What IS This "Net Neutrality"?

        Jim Hamm jumps in on the latest political controversy.  He starts off with, "If you've read or heard about the term 'net neutrality,' as I have, and wondered exactly what that meant, as I have, here is an article from the Lifehacker newsletter that gives a good summary of the term. There are arguments to be made both for and against net neutrality, and the FCC has proposed some rules of its own.
        "Here's one example of an issue on internet usage that comes to mind: if, say, you're on cable for your internet connection and in your neighborhood there are several people that like to download movies. They may well soak up much of the available bandwidth and your internet connection slows to a crawl. Should they pay more because they're using an 'excessive' (whatever that means?) amount of bandwidth? Or should the cable company spend more to upgrade its network to support the additional load? Or both?
        Jim concludes, "Will be interesting—and perhaps disconcerting— to see how all this shakes out."
        When you go to this site scroll down quite a ways to find the headline, "Closed Internet Ahead Proceed With Caution."  On the way you'll find such helpful articles as, "How to Make Mittens Out of Old Sweaters" and "Top 10 End-of-the-Year Upgrades (You Can Probably Write Off)."

Negative Predictions about Apple

        "Apple is the second-largest company in the world," states the writer, but he outlines 11 reasons why Apple could fall in 2011. He does write, "There is no doubt that Apple is one of the greatest companies in the world, with some of the greatest consumer products and revolutionary technologies.  But at what point does the fun end?"
         Jim Hamm sends us the article, commenting that "it's interesting to note that the market cap of Apple is larger than IBM, Hewlett Packard and Dell combined."

Parallels Looks Good

David Passell shares some good news, "I responded to this email yesterday and got Parallels 6. I installed it rather quickly without much headscratching. It is much better integrated with the Mac than the previous Parallels 5. I had Windows XP installed and it transferred over nicely. Today I installed the Zinc browser and it runs fine. The text looks ugly though, compared to the Mac. (This seems true of our Mac site and newsletter too, though). There are a lot of mysterious (to me) things that happen in Windows though :(. Anybody who has Parallels 5 probably should update to this and save."  The sale expires 12-31.

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Encrypt Your Thumb Drive

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        "Many of us use a thumb drive to backup data while traveling and to pass data to trusted friends," Allen Laudenslager gets our attention.  He elaborates, "Some of that data needs to be very private and should be encrypted. So, how do you encrypt your thumb drive?
        "Here is a link to the entire Wired magazine article,  but the specific directions for the Mac are below:
        "Mac OS X actually has a nice built-in encryption tool you can use right out of the box. To get started, just plug in your USB stick and open up Disk Utility (you'll find it in the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder).
        "In Disk Utility head to File >> New >>Blank Disk Image. Select your USB stick as the destination and choose one of the encryption options. You can also set the size of the volume, number of partitions and the format.
        "Once that's done click create and enter a good password (see our guide to picking strong passwords). Alternatively, there is a Mac version of TrueCrypt which may be used.
        "May not be important for pictures of the gandkids, but if you need to take your tax information to the accountant you just might care!"

Finding Special Characters in Pages

"In Microsoft Word and a few other text editors like BBEdit and TextWranger, you can type special codes to search for things like carriage returns or tabs," Art Gorski explains.  " In Pages and TextEdit, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. But if you hold down the Option key when you type these characters in a Search and Replace dialog it works!"  Read how Macworld explains this feature.

Important Argosy News

        David Passell has been having some problems with his Mini.  He's found a fix!  David informs us, "Tony Baltera took in my Mini with the erratic superdrive yesterday and immediately ordered a new one from Apple under my Apple Care warranty that expires Dec. 25. He stated that they do not carry Apple products in stock since outlets like Best Buy can carry a wide selection.
        "HOWEVER: AND THIS IS IMPORTANT TO MAC OWNERS IN THIS AREA. He is an Authorized Apple Repair Center and he is concentrating on this function. He can order Apple products for you though. I did not find this out from BB who told me to contact Apple and have out-of-date info on Argosy.
        "A opinion from me: Contrary to the bragging you hear sometimes, avoidance of local (or any) sales taxes is probably the worst reason to buy from a website (and it is technically illegal if you don't declare the purchase). Remember 'the citizen cares for his/her community; the consumer only cares for his/her wallet.')."
        Update, 12-21.  David writes, "I got my Mini back with a new superdrive yesterday.  It appears to work fine."

iTunes Trouble?

        AppleInsider tells that some users updating to iTunes 10.1.1 have reported it caused iTunes to crash.  Be sure to read this before downloading it. Apparently Apple's standalone iTunes installer appears to run without any problems.
        Jim Hamm had found an article describing and showing comparisons of Macs over the last 5 years.  That was interesting, but the headline below it about iTunes got my attention!

Have a Jolly Mac Computer Christmas

Have a holly, jolly Christmas!
Lots of reasons now for cheer;
Everything just turns out better
When it’s a Mac computer year!

Keep coming to your PMUG
Every meeting that you can;
Meet new friends for show and tell:
Each a Mac computer fan.

Oh, ho, the blog you know
And the website waits for you,
Conquer new technology,
With Mac it’s easy to do.

Yes, the new year’s nearly here,
bringing opportunity,
So pay your dues and you won’t lose
PMUG congeniality.

By Elaine Hardt ©2010

One Hundred Free Software Programs

"MakeTechEasier created a list of 100 free software for Mac OS X," writes John Carter. "I seriously doubt that anyone would want to install every one of them, but you might find something of interest here. For the history buff, there’s Mactracker (provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made). If you don’t have Pathfinder (a really neat substitute for Finder), then you might want Hide-unhide (show hidden files). If you like frills, try BumpTop (3D desktop). Spark (a powerful and easy Shortcuts manager) is sure to find a home for some. And then there are my favorites, NeoOffice (compatible with and a substitute for MS Office) and GIMP (compatible with and a substitute for Photoshop)."

Let It Sleep

        This tip from Small Dog Electronics newsletter tells us to give your laptop up to a minute for "safe sleep" before moving it. Thanks to Jim Hamm for this info.  You'll want to read the whole thing, but here's a part of the article:
        "A hard drive is like a record player. There are platters inside that spin anywhere from 4,200 revolutions per minute to 15,000 revolutions per minute. If you’ve ever bumped into your record player or otherwise jarred it while it was playing music, you know that it doesn’t sound very good, can damage your stylus, and can damage the vinyl. The same holds true in hard drives.
        "Perhaps the easiest and most effective thing you can do to protect your laptop hard drive is to wait after closing the lid. When the sleep light begins 'breathing,' your computer is truly asleep. If the light is solid or off entirely, your hard drive is still spinning. Take a deep breath and wait until the hard drive spins down; your data will thank you, and so will your wallet."

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Mac Mail Tip

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        Is there an easy way to know that an email contains an attachment without opening the message? John Carter tells us, "Yes. There is a column that can be made visible in Mail that will show a small paperclip image if a message contains an attachment, and in addition, it will be accompanied by a number identifying how many attachments are in that message. If you don’t see that paperclip for a message that has an attachment, then you can set up Mail to show it.
        Right click on any column header in Mail to open a menu. You should see something like the following menu (using Mail version 4.4):

Notice that the top item is “Attachments.” If it isn’t checked, click on it.
After activating that column, it will appear on the far right of the column list (above all the message headers).

You can drag that column to any position in the header  I like it closer to the far left:

Here's an example of what you could see:

The blue dot shows me which email I haven’t read.

There you are. Enjoy knowing which message has an attachment and how many it contains."

Note: John sends me an attachment and the icon says "tiff."  But I can't use it; I need a "jpeg."  I drag the attachment by its icon over to the desktop.  Clicking on it there opens it in Preview.  I go to the menu at the top, choose File, then Save As.  From the drop-down Format list I choose "jpeg"  and I choose to save it to the desktop. Now I can copy the "jpeg" to the blog.