Tuesday, December 8, 2015

The Well-behaved Computer....


Both my computers are dual-booting between Linux Mint and Windows 10, but I am not using the Windows 10 nearly as much as I have been. 

I have been one of the millions of volunteer testers of Windows 10 since the 15th of November, 2014, and I still am, but after all those months of using it as my everyday computer system, I have to be honest and say that I'm just getting bored with it. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that.... It's a nice system, and Microsoft's head guru, Satya Nadella, wants us to 'Love our Windows'. I have been trying to do that, and our testers' feedback system works wonderfully for problems and suggestions, but I still have the nagging feeling that Windows 10 is more like "Big Brother" than "The Girl Next Door". And I would like the latter rather than the former.

As my once upon a time Dentist said "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that the world isn't out to get you!" And 443 tracking cookies planted into my Windows 10 in less than 24 hours since it was last purged of spyware strikes me as being just a wee bit too many. 

If you are using Linux Mint, don't forget to enable your Firewall.

Open your Terminal, and type: sudo ufw enable. Press enter and follow the prompt. 

More about Firewall (ufw)...

It responds to most commands in Terminal, but when I try to disable it,  then check its status to verify that, it says it has done as I requested, but it is actually still running, and the problem with that is, it won't let my blog page in Google Blogger show the sign-in control button. So as long as the firewall is running, and I can't stop it, then I can't get into my blog here unless I scroll down to the bottom of the first page, then click on the word "Blogger" in the phrase "Powered by Blogger". That in turn takes me to a new sign-in page for Google. Sign in there, and then I am taken to an editing page in the blog. What a pain in the ass! And all because I enabled that goddamned firewall that now will not disable. It accepts its "disable" command, says it is disabled, but is not. So my advice is to  stay away from that firewall. It comes set to off by default, and now I know why. If you enable the damned thing, you're stuck with a fuck-up you can't fix!

3 comments:

  1. But, Ray you can turn cookies off. Personally I have it set to prompt me whether I want a cookie put there or not.

    Am I missing something here? OR won't Windoz 10 allow you to do this?

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, you're not missing anything, and cookies can be turned off.
    But part of being in the testing program includes being willing
    to accept all the tracking cookies and all that stuff, so that
    Microsoft and its "partners" can see what you're doing with it,
    and what the results were, and where you went to try it all out.

    But sometimes I get tired of living in the "showroom window".

    ReplyDelete