April disappeared too
In a markedly worrying new trend, it would seem that the bulk of my recent posting is to complain about not posting for ages. But instead of flogging that horse, I thought I'd have a think about some stuff. Any stuff, in fact.
First off is that I've fixed a few computers for some folks recently. Some of it has been the usual spyware nonsense where it's somehow the end user's fault for not being a member of the BCS (British Computer Society) and instead they are just a consumer who bought something of the shelf that they expected to just work because they paid alot of money for it and it didn't. These are a pain but are fixable and you can mitigate the end user's ignorance (justifiable ignorance? That's a debate for another day - but they don't have to update their fridge or washing machine... yet!) by installing software that arguably should be placed on there by the seller for example.
Some of it has been faulty software; Symantec Internet Security is a major culprit here as it has limited people's internet or email access without indicating that it is to blame (hint - remove any rules relating to internet/email applications from within the admittedly annoying to get at personal firewall interface and try opening those applications again to set up new rules). My disgruntlement at this consumer aimed software is further increased by the EULA (End User License Agreement) which disowns any responsibility for the software not working correctly and the fact that recent updates for the software seem to have caused these problems.
Some of it has been hardware related. Upon opening a Time (now defunct, you might guess why after reading the following lines) computer it became obvious that anything the user might have tried to upgrade had been glue-gunned in place - it was very difficult to remove the memory but a bit of work with a scalple fixed that. Plus, it was a P4 and it had no AGP slot (something else I've also seen recently) making a decent graphics upgrade nearly impossible anyway.
There's a lot of reasons to like computers. It seems that there are even more reasons to hate them.
First off is that I've fixed a few computers for some folks recently. Some of it has been the usual spyware nonsense where it's somehow the end user's fault for not being a member of the BCS (British Computer Society) and instead they are just a consumer who bought something of the shelf that they expected to just work because they paid alot of money for it and it didn't. These are a pain but are fixable and you can mitigate the end user's ignorance (justifiable ignorance? That's a debate for another day - but they don't have to update their fridge or washing machine... yet!) by installing software that arguably should be placed on there by the seller for example.
Some of it has been faulty software; Symantec Internet Security is a major culprit here as it has limited people's internet or email access without indicating that it is to blame (hint - remove any rules relating to internet/email applications from within the admittedly annoying to get at personal firewall interface and try opening those applications again to set up new rules). My disgruntlement at this consumer aimed software is further increased by the EULA (End User License Agreement) which disowns any responsibility for the software not working correctly and the fact that recent updates for the software seem to have caused these problems.
Some of it has been hardware related. Upon opening a Time (now defunct, you might guess why after reading the following lines) computer it became obvious that anything the user might have tried to upgrade had been glue-gunned in place - it was very difficult to remove the memory but a bit of work with a scalple fixed that. Plus, it was a P4 and it had no AGP slot (something else I've also seen recently) making a decent graphics upgrade nearly impossible anyway.
There's a lot of reasons to like computers. It seems that there are even more reasons to hate them.
posted by dan at
2:40 pm
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