COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Tizer]

The phone companies respond just like the banks: `It's impossible', then when more people complain it's: `Tell the police' when they know quite well that the police won't do anything: `Not our job, guv'.

[PanBiker]

Thanks for the link Wendy seems to not be isolated just to EE as users of other networks have had the problem also. Resolution seems to be a change of number. All our calls were within a 30 minute slot and she has not had any more since. I did a reverse lookup on the numbers but didn't actually google the problem. If it's a transient problem which does seem to be the case in the main, I will check that the calls have not been charged and then ignore, a change of number is a pain so a last resort.

[Stanley]

We're going to have to find a variant on the word 'service' I think. Even the police don't really qualify now.

[Tizer]

I'm all for better communication of medical data to help in individual treatment but I still have reservations about the ability of big organisations to look after the data. This sort of problem simply confirms my feelings:
`NHS data breach affects 150,000 patients in England' LINK

[Stanley]

With good reason Tiz. Could it be incompetence?

[Tizer]

The software's developer TPP has said it "apologises unreservedly" for the coding fault so it must be human error. Either someone was incompetent or wasn't double checking their work. I now see so many errors in books due to no proofreading that I expect the same happens in software coding. Looking at reviews of TPP by its own staff on the GlassDoors web site I see that it's criticised for making staff come in at night to do extra work and for not addressing the high turnover of staff.
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This is one of the reasons that the bosses of the big tech companies send their kids to schools that don't allow smartphones...
`Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to user' LINK

[Stanley]

Proof reading and editing, bug chasing in software. All deteriorating and all depend for efficiency and accuracy on expensive intelligent staff, a resource that is thin on the ground in all fields as profits are chased. We are told that competition lowers prices, it also lowers quality. Same syndrome keeps you on the line for hours if you are trying to access a 'help line'.
I watched the Panorama programme last night on addictive programming of smart phones and for once I agree with the doomsayers, this is a disease and once again it's the profit motive that's driving it.

[Stanley]

We got a new version of Firefox this morning and I have noticed one major improvement. The side bars for navigating the page are now a sensible width and a lot easier to use. Well done!

[chinatyke]

You're right, much better! I'd noticed that they were a bit fiddly before but not given it another thought.

[PanBiker]

Never noticed a problem over in Windows land, what version are you running? I'm on Quantum 61.0.1 (32-bit) on my laptop.

[chinatyke]

Quantum 61.0.1 64 bit. I got the update today and it wasn't until Stanley mentioned that the scroll bar was better that I thought about it. I realised it wasn't my monitor that was causing the problem of the narrow band.

[Stanley]

It must have been the 64 bit version.......

[Tizer]

I can't say I've noticed any difference to the scroll bars in Firefox.

We've encountered a couple of instances in recent days when we couldn't get functions to work on commercial web sites while we were using Firefox. One was to register with a company to help my cousin with some of her work. I had to do it on her PC which uses IE. The other was when our accountant visited. She now logs in to an accountancy services cloud site but she couldn't do it her normal way on our PC but I think that was due to us being on Ubuntu Linux. She phoned the company and they talked her through a way into it. Having said that, we only rarely have any trouble due to using Linux.

Later...now I am seeing a difference in the scroll bars. I wonder if today's Ubuntu update changed something? They are definitely better.

[Stanley]

I only noticed it a couple of days ago after the last big update......

[Pluggy]

Its a narrow scrollbar that switches wider on mouse-over.

[chinatyke]

Its a narrow scrollbar that switches wider on mouse-over.

Mine doesn't go wider on mouse-over, it just changes to a darker grey. I think it has always done that, not certain though.

[Pluggy]

Orange and goes wider Orange here.

[Stanley]

It's a lot better than it was.......

[Tizer]

Its a narrow scrollbar that switches wider on mouse-over.

Mine doesn't go wider on mouse-over, it just changes to a darker grey. I think it has always done that, not certain though.

I've got exactly the same Firefox version on Ubuntu as Pluggy shows in his graphic but, like China, my Firefox scroll bar doesn't go wider on mouse-over - but unlike China's mine doesn't go grey, it stays orange. I wish Ubuntu would change the action of the scroll bar in gThumb Image Viewer. It's very thin and often doesn't respond to the mouse.

[Pluggy]

Back on the Ubuntu 18.04 trail. I'm doubtful about its value as a replacement for 16.04. I was using the Desktop this morning on 18.04 and it was running fine. On shutdown it asked whether to install pending software update (as it does quite frequently) so I tticked the bos and shut it down,

A couple of hours later I came back to it and it wouldn't restart Just sat at the normal Startup screen without the dots moving. Forcing it to TTY2 brought up a list of stuff with stalled processes. REsearching it on my laptop brought up nothing of relevence. Tried reinstalling it leaving the files and installed apps. It sort of worked but most of my installed apps were not there. Then I restarted it and it took several minutes to come back up. II backed up the files and and wiped the f*ucker. Its presently reinstalling 18.04 from scratch. I contemplated putting it back to 16.04 but there are some features in 18.04 I like and having different OSs on my 2 computers was a pain. My advice is if you're happy with 16.04, stay put for the time being.

[Stanley]

Tiz, the biggest fault with G thumb, an otherwise excellent programme, is that 'enter' doesn't work, you have to click find!
Pluggy, what a good job you do for us...... Sound advice, keep us informed......

[Pluggy]

The desktop is back up and running after a clean install on 18.04. It isn't firefox thats doing the widening scroll bar its part of Ubuntu. The scroll bar in terminal does the same.

[Stanley]

I noticed this morning that the computer shop has moved into the bigger premises next door vacated by the Linen Shop. I wish him well!

[Tizer]

My advice is if you're happy with 16.04, stay put for the time being.

Thanks for that valuable advice, Pluggy. We'll stay with 16.04 for now.
Stanley, I agree with you about Gthumb - I like it and use it a lot but it does have a few glitches where I have to stop and re-start it to clear the glitch.

[Stanley]

Never had a problem Tiz but it is a good tool despite it's little foibles.....