New scam – BEWARE!

I found this email in my inbox last night:

I took a screenshot and deleted personal stuff so you could see what it looks like.

Firstly, how did I know this was a scam? Simple – I don’t use Microsoft OneDrive. I have NEVER used OneDrive.

Next, if you look at the email sender it says:

’email@mail.onedrive.com’

Not even a hint of Microsoft anywhere. ‘mail.onedrive’ is a domain that has nothing to do with Microsoft. [When you register a domain, no one else can use it. But there is nothing to stop someone from registering a domain that ‘hints’ at belonging to a well known company].

And finally, do you see the big, red ‘YOU’? I put that in to highlight the poor grammar used in the body of the email. You won’t always find poor grammar, but when you do, it’s a dead giveaway. Whoever set up this scam copied trademarked elements of the Microsoft brand and cobbled them together along with a few bits of their own.

So, what’s the point of this scam email?

The point is to get you to click any one of the links in the email. Those links will not take you to a genuine Microsoft web page. If the scammers are better than most, they will fake up a second page to soothe any lingering suspicions. Otherwise they may just give you some kind of error message. But while you’re staring at the message and wondering what to do, you could be downloading a virus or a worm or a trojan or a keylogger onto your computer.

Why is that bad? It’s bad because you could lose your privacy, your internet banking password, or find your computer is being used in a network to scam yet more people. And those are just three things off the top of my head.

Given how many people use Microsoft products, this scam could cause a hell of a lot of damage.

DO. NOT. CLICK. ANY. LINKS. IN. AN. EMAIL….especially this one.

Take care and stay well,
Meeks

Windows 7 Update – SERIOUS problem

I have my Windows 7 updates set to manual, meaning I get the notification, but the update isn’t installed automatically. If you do the same, and you haven’t already installed update KB4512506, do NOT install it:

The update is called:

2019-08 Security Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB4512506)   285.9 MB

That 285.9 MB update size was suspicious, so I tried to get further information, but the links [on the update page] did not work. So I went online and searched for KB4512506. This is what I found on the Microsoft forum:

The critical part here is this:

Further down the Microsoft forum page you can find workarounds that may help you fix the error if it’s already happened to you.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/security-update-kb4512506-leads-to-bootbcd-error/8f97ba71-6da8-44be-9478-7542312b39bd

If it hasn’t, I strongly recommend ‘hiding’ this update so Windows won’t install it. This is how:

With the update page displayed, right click update KB4512506. You should now see a small popup with just two options:

Click ‘Hide update’.

This will cause the update to be ‘greyed out’. You can now install all the other updates if you wish.

Just a bit of history about this contentious update. The size of the file makes me think it’s an updated version of an earlier update [March? April?] that I refused to install. The reason I refused to install it back then was because under the Support link it stated clearly that installing the update would lead to problems with the Network Card. Thanks but no thanks.

I still don’t know exactly what this update was meant to fix, but I continued to not install it while I waited for Microsoft to fix whatever caused the problems with the Network card. Microsoft never did, through multiple updates. Now, it appears they’ve made it even worse, all without warning ordinary users of the potential harm it can cause.

Curiously, not installing the update allowed nothing ‘bad’ to happen to my pc. I admit that might be because I have one of the best anti-virus software installed, but it does make you think, doesn’t it?

If I were a writing a novel, the cast of characters might include an unscrupulous multinational corporation that deliberately sabotaged its clients just to make them buy its latest product. Luckily, even I’m not that much of a conspiracy theorist. 🙂

cheers

Meeks

 

 

Microsoft Windows 7 update – ‘known issue’ never resolved

Warning: technical post with rant.

Because I’m a baby geek, I have my Windows Updates set to notify but not install. This gives me the chance to look at all the updates and decide which ones to install and which ones to ‘hide’.

Why bother?

Because of ‘known issues’ such as this one:

 

There is an issue with Windows and a third-party software that is related to a missing file (oem<number>.inf). Because of this issue, after you apply this update, the network interface controller will stop working.

Not ‘may stop working’ but ‘will stop working’. Ut oh.

Note: a ‘known issue’ is a problem introduced into the system by the update that the Microsoft developers couldn’t fix in time for that update. The problem with the ‘network interface controller’ [lovingly known as NIC] not working is that your internet connection stops working too.

Most of these ‘known issues’ get fixed as part of the next round of updates, so it pays not to be an early adopter. Sometimes, however, a ‘known issue’ comes with a workaround, or a fix. The fix for the ‘known issue’ with the NIC is this:

1. To locate the network device, launch devmgmt.msc; it may appear under Other Devices.

2. To automatically rediscover the NIC and install drivers, select Scan for Hardware Changes from the Action menu.

a. Alternatively, install the drivers for the network device by right-clicking the device and choosing Update. Then choose Search automatically for updated driver software or Browse my computer for driver software.

I’m not a complete n00b when it comes to my computer, and I do know how to install drivers, but it seems to me that something is missing from step 1. Where am I supposed to launch ‘devmgmt.msc’ from? I suspect it’s the Run command line but I’m not sure.

The alternative might be easier as I think I know where to find the device listing, but if the old driver has been corrupted during the ‘problem’, I have no idea what driver the pc will re-install.

Will I have to dig out the very old motherboard setup disk which I may or may not be able to find?

Or will I have to carry my pc down to the repair shop to get someone more knowledgeable to ‘fix’ the update problem for me?

For all these reasons, I have not installed that particular update, but Microsoft continues to sneak it in under each successive optional ‘quality rollup’. It’s become so ridiculous that I just have to look at the size of the update – 229.2 MB – to know what’s in it.

When I first started ignoring this nasty update, I did so because I expected Microsoft to resolve this ‘known issue’ in much the same way as they resolve most other ‘known issues’. Better late than never, right?

Unfortunately, Microsoft has no intention of resolving this particuler issue. Or perhaps they can’t. Just for fun, I followed the link to More Information today and followed the trail of updates back as far as March 13, 2018 before I gave up. The issue with the NIC, and it’s nasty fix, were repeated in each and every update.

So now I’m wondering what happened to other Windows 7 users out there. Did they all install the original nasty update, fix their pc’s and move on? Or was there a tsunami of outrage that I missed?

I’m never going to install this update until Microsoft resolves the issue because this is a problem of their own making, and no company is so big that it should be allowed to get away with such obvious cheating.

Not happy,

Meeks

 

Sam Dastyari – one rotten apple or just the tip of the iceberg?

I’ve been having a conversation over on The Passive Voice that has disturbed me greatly. Not because it was unpleasant or rude, but because it has made me feel terribly naive at the ripe old age of 65.

To backtrack a little, the conversation began as a discussion about Amazon. We’re all pretty much Indie writers on TPV so Amazon features rather often in our conversations. Anyway, these are the relevant bits of a recent conversation between myself and Felix J Torres:

FJT: ..They [Amazon] are definitely being demonized like Microsoft ca 1995.
Hopefully, unlike MS in those days, they have more than one part time lobbyist in DC and have a few bought and paid for politicians in their pocket.

Me: ..So cynical! I most sincerely hope Bezos is smart enough not to have to do business like that.

FJT: ..If he doesn’t Amazon will get the same treatment Microsoft got for not contributing enough corporate funds to the politicians….

All that is a matter of record.

As is the fact that MS now has one of the larger contingents in DC and regularly provide PCs and free software to Congress people…

Me: ..I’m not denying it happens under the label of ‘lobbying’, but Amazon succeeded despite not doing what all the other companies were doing. If Bezos caves to the soft-corruption game of ‘gifting’ politicians, the ones to suffer long term will be /us/.
Apologies but Amazon is the /only/ large company that I admire. [I am so cringing now]

FJT: ..Well, of course consumers suffer.
The cost added by the politicians and bureaucrats gets added to the sale price….

Once one player alerts the politicians there is money to be had in a market they don’t back off. Rather they descend en masse…

Bezos would have to be an idiot to hear all the baying dogs calling for a lynching of Amazon and do nothing despite of what happened to Microsoft.

And he isn’t.
Amazon’s publicly reported lobbying has been growing steadily. Even faster than their online sales are growing…

Me: ..So there is open corruption that everybody knows about and accepts as normal?
In certain much maligned countries that might be known as ‘baksheesh’.

FJT: ..

Oh, just because it’s common knowledge doesn’t mean it’s accepted.

But every once in a while a congressman gets caught and arrested with a brown bag with $30K. (Seems to be the going rate in the House. Senators are a lot more expensive.)

Most politicians aren’t that blatant and merely call it “serving their constituents”. And many wrap themselves in principle like “protecting competition” or “looking out for the little people”.

Me: ..A member of the Labor party here in Australia – Sam Dastyari – was caught getting cosy with some Chinese business man, twice. He was finally kicked out but now I wonder whether he wasn’t just the tip of the iceberg, the one blatant idiot who got caught.
Could I get any more disillusioned?
I will never understand why so many Americans picked a certain person to be their ‘champion’ against the swamp, but I’m starting to understand why they need a champion in the first place.

I have only quoted what I thought were the relevant parts of the conversation, but if you’re interested, you can find the whole thing here:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2018/01/why-amazon-is-the-new-microsoft/#comment-408446

Just scroll down a bit.

So, is this something everyone else already knew except me?

I would like to think that Australia is less caught up in this nudge-nudge-wink-wink epidemic of greed, but I’m not a complete fool. How many more Sam Dastyari’s are there amongst our politicians? Do they all take bribes of one sort or another? Is that why, once the politics dies down, nothing is ever done to change this bloody situation?

I’ve long thought the  concept of lobbying was wrong: in a democracy, the only people influencing politicians should be the voters. And yes, I know lobbyists are voters too, as are CEO’s of huge corporations blah blah, but if this bribery is as rampant as it appears, then our democracy is just a great big off-colour joke. 😦

Not happy Jan.

Meeks

How to Modify Styles in Word 2016

The following excerpt is from my unpublished how-to called ‘How to print your book with Createspace, a step-by-step guide for Absolute Beginners’. The specific instructions are for the layout of a book, but you can change the settings to be appropriate for any document.

# # #

Word Styles

Styles contain pre-set groups of commands that determine how headings and paragraphs appear.

The most commonly used Word styles are found on the Home tab, in the Style gallery [as shown below]:

 

Even if you did not select any of the styles in the Style Gallery while writing your book, there is one style that you would have used without even being aware of it. That style is ‘Normal’.

Note: the only time the Normal Style is not used automatically in a Word document is when the document originated in another software program and was imported into Word. For example, the Windows program ‘Notepad’ creates documents in Rich Text Format. RTF documents can be opened in Word but the Normal style must be applied manually.

Every time you create a new document in Word, it automatically sets that document to the ‘Normal’ style settings. These include:

• the default font [Calibri],
• the font size [11],
• the font colour [automatic – i.e. black],
• the text alignment [left]
• and a host of other less immediately visible options.

As part of the design process, you can modify some of these options for your book.

Modifying the ‘Normal’ style

In Word, the easiest way to modify an existing style is to right click on its name in the style gallery. This will cause a small menu to be displayed. On that menu is an option called ‘Modify’:

To change elements of the ‘Normal’ style in your document, right click ‘Normal’ in the Style gallery and select the ‘Modify’ option from the drop down list [as shown above].

You should now see the ‘Modify Style’ dialog box:

The first thing to note is the radio button down near the bottom left corner of the dialog box. The option ‘Only in this document’ is pre-selected to ensure that any changes made to the ‘Normal’ style of this document do not become standard for all  Word documents.

Editing the style name

Up near the top of the dialog box you will see the style name. Editing the name is not necessary, but it can be useful as a reminder that the style was changed.

To change the name of the style, simply click inside the Name text box and type in a new one.

Editing the font, size, colour and alignment

You can change the font and font size just as you would on the Home tab. Remember to also select the ‘Justify’ alignment option.

To change the colour of the font, click the small arrow next to the box that says ‘Automatic’ [as shown below]:

Click the colour of your choice or leave it as Automatic, i.e. black.

Editing the paragraph options

All of the less common stylistic functions are hidden behind the ‘Format’ button which is located on the bottom left hand side of the Modify Style window.

Click ‘Format’ and select the ‘Paragraph’ option from the menu:

The paragraph dialog box is now displayed:

As you can see from the screenshot, the alignment is already shown as ‘Justified’ because we set it in the first dialog box along with the font and font size.

Indentation – leave the Left and Right settings at zero, but under ‘Special’, click the small blue arrow [as shown above]. Now select the ‘First line’ option from the drop-down menu. For By: type or select an indent width for the first line of the paragraph.

Check the preview pane to see how the first line indent appears.

Spacing – ensure that ‘Before’ and ‘After’ are both set to zero. These numbers control the blank spaces inserted before and after each paragraph.

Finally, make sure that the ‘Line spacing’ is set to ‘Single’. When you are satisfied, click the ‘OK’ button.

If you are using Word 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 or 2016, any text already using the ‘Normal’ style will be automatically updated to the new settings..

In earlier versions of Word you may have to manually update the text using the modified style.

# # #

These same techniques can be used to edit any of the Word Styles, not just ‘Normal’.

cheers

Meeks

Office #Word 2016 really is a piece of…

Shyte.

What follows is a raged induced rant so look away now.

-breathe-

I’ve just wasted an hour trying to fix the Word 2016 dictionary. It started with ‘Mira Than‘.

No, actually, it started with the combination of two big episodes of Innerscape into one very BIG Word 16 document. How big? 375 pages. Apparently, Word still has issues with very big files. That’s the reason I originally migrated my writing to a dedicated writing package [StoryBox]. Unfortunately, to publish a print version of Innerscape, I have to go Word >>PDF>>Createspace.

Anyway, after spending hours wrestling with Word’s section breaks [more on that in another post], I began doing a this-is-absolutely-the-last edit, when I realised that every time I typed in Miira Tahn, Word would ‘correct’ it to ‘Mira Than’ as soon as my attention moved elsewhere.

I tried getting Word to ‘Ignore All’, but it wouldn’t – and no, it wasn’t just variations on the name, like ‘Miira Tahn‘s‘ etc. And then it began throwing up other ‘errors’, all to do with US spelling. So, naturally, I used the nifty option at the bottom of the Spell Check pane to change the dictionary back to UK spelling:

My efforts obviously confused Word because it suddenly switched to the French dictionary. -growls in rage-

The French dictionary finds every word written in English to be incorrect…

I changed the dictionary back to English UK.

Nope…Word now wants to stay in French.

I look up fixes to the problem. I attempt to reset my language preferences. I restart Word…

Now Word wants to use the US dictionary again BUT the page full of French ‘errors’ is still set to the French dictionary. And then Word stopped working.

It’s back now, but I haven’t been game to check my document in case I end up throwing the monitor across the room. There are many basic, useful formatting functions in Word, and it works well for short-ish, business type documents, but the more Microsoft tries to automate the process, the more mangled and unstable it becomes. Especially with big documents.

I hate to think how convoluted the Word code must be because Microsoft almost never delete anything. They just keep adding to it, and adding to it, and adding to it…

Sadly, while this rant did make me feel a little less homicidal, it’s only a temporary distraction from the main event. I have to get this stupid piece of shit to play nice or I may never get my hands on those lovely, shiny books. 😦

Thanks for letting me vent,

Meeks

 

 

#Microsoft, #Windows10 and #Office 16 vs my privacy

‘They’ say that we give away our privacy with both hands these days and thus, do not deserve to have it protected. Bullshit. We’re given no choice. Trigger warning – angry woman rant ahead.

Due to work, I had to buy a cheap laptop yesterday. It came with Windows 10 installed, and I bought the Office 16 suite to go with it [also for work]. I have now wasted the better part of a day just trying to get what I paid for to work.

First Windows 10.

Even though it was pre-loaded, the first time I fired up the laptop, I had to wait through a number of very slow ‘welcome-ish’ screens. It was so slow, I actually thought the laptop had hung on me. But no, just Microsoft at its best. [Oh and you can’t get out of these loading screens either].

Then, once the loading screens were done, I had to do some customisations. Microsoft pushes VERY hard to make you accept the ‘express’ option. DO. NOT. DO. IT! You will understand why after you select the ‘customise’ option. Essentially, this allows you to see exactly what is hidden behind the super convenient express option.

I can’t remember how many pages of customisation options there were, but they were all controlled by odd little slider buttons, and all of the sliders were set to ‘on’ by default.

To change the slider from ‘on’ to ‘off’, simply click on the left-hand side of the slider. It should now show as ‘off’.

What should you turn off? Everything. Literally.

I think I turned everything to off except maybe the last one that had to do with language and which version of English I wanted to use. Everything else was just sneaky data-mining. Or setting you up for all sorts of advertising and big brother type nonsense. I kid you not, you do not want any of those options set to yes. EVER.

Microsoft Edge

I have always hated the Microsoft browser so I used Edge only long enough to download Firefox. Once Firefox was installed, however, getting Win10 to accept it as the default browser was not at all straightforward or intuitive. To make using something else harder perhaps?

It can be done, just don’t expect it to be logical.

When you open the browser of your choice you will get a dialog box asking if you want to make it your default browser. Click yes.

You will now get a settings window that shows options for music, pictures and browsers etc. In this window, Edge will still be shown as the browser, and there is nothing to clue you in how to change it.

To permanently change your default browser, click on the Microsoft Edge. Only after you’ve done this completely unintuitive step will you be able to see any other browsers you have installed. Select the browser of your choice, answer any other questions thrown at you and you can finally surf the net how you want.

And finally Office 16.

This may not be news to everyone else out there, but it was to me: when you buy Office these days, you do NOT get a box with DVDs and manual inside. Instead, what you get is a small cardboard card. That’s it.

On the back of the card is a silvered strip similar to what you get on a scratch-it card. The writing on the card is tiny and up the very top in very tiny writing is the information that you need to scratch off the silver to get at the product code for the product you have already bought.

Right…

So now what?

I dutifully scratched off the silver and then looked for step 2. Hmm… I guess everyone else knows how to do this shit except me. I hate you Microsoft.

Finally, I noticed that inside the start button, [on the laptop not the scratch-it] the window, or whatever the hell it’s called, for Office was a different kind of colour to the other ones. Not greyed out or anything that intuitive, but different. So I clicked it and Win10 displayed a dialog box with three options, one of which was ‘activate’. Eureka!

I clicked the activate option and that’s where steam really started coming out of my ears. You see, despite having paid for Office 16, I’m not allowed to get Office 16…not without having an account with Microsoft first.

Not that big a deal, you say?

Yes, it is because in the past, when software came in boxes with proper instructions, registering your product was optional. Then Microsoft made it such that using your product depended upon activating it [but I don’t think you had to register?]. Now, you can’t even download something you’ve paid for without giving Microsoft a great deal of personal information:

• a valid email address [okay, this is kind of normal]
• name, country, date of birth? Why date of birth? Do people born before the millenium forfeit their rights or something? You do not need this information Microsoft. 😦
• and sex. Male, female, unspecified. I chose unspecified because I do not want advertisements tailored to old ladies….and three-headed hermaphrodite was not an option. 😦
• and phone number. This truly had me screaming at the walls. Lots of companies want your phone number these days, but they don’t dare penalise you if you don’t supply it. As someone who cares about personal privacy, I do not hand out my phone number to every shitty company that asks for it. HAVING to hand it to Microsoft to get what is already mine?

And that is roughly where I left things for today. I just can’t take any more aggravation. I’ll deal with Micro$hit tomorrow, once I’ve cooled down.

Not happy Jan

Meeks

 

 

 

 

up the pc or laptop, you will have to go through a lot of customisation crap.

Sci-fi now with Holo Lens and Actiongram

In a previous post I talked about holograms as a thing of the near future. I was wrong, they’re here now. Watch the video below to see how Microsoft’s Holo Lens is being teamed with Actiongram to create sci-fi right now:

If that video clip is anything to go by, the interface is still in its infancy, but given the speed with which things like 3D printers have become mainstream, I expect real life holograms to become an everyday reality within five years…and that may be a conservative estimate.

One thing I am sure of is that hologram technology will change how we work, rest and play. I wonder how much money I have in my piggy bank….

Meeks

 

Microsoft’s Hololens – is it the precursor of the ‘chrono’?

The idea of holograms has been around for a very long time, but the only common usage I am aware of is in those images that display a sort of 3D view when you move the image one way or the other. But that, like exoskeletons, is all about to change.

“One of the biggest developments, and we should see it in the next twelve months, is Microsoft’s HoloLens,” says Mark Pesce, a Sydney-based futurist.

HoloLens is a wearable visor which projects holographic images and videos into the line of sight of the user. While it will be great for gaming, Pesce also thinks it will have a huge application in the workplace.

“Microsoft has linked it to Windows 10, and we should see the launch of the accompanying device around the same time frame that the company launches its next generation software,” he says.

Using a holographic device such as HoloLens will allow workers to manipulate large data sets visually, rather than having to scroll through millions of lines of data in an application like Microsoft Excel.

The following video clip is actually a Microsoft advertisement, but it’s so well done it’s worth sharing:

The Hololens is not quite the holo of my Innerscape future, but it’s getting there. And I couldn’t be more pleased because it means my vision of a wristwatch-like device – the chrono – is one step closer to reality.

Don’t know what a chrono is? Well, imagine a smartwatch that you can wear on your wrist. Now imagine not having to peer at a tiny, postage stamp sized screen. Instead, imagine the chrono projecting a small holo into the air above your wrist. Now imagine being able to manipulate that holo; make it bigger or smaller, turn it 360 degrees, zoom in to just one tiny part of it…

The chrono is a long way from real, but from today it is no longer a sci-fi buff’s pipe-dream, it’s a real possibility.

Am I dancing? You bet I am. 😀

Those interested in not-so-future tech can read the complete article here:

http://www.watoday.com.au/long-reads/iinet/gadgets/#.VW5ISEaup5s

Have fun,

Meeks