Do you ever get tired of being pushed around by technology?\u00a0 At the risk of being declared a Luddite boomer, I feel that the endless treadmill of technological innovation is all just a bit much.\u00a0 And calling it innovation is sort of a euphemism.\u00a0 This year Windows decided that instead of its lousy \u201cMail\u201d program I needed to switch over to its differently lousy \u201cOutlook\u201d whenever I wanted to access my emails.\u00a0 Well, I didn\u2019t want to switch.\u00a0 So, every morning when I started up my laptop, I would click on the Mail icon and it would start up Mail.\u00a0 But a second later the Mail window would disappear and the Outlook configuration window would pop up telling me to go through the torture of surrendering my access to my own e-mails to Microsoft.\u00a0 I would then use the Task Manager to close down the Outlook program and then I would click on the Mail icon again.\u00a0 I would have to repeat this ritual three times before Outlook would give up and allow me to use Mail.\u00a0 But the next day it would be the same madness again.<\/p>\n
Luckily, I used to use an open-source program called Thunderbird for my email interface.\u00a0 So, I tried loading it up on my laptop and eureka! it worked.<\/p>\n
And every few days Microsoft tells me about photographs that I loaded on my laptop last year.\u00a0 What the hell!\u00a0 When did I give Microsoft permission to put my photos on their damn cloud?\u00a0 We really have a problem with the technology companies.\u00a0 Their overreach in every facet of our on-line lives is becoming absurd.\u00a0 Many years ago, I had a laptop with Ubuntu as the operating system.\u00a0 I was always complaining about how everything was clunky compared to Windows and how the open-source equivalents for Word and Excel and all the other proprietary programs were weird and unfamiliar and less sophisticated.<\/p>\n
Well, maybe I\u2019m changing my mind.\u00a0 I\u2019m seriously considering having the computer I use on the internet, open-source.\u00a0 No Microsoft, no Cloud, no nothing.\u00a0 I think Elon Musk and whoever Trump puts in at the FCC should do a deep dive on the privacy problems that Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the rest of the tech companies cause.\u00a0 We\u2019re monitored and analyzed and prodded by these companies and each time they \u201cupgrade\u201d their products they ratchet their control of your online existence a little more.<\/p>\n
The latest annoyance is having to provide a secondary check on your identity through a cell phone.\u00a0 Apparently, an e-mail address is no longer enough.\u00a0 They need you attached to a sim card or they\u2019re not happy.\u00a0 Even Amazon wants to institute this but I\u2019ve stoutly refused to knuckle under and, well, Jeff Bezos knows I spend a lot of money at Amazon so he\u2019s patient.\u00a0 Or maybe he\u2019s noted my age somehow and knows that old codgers still believe that the customer is always right.\u00a0 Too bad he can\u2019t pass that idea along to Bill Gates.<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s enough complaining.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to check into the practicality of a completely Microsoft-free internet computer.\u00a0 I can\u2019t think of an issue.\u00a0 I\u2019ll keep the programs that I use that are proprietary on a separate desk top that isn\u2019t plugged into the internet.\u00a0 In your face Bill Gates!\u00a0 Commie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Do you ever get tired of being pushed around by technology?\u00a0 At the risk of being declared a Luddite boomer, I feel that the endless<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[302,4732,4731,4730,146],"class_list":["post-31455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-google","tag-microsoft","tag-open-source","tag-privacy","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n