Monday, January 23, 2012



Computer Care: Stop Online Piracy Act takes things too far


POSTED: January 23, 2012 1:41 p.m.
Could you imagine if we had newspapers that had items blacked out, censored by someone other than its editors?

What if society allowed wealthy members of the business community or authoritative politicians the power to oversee the printed page? What if it were up to them what was considered fit for publication?

Censorship controlled by the wealthy, with the endorsement and consent of the government? What are the chances of that happening? After all, this is the United States of America.

Should House Bill 3261, better known as SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act pass, it could set precedent for censorship in this great country of ours. Its aim is to deliver massive control to certain industries over Internet content. It will start with the Internet and who knows where it can go from there.

The Senate has its own bill, the Protect IP Act or PIPA, S 968.

The bills call for domain blacklisting, which could stop Internet Service Providers from allowing access to certain Internet addresses. It blocks search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) from linking to those sites.

Chinese and Iranian governments endorse this practice. That's quite an elite club to be part of.
I am not in favor of piracy. Every author, artist, performer and creator has the right to profit from his or her work. However, these two congressional bills go way beyond demanding fair pay for fair work.
The current drafts allow record companies and movie studios not to just have objectionable copyrighted content removed from websites but to see the sites shut down completely.

Should these bills pass as they stand, unprecedented powers would in the hands of the Hollywood entertainment companies, artists and organizations like the MPAA and RIAA. For now, it seems the only ones to profit would be the lawyers.

It would make more sense and appear more appropriate to request the site owners to remove the materials in violation of copyright laws. But taking down infringed songs, books or movies is apparently not enough for them. They wanted and received the authority to shut down entire websites.

Any Internet-savvy web surfer could circumvent this obstacle by entering the numerical address of the suspect website instead of its name, rendering the whole ban mute. It may stop some, but not all from accessing a site.

It is overkill to allow termination of a website in the name of piracy prevention.

That means sites such as YouTube could be shut down because a ninth-grader posted a video he created with a Michael Jackson song in the background. Although a site as large as YouTube may be able to withstand that type of threat and survive it, a small startup site could not.

It wouldn't stop there. Advertisers would be prohibited from selling their wares on those websites. Untold numbers of technicians would be out of work.

In protest Wednesday, Google had its search box covered with a black band and asked Web surfers to tell Congress that censorship is wrong.

Google reports that they collected over 7 million signatures in protest over these two bills.
Wikipedia and thousands of other websites shut down for a day in protest this past week. Wikipedia briefly blocked content, and said afterward, "The problem with SOPA is that it prevents the "loss" of money, at the expense of knowledge and freedoms ... we care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors."

Others in opposition to the bills include eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Linkedin, to name but a few.

Those in the entertainment business in favor of the bills have already spent a whopping $100 million on lobbying for their cause to date.

They may need to spend more. So far, the protests appear to have had a huge effect.
After seeing all the public resistance, Congress is busy reworking the bills. Considering where they were a week ago, they have a lot of rewriting to do. There is also a compromise bill in the works. A group of House members is drafting a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act. We'll see.

Quite a few members of Congress have reconsidered their "yay" vote on this controversial bill.
Three co-sponsors have already dropped support of their bills, perhaps more by the time you read this. There are others yet who are waiting to make up their minds, waiting to hear from their constituency until they decide.

That puts it in our hands, where it should be. We have the power, we the people.
Write to your congressional representatives, sign online petitions and email the White House.
Should these bills pass as they stand, this could be the beginning of the end of freedoms that this country was built upon.

Don't let it happen.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Friday, January 20, 2012




Computer Care: Look for more QR codes in the future

POSTED: January 7, 2012 1:00 a.m.


Everyone has seen them. They are in newspapers and magazines and on websites. No, I'm not talking about celebrities or politicians. I refer you to Quick Response Codes. They are those two-dimensional square mazes of black lines and white spaces that you may have seen. For the longest time, I had no idea what they were.

I felt the same way many years ago when bar codes initially came out on products at the supermarket. They were on things like Cheerios long before the stores even had bar code scanners. What were those lines, I wondered.

Those original vertical bar codes' design included a minimal amount of information embedded in them. Those initial bar codes are high-tech price stickers. They tell the customer what an item costs and allows a merchant inventory control.

The purpose of the new QR codes is to show us products and educate us about them. We can also get discount coupons via a scan, go to a website, buy something, read an article or watch a video.

QR codes have the ability to store more information in them than bar codes and will soon be seen on just about anything consumers use, from drink cups to business cards; anything they may read from periodicals to websites; and television to storefronts and even restroom walls.

They are already in use at trade shows and conventions. I have seen them in brochures and flyers. They have even made it to billboards in some cities. The QR is easier to scan than the ones at the self-checkout counter. You can do it from a distance.

Currently, a common use of the QR code is the ability to get apps for your smart phone.
New York City's Central Park adapted them as park codes to show tourists more about the park. They are strategically scattered around the park on signs for visitors to scan. See the video here.

According to my wife's friend, Kathy, the Weight Watchers bar code scanner app for use at the supermarket will help you make smart decisions while shopping for food. Whether you're in the store or at home, you can easily scan foods to keep track of the points in your diet. I thought calculators on the buggies were high-tech.

Although this technology is new in our country, it's been around for a while in Canada and Japan, where it was invented in 1994 for use in the automotive industry.

These soon-to-be-ubiquitous codes will be a boon to advertisers, but will create yet another source of possible malware. As long as you trust the source, just as in web browsing, this shouldn't be an issue. However, if you scan a code that you don't know, there is the possibility it will direct your phone to an infected site. You will then have what is known as a "brick." Your phone will be useless. To be clear, the code is not what is malicious; where is sends you to is what may be.

To answer your next question, yes, cellphone infections are absolutely something we should be concerned about.

The more mobile we become, the more we become dependent on our phones for information. It is simply easier to scan a website address (the code), than to type in the address on a tiny mobile keyboard. Although it is more efficient, it is yet another possible source of infection for us.
Many anti-virus applications now include protection for your mobile device as well as for your computer. If you haven't yet considered this, perhaps now is the time. Check your anti-virus suite. You may already have protection for your mobile phone.

If you don't yet have an app for your smartphone that reads QR codes, you can download a free one. Be sure you get the app specific for your platform, whether iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry or Palm. Use the link to your app store on your mobile phone to get the download.
In most cases, the scan will activate the software. You usually don't even have to click the shutter release button on your phone. All you need to do is accept or deny redirection to the link that the QR code wants you to go to.

Should you want your own QR code, there are many websites that offer them at no cost, with no strings attached. A few of the many sites that will allow you to create them are qrstuff.com,quikqr.com and qrcode.kaywa.com.

Simply tell the code generator if you want an email, text or a URL (web address) embedded in your code. Create it and right-click the newly generated image, then save it to your computer to use as you wish.

You may not have seen many economical comprehensive data plans for your phone lately, but I think you will be seeing a bunch more QR codes in the coming year.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Friday, January 13, 2012


Vipre is currently having a
 "Buy one year, get another free" Sale.

I like it because it doesn't slow my system down. You, my readers will like it because it is a great deal.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Care for your new computer



Computer Care: Boot up, connect, protect that new computer properly



POSTED: December 24, 2011 1:00 a.m.


Whether you celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukkah, chances are someone in your family is either giving or getting a computer for the holidays. Setting up a new computer, transferring data from an old one or adding new peripherals can be a daunting experience for anyone not comfortable with technology.

Connecting your devices to the computer, if you have a desktop, is easier than it appears. Most cables will connect to only one port; just be sure the plugs are oriented properly. USB plugs can go in any USB port and audio cables are color-coded. The Ethernet or Internet plug is like a phone plug on steroids and will fit in only one port.

If you got a new monitor, it is probably high definition. Use the new cable that came with it and connect it to the corresponding port on the computer. You can use the VGA cable if the new computer has no HD port.

Plug in the power last.

Know where to connect your printer, but don't plug it in yet. Install it through the software on its CD and wait until it says to plug it in.

If using an existing printer, go to the (HP, Lexmark, Epson, Canon) website and download an installation program and driver compatible with your new operating system. The old XP disc that came with your printer will probably not work with Win 7. Also, be sure to choose whether it's 32- or 64-bit.

After you get all the cables and devices connected, Windows 7 will walk you through the initial setup. All you will need to do is name the computer, chose a time zone (Greenwich/GMT minus 5 hours for Eastern/EST) and hit "Next" a few times.

Reboot the computer and customize your settings and your desktop. More important is to be sure you have an anti-virus program installed prior to any Internet browsing.

You may have one that came pre-installed on your new computer, but realize it is a trial version and will be good for only a month. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it. Other programs may be cheaper or more thorough. Be sure to include a malware utility, whether incorporated with the anti-virus or a standalone.

After the above installation is finished, take time to configure it. I find more computers that fail to have a schedule set up for any scans other than a defrag.

The network setup is easier than ever with Win 7. If you have a laptop and need the wireless capabilities of the operating system, it will walk you through it. Windows will detect your network for you. You just need to know what its name is and make sure it is set up with encryption to keep the e-prowlers out.

The next step is to create system emergency discs, usually two. One will boot up the computer in an emergency, the other will have an image of all of your stuff should you experience a techno-disaster.

Look under "Maintenance" in the program menu to find how to create these discs. The first one will require a CD, the second a DVD. If you have lots of programs installed and have transferred old data to the new system, that second disc may turn into multiple discs, depending on how much stuff you have to save.

If you plan to give away your old computer, be certain that no sensitive data remains. Just dragging files to the recycle bin isn't the most secure way to erase your data. Any good hacker could still access your files if they really wanted to.

The truth is, Windows simply deletes the file's name, but the file remains on your drive. Download Eraser, a free open-source utility that writes random data across yours, ensuring nobody could have access to it.

When you install programs to your new computer, add a good utility to help keep it in good shape. Advanced System Care from Iobit is a good one.

If you video conference, don't forget to install Skype if it didn't come on the new computer.
Foxit Reader is a faster pdf file reader than Adoble Reader.

Also, download Google's Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox. Both are better browsers and faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, in my opinion.

Let me add one piece of advice about installing programs: Be careful about allowing them in your startup group when running the installation. By default, they all want to go there. This will slow down your system.

So whether you are hanging stockings or lighting candles this weekend, if your gifts come from under a tree or you get one each night, may your computing be happy and may your troubles be slight.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Defrag your hard drive


Computer Care: Keep your cheese clean by defragging often