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HURRICANE HARVEY HAMMERS CABLE SYSTEMS

Severe storms are no fun for any of us. In addition to the obvious hardships they bring, they can knock cable, telecom, and wireless communication systems out of service for weeks or even months on end.

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How has the Houston area fared?

Hurricane Harvey was especially brutal. Though other hurricanes have packed higher wind speeds, Harvey caused more damage because it parked over southeast Texas for several days. While stalled, it dumped more than fifty inches of rain on the area in only four days. This is a new record. It’s even more than famously-wet Seattle got in all of 2016.

Harvey’s effect on cable systems has been catastrophic.

On August 28, two days after Hurricane Harvey made landfall, Comcast said it would suspend operations in the affected area. Comcast is the largest cable firm in the U.S.

On September 6, the FCC reported that on Friday, September 1, six days after Harvey’s landfall, more than 270,000 cable TV and internet in the affected area subscribers still lacked service. In addition, two TV stations and nine radio stations were still off the air.

It’s possible that the FCC understated the service outages. Some subscribers have yet to report service loss, since they face more pressing concerns.

What does the future hold?

John Stankey, CEO of the AT&T Entertainment Group, ratified the FCC’s grim assessment. Speaking at a media conference in Las Vegas, he said his company expects a spike in ‘cord-cutting’ figures for the third quarter. Much of this- though not all- he attributes to Hurricane Harvey. Comparing it to Hurricane Katrina (2005), Stankey said that full restoration of all communication networks will be expensive, requiring a “multi-year commitment”.

At the same media conference, a Comcast spokesman said his company expects to lose 100,000 to 150,000 subscribers in the third quarter. Much of this loss he attributes to Hurricane Harvey.

Expect several months to pass, then, before all cable services in the Houston area are fully restored.

What can you do?

Wherever you live, you have no guarantee that you won’t suffer extreme weather or other natural disasters. But there are a few steps by which you can protect yourself.

For reliable TV and internet service, consider a satellite system. Severe weather can affect it, but is unlikely to cause outages lasting days, weeks, or months. Usually, your service will return once the storm passes.

 

(For the HughesNet service that’s meets your needs, contact Satellite Country. Talk to us. We can help.)

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BACKING UP YOUR COMPUTER

Have you been backing up your computer? If you’re like the rest of us poor sinning mortals, you probably haven’t. It might not have even crossed your mind.

And why should it? Very few people suffer the theft of their laptops or the crashing of hard drives, so it’s easy to assume that our files are safe. We have nothing to worry about, right?

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Still, it’s wise to take a few precautions. Given what’s at stake, we should be backing up our computers routinely. If a power outage or accident destroys your computer, you could lose years of photos or business files, and if someone steals your laptop, you could lose all of the data for a project you’ve been working on for months. As a writer who has rough drafts for up to a dozen clients in my computer at any one time, I certainly couldn’t afford to take chances.

Data backup might not be as critical for your career, but you’ll probably feel the pain from data loss if your computer fails or is stolen.

What can you do, then? What means do you need for backing up your computer?For the most complete protection, you’ll need to combine local backup with cloud storage.

LOCAL BACKUP

PCs and Macs already have built-in backup systems that are highly reliable, but you’ll need an external hard drive to use them properly. Seagate and Western Digital offer reasonably-priced models with solid reputations.. As a rule, your external drive should have at least as much capacity as your internal drive. Ideally, it will have 50% to 100% more.

Windows 10  (File History/ Backup and Restore)

Microsoft offers integrated backup with Windows 10. Plug in your hard drive, and find your File History setting. Select the folders you want backed up, and how often you want Windows to do it. You will need to keep your hard drive plugged in for the backup function.

Mac OS X  (Time Machine)

Mac offers a unique tool called Time Machine. Just plug in your hard drive and open Time Machine for configuration as your backup drive. The software will handle the backing up of your files automatically, at scheduled intervals. If you need to reset your Mac, or you buy a new one, OS X will prompt you to enable Time Machine backup to restore your files from.

CLOUD STORAGE

Local backup is important, but it’s vulnerable. Like hard drives and other hardware, local backup is subject to destruction, theft, or loss. For complete protection, then, consider cloud storage. For individual files, the simplest means of cloud backup is with online systems such as Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, and Google Drive. All enable scanning of local folders and simple uploading of them to the cloud. Then, even if your computer is destroyed, you can log into your account and open your files from anywhere.

If you need even more protection, you might consider a subscription service such as Backblaze. It costs $5.00 per month or $50.00 per year. It’s not as convenient for casual use as Dropbox or Google Drive, but it is highly secure full-service cloud storage.

 

With a few simple precautions, backing up your files and preventing critical data loss will be easy.

 

(For the internet service that works best for you, talk to us. We can help.)

 

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 100 MB/S Satellite Internet Service in 2021

Launching a New Satellite

HughesNet already offers the fastest consumer satellite internet service in the United States. The ISP isn’t finished upgrading its system, though. On August 11, it announced plans to launch a new satellite to enable download speeds of 100 megabits per second (100 MB/S).

The company said its new satellite will be operating in early 2021, and will be dubbed Echostar XXIV.  HughesNet says the new bird will serve “key markets” in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and several other countries in South America, doubling the company’s Ka-band capacity in the Americas. The 100 MB/S service tier will be  available where HughesNet currently offers Gen5 service.

Following Gen5

In March, HughesNet inaugurated what it called the Gen5 service platform. Since, then, it’s been moving subscribers into Gen5, which offers download speeds of 25 MB/S.

This is the the fastest speed available with any satellite internet service.

Peter Gulla, HughesNet’s SVP of marketing, spoke to Multichannel News last week. Gulla said, “Right now, it (25 MB/S) seems to be meeting the needs of our customers. But that doesn’t mean that’s the end of the line.”

Hughes has offered its internet services primarily in rural areas. It plans, though, to move into some suburban and urban markets where DSL service is weak.

About HughesNet:

HughesNet has provided satellite-based communication services for more than forty years. It serves government residential, and commercial clients, chiefly in the U.S.

In March 2017, HughesNet became the first satellite internet system to offer FCC-defined broadband service from coast to coast. Its Gen 5 tier operates at download speeds of 25 MB/S and upload speeds of 3 MB/S. With Gen5, the company offers integrated modems with built in WiFi. All Gen5 plans include 50 gigabytes of Bonus Zone capacity for use between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m.

The FCC has ranked HughesNet first among all major ISPs for consistency in reaching advertised speeds. This ranking is for all ISPs, not just satellite.

About Satellite Country:

Satellite Country is one of America’s largest retailers of TV, internet, home security, and home automation services. It has been in business since 1999. Satellite Country offers a full range of home services, and can find the best deals available where you live.

 

(For the internet service that’s best for you, talk to us. We can help.)

 

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RECOVERY OF AMERICAN ‘KNOW-HOW’

What is the fastest or most certain route to recovery of our cultural self-confidence? How can we recover the supreme technical competence that came with it- what our forebears called “American Know-How”?

The first step must be soberly assessing where we are now, and how we got here.

Getting Off Track

To begin with, “Know-How” itself was always on a wobbly foundation. During the fifties, when it was one of the great buzzwords of the age, its acolytes assumed the permanence of  impermanent things. They took our freedom and our questing, inventive spirit for granted, forgetting that they could thrive only in certain cultural environments. Our technical mastery could grow only in certain philosophical and religious soil.

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We can see something of the “Know-How” idea in the early work of Syd Mead. He was a popular commercial artist in the early sixties. His work featured sports cars, private planes, sleek attractive women, and colonization of other planets.

Mead’s vision assumed the permanence of certain beliefs and practices that have since waned. Marriage and the nuclear family will continue to be society’s social glue. Our economic life will revolve around free markets. Our governments will prioritize their core functions, defense and law enforcement, so we’ll be safe. The Judeo-Christian ethic will be our dominant social value. We’ll continue exploring, so energy will be cheap and abundant. The sciences will be solidly founded on experimentation, and will not be corrupted by politics. Our children will be well-schooled, and well able to think and reason.

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By the late sixties, the notion of American Know-How was hopelessly outdated. Demons that had long lurked in the recesses of the American psyche came out into the open. Student radicals taking over our streets insisted that America was hopelessly despotic and corrupt, and the system should fall. New theories of jurisprudence led to skyrocketing crime rates. We lost the war in Vietnam. The Apollo Space Program fizzled out. We suffered repeated energy crises. The seventies saw ‘stagflation’- monetary inflation with low or negative economic growth- which we’d been told couldn’t happen.

Finding Our Way Back

The Reagan Era brought partial recovery, but it was slow and incomplete. The Trump Presidency offers a robust reassertion of America’s cultural self-confidence. His personal failings, though, threaten to derail his most promising projects.

At any rate, there is only so much we can achieve through politics. Full recovery of “Know-How” requires attention to matters of spirit. It requires attention to our ancient ethical system. It requires reconsidering how we educate children. It requires reform of news and entertainment media.

Above all else, recovery requires reaffirmation of ancient creeds. We have to study again the ideas, hundreds or thousands of years old, that made the American Republic possible.

If we address only the obvious symptoms of our current cultural crisis, we will soon backslide into our previous funk. Recovery will be stalled. Dysfunction will once again become our national norm.

Related image

Next- and Last in the Series: Driving in Neutral

 

(To find the best internet connection for you, talk to us. We can help.)

 

 

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PASSWORD MANAGERS

You know the drill for logging in to your computer. You have to enter a password. You also need passwords for your internet service, for specific websites, and for online commerce.

The use of passwords for online security comes with certain drawbacks. If your password is easy to remember, it may also be easy for a hacker to guess it. If your password is more complex, a combination of letters and numbers, you’re more likely to forget it, and you could be locked out of your computer. If you have several passwords, you’re almost certain to forget one sooner or later.

Some people use password managers, installed browser plug-ins that track all of the passwords the user needs for all different online functions. If you have the plug-in and you log in to a secure site, it offers to save your password and any other credentials. You need to enter the information only once. With every subsequent visit, the password manager offers to fill in the information automatically. If you have saved multiple logins for a particular site, the password manager will show you multiple login options. Most password managers display a toolbar menu with a list of saved login credentials, so you can visit any saved site and log in automatically.

If you need to change a password, or you need login credentials for a new site but don’t want to think of a new password, most password managers will generate and save new passwords automatically.

Most password managers will also fill in personal data on internet forms: name, address, phone number, e-mail address, etc. This could save you considerable time.

Most password managers are free. The better ones cost between $12.00 and $39.95. You don’t have to shell out a lot of money for a superior product, though. One of the top-rated password managers, Lastpass 4.0 Premium, costs just $12.00.

If you want your online activity to be secure, but don’t want to remember multiple passwords, consider installing a password manager. And for the best internet service, talk to us.

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SAVING DATA: MY OWN EXPERIENCE

Every internet service provider rations the amount of data each customer can use per month at the standard speed. If you break your data cap, your download speeds will be cut drastically. Knowing how frustrating this can be, you can benefit from learning how to economize on data without hampering function.

You might find it helpful to know my own experience with data caps, and with my efforts to get the most out of my data allotment.

Needing to research a high volume of material, and being pressed for time, I use Google Chrome for browsing. Chrome is faster than competing browsers, but it comes with a significant drawback: it consumes more data. I needed to find ways to get the most out of what I had.

My data saving program began with disabling auto-play video. Not only is such video advertising annoying, it eats a huge amount of data.

First,  I disabled Adobe Flash, which most- though not all- auto-play ads run on. This required opening my computer’s control panel and hitting the ‘settings’ tab. From there, I scrolled scroll down to the ‘advanced settings’ tab at the bottom of the ‘settings’ window. On the second page of ‘advanced settings’, I found the ‘privacy’ tab. Under ‘privacy’ I found the ‘plug-ins’ tab. One of the options there is ‘manage individual exceptions’. Hitting this tab revealed a list of several optional apps, and Adobe Flash was the last one listed.  I hit ‘disable’ for Flash.

Disabling Adobe Flash doesn’t mean you can never use it again. If you want to watch a video that requires Flash, you can enable it as needed, then disable it again when you’re finished.

If you’re a typical web-surfer, disabling auto-play video and audio should reduce your data consumption by about 20%.

My second major step in saving data was enabling Chrome’s data saver extension. This app compresses picture, video, and sound files.

After hearing about the data saver extension, I looked it up through the browser. It told me the extension was available through the Chrome Web Store. Visiting the store, and searching under ‘apps’, I brought up ‘extensions’.  ‘Data Saver’ was the first extension listed. I chose the ‘download’ option.

Downloading the Chrome Data Saver extension takes only a few seconds. If you want to disable it later, you can easily do so.

Google says that use of this extension will reduce data consumption by up to 70% on some devices. In my own experience, it actually averages 15% to 20%. Every bit adds up, though.

Other browsers feature their own  data saving extensions and means to disable auto-play video. The procedures for them may differ slightly from the Chrome process, but they follow the same general outline.

There are other means of saving data. You can, for example, limit the number of tabs you keep open at a time. Downloading your data saver extension and disabling auto-play video will produce the bulk of your saving, though.

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DATA CAPS & YOU

To get the most out of your internet service, it may help you to know what a data cap is, and how to avoid breaking it.

Most internet service providers, to keep their networks from becoming clogged, limit the amount of data any customer can use per month. Most providers offer tiered service, with higher prices for plans with higher data caps. If you use more than your monthly allotment, your data speeds will fall dramatically, and will remain low until your next monthly service period begins. This can be highly frustrating, and can make some internet functions impossible.

We won’t tell you to limit your use of the internet. We won’t tell you not to download music or videos. These, after all, are among the reasons most people want broadband service.

Without such drastic measures, there are a few other steps you can take to get the most out of your data plan.

First, assess your household’s needs. If only one or two people will be connected at a time, and if you use the web strictly for e-mail and light surfing, then you may not need extreme speed or a high data cap. However, if several people may be connected at once, you download video or music frequently, or you conduct business over the internet, you will need more speed and more data.

Second, consider changing your browser. Google Chrome is usually faster than other browsers, but it consumes more data. This is partly because Google- more than any other browser- scans your e-mail and searches for keywords, which it uses for precisely targeted ads. Not only is this annoying, and a possible privacy concern, it consumes data.  If wringing the most out of your data plan is more important than saving a few seconds on a search, then you may want to use a different browser.

Third, close auto-play videos whenever possible. In Chrome, pull up the ‘settings’ bar. and go from there to ‘advanced settings’. From there, go to ‘privacy’, then hit the ‘plug-ins’ tab, and disable Adobe Flash. This won’t block all auto-play videos, but it will block most of them. You’ll seldom have to listen to annoying ads, and you’ll save an enormous amount of data.

With other browsers, the procedure for disabling Adobe Flash is similar, though it may differ in one or two details..

Finally, limit the number of tabs you keep open. If you have multiple tabs open at once, some pictures and videos may be loading in the background.

(To get the most out of your internet service, talk to us. We are your source for HughesNet.)

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GETTING THE BEST DEAL IN INTERNET SERVICE

How can you be sure you’re getting the best deal in internet service? There are a few questions you should ask about any web service offered.

First, make sure you understand all charges. Many internet service providers offer low monthly rates for a promotional period, usually three months to one year. After the promotional periods, though, the rates increase sharply. Some providers offer ‘free’ equipment and installation, but they add the equipment and installation charges to the monthly fees, and they require long term contracts, with fines for early termination.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being cheated. Make sure you’re getting a complete list of all charges before you sign a contract, though. Before you agree to installation, be sure you understand the total you pay in advance, the total monthly fees, including taxes and other surcharges, and the total you will pay after any promotions end.

Second, assess your needs. Consider how many people in your household are likely to be connected at any one time, what kinds of devices you connect to the internet, and what functions you want. If you will connect only one or two devices, and your web use is chiefly e-mail and light web surfing, then you might get by with fairly low speed and a low data cap. If you intend to connect multiple devices, though, or if you want to download music or video, then you will need a higher download speed and more data capacity.

Conduct a speed test of your present internet service, and monitor how much data you use. This will tell you how much speed or data capacity you will need from a new provider. If your present service is too slow or too limited, these steps will still give you a rough idea of how much extra speed or capacity you will need.

If you’re paying a low rate for your internet service, but it’s inadequate for your needs, then you’re not getting a bargain.

Finally, to be sure you’re getting the best deal in internet service, talk to us.