The Internet, it’s Good and Bad I have to wonder how many people know about the creepy offer being made by MyHeritage. People love genealogy and I have to admit it does have a certain interest to most, even those who don’t actively pursue it. The offer is the company will use a picture you send them of a dead relative and bring it to live by having the head, eyes and mouth make motions. It does look natural, but there is something unnerving about it. Not only that, but to get this “free offer”, you have to give them a lot of information. To me there is something wrong with this, but not everyone might feel the same way. One interesting thing about the internet is you can find almost anything you want to buy on it. I remember the story of an engineer who formed his own company and would sell small amounts of radioactive material to approved companies. Many people claim there are really two internets, the one most of us use and the mostly criminal one called the black web. They are wrong there are more than two, there is also the secret government websites. Some of the commercial websites are used for things like regulating machinery such as the power grid, water purification, sewer and other things. Sometime the least of them which seem insignificant can become dangerous weapons in the wrong hands. Take the water purification for example. Just the other day a hacker tried to increase the amount of lye used to purify water to levels which would harm or maybe even kill us. Luckily it was noticed and prevented. It just goes to show you everything on the internet needs protection, right down to a personal website. While there might not be a lot to be hacked on a personal website, there is personal information. Let’s assume you don’t care about that and you decide to let people communicate on your site. You might not be hacked, but you eventually will get the nasty crowd causing problems. The problem is some people love the idea they can act like bullies, because they are anonymous. Sometimes it is only kids doing this and other times it is unhappy people who take that out on others. Buying things on the internet can also be a problem for several reasons. Usually, the big and famous selling sites like Amazon and others are safe, but every once in a while, a spoof site which looks like the real thing will mislead some people into thinking they are on the correct site and giving their credit card number, name and address. There are more problems. Over the years how many of us, including me, have gone to a strange site to get a bargain, only to find out they tried to keep the money and never sent the item or the item was not what was advertised. This is why it is so important to pay with a credit card because you can dispute the payment later on. I had to do this once. One of the things the new age as introduced is computer dating. I am old now and really didn’t understand why anyone would want to do this. Then my son met his wife this way and they have been happily married for many years. I thought about it and realized things were a lot different than in my day. I was always able to go out and meet people, there were plenty of places to go. When I look around today, they are not nearly as many as there used to be. I still think computer dating has a risk, but I also realize it could turn out okay. I have noticed buying online and trying to get the best price is not always easy. Many of us go to Amazon, Walmart, Bestbuy and other places automatically without checking prices. The other day when I had nothing to do, I was looking at the price of a particular laptop and noticed there was a big price difference between three sites with Amazon being about $300 more than the cheapest site. You should keep this in mind, it never hurts to check around. There have been some breakthroughs which make our life easier. One that comes to mind is depositing checks by just taking a picture of them when you are on the banking site with your mobile phone. I don’t need to use it much, but a few times a year it has helped me avoid going to the bank to cash or deposit checks. YouTube help videos have become a staple. Several times last year and this, I used them to figure out a computer problem such as the settings for email software to connect to different email servers. I have also used them for directions on the use of new devices I have bought. I bought a NuWave Air Fryer and got some good tips on its use. You don’t always get the right info on the internet however. There are several reasons. One reason is you are reading something which was posted years ago. It is very important to check the date of a help article and is useful to also check it when reading the news. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told something by someone who read it on the internet and had to tell them the article was years old and no longer relevant. One the areas on the internet which is problematic is recipes. Some of them are just plain crazy. For example, if you look up how long to boil fresh corn so it is edible, you will find recipes with boiling time ranging from 10 minutes to an hour. The hour is about correct. If you try eating corn which was only boiled for 10 minutes, it is hard as a rock. This also applies to so many other recipes on the internet. Sometimes I think people who put some of them up are laughing when they post them.
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