COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Tizer]

My glitch is that sometimes in the thumbnail view the scroll bar becomes even thinner and doesn't respond. The solution is to click on a different folder and then back onto the desired folder and it'll be normal again.

[Stanley]

Never had that Tiz.......

[Stanley]

SEE THIS for a BBC report on the record fine imposed by the EU on Google. Note that it was the EU what done it! I don't fully understand it but can I remember Microsoft being fined for the same offence when they bundled their browser Explorer with Windows?

[Tizer]

Another example of a big tech company ignoring the lawmakers...
`Google tracks users who turn off location history' LINK
`Google records users' locations even when they have asked it not to, a report from the Associated Press has suggested. The issue could affect up to two billion Android and Apple devices which use Google for maps or search. The study, verified by researchers at Princeton University, has angered US law-makers. Google said in response that it provides clear descriptions of its tools and how to turn them off. The study found that users' whereabouts are recorded even when location history has been disabled.'

[Stanley]

My only consolation is that they won't get much joy tracking me! The location never changes from the kitchen!

[Tizer]

Tracking happens to be the thing that someone has caught them doing. The greater concern is that they flout the law and regulations so who knows what else they might be up to? I used to think I was just being a bit paranoid about these big, rich companies but now my suspicions seem to be coming true.
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Here's something that might become a common sight once we all start being converted to `full fibre broadband'...
Virgin Media broadband teams 'left holes in walls' LINK

[Stanley]

Perhaps Janet was right when she warned me about them all those years ago.....I'll bet one of the problems with the installations is that the engineers are being pressed to work to fast. Keep the costs down and the profits up.....

[Tizer]

Google employees criticise 'censored China search engine' LINK
`Hundreds of Google employees have written to the company to protest against plans to launch a "censored search engine" in China. They said the project raised "urgent moral and ethical questions" and urged the firm to be more transparent. "Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work," they added. Google, which has never spoken publicly about the plans, declined to comment. The firm, which is owned by Alphabet, quit China eight years ago in protest at the country's censorship laws and alleged government hacks. However, reports last month claimed it had been secretively working on a new Chinese search service, referred to internally as Dragonfly. The platform, which still requires Chinese government approval, would block certain websites and search terms like human rights and religion. This has angered some employees who fear they have been unwittingly working on technology that will help China suppress free expression.'

[chinatyke]

Of course, the link is blocked here in China!
I think Google Earth is the greatest free program ever launched and it is crippled here, not unobtainable, but slowed to a crawl and photos cannot be opened. Google search engine, another World-class winner, is also crippled. Yahoo is OK though. Microsoft Maps is OK but hopelessly out of date.

[Stanley]

You told us to stop whingeing China about the actions of our government. I shall not do the same. It is a repressive and short sighted policy on the part of your leaders. They can't hold back the tide of information forever.

[chinatyke]

You are right. The youngsters are very good with technology and can easily defeat the firewall. I can easily install a VPN but I choose not to do anything that is frowned upon.

[PanBiker]

Wouldn't do for me.

[Tizer]

China, do you have access to the Rightmove web site over there? LINK
If so, you can at least get some small map or aerial views of places in Britain. Put the town into the search box, select one of the For Sale properties in the area you're interested in then click the Map view below the main photo. It'll be interesting to see if that lets through some Google map data.

[chinatyke]

Thanks Tiz. I can open that one and the map section and have book-marked the website. I love looking at houses so that will keep me amused.

Ian, it is honestly the most free and least oppressive place I've ever lived but I try not to step over the line. Please don't believe all the anti-China propaganda you read in the newspapers, that would be like me believing all the anti-Corbyn stuff in the Daily Mail.

[Stanley]

I like that, mainly because just for once the estate agents are the good guys!

[Wendyf]

Of course, the link is blocked here in China!
I think Google Earth is the greatest free program ever launched and it is crippled here, not unobtainable, but slowed to a crawl and photos cannot be opened. Google search engine, another World-class winner, is also crippled. Yahoo is OK though. Microsoft Maps is OK but hopelessly out of date.

What about Bing Maps or is that the Microsoft one? Their aerial view for this area is more up to date than Google Earth.


https://www.bing.com/maps

[chinatyke]

Yes, same one. No doubt that there is a reason why maps of China are not updated.

[Stanley]

See THIS report on data hacked from Superdrug. Is there anything safe about 'secure connections'?

[Stanley]

I saw a report in PE yesterday that Amazon have taken out a new patent for 'Augmented Reality User Interface Facilitating Fulfilment'. So what..... It's a new technology for use by workers in their 'Fulfilment Centres', in other words the warehouses where they pick and fill our orders. The goggles give instructions for what needs to be picked and where it is. Nothing really worrying so far but..... included in the suite of capabilities is the ability to track 'Orientation data, pitch, yaw and accelerometer data'. In other words it reports every move of the wearer and even where they are looking. Of course this also means the ability to transmit a message to the worker if they stand still or go to the toilet.
I don't know about you but 'advances' like this give me a chill. I think of all the years I spent on the road incommunicado because it was before the day of cell phones. I was given my instructions and trusted to do it at my own speed, all that mattered was that I got back safely at night with the job done. Would the availability of technology like the above have made me a more efficient driver? Even more important to me, would I feel I was free and independent or simply some form of wage slave robot? I know what I think and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

[plaques]

It was always a criticism that George Orwell never included robots in his work 1984. The answer he gave was that he didn't need to, people would become the robots. Looks like we have got there at last.

[Tizer]

We'll probably soon find that for the last decade Amazon has been recording our 'Orientation data, pitch, yaw and accelerometer data' from their Kindle and Fire devices and the big phone manufacturers will have been doing the same. It makes me think about how my young relatives use their smartphone to track each other using....is it Snapchat or some app of that type. The teenage relative who went kayaking in the rivers and ravines of the Ardeche was shown in a little boat with exact positional location data on the phones here in the UK. A useful way to track your kids and their activities but if you can do it for kids you can guess the phone companies will be doing it to us behind out backs.

I fact I was wrong to restrict Amazon to Kindle and Fire - the company has apps on most smartphones, so they could be doing it more widely.

[PanBiker]

With regard to Stanley's comments.
A smaller area to roam but I was the same when I was a field service engineer. You took your list of jobs, loaded the kit you needed and got on with it. If the last job was out of town and there was time left in the day we would ring back to see if there was anything else to do in our direction, customers house phone or a call box. If you had cleared your list a bit early you went home, it worked the other way if you ran over, swings and roundabouts but captain of your own ship in many ways.

Anyone see the advert for Radio 4.1? Experimental A.I. presentation for a day or something. TV have done away with all the studio cameramen, certainly in the news studio. Is it time to dump the presenters for a digital alternative?

[Tripps]

Email for technophobes -

I sent an email to a Baronet last night at about 8 pm. He is notorious for not using email and I didn't really expect a reply. I had a hand written reply within 12 hours - the technique is to print out the email, write a reply on it, then pass to your secretary to scan and send as an attachment.

'Noblesse oblige' as they say - not sure it's very efficient though.

[Tizer]

The NHS still use fax much of the time instead of internet.

Ian, when we moved house and had the BT broadband engineer here for a couple of hours his phone rang about every 15 minutes with BT checking up on where he was and how far he'd got with the job and why he hadn't finished.

[PanBiker]

When the IT services that I and my technician used to run went over to a managed service under BSF. I ceased to be a Network Manager and became IT Coordinator, a made up position masking 37 different areas of IT that the new managed service didn't want to touch or could not be bothered with. My technician was scooped up to work for them and occupied, along with another a small room 25 yards away from my front office on the top floor of the new college.

One of my roles was that I was the designated contact person for the IT support desk which was situated in Atlanta, Georgia! I was the only person they would take a call off so all problems had to be related to me and then passed on to them to instigate the solution. When I rang a problem through on the designated button on my CISCO desk phone three things happened. They entered it up on their logging system which simultaneously sent a text to the technicians mobile phone, logged the job on their computer for reference and set a countdown clock of 15 minutes going on their phone for completion of the job, the technicians were on penalty if they ran over the allocated time even if they had no other jobs scheduled. Total madness and the method flawed in so many ways that it was doomed to fail in the long run.

I had to relate second hand information on technical matters relayed to me by unqualified or IT illiterate people in many cases. Quite often the technicians would find other problems never related to me by the user when they tipped up to the job. A standard 15 minutes for a fix regardless of the severity or circumstance of the problem was unworkable. I was considered unqualified to touch their kit so was not officially allowed to visit the user to help diagnose what to ring through. It was very frustrating for everyone involved so regardless of dictates from the school manager who would always side with the regime. I did used to ring the lads first and give them the drop on the jobs before I rang America for an official fix under the regime. In many cases I popped on a toilet break and just happened to go via the classroom that needed its overhead projector switching off and then back on again. You had to bend the rules or the teaching and learning would stop in many cases.

In the end, as predicted on day one of the madness and after they had sacked me off because my post was "no longer required", they dumped the managed service at 5 years into a 7 year contract and set on a brand new shiny person and called him the network manager. That was at exactly three years to the day since my redundancy. I saw the advert but didn't apply.