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Ad blocking

Aug 29th, 2026
by Craig.
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The lengths to which “publishers” will go to publish ads on the web is pretty infuriating sometimes. “Publishers” in this sense are people like me, publishing stuff on the web, whether it’s my opinion on what the dickheads of the world are up to as they try to ruin this planet, or information on how your app works or the news of the world. All of that is useful information, often that shows up as search results, and I suppose it’s legitimate for the publishers of that information to expect to be paid for that information commensurate with what they have to pay data centres for bandwidth and (in the case of the BBC) stationing journalists all over the world to report on news.

But it’s also reasonable for me, as the owner of the device of which said ads are being displayed, to restrict publishers from using the cycles of my device’s CPU to sell their products or services or the bandwidth that I have to pay my ISP to download their ads. The latter is not insignificant.

And that is what I have done for years.

For many years I have used the “hosts” file at winhelp2002.mvps.org. Unfortunately, the guy who used to run that appears to have died. I did donate to his project (back when I had money) and, when his medical problems became clear, offered to help and (if necessary) take over the project, but he never replied to my email. Now that he’s gone, his file has languished un-updated since March 2021, and yet the world has moved on in the five years since then. Advertisers register new domains every day to serve up their ads, and so I see new ads occasionally because their new domains aren’t blocked.

I’m convinced that I don’t see half of the crap online that most people see. I credit the “Criteria for detection for the MVPS HOSTS File” for this, and the fact that I can (and do) edit my own HOSTS file to blackhole domains of my choice.

The one thing I have never done is use a program like Pi-hole to block advertising on my whole network, including my cell (mobile) phones and tablets and the devices of everyone in my household. It’s not because I’m morally opposed to using them, but because I feel I have more control over the “hosts” file on my own machine. I have a script that very quickly moves my “hosts” file out of the way and puts in my default “hosts” file, and I don’t know how I’d accomplish that same thing on a network-connected device, such as a router. It will be the first thing I research if I ever do something to move into the modern world of ad blocking.

I’m also worried that doing so might negatively affect how some apps operate, but you don’t know until you try. If you have experience using a mainstream (Android or Iphone) device on a Pi-holed network, I’d be interested in your opinion. Changing my phone to a non-mainstream type is another thing I plan to try before I die.

Speaking of the lengths to which “publishers” — in this case actually the advertisers — will go, they register domains and just park generic pages at the root of the domain. Here’s one of them:

ill-fatedodd.com screenshot

ill-fatedodd.com screenshot.

(If you’re not blocking advertising domains, you can see this page in full at 3.stg.ill-fatedodd.com. Here’s another one from another company: www.chaseherbalpasty.com.)

In their verbiage, they refer to a laughable “legal notice” — they title the page as a “Notice for cybersecurity professionals” — where they plead for their domain not to be blocked:

Any attempt to bypass or interfere with a website’s intended functionality or technical protection measures (including adding this domain to a blocklist) may violate the DMCA and the publisher’s Terms of Service, and may result in restricted access to the service.

Publishers delivering ads through this domain reserve the right to take necessary actions, in accordance with applicable laws and policies, to ensure the stable provision of services.

In other words, “Please, pretty please, don’t block our advertising.” If I operated a huge network and I didn’t want to inconvenience (or support) my users, I’d probably pay attention to this notice. But if I’m just trying to block advertising on my own computer (and possibly, in the future, my own small network), this is inconsequential to me. Only once in my life have I run into a situation where a business seemed to rely on an advertising domain in my blacklist to achieve some sort of function that blocked me from logging into my pre-existing account, and for those of you who work in this business, it won’t surprise you that that business was Godaddy. But they must have stopped using that blacklisted domain at some point, because after using my naked “hosts” file to get around the problem for a while, I eventually seemed able to log into their website with my full blacklist in place. No harm, no foul; I got to carry on blocking advertising and I got to carry on using my Godaddy account.

One consequence of this block, for me, is that I either have no or a very sparse profile with advertisers. I just don’t exist in their books. If you think, “Well, I hardly ever browse the Web, so they’ve got nothing on me,” then you’re wrong. They do. Even in my case, I received an email from a cousin (who uses a gmail.com address) that referred to Calgary Airport, and the same day I saw advertising for parking at Calgary Airport in an environment where I can’t currently block advertising (an Android phone). Gee, I wonder where Google made that connection?! I was also one of those suckers who used to have a very high opinion of Google, and so I was delighted one day to get an “invitation” to sign up for a Gmail address. I created, but never did use my account, except for one occasion on which I sent an email to a friend because my own mail server was down that day. One person, one email message! And yet, years later when I decided to close the account, I found that Gmail had created a hidden address book for me of dozens of people I knew! With their real email address! That I had never used with that account! And how the fuck did Gmail know that Bob Smith was my friend?! There was nobody in that hidden address book that I didn’t know, but none of them had ever received an email message from that address or had ever sent one to that address!

In another case, I broke my own rules and signed-up for a Facebook account because we were looking for a rental apartment, and we were told by “the kids” in the know that anything in the rental market happens in Facebook Marketplace. While I was in the first sign-up process, my application was blocked and my account suspended for “violating community guidelines”, even though I couldn’t have done so in the seven-tenths of a second I was a member. My second attempt a couple of weeks later was also unsuccessful and suspended for the same reason, even though the only thing I had managed to do was create an avatar. I’ve since been told that I was suspended because I didn’t make any “friends”, but that’s just speculation, not from the horse’s mouth. I think it’s more likely that, because I had (and have) facebook.com in my blacklist for the other 23.5 hours of the day I use the Internet, I looked suspicious to Facebook because I simply didn’t exist. No problem. I managed to find rental accommodation the old fashioned way (word of mouth), and to this day I have facebook.com (and other associated domains) blocked on my computer. No loss to me.

On the other hand, on the rare occasions I do see advertising, it is strangely apparent to me that they do know who I am. Is it just a coincidence that I see adverts for middle-age men, instead of (for example) skin creams for young 20-year-old women? No, sadly, it’s probably not a coincidence. Yes, I do have a prostate, thank-you very much, and yes it has been checked lately.

What this long (and meandering towards the end) post is supposed to communicate, is that it is possible (to a large extent, although not fully) to hide from advertisers and the purveyors of other crap, largely conspiracy theories. The impetus for this post is everything that is in the news these days (even tonight) about people, particularly kids, being subject to the whims of advertisers, whether those advertisers are advertising the latest skin cream (as mentioned above) or the latest conspiracy theory about Alberta separation, who really killed JFK, which race is really the master race or whether or not women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen! My using blocks of huge (over 10 000 at this point) lists of blacklisted domains and just staying away from social media (easy for some of us to do) is a recipe for success for me. My IP address isn’t hidden from anyone, as the Vancouver Police Department has personally informed me, so I’m obviously not doing anything illegal, but I am obviously doing the best I can to hide myself from “surveillance capitalism”. And my success is seeing, on the news, that I’m not suffering from the same mental maladies that it seems afflict 90% of the rest of society.

Where this doesn’t help me is in dealing with friends who have become susceptible to the sewage they are fed. Unfortunately, having swallowed the Kool-Aid, they then assume that I have swallowed different Kool-Aid, and they completely discount my opinions. Two of my trump-supporting friends have ended a total of about eighty years worth of friendships with me recently because I won’t bow down and admit how great trump is. It’s shocking to me. That should cause me to have mental problems, not the sewage I don’t subject myself to online.

And to do this I am not restricting myself in any way. I (and my computer) do not load certain domains, and by not loading those domains my computer and Internet connection are faster and I am not subjected to the same sewage that the rest of the population is fed. In the famous words of donald trump, “Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.”

Motorola for the win

Jan 8th, 2024
by Craig.
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As you’re aware if you follow this blog — all two of you — I recently broke my cell/mobile phone and needed to replace it. I know, this is stunning news that you just never hear and likely haven’t experienced yourself, but bear with me. 🙂 Although I had a cell/mobile phone long before many people did, I essentially gave up on them and stopped owning one for many years due to the way that the Canadian cell phone oligopoly rapes their customers.

In 2017 I decided to buy a phone from an American supplier — Ting, who operated based on paying only for the services you wanted and used — even though I was in Canada. Ting was a mobile virtual network operator owned by Tucows (before they sold it), a Canadian company who also own OpenSRS, a domain registrar who operate based on the reseller model. One of these days I will write more about them and why I left them after almost twenty years, but it should suffice to say that they didn’t (and don’t) live up to their own hype. Tucows never opened Ting in Canada because of how fucked-up the Canadian cell phone market is, and they essentially said that to their Canadian clients … without using the four-letter word I used. 🙂

However, Ting was awesome for the approximately two years I used them. (They actually did live up to their hype!) They’re not any more, sadly, because they now operate based on the plan system like just about everyone else, rather than actually charging you for what you need and use. (Tucows sold Ting Mobile.)

Through Ting I bought a phone that was adequate for my needs, a US$60 smartphone. Why didn’t I spend a thousand dollars on an Iphone? Because I don’t give a fuck about fads like owning the latest and greatest tracking device. Simply put, I just needed a portable computer in my hands that would tell me when I had email that may or may not need my immediate attention. I roamed in Canada, of course, but that was still cheaper in the long run than owning a Canadian cell phone. Bizarre, but true! I also wasn’t scrolling through Facebook endlessly and watching videos on it; all it did, essentially, was check my email. (In January 2024, after Rogers and Bell coincidentally raised their rates at the same time by about the same amount — after Rogers bought Shaw and promised that being allowed to do that would cause rates to be lowered! — I’m again hearing other Canadians talking about getting a non-Canadian phone and roaming! With VoIP and Internet-based messengers like Signal, why not?! Welcome to the 21st century!)

I still have that $60 cell phone! I occasionally use it on wifi, but I suspect it wouldn’t be welcome on any cell networks in 2024, or be able to download the latest apps.

In 2019 I was enticed to join Freedom Mobile, to whom I refer as Troublesome Mobile. I am not generally someone who looks for the cheapest, nastiest deals around — quality is not cheap, but quality isn’t to be found in this industry at any price! — but considering the extent to which the Canadian cell industry, as I say, rapes the Canadian population, the deal was good for what I needed, a portable computer that let’s me check my business email when I’m out. I don’t know anyone who pays $15 a month (before taxes) to be connected wherever they go.

Troublesome Mobile offered a Motorola phone at a reasonable price, so I went for it. I had bought a Samsung tablet a few years before but, as I said at the time, “In a nutshell, I am mightily disappointed in my Samsung/Android tablet.” So there was no way I was gong to acquire a Samsung phone, and I never will seeing as they have become the Apple of the Android world. When looking for a new phone late last year, I decided on another cheap, unlocked phone from an electronics retailer. I mean, smartphones have been around for years now, right? Apple is up to the Iphone 132 now or something, I believe, and each iteration is a vast improvement over the one before, right?! Well, apparently not. I was well aware that my old Motorola had Motorola apps on it that imparted more functionality on the phone than what comes with Android the operating system, but I naïvely figured that by 2024 those things would be standard in the OS. Ha! They aren’t, but I knew I’d adapt … until my new Cat Phone wouldn’t play nicely with my network of (limited) choice.

So I returned it and, as I said, walked into the trap of the Canadian cell phone oligopoly and crawled back to Troublesome Mobile on my hands and knees and handed over a couple of hundred dollars for another, low-end Motorola. Now, with my new phone, I can again karate chop my torch on. Yippee. Sadly, I learned that the feature of my old phone whereby I could do a double wrist twist to turn on the camera doesn’t work any more. As I said, new versions of software don’t imply improvement.

I readily admit that my vast experience will all of three brands of smartphones doesn’t hold a candle to the experience of selfie queen Kim Kardashian, who can afford to buy (or is probably given) a new phone every week, but Motorola is one company that I’m reasonably content with … except for the fact that it’s owned by Lenovo, who are based in the hostage-taking PRC. Now all I need is a Motorola sponsorship so that I can get paid for my effusive words of high praise! 🙂

Excellent service (not!) at Visions Electronics, Vancouver

Dec 29th, 2023
by Craig.
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I did something for the first time in my life on Boxing Day, and that was go shopping looking for a Boxing Day deal, days after I had smashed my cell phone by dropping it. I’d done a bit of online research in advance, of course, so I already knew roughly what I wanted. My old phone was running Android 9 (“Pie”, to you weirdos that like to use silly words instead of version numbers) and the new one runs Android 12. (I’ll have more to say about how crappy Android 12 is in a future post. How Google gets away with selling a software product [as Microsoft does], even though it’s open source, without providing any kind of support except through their fanbois is beyond my understanding.) I’d also decided to shop at Visions Electronics, who had been open on South East Marine Drive at the north end of the Knight Street Bridge for a few years. I’d never been in there, so I thought it was time I had a look after driving past about a million times.

Although I wasn’t there at opening time, I was still surprised at how “un-busy” they were. It’s not as if the place was deserted, but I suppose they just didn’t have the deals people wanted. Apparently Boxing Day sales are a thing of the past, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday taking their place.

I first went over to the big “CELLULAR” sign, where I found … no cell phones. I eventually found a small cell-phone display (nowhere near the big “CELLULAR” sign!), but they were just selling phone packages from the Canadian cell-phone oligopoly (including my current provider, Troublesome Mobile, aka Freedom Mobile), which was definitely not why I was there. I just wanted an unlocked phone. The salesperson there was uninterested in helping me if I was looking for an unlocked phone — he was busy doing something else on a computer anyway, and I was unhelpfully interrupting him — and pointed to a desk where customers were apparently checking out and paying for goods.

Unlike the old A&B Sound, which used to be located further west on South West Marine Drive, the place wasn’t roaming with salespeople looking for marks, even though the interior decor is similar with boxes piled everywhere. Instead I made my way to the head of a short queue where I stated that I was interested in a Cat S42 smartphone, and that I had questions. Instead of a helpful salesperson being very interested in selling me a phone, all I received in response — besides a look at the phone in question — was aggression towards and disinterest in my questions, one of which was based on the visions.ca website reporting different specifications for the phone than the Cat Phones website. Just as I didn’t really want to have a phone with a smashed screen, I also didn’t want to drag out the process any longer than was necessary by going somewhere else or going back home empty-handed to restart my research for what has become a standard consumer good, but for which cell-phone companies charge sometimes four figures for their products!

Anyway, to make a long story short I handed over my money to the ungrateful salesperson and walked out with the new phone. Admittedly, I got it for $210 less than the price on the Cat Phones website, but considering how I felt I was not really welcome or wanted in their store, I don’t plan to go back for anything else. Just not gonna happen!

Updated, 2 January 2024: After wasting several hours of my life on the Cat Phone (not the Bat Phone!), both on the phone itself and on the line with Troublesome Mobile (aka Freedom Mobile) for the better part of two hours, I returned the phone today to Visions Electronics because, despite the fact that one would assume that the phone was manufactured according to “standards” by Bullitt Mobile Ltd. in the UK, Troublesome Mobile declared that it was an “off-brand” phone and it was incompatible with their MMS system! It so happened that I returned it to the same salesperson (Thomas Lai-Mana) who sold it to me and who was completely uninterested in answering my questions when I bought it. Surprisingly (or maybe not!), he wasn’t one bit interested in why I returned it!

I also returned it because, despite the fact that the Visions website states that the phone is compatible with “All known Canadian carriers” (which seems an odd way to put it) … it wasn’t! Frankly, I don’t know whether to blame Bullitt Mobile Ltd. or Troublesome Mobile, but I already have a very low opinion of Troublesome/Freedom Mobile, so let’s go with them.

I then unwillingly (but knowingly) walked into the trap laid by Canadian mobile operators and went to a Troublesome Mobile retail location and bought a Motorola Moto G Pure … for fifty bucks less. (I bought it outright, not on some stupid payment plan.) I’ll have more to say about this ongoing scam in due course, but I’ve got so much to complain about at the moment that I need to take a break for the sake of my sanity! 🙂

Updated, 8 January 2024: I mentioned my experience at Visions to a friend, and she told me she and her husband had had a similar negative experience with a TV purchase from them. If only I had known I could have avoided my experience!

Google denies me access to my Adsense earnings

Jun 30th, 2021
by Craig.
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Defaced Google logo

Defaced Google logo.

Back in 2015 (or perhaps late 2014) Google suddenly, without notice, stopped paying me the revenue I was earning on the Adsense adverts I had on some of my websites. They also completely removed my ability to make changes to my account that would result in my being paid in some other way.

Have you ever tried to contact Google? No? Well, I’m here to tell you that unless you’re feeding their coffers with muchos dollars, they’re not the slightest bit interested in dealing with you peons. I followed instructions to contact a mailing list / forum, but that was certainly an eye-opening experience. Despite the fact that I used my real name, there I dealt with a person named “Publisher1”. I dealt with other people too, but the fact of the matter is that these people, for free (!), do nothing but defend Google’s indefensible actions! I was even accused of tax evasion, based on absolutely no evidence!

The fact of the matter is that big companies, like Google (and others), develop a culture of rabid “fanbois” who are, quite apparently, willing and able to be marshalled — at no cost to and with no oversight from Google — to be their “customer support” department … if you can even call it that. These so-called customer support people are free to do things that no paid employee wearing the company logo would do or be allowed to do, like accuse Google’s users of being tax evaders. In my case it was alleged by one of these fanbois that Google had read my emails about my situation, but rather than replying in the forum directly to me and providing official advice, they only — again, allegedly — claimed that the supposed “solution” offered by one of their fanbois was correct. At no point did Google distance themselves from the false accusations against me.

Anyway, since before 2015 I have slowly — far too slowly, I will admit — disentangled myself from Google. (The reasons are unrelated to the spat I’ve described above, but this spat was emblematic of the reasons.) In 2015 I got nowhere with my dispute, and I moved onto more important matters. In late 2020 I received an email from Google telling me that if I didn’t sign into my Adsense account by January they would “escheat [my] AdSense account balance to the government.” A few months later, this they did! I then applied to the government of the US state to which they escheated my money, and I got it! Best outcome ever!

So fuck you, Google and fanboi Publisher1. I, and common sense, won.

Android issues

Nov 16th, 2015
by Craig.
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Google+ has stopped, which is very unfortunate.

Google+ has crashed, burned and died, which is terribly unfortunate

As I’ve alluded to before, my disappointment with the Android operating system created by Google is mighty. However, it reached a new low last week.

Suddenly I kept being presented with “Unfortunately, Google+ has stopped” errors that prevented me from doing anything until I tapped either “Report” or “OK”. I tapped “OK” the first few times, but then I thought, “Well, maybe I should be a good user and report this problem.” At first my reports were polite, but after being presented with this error every few seconds, sometimes one on top of the other while I was still trying to report the previous instance, I started to use four-letter words, usually two per report. Then I just gave up, and hit a few random letters before sending my report. I figured that after a few dozen reports something might be done. I am so naive!

Anyway, after a day or two of not being able to do anything on my tablet without constant interruption by the Google Plus app apparently crashing, I decided to take matters into my own hands. First of all, I don’t use Google Plus in any shape or form, but (of course) it’s a “system app” that you are forced to keep, so I rolled back the updates and disabled it. Then I went and disabled every single Google app I could identify except the six that I’m actually using:

  • Chrome,
  • Gmail,
  • Google Play service,
  • Google Play Store,
  • (Google) Maps, and
  • Youtube.

I have no doubt that there are more Google services on my tablet “phoning home” at every opportunity, but I probably can’t do much about those. As for the six that are left, short of “rooting” my device I probably can’t operate without the two “Play” apps, Gmail is on my list of things that I won’t need in the near future (and will disable) as I work diligently to stop using all Google services (I’ll be writing about that when I have some time), Chrome I’m keeping for now as I think it’s a good idea to have a second web browser on any machine (even if one of them is Google crap), Google Maps I will replace if or when I find something as good (in the meantime I’m fine using it with location services turned off), and Youtube … well, since it’s the world’s video sharing service, I won’t be disabling that any time soon, I suppose.

Speaking of rooting, I’m now way more inclined to do that than I was a couple of years ago when I bought this tablet. The only issue is that I don’t have the time to spend managing all of my computing resources. Technology was supposed to save us time, allowing us to frolic in fields of green with our friends and families while the computers did all the work. Instead we’re chained to them like slaves. How bloody ironic! Anyway, my tablet doesn’t seem to be on a list of supported devices for which there are instructions and software for rooting. Further digging reveals that I could probably work on it but … here we are back at the time excuse in this circular argument.

But here’s some further irony in this story: Once I had disabled all of the Google apps I could get my hands on, suddenly I could multitask again! Well, as well as you can on a tablet, I suppose. Where once I couldn’t switch to another app without it completely reloading from scratch, now I can get back to where I was mid-session with some of them. Firefox is the exception, which annoyingly reloads tabs from scratch every single time they’re re-selected.

Update, 29 November 2015: Having got on a roll and removed or (if it’s a “system app”) disabled any app that I’m not using, I was left with Samsung WatchON, which (after rolling back all of the updates) I can neither disable nor remove nor even stop. And yet, according to its Wikipedia article (as much research as I am willing to waste my time with), “App is discontinued on December 31, 2014 worldwide except US and Korea, and June 15, 2015 in those remaining two countries.” (The wording of that is not the only problem with the Wikipedia article.) When I try to run the app I’m told that it won’t run because the time on my device is wrong. Well, actually Samsung, it’s not. And so, having rolled back all of the updates so that I could disable this “system (cr)app”, I’m now running an out-of-date and possibly vulnerable app that I can neither stop, disable nor remove, and I keep being prompted to update it. Well, I guess I’d better update it then to stop the annoyance! Now when I try to run it I get an error message about not being able “to retrieve data from the server.” It helpfully suggest that I “Try again later. (1) [sic]”

Thanks, Samsung, you useless bastards.

Goodbye Windows! Goodbye Google!

Apr 8th, 2014
by Craig.
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The day is finally here! It’s 8 April 2014, and support for Windows XP has ended. Years ago — I really don’t remember how many — I swore that XP would be the last version of Windows that I’d run. Not because XP was any worse than versions of Windows before it; on the contrary, having finally reached a level of acceptable stability with Windows 2000, XP continued that and I was generally happy, although that happiness (contentedness, rather) has been badly tinged in the last couple of years by the fact that my older machine (still easily meeting the technical requirements for XP) got more and more bogged down by the crap that everyone feels they need to load into their web pages.

But back in the mists of time I saw where Microsoft was going with Windows, and I wanted no part of it. Whether they succeeded or not with their plans for DRM, I wanted no part of their philosophy. (Apple is even worse, not to mention ridiculously overpriced, so that certainly was never going to be an option.) Besides those issues, I recently helped a friend buy a new computer and I was just aghast at Windows 8. It’s horrible! Maybe as someone who got his start on an Apple ][ and then moved to DOS, I’m just an irrelevant old fuddy-duddy now, but I’m still a reasonably productive (no old-age home yet) and paying consumer, and Windows 8 would not do anything to help with my productivity.

So with the countdown clock winding rapidly down to today, I bought a new machine from System76 that came with Ubuntu Linux. I’m still getting my sea legs on it, but I’m very happy so far. If you’ve ever used swear words when dealing with Windows and you’d like to consider alternatives but you’re worried for some reason about trying Linux, don’t be. So far I’ve found that it feels like all that has happened to my daily experience is that what Windows calls the “task bar” has moved from the bottom of my screen to the left edge (I could probably move it, but I’m not that motivated to do so), the close button has moved to the top, left-hand corner from the right (but Alt-F4 still does the same thing), and I now have a thin combination between a task bar and a menu bar at the top of my screen. In other words, my mind is not preoccupied with figuring out how everything works, and I’m more productive because I have new hardware. It’s a win all around. As someone who has watched former Windows users (including myself) tear their hair out trying to figure out the so-called intuitive Mac operating system, I’m very happy so far.

Even selecting new applications has been a breeze so far, with one exception. Not counting background programs (generally those running in the Windows system tray), on Windows I generally manually run four programs as soon as I log on: an email client, a text editor, a web browser and a terminal window. On Windows these were Eudora, TextPad, Firefox and (of course) a DOS box.

I’ve been a Eudora user since version 2 (in April 1996 when I bought my first GUI-based computer running Windows 95), almost twenty years ago! Over time I tried Thunderbird, Outlook and Outlook Express (and considered others, not the least of which was Pegasus), but they all failed to impress me. Even when Qualcomm stopped developing Eudora in 2006 (version 7 for Windows, 6 for the Mac) I kept using it. (Don’t forget, the standards on which email is based go back to the 1960s!) Qualcomm passed along something — I’m not entirely sure what, other than the name, but not much and certainly no substantial code if any at all — to the Mozilla Foundation and they were supposed to develop a Thunderbird-based “new Eudora”, keeping as many of the features of Eudora as possible that made it such a superior email client. To make a lengthening story shorter (I should have seen the writing on the wall, given my lack of enthusiasm for Thunderbird), Eudora was pissed down the toilet and (known by then by the project name “Penelope” and then as Eudora OSE) died a cruel death. Ironically, the lack of Eudora on Linux (unless you run it in an emulator) was my biggest worry about switching to Linux, but circumstances have conspired to force my hand anyway.

TextPad is a great editor, although a Windows-only program, but Linux is famous for its text editors. (I mainly used TextPad as a note-taking and text-processing application anyway; for coding I used Notepad++ [Notepad Plus Plus, aka Notepad Double Plus].) Firefox runs on Linux; and of course Linux has a far better, more functional and more versatile command line. The fact that I have (with the significant exceptions of Eudora and TextPad that I’ve used for so long) been drawn to open-source software (even on Windows) means that I can keep using on Linux some of the programs I’ve been using on Windows: GIMP, KeePass, the aforementioned Firefox, and more. This is good.

So what am I using now for email on Linux? After some research I have (for now; I’m still evaluating) settled on Evolution as my new email client, but I may also evaluate Zimbra‘s email client. I’m also still using Gedit (the default editor in Ubuntu) with some plug-ins to replicate what I had with TextPad, but I haven’t made a final decision on that yet either.

Hopefully I’ll have more to say about GUI Linux and System76 in the near future.

And what does Google have to do with all of this? Well, the other thing that I am changing after so many years is the Web search engine I use. The last time I did that was when I switched from AltaVista to Google in the late nineties or early noughties! But today is about dumping particularly evil companies, so it seems a good time to double the celebration. Unfortunately, due to the reach of their evil I can’t dump Google entirely, but I’m making a first step by not feeding them with free data about my life through their search engine. I don’t trust anyone online any more, but for now DuckDuckGo seems as good a search engine to use. In fact, if they didn’t have such a stupid name I’d probably have realised what they were and switched much sooner!

Samsung and Android: Out-of-box failure

Mar 28th, 2014
by Craig.
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I learnt a new term recently while doing research related to configuring my Samsung/Android tablet: Out-of-box failure. The current definition (as of this writing) on Wikipedia that applies in this case is as follows: “Out of box failure … is a negative experience a user has when installing and/or performing initial configuration on a piece of hardware ….”

In a nutshell, I am mightily disappointed in my Samsung/Android tablet.

While I have damn nearly two decades of experience being the go-to guy for computer problems among some of my friends (not to mention providing technical support to paying clients for almost that long), managing a tablet (or smart phone) is a new experience for me. I expected to run into challenges, but I didn’t expect to be let down so severely.

I remember learning about Android years ago — long before it was even released — and at the time I was excited. (Well, as excited as I get anyway.) Here was a new operating system (albeit based on an old [and good] OS, UNIX, with which I have almost as much experience as I do with Windows) that was going to allow people to turn their “dumb phones” (akin to the one-trick pony sitting on your kitchen counter: the toaster) into handheld, portable computers, just like their bigger cousins sitting on laps or desks. Not only that, it was going to create competition for the monopoly at that time — Apple and iOS — giving its users the freedom to manage their devices as they saw fit rather than as the dictatorial manufacturer saw fit. Besides the fact that I am a fan of competition, I have no love for Apple or their products. I specifically dislike the control they exert over the consumers of their products, the people who put ridiculous amounts of money into Apple’s coffers. Either you do it Steve Jobs’ way, or you can suck wind:

And yet, here I am — definitely not an “early adopter”! — with a new Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, running Android of course, and I find that I’m being railroaded into having to do things according to the Gospel of Google:

  • First, if you want to do anything useful with your tablet (other than read reams and reams of dire legal agreements as you run each app for the first time), you have to sign up for a Google/NSA account. If you don’t want to do that, you might as well return your tablet or use it for a paperweight, frisbee, coaster, or for skipping on a lake like you would with a stone.
  • Then, if you want to dump crap like Dropbox … well, you can’t! It’s a “system app”, so you can’t uninstall it. You can disable it, but only after you roll back the updates that were installed after you finally broke down and gave your name and email address to Google and the NSA.
  • The other thing I have found my Samsung/Android tablet is useful for is spam. Not sending spam or stopping it, but reading it. The fucking thing is always whistling at me or interrupting what I’m doing to ask me if I want to sign up for one Google service or another, or to remind me that I haven’t yet set up yet another “system app” (Peel Smart Remote in this case) that I also have no intention of ever using. Plus I’m now getting spammed by YouTube (“Happy dances around the world” for fuck’s sake), even though I keep clicking the “unsubscribe” link and even though the link takes me to a YouTube page that tells me that my “current setting” is “off”. Let me give you arseholes a tip: If you want me to use your software or service, hijacking my email account and the device for which I paid a couple of hundred dollars and generally pissing me off is a guaranteed losing strategy. This kind of shit is why, in the desktop world, the first thing I do with a new computer is “format c:” and install a fresh and unadulterated copy of the operating system to get rid of all the “crapware” cluttering the desktop and hard drive that companies have paid to have added to the system, but which is generally of little or no use to any thinking user. I suspect that once I get the hang of this, I will similarly root any future new Android device I buy (or work on) immediately.

OK, so as I think I understand it (I’m just guessing at this point in my learning experience, actually), it’s the decision of the device manufacturer to decide what apps are “system apps”, so I need to blame Samsung for that … and they (and Google) are starting to look more and more like Apple to me. This isn’t even a cell phone attached to one of the evil members of the cell phone cartel, who speciously claim that they must control what software runs on my phone — it’s just a tablet, which to me should be no different than a desktop computer when it comes to installing what I want on it — so I fail to understand why I am forced to keep apps that I have no intention of ever using, such as Dropbox and Peel Smart Remote. (Hasn’t Google learnt from Microsoft’s experience about bad behaviour like this in the latter’s various anti-trust lawsuits launched by the American and European governments?) To me this is like being forced to live with a slovenly neighbour from down the street, because the Communist Party Housing Authority said so. No thanks.

Although I have had this tablet for almost three months now, it has taken me this long to get over my feelings of loathing and dread (for all of the above reasons) and find the time to get this far in the experience, where I have finally installed my choice of web browser (Firefox, which crashes daily for no apparent reason) and anti-virus (Avast), and a crashing (because it wants to use the now disabled Dropbox) KeePassDroid so that I can actually access useful services that I use for which I need to log in. (Two out of three apps crashing; not what I would call “out-of-box happiness”.) I don’t have all the time in the world to screw around with this crap, as educating as it is, so time will tell whether or not this tablet turns out to be a productive and useful tool, or another listing on Craigslist.

It will also determine what new cell phone I buy shortly, ending my one-man, seven-year boycott of the anti-competitive cell phone industry, and a “dumb phone” (also known as a “feature phone”, although I can’t figure out why when it has only one feature!) or continuing with no phone is starting to look like a mighty attractive option right now.

Stay tuned!

Google search going downhill?

Oct 13th, 2011
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

After being frustrated by the results in a Google search yet again, I submitted the following feedback to Google under the category “Google’s search results weren’t helpful” and the sub-category “The results included a page that was irrelevant”:

You searched for shaw vod 33319.

Please list which site or sites were irrelevant.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=55214
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=127023
https://secure.shaw.ca/apps/digital_services/GuideErrors.asp

… and probably the rest of the results, but I didn’t go past the top three.

Why were they irrelevant?

I’m finding more and more that Google ignores one or more of my search terms, trying to be too clever for its own good. For example, while the third result on the secure.shaw.ca domain would be relevant if I was looking for a way to contact my cable company (Shaw) about the VOD (video on demand) error (33319) I am receiving, it’s absolutely useless as a result that tells me immediately what error 33319 is.

In this case “33319” does not even appear anywhere in the page at any of the top three search results. Why then are these pages included in the results if I’m searching for “all of the words” (Google’s wording) I have entered, and not “one or more of these words”? And this happens even when all of my search terms are actually words, unlike this case where one of the search terms is a string of numbers.

Please don’t make me use a Microsoft product for my searches. The last time I switched search engines was from AltaVista to Google.

For those of you with short memories or who weren’t around “BG” (before Google), AltaVista was the search engine back in the day. They even provided search results for Yahoo, before going into decline and eventually becoming a part of Yahoo. Now it’s just a point of entry into the Yahoo search system. I don’t even remember exactly when I switched, but it was probably in the early 2000’s.