COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

That's a good point Ian. Out of sight is out of mind and I never cease to be amazed at how fast dust builds up inside the FM. I take the covers off and give it a good clean up occasionally and in the end I'm sure it is a good thing. I first leaned this trick from my uncle Ernest who regularly vacuumed the inside of his old TV set over 60 years ago. Everyone laughed at him but that set lasted forever! Look at the number of people who never think to clean the screen on a TV.....

[Sue]

Last week, whilst doing some DIY Bob had a major accident with my iPad and killed it. After a phone call to Apple they sent me a box to return it within 24 hours. A day later they had checked it, declared it dead and sent me a new one under warranty. I am very impressed. A week later I am fully functioing
again

[Stanley]

Wonderful! All we hear are the horror stories, that sounds like a really good result. I am glad you got satisfaction....

[Stanley]

I'm a bit late onto this one but I was triggered by a report in this week's Private Eye. See THIS for a report about the mining of data inside Google Chrome especially when used on smart phones. It's a rough old world out there and the more we use this technology the more we expose ourselves.

[Tizer]

I saw an article last week about the CEO of the banking and insurance company FirstDirect where she said her greatest fear of competition is Apple moving into banking. Then yesterday I read that malicious attacks on Apple computers and gadgets have doubled in number recently. This is thought to be a result of so many people using ApplePay. Just imagine if your bank was also the provider of your computer operating system!

[Stanley]

Tiz, that is truly a terrifying prospect and not beyond the bounds of possibility. It strengthens my resolve to avoid internet banking and 'automatic payments'. All my infrequent communications with my bank are by letter, I won't even use email. That's right, I don't trust the buggers!
How are you going on with your fibre connection? I realised this morning that the faster speed is now the norm and I don't even notice it. It should be standard across all networks, forget the government definition of 10mps.

[Tizer]

We're getting 34Mbps now which is lower than the promised 40 but miles better than our previous 6. It's steady and we've had no problems. It certainly makes browsing a lot easier and we can now view your image-rich topics easily! Mrs Tiz is a happy bunny due to the unlimited download and videos now being `free'.

[Stanley]

Same speed as mine Tiz and we are only 400 yards from the exchange. I have got used to it now, it is the norm until full fibre becomes available....
I have been having a strange problem of late with my email. My mails to one of my daughters in Australia are reported by Daemon as "The following message to Janet was undeliverable. The reason for the problem: Maximum Retry Queue Age Reached". Every mail I send her gets the same response. However, I was lucky enough to catch Janet in yesterday and we had a lovely long conversation. During the course of this I raised the matter of the bounced mails and she surprised me by telling me she had got all of them! I have just got another this morning in response to my daily 'I am not lying dead behind the door' mail.
Has anyone else had this problem?

[PanBiker]

It could be one of the routers between here and Oz hanging on to the mail slightly too long or a broken routing table somewhere in the loop.

[Stanley]

All I know is that it is disturbing and annoying!
I went off piste yesterday in Medical Matters and so I'm reporting here where it properly belongs. I was talking to Janet yesterday and amongst other matters I asked her what her latest project was. She told me that she and her small team of colleagues have been working on a programme that allows and enables Joe Public to access mass data and analyse it in a variety of ways. The key thing about this technique is it opens up data previously inaccessible to ordinary mortals and this level of protection was seen as sufficient by the holders on the grounds that a compact and easily accessible access programme was impossible. Not now! Janet says they have been flooded by enquiries from other independent software engineers wanting to know how they did it. She says that this is immensely important because of the power it gives to anyone savvy enough to pick up on the technique and use the programme. What was impossible before is now feasible and this means that the power of big data is now available to anyone who takes the trouble to seek them out.
It sounds exaggerated doesn't it but hear this, Janet's track record in advanced software engineering is impressive, look up NASNET for her early days and she has progressed since then. I know I'm the proud father but being as objective as I can be, watch this space. She is a smart cookie and is very often well in front of the curve....
She also said that four major companies, Amazon, Google and two others I didn't catch, are intent on world domination in their field and on present progress are going to get there. She is not happy about this.... Again, take notice, if she is worried so am I!

[Stanley]

The good news is that the spurious Daemon messages seem to have ceased!

[Stanley]

Why would anyone need an application on their smart phone to control the heating in their home? Has fascination with what is possible using the latest technology trumped common sense? Can't you just imagine hackers having fun turning the heat up and the fridge down?
For a variety of reasons I have decided that today is the day I do my annual backup of data from the FM3 to two external drives and start the 2016 current data file. A bit early but it fits in with other matters and is a logical time to do it. Too late when a crash has lost the archive!
09:00. Archive done successfully to the oldest of the two, a Samsung. I know you think I'm a bit obsessive about having two external drives but this morning I proved the value. The newest drive, a Seagate, failed completely. First it was the power supply that was dead but even when I replaced that with another one, it woke up but wouldn't talk to the FM3. I shall put it away labelled up and get another Samsung and do a complete download to that. Just think if I had been relying on it for a reload.....
A question Pluggy, does the operation of an external hard drive rely on a driver on the FM3 or should it automatically show up when enabled? It has been OK up to press, showed its blue light but never started up and connected?
15 minutes later. Being a nosey bugger I examined the power source transformer very carefully and found that the block that carried the pins for the plug could be slid off. A bit of black soot in there and a dirty contact. I cleaned the contacts up, replaced the pins and tested again. Still dead. I checked for continuity inside it and couldn't get a reading so I've binned it..... I have another transformer that will light the blue pilot light.... Am leaving it at that for the time being!

[Pluggy]

Linux has the necessary drivers built in to handle external hard drives, they just work in my experience. There are things you can check at the command line to gain further clues if they just don't work. Sometimes the USB interface packs up whilst the drive remains working and can be recovered by connecting it via another interface,

[Stanley]

I thought that was the case. I shall not muck about, I'll just buy a new drive.....

[Tizer]

Stanley, have you tried connecting the drive to other USB sockets?

[plaques]

Stanley, have you tried connecting the drive to other USB sockets?

A reasonable suggestion. On my old machine the whole board carrying the rear USB outlet went down. It gave me the biggest fright of my life. Although it still worked on the front USB's I thought it was time for a new PC.

[Stanley]

Thanks for the suggestions. The old Samsung drive is working happily in the same socket. I gave it some thought last night and in my experience it's very rare for a small system like this to suffer two failures at the same time. The power source I substituted for the bum one was an El Cheapo that had several different voltage settings and I tested it before using it. The only setting that gave 12V was the 9V setting! I have ordered a new power source specifically made for the Seagate drive and when I get it I'll try it with that before ditching the drive. It will be a £12 gamble but I have a funny idea it might work. Worth the risk I think. I will report back! Onwards and upwards!

[PanBiker]

Sounds like the PSU is just a tapped secondary with little or no regulation, typically the voltages given will be off load, hence the discrepancy on the voltage ranges. You should always connect at a lower rate and check the voltage under load conditions.

[Stanley]

Ian. you're probably right. Whatever, it is obviously not reliable! I got word this morning the new PSU has been dispatched. I'll try it when it arrives and let you know what happens.....

[Stanley]

The new PSU arrived this afternoon. Connected the drive and it worked fine. 1.6gb of Archive 15 saved to the external drive with no problem. Whole thing took less than 10 minutes including connecting. The updated HDD and its new PSU are put away safely for another year....

[Tizer]

I don't know if this has direct relevance to any of us?

`Java plug-in malware alert to be issued by Oracle' BBC
"Millions of Java users are to be warned that they could be exposed to malware as a result of a flaw that existed in the software's update tool. The plug-in is installed on many PCs to let them to run small programs written in the Java programming language. Its distributor Oracle has agreed to issue an alert on both social media and its own site following an investigation by the US's Federal Trade Commission."

[Stanley]

I seem to remember Pluggy telling me a long time ago when I first moved to Linux that Java was crap and it was high time it was done away with.

[Pluggy]

I think that was Flash Stanley. I've stopped putting Java on machines I build nowadays because its a lot less used in this day and age than it once was and it is an extra security risk. Flash will eventually die out but its still a must have. The beeb is beta testing HTML5 as a replacement for its iPlayer and stuff and it works OK. http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5

[Stanley]

You are right Pluggy, it was Flash. If I remember rightly you wouldn't load Ubuntu 64 bit for me until they had solved the problems they were having with it. (The advantages of being guided through the minefield by a man with a built-in detector!)

[plaques]

I have two duff USB flash drives that are well below the capacity that is shown on a properties scan. These were bought from e-bay before I learnt my lesson. From internet searches it would appear that a free download programme 'H2testw 1.4' is the benchmark for checking for capacity problems. My problem is that I'm paranoid about downloading from sites that may have other things attached to it. Has anyone tried this programme and can they recommend a secure down load site?