I don't mind that you record the nocturne if you are sure you can do it - but you shouldn't feel any pressure. After all I have kept my own old and terribly bad recordings for myself because the ugly sound of them would make any serious music lover's ears bleed. I opposed it last time because a recording of just the first few bars would be meaningless.
I have spent a few days away from my computer, but I did bring along some printouts in other languages so it has not been totally wasted time. However the major part of my reading was spent on Danish newspapers and a consumer magazine ('Tænk'), and they had a number of articles on computers and informatics which might deserve a comment. A couple of the articles dealt with the time Google stores your search and location data - in principle forever, although you can empty your history. But does this only make the data invisible for yourself or are the data data really done away with for good? Nobody knows... As for the location data they come from your smartassphone, if you have got one - I don't know whether my old Nokia also reports
my position, but it might do so - though not necessarily in a storage place accessible to Google. But I noticed one thing I didn't know, namely that the free version of the anti virus product AVG also grabs your search history and sell it to commercial partners (that's why it''s 'free' - no really free lunch here). And nobody knows how to empty your history in that company.
Even more scary was the newspaper article about ransom ware, i.e. the kind of malware that sneaks into your system and at some point encrypts your data files and demands a hefty ransom (without any guarantee that you get them back even if you pay up). In principle payments through paypal should be traceable, but it doesn't seem to be happening in practice. The scary thing is that you don't have to be idiotic enough to press dodgy links on homepages or in emails from strangers - nowadays the criminals can spoof people on your friends' list. And you may risk that your backup also is contaminated before the ominous message appears. I have one portable computer that simply never is on the internet - maybe it's time to store my permanent collection of music files etc. etc. there and do all my revisions and upkeep there instead of doing those things on a computer that is connected to the big bad internet.
It is a pity that such things may become necessary, but the fact is that the way our computers work has been deliberately designed NOT to be safe. One early error from Microsoft was to allow other providers to mix their own dll's (or versions of dll's) with those supplied with the machine (dll's are small program snppets used to make your computer work). In the old days short executable files were typically .com files, and the long ones were .exe files with supplementary files, and everything belonging to one program was typically placed in one catalogue. But programs nowadays are so complex that it's hard to say what belongs to each program, and they are free to mingle with each other. The latest versions of Windows allegedly have a zoning system that protects the operating system, but sorry, if that was enough then we wouldn't have the problem with malware we have. As long as there is a mechanism that can install an update (include updates to Windows) without even telling you, then there also is a way malware can enter it.
And the bling bling first movers who want things to function automatically in spectacular ways and use functions from several different programs in any given operation are driving this dangerous development forward. Frankly, isn't it COMPLETELY idiotic that you can store harmful code in a .jpg picture file?
Who didn't think ahead and predict that pictures could be infected with vira? And no, I don't trust that our antivirus programs can keep on protecting our computers forever. I have earlier been able to cure my own former computers from different kinds of malware (including one rootkit) witrh the help of some clever antivirus software plus my own knowledge of the systems, but in the article about ransom it appeared that a victim had tried to get help from several specialist security companies, but to no avail. So he lost 15 years' of work - including the data copies on his backup. Bad luck - a
really rotten day at the office!
The internet is increasingly becoming the digital parallel to Snipers' Alley in Sarajevo, and we are the targets..
I'll write more about my mini holiday later today.
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