The Outer Edgecipcug.org/toe/toe-1116.pdf · If you have any sug-gestions, please get in contact...

November 2016 The Outer Edge

A s I sit down to write this, it is Halloween morning. We had some rain over the weekend. I’m sure it is not enough to make a differ-ence in the drought, but it will have been enough to grow a plentiful crop of weeds!

October'’ meeting was very interesting. Michael got his chance to do his program that was supposed to be half of September's program. We, the audi-ence, asked so many questions of Toby that we ran out of time. So Michael gave a program on tips and shortcuts for Windows 10. Michael, like Toby, got a ton of questions so it turned out to be two programs after all.

We are looking for ideas for programs. If you have any sug-gestions, please get in contact with Craig. He has done such a great job over the years getting us some great and interesting programs. I have a couple of ideas that I haven’t given him, and I know he can’t schedule a good program if he doesn’t know about it. This is a short Command.com this month. I should have writ-ten it the afternoon after the meeting. I always have great ideas then!

On a sad note, we are losing a kitty. He has FIP (look it up) and has ap-parently had it since he was a kitten. We are waffling about when to put him to sleep. We don’t want to do it too soon, but we don’t want him to suffer either. He has the sweetest face and the sweetest personality. I am going to miss him.

Well, I’ll see you later this month. Remember, the meeting is on Nov. 19, instead of the 26th.

Lisa Toth, President

COMMAND.COM By Lisa Toth, president

Attendance at the October general meeting: 33 members and guests.

How to contact us The Outer Edge ……………[email protected] General Info (Ventura County Computers)..............805-289-3960 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 51354,

Oxnard, CA 93031-1354 Email addresses for board members are

on page 2 On the Web: cipcug.org On Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/cipcug

November 2016 Vol. 30, No. 3 Newsletter of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org

Whole No. 343 ISSN 1055-4399

Toth

The Outer

Edge

Inside There was no board meeting in October, so

there are no minutes.

Once again this month, we have several

contributions from the APCUG PUSH arti-cles, including:

● Review: Alarm +++ helpful reminder — Page 10

● Open source software has lots of sources for help — Page 12

● Tips offered for Cortana, OK Google, Siri, Alexa — Page 13

● Device transparency: accessing files anywhere — Page 14

Next meeting: Saturday, Nov. 19


Root Directory Channel Islands PC Users Group

CIPCUG mailing address: P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA

93031-1354

Executive Committee (Elected members of Board of Directors)

President………...........................Lisa Toth .……………………[email protected] Vice President/Program Chairman ………………..………………..Craig Ladd ………………[email protected] Secretary…………….…….Bob Dinsmore ……………………[email protected] Treasurer……..…….……....…Andy Toth …………………[email protected] Immediate Past President …………………........Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo

(Appointed members of Board of Directors)

Technical Adviser……….………..Toby Scott Web Page Editor….……………....Andy Toth ……………………[email protected] TOE editor.…….………….…….John Weigle …………………………[email protected] Membership Chairman.………....Ken Church …………….………[email protected] Reviews chairman………………Bart Koslow ……….….…………………[email protected]

Ex-officio members of Board of Directors CIPCUG ISP Signups……..……..Andy Totht Sound Equipment Technicians ...………….….Curt Davison and Tom Murray Program Chairman……...…K. Edward Lynch Publicity Chairman...…………..…Rick Curry SIG coordinator…..…………....Larry Hudson

Past Presidents

Walt Yates…………………………….…1987-1989 Lois Evans de Violini…………………...1989-1991 Terry Lee…………………………….…..1991-1993 Jerry McLoud…………………….……...1993-1995 Robert Provart………………….………..1995-1997 Toby Scott…………………………….…1997-1999 George Lakes …………………………...1999-2001 Andy Toth……………………………….2001-2003 David Harris………………….………….2003-2005 Lois Evans de Violini………………….2005-2007 Paul Westefer…………………………...2007-2009 Rick Curry……………………………….2009-2011 James Brown………………………….…2011-2013 Sandy Tsutsui-Trujillo………………….2013-2015 (With the exception of the immediate past president, past presidents are not board members.)

Life members

Frank Segesman* Toby Scott Lois Evans de Violini Art Lewis* Helen Long *Deceased

The Outer Edge Editor……………………..John Weigle

P.O. Box 6536, Ventura CA 93006 485-7121………[email protected]

The Outer Edge is published monthly by Channel Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG), P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, Calif. 93031-1354. an independent, nonprofit corporation. Contents of The Outer Edge copyright 2001 by Channel Islands PC Users Group. Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is granted to other computer user groups for internal nonprofit use provided credit is given to The Outer Edge and the authors of the reproduced material. All other reproduction is prohibited without prior written consent of Channel Islands PC Users Group. Opinions expressed in this journal are solely those of the authors or contributors, and do not necessarily represent those of Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers or membership as a whole. The information provided is believed to be correct and useful; however, no warranty, express or implied, is made by Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers, editorial staff or contributors. This disclaimer extends to all losses, incidental or consequential, resulting from the use or application of the information provided. Channel Islands PC Users Group does not endorse or recommend any specific hardware or software products, dealers, distributors or manufacturers. All trademarked or registered trademarked names are acknowledged to be the property of their respective owners, and are used for editorial purposes only.

Advertising in The Outer Edge

Advertising is accepted for computer-related materials, businesses and services only. Rates are for Camera-Ready copy (clear, clean black and white masters). Typesetting and graphics are available at an additional fee. SIZE Cost/Issue FULL-PAGE (9½”H x 7¼”W)................$50.00 HALF-PAGE (4½”H x 7¼”W) or (9½”H x 3½”W )....….........................$30.00 THIRD-PAGE (3”H x 7¼” W)………….$25.00 QUARTER-PAGE (4½”H x 3½W)..........$20.00 BUSINESS CARD ad...............................$15.00 Discounts for multiple issues (3, 6, 9 and 12 months) Ad copy deadline is the 5th of the month of publication. Make all checks payable to CIPCUG. Members’ classified ads are free but are limited to 105 characters, including spaces.

CIPCUG NEWS Benefits ............................. ………19 CIPCUG sponsors ......................... 17 Coming CIPCUG events .............. 3 Contributors to TOE ..................... 12 Command.com ................................ 1 Editor’s corner ................................. 3 Map to meeting place .................... 20 Membership report ........................ 11 Program: Upgrade makes many changes to Windows 10 .............. 8 Recent activity on our Facebook page ........................... 18 Q&A sessions .................................. 4 Treasurer’s report .......................... 10 GENERAL Brokestuff Mountain: When you’re the fixer ......................... 16 Device transparency: accessing files anywhere ............................ 14 Open source software has lots of sources for help ..................... 12 Review: Alarm++ .......................... 10 Tips for safe computing ................. 18 Tips offered for Cortana, OK Google, Siri, Alexa .................... 13 Web help sites ............................... 18 ADVERTISEMENTS Creative Technology ..................... 17 Members’ classified ads ................ 17 Mercury Broadcasting ................... 15 O’Reilly ......................................... 17 Ventura County Computers ........... 13

AWARDS 2004 APCUG: Large groups first

place for website. 2006 Southwest User Group

Conference: second place in both the newsletter and website contests.

2011 APCUG first place in the newsletter contest (medium groups).

2012 APCUG first place in the newsletter contest (medium groups). .


Programs Libre Office will be the topic of our Nov. 19 meeting. Orv

Beach will discuss and demonstrate the free office suite that has many of the same features as Microsoft Office. The meeting will, as usual, be at the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (Ponderosa Drive and Temple Avenue), Camarillo (see the map on page 20).

Information about LibreOffice can be found at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh, where the pro-gram can be downloaded. Versions are available for Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

The site describes LibreOffice this way: “LibreOffice is a powerful office suite — its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most powerful Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).

The meeting starts at 8:45 a.m. with the first part of the Q&A session, followed by a business meeting, the second part of the Q&A, a break and the program

Dates of other coming meetings: Dec. 17 (third Saturday) 2017 Jan. 28 Feb. 25

(Continued on page 4)

Door prizes We have two types of raffle tickets: one for prizes offered by

the presenter and one for club-provided prizes. The tickets for the presenter’s prizes are free and limited to one per member.

The tickets for the club-provided prizes are $1 each, $5 for six tickets, $10 for 13 tickets, $15 for 20 tickets and $20 for 27 tickets and are available to anyone. Those who can’t stay until the drawing may sign their tickets and give the person selling the tickets a list of the prizes they would like in the order they’d pick them. Winners’ prizes will be held until the next meeting.

Consignment table A consignment table is set up at every meeting. Anyone can

buy, but only members can sell.

The club gets 10 percent of the sales price. Sold items must be picked up at the end of the day’s meeting.

Any items not picked up will become the property of CIPCUG and will be subject to disposal at the club’s discretion.

CIPCUG is not responsible in any way for items bought or sold at the table. Each item is sold as-is unless otherwise stated.

LibreOffice is topic for November program I

don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that this year has sped by much faster than others. Now, if I could just say the same about the elec-tions…

I’m writing this on Nov. 3, a few days before I have to vote on long lists of state and local ballot measures and candidates for federal state and local offices. It seems like I’ve been hearing major party candidates for president for

years rather than months, and most of the arguments for and against candidates and measures are attacks on the other side rather than helpful information about what candi-dates’ platforms are and what the various ballot measures really mean and their long-term effects. There was a time when I was willing to sign almost any petition to get items on the ballot, figuring that we, the people, should have a chance to vote on any issues that

concerned people have raised. But I changed that philoso-phy as ballots grew longer and longer and I realized that many votes are cast by uninformed voters..

At least there’s one good piece of news: we won’t go through another presidential election for four years, alt-hough we can be certain that a lot of people will be trying to figure out how they can get on the 2020 ballot on Nov. 9, if they haven’t started already.

Things are moving quickly in the technology world, too.

Many people are leaving desktop and laptop computers behind and moving to tablets and smartphones. I’m not on that list. When I’m doing things like putting TOE and other newsletters together, I want a standard size keyboard. Even with that, I end up putting my fingers back on the wrong keys if I take them off the keyboard.

Looking back, I can think of lots of things that used to be common that we seldom, if ever, see today: wire record-ers, 8-track recordings, cassettes, VHS tapes and players, floppy discs, portable computers that were so heavy they were barely portable, and phones that looked more like military Walkie Talkies than phones. Even CDs and DVDs are losing some users. Now we have pocket-size phones that have more computing power than our first astronauts had in their space capsules.

Consider, too, that advances in health care are extend-ing life spans with new medicines, organ transplants and artificial knees, hips and more.

And there is more and more talk about driverless vehi-cles moving us quickly and safely from one location to another. Many of us have reservations about that because we know how computers can fail and create all kinds of problems. On the other hand, the statistics show how many accidents human drivers cause.

Think about it. .

CIPCUG news and events

It seems like we just welcomed 2016

Coming CIPCUG events

Editor’s corner

Weigle


Because the pre-meeting SIG has become a general Q&A session, this report calls the two parts Q&A: Part 1, and Q&A: Part 2.

Unless otherwise noted, Toby Scott answers the questions, and Michael Shalkey handles the com-puter duties. — Editor

Q&A: Part 1 Windows Live Mail problems

Q: I got a new computer and am still trying to get back to where I was with the old one. I used to be able to set junk mail from domains rather than by sender so I didn’t see it. It doesn’t work any-more. I’m using Windows Live Mail.

A: The messages aren’t really from one place. For example, someone send-ing fake email might make it look like it’s from CIPCUG by using a cyrillic alphabet character that looks like a C but isn’t. (Charts showing Cyrillic char-acters are available at https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cyrillic-alphabet — Editor)

Michael Shalkey: You can try to block domains, but the spammers keep changing locations. Windows Live Mail is good at screening out junk.

Toby Scott: Set your email pro-gram’s junk mail filters on high and then check what goes into the spam folder for a month or so and whitelist the senders you want to see. It’s easier to add people or domains to a safe send-ers (whitelist) list than it is to try to block every possible location of mail you don’t want. Check the spam folder periodically after the first month to be sure you don’t want any of the messages

labeled as spam. You can click on a message and add the sender’s name or the domain name to the safe senders list.

I use rules to move the messages I know I want to see to specific folders, so my inbox is effectively my suspected junk folder. My email program shows the number of unread messages in every folder, so I can immediately see what folders I need to check. I regularly check the CIPCUG folder but don’t nec-essarily look at all other new messages daily in some other folders.

Michael Shalkey: I get a lot of mes-sages with the first names of people I know, but the last name is wrong. You have to be careful with all your messag-es.

If you get a message from [email protected], it’s spam because there is no such account to send mail from. The address is an alias and directs messages to the email account of the current CIPCUG president, but her out-going messages don’t show the alias. It’s fairly easy to spoof addresses. Any-body can pretend to be anybody else by putting in a new address. We had an attack on our server, and most of the

mail was coming from the Seychelles.

Internet Explorer Q: I keep getting scripting errors on

Internet Explorer. I set it back to the original settings and am still having problems. I use Firefox most of the time now.

A: A thousand things can cause scripting errors. Are you opening the mail program with a desktop icon? (The answer was yes.) Try deleting the icon and opening Internet Explorer from its own folder (generally in the Programs folder on your C: drive). Sometimes, hackers replace where you’re going with their own URL in the desktop icon.

Michael Shalkey: If you’re using Windows 10, try going to one of the problem sites with Microsoft’s Edge browser and see if the error still shows up. Some conspiracy people are saying the errors are created by Microsoft in an attempt to get everyone away from In-ternet Explorer.

Toby Scott: Internet Explorer is not being updated regularly, which means many of its security problems are not being fixed. Microsoft developed Inter-


This month’s topics Q&A: Part 1 Windows Live Mail problems Internet Explorer Safari Searching online TOE issues Windows updates Outlook.com Netbook problem Motorola 4 Android

Q&A: Part 2 Meeting reminders Logitech mouse USB hubs DDoS attack on internet Fraudulent IRS letters Facial recognition software Recovering deleted folders USB hubs Updating routers


Q&A sessions, business meeting

March 25 April 22 May 27 June 24 July 22 Aug. 26 Sept. 23 Oct. 28 Nov. 18 (third Saturday) Dec. 16 (Third Saturday

SIGs Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are

sponsored by CIPCUG and, when of-fered, are led by volunteer club members. The SIGs are free to CIPCUG members.

At the moment, no SIGs are being offered. Anyone interested in leading a SIG or who has suggestions for one should tell any board member. When there are SIGS, they run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Ventura County Computers,

2175 Goodyear Ave., Unit 117, Ventura; phone 289-3960. From the 101 Freeway, exit at Telephone, take Telephone south to McGrath, turn left and go one block. Turn right on Goodyear and right again into the second driveway. Unit 117 is the back, right corner of the building.

Be sure to check the calendar on

cipcug.org for updates on event pro-grams, dates and times.

(Continued from page 3)

More on coming events ...


net Explorer to defeat the Netscape browser, which had much of the market share at the time. Microsoft developed Active X, which made it possible to do many things that Netscape could not do, but Active X has lots of security prob-lems, which the hackers have found, and it’s still part of Internet Explorer. Basi-cally, you don’t want to use Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox or Chrome. I liked Opera, but I’m not sure I’m go-ing to keep using it because it’s been bought by a Chinese consortium. Safari is a hack job.

Safari Q: I’ve been using Safari on an iPod. A: You can use Chrome on an iPad.

I’m not sure about an iPod.

Searching online TOE issues Q: I was trying to find information

about Silverlight and used the search engine on cipcug.org to search The Out-er Edge files. I got several answers, but the word was not highlighted so I could-n’t easily find the references.

A: General search engines don’t always work well with PDFs, which is what online TOE issues are. Each PDF reader has its own search tools, so open the issue based on the original search and then use the reader’s tool to search for the term again. The word should be highlighted in that search.

Q: I was looking for information about deleting Silverlight. Can I do that?

A: You can delete it, but it will prob-ably come back because lots of down-load sites use it.

Windows updates Q: I want to prevent some Windows

updates until they’ve been released for a while and any bugs have been fixed. It’s easy to do that in the Windows 10 Pro version but isn’t so easy in the Home version. Some of the technical boards say to turn off the upgrade services. I have Acer and Asus computers.

A: You probably wouldn’t have problems with the Acer computer. The updates have generally been successful on those, but there have been a few problems. The Asus computers have had more problems. By and large, the anni-versary update has been pretty good.

Outlook.com Q: When I go to Outlook.com, it

says I have 1,300 messages in the inbox, but I can see only 10. If I sort by send-

ers, instead of date, I see them all. A: It’s an online display. There’s not

much you can do about it on your com-puter. It’s a sign you have too many messages in your inbox, which can re-sult in the loss of all the messages. In all email programs, you want to keep your inbox small. You can download all the messages to your computer in Windows Live mail. Move them to another folder or folders.

Q: Can you archive the messages? A: Yes. I archive each year’s mes-

sages during the Thanksgiving-Christmas season. I keep them available for several years before I move them to DVD or other permanent media (two copies, never one or it isn’t a backup).

Netbook problem Q: I put Windows 10 on a Toshiba

netbook. After a month or so, the Win-dows key on the screen and on the key-board stopped working. I have to force the machine to power off. The Microsoft key came back and then failed again.

A: Michael Shalkey: Roll back to an earlier version of Windows or wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 10. It’s a known problem and so far those are the only solutions. Some people get a blue screen.

Use Windows key + I and go to Up-date and Security. Roll back to version 1511 or reinstall Windows 10. Use Win-dows key + 4 to shut the computer down. It’s often a problem with an up-date.

Motorola 4 Android Q: I bought a Motorola 4 Android

and can’t download pictures from the phone. I connect the phone to the com-puter but pictures don’t show.

A: Michael Shalkey: There’s an app you need to get. Go to Google Play and search for your manufacturer and “download pictures.”

I take a lot of pictures of logins, passwords, and model numbers with my smartphone when I’m working on a problem device.

LG had similar problems. Comment: On my phone, you have

to tell the phone to use itself for storage. Comment: Some phones need an SD

card to do it.

Business meeting Craig Ladd said next month’s pro-

gram will be Orv Beach on LibreOffice. Craig is also working on a webinar on

“Everything Android” through APCUG. There was an announcement that

Verizon is giving veterans a 15 percent discount on phone bills. (Details are at https://devices.verizonwireless.com/content/vzw-eStore/military-veterans.html).

Michael Shalkey recommended sev-eral websites that have good information on Android devices: All About Android (https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android), Android Authority (www.androidauthority.com/ ) and An-droid Police (www.androidpolice.com/) and Android Central (www.androidcentral.com/)

Bart Koslow announced that he has copies of Acronis True Image 17 for reviews. There are two versions — Cloud and 2017 PC.

Q&A: Part 2 Meeting reminders

The November and December meet-ings are on the third Saturday of the month, not the fourth Saturday.

Logitech mouse Q: My Logitech wireless mouse is

going crazy. I tried it in a different USB port and it worked OK.

A: Michael Shalkey: Try plugging something else in the port that the mouse doesn’t work on and see if the new device works. Your problem sounds like a damaged USB port,

USB hubs Q: Do USB hubs work? A: Michael Shalkey: It depends on

the power needs of what you plug into the hubs. External hard drives might be a problem.

Toby Scott: If you get a hub that plugs into an electrical outlet, you shouldn’t have any problems.

DDoS attack on internet Toby Scott: We need to discuss the

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that took down much of the In-ternet on Oct. 21. We discussed it on the last podcast. What we’re calling the Internet of Things (IoT) consists of devices that have computer interfaces, but we don’t normally think of as com-puters (like toasters, refrigerators, gar-age door openers, light bulbs, thermo-stats, baby cameras, etc.) Lack of secu-rity in these devices creates many ways for hackers to cause internet problems





without having to take over a lot of com-puters. Security has not been a big issue for most of the devices that make up the IoT. Most people do not change any default logins or passwords, and many people might not even know they exist.

Software is available that can search for such low-hanging fruit to attack and capture user names and passwords. All those devices can be told to bombard selected sites or banks of servers with questions like “what time is it?” One or two such requests can be handled easily, but thousands of requests cannot.

If you have anything that goes to the internet, change the default logins and passwords.

After the meeting, Toby Scott posted a quotation he had paraphrased during the meeting on the CIPCUG Facebook page:

Jeff Jarmoc, head of security for global business service Salesforce, pointed out that internet infrastructure is supposed to be more robust.

“In a relatively short time we've tak-en a system built to resist destruction by nuclear weapons and made it vulnerable to toasters,” he tweeted.

The hack is described in detail in a BBC report at http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37738823.

The attack was aimed at Dyn, which, the BBC explained, “is a DNS service — an internet ‘phone book’ which di-rects users to the internet address where the website is stored. Such services are a crucial part of web infrastructure.”

Michael Shalkey said that no website can handle massive numbers of requests and added, “It’s going to be a really big problem going on.”

Many devices on the IoT are not updateable, so the attacks will continue through those devices.

Computer security expert Brian Krebs, who has the Krebs on Security website, suffered such an attack in Sep-tember. Krebs prowls the dark web with several aliases and gathers information from sources there that he discusses on his website. The bad guys retaliated with the attack on his site.

The Oct. 21 attack took down such sites as Twitter, Facebook, the BBC, Amazon, Spotify, Reddit, SoundCloud and PayPal.

Shalkey said that the attack was on the infrastructure of the internet rather

than individual sites. He compared it to an attack on certain freeways and bridg-es to shut down Southern California.

Fraudulent IRS letters Toby Scott: We’ve discussed fraudu-

lent emails and phone calls from such agencies as the IRS, but now there are fake regular mail letters that purport to be from the IRS, say the recipient owes money and says to call a certain phone number. The IRS says it does not do that, but if you get a letter you think is legitimate, do not call the number in the letter. Look up the IRS number on the internet and call it be sure. If you are unsure, do a Google search on the phone number in the letter. I bet it doesn’t be-long to the IRS.

Michael Shalkey: There’s also a new computer fraud popping up. It’s Hicurdismos, a fake Microsoft Secu-rity Essentials installer that can lead to a support call scam. (see Fig. 1, above) Details are at https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2016/10/21/beware-of-hicurdismos-its-a-fake-microsoft-security-essentials-installer-that-can-lead-to-a-support-call-scam/.

As I’ve said before, don’t answer your phone with “hello” because that starts robocall messages.

Q: I’m getting a lot of calls from Dell tech support with my personal information saying that they have

detected problems on my computer. I have a Dell.

A: Michael Shalkey: The infor-mation is probably from a stolen da-tabase. Dell doesn’t monitor com-puters they sold or they’d be in jail for snooping.

If no action is taken by Jan. 1, the FBI, NSA and others will be able to track information coming from com-puters.

Toby Scott: If that happens, you’ll lose some privacy, but it will be easier to take track the bots. If I can get rid of 20 percent of the spam I get, I’m willing to give up a little privacy. As this is discussed, you’ll hear all the extreme versions of what could happen if it is allowed.

He told a story from several years ago when his wife’s mother called her from Cuba because she was there to play a piano concert. The two women spoke in Russian, and the next day two FBI agents knocked on Scott’s door to investigate the call. It is legal for the agencies to track those calls.

Comment: The federal govern-ment is constructing large buildings to store all our messages.

What if the hackers get into the




Fig. 1: This message is fraudulent, not a Windows warning.



Q&A reminder: Please wait for the microphone to ask, an-swer or comment on a question so the information can be rec-orded for use in TOE. When you get the microphone, hold it close to your mouth all the time you’re talking. Waving it around might mean part of your question is missed.

power grid? A: You’re looking at another DDoS.

There was an attack on a nuclear power plant. If I remember right it was in France. And remember that Stuxnet, which was developed by us and probably Israel, took down Iran’s centrifuges. It’s a tricky world that we’re tip-toeing into. More information is available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-cyber-idUSKCN12A1OC

or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

news/2016/04/27/cyber-attackers-hack-german-nuclear-plant/

Facial recognition software Q: I read an article that said facial

recognition software is improving so much that it will be used regularly in many locations.

A: The FBI has pictures of about half the people in the United States that are good enough to be used for facial recog-nition from many angles and personal information about many of those pic-tured.

Michael Shalkey: And many of those people are identified because people have been tagging them on the internet.

Toby Scott: Mug shots are a common source of such pictures. The software is getting more sophisticated and can be used on pictures on Facebook and other websites.

Michael Shalkey: All-in-one comput-ers want to take your pictures and use facial recognition to do away with pass-words for logins. Twice in the last week, people with all-in-one computers found out the computer was trying to take their pictures. The idea was to eliminate pass-words, but if you didn’t want that service, you might not like the idea. There is a way to turn it off, and I can give it to you

if you need it. Toby Scott: For those who don’t

know, all-in-one computers have the monitor and motherboard and other in-nards all in one piece. The mouse and keyboard are separate pieces.

Recovering deleted folders Q: I deleted some folders on an exter-

nal drive by mistake. Is there a way to recover them?

A: Michael Shalkey: I like Recuva (http://www.piriform.com/recuva) and Undelete (http://www.condusiv.com/products/undelete/). Some such tools are built into many Linux systems and be used on Windows drives.

USB hubs Q: Going back to the USB hubs ques-

tion, I’ve used a powered USB hub for years without any problems. If someone wants to use a hub on a desktop I’d rec-ommend buying a powered one. USB doesn’t allow much power.

Comment: Lots of the ones you’re showing on the screen are not USB 3 but USB 2 and often aren’t carried in local stores.

Updating router Q: Kim Komando has recommended

updating routers’ firmware. Is it really important?

A: Yes, but some companies are not doing updates.

DD-WRT (http://dd-wrt.com/site/index) has some operating systems for older routers. You can check makes and model numbers there to see if there’s something for your router, but start by visiting the website of your router’s man-ufacturer.

Q: Does the site include Verizon rout-ers?

A: No. Those routers are entirely dif-ferent stories and have to handle different

kinds of signals. Whatever you do, don’t plug your computer directly into the In-ternet. It will be hacked almost immedi-ately. Use some kind of router.

September corrections

Ordinarily, Toby Scott and Michael Shalkey review the reports on the Q&A and program reports. Because I was late getting the drafts for the September meet-ing to them, Michael’s corrections came too late to be incorporated into last month’s TOE. The corrections are here, with Michael’s changes are in boldface. — Editor

Q&A Storing photos on external drive

Q: Last month, you said to store pho-tos on external drives. Where do you get 5 terabyte external drives? I have more than 1,000 CDs with photos and music.

Michael Shalkey: Here is a Google search that shows MANY https://www.google.com/search?q=5+tb+external&oq=5+tb+external&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4579j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=5+tb+external&tbm=shop

Program It’s easier to know if Windows De-

fender is running because there’s a shield icon in the system tray. Like all run-ning processes, if you don’t see it, click on the white arrow in the lower right of the screen.

Windows key + L activates the Lock screen, which has a picture from Bing, but you can change it to bring up your own pictures. This used to be called the boss key because it would bring up a spread sheet to block a view of what was on your screen.




Program

A variety of changes to Windows 10 in the latest build were the subject of Michael Shalkey’s presentation in October.

The latest released build of Windows 10 is 1607 (2016 July) or commonly “the anniversary update.” With Microsoft’s deci-

sion to make Windows 10 the last version of Windows, many users might not care what version they have — un-less they’re hav-ing a problem with an update. The easiest way to find out what build you have is to use the Win-dows key + R and type “winver”

without the quotation marks. This is a SIG to point out features of the newest version.

Spotlight images These are the pictures that appear when you start your com-

puter. Microsoft is using beautiful photos from around the world on this screen, and you can have different ones every day. Users can save them and use them as desktop backgrounds or slide shows.

Instructions to download and use one of the pictures for your desktop background are at https://www.cnet.com/how-to/where-to-find-the-windows-spotlight-photos/.

This is called the “Lock screen” and is seen when you first boot up or any time you log out. Users who must leave their computers for some period of time but who don’t want to shut the computer down can use the Windows key + L to log out of the current user profile. Users can also use their own photos for the lock screen by hitting the start button and typing “lock” to customize the lock screen settings from the Windows Spotlight images or slideshow of your personal photos.

Sticky notes The free sticky notes program that was available in Win-

dows 7 and 8 has been removed from Windows 10 1607, but don’t worry: it was replaced with a new version of sticky notes from the Windows Store. The name describes the program — users can create notes and keep them on the desktop or in the cloud so they can be available on a variety of devices. The notes can be made bigger or smaller and can be in different colors.

Start menu Some items have been rearranged on the Start Menu and in

some cases, the File Explorer icon has been moved to the taskbar. Tiles can be easily moved, resized, or deleted. Shalkey

likes the weather tile but periodically has to remind it that he’s in Camarillo, not Washington, D.C. It displays the current weather forecast when on the Internet.

The calendar tile can be made larger so it will show more details about appointments, Toby Scott said.

Settings The settings have been grouped and can be reached by

clicking on the gear icon in the Start Menu or us-ing the Win-dows key + I shortcut.

People who prefer the Control Panel design can reach it by right mouse click-ing on the start button or typing “control panel” without the quotes in the Start Menu search box, but Scott said that it is scheduled to be eliminated in a future update.

File Explorer File Explorer is on the Start Menu or taskbar and can also


Upgrade makes lots of Windows 10 changes


be opened with Windows key + e. Shalkey said users can find any program by starting to type

its name in the Start Menu search box. Users with a headset and microphone can speak to Cortana, but he prefers the Amazon Echo to Cortana and Siri, which he called artificial stupidity.

Notifications Center There is a much expanded ver-

sion of the Notifications Center pop up at the right site of the taskbar. There are tons of things that many people probably don’t know about, Shalkey said. Users can set quiet hours — useful for those who want to block children’s use of the computer at certain times — and tell laptops not to download files unless they’re plugged in.

Mail app Shalkey discussed it briefly and said it incorporates into the

notifications center, which shows a short version of new mes-sages. He doesn’t use Mail app.

Edge In what Shalkey called “a new fun thing,” the Edge browser

allows extensions, including LastPass, which saves and en-crypts passwords and logins. To find out what’s available, open Edge, click on the four dots menu and then on extensions. As this is being written, there are only 16 extensions are available, but that’s likely to change.

Asked if LastPass has been hacked, Shalkey said security experts who have examined it say it’s safe. This is not to say that it will never be hacked, he said, but added that the pro-gram’s vault of logins and passwords is encrypted. The pro-gram requires a master password, which is the last password a user needs to remember.

A member who uses the Norton password saver asked if LastPass could import the information from the Norton pro-gram. Neither Shalkey nor Scott knew if Norton data could be exported and imported.

Shalkey installed LastPass for Windows and discovered that extensions must be downloaded for each browser on a machine. LastPass is a separate database and synchronizes with all devic-es and browsers it’s installed on.

Games There is a way to put the Windows 7 games back on Win-

dows 10, Shalkey said. Go to the following website: http://winaero.com/blog/get-windows-7-games-for-

windows-10/ As with all software, be careful when installing not to say

“yes” to other software that might be bundled with the games.

Emojis There are some new ones.

Dark theme A study has indicated that the color blue affects eyes and

sleep patterns. The dark theme might be helpful, but it didn’t impress Shalkey when he installed it.

Windows Ink It allows writing with a stylus, but, Shalkey said, it’s not

something he’d use.

License codes Another new feature of 1607 is that now Windows license

codes can be saved to a Microsoft account so it’s linked to the account rather than a specific machine. This is especially useful for people who change their hardware a lot.

More tips and tricks Shalkey recommended these websites for more tips and

tricks: Windows 10 1607 best features http://www.thewindowsclub.com/features-added-removed-

windows-10-anniversary-update http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/9-windows-10-anniversary-

update-features-youll-love/ https://mspoweruser.com/windows-10-anniversary-update-

review/ http://www.techradar.com/how-to/computing/100-windows

-10-tips-and-tricks-1307317

Solid State Drive overuse This is a post from the CIPCUG Facebook page by Toby

after the meeting: At today's meeting we discussed that the default Firefox

autosave settings would wear out your SSD drive if you have one. Here's the procedure to correct. Be careful.

1. Open a new tab 2. In the address bar, type about:config 3. Tell Firefox that you know about the warranty and will

be careful 4. In the search below the address bar, type session-

store.interval 5. Double click on the item to edit the value 6. Change the default of 1500 to a more reasonable 150000

(that will change the default save value from about 15 seconds to about 25 minutes)

7. Click on the X to close the about.config window before

you accidentally change something you didn’t want to change

Color coding Word documents A member asked if Word documents can be color-coded in





Cipcug news and events / General news and commentary

Toth

Treasurer Treasurer’s report for September By Andy Toth

a way that the color won’t print. He wanted to use the colors to identify documents on the taskbar.

If you click on the page layout in Word and then Page Color, you can make the background of the document any color other than white. Now when you hold your mouse over the Microsoft Word icon on the taskbar you can tell which document is which.

Moving photos from camera A member said he needed to transfer pictures from an iPhone to

the computer and was having trouble. Shalkey said to do it by plugging the phone into the computer.

The files should be moved automatically with an import wizard. Do not use iTunes to do it, he said, because it can lose pictures in the process.

When the camera is connected to the computer, there should be a “what to do with this device” list. Click on import photos.

Miscellaneous issues Windows key + m minimizes the current window. A member of the audience said he could not get a list of Wi-Fi

spots. Shalkey said something is messed up on the computer. Another person asked if a computer should be reset if there are

no problems. Shalkey said no. A Windows 8 user asked if she needed Firefox. The answer was


10/1/2016- 10/30/2016

INCOME Coffee Income………………………………………………44.00 Membership…………..,,………………………………….180.00 Raffle ……………………………………………………….95.00 Total Income….. ………………………………………….$319.00 EXPENSES Coffee-Doughnuts Expense………………………………...26.85 Coffee-Doughnuts Expense: Coffee-Doughnuts Hostess…..40.00 TOTAL Coffee-Doughnuts Expense……………………….66.85 PO Box Rental……………………………………………...70.00 Rent Paid…………………………………………………..200.00 TOE………………………………………………………..137.64 Total Expense……………………………………………...$474.49 Net………………………………………………………..$(155.49) Note: The TOE reimbursement is for three issues.

Review: Alarm ++ a helpful reminder By Marshall K. DuBois Webmaster, Sarasota Technology User Group, FL April 2016 issue, STUG Monitor www.thestug.org webmaster (at) thestug.org

This is a great reminder program that will help you remember many things you usually forget.

Every day I rely on this little gem. Think of some-thing in your home that you value, is small and general-ly goes unnoticed until you discover its absence. I am really glad when I’m reminded of a family member’s or friend’s birthday by a reminder popping up. I used to feel bad when I overlooked someone, especially a youngster.

The software is perpetual in that you can have re-minders (alarms) appear when scheduled for as long as you wish. An alarm will appear and launch a program on a specified date/time. For example, I have an alarm for the STUG TNT (Tips ‘N Tricks) page.

The alarm appears on screen, and in the background it opens the “Interesting Internet Finds” in my web browser, which eliminates the need to hunt for a URL each week.

I could go on and on. Below is a short list of my favorite alarms. I have been using this product since 2001.

In brief: Alarm++ Shareware: $19 Supports Windows XP–10 http://12noon.com/?page_id=27


Is it time to renew?

By Ken Church

email address: [email protected] New Members: Predictable, bring a friend.

Attendance at the October 2016 gen-eral meeting: 33 members and guests (who signed-in)

Total membership: 145

MEMBER RENEWAL INFORMATION $30 for single membership, $35 for two or more family membership. NEW MEMBER INFORMATION $40 first year for single membership, $55 first year for two or more family member-ship in same household. TOE NEWSLETTER INFORMATION $30 mailed copy – yearly subscription Please send your payment to:

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP P.O. BOX 51354 OXNARD, CA 93031-1354

Or bring your payment to the members sign in table for the Nov. 19, 2016, meeting. We need and appreciate your support.

(Dated information as of 09/22/2016) September 2016 renewals payment due:

October 2016 renewals payment due:

November 2016 renewals payment due:

Mbr# Last Name First Name

Pd to

1207 Anderson Andy 201609

0714 Bryan Bob 201609

1161 Greene William 201609

0249 Greenway Frank 201609

1235 Shaw Wayne 201609

0722 Smith Gary 201609

1036 Smith Howard 201609

1150 Thomas Ray 201609

1275 Van Duinwyk Jan 201609

Mbr# Last Name First Name

Pd to

0034 Campbell Gordon 201610

0385 Forder John 201610

1210 Fox John 201610

1277 Mascitelli Scott 201610

0990 Mehr Steve 201610

1278 Nasalroad Gary 201610

0901 Shelton Charles 201610

Mbr# Last Name First Name Pd to

0388 Armstrong Bob 201611

1252 Bergman Irving 201611

1074 Chaison Doris 201611

0915 Clayton Phil 201611

0944Tn

Coon Donn 201611

1257 Ford George 201611

0635 Godwin John 201611

1212 Hollander Gary 201611

0074 Marks Gracia 201611

1194A Trujillo Marty 201611

1194n Tsutsui-Trujillo Sandy 201611


CHURCH

Membership report


By Cal Esneault Former President of CCCC and leader of many Open Source Workshops & SIGs Cajun Clickers Computer Club News, April 2016 www.clickers.org tsa70785 (at) gmail.com

Once someone starts using open-source software, either by running a Linux OS or by installing cross-platform tools on Windows or Mac OS systems, the reality sets in that there is a whole new world of vast opportunities available without the drawbacks of financial cost or restrictive licenses. But how does one navigate this new environment? My personal advice is to use the DistroWatch.com site as a key resource. Besides being a jumping off point to find Linux distributions, it also has a great newsletter with links to current information. In particular, I like to keep up by reading recent newsletters and listening to the latest podcasts. Below is a sample of the left-hand pane on the DistroWatch web site that has links to news-letters and podcasts.

For newsletters, you can see the variety of platforms: Ub-

untu, a Debian-based OS; Raspberry Pi, a single board com-puter using ARM processors; and, Red Hat, an RPM-based OS used in enterprise environments. The resources are listed chronologically, and the list changes with time as new issues are made available.

Podcasts (or netcasts, for purists), are audio files where there is a general discussion with recurring hosts typically focused on recent news items of interest to users of open-source programs. The two common audio coding formats, MP3 and OGG, provide “lossy” data compression, which re-duces file size while still providing sufficient dynamic range

for conversational programming. BSD Now and LAS (Linux Action Show) are both produc-

tions of Jupiter Broadcasting, an organization that has been producing audios and videos since 2008. From their studios in Washington State, they now produce 10 shows, most pro-duced weekly. In general, shows follow a news format cover-ing recent events with a main segment of more in-depth cover-age of a specific open-source software item.

FLOSS Weekly is a netcast produced by TWiT.tv, a com-pany in central California started in 2005 with about two doz-en weekly podcasts now being produced in both audio and video formats. FLOSS stands for “Free, Libre, and Open-Source Software,” and shows generally concentrate in depth on a particular application or set of software tools. Content is aimed at more experienced users.

Podcasts usually follow a pattern of style set by the hosts, and whether you like a particular show is very subjective for each individual. Prepare to take some time to sample a variety of podcasts before you find a set that meets your own views and needs. Here are a few other shows that may be of interest (many available in both audio and video formats):

GNU World Order Hacker Public Radio Mintcast Linux Luddites Sunday Morning Linux Review Blender Podcast LinuxLUGcast Category 5 Technology TV If this is not enough, go to the "Tech Podcast Network"

site to view their list, or simply use your Internet search en-gine to search for new shows. Once you find a suitable list of shows that you personally like, you will have a continual flow of information and entertainment to keep you up to date.

Your name can appear here, too. Share your knowledge with other members by sending an article, letter or tip to [email protected]. CIPCUG MEMBERS

Ken Church Rick Curry Bob Dinsmore John Jay Bart Koslow Andy Toth Lisa Toth John Weigle

OTHERS

Gene Barlow Sandy Berger Jim Cerny

Steve Costello Nancy DeMarte

Cal Esneault George Harding

Dick Maybach Larry McJunkin Eric Moore Mike Morris John Moss Joe Nuvolini John Pearce Bob Rankin Rod Scher Greg Skalka Phil Sorrentino

General news and commentary

2016 contributors to TOE

Open source software has lots of sources for help


By Phil Sorrentino Contributing Writer, The Computer Club, Florida http://scccomputerclub.org / Phil-sorr.wordpress.com philsorr (at) yahoo.com

Remember Dragon Naturally Speak-ing? It was, and still is, Voice Recogni-tion software mostly used to control the operation of a word processor like Word. Certain words were used for very specific manipulation of the cursor and the text. Naturally Speaking came on the scene and became useful sometime around 1999 to 2003, depending on how much you needed to transcribe documents into the computer. Early versions had to be “trained” by the users to recognize their individual voice, and the speed and accu-racy were sometimes acceptable, and sometimes not so much. Things have really improved since then; now the man-ufacturer, Nuance, claims in its advertis-ing that “Dragon is 3x faster than typing and it’s 99% accurate.” So, Voice Recog-

nition software has really come a long way.

(For those of you, who are not famil-iar with Naturally Speaking, it has three primary areas of functionality: dictation, text-to-speech, and command input. The users are able to dictate and have their speech transcribed as written text, or they can have a document synthesized as an audio stream, or they can issue com-mands that are recognized by the pro-gram.)

Naturally Speaking is an example of a local computer application or app. All the computing needed for it to operate is on the computer that runs it. Naturally Speaking doesn’t take advantage of client-server technology. If you attended one of our classes, you will recall that when an application is implemented with client-server technology, the heavy lifting (computer processing) is not done locally, but rather at a server that is very powerful and very fast, but remote from the client. The remote server is connected to the

client by the internet, which allows rapid movement of data between the client and the server. So the client app runs on the local computer and is connected to the server software, running in the cloud, via the internet. This combination provides the total voice recognition and control system. The client collects input from the user and sends it to the server, where all the really complex computing is accom-plished. The server analyzes the input and develops the responses and sends them to the client, where the results are presented to the user in audio and/or display for-mats.

Naturally Speaking is certainly a use-ful product, but the voice recognition and control that has really gotten the attention of the public lately are the intelligent per-sonal assistants that are provided by some of the leading computer companies, Ap-ple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Apple was first on the scene with “Siri,” followed by Google’s “OK Google,” and


Tips offered for Cortana, OK Google, Siri, Alexa




then, with Windows 10, came Mi-crosoft’s “Hey Cortana,” and finally Amazon’s “Alexa.”

All of these are client-server imple-mentations. The servers are somewhere in the cloud and the client resides on your smartphone, in the case of Siri and “OK Google,” or on your laptop (or desktop, or tablet) in the case of “Hey Cortana,” or on a special device that is placed central-ly located in your home, in the case of “Alexa.”

All of these assistants use a natural language user interface to answer ques-tions. You’ll need a microphone on your device to take advantage of this capabil-ity. The client app, on the device, uses the microphone to listen for a “wake phrase.” After this phrase is recognized, the following intercepted speech is then sent to the server, where it is analyzed via speech recognition software, and convert-ed to commands. The server then uses these commands to gather answers to the original spoken inquiry. All of these as-sistants can make recommendations and perform various actions via their server capabilities. (For example, a verbal re-quest for the “weather” might yield vari-ous audible statements about the weather in your location. Or a request for “traffic” might yield audible indications of the traffic in your location, or possibly maps indicating traffic problems. Or a request for the best restaurant might yield a list of

restaurants near your location. Or if you have things set up, the statement “Add eggs to my shopping list” will yield an updated shopping list including eggs.)

Here are some descriptions (and ad-vertisements) found for each of these voice recognition and control apps.

Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a computer pro-gram that works as an “intelligent person-al assistant” and “knowledge navigator,” according to Wikipedia. “The software adapts to the user’s individual language usage and individual searches with con-tinuing use, and returns results that are individualized,” also from Wikipedia. “Hey Siri” is the wake phrase, which can be turned on or off.

OK Google lets you do things like search, get directions, and create remind-ers. For example “OK Google do I need an umbrella” to see if there is rain in the weather forecast. To use “OK Google,” make sure you have the latest Google Search app and turn on “OK Google de-tection” in settings.

Cortana is an app with which you can use your voice to make a call, send a text message, search the web, or open another app. Cortana can help you: schedule a meeting, set a reminder, get up-to-date weather or traffic. (Note: you need a Mi-crosoft account to use Cortana.) “Hey Cortana” seems to be tied to the “Notebook,” and thus is set up in the Notebook-Settings, which may not be

obvious. (You get to the Notebook-Settings by clicking in the search bar on the taskbar, then selecting Notebook (the square icon under the home icon), and finally Settings.)

Alexa is the name of Amazon’s assis-tant that comes with the Amazon Echo. Echo is a wireless speaker and voice command device. The device consists of a 9.25-inch tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array. “Alexa,” the “wake word,” is always on and can be changed by the user to either “Amazon” or “Echo.” The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming pod-casts, playing audio books, and providing weather, traffic and other real time infor-mation. It can also control several smart devices. Echo requires a Wi-Fi internet connection in order to work. The Echo must be plugged in to operate since it has no internal battery.

If these personal digital assistants are successful, many more may show up. I just read that the company that brought us the SoundHound app also has a per-sonal assistant called Hound that they hope to embed in other applications so that those apps can be voice controlled. Imagine setting up an Uber ride by voice. (If you will recall, SoundHound is like the Shazam app, just hum a tune and it will tell you the tune’s name.) With all these personal assistants around, we cer-tainly will never have to feel lonely.


More on audio computer aides

Device transparency: accessing files anywhere By Eric Moore President, Computer Users’ Group of Greeley, CO May 2016 newsletter, Random Access www.cugg.org [email protected]

As computer users increasingly have multiple devices — laptops, desktop computers, tablets, smartphones — on which they keep important data, being able to seamlessly access a file from any location or device becomes a challenge.

Say you are on a business trip with your laptop and smartphone, but realize you forgot to copy a report from your

desktop computer to one of your mobile devices. You may find it a challenge to get what you need. Remote control soft-ware such as LogMeIn can allow you to remotely connect to the computer to download the file you need. Dropbox provides a means of sharing files with yourself and others through a cloud-based storage. VPNs and collaboration services such as Microsoft SharePoint are other possibilities for getting access to a file you need while away from home or the office.

“Device transparency” (DT) is a con-cept that could provide a seamless means

of managing your files from any of your devices. Whether you need to transfer a photo from a smartphone to your laptop, play a music file residing on a Mac Pow-erBook on your Android device, or ac-cess a Word document from home on your tablet computer, device transparen-cy would make this all possible. In a pa-per published at http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/devtransp.pdf, researchers with MIT and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems describe how such an ideal ser-




vice would function. (At the time of the paper’s writing, there was no service they were aware of that provided all of these features they propose.)

To summarize, the service would pro-vide a means by which “metadata” —information about your files — would be shared between your devices. Such infor-mation would include the file types, names, and on which devices the files are stored. Without you needing to be con-sciously aware of where a particular file is located, you would be able to down-load the file from the device on which it is stored and open it on any other device you are using (provided it has sufficient storage space). The only requirement is that the device that has the file you need is “linked” into the file-sharing service, is powered on, and has an active internet connection.

Adobe DC to some extent has such features, although it is geared toward working with PDF documents. Services such as Dropbox are available for multi-

ple devices and operating systems, so they can to some extent meet such needs, provided you carefully configure the soft-ware on each device to share the files you need. One downside to sharing your files through Dropbox is that they must be uploaded to the “cloud” — which is simply a server that the vendor provides for storing your files. This may be a pri-vacy concern, depending on the contents of the files, and could be costly in terms of the amount of storage space required (especially if you have a large music or photo collection).

DT would mitigate this issue, as the files would not be stored in the cloud. It would also alleviate the need of every one of your devices synchronizing copies of all your files. Instead, the sharing of metadata would enable every device to be

“aware” of your complete collection of files, so you can download what you need when you need it. Although the metadata may require many megabytes of storage, it would not be nearly so great as the storage space for the files themselves — especially high-fidelity photos, movies, and music files — which could require hundreds or thousands of megabytes of storage.

Device transparency is an interesting concept which could revolutionize how we work without our multiple computing devices. I am interested in seeing if such a service is developed sometime in the future. Depending on how well-designed (easy-to-use) it is, and what measures are taken to protect users’ privacy, I might consider using such a service for my lap-top, desktop PC, and tablet computer.


“D evice transparency” (DT) is a concept that could pro-vide a seamless means of managing your files from any of your devices. “



By Greg Skalka President, Under the Computer Hood User Group, CA September issue, Drive Light www.uchug.org president (at) uchug.org

One of my greatest fears is broken stuff. As an engineer, my work days are filled with problem solving, which often involves trying to figure out why some-thing does not work as expected. At home, I’m looked upon as the builder and fixer of the family. My experience with electronics, electrical items and mechani-cal things won’t allow me to plead igno-rance when someone in my family has a computer problem or a malfunctioning device. It seems all I do is solve problems and fix broken things. If heaven and hell are personalized, then I know what mine would be like. Heaven would be a place where everything works perfectly for eternity, while hell would be a place where everything is always broken.

This month I’ve been confronted with a mountainous pile of broken stuff. Some problems I’ve solved, others appear to be continuing, and some are fixed for now, but the can may only be kicked down the road a short ways.

Windows 8, lay them straight My daughter started graduate school

this fall and sought my advice on getting a new computer. The old Windows Vista laptop I bought her for college carried her through to a bachelor’s degree, but it has gotten filled up with junk over the years, and she wants a fresh, new start. I paid for her first degree, so she realizes this new endeavor is on her own dime. She bought herself an iPad tablet after gradu-ating, but even she does not think it’s sufficient for college work. She would

have liked a MacBook Pro, a small, light Apple notebook computer, but she is on a budget, and so fortunately chose an Asus Q301LA tough screen laptop instead. It is a lot like the MacBook; small, thin and light, with no optical drive or removable battery. It does have a powerful Intel i5 processor, a 13.3” touch screen display and a 500G hard drive. She got a good deal by purchasing a factory refurbished unit from Amazon for a third of the Mac-Book’s price.

She brought it down with her on a visit with us a few weeks ago, so I got to spend a few evenings with a Windows 8.1 touch screen laptop. My assignment was to get it set up for her to use at school. It took me a little while just to figure out how to get around in Windows 8.1. The touch screen gives Windows 8.1 a tabletly feel; one of the ways to get to Control Panel was to swipe the screen from right to left.

My first order of business was to back up the existing system as delivered, so I could recover from any mistakes I might make. I knew the Acronis True Image 2015 backup program I use can support Windows 8 touch screen PCs, but without a CD drive, it was going to be difficult to install or boot from the program CD. For-tunately, I have a Samsung external USB CD/DVD drive (I also have external USB 3.5” floppy and Blu-ray drives). I use an external USB3 hard drive to store my back-up files; it took me a little time to insure both external drives were being recognized when connected. I decided to run True Image from the bootable CD, but it again took a while to figure out how to change the boot options. I didn’t see any apparent BIOS screen when boot-ing the laptop so finally had to search for the manual online to find out which func-tion key allows you to enter the BIOS screens. Once I got it booting from the CD, the backup went smoothly.

My daughter wanted me to install Windows 10 and Microsoft Office (I have an unused 3-user copy of Office Home and Student 2010), but I was run-ning out of time and there was no Win-dows 10 upgrade icon in the system tray. I finally figured out that there were over a hundred updates yet to be installed for Windows 8.1. Once that was done (an all-evening process), the Win10 upgrade

icon was present, but my daughter’s visit was almost over. I just barely had enough time to install Office 2010 (once again using the external USB CD/DVD drive) and make a final backup before she left. I figured she could live without Windows 10 for a while.

My daughter called me yesterday to tell me she had decided to install Win-dows 10 herself, but had run into a few problems. Something had happened to her cursor, but she was able to search online and find a fix for it. She also asked if I had installed Office, because now she couldn’t find it. I don’t know what set-tings she used to install Windows 10, but I hope it did not wipe out my installation of Office 2010. Why am I suspicious that Microsoft might do something like that, so she would be enticed to subscribe to Office 360? I guess this problem lives on.

Assault and Battery One nice thing about laptops is that

they come with a built-in UPS (uninterruptable power supply). When running off of AC power, they will auto-matically switch to battery should line power fail. This is not a standard feature of desktop computers, so unless you want to risk losing valuable data or even mess-ing up your system, an external UPS is a necessity.

I have an external UPS for each of the desktop PCs in the house, plus a smaller one to run my network drive. A UPS uses AC power to charge an internal battery; battery power is used to create 110 VAC to run your computer. I use a 350 VA (200 W) UPS for each desktop computer; the APC model BE350G is one I have several of. It has three outlets that pro-vide uninterruptable power and three that are only surge protected from the switched input power. When the AC


Brokestuff Mountain: When you’re the fixer


The Outer Edge is printed and prepared for mailing by:

Members’ classified ads

For sale Contact Richard Quint, [email protected] 1. Canon LiDE 30 scanner. USB supplies data and power. $10

2. D-Link ADSL2+ modem unused, in opened box with all accessories. $20. 3. D-Link DIR-655 “XTREME N GIGABIT ROUTER” still in shrink-wrapped box. $30.

CIPCUG sponsors ● American Graphics Institute (AGI) — Classroom in a

Book training -- various subjects. www.agitraining.com ● Focal Press — photography and media books —

25 percent discount. www.focal press.com ● No Starch Press — computer books — 30 percent

discount to members with the code CIPCUG15 — www.nostarch.com .

● O’Reilly Media — computer books — 50 percent to 60 percent discount to members. www.oreilly.com

● Peachpit Press — computer and technology books. 35 percent discount to members. www.peachpit.com

● Webucator — Online, self-paced computer train-ing courses. Free to members. Contact [email protected] for voucher.

Use discount code USRG

and get 20 percent o passes to O'Reilly conferences including OSCON, Strata + Hadoop World, Velocity, O'Reilly So�-ware Architecture and more.

power goes out, you can have up to 15 minutes to shut down your computer gracefully. These UPS units work very well, but the internal batteries typically last only a few years, and are pretty expensive. I can sometimes buy the whole UPS on sale at a price that is the same as a replacement battery, so I have a few UPS units I’ve bought on sale in reserve.

This particular model, which I use with my wife’s desktop, puts out a loud, high-pitched tone when the battery is on its way out. This is unfortunately something you cannot ignore — it is so annoying. I came home recently to my wife’s almost equally loud complaining that she could not use her computer at all that day because the UPS had started putting out the low battery tone.

I had no spare UPS batteries, but I did have a couple of new, spare UPS units. I swapped out the UPS on my wife’s computer for a power strip, so I could get her running again. I then opened up the new UPS units, hooked up the batteries and plugged them in to charge overnight. A new UPS is shipped with the battery disconnected and uncharged.

The next day, I turned on the two UPS units. One appeared to work, but the other put out the screeching low battery tone. Perhaps I’d had that one in the box for too long. I could have used the good UPS for my wife’s computer, but though it was the same model number, it had a different mounting hole pat-tern (I mount the UPS to my wife’s computer desk so she can use the UPS switch as a system power switch). I found the good UPS unit used the same battery as my wife’s unit, so I swapped batteries and hooked her UPS back up. Now I need to start looking for replacement batteries or UPS units for the next time the battery goes bad.

Wi-Fi Fo Fum While I was working out the UPS battery problem, my

wife also complained that she could no longer get on to our home Wi-Fi, and was using up too much data on her iPhone data plan. I have installed a Wi-Fi access point near the center of my house, as my wireless router is located at a corner of the house for better routing of wired Ethernet, and does not pro-vide good coverage throughout all of the house from that loca-tion. I also have the access point powered through a power strip, so I can turn it on and off easily.

I logged in to the wireless access point through its wired connection and turned off encryption on the wireless link. Even then, though my iPad Mini could see the SSID and con-nect, I could not get any data through the access point. This access point was bad — time for a new one.

I had fortunately bought a few low-cost Wi-Fi access points on sale, thinking I might use them for travel. I opened up a TP-LINK TL-WR700N mini pocket router I had bought and set it up per the manual. It had the advantage of being capable of more secure Wi-Fi encryption than my old access point, so I set it up for stronger encryption and installed it in the same location in the house. Now my wife is happy again — until the next thing breaks.



Remember: The November and December meetings are on the third Saturday, not the fourth.



(Updated 4-5-2016) Android phones: howtogeek.com/163624/welcome-to-android-a-

beginners-guide-to-getting-started-with-android/ Battery information: batteryuniversity.com DSL reports: www.dslreports.com Steve Gibson: www.grc.com Kim Komando: www.komando.com Leo Laporte: techguylabs.com; www.leoville.com (among oth-

ers) Linux distributions: www.DistroWatch.com Microsoft: www.microsoft.com OnGuard Online: www.onguardonline.gov PCMag: www.pcmag.com

PC Pitstop: www.pcpitstop.com PC World: www.pcworld.com Recalled products: www.recalls.gov SANS Institute — Computer Security Education and Information

Security Training: www.sans.org Spyware Warrior: www.spywarewarrior.com User Group Relations (Gene Barlow): www.ugr7.com Ventura County Computers (Rick and Toby’s shop):

www.vccomputers.com Virus Bulletin: www.virusbtn.com/index Windows Secrets: www.windowssecrets.com If you have a favorite help site on the Web, please forward it,

so we can expand the section. If you find a link that doesn’t work, please tell us that, too.

(https://www.facebook.com/groups/cipcug) A couple of posts show old and new Jerry Crocker photos Another 40 million people bolt from Microsoft’s browsers

as mass exodus continues Lee Smolin dives in about Einstein and how the social dy-

namics of physics have evolved (Jessica Scott’s podcast) Get LastPass Everywhere: Multi-device access is now free! Trick or Treat! Google issues warning of critical Windows

vulnerability in wild New code injection exposes all versions of Windows to

cyberattack | ZDNet Content Insider #491: IBC Wrap 3 cybercrimes affecting your family you need to be on the

lookout for| Komando.com Limelens (interchangeable lesnes for smartphones) New FCC rules impose privacy boost for ISP customers Microsoft reveals what’s next for Windows 10

These items come up regularly during our meetings, so to keep them available they’re listed here as a regular feature.

Updates: Security holes and the regu-lar release of new malware require that your operating system and anti-malware programs be updated regularly. Let what-ever version of Windows you use and your anti-malware programs update them-selves automatically. Accept updates for Acrobat Reader, Flash and Java, but be sure the “you need to update” messages are valid. The best approach is to visit the following sites to be sure you’re not get-ting hacked versions of the programs:

Acrobat Reader https://get.adobe.com/reader. Uncheck

the optional offer on the website unless you really do want what’s offered (as a general rule, you don’t want it). When the program is installed, go to Edit > Prefer-ences > Turn off Java Script. Then go to Trust Manager and check “Don’t allow

non-PDF files to run.”

Flash Update at https://get.adobe.com/

flashplayer. Uncheck the optional offer for other programs. Some experts recom-mend deleting Flash. Others are more lenient, saying that many websites depend on it for video, animation and other spe-cial effects. On many sites, you won’t care, but on some you might want the special effects.

Java Update at https://java.com/en/

download. Then open Control Panel > Java. Click on Advanced, scroll down to the bottom and check “Suppress sponsor offers when installing or updating Java.”

Web browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome,

Opera and others must be kept up to date (they usually update themselves automati-cally). Programs that regularly go to the

internet must be updated to prevent mal-ware infestation.

Other programs Unless the upgrades are listed as solv-

ing security issues, most programs can generally be updated or not, depending on your feelings.

Drivers — the software that runs hardware — don’t need to be updated unless you’re having problems with a specific device or the manufacturer strongly recommends them. The most common spyware comes with Driver Up-dater, Driver Detective, and other brands that claim to “constantly look for new drivers for your hardware.” Don’t update drivers to attempt to solve problems like general slowness, freezing or slow Inter-net speed.

Email: Don’t open generic links or unexpected attachments you receive in email. If you’re not positive that the link is good, don’t open it. The same is true of attachments. They should not be opened in generic messages (“Hey, you’ve got to see this,” for instance). The links and attachments can be sources of malware.

Web help sites

Tips for safe computing

Recent activity on our Facebook page


Every month, members of the Channel Islands PC Users Group have access to:

The Outer Edge newsletter online.

The general meeting, featuring a question-and-answer session and program on software or hardware.

Special Interest Groups. The SIG at the meeting covers tablets, smartphones and other devices in addi-tion to computers.

Door prizes and sometimes a raf-fle at the regular meeting.

Other benefits include:

Discounts on books and software. The opportunity to get free soft-

ware and books to review in TOE. A flash drive containing many

freeware programs (payment required). A chance to make friends with

people who have similar interests. The ability to put your knowledge

to good use by helping other. The concept of user groups is members helping members.

Please clip the coupon and send with payment to CIPCUG Membership, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA 93031-1354. Make checks payable to CIPCUG.

Dues for new members Individual member, $40. Family membership (same address),

$55. Renewals are $30 and $35 per year

respectively. TOE subscription only (in the U.S.),

$30. Printed versions of TOE cost an ad-

ditional $30 and the regular dues. CIPCUG E-MAIL ADDRESS

Members who would like to have an email address through CIPCUG in the form of [email protected] may obtain one for $20 per year.

Why join Channel Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG)?

CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION

Amount enclosed: ____________________________ Please Print the following information: Name: _______________________________________ Address: ______________________________________ City: ___________________________, State:________ ZIP Code: ________________ Phone (Home): ______________(Work): ______________ E-mail address: ________________________________ User level: Novice ____; Intermediate _____; Advanced _____ Can you help the club as a volunteer? If so, what would you be interested in working on? Please list below or on a sepa-rate sheet if necessary.

For CIPCUG use: Date __________________ Member # ____________


Channel Islands PC Users Group Inc. P.O.Box 51354 Oxnard, CA: 93031

DATED MATERIAL Please Do Not Delay

November 2016 mee�ng of the Channel Islands PC Users Group

Saturday morning, Nov. Nov. 19, 2016, at the Boys & Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (Ponderosa Drive and Temple Avenue), Camarillo. Meeting schedule: 8:00 a.m. Doors open 8:45 SIG (Internet and connectivity; tablet and phone apps) 9:30 Business meeting 10:00 Q&A session 10:30 Break 11:00 Program : Orv Beach on LibreOffice Noon Drawing

DUES REMINDER If the code above your name is 2016 OCTOBER, your dues are payable this month.

The map shows the easiest route

to the Boys & Girls Club, but if

you prefer, you can take the

Carmen Drive offramp to

Ponderosa Drive, which leads to

Temple Avenue.

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