The Technology Trap

[Perry]

Spotted this interesting quote, today.

The unspeakable has become the inescapable in today’s world. It’s become a running joke on the Internet that the word “upgrade” inevitably means poorer service, fewer benefits, and more annoyances for those who have to deal with the new and allegedly improved product or service.

The same logic can be applied equally well across the entire landscape of modern technology. What’s new, innovative, revolutionary, game-changing, and so on through the usual litany of overheated adjectives, isn’t necessarily an improvement.

It can be, and very often is, a disaster.

Change - technological or otherwise - simply for the sake of change is really just so much time and energy wasted. Time in one's life that will never be recovered. And - chances are - any promised efficiency will deliver a lot less that the vendor claims. Not all tech is like that, of course, but far too much is.

Windoze10 is a great example. You'll get the latest and greatest and also all the malware and spyware that microcrapt has embedded in the operating system without telling you.

And you thought the technological upgrade was for your benefit!

Silly!

[sidinz]

Which is why I have the update function disabled on my own computer. Pity I can't do it on my work-issued one. Does my head in.

[Perry]

Auto-updates is carte blanche for software vendors to do what they will with your computer.

That gawd-awful thing called macafeeble anti-virus is ticked by default with Adobe Flush updates. And they happen so often, it's not funny.

[sidinz]

I get brassed off because I've installed something that stops Flash videos from automatically running. But when the Flash player gets old, the blocker doesn't work properly, or Firefox blocks all Flash as being vulnerable. Grrrrr. Stop meddling!

[Davo36]

I get brassed off because I've installed something that stops Flash videos from automatically running. But when the Flash player gets old, the blocker doesn't work properly, or Firefox blocks all Flash as being vulnerable. Grrrrr. Stop meddling!

Activate flash in Firefox is all you need to do.

But yeah updates are the bane of everyones life.

[Davo36]

Spotted this interesting quote, today.



Change - technological or otherwise - simply for the sake of change is really just so much time and energy wasted. Time in one's life that will never be recovered. And - chances are - any promised efficiency will deliver a lot less that the vendor claims. Not all tech is like that, of course, but far too much is.

Windoze10 is a great example. You'll get the latest and greatest and also all the malware and spyware that microcrapt has embedded in the operating system without telling you.

And you thought the technological upgrade was for your benefit!

Silly!

Perry I have 3 pcs running win 10, it seems to work pretty well actually.

Have you thought of going to Ubuntu or something?

[Perry]

Did you know about (and/or have you had it disabled/removed) the spyware and malware in W10, intentionally embedded by microcrapt?

If not, every keypress you make, your e-mail program contents and your my documents folders contents are being reported back to the new cyber-terrorist scumbags in Redmond.

[Nick G]

Auto updates can be bad but especially with Windows you should try to keep ahead of the bad guys. I used to work in tech support and most problems that required a reinstall could have been avoided by staying up to date.

I don't know if it's still the case that Macs are safer. It certainly used to be, my understanding was the UNIX based OS had a role to play, as did the low-hanging fruit nature of old versions of Windows (and higher usage) as an alternative target.

[sidinz]

Did you know about (and/or have you had it disabled/removed) the spyware and malware in W10, intentionally embedded by microcrapt?

If not, every keypress you make, your e-mail program contents and your my documents folders contents are being reported back to the new cyber-terrorist scumbags in Redmond.

I only know because my system seemed bogged down, so I ran Task Manager to see why. I found something new that seemed to be chewing up huge system resources. Googling it showed it to be spyware (telemetry something) embedded in an update even though I had deliberately opted out of their reporting back programs in the Control Panel. B@stards are arrogantly ignoring their customers' expressed instructions not to send data back. Also uses up wads of your data cap.

Activate flash in Firefox is all you need to do.

Nope. If the Flash becomes outdated, I have to instruct Firefox to play the 'suspect' Flash file on every single webpage that I want to run it on. 2-3 clicks. Totally aggravating.

[PC]

Bought an apple for home.
Turn it on - don't even get time to make a coffee - and other than the spinning beach ball of death - it just works.

Use windows at work - charge by the hour - plenty of time for coffees.

[Wayne]

Bought an apple for home.
Turn it on - don't even get time to make a coffee - and other than the spinning beach ball of death - it just works.

Use windows at work - charge by the hour - plenty of time for coffees.

Have Windows 10 lap top at home - turn on and it is up and running in 30s.
I can load anything I want on it and do anything I like to it.
Not controlled by the fruitloops.

[Bob Kane]

Did you know about (and/or have you had it disabled/removed) the spyware and malware in W10, intentionally embedded by microcrapt?

If not, every keypress you make, your e-mail program contents and your my documents folders contents are being reported back to the new cyber-terrorist scumbags in Redmond.

Does this mean when I log onto online banking that my login and password are sent back to Microsoft?
And if I change my password, that is also sent back?

[Wayne]

Does this mean when I log onto online banking that my login and password are sent back to Microsoft?
And if I change my password, that is also sent back?

Probably not.
Have a look here

http://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10-upgrade-spying-how-to-opt-out/

[sidinz]

My post actually referred to Windows 8. I sure as hell didn't accept any terms and conditions when they automatically installed their spyware update onto my computer. I found a way to turn it off deep within the systems but most people would have no idea that it was installed. Especially if, like me, they were confident in their privacy after having switched off participation in the customer experience program.

[donna]

I prefer Apple - it just works!cheers,Donna