COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Tizer]

Last night and this morning I can't get any connection to Plusnet's email server. It's affecting many parts of the country, as shown by this map on DownDetector: LINK Yet another blow to UK productivity and another depressing hassle for the public.

[Stanley]

Finger crossed here..... Talk talk have been quite reasonable since the big hack!

[Tripps]

Had an 'interesting' day on the machine yesterday, in the time I wasn't wrestling with phones and Sim cards. I had installed Google Drive a while ago, and used it to allow someone to access some documents which were too large for their email system. So far so good.

Yesterday - I managed to do something wrong whilst exiting an application (Treepad) , and corrupted a file making the whole thing inaccessible. My latest home made backup was over a month old - so I went to G drive to find that the corrupt file was there as well. So not a Backup just a Synch.

Had look at G drive yesterday, and found that I had used all my free 15 Gb allowance, and that absolutely everything on my machine, plus any USB sticks I'd ever used, etc had been up loaded to G drive. That's not at all what I wanted - and so I'm looking to bend it all to what I want - not what google want. Whilst poking about I came across something called Google Backup and Synch, I took this to be an add on to Google Drive which might let me change things there.

WRONG - I now find that G drive is to be ceased being supported very shortly, and removed entirely within a few months, and that Google Backup and Sync will replace it. So now I have two programs which almost do the same thing, and I don't really want either of them.
Nothing seen whilst dealing wit it to advise me of this. All found out by 'googling' - how ironic.

I started the clearout by uninstalling Chrome browser which I'd read was the best to use with G drive. That took ages, and seemed to remove at least all the photos and videos from the drive. It also removed half the shortcuts on my desktop.

I've had enough of all this - and looking into the possibility of deleting all of Google. However I hadn't quite realised how much they had spread into my world. I will lose the email which is no hardship, but also the blogs which I've had for many years, and although no one visits them, I 'd miss them if they were removed.

My phone is involved too as It seemed a good idea to synch Googledrive to that device. I may put that back to 'factory settings' and start again. I can mange that.

What I really want to do is lose the bits I don't want, and keep the bits that I do want. I won't be too hasty, and as Capt. Evans said - I may be some time.

[chinatyke]

Not sure how this works or if it is correct but I've been told photos uploaded to the cloud remain the property of the cloud provider. So even if you delete them you've only deleted your access privileges and not the photos themselves, which could still be available to all and sundry. Does this also apply to files?

Which is why I'm a dinosaur and don't use cloud storage.

There is a beta release of Mozilla Firefox available at the moment prior to full release in November. I'm using this, it is said to be twice as fast as the last version. It certainly isn't slower! No problems so far.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/quantum/

[Tizer]

I don't use cloud storage either. Reading what China and Tripps write in these posts makes my concerns even greater about the MoD having tried using an American company to put all its data on Microsoft's cloud storage. When the Russian tanks start rolling in our direction across the European plains there'll be a general in the MoD calling Microsoft and hearing them say in reply "Data, what data?".

[Stanley]

Hard luck David... you have fallen foul of Google's campaign to run the world. This is why I keep my storage on my desk top on external hard drives (two of them) not permanently connected to my computer. It's also why I deleted my Facebook account, they take 'ownership' (steal) everything you post. Tiz is quite right about data being held in the US, sometimes by private companies. The latest avionics are like this and even the US government is getting worried because the data includes current operational details.
So my advice is to keep data close and take responsibility for back-ups yourself.
Tiz, I didn't know there was a quantum version of Firefox. Question is do I need it? I have no complaints with the one I'm running now.

[Tizer]

Tiz, I didn't know there was a quantum version of Firefox. Question is do I need it? I have no complaints with the one I'm running now.

It was China who posted about that - I'd not heard of it but I've looked and it's still in a beta version as he wrote. Best to wait and see when there's a stable version. I don't think it's anything to do with quantum computing, just a trendy product name!

Still nothing from Delight.com. So much for a 24-hour support response.

[Stanley]

Ah, sorry lads, a senior moment!
I noted this morning that the Oneguy programme switched automatically to GMT. It's never done that before.....

[PanBiker]

Just a word on this, the server time set in the Admin Control Panel and is set to UTC. As the board is international so to speak it is up to users to set their time preferences in their own control panels. The site software has no bearing or control on your individual personal settings.

[Stanley]

Well, whatever the reason it set GMT automatically yesterday, for the first time. Perhaps Firefox is looking after me!

[Wendyf]

Mine changed automatically too, nothing to do with Firefox!

[PanBiker]

Interesting, I had to change mine as is the norm. I'll not loose any sleep over it.

[Pluggy]

Mine has set itself correctly - I am using Chromium

[Tizer]

And mine didn't!

An incident with my Thunderbird email software gave me a fright this morning so I'll relate it here so others don't fall into the same trap. When I downloaded email the software said there were two new messages in the Inbox. One was from a relative but I couldn't see the other one. I knew it must be due to the message having an old date and therefore it didn't appear in the window but would be somewhere in the list if I scrolled down far enough. The easier way is to switch from displaying `All' to only `Unread'. I knew there should be an easy one-click way to do this but had forgotten where it was so I used the dropdown `View' menu on the top bar - clicked on `Messages' then on `Unread'. This brought up one message dated back in May 2017 which was obviously a scam judging from the address and the link in the message body. I deleted it. I then remembered the easy way to toggle between All and Unread - it was staring me in the face in the top right corner of the Thunderbird window. I clicked it back to All...and that's when I got the shock - no messages appeared in my Inbox. No matter what I did I couldn't recover my messages. Shock, horror! I tried clicking on Repair Folder in the Properties box but it didn't work. Messages in my archive folders and sent folder were still visible. Then I noted that the bottom of the Inbox said there were messages in it, so they must be there but not showing.

Eventually I found the answer. Above I described how I used the dropdown `View' menu on the top bar - clicked on `Messages' then on `Unread'. If you look at that menu you'll find that immediately below `Messages' there is `Threads'....and when you open it this has the same All and Unread buttons as in the Messages bit. I'd let my cursor slip over onto the Threads instead of Messages. Once I changed this back to `All' I got my messages back. It was made worse by me discovering the quicker way of toggling Unread Messages and therefore going back by a different route. All's well that ends well! (Disappearance of the messages wasn't as dangerous as it sounds - all our messages are on Mrs Tiz's PC as well as mine and we have backups for the older ones. But it sill gives you a shock, especially when you've just seen a scam message!)

[Stanley]

Being a dinosaur I do nothing beyond sending and receiving and marking as junk. If I get adventurous I end up in the shit!

[Stanley]

Pluggy is going to laugh at this. My cordless keyboard has been dropping the odd character and reinstalling the receiver on the computer cabinet didn't cure it so I have replaced the batteries......

[Pluggy]

Battery phobe ?
Me ?
Nahhh

[Stanley]

[Tripps]

I was going to insert a a link to a BBC iPlayer programme. I now find that they won't let me in unless I register. D. O.B , email address, complex password, the lot. I'm reluctant to join so no link for now. Actually, they have already all my details elsewhere in their archives. I considered starting a false identity just to annoy them.

[Marilyn]

I tried to register for a two week free trial on a genealogy website, but gave up in the end because -after 25 tries entering every kind of user name and password I could invent - it kept telling me they were already taken! Even when I just did random letters and numbers...
Funny thing is that I keep getting emails telling me to search, but I don't actually have a user name or password, so it would just be another waste of time trying to establish one.
Not "user friendly"!

[Stanley]

David, all the catch up programmes need registration now. It has vanished completely off my Freesat.

[Big Kev]

It's to ensure those using the service have a TV licence.

[Tizer]

All part of the great data gathering boom - as I've written elsewhere, personal data is taking over from money in the business world. One company will take over another simply to get access to its accumulated personal data. Companies prefer us to go online to buy their stuff because they can make us register with them. You'll soon have to give your personal data to buy a bottle of milk. In fact many people already do so by using their `loyalty cards'. It's not only name, address etc that they're after but GPS data on your location and movements.

[PanBiker]

Tracking by credit card and hole in the wall is not a new thing, it's been with us since inception of the services. Best not mention the personal tracker that the majority carry around with them(myself included) disguised as a mobile phone and the fact that most folk are photographed 300 times a day. It's enough to turn you into a conspiracy theorist.

Refusing this that or the other registration which may end up making life just that little bit harder for you is irrelevant.

[Tizer]

That was only the beginning Ian, we're now into the second stage which was pioneered by Google and taken up by the supermarkets but is now about to spread quickly elsewhere. This is the `feedback' stage where the data collected is used to customise the way that retailers interact with each of us. It's one thing to be given only products or information that they judge you will want but another to feed back people's preconceptions, political loyalties, bigotries etc. It's one more part of that shift from communal to individual which has led to Brexit and Trump.