It is currently very fashionable for reporters to write about Artificial Intelligence and they make it sound like it is magic. My contention is that it is not. I think the first thing to look at when reading anything that mentions Artificial Intelligence is to check whether the writer has defined what Artificial Intelligence is. …
Category archives: Uncategorised
Why do scam emails seem to be targeted directly at me?
One thing about scam emails is that they are sent to thousands of people but appear to be personal. This is because the email doesn’t say how many people it has been sent to. If you received a letter that appeared to address your current circumstances (e.g. if it offered to sell you socks just …
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How to spot (some) unwanted email messages
I hope this post will help you to spot some email messages that are not what they say they are. I received a very convincing looking email message on one day this week. Here’s the subject line.. .. and here’s the body of the message .. How do I know that it’s not genuine? When …
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Pasting links into social media updates etc.
I often want to copy a link into a social media update or an email or something similar. It is tempting to right click on a link, select ‘copy link’ (or similar) and then paste it into some text. However.. I strongly recommend taking a bit of extra time and [1] copying the link into …
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Jargon and Terminology
The reason that computers can do things quickly and (mostly) reliably is not because they are complicated but because they are simple: It’s always easier to do simple things than complicated things. Computer people tell you that things are complicated in order to justify how much they charge but they’re using terminology and jargon to …
Fortnightly Zoom Social
I’m hosting a Zoom social about computers every two weeks on Mondays for 2 hours from 7pm. The easiest way to see the details is on the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/computersnotmagic) but please send me an email if you can’t access that or have any other questions. Here are the details … Let’s have a chat …
‘on or before today’ vs. ‘before today’
Computers are not magic but they are picky. For instance: there’s can be a big difference between ‘less than’ and ‘less than or equal to’. Particularly when it relates to dates and the relevant date is today. Also: I think it can be difficult to remember that large organisations suffer from the same problems as …
Short-term issues can cause long-term problems
As computers and networking and the internet and email become more stable, and I think they have done over the years, there is a corresponding expectation that they will always work. This can mean that when they don’t work people (understandably) try to fix them themselves. Often an unhelpful error message from a bit of …
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Wireless exists. Broadband exists. Wireless Broadband does not exist.
Wireless (or WiFi) is a way that your computer can send and receive information to and from another Wireless-enabled device: e.g. a hub or switch, a router, a printer – without the need to plug in a network cable. Broadband is a fast connection (in the sense that “it’s faster than what we had before”) …
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Files and Folders: It’s all about information
Computers are a tool for storing and working with information. That’s the only thing they do. They can do this in very complicated ways that appear to be almost magical but it is still what they are doing: working with information – in some cases a lot of information and working with it very quickly. …
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