“Hello there – is this Gordon’s Pizza?” “No, sir – it’s Google’s Pizza.” “I must have dialled a wrong number. Sorry.” “No, sir, this is the correct nu
[See the full post at: Ordering a pizza]
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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
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Ordering a pizza
- This topic has 49 replies, 26 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 5 months ago.
AuthorViewing 24 reply threadsAuthor-
Way to go Woody! You got it right (sad to say).
Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's1 user thanked author for this post.
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Great timing, considering I just finished one, rubs belly with satisfaction.
Nice composition too. Probably explains why I’m a bit of a privacy nut.
Win 8.1 (home & pro) Group B, W10/11 Avoider, Linux Dabbler
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Just what I wanted a decade ago. Guess technology can’t keep up with my demand. Now I want Google to auto flush my toilet after I poop and analyze my poop on the fly to predict what illness is coming my way before it hits me and deliver the medication via drone right to my door.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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Sir, You’re Internet Service Provider records indicate that you have been visiting the askwoody.com website on a regular basis. Trying to gain knowledge on how to prevent data acquisition of how you use your computer. What are you trying to hide?
I have nothing to hide, I just like to close my window shades at night when I’m changing into my pajamas. Why, because no society can survive when nothings private.
Dell, W10 Professional, 64-bit, Intel Core i7 Quad, Group A
HP, W7 Home Premium, 64-bit, AMD Phenom II, Group A
18 users thanked author for this post.
Morty,
HiFlyer,
Lori,
JDeC,
AJNorth,
Rock,
samak,
woody,
SueW,
Noel Carboni,
Elly,
FakeNinja,
windows7wasthebest,
BobbyB,
Microfix,
GoneToPlaid,
Cybertooth
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THIRD BASE.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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“Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.”
— Niels Bohr
9 users thanked author for this post.
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Hee Hee..
‘According to Cortana and your mobile phone, amazon echo and third party smart devices, you have disabled CEIP, Diagnostic Telemetry, Windows Update and are missing MSRT and various important upgrade patches in your PC. In order for your PC to work correctly, please activate these services, tasks and install the security application with missing patches.’
‘Yep, it must be approaching patch Tuesday then’
Windows - commercial by definition and now function... -
going to an island without the Internet, without cable TV – some place where there is no cell phone service and no one to spy on me!!”
Well I used to know an Island just like that some where in the South China sea but alas cell phones are sadly now all the rage, gone are the days if got a call some one had to go and get you on a bike and drag you to the Town Phone in the Market. Needless to say ordering Pizza was nigh impossible, like you wanted one in the tropics any way, just too busy doing nothing on the Beach with an ice cold Singha watching the world go by lol
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While we’re on the subject of cell phones – I have one too, it’s a flip phone and it stays turned off 99% of the time. I got it mainly to have for emergency use (car breakdown, etc.) Sometimes I wonder how many people know that they can actually turn their cell phones completely off. I’ve only had to charge my phone maybe twice a year.
It is very aggravating to see so many people either yapping away or walking around in near oblivion with eyes glued to a cell phone texting or playing games. It’s been looking like the inside of a Borg Cube (Star Trek) for some time now.
Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's -
As a former professor of mine was fond of saying (rather wistfully sometimes), “New things are needed for progress, I’m told. Well, you take the new things; I’ll keep the old.”
Then there was a New England poet who put it this way:
Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town. — Robert Frost: "Directive" (1946)1 user thanked author for this post.
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Faith in technology today is like faith in Progress was in the Fifties, a delusion.
Technology can and will be put to evil as well as beneficial uses. A large contingent of people already believe that because the State pays for health care costs, the State should tax those who make poor health choices. Some, like smoking, are so disapproved that they can be penalized by insurers. There are many who would like to see a tax on anyone whose body mass index exceeds a prescribed level. Technology will help implement that. And then those who control it will start dreaming of what else it can do, in the same way that E-Z Pass toll collection has gradually come to be used for law enforcement and outright spying.
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I noticed the ads I viewed on Amazon are following me right to your sight…
1 user thanked author for this post.
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I have uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger running interference for me. Do they help? Who knows?
But I have both of them turned off for AskWoody.com and the Lounge because they block ads that help Woody pay the bills … and help us all. So, paradoxical as it may sound, I invite the “snooping” for this site.
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I have uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger running interference for me. Do they help? Who knows? But I have both of them turned off for AskWoody.com and the Lounge because they block ads that help Woody pay the bills … and help us all. So, paradoxical as it may sound, I invite the “snooping” for this site.
They do help very much to block or at least greatly reduce tracking. On any more typical site, that would have been my answer… just run an adblocker (and preferably a scriptblocker like NoScript too) and those creepy ads that follow you and know who you are will be gone.
As you noted, though, we’re trying to help Woody here by not disabling the ads, and deleting the cookies will stop the tracking without stopping Woody from being paid for serving the Amazon ad. It will still appear; it just won’t show ads for stuff you may have looked at before or track your movements around the web.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
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Okay, Woody may very well be my favorite web-bot
but that won’t make me neither whitelist the site nor disable my adblocker! It’s a principle for me… at least until May 25 next year…To compensate for the loss of ad income I sometimes send Woody a little sum, that I hope, he’ll spend on a bottle of wine or a good beer.
Now I don’t know the amount of income he’ll miss due to my ad blocking, but I don’t think, we’re talking “millions”?
For fun I’ve tried disabling my Adguard adblocker and then surf around different sites… oh boy. That’s a sure short-cut to insanity!
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Considering I am in my 50’s I guess for me having a data base with so much personal information is scary. Considering the fact a lot of these facilities don’t appear to be able to keep it very safe. The ideal of knowing you better, means helping you better. But you should be able to say no thanks, I don’t want your nosy help, and stay out of my business.
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THIRD BASE.
I don’t know, poor Costello, heh heh heh.
Win 8.1 (home & pro) Group B, W10/11 Avoider, Linux Dabbler
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Once again for the benefit of those visitors who may not “get it” (nor even know that there was a time when humor was more gentle ― and clever):
Who’s on First? by Abbott & Costello1 user thanked author for this post.
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Great posting, Woody.
When I was little, long time ago, television was not yet around in my part of the world; it was something like Dick Tracy’s wrist radio, something of the future.
The year 2000 came around, with both tv, cable, wireless telephones and the Web riding on the Internet, and for a moment it seemed like one part of the long hoped for future had truly arrived, the realization of a dream. Alas, this happy dream turned out to be wrapped around something much less enticing. Just like ordering pizza might be, in some not too distant day.
We finally could watch TV on the go and in HD, with a mobile phone… and it was all reality shows. We could get in touch with everyone in the whole world… and also be tricked in the privacy of our own homes by uninvited con artists, or get our personal data stolen or hoovered to be sold to unknown third parties.
It is as if we, of the human race, cannot help ourselves from doing to death everything that tickles our fancy. And, having done that past the breaking point , we are also not very good at fixing things up.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV7 users thanked author for this post.
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Great post! Sadly, it would be a lot funnier if it weren’t so frighteningly true. Personal privacy is fast becoming an endangered species, but for those of us with enough gray hair to remember what real personal privacy is (was?) and who value it, surrendering our privacy without a fight is not an option.
If Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and their ilk refuse to respect our privacy, we can refuse to use their services, or if for whatever reason we have to use them, we can use every means at our disposal to thwart their data collection. I’ve never started with FB or other social media and I use the DuckDuckGo and Startpage.com search engines instead of Google because they don’t track my activities. As to operating systems, though I’ve exclusively used DOS and multiple Windows variants since 1985, I refuse to hand over control of my OS to Microsoft by installing their data-grabbing Windows 10, nor will I give Apple access to my digital life either, which leaves me with Linux.
Unlike the Microsoft and Apple OS’s, Linux is not only free to all but also open source, so even if anyone tried to slip any malicious or privacy-invading code into a Linux distro, it would quickly be discovered, the users would be warned, and the distro named, shamed, and avoided. Being open source keeps all the developers honest, and besides, since Linux is not developed by a corporation, but by independent teams of developers around the world, there’s no motive to “do evil” for corporate gain.
Mobile phones are a more difficult issue to deal with, for although there are phones on the market which run on a Linux OS, I’ve not yet come across any with the wealth of apps we’re used to with Android (actually based on a proprietary variant of Linux) or Apple phones. I can’t speak for Apple products, but with Android phones we can keep our location turned off except when absolutely necessary, opt out of every possible data-sharing option with Google, and regularly check and purge any and all collected data from our Google accounts. We can turn off any unnecessary, privacy-compromising permissions for any app on the phone and use encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp or Signal, along with a VPN to help keep us anonymous and protect our privacy.
Personal privacy is far more difficult to maintain in this digital age than it used to be, but for those who still care about preserving their privacy, it can be done, at least to a considerable degree. As for those who don’t care about their privacy, they can just sit back, relax, and order another pizza…
Group 7-L (W7, heading toward Linux)
W7 Pro x64 SP1
Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64-bit
Linux Mint 17.1 Xfce 32-bit -
so even if anyone tried to slip any malicious or privacy-invading code into a Linux distro
For anyone thinking Linux is immune from malware and/or security vulnerabilities, I recommend reading the various topics in Linux for Windows wonks and the NCAS Weekly Vulnerability Summary, for instance.
And from Catalin Cimpanu on BleepingComputer:
New KRACK Attack Breaks WPA2 WiFi Protocol
By Catalin Cimpanu | October 16, 2017The KRACK attack is universal and works against all type of devices connecting or using a WPA2 WiFi network. This includes Android, Linux, iOS, macOS, Windows, OpenBSD, and embedded and IoT devices.
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What offends me about the image is that it is not attributed to any web page. And it is an anonymous posting. And it offers zero references and no proof of exactly what information is transmitted and to whom/where. If you want your posts to be taken seriously, you will have to provide much better documentation than this.
Also, one part of this image contains an attack on the founder of DuckDuckGo for being “a Jew”. Enough said.
-- rc primak
7 users thanked author for this post.
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It’s not like you weren’t warned about coarse language, and coarse language doesn’t automatically means claims are invalid.
I am not going to argue this back and forth, because then I’d have to make an account and I’d rather spend my time on literally anything else than doing that.
What I’m saying is: Don’t blindly assume people are telling you the truth online, especially not when there’s money involved.
I am aware that the image is ~2 years old by now and things could’ve changed, but my inner cynic doubts it.
I am also aware of the irony in me telling others not to blindly trust people on the internet, while being anonymous myself.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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if anyone tried to slip any malicious or privacy-invading code into a Linux distro, it would quickly be discovered, the users would be warned, and the distro named, shamed, and avoided
That’s not the way it works with Linux.
There have been documented cases where security holes in the Linux Kernel, used by all Linux distros, have not been patched for many years. Avoiding distros based on their current patching history is made nearly impossible by the large number of distros out there, and the fact that not all Linux distros patch on the same schedule. By the time a distro is called out, often it has already been patched, or a patch is in the works. (Although some distros are notorious for not patching security issues.)
Then there is the problem of end users. Linux users can be so convinced that there is no Linux malware, that they run old, unpatched versions, or do not do regular patching. This is how several corporate data breaches have happened lately.
Linux security does require paying attention to your own patching and security status. There are rootkits and other forms of Linux malware, and there are tools which run very fast and can scan any Linux installation and warn of actual or possible malicious code. Obscurity does not equal security anymore, if it ever was so.
I scan my Ubuntu Linux once or twice monthly with ClamTK and two rootkit scanners. I keep the logs and warnings to compare with future runs. If anything changes, I use VirusTotal or other tools to determine the likelihood the changes are malicious. So far, no cause for alarm. I also keep up with patching on a weekly basis, something I would never dare to do with Windows due to munged Windows Updates.
I have seldom if ever had an update to my Ubuntu mess up the installation, though I have done things on my own which have made a mess. This is why I back up with Clonezilla and restore if things get messed up. Backup and restore operations are much faster in Ubuntu than in Windows.
Updating and security scanning take up very little of my time in Ubuntu, whereas in Windows, just updating third party software takes more time than my entire updating and scanning process in Ubuntu. Performing a file system scan in Windows takes almost a half a day with four different tools, compared with a couple of hours at most in Ubuntu with three different tools.
-- rc primak
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To keep up with vulnerabilities, patches a.o. I like to read http://www.linuxsecurity.com
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Brian Krebs started being interested in security after trying Linux and got bitten…
https://krebsonsecurity.com/about/
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StartPage HTTPS has been my hands-down choice for over a decade. Moreover, they also maintain a stand-alone proxy service, Ixquick Proxy, which has been incorporated into both their StartPage and ixquick search engines, thus allowing users the option to open all search results via proxy. (In fact, they are now developing a privacy-protecting email service.)
Here is a recent and in-depth discussion of, and comparison between, the two: DuckDuckGo or StartPage (updated 2017.03.02).
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“Enough! I’m sick to death of Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others!! I’m going to an island without the Internet, without cable TV – some place where there is no cell phone service and no one to spy on me!!”
“Sir, may I suggest XYZ island? The food they eat there matches the kind of food you have been ordering in restaurants for the past 20 years. And based on the comments you have posted on Facebook about the weather, XYZ island should have the perfect climate for you. Would you like for me to make travel arrangements for you?”
Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server -
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@Jan K.,
What is going to happen on May 25th next year? Sounds a little ominous!
:-0“Woody may very well be my favorite web-bot but that won’t make me neither whitelist the site nor disable my adblocker! It’s a principle for me… at least until May 25 next year…”
—–
P. T.
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The following is from user “Poohsticks” —
For the past 3 years, I’ve contributed on this site under a few different names – D., D.D., Poohsticks, and maybe one or two more in that time.
(I always mentioned that I was switching names, not trying to hide my tracks; switched to the very unique “Poohsticks” to allow me to search for my own AskWoody posts on an external search engine, because the old forum didn’t allow me to search for only one or two letters – e.g., looking for the two-letter name “D.D.”.
I was trying to find an easier way to keep track of the thread discussions where I’d contributed a comment, because the site offered no way for one to tell if anyone had left a response to one’s comment.)
Anyway…
Regarding the post 140115 above about the DuckDuckGo founder, that anonymous post was not by me,
I have seen it today as I’m jumping around this site, getting acquainted with the “new” forum (haven’t really been around in about a year) —
decided not to click on the link provided in that post — no need to — I am against discrimination, which other peoples’ replies here have indicated that that link promotes,
but I will say, completely separate from those issues,
that I have known about the past privacy-disregarding behavior of the person who founded DuckDuckGo for years –
I read several legit articles about it (not from discriminatory sources) perhaps 5 years ago, and I have occasionally said in forum comments that people might want to research a little more into the founder, rather than just believing it when other people on the internet say, “Oh that site is safe and it believes very much in privacy, we trust it because that site says we should.”
I am certain that in the past on AskWoody I have mentioned the iffy history of the DuckDuckGo founder at least once or twice…
[here is one of those times: https://askwoody.com/forums/topic/more-about-the-interlocking-gwx-patches-kb-3035583-and-2952664/#post-45673 ] —
I also questioned Woody about why he recommended DuckDuckGo and not Startpage/Ixquick as “safe” search engines. (He replied something along the lines of — that he didn’t have any information about Startpage/Ixquick so that’s why he didn’t mention them one way or the other when he was recommending safe “search” websites to use.)
[this is that post: https://askwoody.com/forums/topic/massive-batch-of-optional-non-security-windows-patches-precede-october-changes/#post-34195 ]
It’s been years since I’ve looked into the DDG guy — as I type, little snippets are popping into my memory, maybe it was something about Pittsburgh, PA, maybe what I read was an article in the main city paper… or perhaps it was in a kind of “lifestyle” magazine that comes in a Sunday supplement section… this would have been many years ago, when he sold his social media site and also sold the private details of all the members of his site, even though he had promised them he wouldn’t.
I am about 90% sure that, at the time I was looking into this those several years ago, I even read on the DDG founder’s own website where he admitted to doing so, and he apologized for doing that to the people whom he had promised that their information was always going to be safe with him. That’s when I decided that I would use something other than DDG, because other options were available.
A couple years after that, I went back to his website to find that essay where he had apologized for that, and it was gone. He had changed around his site and also taken down some photos (I think they were of his house, maybe a house renovation or purchase, or a story about how to set up a simple home office when you are beginning a start-up, something like that), maybe a story of how he had met or proposed to his girlfriend, and other stories that he used to have on there. (At the time, I didn’t know about the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, so I didn’t check there for the deleted pages.)
I don’t know what the offending link posted in comment 140115 claims about the DDG guy, but I just wanted to state that some people’s concerns about the past of that founder are not based on having any discriminatory views about his family history/religion/etc. — years ago, when I looked into whether I personally wanted to trust the glowing recommendations for DDG, I wouldn’t have noticed or wondered what the founder’s religion/family history was.
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@AJNorth, post 140255 —
On AskWoody, for a couple of years now (as user “Poohsticks”, prior to that as “D.D.”, prior to that as “D.”), from time to time, I have mentioned Startpage/Ixquick and encouraged people to try them out.
Sadly, in the past few months, I have noticed a huge reduction in the quality of the search results from Startpage/Ixquick. I have also seen on other forums where people have mentioned the same thing.
There was one search comparison someone made online a few months ago where you could really see that something weird and limiting was going on.
Nowadays, depending on what search you do, you might get only 2 pages of results, even though Startpage says it comes from Google, and Google will have dozens of pages of results for the same terms.
Especially with Ixquick anymore, I often get “nothing was found for your search”, which is ridiculous, when other search engines can find a bunch of entries for the search.
Ixquick/Startpage have been my default search engines for years, but I would definitely move, if there were something else that I could be halfway sure were halfway trustworthy (I don’t know if they are, either).
The following search engine is not great for everything, it is a non-profit, unaffiliated German site, but it has sometimes given me results I was looking for that no other search engine has offered, and they allow a proxy mode where you open it on their system and they just show you a picture of it, rather than having your own system be recorded as opening the page —
(I also frequently use the proxy mode of Ixquick/Startpage but nowadays that often doesn’t work and I just get a blank page, while the following site often succeeds in showing me what I am trying to see via proxy)
they are a non-profit NGO with open source code
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For Poohsticks (a lovely game, by the way, if I recall your reference rightly), and others concerned over privacy of search engines, or privacy in general.
I find it convenient to think of the internet as an amalgam of the public library, the lawn of Central Park, and sending postcards without envelopes. If I would be embarrassed to ask at the desk, or be seen in public, or have the postman read my message; then maybe I should not use the internet for that task. If I think I may suffer actual harm from my actions, maybe I should not do them at all.
We are assured of privacy in our own homes only when we close the blinds. The screen I am currently typing on is just another ‘window’ to the outside world. When I leave it open, I have no assurance of privacy. I tried three times to rewrite that without sounding like a Microsoft advertisement. Failed each time.
These other devices that are on topic here, simply add more ways for the world to observe us. What we chose to do while being observed is up to us.
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