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Rob Dempster
'Allo 'Allo Gardens! (AAG) Howick (uMngeni) AAG Blog Login Blues |
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Given that I have been involved with work that required me to use a computer for most of my working life, I am no stranger to being required to log in to a system in order to get work done. That has not stopped. Every morning I start up my phone by entering two four-digit Personal Identification Numbers (PINs).
Then armed with my phone and a cup of coffee, I sit down in front of my Personal Computer (PC) and enter a Password (PWD) in order to log into my account on my PC. I then use an Internet (WWW) browser to access my WWW Home Page (HP). There I first check to see whether my web cam (WC) image is being correctly uploaded (every 10 minutes) to the web. After that I click a link to my Grandson's Ambient Weather Web Site. There I either have to be satisfied with a Fahrenheit Temperature (in a metric country) for his weather station, or I have to LOGIN to an Ambient account (Another USERID & PASSWORD [U&P}) in order to see the Celsius temperature for the Town Bush Valley in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
Next I log in to WEATHER UNDERGROUND (WU) to find out what the temperature in my home town (Howick, KZN) is. After that I log into Gmail (Google's Mail Service) in order check my email and read the News Feeds I receive from The Daily Maverick (DM). In order to not see the adverts that accompany the stuff the DM publishes one needs to be a (paying) subscriber, AND be logged into ones DM account. Yet another login. I currently am a subscriber and I don't log in, I simply put up with the adverts.
Maintaining these accounts and logging in to them is a pain in the butt, a pain I would rather avoid, and mostly can avoid.
Not so easy to avoid is the newcomer on the block, Artificial Intelligence (AI). When I first arrived at the Computer Science Department of the then University of Natal in 1984, AI was still a buzz word. It no longer is, it is now a pain in the butt within the context of my use of the WWW and worse still, my phone. Sending my wife a message that includes a question regarding whether I should take a left at the fork (in the road), could now result in me receiving adverts featuring cutlery and/or garden implements.
Don't get me wrong, AI is great, but not when it results in me receiving advertising for cutlery and/or garden implements. As for posting a search in order to find out what GENUS the TIT belongs to, I am simply never going to go there.
If you have any comments, corrections, suggestions or plain criticism, I would appreciate it if you would communicate the same to me.
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[email protected] | www.robdempster.com |
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