COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

Nevertheless Gloria, it's a shame that people in your situation are denied reasonable speeds. I would hate to go back to dial-up speeds. I remember when I had my self-publishing phase on Lulu it often took 45 minutes or more to upload the text files and sometimes the connection failed and you had to start all over again..... I just accepted it.
I remember my first hard drive, I think it held 7.5mb! It was a miracle at the time. Now we talk terra bites and even peta bites! Times change and you are being left behind. Not enough customers in the area to justify an improvement I suppose although I see that some users in big cities have the same problem.

[Wendyf]

Boundless who provide our connection are doing a great job in Yorkshire and Lancashire getting a wireless connection to outlying communities where the phone line doesn't support broadband. I think there is an initial cost of £120 for the connection and we get their cheapest package at £24.99 a month. Without it we had nothing at all!

[Big Kev]

Crikey how bad is ours then? 1.81 down and 0.33 up.

That's not good at all, are you 'out in the sticks' Gloria? I presume you've queried the lack of speed with EE?

[Gloria]

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Ours is £26 and unlimited landline calls. If I take the £26 on here it bumps up and no landline calls. We haven't a house full on the Internet, just the two of us so it doesn't seem bad. Perhaps I should speak to EE and see what they can offer if I say I'm swopping.
The offers I have added are for new customers.

[Big Kev]

Your existing ADSL broadband should be giving you much better than 1.33 mbps download, I get more than that upload speed. I'd definitely query it with EE.

[PanBiker]

So would I, you could have a line fault, 4mbps is pretty poor even over copper unless you are 10 miles from the exchange, how far is it? I would assume you have a fibre cabinet a lot nearer providing those rates are based on your postcode. Does your TV or satellite box have on demand that you can't use?

[Stanley]

I've just had a 100mb update from Canonical. It struck me that that would ruin Gloria's day.....
Get on to them Love!

[Wendyf]

It doesn't quite work like that in rural areas Ian, we aren't 3 miles from the exchange at Colne but can't get broadband at all. The lines are ancient and BT has never been prepared to upgrade them. Talking of phone lines ours was finally fixed yesterday after 8 days!

[PanBiker]

I appreciate that Wendy but I don't thing Gloria is quite as rural as you.

[plaques]

Broadband coverage is all about money. I live 1 mile from the exchange but the nearest fibre box is 900 metres away. Obviously they think because of the number of houses involve its not worth installing full blown fibre.

[Wendyf]

It's not that long since the BT engineers would visit you if you had a fault and explain what it was and what they were going to do, ringing once it was fixed to check everything was back on ok. We got to know the local lads quite well.
Colin reported our recent fault online, set up the contact number plus an email address but apart from an initial panicked call from the engineer to find out who had dug a great big hole and cut through the line we heard nothing at all for over a week. When we checked the website on Monday the fault was reported as fixed and case closed which it certainly wasn't! After nearly an hour on the phone to various people in customer services the fault had to be logged again and an appointment made for an engineer to visit yesterday. Of course the local engineers knew exactly what was going on but everything has to be booked onto the computer. What a waste of time and money!
A complaint was logged and we got £10 off our bill.

[Tizer]

Their policy is to spend money on fixing faults and paying compensation rather than spending on prevention - a bit like the UK's approach to health!

Gloria, what does a broadband speed checker tell you that you should be getting? For example: LINK

[Gloria]

We are about 5 miles from the exchange and quite rural.
Think I might give them a ring and see what they have to say.

[Stanley]

Tiz, Ubuntu have done more housekeeping on 16LTS removing Linux kernels. I have an idea it has speeded up, have you noticed anything?
Thunderbird on Talk Talk is playing silly beggars yet again..... I shall leave it, it always heals up! (Famous last words)
Later, it had healed up by 06:15.

[Tizer]

Stanley, I agree my PC seems faster after the deletion of all those old operating system files.
I've never had problems with Thunderbird and it must be something to do with your broadband connection.

Gloria, if you get a reading with the broadband speed checker in my link above it'll give you some ammunition when you ring the service provider.

`Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app' LINK
`Lawyer and privacy expert Julia Powles, who has closely followed the development of Streams, responded on Twitter: "DeepMind repeatedly, unconditionally promised to 'never connect people's intimate, identifiable health data to Google. Now it's announced... exactly that. This isn't transparency, it's trust demolition," she added.'

Isn't this just typical of Google? It reminds me of years ago when they suddenly started putting the full content of thousands of books online for free with no regard for copyright. A law unto themselves. Never trust them.

[Gloria]

Thankyou Tizer.

[chinatyke]

Google are a profit making enterprise, what do you expect? Remember the warnings of Big Brother and Big Data? It isn't just Google who use information for their own purposes. In my mind the internet is a wonderful, powerful and dangerous tool. For that reason I am careful not to join social media, OGFB is an exception to my rule.

The other side of the coin: Google Earth, the greatest free program ever in my opinion. Brilliant, innovative, costly to produce and free to the user!

[Stanley]

Warnings in PE this week about Google selling AI immigration control programmes that harvest data like facial recognition and social media activity at the same time....
Tiz, a third level engineer at Talk Talk once told me that the old Freeserve customers like me are on a separate server even though we now have a TalkTalk address and also that the time I log on could be a cause. At this time of the morning when most of Europe and the US are off line is a good time for maintenance downtime. It always heals up if you ignore it.
Calls to Oz are always instantaneous at this time of the morning......

[Tizer]

Google are a profit making enterprise, what do you expect?

I agree with everything in your post China but I don't believe seeking to make a profit means you can break the law.

At this time of the morning when most of Europe and the US are off line is a good time for maintenance downtime.

It's probably also the time when the scammers send out their millions of emails judging by the ones I get which are all already waiting for me in the morning.

[Pluggy]

A good reason to hate Google and a good reason to love Google in the same post.

Yep it spys on you and sells the data,

On the plus side whats spam ?

Gmail makes a good job of sorting it and dealing with it to the extent I just let it get on with it nowadays. If I look at the spam folder I get 10 or 11 a day. I never see it unless I go looking for it. I used to look through it to check of false positives, but they are so rare I don't bother now.

[Stanley]

Talk Talk is as efficient Pluggy. Only the clever ones get through to the inbox. Less than you though, about half a dozen a week? I always check for false positives, they can still happen but very seldom.
Ubuntu is definitely faster after the two sessions of pruning in the updates this week.

[Tizer]

The Chief Financial Officers of large firms are now themselves being scammed through email messages and on a large scale...
`Introducing London Blue, the criminal organisation targeting CFOs with a scam email campaign' LINK

Here's something that I didn't know could happen - because I don't use Twitter and am unfamiliar with its quirks...
`Giuliani's Twitter typo used to abuse President Trump' Giuliani

[PanBiker]

Sally alerted me to a new tab that had opened up on the main computer when she was using chrome. It forced the browser onto the tab which announced that it was from Microsoft who had detected malware on the computer that could lead to financial and personal details being accesses on the machine. Instructions to ring an 0800 number or click various links that would instigate scans to rectify the "problem". The mouse pointer was locked inside the window and you could not close the browser down. Flashing lights accompanied the warnings of doom. The url looked as if it originated from Microsoft so I could see how many receiving this would fall into the trap.

Total rubbish of course and just an effort to ring a redirected number that would cost a fortune, clicking any of the links would install malware on the machine so I elected to exit without executing anything. Couldn't click my way out so I backed out with CTRL, ALT, DEL and first had a look round the task manager. I killed all the chrome processes running then went for a straight reset. The machine started normally so I instigated a deep scan through Windows Defender followed by an off line scan just to make sure. Machine is up and running and as far as I can see clean. Google confirms I was on the right track with my actions.

[Pluggy]

I think there are a lot more 'fakes' done through browser hijackings than actual malware these days. Scans don't find anything because theres nothing to find.

[PanBiker]

Indeed, it's a cunning plan and a different tack to extract quick money. The "Microsoft your computer is blocked" is well documented as a prime example of how to dupe the gullible or trusting. Looks fairly authentic as well apart from the locked in behaviour and flashing lights. If they dumbed it down a bit it would probably be even more convincing.