July, 2016 - Mid-Month Newsletter

The following articles appear in the current edition of the Club's Newsletter, and are in addition to the President's Message on the From The Board page and elsewhere on this website.

 

 

programmer 

Teckspert Talk

By Melanie Birnbom

Is It Plugged In? Is It Turned On? Two Time-Saving Questions To Ask

Is it plugged in? Many years ago, a wise engineer gave me the best tech-support advice I’ve ever received. He said that if something isn’t working, always ask yourself two things: “Is it plugged in? Is it turned on?”

This sounds ridiculously simple, but in the course of a career spent surrounded by computers and other highly technical and infuriating equipment, I’ve found it to be the most useful piece of advice I’ve ever received.

First of all, is it plugged in? Check to make sure the plug is actually securely plugged into the wall or power strip. A few days ago I was staring at my electric kettle wondering why it refused to boil and realized that I had plugged in my coffee grinder instead. If you are plugged in, make sure the power strip or outlet is turned on. If it’s turned on, double-check to make sure it is functioning. Outlets break just like anything else. If your device uses batteries, make sure they are properly placed and working. Even if you’ve replaced them recently, try a fresh set and see if that makes a difference.

Power cords aren’t the only things that come unplugged. If your device has cables of any kind, make sure everything is securely in place. Sometimes cables to a monitor, modem or headphones can work loose.

Is it turned on? Don’t take this as an insult. I’ve seen an engineer with a master’s degree struggling to figure out why something wouldn’t work for half an hour before realizing he’d neglected to flip the on-switch for a server. On/off switches are not always clearly marked or conveniently placed and it can sometimes be difficult to tell if something is powered on or off.

Hopefully, these two simple questions can save you a lot of trouble when dealing with electronic devices.

 

 

PDF File Type – What and Why?
By Phil Sorrentino, Contributing Writer, The Computer Club, Florida
http://scccomputerclub.org / Philsorr.wordpress.com
philsorr (at) yahoo.com

The Portable Document File (.pdf) file type has been around since 1993 when Adobe Systems made the specification available to all, free of charge. However, PDF was initially a proprietary format, controlled by Adobe, until it was officially released as an Open Standard in 2008. Since then it has been controlled by a committee of volunteer experts who are part of the International Organization for Standardization. The .pdf file type was developed as a way to share documents that would include text, formatting, and inline images, among computer users of different types of computers from different companies. (PCs, Apple, IBM, Sun, anyone remember DEC?). The PDF standard endeavors to present documents in a consistent manner that is independent of application software, hardware and operating system. The .pdf file type, by its very nature, and name - Portable, was intended to be a file that could be a complex of text, graphics and so on, and be easily shared by people that didn’t have the same hardware or software. So, the real benefit was that the file would look exactly the same when displayed on all different types of computer systems.

Each .pdf file encapsulates a complete description of a document, including text, fonts, graphics, forms, annotations, outlines, and other information needed to display the file. .pdf files can also contain links, buttons, audio, video, and business logic; and where security is important, they can be password protected. So a .pdf file can end up as a pretty big file. (When I was almost finished with this article I saved it as a .doc and a .pdf. The .doc was 36KB, and the .pdf was 106KB. I also looked at a PowerPoint presentation, 127 slides with lots of graphics; it was 11.5MB saved as .ppt, and 32.4MB saved as .pdf. Finally, I saved a fairly large Excel spreadsheet (125 rows, with columns that went out to column AT, with quite a few calculations within the spreadsheet), which was 157K saved as .xls and 475 KB as .pdf. So from that limited testing it looks like the .pdf will be about 3 times the native applications size.)

.pdf files can easily be viewed on your computer using a free PDF Reader from Adobe called “Acrobat Reader DC”. A mobile “Acrobat Reader DC” App is also available, free, for your Smartphone or Tablet. And for Windows 10 users, who are also Microsoft Office owners, PDFs can now be created from the Office Apps, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (By the way, you may have seen a reference to an .xps file type along with .pdf. The .xps file type is Microsoft’s alternative to .pdf. It was introduced with Windows Vista but never attracted much of a following. Of the two, the .pdf format is the preferred choice.)

At this point in computer evolution, .pdf files can be opened by just about every major operating system (Windows 7, 10, OS X, iOS, Android) and can be used by many different applications. In addition, the majority of modern web browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Firefox) allow .pdf files to be read without the use of an external application, making them easy to use in web applications. (Though the literature doesn’t give these internal PDF readers much of a good review; and advice on how to replace the internal PDF reader is easily found.) Also, Mobile Operating Systems (Android, iOS) are including PDF readers, making the PDF format almost universally useable. (This can’t be said of any other file type; even though we all may be familiar with Microsoft’s Word format (.doc), this format can only be used by a limited number of applications.)

There are hundreds of file types on a typical computer, and that you can inspect and change the association between a file type and the program that uses that file type, using the Control Panel. (Remember, “Default Programs”, followed by “associate a file type or protocol with a program”?) So, you have to have a program on your computer that knows how to use the .pdf file type. If you are having trouble opening a .pdf document, you probably don’t have a program that knows how to use the .pdf file type, on your machine. If this is your situation, consider getting the free Adobe Reader, from the Adobe website, http://www.Adobe.com.

Normally, .pdf files cannot be modified by the user, making these files perfect for use by an “end user”, i.e., someone who needs the content of the file without being able to modify the file contents. In other words the file was not intended to be changed, once it was created or “published”. So, originally there was no way to change a .pdf file without using the very expensive PDF Creator software from Adobe (or lesser expensive PDF creation software from Foxit). However, there are situations where it makes sense to change the contents of a received .pdf file, like “if you need to fill in some information on a PDF form”.

“PDF to Word” conversion websites like “PDF Converter”, “PDF to Word” or “PDF Online” are websites that advertise that will do the conversion for free. (Google “free pdf to word” and you’ll see many possibilities.) Also, you could try “free document converter” found at www.hellopdf.com. I haven’t any experience with these, but the literature claims they work as indicated. And, for those of you who need to do a lot of these conversions, Adobe offers “Adobe Acrobat DC” for about $15/month or you could buy it for around $200. There must be a large enough number of people who need to convert .pdf files to .doc files because when I Googled “pdf to word”, I was pointed to many websites that could supposedly help me in my quest. There even was a YouTube video that indicated that you could upload a .pdf file to Google drive, (yes, you’ll probably need a Google Drive account), and then download it as a word (.doc) document. When I tried it on a pretty simple PDF, the conversion didn’t seem to preserve a lot of the formatting, so it didn’t look like it would be acceptable, at all, on a more complex document. I haven’t had the occasion to need to convert a document, but if the situation ever arises I’m sure I’ll be able to get it done, though I just might have to go to the lab and get some help from one of the very able and helpful Monitors. So, when all is said and done, the PDF standard is deeply ingrained in modern computing because it allows a single file to provide a display that looks the same on all different types of computers.

 

 

For those of our generation who do not and cannot comprehend why Facebook exists:

I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the same principles.

Therefore, every day I walk down the street and tell passersby what I've eaten, how I feel at the moment, what I have done the night before, what I will do later, and with whom.

I give them pictures of my family, of me gardening, taking things apart in the garage, watering the lawn, standing in front of landmarks, driving around town, having lunch, and doing what anybody and everybody does every day.

I also listen to their conversations, give them the "thumbs up" and tell them... I like them.

And it works just like Facebook...

I already have four people following me:... two police officers, a private investigator, and a psychiatrist.

 

 

More People To Have Mobile Phones Than Electricity

According to a new study by tech giant Cisco, within the next 4 years expect 5.4 billion people around the world to own a mobile phone. What makes that so surprising is that only about 5.3 billion folks are expected to have electricity by then.

And many of those folks will have more than one device, because Cisco estimates that there will be 11.6 billion mobile-ready devices out there.

Currently, nearly 65% of American adults own a smartphone. For many, it’s their sole means of accessing the Internet. According to findings by Pew research, 10% of those people say their phone is their only way of accessing the Internet.

Those with incomes under $30,000 a year are most likely to use their smartphone as their primary means of accessing the Internet, and African Americans and Latinos are 3 times more likely to use smartphones as their only Internet access than Caucasians.

What do people do with their phones? Around 60% use their phone for banking with a similar number using their phone to look up health information. Nearly 45% have used their phone for important tasks like looking for a new home or a new job. Almost 20% of those job-seekers have submitted an application using their phone.

Smartphones are especially popular among young adults. A whopping 85% of those 18-29 have a smartphone. And don’t think smartphones are just for kids. Among users 50 and older, 92% use their phone for texting, 80% for surfing the Internet, 94% for voice and video calls and 87% for e-mail.

While cell phones used to be considered something of a luxury item, that’s no longer the case. Around 80% of households below the poverty level have at least one cell phone. A full 91% of U.S. adults report owning cell phones and for nearly 50% of the people, that’s the only phone for their home.

 

 

Think Before You Post

We’ve talked before about finding out if something is true before you share it via social media or in an e-mail. I’ve got a great example of why just taking a few seconds to think before you share something keeps falsehoods and hoaxes from spreading. Take a look at this post about the record-setting Powerball Jackpot.

It claimed to have a simple solution for poverty in the U.S. It claimed that if you split the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot between the 300 million residents of the U.S., each would get $4.33 million dollars. This image was shared millions of times on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook - clearly before anyone bothered to think about it. If you gave it a closer look, you’d see that the math is all wrong. $1.3 billion divided by 300 million is $4.33. That won’t even buy everyone in the country a large latte at Starbucks. Even without doing the math, you should know that lottery jackpots are made up of the amount of money that’s put in to them by the players. So assuming that every single person in the country bought a ticket, that would mean that they put in an average $4.33 million each. That also seems pretty unlikely.

I’m a bit concerned that so many folks don’t seem to know that a billion is a thousand million. I’m concerned that so many people are willing to pass along information without the slightest attempt to verify it.

Does this Powerball post matter? No, not really. But when people pass along health claims, false claims that people have made racist statements, false accusations of criminal activity, false reports of missing children etc… it does hurt.

If you’re old enough to use a phone or PC, you should be old enough to know that just because someone writes something on a photo, it doesn’t make it true. And if you don’t know if it’s true, don’t share it before you verify it.

 

 

 

Don't Fall For This Noisy Scam

Scammers are always changing their tactics to take advantage of computer users. There’s a new one out there that I wanted to tell you about. We’ve talked before about fake virus pop-ups that direct you to scam tech-support sites. This new one adds the element of sound.

A window will open and you’ll hear a voice telling you that your computer has just been infected and that you need to call a certain number right now to fix it. In the past few days my friend’s mother and another friend’s father-in-law were both hit by this same scam. It’s completely FAKE! If your virus software detects a virus, it fixes it. It won’t direct you to a number to call. These crooks just want to get your credit card number or access to your computer.

A window will open and you’ll hear a voice telling you that your computer has just been infected and that you need to call a certain number right now to fix it. In the past few days my friend’s mother and another friend’s father-in-law were both hit by this same scam. It’s completely FAKE! If your virus software detects a virus, it fixes it. It won’t direct you to a number to call. These crooks just want to get your credit card number or access to your computer.

 

 

 



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