Decisions, decisions.....

Desktops: Browsers: Percentage of total

A recent article in Ars Technica babbles on for four pages about how Internet Explorer is still king of the hill. I'm from the 'KISS' school of thought, and the
'Keep-It-Simple-Stupid' version is a one-pager, mostly visual, because I like pictures.... so here's a pie chart telling the whole story:-

While I'm at it, here's the pie chart for Operating Systems for Desktops:

It's all Showbiz, Folks!

You can't get to Heaven using politics. You might not get to Heaven with religion either, but your chances are better....

 

My favorite Media Player.....

Before and after sundown

Prognosticatively speaking......

More of that 'News Bento' App... a book review.

The Great White North: It's back!

Have you tried this? - here's a look...

This is a combination of sources available in one App, and it looks good.... below is a sample from it....

Just wondering: Is Joe Biden really the Rodney Dangerfield of American politics?
Maybe he should move up here to Canada and run against 'Hairspray' Harper for the position of Number One Whip-cracker in the Country. Everybody wins!

Today's 'Question Everything'...

Hillary's bio in Wikipedia begins with an impressive list of what she was, almost as if she's no longer with us. And in a sense, she isn't. She's 66, technically an old age pensioner, and presumably has 'hung up her guns' and 'packed it in' and retired. But old War Horses when they get the bit in their teeth tend to run with it, so today's 'Question Everything' is: "When is enough 'enough'?"

Movies....

I haven't gone out to a movie since 'Bridges of Madison County' and that's 18 years ago now. I liked it, because Clint Eastwood played something other than a bloodthirsty gunman. The multiplex where it was showing left a lot to be desired though. The floor and seats had popcorn scattered around, and it looked like the place hadn't had a good cleaning since it had been built over an older single movie theater a few years before. That helped persuade me against going back.

The rest of the persuasion comes from looking over the current crop of offerings
they're euphemistically calling 'movies' these days, instead of naming them for the glimpses of Hell or Purgatory most seem to portray, and which few if any of us would actually want to visit. What's happened to the current crop of movie makers, to make them focus so much on the blood and guts and gore instead of showing us something to inspire us to try to become better or finer human beings? Where are they getting their definition of 'entertainment'? From Hell?
It often looks that way from my vantage point here in the big chair...

If you use the Firefox browser.....

Firefox is my favorite browser, even though I also have Opera and I.E. 10 also. Lately, however, since a recent automatic update, it hasn't been closing properly when being shut down. Today, while trying to fix that problem by re-installing it,
I got into another problem that took even longer to fix....

It seems some smart-ass has spoofed a download site for it, and added into the mix several items of 'bloatware' including one new taskbar, which I didn't see any option for refusing during the install. I should have stopped right there. But I went ahead and installed Firefox, and then followed a lot of trouble getting rid of that unwanted add-on, called 'Mysearchdial'. Instructions said to simply go to the Control Panel's 'Programs and Features' (formerly Add/Remove Programs) and delete it from there. Did that. It disappeared from that list, but not from my computer.

I went into Firefox Add-ons, and selected 'Remove' for it there. It still wasn't gone from the lists of items in Firefox 'about:config' accessed from the address bar and showing all the various choices for tuning the browser's code. I went down that list, and disabled as much of its stuff as I could safely understand, and then having reset my search choice to Google, I checked yet another website for advice, and that seemed as if I'd done everything already.

Then, I ran a virus scan, because some of the sites I'd been checking said that this could be installing malware even though it wasn't malware itself. So to find out if I had any infection on here, I ran a scan with Malwarebytes Pro, and it found 14 items that shouldn't be here. It removed them, and a couple of other follow-up scans indicate the machine is now clean again. And all of that took a
nerve-wracking hour or so. All because I didn't check carefully enough when the little download window came on screen. Make sure it says that your download is coming from Mozilla.org and not somewhere else. And those 14 items weren't already on here from earlier, because I'd already ran one scan first thing this morning, right after start-up. So I'm sure those all came with that toolbar that I didn't want. And the guy who wrote that it could be installing malware was right. It did. Luckily, I caught it before it was here very long. So watch where your downloads are really originating from and if that's not where you thought,
then stop right there, and save yourself a lot of trouble. Verify that you're on the right source before you download something. It can save time and aggravation. 

Suggestion.....

They should all apply for jobs signing up applicants for Healthcare.gov to replace the faulty computers and get the show on the road.....

Have I a morbid fascination for bad news?

And is there any other kind of news? I sometimes wonder, don't you?

Another senseless killing, this time at the L.A. Airport, but Hey! Let's hear it for the NRA!.... A headmaster at a private school busted for child porn, like there isn't enough of the adult kind to go around these days on the Internet....and a headline underneath that proclaiming that the Taliban needs a new leader now,
like as if they're accepting applications and doing interviews for the position.
And why do all those guys seem to be channeling Genghis Khan? Do they all aspire to being dead for 786 years like he is? One wonders...

Sometimes, I just feel like shouting "Stop the world! I want to get off! Let me out of here! You bastards are all crazy!" Do you ever feel like that? At times like that, I'm absolutely convinced that the human race is a failed experiment, and
Whoever did this regrets it...

When I was younger, and knew it all, I used to snicker at those who were talking about "the last days", or "we're nearing The End", like they had some kind of inside information none of the rest of us could discover from the same sources presumably they were using. Now, I'm not so sure....sometimes, I even think it might not be such a bad idea after all. Just bring on the Revelations trick of the Heavens and the Earth being rolled up like a scroll, with fire and brimstone, and surround sound, in 3D, something like what happened on Mars about three and a half billions of years ago, and let's just start all over again....

Just Ug and Mug, those intrepid cavemen, with their merry little band of almost humans, learning how to burn vegetables and small critters over an open fire, to make them easier to chew, and maybe taste a little better. Never mind more digestible; that wouldn't be known or understood for millennia yet.... just the oft dreamed of 'simple life', like Raquel shared with John Richardson in "One Million Years B.C.", and no, children, this wasn't the story of the early days of our beloved British Columbia..... This was 'B.C.', - Before Catholicism - and that's a
whole other story, so maybe I'd better stop here for now... 

Here's Raquel and John in 'One Million Years B.C.', trying to avoid the dinosaurs while looking for a spot to open the first-ever 'Hooters'.....

 

Owls...another Win-8 Theme

Here's a couple of samples......

Count the undernourished in this picture...

Another new theme for Win-8

Ain't technology wonderful?

Today's 'Question Everything'....

With all the difficulties around signing up, and given that it's well known the Republicans and in particular their wild-eyed 'Tea Party' fringe, sponsored by the Koch brothers and their many special interest groups are opposed to Obamacare in any form, is it possible they've hired hackers to sabotage that website where everyone is trying to sign up? 

My next question would be related to that, and would be 'What have they got against having a healthy America? Do they think sick Americans would love them more or be more likely to vote for them?'

Sometimes, the convolutions of American politics simply boggle the mind.

Last 'sundown' of October, such as it was...

We get a lot of gloomy weather this time of year.