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Right Angle: Backstage (09-28-2021)

You may have to supply your own long-winded rambling story this time, since the men of Right Angle find themselves uncharacteristically succinct during this week’s Backstage meeting.

Right Angle: Backstage (09-28-2021)

You may have to supply your own long-winded rambling story this time, since the men of Right Angle find themselves uncharacteristically succinct during this week’s Backstage meeting.

https://youtu.be/DO2ZRloF76M

32 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (09-28-2021)”

I don’t use DuckDuckGo and I have no problems, with either privacy or functionality, either. I don’t see any reason to use it, it’s a minor browser and I can get the same results with a couple of the major browsers and the proper extensions, addons and settings. I can’t remember the last time I saw a commercial or an intrusive ad or let a script run that’s likely to steal anything significant regarding my privacy from me. But then I’ve been in IT, among other things, for 40 years so I have a little bit of experience with this stuff.

DuckDuckGo does all those things automatically but if you don’t know how to adjust the settings then you might get broken pages and have other problems. Just because you don’t have a problem doesn’t mean no one else could possibly have any problems either.

That’s like Don Lemon saying there’s no crime issues in NYC because he went out to a high end restaurant in a swank, well patrolled part of town and didn’t get mugged.

Scott wasn’t saying that DuckDuckGo is bad. He was saying that if you don’t know how to use DuckDuckGo then you can get bad results. It’s not the same thing.

OK – I purposely avoid pop culture, mostly because I find it facile, mind-numbing and/or rage inducing, vulgar, etc. etc. but I have noticed that Kanye has been noticeably not in the news…at least from the news I access. Anyone know why?

No real idea, but if forced to guess I’d say they got his meds right for the moment.

I appreciate your careful listening skills. Didn’t think anyone would notice the intentional malapropism.

8:33 Ok, Scott, fess up! Did you come up with, “Rider in the Form,” that quickly, or had you thought of it before? I’m old enough that a lot of jokes/puns based on current culture are over my head, but that was great!

You know, that was one of my first thoughts. Has anyone asked her what she thinks about this? Charlie Manson was a wanna-be musician, too. Even made a demo. The record company exec was one of the first that pissed him off. There’s a beach boy in his story too.

Then there’s also the fact that any nut who wants to get his name in the history books by smoking Hinkley, the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan … Will have a lot easier time of meeting that goal with Hinkley running around loose and without official observation.

Not that I think that would be a horrible thing and hey, I’m thinking Jodi Foster might breath a quiet sigh of relief too.

I don’t know, Steve, I lived in California for 25yrs, mostly among downtown LA denizens. I would not put it past any of those people to drink the gas. Or at least, go all Zoolander w/ the stuff.

IF you’re so paranoid that you just have to view content here on a browser you do not understand how to properly operate but insist on using it anyway because Google/YouTube might OMG make a quarter of a cent revenue sending you a video feed …

THEN you deserve every bit of the frustration and failure that kind of behavior brings you.

BECAUSE your foibles, scruples, fears and the ignorance manifested in refusing to learn how to operate your equipment correctly are not the problem of BillWhittle.com

SO you should be properly grateful when Scott Ott or any of the staff and any of the other members here at BillWhittle.com help you get the stuff working that you don’t understand and likely have no business messing with in the first place.

BUT whether it’s your failure or not, whether it’s your hardware or software or something else entirely that is causing the problem, you have no cause to grumble that things should be done your way on this site. Whatever reasons the Bill Whittle Enterprise have for doing things the way they do are their own and they do not have to justify those reasons to you or me. That’s none of our business. We all like to feel like we know these people but we don’t and they sure as heck don’t know us at a personal level either. We pay them for content, how they provide that content and considering that they’re operating on a shoestring budget doing the best they can with what they have and must needs do things in a way that keeps this endeavor as financially lubricated as possible — Is their decision. Alone. They run the show and they have to deliver so let them do that and leave them be about how they do it. They’re decent people trying to do a good job and they’ll get it right … Eventually.

Yup.
I wish there were more virtual thumbs available for me to give to this relatively short rant.

Thanks, no doubt you already had some insight as to why I’d make this point. Considering our previous recent private conversation.

Here’s the not-so-short version of that rant …

You, I, and several other members with technical backgrounds try to help out with what advice we can give when people post a question or say they’re having problems. This sort of “aid” is like any other — I don’t like to waste my time or resources on the undeserving but I don’t mind helping someone who is deserving either.

Self inflicted wounds qualify as undeserving. Making any sort of approach to how these guys run their business is also grounds for me to consider someone undeserving. Depending on that approach I can be downright unfriendly.

This website is not the place to learn how to use a new browser, people need to already be proficient in that sort of thing before they get here. Or else they need to stick with what they know and works until they learn enough to use their gear properly.

I almost never call tech support. I never, ever call or contact anyone for support until I have thoroughly eliminated the possibility that the problem is on my end of the pipeline. That’s not because I’m so tech savvy that I’m better than any possible support system. That’s because I’ve been doing this long enough to know it’s a waste of time on both ends of the pipe if that isn’t done first.

Worse yet are people who blow things all out of proportion, including their own importance and power to affect the larger world. There is nothing any of us can do boycott-wise to hurt Google/YouTube. More people die from natural causes and mishap each day and drop off Google/YouTube than any boycott could hope to match in numbers. More young people come online and make up whatever gap a boycott could hope to create.

Big Tech is too big for us to affect on a macro scale. You can boycott Big Oil and refuse to buy gasoline but if you do you’re not going to travel more than a few miles at a time. The situation with Big Tech is comparable. We all accept the evils of Big Oil; price fixing, opportunistic price gouging, crude oil spills, market forces outside of American control, etc. We do this because we have to, not because we want to or agree with it. The same goes for the Worldwide Web and the Internet. If we want to use it and get the benefits thereby then there are going to be things we do not like and cannot change about it too.

There is nothing we can do on a macro scale to significantly affect the ubiquity of Big Tech. There are small things we can do personally to protect ourselves but you need to have at least a modicum of technical ability to do that. If you want to do that you have to learn, not just download a piece of software that claims it will protect you from the boogieman.

An IT instructor of mine once told me that it’s a very simple matter to never get snooped on, attacked by viruses or worms, or have any other compromise related to living with networks. Just don’t plug your computer into a power outlet and they can’t get to you. If you do plug it in and power it up, then someone somewhere will figure out a way to use your stuff to their advantage. Past that point where you power up a device it’s a matter of degree and how much you know.

The cookies, javascripts and vb scripts that people are turning off or are off by default off/blocked in DuckDuckGo — That are breaking webpages and making internet browsing problematic — Are the same scripts that they’re paranoid about. The internet just doesn’t work without them and you don’t need DuckDuckGo’s half-assed browser to manipulate them. You need to understand what the threats are and learn how to combat them effectively.

Even then, if you want things to work satisfactorily you are going to have to accept some compromise. That’s just a fact of modern life and denying facts doesn’t make you smart. The amount of compromise you are willing to accept is up to you, it’s not BillWhittle.com’s fault if that doesn’t sync with your perceptions. That’s a personal matter to you.

All of that takes time and effort not a gimmick. Your own time and effort, not Scott Ott’s time and effort.

It’s a shame that people have wasted so much of Scott Ott’s already very limited time complaining about things that are their own fault or none of their damn business in the first place. They don’t need to do that and they do need to knock it off if they want this enterprise to thrive as much as the rest of us do.

It’s not this sites fault if it doesn’t conform to some ignorant standard of action some ignorant person thinks they need to meet. Obviously I don’t mean you, Dave, but we both know the kind of person I’m referring to here.

Scott’s quote from Malcolm Reynolds – “Listen, you don’t know me, son, so I’m gonna say this once: if I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.”

I liked Jayne’s quote better, “I’ll kill a man in a fair fight. Or if I think he’s about to start one.”

Agreed wholeheartedly. I’ll negate an obvious threat at the most likely to be successful opportunity. That doesn’t necessarily include killing someone but it may …

At a party one time I was joking around with the host’s brother. Who was drunk, ten feet tall and bullet proof in his own estimation. He got offended for no obvious, intentional cause. For some reason this fool though it would be dramatic to take off the denim jacket he was wearing and it was clear he intended to hit me when he got it off. So while it was still around his elbows I knocked him on his ass.

Let this be a lesson to all. Don’t get stupid drunk. Even if you’re drunk you can still fight in a denim jacket. If you are stupid drunk while wearing a jacket don’t tie your arms up while loudly proclaiming your intention to do violence. If you do that sort of thing you have no complaint when someone helps you take the nap you badly need.

” You may have to supply your own long-winded rambling story … “

Gee, I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to do that but give me a while and I’m sure I can come up with something. If I try really, really hard.

😉

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