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Computer Forteana?

A bit off-topic, but the mention of computer clocks reminded me, and I thought this might be useful to some: www.worldtimeserver.com . All pc clocks lose a little time to keep your clock right, go there and download a free program that keeps your clock corrected right to the second.
 
I'm sure we had a thread once on 'elgoog', but I can't find it so I'll post this curiosity here.

Apparently, using the joke 'mirror image' Google site, the Great Chinese Firewall can be circumvented. Interesting that the Chinese govt. goes to such lengths to protect its citizens from foreign ideas.


(The 'elgoog' search engine is here. )
 
ghost dog said:
OSX mean it doesnt crash (what that actually means is that if it should crash then only the application crashes, not the computer, which limits the amount of times you spin down the harddrive, adding to the longevity of your computer).
Click to expand...

You have a surprise coming!

We own a G4, too, and I speak from experience.
 
Computer Fairies

The following sort of thing happens to me a lot. Techs are no good (except the one I'm married too; and he's mostly software) because they stare at you and say: "That's impossible. It couldn't happen." This is why I never call a tech until I'm certain I can sit him down at the machine, turn my back, and tell him what "impossible" results he's getting as they come up.

Anyway, our printer wasn't behaving well, so I had to put the Paleo-indian story onto a disk to take to work to print. This involves copying over about 46 files Word Perfect files and a master document. While checking the results, I noted that the word count* was wrong, though I remembered changing it. Well, just because I remember doing something doesn't mean I did it, so I made the change, saved it immediately, and went on with what I was doing. Various glitches arose which I won't bother to describe here. I pinpointed the location of the final, worst problem, decided I needed to tackle that in the morning, and closed.

This morning was hell. I fixed the problem, and the program crashed as I was saving the final form of the copy. When I re-opened, I was told that the data was unreadable. All right, fine. I threw away that disk and got another one. It went blue screen - disk error. I got another disk, another blue screen. I started crying and throwing disks around. (Hey, for professional reasons a part of me will always be 11.) My husband came to help me, and while showing him what I was doing I noticed that the word count - which I knew for a fact I had corrected yesterday - was again incorrect. I mentioned it but blew off fixing it till the big problem was fixed.

So, he finally gets everything successfully copied onto a disk (one which, incidentally contains a parody story he once wrote for me, "Peni the Wooh"). I sit down to make sure it all functions properly now. It does! Oh frabjous day! So, all I had to do now was make the change to the word count and make it stick this time, dammit -

And it was already correct.

No, my husband didn't change it for me.

Damn computer fairies.


*Manuscripts should be submitted with an approximate word count in the upper right hand corner of the first page of the document.
 
I still use a Sharp QL-W30 Word Processor, for anything that's important!!!!

It dates from about 1984 or 5, but it still works & I have two working spares in the garage, which cost a couple of quid each at the local boot sale plus, about two hundred double density 3.5" floppies.

Plus, when it Donald Ducked in early 2000, I was able to get it fixed in under a week!!!

I can understand my m8's who stagger on with an old Amstrad with a 5.25 floppy drive!!!!!

At the end of the day, it works & you know what you are doing with it!!!!
 
Sinister Mystery Email, and Strange Computer Going Ons

Hey everyone. Okay, so I was just thinking about this, and last year there were two weird incidents with my computer that seem a little irrational, and I was wondering if anyone else experienced something like this at all.

So, this all happened I'm pretty sure around the same time, like the same week or so. Anyhow, first off, I used to get really depressed, though I wouldn't show it to other people, rather just let it build up to such a great extent internally. Anyhow, thankfully I don't do that anymore, but at the moment, I was so depressed, and I had thought to myself that I felt so alone and that I didn't have any real friends. Well, that evening I get an email, from myself (though I did not send it), with the header "You don't even have any friends..." I opened the email but it was completely empty. The only words were those on the header that I just wrote. I was a bit disturbed by it. I figured that someone had possibly hacked into my email and sent it, though why someone would send that, no viruses or anything, just a really depressing message, with no idea what I was thinking, is a mystery to me.

Anyhow, the second thing, later on, wasn't sinister thankfully. Since I'm a university student, I'm part of facebook, kind of like myspace, like most people at my uni. Anyhow, it was just catching on and people were starting all sorts of groups. The house I lived in had been dubbed the Yellow House, and there were only a few people who had ever lived there. Anyhow, so one day I get a message on it from my roommate saying that "sure, I'll start a yellow house group if that's what you want." So, when she got home, I asked her why she sent me that message. She told me I had sent a post to her telling her she should start a yellow house group, but i never did. I checked her email, and it was sent from me at around 1 in th morning, but I had been on my computer and logged onto facebook at that time, and had never sent it. Anyways, the group was started, but it was a bit weird. I don't think anyone knew my password, or why they would try to log on like that. It's a bit strange.

Any ideas what it could have been?
 
It is relatively easy to send an e-mail with a faked sender address.
I can easily send you an e-mail from "[email protected]". You can do it by hand, simply by talking directly to your mail server. Or you can use mail-tools like "Blat".

It is possible to discover the fake by looking at the mail headers. Most mail clients like Outlook don't show these headers.
 
It may also be that you'd logged in at a public computer and forgot to sign out.
 
uair01 said:
It is relatively easy to send an e-mail with a faked sender address.
I can easily send you an e-mail from "[email protected]". You can do it by hand, simply by talking directly to your mail server. Or you can use mail-tools like "Blat".

It is possible to discover the fake by looking at the mail headers. Most mail clients like Outlook don't show these headers.
Click to expand...

If you're using a recent version of Outlook Express, you can view the headers.

Select the email, right-click and then select Properties.
A dialog will then pop up.
Click on the Details page to view the headers.
To view the source, click on the Message Source... button.
 
Hi, I'm a pseudo luddite. I moan about my incompetance with machines and how crap Iam, but can in reality do 'stuff'. However, clearly we have some experts here. Would any of you experts care to start a thread helping people out with these kind (e.g. above) things?
 
Just glad I could be of service. :)
 
Today I received an email from a correspondent in America

- which was rather odd, as it was addressed to someone in Australia! :shock:

(There were no other addressees or CCs.)


This has happened to me once or twice before, but I can't find any previous posts I made on the subject.

One time I got an email, from a female colleague in this town, which had been addressed to the OU (we were both doing the same OU course at the time), but to get an email sent to someone I don't know on the other side of the world is definitely odd!
 
not so strange as your experience but I had one today when I was trying to look up flights and clicked a link. A message came up saying, quote :
'we don't expect to see you here' then the computer turned itself off.

I don't know if this has any bearing but i once sat down at a computer in a 'cyber' cafe and the fella before me hadn't signed out so through pure devilment (after all I would never get to see the results of my actions) I sent a message to a few people in his address book declaring my love for them.
 
rynner said:
Today I received an email from a correspondent in America

- which was rather odd, as it was addressed to someone in Australia! :shock:

(There were no other addressees or CCs.)
Click to expand...
I qestioned the sender about this - it turned out he had BCC'd the message to a select group of other people, including me.

BCC is Blind Carbon Copy, which explains why no other addressees were listed in the message headers.
 
milk23 said:
not so strange as your experience but I had one today when I was trying to look up flights and clicked a link. A message came up saying, quote :
'we don't expect to see you here' then the computer turned itself off.
Click to expand...

:shock:
 
I've received blank spam before. Not even a subject line! Makes me wonder, that's for sure...
 
Mister_Awesome said:
I've received blank spam before. Not even a subject line! Makes me wonder, that's for sure...
Click to expand...

Just an ickle bit of software installing itself in the background mwah-ha-ha!
 
milk23 said:
not so strange as your experience but I had one today when I was trying to look up flights and clicked a link. A message came up saying, quote :
'we don't expect to see you here' then the computer turned itself off.
Click to expand...

Do post the URL: I want to see the script for this one!

milk23 said:
I don't know if this has any bearing but i once sat down at a computer in a 'cyber' cafe and the fella before me hadn't signed out so through pure devilment (after all I would never get to see the results of my actions) I sent a message to a few people in his address book declaring my love for them.
Click to expand...

That was you, was it?
 
Man gets 3,000 C-charge receipts

A tradesman from Kent who went online to pay the London congestion charge ended up being sent 3,000 receipts.
Graeme Ellis from Swanley, went on the Transport for London (TfL) website to pay the £8 fee and then requested a receipt.

The first time, he was sent 500, and then on the next occasion 3,000 arrived at his house, delivered by Royal Mail.

TfL said it was an "unacceptable" computer error and steps had been taken to ensure it did not happen again.

Make castles

Mr Ellis said: "The second time it happened I ended up with four boxes, about 3,000 receipts all turned up on the doorstep in a big Royal Mail lorry. :shock:

"I think I might pay at the petrol station tomorrow. The kids love opening them though, we make castles out of them and towers."

In a statement TfL said: "This is clearly an unacceptable error. Our service provider, Capita, have identified the fault and put in additional controls to ensure it does not happen in future."

Mr Ellis said he only chose to pay online after forgetting to pay the charge on three occasions and being fined.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7314783.stm
 
Where is the computer fortean phenomena?

How is it that the `Oz Factor´ never seems to turn up in hard-drives
or on data-screens?

By Oz factor I mean it in the sense of the phrase that was coined by Dr. James MacDonald (or was it John A. Keel?) as a way of defining the strange distortions of reality that seem to have been going on for at least as long as humans have been recording information.

You know, things like people who seem to travel from point A to point B in to short a time, even though they do not remember anything different happening, or people who encounter Bigfoot, UFOs, little people, stuff falling out of the sky that did not belong there or any number of other strange things that Charles Fort liked to write about.

These happenings are reported in one form or another with all modern things as soon as they become common enough, from trains, to photography, radio, telephone, automobiles, airplanes, television, tape recorders and so on, all are soon touched by the Oz factor..... save for one, save for the computer.

At least if anything like that has happened with the computer I have not heard about it, and I make a point of keeping track of these things as best I can.

So what's the deal? Are things happening that people are just not talking about? Or is the computer so set into the scientific / materialist mindset that they are `proof´ against the Oz factor? A sort of powerful ju-ju anti-magick talisman? Do they do something to our
brain-waves that keeps them from happening? Or have a bunch of stories
just passed me by that I missed?

For that matter why no stories of the dead or whatever coming though over Ipods, the computers younger cooler little brother?
 
There's stories of the dead coming through on computers, but some are fairly ancient like Kenneth Websters "The Vertical Plane" where people started getting messages from some Tudor character who IIRC wasn't sure that he was dead.

I've heard stories about people who believe that the random shuffle function in their ipods can be affected their moods, but really ipods haven't been round long enough to build up any legends.

The other problem with the Oz effect in computers is how to determine whether some weird behaviour is the other, or a virus, or just something buggy in Microsnot's software...
 
Search (and ye shall find!): the first four relevent results on searching the FTMB with 'computer' in the thread title.

Sinister Mystery Email, and Strange Computer Going Ons
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26427

Spirits communicating by computer
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12164

Messages from the future...Via Computer...
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27768

Jinxed Computer Users
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23099


Strangely enough, I had a weirdness happen when I started the seach:
I opened the Search panel in a new tab, and when I moved the cursor down over the page, it turned into a red circle with a diagonal bar (like a UK 'No Waiting' traffic sign, but without the blue background). I've never seen that before! :shock: And I couldn't type anything, so I swapped tabs back and forth, whereupon the cursor returned to normal...

Spooky, eh? ;)
 
There was a good story from a few years back about a woman who had the ghost of Kurt Cobain in her computer.
 
With regard to the random shuffle feature on an i-pod. I am convinced that if I skip through and allow certain songs to play, after 2 or 3 tracks it gets a feeling for my mood and then "chooses" tracks of the same genre.
Up until now,others who I have confided my suspicions in, have always dismissed me as barking mad, but perhaps I'm not after all!!! :roll:
 
Maviself said:
With regard to the random shuffle feature on an i-pod. I am convinced that if I skip through and allow certain songs to play, after 2 or 3 tracks it gets a feeling for my mood and then "chooses" tracks of the same genre.
...
Click to expand...
That may be a function of the programme that supposed to select 'random' tracks. It would depend upon how much information is contained in the short description of the track, contained in the mp3 file and whether the iPod's selection programme can read it.

You know: Blues; Rock; easy listening; female vocalist; etc.
 
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