DVD from 10.11 El Capitan, I did the following:

 

1. Plug in the external DVD burner. Mine just needs the USB 2.0 cable plugged into a  USB port for power and data.

2. Pop in a blank DVD disk. You’ll hear some humming. Then you’ll see this message on your screen:

 

 

3. Click on “OK” to open the Finder. 

4. You want to go to the folder where you put the Windows 10 Disk Image. In my case, it was the Downloads folder.

5. Find the disk image with the .iso extension. You want to click on it ONCE to select. Don’t double-click on it. You don’t want to open it up.

 

 

6. Now to the important part. Go to the File Menu of the Finder. You will see a menu similar to this appear.

 

 

I have highlighted the important command, “Burn Disk Image xxx” which ONLY appears after you insert a blank DVD into the DVD burner AND you select the disk image you want to burn. Click on this command.

 

7. You will now see this window open up on your screen:

 

 

 

Click on Burn to proceed.

 

Wait a few minutes and the disk should pop out.

 

8. Take a Sharpie and label the disk as “Windows 10 install disk” with the date, too.

 

9. Now I put it into my PC’s DVD drive and restarted the machine. I got a message on screen to press any key to continue booting from the DVD. Press a key,  the letter W for instance, to start the installation process.

 

Problems I encountered along the way

 

I encountered several problems along the way. This is how I fixed them. In one case, I needed to buy a $20 program which worked beautifully.

 

You’ll need to reformat your drive as a Windows drive. I started out to do this from the Windows graphics interface. Pick the drive and then format.

It should have been simple, but it wasn’t. I needed to do some work on the drive’s boot record. For that, I needed to go to the command line.

 

Go to this article at the Windows Club Web site.  This will walk you through the steps you need to take to fix your Master Boot Record so that you can install Windows 10. 

 

The other problem I encountered was that I had successfully installed Windows 10, but then I tried to set it up with the Linux Multi-Boot menu.

 

I used the Boot Repair Disk Utility initially. It’s free and I got it here. You’ll need it, so download it and burn it to a CD or DVD.  

My initial experience was that it set up the Linux drives perfectly, but ignored the Windows installation.

To cut to the chase, I went to Neosmart.net and bought their Easy Repair Essentials for $19.75. Go to the System Repair CDs page. 

You download yes, yet another ISO which  you burn to a CD/DVD or install on a USB flash drive. 

You boot up from the DVD/CD/USB flash drive and go through the steps. It will locate your Windows installation and make it bootable.

After you can boot into Windows, but can’t boot into the Linux installations….Now Try the Boot Repair Disk. I got all four of my drives in the Grub Menu. Now I’m happy.

 

Now why did I turn to Neosmart.net? Because I’d used the donation ware version of their Easy BCD software with great results. I knew I could trust them. 

$19.75 is a paltry sum to pay. I make $20/hour. I have high blood pressure. A solution like Easy RE is worth the time and money. 

You might solve the problem by Googling for several hours, but at what cost? Follow my late mother’s advice and Make It Easy on Yourself. Buy EasyRE if you can’t get Windows to boot up. It works. 

 

Well, that’s it for now. Always remember to BACK UP if you want to format a disk that might contain valuable data. 

 

Tom Briant

Editor,MacValley Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senior Correspondent Arnold Woodworth's Weekly Web Wrap-up for December 26, 2015

How to Set Up Your New iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-to-set-up-your-new-iphone-ipad-or-ipod-touch/



How to Set Up Your New Apple Watch

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-to-set-up-apple-watch/



Apple Watch Users Discover Another Way to Go ‘Hands Free

Mr. Forrest, a manager at Freebirds World Burrito in Thousand Oaks, Calif., was cutting meat when the timer on his watch started buzzing and beeping. With his hands covered in meat juices, Mr. Forrest sniffed out a solution: He silenced the alarm with his nose.

“It definitely works,” said Mr. Forrest. “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”

He said he has used the tip of his elbow to control his Apple Watch, but prefers his nose.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/nosy-apple-watch-users-discover-another-way-to-go-hands-free-1451077454



21 useful apps we love right now

Most of these apps work on both iOS and Android.
A few are Apple only.  A few are Android only.

http://www.businessinsider.com/useful-apps-for-iphone-and-android-2015-9?r=UK&IR=T



Why I Returned My Apple Inc. iPad Pro

After spending a few days with a new iPad Pro, I decided to return the iPad Pro and continue plugging along with my trusty iPad Air 2.

iPad Pro is hardly the ideal productivity device for what I do

I love my iPad Air 2 as a consumption device, so I was hoping I could at least justify keeping the iPad Pro as a "bigger, better" iPad Air.

Sadly, I couldn't make that case to myself either.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/22/why-i-returned-my-apple-inc-ipad-pro.aspx



How Tim Cook created a $25 billion beast of a business in 2015 in a market where Apple used to struggle

it wasn't until mid 2014 — when Tim Cook cuddled up to IBM to announce a new partnership to focus on selling more iOS devices to businesses — that Apple woke up and smelled a big new market.

IBM has now created 100 iOS apps for all sorts of business needs.

http://www.businessinsider.com/2015-was-good-for-apple-in-the-enterprise-2015-12



Locating Missing Mac Mail

How to “Rebuild” a “Mailbox” in Apple Mail

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/technology/personaltech/locating-missing-mac-mail.html?emc=edit_ct_20151224&nl=personaltech&nlid=11893479



The only 9 apps released in 2015 that we're still actually using

http://www.businessinsider.com/apps-from-2015-we-havent-deleted-from-our-phones-2015-12



11 apps 'The 4-Hour Workweek' author Tim Ferriss uses every day

http://www.businessinsider.com/11-apps-tim-ferriss-uses-every-day-2015-12/



100 podcasts that will make you smarter and more successful

http://www.businessinsider.com/100-podcasts-that-will-make-you-smarter-and-more-successful-2015-12



How to Track Data Use, and Choose the Right Smartphone Plan

The average amount of mobile data consumed, or the bytes transferred over a cell-phone network, keeps growing every year. In 2014, American wireless subscribers consumed an average of 1.9 gigabytes a month, up from 1.2 gigabytes in 2013. That number is expected to rise to 11 gigabytes in 2019.

Heavier use comes with higher costs: Some carriers, like AT&T and Verizon, charge overage fees of $15 a gigabyte.

Each of the big American carriers offers an app or web tool for monitoring data consumption. But they were generally time-consuming or poorly designed.

Instead, the quickest way to monitor your data use is by simply using your phone. Each carrier has a hidden code that you can punch into your phone to get an update on data use.

For AT&T subscribers, the method is simple. You place a phone call to *DATA# (*3282#). AT&T will send a text message showing the amount of megabytes you have used out of your monthly allotment. It showed that so far this month I have used 464 megabytes out of 3 gigabytes.

Place a call to #DATA (#3282) and Verizon will show a report of your data use, both domestically and internationally.

Sprint customers can send a text message containing the word “Usage” to the number 1311 and get a text message with a data report.

T-Mobile subscribers can place a call to #WEB# (#932#) to receive a quick data summary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/technology/personaltech/how-to-track-data-use-and-choose-the-right-smartphone-plan.html?emc=edit_ct_20151217&nl=personaltech&nlid=11893479&_r=0



Getting Gmail Verification Codes Without a Smartphone, or a Phone at All

Google has devised several ways besides text messaging to provide its 2-step security codes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/technology/personaltech/getting-gmail-verification-codes-without-a-smartphone-or-a-phone-at-all.html?emc=edit_ct_20151217&nl=personaltech&nlid=11893479



For Parental Controls, iPhones Beat Androids

“You’re giving your kid a lot of power when you hand them a smartphone, and kids’ digital savvy often outstrips their judgment,” said Caroline Knorr.

While it may be tempting to save money by buying cheaper Android devices for children, parents who want tight control over their children’s activities on smartphones will be better off buying iPhones for the family. Apple’s parental controls were detailed and took a while to set up, but they accomplished all of the restrictions that I wanted. The Android system was sorely lacking in features for regulating minors and only offered incomplete solutions for a small number of restrictions.

A key part of Family Sharing is a feature called Ask to Buy. With the feature enabled, whenever a child tries to download an app or make a purchase inside an app, the parent’s iPhone receives a notification and a detailed description of the content. The parent can then choose to allow or deny the purchase.

The feature should come in handy for parents who don’t want their children to rack up hefty credit card bills with in-app purchases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/technology/personaltech/for-parental-controls-iphones-beat-androids.html?emc=edit_ct_20151224&nl=personaltech&nlid=11893479



Why millions are broadcasting their lives for fun and profit on Periscope

Periscope, the live-broadcasting app that lets users hit the "record" button to put almost anything - from views of exotic destinations and discussions about how to get ahead at business to the mundanities of daily life - online in an instant. The videos disappear 24 hours later.

Its push-to-broadcast simplicity and unvarnished aesthetic has attracted a range of stars - and would-be stars - hoping to capitalize on the increasingly dramatic shift of media consumption to mobile devices.

Like having your own reality TV show

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-millions-are-broadcasting-their-lives-for-fun-and-profit-on-periscope-2015-12-22



I registered my drone. Here's why you should too

as required by a new Federal Aviation Administration rule.

the entire registration process took somewhere between two and three minutes.

there have only been a few serious accidents involving drones so far. But drones aren't toys, though they are increasingly marketed that way. The fact that drones will be a popular Christmas gift this year is no coincidence. 

More than anything, the FAA's drone registration is a way for it to send a clear message that it takes drones seriously - and all drone operators should too.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/i-registered-my-drone-heres-why-you-should-too-2015-12-21



These incredible undersea cables are what connect you to the worldwide web

Nearly all of that data actually travels on submarine cables stretching hundreds of thousands of miles along the ocean floor.

This animation shows just how many stretch from coast to coast to coast, carrying tweets, YouTube videos, phone calls, and banking transactions as they go.

Take a moment to appreciate just how pervasive undersea cables are, how they survive more than 25,000 feet below the water, and ultimately help you access this article on a distant server.

Neat Video

http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-cables-map-of-fiberoptics-in-the-ocean-2015-12



9 crazy things that could happen after the singularity, when robots become smarter than humans

http://www.businessinsider.com/predictions-for-after-singularity-2015-11



What Everybody Googled in 2015

People love to google other people. That’s the main takeaway from Google’s annual list of the year’s most popular searches.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/what-everybody-googled-in-2015/420717/



Average Internet Speeds Up, But U.S. Still Has Work to Do

South Korea's 20.5 Mbps average Internet speed topped Akamai's list for the third quarter of the year, a figure nearly four times the worldwide average. The United States didn't even make it to Akamai's top 10 list, but it was certainly close with an average Internet speed of 12.6 Mbps (highest of any country in North or South America, at least).

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2496861,00.asp



Oregon police bust crime ring attempting to ship $750K+ worth of iPhones to Hong Kong

Tipped off by a suspect buying hundreds of iPhones with Apple gift cards, police in Oregon have cracked down on an organized crime ring that they say was shipping handsets to Hong Kong where they were to be sold on the black market.

The relatively high cost of Apple's devices combined with the company's limited worldwide distribution network — Apple retail stores operate in just 16 countries — provides lucrative arbitrage opportunities for smugglers.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/24/oregon-police-bust-crime-ring-attempting-to-ship-750k-worth-of-iphones-to-hong-kong



"Backdoor" computer hack may have put government data at risk

But it's not yet clear whether hackers have taken advantage of the opening, or what damage might have been done.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/juniper-technologies-computer-hack-could-put-government-data-at-risk/



Secret Code Found in Juniper's Firewalls Shows Risks of Government Back Doors

tech giant Juniper Networks revealed in a startling announcement that it had found “unauthorized” code embedded in an operating system running on some of its firewalls.

The security community is particularly alarmed because at least one of the backdoors appears to be the work of a sophisticated nation-state attacker.

“The weakness in the VPN itself that enables passive decryption is only of benefit to a national surveillance agency like the British, the US, the Chinese, or the Israelis,” says Nicholas Weaver

“This is a very good showcase for why backdoors are really something governments should not have in these types of devices because at some point it will backfire,” Prins says.

Green says the hypothetical threat around NSA backdoors has always been: What if someone repurposed them against us?

The first backdoor Juniper found would give an attacker administrative-level or root privileges over the firewalls.

The second backdoor would effectively allow an attacker who has already intercepted VPN traffic passing through the Juniper firewalls to decrypt the traffic without knowing the decryption keys.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/juniper-networks-hidden-backdoors-show-the-risk-of-government-backdoors/



Congress Slips CISA into a Budget Bill That's Sure to Pass

CISA had alarmed the privacy community by giving companies the ability to share cybersecurity information with federal agencies, including the NSA, “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” That means CISA’s information-sharing channel, ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, could also provide a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.

Even in its earlier version, CISA had drawn the opposition of tech firms including Apple, Twitter, and Reddit, as well as the Business Software Alliance and the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibus-bill-thats-sure-to-pass/

MacValley's post-Christmas message to all of you

Now that the chocolate buzz has started to recede and the guests have started to go home, now it’s time for a post-Christmas message of peace, joy and hard looks at each other. 

To begin with, if you feel your Christmas spirit has drained out of you like anti-freeze out of the engine at Jiffy-Lube, go to Britain’s Spectator magazine to read this article. You won’t agreed with half of them, you won’t know what he’s talking about for some of them; but I’m sure you can come up with a list of twenty things of your own. Have at it. You need a good laugh and probably a decent gin and tonic. 

With regard to the election, just about every candidate now leading in the polls will fizzle out by Labor Day 2016. This is because only idiots who can’t work an answering machine respond to unsolicited telephone polls. 

If you get an unsolicited call from someone who says they’re from the IRS, ignore it. The IRS will mail you the bad news in an official Treasury Department envelope. You have to phone them. The scammer will want you to pay them through a PayPal account. Uncle Sam is not that advanced.

For Heaven’s Sakes, call the IRS about this or talk to your tax preparer. Don’t hand over money to a scary voice on the phone.

Now for some good news. If you have an official Microsoft license for Windows 7 or 8 in your possession, you can upgrade to Windows 10. 

I had wiped out my Windows 7 installation and substituted Linux, but Microsoft let me download the Windows 10 .iso, burn a disk through the Finder, and do a clean installation of Windows 10. More on this topic to follow.

Now for some bad news. Keep OS X 10.10 Yosemite on at least one of your drives or partitions until after tax season. I speak from experience of last year, when Turbo Tax 2014 failed to install on Yosemite. Fortunately, I kept an installation of 10.9.5 on an external drive. Here are Apple’s own instructions for installing OS X onto an external drive of some sort. 

So good night to all. I’ve got Jim Svejda on KUSC.org turned up for holiday music.  Time for the decent booze. 

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom's Top 5 tips for malfunctioning holiday computers

Good Christmas Day to all. Here are 5 tips for holiday computer hardware.

 

1. If it doesn’t work at first, turn it off, wait five minutes, and then turn it back on. 

2. If you’re giving someone a gift that requires Wi-Fi access, make sure you’ve got the 
Wi-Fi router name and password ready to pass out. You probably should have done this last night, instead of this morning in your pajamas.

3. If you intend to share a wired connection to your router, make sure you’ve got a long cable. Murphy’s Law states that the length of the connection is always shorter than the cable. 

4. For God’s Sake, keep the holiday goodies away from the computer hardware. You don’t want to spill egg nog or mimosas or whatever holiday beverages you enjoy into the keyboard or innards of that new $750 laptop!

5. If the error message  you see on the screen mystifies you. just type it into Google and press the ENTER key. You could also copy and paste it into the Google entry box. Someone at some time encountered this same problem as you did and posted it on-line. 

 

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Set Up and Get to Know Your New PC, Mac, Android, or iPhone

How to Set Up and Get to Know Your New PC, Mac, Android, or iPhone: ""

(Via.)

 

Advice from LifeHacker.com Enjoy!

 

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog

 

35 Items In Your Home That You Can Get Rid of Right Now

35 Items In Your Home That You Can Get Rid of Right Now: ""

(Via.)

 

It’s the end of the year, my fellow nerds. Here’s some tips on what to throw out by January 1st, 2016.

 

Tom Briant

Editor, Macvalley Blog