COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

Janet alerted me to the dangers of Big Data years ago. I'm afraid it is unstoppable and the only route to counter the ill effects is something similar to what Janet and her team were working on. Software that allows the ordinary consumer to access and use the same data that is being used to against them.

[Tizer]

Now Yahoo admits to a billion customer account details being stolen in a hack. It beats me why anybody would sign up to, or continue with, a Yahoo account these days. Its computer systems have been known to be dodgy for years. It didn't help when BT signed up its own customers to Yahoo. One of our friends got her first computer a couple of years ago and took out a broadband account with BT which used Yahoo. Within a couple of weeks we were getting scam emails purporting to be from her address.

[Stanley]

Perhaps the bottom line in the annual accounts is more important than the client. The power of a brand name! I wonder how this will affect the current take-over bid by (I think) Verison....

[Tizer]

The FT today says that a team of lawyers at Verizon are working to decide whether they can save the deal without exposing the US telecom group to any future litigation linked to the data hack. "Unless Verizon is able to build a firewall against future legal damages related to the data breach, it will be forced either to kill the deal or seek a discount on the transaction’s price tag." Shares in Yahoo fell by about 6% after Bloomberg reported that Verizon was considering either lowering the price tag or exiting the deal.

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Friends sometimes send us images by email that are accessed by clicking a hyperlink rather than attaching them as image files. Clicking the link doesn't open my browser but brings up the image in my document viewer. The links don't look like the web links that I'm used to, they begin with `cid:' and end with something like product.support.com. Unlike normal web links which add little in terms of memory size to the message these can make the message as much as 5MB. Can anyone tell me what these links are? I'm not asking the friends because they are not technically oriented!

[Stanley]

That one is beyond my pay grade......

[Big Kev]

I would guess the files are pdf docs and Linux is downloading them and opening them in your viewer. Linux isn't my strong point so I could be talking rubbish but a quick Google of 'cid' and 'Linux' points at Adobe PDF and the distiller. Pluggy is probably the best man for the answer

[Big Kev]

As an aside and loosely related to the subject, an IT role in Leeds for anyone looking to make a start in that field
The role of the analyst is to provide technical support for the various products and services we offer. This person will be the first point of contact for customers and will need to record all information provided, diagnose, and then resolve the issues raised. The successful person will need to escalate problems and trends to the senior analysts and make sure that in all situations complies with any procedures and policies in relation to ISO standards. This role would be perfect for someone who has customer service experience and a good technical understanding, although we will help develop your knowledge through training.

Our team

This role will sit in the service desk team which is a team of 36, there is a service desk manager, 3 team managers, 4 senior analysts and 28 analysts.

Who you will be

We want to make sure you`re set for success so the key skills we are looking for in the role are below;

good technical knowledge is required, with a focus on Microsoft Server operating systems, including Active Directory, Group Policy Management, Server Licensing & DNS Management
understanding of virtualisation technologies as well as MS Exchange
experience in a technical support role would be beneficial, but being able to learn new products and support them is essential
excellent fault diagnosing skills are a must
customer service experience would also be beneficial, as you are required to support many parties
awareness of ISO and the ITIL framework would be helpful
good communication skills

[Stanley]

I understood 'good communication skills'.......

[Tizer]

I don't know what to make of this news story and thought it best to put it here for comment rather than in the Medical Matters thread.
`Electromagnetic waves have made this Chard woman unable to leave the house' LINK
"A woman has told of her "heart-breaking" medical condition that means she has been made housebound by the electromagnetic waves in our atmosphere. Kim De'Atta suffers from electromagnetic sensitivity meaning the signals coming from our mobile phones and Wi-Fi make her ill. She can rarely leave her home in Chard and has to go to places where there is little mobile phone signal to stop her suffering symptoms. As a result of Kim's illness she can rarely see friends and family because travelling is too difficult....The electromagnetic waves emitted from mobile phones, televisions, Wi-Fi and other electronic devices give Kim debilitating symptoms. She can suffer with migraines, fatigue, infections, pins and needles and allergies, as well as problems with her nervous system. To try and protect herself at home she wears a shielded head net and sleeps under a shielded net.

[Pluggy]

My take, is that she is crippled by the fear of electromagnetic waves and its that fear is affecting her. she thinks they are harmful and the fear causes the symptoms. A reverse placebo effect if you like.

There have been dozens of double blind tests done. Involving putting subjects in faraday cages and letting / making them think that there is EM around. They get sick just the same.

The human brain is a very complex thing......

[Whyperion]

Ive not knowingly suffered from ill effects of EM radiation at assorted wavelengths and magnitude ( 240v AC from exposed wiring a bit of a belt ) . Maybe I would be less of a sociopath and more of a genius if I had lived in a world without them. I've lived a few feet from AC railway railway lines and it was more when they stopped working I lost sleep. But I have been troubled in wakefulness by the 24 hr tube in London Fri/Sat nights , possibly because there is both ground rumble and movement and its occuring when there is less general external noise about.

[Stanley]

My instinct tells me to go with Pluggy on this one......
On another subject, Why is Firefox warning me that 'libvacode' is possibly vulnerable and I should update it to play video?

[PanBiker]

It's a back end piece of code that is used when playing YouTube videos. Firefox may have detected that it is out of date and requires updating.

[Tizer]

Thanks Stanley, your comment about Youtube videos has prompted me to do something about it on my PC. I'd seen the same notice come up but it had stopped playing videos altogether. I'm not much of a video fan so didn't get motivated enough to sort it - until now. I did some searching, putting your sentence into google: "Why is Firefox warning me that 'libvacode' is possibly vulnerable and I should update it to play video?" It got me a page which concluded as follows: "Simply go into Software Center, wait for it to load, type 'restricted' into the search feature, and install the restricted extras package for your particular distro." So I did this and chose the Ubuntu set of restricted extras, clicked Install and bingo the videos are working again. The word `restricted' in these cases usually refers to proprietary and copyrighted software. Ubuntu developers don't like them because they believe everything should be available freely.

[Whyperion]

Somehow, on Win10 got the Epson 3-in - 1 SX425W working but I dont know how (it doesnt print black, I think the ink reservoir pad has dried ink on it reading forums, it needs mositening and then the excess ink taking out with a syringe dropper thing, not really had time to do it.

But it pushes for scanning and pulls in OK for jpgs on one program, but using the epson software to try to get pdf scans it kept saying not connected (via USB cable) but fiddling with somekind of settting in the epson set up it appears to be working via wireless IP address, not that it shows up on the network map on the computers network settings thing !
Found NAPF2 software on the net, so I can scan multiple pages and save to one PDF and maybe do some other stuff too, just so I can reduce the paper pile for non-essential stuff this week Still been an unneccsary pain , maybe it needed to be confirmed scanner was TWAIN driven and not some of the alterntives.
Only problem will be getting time to get to recycling - the pendle bins at morrisons in colne normally fill up quickly.

[Stanley]

Well done Tiz! My videos were still playing OK but I have followed your path, installed the extras and have checked on Youtube. It must be OK because the warning has gone away. It was bugging me but that's one less thing to be concerned about. BTW. I read the reviews and they are universally enthusiastic about to modification.....

[David Whipp]

T'interweb off with us for most of day again...

[Stanley]

Sorry to hear that David..... Touch wood.....
It may be my imagination but the fonts on the topic titles look slightly different since I did that restricted update.

[Tizer]

T'interweb off with us for most of day again...

You're supposed to be pleased David, that's your service provider making sure you can't get caught by online scams at Christmas!

Stanley, I think it installs extra fonts and perhaps that allows some different rendering on the screen.

[Stanley]

I noticed that in the list Tiz and yes, I suspect that is what has happened. The libvacode message is history.

[Tizer]

There's a letter in The Times in response to an article about slow broadband connections. The writer says a BT engineer told him that you could link together up to four separate phone lines to get a faster connection. The man claims he did it and it works but doesn't give any further information. Does it sound feasible?

[Pluggy]

Its feasible, but expensive to set up and run (fancy kit and multiple broadband connections) A course of last resort in my book.

Investigate 'round robin routing' and 'load balancing'

[Stanley]

Include me out.......
The libavcodec warning has returned. I have looked on the web and it seems that Ubuntu is refusing any earlier versions of the code because of security issues. There is a lot of discussion on the web about it and my conclusion is that I should leave the situation alone and perhaps consult Pluggy about changing over to the latest version of Ubuntu which I think is 16LTS (I am still using 12LTS).
Pluggy, what do you think?

[Tizer]

I'm getting strange behaviour from videos now. Some run perfectly, some won't start - the whirly thing in the centre spins around on a black background but nothing starts - some I can trigger to start after a bit of clicking on the on/off icon.

[Pluggy]

Some information to go on would be useful, links to videos that give problems and which browser you're using would be a start.

In general Google Chrome is least problematical for videos. It will work with most video whatever codec and wrapper they use. The first thing I'd do is try another browser other than the one giving problems. Chromium is a nice easy one to install, its in the repositories, but it won't do Flash, but an ever decreasing number of sites still use Flash.

Be warned that Chrome won't work on versions of Ubuntu prior to 14.04 or on anything 32 bit. Not limted to Linux, it takes a dim view of any Windows prior to Windows 7.