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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
Seems over the last couple years comments and replies have been getting much more “snippy” and/or “confrontational”, at least in my mind. Nothing targeted at me, just a general vibe I’ve been picking up. Maybe it’s just me. I just don’t enjoy visiting near as much as I used to.
There, I said it. It has been on my mind for some time.
Generally speaking social media and the last several years have made us all a bit grumpy. All of us here do our very best to maintain civility.
It’s ultimately us humans helping each other that make things work. Not vendors, not technology, but humans communicating with each other. Thank you for participating here and remember you can always reach me at sb@askwoody.com.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Society in general has become less civil and I fear it will become worse. I know I’m a dinosaur, but I think etiquette and manners are dying just like me. Social media should be called anti-social media (and also anti-intellectual).
I do cut people some slack while in forums, however. Sometimes I’m unsure whether English is the native language of an individual and perhaps nuances are being misconstrued.
I’ve moderated my share of community forums and it’s a endless job.
The common things I see are that people don’t search correctly and forums don’t really have enough guides or FAQs for common issues and those are frequently not updated.
Topics, questions/answers can be buried in pages of dialogue. In my opinion, any long threads are useless as they over grow and should be summarized in a FAQ. Plus, many times the answers are inconsistent. Another reason, I believe, is that the “Internet” has made us impatient. Everyone wants a quick, step by step answer….. regardless of the complexity of the problem or the lack of good communication.
Mike
DriftyDonN, I forgot to write about searching in AskWoody and was just coming back to fix that but you got here first. Often one should do both. I think that the Web search can be more focused, because with the search words one can form more descriptive sentences. Often it is not even necessary to know the right words to start a Web search and, sometimes, such a search may help found those words that one can then use to search in AskWoody.
Searching effectively takes practice wherever it is made, though.
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 AV
Hello CyberSAR, it is me that anonymous guy again and I was anonymous back in 2015 when Wood ran things. i use to pose a fair amount, maybe once every week or two and more often if I was helping someone along with cybertooth. I remember trying something like 6 times to post a comment to a guy who was running an AMD processor computer. The post got pulled every time and I think I know by who. I will mention name later.
People were much more advanced and helpful way back when Woody’s was “just woody” and his MVPs.
There are good people here, that I consider “online friends”. PKCano, Microfix, Ascaris, Wavvy, cybertooth, GTP, CanadianTech, Morty, Oscar….
But thing have changed. I did mention this about a year or so ago when Susan Bradley asked for people’s opinions.
It is “different”. People asking questions, some, barely know where the on switch is and are asking about computer surgery.
Some MVPs think they own the forum, as in the one that deleted my AMD post years ago. It was nothing evil, nothing rude, nothing nasty.
Let me just say to CyberSAR and Susan, that if you looked at the ratio of “posts to thank you” you will see very quickly the ones not hummmm, I’ll say performing well.
I still like Woody’s but don’t visit nearly as often as in the past.
Thank you for reading this.
Moderator edit of post to remove personal information.
Technology is also trending towards a bit more complicated and exasperating as well. For example I just had to walk someone through getting their email back sorted on their iphone and the screen wasn’t popping up the items it used to thus making the experience complicated. Security enhancement are good, but…. they make it harder to set up things making it more frustrating.
I would hope that anyone who has a question would ask away.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I would hope that anyone who has a question would ask away.
I have usually tried to find the answer to my question via a web search first, but those waters are very deep and vast and I often find myself more deeply adrift. Sometimes, there are issues and boundaries that I wouldn’t even think to ask questions about (something like the shipping container that recently got stuck in the Chesapeake Bay). If it weren’t for the postings here, I wouldn’t have had any helpful info on how to navigate my way out of a problem I wasn’t even aware of. So, too, with others’ questions and answers (which would not be here, had the poster found the answer in a web search instead.) Which is to say that posting questions and being able to read others’ questions here on AskWoody has not only helped to keep this ship afloat but has also made the sailing smoother and quicker.
One of the frustrating things I’ve found about Search Engines (including Google) is that when you find what you think is a possible answer to a question, it’s 10 to 15 years old. When that happens I come here where most everyone is up to date.
I rarely choose the “Tools/Anytime” setting, almost always choose, instead, “Tools/Anytime/Past year”, sometimes also “…/Past month”, “…/Past week”, …/”Past 24 hours”, depending of what I am after. That is why I mentioned that doing Web searches requires practice. But it is worth the effort to become proficient at making them.
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 AV
I use DuckDuckGo (DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials) also, but I do not see any “Tools/Anytime”, “Tools/Anytime/Past year”, “…/Past month”, “…/Past week”, …/”Past 24 hours” settings. Where are they? Or is this feature confined to a Mac? Or to Waterfox on a Mac?
The format is a little different, the functionality is the same.
For example:
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 AV
BRILLIANT tip. Thank you.
I was raised by librarians who taught me always to check the publication data of non-fiction books. Searching the web is much like that, the more so with new versions of software coming out once a month.
Thanks
Chris
Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.
Also very helpful are the search operators, of which there is here a comprehensive table for the ones used with Google, but other search engines have similar or identical ones:
https://static.semrush.com/blog/uploads/files/39/12/39121580a18160d3587274faed6323e2.pdf
One operator not fully explained “site:*xxx”, were “xxx”, besides those things mentioned in the PDF linked above, also can be used to find the sought after information in a certain type of Web site. This form of the operator normally is placed after the search key words of whatever one wants to find.
For example:
site:*.edu will return information to be found at universities and similar places.
site:*.gov will do this for sites belonging to government organizations.
site:*.org for sites belonging to no-commercial, non-govermental organizations in general.
site:*.com for commercial organizations only.
As most of the “hits” at the top of a Google search are for numerous business outfits that may be of interest to the one doing the search, but more often than not they aren’t and just get in the way, using one of the others gets rid of the “*.com” ones.
(Note that “*” is a special character that functions as the jokey in a pack of cards: it stands for whatever else is preceding the “.xxx” ending in the actual name of the perhaps many different sites that may have the searched for information.)
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 AV
Note that when using Google, after entering a question, you have to click on Tools at the top and it changes the number of hits to the “Anytime – Year – Month, etc.” Something I had never thought to do before because it’s not as obvious as it is on DuckDuckGo.
Posted earlier during the week knowing it would pass the checks as anon,
which was subsequently trashed and seems to be one of the very few posts that are actually on-topic.
However, as I have also written already as well, I do not frequent the “Windows” comments anymore, so I have no real idea of what is going on there.
You’ve posted in Windows forums 23 times this year, including five times in the last ten days.
Hello Microfix, CyberSAR, et.al, I am the anon above from post #2431888. I know there are those that insist one join and post ONLY with a name. Like others that say “they clicked respond” and didn’t log in, I too do not wish to sign up, and log in. I prefer to donate my help anonymously. I can NOT see any harm in that. I do see where anonymous posters should be examined closely to see if they mean harm or foul language or unwarranted insults. Other than that, I can not see why some of you are so insistent one should sign up. I can assure you there are others here at my location, and “we” have donated to AskWoody’s, but … I still prefer to remain anonymous.
Woody is correct that people genuinely interested in helping others should be allowed to post anonymously. That is part of “Woody’s Charter” he laid down.
I do not come here nearly as often, but I do try to help others with my 37 years of IBM PC experience.
If you want to ruin AskWoody’s (even more), go ahead and block anonymous posters. But I feel many members that quickly post not logged in and other “people passing by” that could post a helpful comment will not.
Thank you for reading this.
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