Java Needlessly Obsessive Security

Java is joining the ranks of the uber paranoid, and not allowing me to get anything done.  Once again (and for the umpteenth plus one time) I cannot access my home control system, which I've been using for the past 3 years without issues....except these stupid Java Security issues which I used to be able to get around.

I can't even disable security in the advanced panel, by clicking on all the "not recommended" boxes.

Because when I do that, I just get another security message which tells me Java won't run without all those needless checks.

Honestly, I've never had any trouble with viruses, trojans, etc.  But I've had endless troubles not unlike this, just trying to do things I don't do often, because of useless security.

If it were nice, I could get some kind of hint as to what was attempting what, and suggestions as to how to unblock it.

In this case, it appears I can't run my home control system without finding what URL my home security system is at, and then adding it to the list of things to unblock.

Which is something I don't have time for right now.

And then, if my local network refreshes, I may have to do it all over again.

It should just know, that anything on my LAN, at least, can be trusted.

Anything I've told it I trust 100 times before, and used 100 times before, but not recently, can still be trusted.

But the new rule is, anything that isn't from Apple or a corporation liked by Apple, can't be trusted without going through endless hoops.

No matter how many times I've told Mac OS or Java it can be trusted, before.

Return to Doghouse, Apple Maps, and Apple Maps Tyranny!

On my new iPhone, I was disappointed to find that Apple Maps is once again the default navigator for addresses in the Calendar app.

Oh, yes, Apple Maps, I had trouble with that before.  Didn't seem to find things when Google Maps had the correct answer right away.  After once getting lost with Apple Maps two years ago, I decided to never use it again.  I wanted to go to a Bernie Sanders meeting, and for some reason Apple Maps couldn't give me consistent directions to it, or even a consistent location.  Apple Maps censorship?  I decided then and there never to use Apple Maps again.  I opened up Google Maps which found the location and directed me to it very nicely.  Everyone I talked to said Google Maps is better.

But this time, with my new iPhone 8 Plus, I was in a hurry, and just let Apple Maps run, for at least a couple minutes.  Maybe they had made it better by now.

Now I have many of my own special routes, which aren't necessarily shorter, but I feel they are safer. I bypass particularly problematic highway onramps and interchanges, and left turns without green arrows.

Without thinking, I followed the first Apple Maps direction, before I realized that I wasn't going my way.  So I took turned on a side street to get turned around and back going on my chosen route to get on the necessary highway.

Rather too quickly, Apple Maps began blaring: "Return to designated route."  As I was getting myself turned around, it blared "Return to designated route" a second time.  And once I got back going on my route going the way I prefer, it blared that message a third time.  This reminded me of a similarly stuck up navigator I used on a Lincoln I rented in 1991, which also kept blaring "Return to designated route."

Enough of Apple Maps tyranny!  I parked, and though I was already going to be a few minutes late, I took the trouble to download Google Maps right then and there.  I entered in the address of my destination, and Google Maps took it from there.  Big relief.

When I change to a different route, Google Maps always seems to figure that out fairly quickly, and rather than giving me a stupid "Return to Designated Route" message, which would be unhelpful even if I wanted to follow it, Google Maps quickly figures out the new route I'm planning to take, and goes along with my plan, without a single bad word.  I don't recall Google Maps ever telling me to "return to designated route" or anything like that.

But now it appears, tyrannical Apple has caught up with us prisoners.  You can no longer change the navigator used by Calendar to Google Maps.   Resistance is futile!

Damn.  I'll just have to enter the directions into Google Maps each time, rather than relying on the helpful Calendar navigator link.

Unless I can find a new Google Calendar that links to Google Maps.

Sadly, Google Calendar appears to be merely a front to Google.  You have to log into Google before it does anything.  So I tossed that also.

Enough Multitasking Already!

Most of the time when I quit an app on my iPhone, I simply want the app to quit.  I don't want it to stay running in the background.

Some apps consume a lot of power or tie up resources like the internal microphone even in the background.

It is a huge misfeature of IOS that there isn't a simple and uniform way to do this.

Except the inconvenient double home and swipe.  It is a huge bother.  That would be OK for something you rarely have to do.  But for something you need to do all the time, especially for those resource sucking apps, it's a big pain.

Mac OS does this nicely, with one button for minimize, and another for terminate.

Siri go away, go away, go away already

If Siri were just an app, I might use it once and awhile.

But Siri is this monster that is wrapped all around your phone by apple, and it's hell to get it to stop always getting in your way.

First I don't want anything listening all the time, so I shut that off.

Second, I don't want Siri hijacking the home button, because I use that a lot, and if you hold one millisecond too long Siri comes up, and you have to start all over doing what you were trying to do.

(How is the phone supposed to work anymore without a Home button?  I'm dreading being forced into that world some time maybe 2 years off.  Apple keeps removing all the essential things--they've always been like that--and adding more spooky troublesome stuff.  And the world is coming more and more to resemble the movie Brazil.  I vastly prefer simple buttons to spooky troublesome stuff.)

So, I turned off listening, then I turned off respond to bottom button, in the Siri preferences (which I had to use Search in settings even to find...and then there were a bunch of things and I had to go through two to find the right one).

But then, after finally turning off the home button enable, if you hold the home button one millisecond too long,  a new screen comes up telling you that you could enable Siri if you wanted to.  I pressed NO the first time but that wasn't enough.  Finally on the third attempt, I saw an additional "turn Siri off" and that seems to work.  Now I can hold the bottom button as long as I want without Siri getting in the way anymore.  I hope.

My favorite smartphone experience to date was with my iPhone 3G, which was great and lots of fun until Apple started messing with things and then the 3G hardware couldn't keep up anymore and essential apps like Maps didn't work anymore.  That was about year 3.

As smart devices are larded up more and more with "conveniences" they more and more resemble the Spaceship Heart of Gold in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams could see very well in the mid 1970's where things were going.

DAMN PASSWORDS AND SECURITY CRAP !!@@#$%)^%-

It's been a huge pain to transfer to my new iPhone.  Several days there's still a lot to do.

I hope I never have to log into iCloud again.  It has questions I cannot remember the answers I gave.  Where do I go to reset that???  Good Riddance Anyway!!!  But the funny thing is somehow it seems I did get on once to get my contacts transferred--it appeared to be the only way.  But it doesn't remember that I got on once and keeps demanding that I log in again.

iCloud is inextricably linked to things you might want, like transfer stuff to new phone, so if you can't get on iCloud you are stuck with hard to find ways of transferring to the new device.

Fortunately I've found that my Apps are only secured through my Apple ID, which I can remember.  I can re-download them one by one just by entering that--a big relief.  But that's going to be a lot of work.

Kindle is a big pain, because on top of having to enter ancient email address (and I have to remember which one) and password (thankfully Amazon doesn't force you to keep changing so its one of the few things I can actually remember) you have to enter the stupid letters, which are almost impossible to read.  Then, if you get anything wrong, it clears your password, and you have to start all over again.  The error message is garbled unless you scroll back to the top of the screen.  Did anyone at Amazon actually try this, assuming you might get something wrong?  It's unclear which button to press (Done?  Go?).  The Login button is at the bottom of the screen, which you don't see unless you scroll all the way down there.  Then, if there's an error at the top (which you don't see because you just scrolled down to the bottom) pressing login does nothing.  Fortunately after about 45 minutes of trial and error, and logging into my Amazon account on a computer to remember my registered email address, and also be sure of my password, I got my Kindle library on the new iphone.

Why do they force you to use those letters anyway?  Isn't that completely redundant?

Upgraded to iPhone 8 Plus, NOT iPhone X

The iPhone X is now the rave (though not in stock anywhere).  But it didn't take too much time to see the flaw for me.

It is smaller than the 8 Plus.

Now, you could say "but it fits more screen into a smaller phone."  Well yes and no...considering the cutouts.  But that's not actually the issue for me.

Back when I had a Samsung Galaxy 4 I struggled to pull it out of my pocket, or putting it back in, without pressing the side buttons, which could do things I didn't want done.

So I didn't want another phone with a side mounted on/off button.  I almost decided upon getting a iPhone 4 which still had the top button.  But I didn't like the sharp beveled edges either.  They felt dangerous to my hands.

But after much handling in the store, I found that the 6S Plus was so much larger than the other phones, I could wrap my hand around the bottom end of the phone (which is on top, inside my pocket) and pull the phone out of my pocket without accidentally pressing any of the side buttons.  I was sold on the 6S Plus from that moment onwards.

I had to read a lot of rave reviews of the iPhone X without discovering this issue that it's smaller and likely a full hand grip would actually press buttons by accident.

After having the Galaxy phone, I also wasn't necessarily convinced OLED made for a better phone screen either.  In bright daylight, the Galaxy S4 screen was totally washed out.  My iPhone 3 was better in bright sun, and it was more than 3 years older.  Now, it could be this isn't a problem with the newest OLEDs.

I'm also suspicious of the "feature" of having to look at your phone to turn it on.  I like having a dedicated button.

Actually I wish I could disable the finger authentication and have the bottom button just turn the phone on and off without any "security" (because the finger authentication still only works about 60% of the time...quite often I have to press it several times to get it to work).  But...if you disable all security, the bottom button won't turn the phone on or off at all anymore.  Funny, the bottom button does work without security--very nice--until you finish the "setup" process (which is only the beginning of your troubles, but a nice milestone anyway).  Then you're back to the bottom button which only works with one finger and doesn't always work.

I especially hate "swipes" to turn the phone on.  With the Samsung, it never turned on with the first swipe.  I had to swipe again and again to get the swipe just right.  What is this, some kind of "test"?  It was almost easier to enter the numbers, at least that's fairly predictable.

iCloud stinks

I like the old days, where I could easily back up my phone to my computer.  And that was that.

I don't want no stinking iCloud anything.  I'm sorry I ever said yes to that somewhere when starting my iPhone 6s Plus the first time.  I knew from the start this would be a come-on, that soon enough it would be endlessly telling me I need to upgrade to the paid service, which has in fact been the case for almost the entire time until today (I hope).

I know from having storage services that it's a ripoff.  You pay and pay and in the end you find you never used anything you paid for.  That happened 20 years ago when I moved and had to quickly find a way of discarding everything in my storage unit.  Hardly anything was kept.  Most of what I had paid 10 years of storage fees for was simply tossed in the trash.  The rest I could have kept in a corner of a closet.  I didn't have time for recycling, resale, whatever, it all had to go fast so I could make my plane.  In fact it was hard to get it all tossed into the trash fast enough.  And if I left even the smallest thing behind, I would have to pay another months rent, cleanup fees, and never get my deposit back.

Anyway, when I was starting my iPhone for the first time, I think it told me that if I didn't use iCloud, I wouldn't be able to backup my notes, etc.  Well that seemed like tyranny, but I thought notes would be OK, I'd never use up 5G of notes, which I barely use much anyway, but I hate to lose anything I've written, because I might need it later.

But soon enough it was clear that it was also recording photos, videos, everything.

And that's a problem because (1) the photos are so uselessly large, IMO 2mp is sufficient for virtually everything, but these seem to be like 10 or 30 times larger.  And (2) by accident, constantly, because all the buttons are so small, and the photo/movie option slider moves when I'm trying to hold the phone with one hand, I kept accidentally taking videos, when I had no intention to.  And these videos might record for minutes before I even noticed that video was being recorded.  (Only a few weeks ago I discovered that videos I had not intended to take were taking up most of the 64Gb on my phone, and I figured out how to go through and delete them all, though I had to do this in multiple sessions because it would only show me the largest few at any one time) and (3) mostly when I'm trying to take a photo, I'm paying attention to the subject, not the slider and buttons and so on.  So many many photos I've taken are simply garbage, until I managed to get the slider back to the correct position to take a plain old photo, which almost always what I intended to do.  In retrospect, I never had these problems with my iPhone 3, taking pictures on that was always a breeze, and despite having far less storage, it never filled up the device itself.  Simpler and smaller worked out better for me.

As I feared, iCloud has been an incredible nuisance since day one, and on 2 years later.  Many months ago I finally got so tired of the warnings telling me I needed to upgrade to paid storage, I finally figured out how to shut it off, or so I thought.  But off doesn't mean off, there are so many different things which separately have to be turned off.

Despite turning off iCloud, or so I thought, recently it's been putting a warning on my screen all the time about my iCloud storage being full.  So I figured out how to actually delete photos from the iCloud itself.  It seems with a recent update Apple may have made this better.  It now seems that simply turning on the phone does the required authentication.  I think previously it demanded I log into iCloud to make any changes.  And that's a problem because I can hardly keep track of the passwords I use for the things I use often, let alone the things I very rarely use, like iCloud, which in fact I've never retrieved anything from.  But this time, thankfully, I was able to delete all my photos from iCloud, and the storage there fell back to almost nothing, just my notes.

But now it seems more fully "on", but all my oldest notes have disappeared.  I think that was the warning that kept me from doing this all along.

Now, all the notes I've ever taken would only have filled up maybe 1mb or so, but when I turned off the iCloud, I immediately lost about half of my notes (probably going back to some earlier day when I first turned iCloud notes off, I have everything since then, maybe).

This is the basic Apple tyranny of "Sync."  Files never exist as independent copies anywhere in iCloud syncing.  You are either sync'd to the iCloud, or they don't exist at all.  They may be "on" your phone when you have iCloud, but when iCloud is sufficiently disabled they are wiped from your phone.  You don't "own" anything.  Apple owns you.

Fortunately it doesn't seem to have deleted all my photos in the way it did with my notes.  I still seem to have all my photos back to the beginning.  Whew.

Now the way this should work, as I think it did with my iPhone 3, is that whenever I plug it into my computer it just backs up everything new.  And since there isn't much new stuff, this should take maybe 5 minutes, which was the way it had been for the first few months.

Though, that had been a problem because after awhile, even though I wasn't adding much new stuff, it might take 24 hours or so to index all the stuff which was already on my computer so it could tell what was new.  So by the time I finally stopped using my iPhone 3, backups had become almost impossible, as I'd need to leave my phone connected to my Mac for 24 hours or more, just to figure out which new stuff needed to be backed up.

As fast as computer are, and have been for the last 20 years, I wouldn't have thought this would have been a problem, but it was.

As always, this happens because their priorities are different than mine.  Their priority is to always find some way that I'll need to buy more stuff, as if buying a $1000 phone wasn't enough.  And my priority is generally to figure out some way I can keep from buying more stuff.

When I press pause, I mean pause

I hate all kinds of timeouts.  Pretty much, they aren't necessary, in my experience, anyway.

When I press the pause button of my DVD player, I want it to stay paused, until I press some other button.

I'm grateful that Panasonic does still make a HDD/DVD recorder.  But the way that pause times out in 5 minutes or so is extemely problematic for me.

With HDD (I haven't tried that on the Panny) I'm not sure what happens.

Are they trying to save the disc, the laser, or both?

Can't the still video just play from memory and have laser at standby during pause???

This is one of so many examples.

My LeGrand doorbell camera I bought a few years ago helpfully has a menu where you can set the "monitor" duration to 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, and hold.

Nice, but "hold" doesn't work.  Now, in some cases this might drain the camera battery.  However, the great great virtue of this unit (I had never seen anything like it) was that you could power it from existing doorbell wiring, which carries low voltage from a transformer, which is how mine is hooked up, so I wanted that "hold" but it doesn't work.  It gives no more time than the 1 minute setting, which often isn't enough even for serious use.

It would have been so nice to have permanent monitor of the outside.

Of course, for the longest time, the limitation of VCR recorders was that the various slow motion features would necessarily time out, to save both the head and the tape.  But many VCR's had multiple slow motion speeds.

Now, with computer playback, where the still or slow motion could hold forever, the still most likely times out (at least due to screen preserver), AND, the slow motion features aren't available at all (and for that reason, I avoid computer playback, and only play from recorders that have the slow motion feature).

Now, it has often been said, that holding stills on various kinds of screens, can cause burn it, stuck pixels, and so on.

I'd held pictures for days on my 2009 Samsung LCD, and never had any burn in or stuck pixels.

Now, I was using only moderate contrast.

But I believe by now, this fear of still images is far over exaggerated.  Maybe if "forever" holds aren't good, how about at least an hour.  And if I don't want any limit, anyway, at least when it can be handled, give me that.

Hospital Parking Lot

If you can find it.

You enter from the street to drive past a sign with lots of arrows.  At the top, in multicolor letters, is the "Children's Hospital."  OK, so I want the adult hospital, so I go look for the next sign...

Next is Emergency, but there the sign also has Children's Hospital on top.  So I'm still not there yet.

I see some outdoor parking, whatever it is for, but there's a big red sign that says "Lot Full."  OK, so much for that.

Next thing I know, I'm back out on the street.  And it takes quite a detour to get back to the Hospital again.

This time, entering from the other entrance/exit, it's that same old sign.  But looking harder I see two visitor parking arrows, pointing in both directions.  So I turn towards the open parking lot I saw before, which I can now see has plenty of open spots, the "Lot Full" sign not apparently being accurate.  Actually, I saw someone else turning in there before realizing that.

I park my car and head for the fanciest looking enormous building, next to the mass parking building the other arrow pointed to.

I get into the General Entrance, I just figured that's what it was because it was a big entrance with lobby on the inside visible through the glass.  There were no signs, arrows, anything.

I go up to the Information Desk, which did have a big sign that said Information Desk.  The website said you could find your Friends room location by asking at the Information Desk.  There was nobody there.  There was no kiosk, or sign either, or literature, just a large round empty desk with room for about 8 people, but nobody there, and nothing else either, except for the big Information Desk sign.

Fortunately my friend had texted me here room number.  So I took the elevator that was near the empty Information Desk.  I didn't know if it was the correct one.  The elevator I took said "South Tower" but my friend had only texted "Tower" in addition to the room number.

Exit the elevator and enter a long long hall.  I notice the numbers are getting smaller going in one direction, and my friend's number is smaller, so I head that direction.

After awhile I notice the number aren't getting smaller very fast, and are mixed with larger numbers on the other side of the hallway, getting larger.

By the time I nearly reach one end of the long long hall, the numers have only fallen about 1/2 the amount they needed to.  But there was a person, so I asked them.  "Oh, you have to go to the end of the hallway," pointing back the way I came, "and then take the first door on the left."

So I walk all the way back from where I started, and more, and entered the door, and there was another hallway.

But here I finally notice some room numbering signs pointing in directions.  So this time I go the correct direction, and finally find the correct room.

Typical: Non-apple applications locked out again and again

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I believe most "security" that is provided by an OS is more about protecting their market share than anything else.  Making it impossible to run software not made or endorsed by them is a good start.

I've come yet another oh-so-typical case tonight.  A foolish friend of mine has sent me Word documents.  I do not have Word installed on my computer, never have.

So, people tell me, I can just use OpenOffice, and indeed I often try.

So I installed OpenOffice, and I get the popup:

"OpenOffice.app" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.  Yes, of course, OpenOffice.org is an "unidentified developer" as far as Apple is concerned.

OK, so I got to security preferences, and it conveniently says:

"OpenOffice.app was blocked from opening because it is not from an identified developer."

and there is a button saying:

Open Anyway

But, no matter how many times I click on "Open Anyway", nothing happens.  If, after having clicked on "Open Anyway", I go back and click on OpenOffice, I get the original "can't be opened" popup again.

OK, so time for the balls out option.  Back at "Security & Privacy" I can check the box "Allow apps downloaded from Anywhere."   This brings up a warning box, which also warns me that if I don't use this option for 30 days, it will be inactivated.

That's the problem in my life.  I do so many different things, I often don't use apps for years, and when I go back it's like starting all over again, including messing with security malfunctions like this.

OK, so now I'm set, right?

Of course not.  Not for the first 2 times I went through the whole sequence described above sequence.  I still got the "can't be opened" popup.

The third time, just as I was writing this, it worked.

If I hadn't been writing this, I wouldn't have tried a third time.