COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

More admissions in PE from the big tech companies who supply Alexa at al. They record everything and keep it for ever. No word on what they harvest or sell on. Bugger 'assistants'!!

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report of a fine imposed by the US FTC on Facebook of $5billion for data abuse connected with the Cambridge Analytica affair. Described by commentators as a 'gnat bite' as it is only a fraction of their profit, they made $15billion in the first 3 months of this year.
Unimaginable figures......

[Stanley]

I've noticed that the site has delivered a strange little quirk of late. If you put a word inside single quotation marks it flags up as a spelling error. I'm used to it now but wondered whether it has affected others.
Just tried it in Libre Office Writer (new version this morning....) and it isn't doing it there.

[Pluggy]

"computers"
conputers
'computers'


Doesn't do it here. Only the middle one flags as a spelling mistake.

[Tizer]

I've noticed the same as Stanley in the last day or so...
This is OK computers no problem
So is this `computers no problem
But this is flagged computers' no problem
And this is flagged `computers' no problem

By flagged I mean it's wavy underlined in red. Strange. Nothing to worry about though!

[chinatyke]

'computers ✔
computers' ✖
'computers' ✖
' computers' ✖
' computers ' ✔
"computers" ✔

[Marilyn]

"computers"
(Looks ok on ipad
computers
(Looks ok too)

Can't be anything to do with computers needing a capital C could it? I did it without in keeping with you.

[Stanley]

'computer' still flagged but as Tiz says, no problem, just a funny little glitch!

[Tizer]

it's with single quotes ` ', Maz. Double quotes " " work OK.

[Tripps]

'Problem' ' No problem '

I hadn't noticed that happening - but it does. I use single quotes a lot - sometimes I think it's a bit pretentious, but I still do it, I've just found that if you insert a space between the quote mark and that text, all is well.

Now today I notice that the site goes (for a very short time), to just text when I log in or change screens, then the pictures arrive. In fact when I first came in this morning I was thrown out - with some sort of error message, saying that the program hadn't loaded properly or some such. Never seen it before.

Everything else is working correctly, and it didn't do it yesterday.

Am I alone?

[PanBiker]

A couple of points there Tripps, spell checkers only work on joined up letters hence the space fix.

Occasional phpBB template not loading. I have noticed that also, just a glitch, nothing traceable in the logs and normally cured with a page refresh. Could be anything that screws the date stream when you load the page, noise on the line or temporary drop out, site brain fart in normal speak.

[Tripps]

I see - thanks for that - the spell checker just obeying orders then.

Occasional phpBB template not loading.

I've rebooted which is as far as my skills take me, but if anything the time lag is worse.

I can live with it - just a slight irritation. I don't think I buy the noisy line though - it happens at every page load, and uniquely, just on this site.

PS Correction - I just noticed that logging in to this TV Licence Resistance site which seems to use the same hosting software, produces the same delay, but quite a bit shorter.

[PanBiker]

The link you provided above loads into a new tab for me in less than a second. That's on my laptop over WiFi as well. What bandwidth does your router report and does its logs tell you anything.

Sorry, you said that a reboot was your limit, don't do yourself down. I assume you have login details for your router?

I only noticed it when I had the intermittent on my line and not since that was fixed, hence my suggestion of possible cause. What you describe is an interruption of the site template loading so it does the best it can and presents the page as basic text and hyper-links.

You could try clearing the site cookies, link at the bottom of the page and your browser cache but you will need your password the next time you login. Cached pages sometimes have a lot to answer for.

[Wendyf]

Just a thought about the single quotation marks, could it be because they are apostrophes not quotation marks that they show an error?

[PanBiker]

You could have a point there as well Wendy, no single quotes on a standard QWERTY keyboard. I wonder if they are in the extended character set and accessible via their ASCII number?

Just checked and single quote is not available in the ASCII character or extended set the latter being mainly printer control codes. ASCII is after all a derivative from it's original use as teleprinter code. Nearest character is the grave accent which looks similar but is not the same.

Moral is, use the double ones, I must have forgotten, what is the purpose of single quotes anyway?

[Tizer]

I've been using single quotes on OG for years, e.g. every time I put a BBC or newspaper headline in a post or to indicate a brand name etc, and never had the spelling error show up until the last few days. So the site used to accept single quotes with no problem.

Use of single/double quotes. In my editor days with Reed Elsevier I was taught to use double quotes only to indicate reported speech, i.e. when you quote what someone said as in a newspaper report. Everything else was single quotes.

[PanBiker]

As Wendy says though Tiz the character is actually an apostrophe not a single quote so the behaviour of the spell checker is correct, space the apostrophe and it sees the word correctly. I assume you are using the character underneath the @? As stated above there is no single quote character in the ASCII set.

[plaques]

Have you tried ALT0146 (’) That is with the Alt held down the 0146 (numbers) then release.

[PanBiker]

Standard ASCII only uses 0 to 127. ALT 0146 is the Latin Dipthong on a UK character set. Which language and keyboard set are you using?

One table I have looked at does count character 39 as an apostrophe or a single quote, most do not.

[plaques]

All a mystery to me. I just use what seems to work.


https://homepage.cs.uri.edu/faculty/wol ... eASCII.htm

[Tripps]

You could try clearing the site cookies, link at the bottom of the page and your browser cache but you will need your password the next time you login. Cached pages sometimes have a lot to answer for.

i do that anyway from time to time and I've done it again but made no difference. That was using my regular browser Firefox. I changed to Opera browser, and it works just fine.

[Stanley]

I agree with Tiz, double quotation marks are for speech, single for text or what I call the 'raised eyebrow'.
Just noticed, if you have it at the end of a sentence and use a full stop it doesn't flag. I shall continue to ignore it. No other problems to report.....
Later, the Metropolitan Police report that their computers have been hacked. What chance is there for us if they are vulnerable?

[Tizer]

As Wendy says though Tiz the character is actually an apostrophe not a single quote so the behaviour of the spell checker is correct, space the apostrophe and it sees the word correctly. I assume you are using the character underneath the @? As stated above there is no single quote character in the ASCII set.

Yes, that's the character I'm using for a closing single quote and I've used it ever since I got my first computer. It's the character that publishing editors use for a closing single quote. I've never before seen it cause a preceding word to be flagged up as a mis-spelling. When it began this week on OG that's the first time I've had it happen. And it doesn't happen in any of my other applications.

It's not causing any difficulty for me, I just ignore it, but something has definitely changed on the OG site. I've also noticed that it's erratic. I've just done a post with a heading in single quotes and the last word was (incorrectly) flagged in wavy red. I added an opening quote (top left on the keyboard) in front of the word and it remained flagged. I then deleted the opening quote and the red wave disappeared! I've also copied and pasted a phrase with the closing quote and red falg and the flag disappeared when I pasted it back into the text. All very strange. I just noticed that when I wrote the word into in the last sentence it was flagged red. I tried splitting it to in to and the red wave went away. Then I deleted the space to get back into and it wasn't flagged. It beats me! I must get out more....

[PanBiker]

Well, nothing has changed on the site in the last few weeks, we still have a pending maintenance upgrade that I am not actioning yet. Not changed anything else in the ACP.

I have to say I have never noticed it as the pleb that I am always uses double quotes everywhere, probably inappropriately in most cases as well. It comes into the category of, here we go "don't sweat the small stuff". Can't explain it or why some ASCII standard character sets show single quotes and others don't. It's either a standard set or it is'nt, life's too short.

[Tizer]

Gremlins!