Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Firefox Wants to be Like Chrome

I was using Firefox because it did not look like Chrome.

With version 29, it is plain that Firefox wants to look just like Chrome. Fine. What's the advantage in using Firefox, again?


I think Mozilla has lost its way. If they would develop some real features for Firefox, it might regain market share. Instead, they just continue to make unfortunate design blunders that will drive existing users away from Firefox.

Cluelessness is evident here. Chrome will always be the best Chrome. If you want to become just like Chrome, guess what, users will choose the real Chrome.

I've made a decision.

Whenever I install a new system for my users, I'm going to install Chrome, whether the system is Windows or Linux. No need to mess around with Firefox anymore, because Firefox is just a Chrome wannabe, without the good Flash support.

It puzzles me why a big software company like Mozilla would go out of its way to render its flagship browser ugly and user-unfriendly. But then again, as demonstrated by their recent choice of CEO, clearly those people do not have the best judgement when it comes to strategy.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

I Like Google News

I like google news. That's the take-home from the whole Mozilla CEO brouhaha.

What a lovely word "brouhaha" is. It expresses so much with so little.

Oh, I've always been a fan of Google--just not crazy about their browser. I have a little suspicion that Google is good. Could be. But then I used to think the same about Mozilla. I'm not always right in my hunches. That's why I don't plan to join the Psychic's Union.

Using the wonderful options available at news.google.com, I have deleted the New York Times, Slate, The Atlantic, and the Christian Science Monitor from my daily news feed and will never read them again. I don't need to read them in my advanced age. They are rather hysterical to say the least. Voices of wisdom, they are not. I have the strong suspicion their writers are told what to write anyway by their wealthy masters and that their opinions may play only a minor role, if any.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Firefox and Eich, the Anti-Gay CEO

I hadn't planned to boycott Firefox over Mozilla's anti-gay marriage CEO. However, OKCupid does make a good point. The CEO of a company is rewarded based on a company's performance. If Mozilla does well, then Eich is rewarded, and then he can spend more money opposing my civil rights and trying to make me suffer. The Mozilla CEO does not believe that my relationship should have ANY protection under the law. He would smile while my partner is deprived of all my assets after I die. The more I think about it, the more I dislike Mozilla's CEO. A thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend trying to hurt me and other people like me.

I've been a Mozilla evangelist since forever, but now, I'm thinking that maybe it is time to look into Chrome, Chromium, and/or Opera.

Mozilla's blunder in choosing their CEO is more than just ethically wrong. It indicates a high degree of social incompetence on the part of Mozilla's leaders. They do not understand the society in which they live. They do not understand the human beings that use their browser. They are social incompetents. This has been made crystal clear. Perhaps that is why the Firefox browser has been busy removing features I like, such as the navigational icons, and introducing features I dislike and features that do not work well. Firefox Sync is one example. It does not work well at all. It is not intuitive, and takes a lot of time to learn how to use, assuming in the first place that one is very familiar with computers. The new tab feature is another problem in Firefox. Opening a new tab presents a wall of garbage to the end user, and changing that behavior is both anti-intuitive and cumbersome. Probably the new CEO was behind all of these changes. Everytime I install Firefox, I have to tweak it for a couple of hours to mold it into something I want to use. The question is why should I bother, especially since Mozilla has now declared their hatred for gays?

April 2nd, 2014 Update:

I looked into Opera, but the Linux version hasn't been updated in a long time. That to me is a deal-breaker, so adios, Opera. Next on the list: Chrome.

Chrome has the latest version available for 64-bit Linux. When I installed it on my Xubuntu rig, it pulled in all the configuration info from Firefox automatically. I did not have to set my home page or the navigational icons. Very impressive. The only thing I'm missing is the History icon. It's something I use all the time, and I don't see it in Chrome. I really don't understand why Chrome won't support a History icon when there are 1680 pixels available for the navigation strip. I don't think many Internet urls are going to require anything close to my monitor's 1680 pixels. I see that Chrome expects the user to hold down the Back button to access History, but that's stupid. I want a button, and there is room for a button, so why isn't there a button? There also is no Bookmarks button or Downloads button. Chrome's solutions involve adding long strips that severely reduce the available browsing space, which is very bad for widescreen monitors. From what I see, Chrome is trying to capture the mobile gadget market and doesn't care about desktops.

I think I'm going to have to put off changing browsers for the time being. Chrome seems designed for a handheld device, not a desktop. Options and functionality are hidden away, compartmentalized, so as to look good on a screen with tiny resolution. Chrome does not offer any mechanism to customize the browser's toolbar. Chrome is permanently dumbed-down. Chrome is more tedious to use for an experienced, Internet-savvy user. Many more clicks and gyrations of the mouse will be required in order to get things done in Chrome. Am I willing to spend more time to perform simple Internet tasks in order to use Chrome? Not really.

Conclusion

Mozilla goofed big-time with their CEO appointment disappointment, but the other big browsers are snoozing in their easy chairs and aren't prepared to take advantage, which is to say market share. Chrome is designed for handhelds, and Opera and Internet Explorer are for Windows only. I'm a hardcore, cut-me-and-I-bleed-tech power user, and I don't intend to handicap myself by using handhelds or Windows. There really is no other contender for Linux on the desktop other than Firefox. Firefox is the nine-hundred pound gorilla in the ring. I think I'll just put a clothespin on my nose and endure the stench of their leadership choice for the time being, unless Opera decides Linux is worth supporting again. I'm kind of curious about Opera, but I'm not willing to mess around with a version that is several years old. Get with the times, Opera.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

What's Wrong with Wireless

Wireless is insecure by design. That's why I don't do wireless. If you use a wireless network, keyboard, or mouse, then a hacker can intercept that communication. Your implicit intention is to broadcast your computer activity to the entire world.

I've never understood why people will pay a premium for wireless keyboards or mice when extension cables are dirt cheap. Wireless keyboards and mice are inferior in every respect to their wired cousins. Wireless input devices are not only insecure, but require batteries, which is a huge hassle compared to hassle-free wired input devices.

I've also never understood the appeal of wireless networking for indoor use. I can understand using wireless when outdoors or in the car. I just don't get using wireless in a home or business. It is both slower and insecure.

Many of my neighbors use wireless. I know because my laptop picks up their home networks. I don't hack them. But someone with less morality could certainly attempt to hack them and at the very least use and abuse their internet bandwidth for his own purposes. I fault the local ISP's for promoting wireless internet services for their own convenience, merely because their technicians don't want to crawl around in the crawlspace.

Running ethernet cable under the house only takes an hour at most. A man has to have a powerful case of the Lazybones to prefer wireless. By doing so, he will have a slower and less secure network.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

I Use IP Chicken




I like the above service for determining the local IP address. Clean, fast, and simple, with a privacy policy I can understand. There are many competitors, but IP Chicken does IP-checkin' (chicken) the way it should be done.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

How to Configure Your Mail Reader When Switching from DSL to AT&T U-Verse

One of these days I'm going to pop a gasket. With me, the odds are higher due to Mitral Valve Prolapse and lack of medical insurance. Those with MVP can just drop dead any old time according to Wikipedia's wisdom. Well, I just hope it's later rather than sooner. If my blog stops having updates, then my readers can put two and two together. Even from beyond the grave, I will ensure that my blog remains a spam-free zone due to my security settings.

The latest irritant to elevate my blood pressure was AT&T technical support. I recently switched from DSL to U-verse. When I tried to check my AT&T email via the popular Thunderbird mail reader, I received an error message that indicated something was wrong with AT&T's mail server. I waited a couple of hours and tried again and got the same error. I called AT&T and spent about half an hour on the phone with a friendly guy who assured me that my new account was provisioning and all would be fine by the morning. Great, I said.

Trouble was, AT&T's guy lied. Through his teeth. Just outright lied. He had no idea what he was talking about. The following morning, I still got an error message, and twelve hours later, ditto. I called AT&T tech support again and got someone who sounded like she had been smoking weed and swigging tequila. She was giggling and talking to other people in the background, and the background noise was very intense, with people talking in Spanish and English, so much so that she did not hear half the things I said. I had to repeat every other sentence. In addition to this, the line went mute, cutting her or me off sporadically. She asked if she could call me back, and I said yes, but that didn't help. The same problem persisted throughout the call. We were talking on my landline, incidentally. The problem was certainly not on my end, because I have talked to other people on the same phone without any issue. My connection was completely wired, not in any way wireless. Her connection had the problem.

Between bouts of silence and background noise, she reminded me that AT&T does not support Thunderbird. Over the years, I have received the same scripted line every single time I call AT&T asking for help configuring my mail reader. AT&T gives short shrift to mail readers. Why do they hate mail readers? Well, let's think about that, shall we? It is in AT&T's interest to herd people through their web portal, isn't it? That way, their customers are exposed to all kinds of advertising.


Whatever. I'm not the type of guy to take "No" for an answer, not when I pay over a hundred dollars a month for the service. My mail reader was working yesterday, and after their guy installed U-verse, it stopped working. I had changed nothing on my end. I knew it was their fault and anyone with intelligence would know that too.

She asked if she could take control of my computer, and I said no, because I run Linux and I'm not sure how to grant that kind of access and don't want to, either, because I'm absolutely certain it would not help. Then she wanted me to reboot my computer, and at that point I went over the edge, because rebooting is something a tech tells people when he doesn't know anything. I started ranting about AT&T's contractual obligations, and then she muted me again. So I hung up. Clearly she knew nothing and was not going to help.

I called back, chose a different option on their phone menu, hoping to contact someone different, and got a tech rep that sounded nicer. She was in a different office, a quiet one. I guessed the water bong hadn't made the rounds at her office. There was no background noise, and she didn't sound like she was high. She wasn't giggling at obscene jokes her co-workers were sending in the office. She actually walked me through Thunderbird's set-up, but everything she told me about the configuration was already set. After all, the mail reader had been working perfectly prior to the switch to U-verse. Although she was nice, her advice was useless.
 
Here's the bottom line after about two hours of aggravation with AT&T's tech support. No configuration changes need to be made to the Thunderbird mail reader. Nothing needs to be done to the mail reader at all. The only reason the techs suggest that is because they don't know what they are talking about.

Thunderbird is a highly intuitive mail reader developed by Mozilla, the same company that develops Firefox. Thunderbird configures itself automatically. There is no need for the end user to input anything other than email address and password. There is little chance of an incorrect configuration. AT&T technical support does not know what time of day it is. It is aggravating to call up technical support and listen to pushy drunks that don't know anything other than what their script tells them. I have to teach them their job, because they do not know anything about computers. Meanwhile, I can't access my email.

There is only one thing a customer needs to do to fix the mail reader after the switch from DSL to U-verse. Log in via the web browser. Period. Yahoo has a serious bug or else an intentional, selfish annoyance (take your pick). The end user is required to log in via the web browser once in order to use the mail reader, even if he has been using the mail reader for years via DSL.

AT&T and Yahoo don't like mail readers. They wish to discourage their use, because mail readers do not add to their bottom line. They make the mail reader difficult to use because they want to push more of their crap products via the web site. They wasted two hours of my time with this nonsense for no other reason.

The mail reader still reports an error indicating a problem with their internal service when I first load Thunderbird. I have to press OK to accept the message, then click "Check Mail" to check mail again. This is because AT&T does not configure the U-verse mail server properly. I suppose they never will fix it, because they very nearly have a monopoly in my location. They treat their customers like dirt because they can get away with it.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Cable and Phone Companies are Robber Barons

The collusion of government and corporations, as in this case, makes me angry. Municipal broadband would be a dream come true for all Americans, and the cable companies want to ban it. I would be delighted if broadband were offered by my city.

The cable companies provide lousy broadband at extremely high prices, as do the phone companies. Broadband should be cheap and reliable today. The reason it is anything but that is because cable companies and the phone companies enjoy monopolies, and the reason they do is because they have put corrupt politicians into power. Why are my only choices cable or phone? Those are lousy choices. Each one wants me to cough up $100 - $200 a month just to access the Internet. I receive a letter in the mail every week with one of their "offers" that never vary from the week before. Always the advertised price is $100, with hidden fees, costs, fines, and contractual obligations that amount to $200 a month after the introductory period has passed. Municipal broadband can deliver faster Internet much, much cheaper. Cable and phone companies are not innovators. They should be recognized for what they are: robber barons, bribing politicians to entrench their monopolies in American society.

This article states that municipalities are being sued repeatedly by cable and phone companies to keep them out of the broadband market. Cable and phone companies represent a cabal opposed to innovation and opposed to choice.

Corruption is the greatest problem in our society, the filthy intersection between politics and business, or "the grease that makes the capitalist engine hum," as one of my Republican acquaintances put it. We are all on the business end of the exhaust pipe. I suggest building a better engine.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Tucows, Soft32 & Cnet

Tucows and Soft32 manufacture new versions of programs that even the program's developers don't know about. These "new versions" are wrapped up in Soft32's and Tucow's "Download Administrator," which attempts to install malware on the end-user's computer. The motive for manufacturing a bogus new version is to tempt existing users of the program to download the "new" version--along with their revenue-generating "Download Administrator." Cnet uses a similar "Download Administrator," but I haven't detected bogus program versions yet, so it seems Cnet's management clings to one last, tattered shred of ethics--at the moment at least--or else they have eluded my vigilance, the cunning rascals.

Apparently these supposedly "free" download sites are desperate to make money, so they have joined forces with malware vendors intent upon crippling and misusing people's computers. Such vendors prey upon the technologically less sophisticated users, like my mother.

Thus, Tucows, Soft32 and Cnet represent unsafe web sites that must not be used by anyone except those prepared to take great risk with their computer system, such as professional computer investigators. I would recommend banning these sites altogether to prevent the unwary from accessing them.

A good site for obtaining free software used to be Source forge, but from what I understand, that site may also be oozing in the direction forged by the above corporate culprits.

It seems the almighty dollar is prized above ethics. Those with money always want more and they are willing to do anything at all in order to get it. When such souls pass on, they should be remembered for what they were. Big-shot, big-name CEO's, even of major computer manufacturing companies, are not exempt from posterity's judgment. If they sent American jobs overseas, betrayed America in other ways, crippled computers, or harmed people in some other way, then such deeds tend to overshadow their other endeavors. They made a bunch of money--big deal, so what, who cares? No form of currency is recognized after death.

Monday, January 6, 2014

I Use Duck Duck Go and I'm Proud of It

There are several things I like about DuckDuckGo, a search engine competing with Google. For one thing, there needs to be an alternative to Google. I think everybody realizes that an absolute monopoly is not a good thing. However, I don't like my web sites getting hit by a thousand different bots from a thousand different search engines, either. It is obviously more efficient for just a handful of bots to patrol the web looking for new sites and evaluating their rankings and relationships. To that end, DuckDuckGo doesn't send out its own bots, but purchases search data from Bing and Yahoo and repackages it using its own filtering algorithms. DuckDuckGo bans content mills and may offer superior results to Google, which seems to be the #1 target of all SEO scum.

Another thing I like about DuckDuckGo is what I call the silly factor. I like the name and I like the quacking duck, all right? Is there anything wrong with that? I didn't think so. A ducky on my browser is a necessity. The ducky protects against dragonflies.

Another cool thing about DuckDuckGo is that it is Linux-friendly. Apparently some money trickles down to Linux Mint and various other Linux distros in exchange for making DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Firefox in those distros. I think that is fair, considering that these distros are provided free of charge to the end user, although donations are requested (but not often enough provided).

Google, like all companies, runs the risk of getting too big for its britches and becoming another unresponsive, uncaring, ambivalent corporate behemoth. I'm not actually a critic of Google. I like Google and I like a lot of the things that Google does. I can't think of anything I disapprove of in relation to Google. But almost by instinct I tend to gravitate toward the underdog, and the sillier, fiercer and feistier, the better, in my book.

I'm not a fan of Yahoo, because Yahoo serves up too many ads and toolbars. I believe Yahoo is lacking in ethics. Bing on the other hand suffers from the connection to Microsoft. It's just too smooth and too non-innovative, offering no new features, intent upon dwelling in the shadow of Google.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

IRC is a Fetid Corpse

IRC is beyond dead. I visited again tonight just to confirm my initial impression. Oh, God. It's horrible. Deathly quiet. A pall over all the channels, all of them with the exception of the ones that have text (spam) flowing in from outside sources. The few human beings slant towards being extremely anti-social, cliquish and downright hostile to anyone they do not know. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to communicate with anyone on IRC, so I uninstalled my IRC program and have no plans to ever play around with that nonsense again.

I did, however, find a site on the Internet where it is possible to communicate with human beings online in a fun and engaging manner. I think web sites have supplanted IRC, and good riddance, because IRC stands for I Reject Communicating. The problem always was that IRC favored the geeks, while normal people steered clear.

Even spammy, weird, virus-strewn and random Usenet is friendlier than IRC.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

IRC is a Desert

I tried IRC tonight. It was a desert. Every channel I joined had few to no comments. The few channels with activity slanted toward the geeky end of the spectrum and were neither welcoming nor interesting unless one has a great deal of expertise in the particular technical niche being discussed. For three hours I trudged through the sands of this desert. There was no oasis anywhere. Everywhere were signs warning of the consequences for spammers, trolls, and assorted rule-breakers. I thought that was amusing. The admins would be lucky to have a spammer, troll, or rule-breaker, because at least that would constitute activity. IRC seemed to me boring and pointless. Most channels have no activity at all, but the activity I did detect was of the snooze-inducing variety. I suppose all the nice people are on Facebook these days. I'm done with IRC for the time being. I feel the same way about Craigslist. There are ghettos on the Internet where one does not wish to go or where one might drive by in transit to a better place.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Avoiding a Critical Pitfall in Windows Backup and Restore

Windows Backup and Restore does not handle hardware I/O errors in an elegant manner. It displays a cryptic error message and aborts the process. That is a potential pitfall, because hard drives develop I/O errors over time. To my knowledge, all media are vulnerable to I/O errors. The only variance involves the degree of vulnerability.

In the future, I will use Windows Backup only for system-related files and directories. Media directories should be backed up separately using Windows Explorer. This will minimize the size of the Windows backup image while increasing the speed of restoration, but most importantly, it will minimize the potential of an I/O error stopping the restoration.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Windows: As Stupid as the Day is Long

Q. How many days are required to install Windows 7?

A. Wrong question. Replace "days" with "weeks." Windows refuses to install any drivers, so upon installation, the computer cannot connect to the Internet, cannot display higher than 640 x 480 resolution, and cannot read from USB drives. Linux distros perform these tasks, which is why Linux is more user-friendly than any Windows product.

But the very worst problem with Windows is that when an old hard drive begins failing, and a user connects a new hard drive to install Windows, Windows will secretly botch the install and sabotage all labor performed. That is, after Windows has (presumably) been installed on the new hard drive, and dozens of software applications have been installed and configured and updated, and Windows Update has downloaded 600+MB of updates and installed them, and all the media files have been copied onto the new hard drive, and then the old hard drive is disconnected and the power shut off--Windows won't boot. Ever. It's a botched install. Why? Because Microsoft is stupid and hates its customers. Instead of installing Windows to the new hard drive, what Microsoft did was install it to both drives, so that the new hard drive is forever dependent upon the old.

Almost any Linux distro is better than Windows due to the many "gotchas" in the Windows world, which inflict a multitude of pranks on the end users to compel them to either buy entire new systems or spend countless hours dealing with Microsoft-imposed problems. Most people I know simply chunk their old computer and buy a new one. I am one of the few that are willing to put up with all the crap Windows dishes out in order to save money. Indeed this is probably the reason why Microsoft inserted that little trap. Their system is malicious by design. Since Microsoft colludes with manufacturers, it is in "their" interest (Microsoft and the manufacturers) to prod users to replace, rather than repair aging computer systems. I don't know how much money is sucked out of the world economy due to Windows, but the figure is probably in the billions.

Windows is very similar to malware in a number of respects, from its poor design to its bugginess and its ways of harming the user by stealing time and effort. I wouldn't use Windows at all if it were not for ACDSee and Call Clerk, two applications that require it. The main problem with Windows is that it hides the details from the user and tries to simplify complicated matters, but the way that they go about achieving these objectives is completely wrong. Windows 7 is worse than Kubuntu, worse than PCLinuxOS, worse than Open Suse, and worse than almost any major Linux distribution I can think of, any distro that occupies a slot in the top ten list of Distro Watch. Anyone who tries these Linux distros cannot fail to arrive at the same conclusion. I look forward to the day when I can run nothing but Linux, when ACDSee and Call Clerk will at least work from Wine. Until that blessed day arrives, I am compelled to struggle with the weird maliciousness of Windows.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Namecheap, the Worst Web Hosting Company

Namecheap, Inc. just sent me an invoice for--well, I don't know what. They expect me to pay a bunch of money because, I guess, they need money. I haven't hosted with them in years and my domain is no longer registered with them. I'm not surprised their morals are amiss. Namecheap is possibly the worst web host in existence. Their service was lousy, with unexplained bizarre errors, and their tech support, which I frequently had to use, was foreign, incompetent, unresponsive, and uncaring. I was never so happy as when I abandoned my Namecheap account and moved to a different host, even though it cost me financially to do so. Namecheat is more like it.

The host I recommend is Bluehost, a class act all around. They may be Mormon-owned for all I know, but they do web hosting right, and on the extremely rare occasion that I have needed their tech support, I have talked to real, live American techies on the telephone who know what they are doing. I've never been talking to a Bluehost representative without feeling like they are intelligent and, perhaps more importantly, care. I've used Bluehost for many years. I don't know of any other web host that is as good as they are, although it's true I haven't tried many. Bluehost is even recommended by Wordpress, which I think is very impressive in itself. Their founder runs the entire company on Mac or Linux, scorning Microsoft. I've followed his blog off and on through the years. I doubt we would agree on politics, but as far as computers go, I think we are in agreement.

For the past couple days, my site on Bluehost has become inaccessible around midnight every day without explanation and stays slow until the morning. So I can't recommend Bluehost without reservation. I need to become more cautious about my enthusiasm for things. It seems like the very moment that I praise something, that's when I discover its shortcoming. In the case of Bluehost, I discovered their nightly slowdown about the same time that I renewed for two years. However, I think that this may have been a temporary glitch, possibly due to Wordpress attackers.

If this is the only post any visitor to my blog ever reads, then so much the better. Namecheap caused me hardship with their unexplained errors and incompetent service.

7/30/2013 Update: This post against Namecheap has been attacked on over ten separate occasions by spam comments linking to malware sites that try to infect people's computers with viruses. My policy now is that whenever that happens, this post will be updated to be the front-page, very first post; or else I may post another message about Namecheap and its sleazy, unethical business practices. There's no way that Namecheap can get out of their well-deserved poor reputation. They are going to have to live with it, no matter how many spammers they hire.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Speed Up Windows Backup

Backing up Windows is essential, because forty forevers are needed to get a Windows install back up to snuff. I used to use Clonezilla to clone my Windows install, but Clonezilla is quite limited for use with a failing hard drive. There is the "rescue" mode, which I used, but I found that the display suffered severe corruption due to I/O errors that displayed rather untidily wherever. Apparently, Clonezilla only updates five numerical values during the cloning process. The labels for these values are not updated, so any errors that pop up simply result in a mess. I did not like looking at that, because in order to interpret the display, I had to google Clonezilla and find a screenshot of what the screen is supposed to look like during ordinary operation. The Clonezilla web site does not offer such a screenshot, I guess because it was deemed unimportant. I tried the very latest version of Clonezilla Debian and Clonezilla Ubuntu, and both had the same behavior. Compounding the problem, I noticed that the "time remaining" value was constantly increasing, rather than decreasing. Of course I do not wish for the cloning process to last all my days, so I aborted the process by hitting the power button, which to my knowledge is the only way to regain control. I think in the future I will only recommend Clonezilla for drives free of I/O errors, and suggest that a drive scan be performed prior to attempting to use the program.

I resorted to using the Windows Backup in Windows 7. I did not have high expectations, but actually I have found it is fairly good, although simple-minded. The display does not get corrupted, which is nice, and what is even nicer is that I can continue using the computer while it is backing things up. The one problem I ran into is that by accepting Windows Backup defaults, again the backing up takes forever. It is much slower than it should be. Googling for help, I found that many users complain about the same problem. I made a simple observation that I am sure has occurred to others. First of all, Windows Backup attempts to compress files, which is often a bad idea, because some files are already compressed, such as jpegs and many popular video and music formats. For some users, such files comprise the overwhelming majority of the space used on their hard drive. This I believe is the main reason that many users complain about slow backup. I do not think Windows Backup is intelligent enough to skip compression for already compressed file formats. For the sake of performance, it should be storing these files, rather than attempting compression. Instead, it is attempting to compress them further, wasting time, because little or nothing will be gained in space. Once a file is compressed, it is impossible to compress it further without using a more efficient algorithm, and I doubt that Windows Backup uses the most efficient algorithm in the world. I do not know why Microsoft went this route.

The solution to slow backup in Windows Backup, in such cases as described above, is to pick and choose the directories to be backed up. The video, music, and picture directories should be copied using Windows Explorer to the backup drive. Windows Backup should not touch them, because that will only slow the backup process down a great deal. Where Windows Backup excels is at compressing all of the system files, documents and data files and areas that the user cannot easily access. I let Windows Backup handle all of that for me. It is actually a pleasant little utility that seems a lot nicer to use than certain alternatives, but like all tools, it does have its limitations.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Firefox Sync: Unintuitive

I never remember how to use Firefox Sync, and that means I can't recommend Sync to anybody. I recommend Firefox, because I love Firefox Add-Ons and the open source nature of Firefox, but Sync has given me frequent problems. In the first place, it doesn't always work for me. Sync stopped working for me once I amassed over 30 styles in Stylish. When I updated my operating system and installed Firefox, I couldn't Sync. There was no error message, but the Syncing failed. I tried several times and wasted about an hour before online research, which is my particular strength, informed me that Sync was broken and buggy. There is a storage limitation on their Sync server, and instead of informing the user about this, Firefox simply fails to Sync, leaving the user to wonder if he did something wrong and should try again a hundred-odd times until it works, which wastes bandwidth and time for everybody, Mozilla included. In the end, I lost all my styles.

But Sync has more problems than just not working right. I can't figure it out half the time. I always have to read the documentation. It is not clear to me how to sync or what each sequence of clicks will do. I have more than once lost an entire Firefox configuration due to the non-intuitive, user-hostile Sync interface. If I can't figure it out--and I'm not exactly a newcomer when it comes to computers--I wonder how all the other users are doing with it. I think it would be very easy to code Sync in such a way that it is intuitive and easy to understand. I think it would take all of an afternoon and nothing more. I just think whoever programmed it was not that skilled at user interfaces and is probably more of a backend coder, possibly good at making a system function but not so good at explaining it to human beings.

I find Thunderbird annoying in a similar manner. I can't figure out how to stop spam. Thunderbird marks emails it thinks are spam, but delivers them anyway in my "In" Box, alerting me with a visual and audible signal about the important spam message. I find Thunderbird pretty primitive as far as an email client goes, but it is still better than Kmail, which requires me to enter my password each and every time I check my email. I do not see the point of using a mail reader in the first place if there is a need to enter the password. Might as well used web-based email in that scenario.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Social Skills and Those That Lack Them

I admire those that have the knack for smooth social interaction, who can express themselves without resorting to crude and ugly phrases. I am rather less impressed by technical skills, perhaps because I have 'em. When I think about the people I like the most and the one I chose to spend my life with, it is clear that social skills are their foremost quality. Etiquette, sensitivity, insight, thoughtfulness--these qualities sometimes seem scarce in online discourse. Reading some people's messages, I wonder how they could possibly have good relations with anyone at all. My guess is that they probably don't.

I have been both moderator and admin and know what goes on and who goes into a forum. I do not envy moderators. Unless there is pay--adequate compensation--the better choice is to pass. The power, the glory? Eh, there's no glory, and power is only resented, whether used or not.

Nevertheless, online discourse has improved over the years. Back in the day, things were worse. Nowadays everybody has a computer of some kind. Computer use has become more democratized. Technical skills are not the filter, the prerequisite for participation in a forum. Thus, some forums, particularly those with wider appeal, are more representative of the human population, rather than being the exclusive province of geeks.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Flashblock 1.5.17 Eliminates Annoying Flash Autoplay

Ah. Peace and quiet again on my browser. Thank you, Flashblock 1.5.17, another fantastic Firefox add-on!

News sites like USA Today have gotten obnoxious, playing video the minute one clicks on an article. They must assume that their guests are lazy. Perhaps that may be so. When I visit, I don't want my reading interrupted by someone speaking to me. I can acquire more information reading than listening to someone read for me. I don't know what is wrong with the world that people don't want to read. I often find that when I search for things, Youtube videos are at the top of the search rankings. I want to know who has the time to wade through a ten or twenty minute video to learn a piece of information that could be found in thirty seconds in a well-written article?

I wonder if Google Chrome has such a feature as Flashblock? Probably not is my guess. There is so much Chrome cannot do. People claim it's faster playing their precious videos, so I guess that is what is important to them. For my part, I install an add-on to disable videos, because they are annoying.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Subscribing by Email

My mail reader informs me of new messages instantly. Partly for that reason, I never subscribe to newsletters. I never want to receive email from any company unless I have had recent or ongoing business with that company. Amazon sends me email when I write a review, or when someone comments on my review, and that is all right as well. Email in response to recent action is all right. However, companies assume that someone wants a newsletter on the slightest pretext. I left a comment on ZDNET recently, and their morons concluded I wanted a newsletter subscription. ZAP! POW! WRONG! If I want to read something, I will visit a site or subscribe via RSS. Only important matters should be transmitted via email. Email is for friends and business contacts only. Has ZDNET never heard of RSS feeds? What dinosaurs! Actually, I don't use RSS either, but if I were of a mind to want a regular newsletter, then RSS is how I would go about it.

Some outfits require a user to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to unsubscribe. Many require typing in the email address. I don't bother with all of that. The maximum effort I'm willing to put forth to unsubscribe is two clicks. I am doing the sender a favor by actually being nice enough to unsubscribe. If a third click or any typing is required, then I won't unsubscribe. Instead, I'll mark the email as spam. The more people that mark such email as spam, the more likely that the email provider, such as Yahoo, will default all the sender's emails to the spam folder for all users, which is right, because newsletter-pushers are indeed spammers.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Linux? I Don't Even Know What That Is

I told one of my clients today that I use Linux, and they replied, "I don't even know what that is." My client was sick of Windows 8 and wanted to dial back to Windows 7, so without thinking twice, she bought a copy from a local retail store. Of course, Microsoft wins; they sold her both Windows 8 and Windows 7, which makes for quite an expensive operating system--about $150, all told. Microsoft is being rewarded for making a turkey out of Windows 8.

In my view, she'd be better off with Linux, but how can I suggest a thing she never even heard of? Linux deserves better name recognition, but what can be done? One can point out that most of the web sites in the world run on Linux, and that mobile devices often use Linux, but that is not quite as apparent as the brand one sees on almost every laptop or desktop.

What deters me from recommending Linux even more is that mainstream Linux distros have little issues, and Linux gurus or even Linux journeymen are thin on the ground. She can't ask her friend, neighbor or nephew for help with a Linux system. That's quite a disadvantage.

Could I in good conscience recommend Kubuntu? Nope. My Kubuntu 13.04 system running KDE 4.10.3 is now booting up with two blankscrn.kss windows for no apparent reason. Do I really want her calling me on the phone asking what is wrong with Kubuntu and how did it get infected by a virus? Then there was the problem I wrestled with where Kubuntu dialed the clock back three hours. I had to use the command line to fix that problem and some pretty arcane syntax, too.

Could I recommend Open Suse 12.3? Nope. Open Suse won't install a printer for anybody but a bonafide geek. Open Suse will give an error message the minute she tries connecting to the Internet. Open Suse will give an error message on her very first update after installation, because even after all these years, the devs haven't learned to remove the dvd from the repository list. I wouldn't recommend Open Suse to anybody.

The only Linux distro I'd feel safe recommending to a low-tech individual would be Linux Mint Xfce or Cinnamon, but there again, Linux users are thin on the ground, so anybody who ventures into the Linux world has to be comfortable browsing and researching online forums and wikis in order to resolve the occasional unforeseen and the unexpected. I am comfortable and I think extremely good at performing online research, but the average user is not. The average user wants to speak to somebody on the phone or better yet, ask someone in person. At least with Windows, everybody and their brother knows a little something and the herd can help each other cope with Windows' eccentricities.
techlorebyigor is my personal journal for ideas & opinions