COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Tizer]

How do they hijack a browser?

[Pluggy]

Javascript usually. Programs the browser to display their crap and prevents you moving away from the page and or closing the browser. Much of it is persistent in that restarting the machine and opening up the browser again will open their page again. The cure is getting into the browser settings and resetting it. It doesn't install anything on the computer and once you've reset the browser its gone.

[PanBiker]

Yes, in Windows I did that by exiting to the Task Manager and killing all the chrome sessions before going for the restart, been OK since.

Email scam today: Apparently my TV Licence ran out yesterday and I could renew it online by clicking the link offered. Problem is the link went to Jacksonville in Florida! They obviously don't know that our TV licence is paid on direct debit. Didn't even let it touch deleted items.

[Stanley]

What a can of worms Ian..... In situations like that I just pull the plug and do a restart from cold asking for new sessions when prompted for a route into Firefox. Do you think that would be a cure?
Something that strikes me is that the site is working well since Mark Breathed on it. Has he sent a bill? Let us know, cash injection available ..... (Thank you Mark. How are you on bladder cancer?)

[PanBiker]

Don't know the processes in Ubuntu Stanley best ask Stephen.

Mark is all sorted out, I actually paid him slightly over the odds for his quick attention.

It will be mentioned in the site funding report when it comes round.

[Tizer]

Scam email message rec'd by Mrs Tiz today. This is a good illustration of the benefit of receiving messages in plain text.

[Pluggy]

What a can of worms Ian..... In situations like that I just pull the plug and do a restart from cold asking for new sessions when prompted for a route into Firefox. Do you think that would be a cure?

I'm not a user of Firefox generally but this method works :

https://askubuntu.com/questions/507526/ ... mmand-line

[PanBiker]

Looks very similar to the exit to Task Manager in Windows, probably a command line routine there as well. GUI in TM works fine as you can see all the tasks and processes that are running.

[Stanley]

I'll just give Pluggy a shout!

[Tizer]

This is by the BBC's Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones:
`Tech Tent: Can we trust the telecoms giants?' LINK
`This week, a basic error by Sweden's Ericsson took millions of mobile customers offline, while its Chinese rival Huawei faced mounting pressure from those who consider it a security risk. On the latest Tech Tent podcast, we ask: can we trust the telecoms industry?....'

[Stanley]

If they are working for profit No!!! And even if they are not they make mistakes like any other human project so watch the buggers!

[Tizer]

People are feeling the pinch and are not falling so easily for the usual phone sellers' traps...
`Dixons Carphone posts £440m loss in first half' LINK

[Stanley]

I wonder how many companies are facing the same problems or variants of them? What happens when Brexit strikes? On any estimate the common prediction is a shrinking of the economy. And our local Council decides this is the time for a get rich quick scheme of installing parking meters in the shopping streets..... How dumb can you get?

[Stanley]

Bad news I know but my mind is starting to turn towards my annual backup to two external hard drives of all my 2018 data. I have been told I should get with the programme and use 'The Cloud', no thanks, I'll keep my data here at home. It may be old fashioned but it's safe!
I still remember the early days when it was not uncommon to lose a day's work, it makes you aware of data storage and security, is this less common now?

[Big Kev]

Bad news I know but my mind is starting to turn towards my annual backup to two external hard drives of all my 2018 data. I have been told I should get with the programme and use 'The Cloud', no thanks, I'll keep my data here at home. It may be old fashioned but it's safe!
I still remember the early days when it was not uncommon to lose a day's work, it makes you aware of data storage and security, is this less common now?

It's only safe all the time you can see the hard drives...

Why the strong aversion to online storage?

[Stanley]

Sorry Kev, I didn't make it clear. Because I can be absolutely certain that only I have access to it.

[PanBiker]

In a past life having been responsible for backups of curriculum and admin servers in School and Sixth Form on a five tape rotation regime. I can see that your system has a single point of failure unless your backup media leaves the premises. If that is not the case you can still loose the entire lot in say a house fire.

On a secure rotational daily backup regime the latest media always left the premises, this guards against fire or theft. When the managed service took over with the new schools Shuttleworth College was the data repository for all the Burnley schools. Daily backups from the local servers were mirrored to the data store and that in turn was mirrored automatically to a US based facility.

[Tizer]

I don't back up data to cloud storage because, like Stanley, I don't trust the companies that run them. There is too much fraud going on in companies for me to feel my data would be secure. And even without fraud, we'll soon see these companies taking over one another and you won't know who has responsibility for, and access to, your data. We've seen data being swapped between Apple and Facebook without customers' permission too. Count me out.

[Big Kev]

Encrypt your backups prior to uploading...

[Pluggy]

I can't see Stanley or Tiz trusting encryption either

[Stanley]

Dead right Pluggy, leave Tiz and me alone to be Old School. It has served us well for many years and neither of us is going to ditch it now!

[PanBiker]

But you still have a single point of failure Stanley. Unless you ship your external hard drives out to a trusted keeper.

[Tizer]

We've subjected our procedures to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis - and decided we like an easy life!
Besides, encryption doesn't stop your back-up being lost if the cloud company has a disaster. (I wonder how they back up the data on their servers?) Next thing is we'll be paying Branson to keep back-ups of our back-ups on the Moon in case the Earth is hit by an asteroid. (Yes, I know, I'm tempting providence!)

Talking about big tech companies...
`New Facebook bug exposed millions of photos' LINK

[Big Kev]

Besides, encryption doesn't stop your back-up being lost if the cloud company has a disaster.

You'd be suprised at the resiliency of a multi site storage solution.

[Stanley]

You are right Ian and as you know I am all in favour of multi-site archiving, look at the LTP! But I am happy where I am and will stay there.....
A Californian friend of mine lost his house, all his possessions and 40 year's worth of hard copy archives to a canyon fire while he was abroad. Later he told me he had been surprised at how quickly he had recovered from what looked at the time like a life-shattering event.