I am not sure what is going on...I tried to sign on to MS Word to work on a new short story today. I got blocked by "them" and figured that it was time to pay some money. I try to deal only with those online entities where the transaction is easy and seamless. The rest only get CASH.
I may have already shot myself in the foot. They wanted my address, and phone number and kept sending me verification codes until stopped suffering the fools. I may have to make a trip to my bank, only 1-2 miles away to get it sorted.
I am in lots of pain right now and had planned to go to my Doctor to get a shot of Tramadol to break the pain. The shot is an opiate, so I am not sure what will happen... In the last decade, I have done this single shot thing twice and it has worked a treat. Hopefully there will be time for both ???
God, help me.
Ahabidah, Gwen Brown, or what ever...
Comments
Stop faffing around with Microshaft
Download LibreOffice and get on with work. No fees, no license hassles.
MS, like Adobe and the rest are just becoming more trouble than they are worth. Avoid at all costs.
Samantha
MS Word
This morning around 3:30 am (around 10:30 or so am), I was still able to write and print 3 copies of the request to my Doctor for a standing prescription of "Tramadol shot (1)". You likely call it something else.
Eff you Microsoft.
Gwen Brown, or whatever. :)
Writing on the wall
I saw the proverbial writing on the wall of the Microsoft grift just over 20 years ago, and pull the proverbial ripcord!
It was around 2003 that I abandoned MSOffice97 (in my opinion the best version M$ has ever produced regarding features and ease of use) and switched to OpenOffice/LibreOffice. There was one [very advanced and esoteric] feature that I lost in the switch. But I have gained alternate workarounds in the Open Source Software market. And you can use almost all Open Source Software on either M$ Windows, Apple OS/X or Linux, with transparent data migration between all three platforms.
Around the turn of the millennium I have carefully read all the small print on the Microsoft license agreements. Even the Windows license stated that the user granted M$ a royalty free use of any and all intellectual property for their own use without even having to acknowledge the source, that is stored on any system that runs any M$ software. Not an issue as long as computers are NOT connected to the Internet. But it started to become an issue as soon as online software activation became a requirement.
Apparently most cloud storage providers have a similar policy. Especially with the so-called “free accounts”. And if they decide to discontinue the service, get bought out or go bankrupt, then all your data-files and intellectual property is gone with the wind.
My suggestion: Download the current LibreOffice installer for your particular platform. Install LibreOffice on your computer. Save your files on your own computer hard disk. Make copies at regular intervals to several external hard drives and USB sticks that you keep in your physical possession. If possible, delete your files from cloud storage after copying to several local media. As much as possible, bail away from M$ software. (I know that there are specialized applications that are not yet available as Open Source Software, so you might be stuck with Windows or OS/X.)
Cloud Storage
I refuse to use cloud storage anywhere; especially "Onedrive." I don't even use the Samsung cloud storage to backup my phone. Putting stuff in the cloud is an invitation for others to see it, copy it and use it as they see fit.
With the availability of Tera Byte flash drives, there's no reason to back up your computer any other way. I can't think of a device that I can't use a flash drive on that I'd need that information on.
I personally use a SanDisk - Ultra Fit 512GB flash drive. It's password protected and small enough that it can live in a USB port on my laptop without causing any more obstruction than my wireless mouse USB. It only takes a couple of minutes to backup all my data files.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Corporate "security" and cloud storage
Back before I retired, I worked for a company that used and wrote a lot of software (for their own use.) They had all kinds of security policies, which as usual made my work harder. But they wanted everything to be put in the cloud, and used MS software for most of it, which IMHO basically negated any security they might have gained from making us jump through all those hoops.
But then, most of the people running corporations, including those responsible for security (whether they know it or not), have no clue about security. It's all security theater, cargo-cult security mentality. Like most of the things the bosses do, it's about being able to say you've done whatever the latest management fad calls for.
Clouds are temporary
both in real life and in IT
I worked for a company where we had to put all released code into [drum roll please] a sharepoint instance that was in Atlanta. We duly did that and provided screen shots of the upload.
About a month later no one could find the code in the sharepoint instance.
Thankfully, us brits saw the folly of that and had multiple physical backups on our servers based in West London.
This was all to conform to their new Agile/Scrum development methodology. All our projects in Europe were run by the developers. At most there were two people working on the code. We didn't follow their scrum mantra. Employing even a part time scrum manager would have blown the budgets.
Clouds are only good when they drop wet stuff on you. Then they are gone forever.
I could rant for hours about cloud storage and its failures. IMHO, the only safe cloud is on-premises cloud. Then, you are in control of everything, not renting some storage from a bit barn.
Samantha
Uh
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's data storage illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all
Love, Andrea Lena
Me too
... and I don't like them.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Microsoft
Microsoft is one of the worst data miners second only to Google and Chrome. I totally ignore MS emails wanting me to login to my Microsoft account. No good could come from that.
I'm sure that MS has super good security that would take a first-class hacker to break into; and then only after a great deal of effort. It's not the hacker(s) that concerns me with them... it's Microsoft themselves. I wouldn't put it past them to up-slurp anything on their cloud servers and use it or sell it for their own profit.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
up-slurping
That was spelled out just like that in their End User License Agreement way back in the 1998 to 2001 time-frame, buried deep in the very small fine print and surrounded by a lot of legalese mumbo jumbo. It was not easy for me to dis-cipher, but it was a huge turn-off for me. And ultimately caused me to move my computing environment to Linux and the rest of the Open Source Software ecosystem.
I have a copy of Office 97 pro ...
... I've had for many years. It's on a CD and I simply install on each new desk top when I update the hardware. I'm currently on W11 and it works fine and does everything I'll ever need - and lots more! I occasionally use LibreOffice if I get sent text-type files Word97 doesn't like. I never rent software - I always buy or use free. I think you can buy a copy of Office 97 pro on eBay for about £10 in the UK - or even less.
My 'Cloud' is various hard drives stored in my desk drawers. From the days when my software was saved on C90 cassettes my back-ups have always been very local and in those days I was writing in assembler. IIRC I have 3 hard drives (the 2 terrabyte SSD is partitioned in addition) - so my data are well spread around :)
Slow Study...
Not to be hard on myself... Sometimes it seems like I am not the sharpest tool in the shed. I have started to research LibreOffice. This will likely take some time. I think that I heard about some desk tops having a booby trap right in the chips that make the user suffer for dumping Micro soft. Paranoid much?
I use Google to search and YouTube even more. Few have ever told me that I am a great writer, and no one has paid me for it...
Gwen
Links
You can find LibreOffice at https://www.libreoffice.org/ and for the download page go to https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/ where you can select the installer for your platform. Though usually the pre-selected installer is based on the operating system you are browsing from.
The Windows installer will install LibreOffice within the Microsoft guidelines and basically “embed” LibreOffice into Windows, just like any other well behaved software should do on the Windows platform.
The other option that has been mentioned before in other similar blogs and comments is the PortableApps framework. With this framework you get a very big part of the Open Source Software ecosystem that stays completely separate and independent of the Windows operating system. You can either install PortableApps on an external USB drive/stick that you can use on any and all Windows computer, or you can install it into a custom stand-alone directory/folder on any internal hard drive on your computer and set it to auto-launch whenever you start your Windows PC.
Since PortableApps is a Windows-only port of Open Source Software, and I have not had access to any Windows PC for nearly a decade, I have no current practical experience with the latest iteration of this framework. But basically it consists of a small installer which generates the basic framework software. The framework software inserted an alternative “Start Menu” into the system tray, from where you could install or launch all the various PortableApps. At https://portableapps.com/apps you can check out all the Open Source Software applications that are available within the framework.