thread policy (probably approaching L2 at least)

[Ronn! Blankenship]

Sorry if this seems to be violating the policy 
which is the topic of this thread ;), but I'm 
concatenating several posts into one in order to 
address Jon's questions in a more coherent way 
than by responding to each individual post separately—



At 09:56 PM Tuesday 5/20/2008, jon louis mann wrote:

>--- Ronn! Blankenship <ronn_blankenship at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>>At 04:30 PM Tuesday 5/20/2008, jon louis mann wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>Safari?  I thought that was something called a browser, like Netscape,
>>>or Explorer, or Thunderbird, or Mozilla, Linux...?  What is OS X?
>>
>>
>>
>>For what it's worth:
>>
>>OS X, Windows (in all its different versions like 95, 98, NT, 2000,
>>XP, Vista . . . ), and Linux are all what are called "operating
>>systems."  An "operating system," frequently abbreviated "OS," is the
>>main program which controls whatever happens on the
>>computer.  Everything else which runs on the computer runs under the
>>operating system, iow, the OS must be up and running properly before
>>you can run any other programs on the computer.  (Some of the geeks
>>here may point out that I am simplifying things here, but I'm trying
>>to give you what you need, not teach another course in operating
>>system design like I last taught about 20 years ago . . . ;))
>>
>>Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla are all examples of
>>"browsers."  A browser is a program which runs under an operating
>>system and allows you to connect to the Internet and read web pages.
>>
>>Thunderbird and Eudora (which I'm using at the moment) are examples
>>of "mail programs."  A mail program runs under an operating system
>>and allows you to read and write and send and receive e-mail.
>>
>>To make things more complicated (naturally), many browsers have an
>>e-mail feature which allows you to read and write and send and
>>receive e-mail while in the browser.  Also, there are sites like
>>Gmail and the mail feature at Yahoo! and many others where you can
>>load a particular web page in your browser and read and write and
>>send and receive e-mail while logged into that web page.  So you may
>>indeed be using a browser to read and write and send and receive your
>>Brin-list e-mail.  That's why William asked you to look up in the
>>upper-left-hand corner of your screen where the name of the active
>>program usually appears so hopefully someone here will recognize the
>>name of the program and know something about how to manage its
>>settings.  (Yes, all of them are different.  Frequently quite
>>frustratingly so.  And like with every other program, familiarity
>>with how it works takes practice.)
>>
>>I'm sure some of the others here will be weighing in with their words
>>
>>of wisdom (probably much wiser than the above . . . )
>>
>>HTH.
>
>
>wow, i think i will stick with what i am used to and just live with the
>results rather than make any more waves.



Really, it's not any harder than learning many of 
the things all of us have to learn for our 
employment or to function in everyday life, and 
is indeed simpler than many of those things.  Just different.



>one more question.  if safari
>is my operating system and yahoo is is my mail program, what is my
>browser?
>jon



(I think that question has been answered by others.)



At 10:00 PM Tuesday 5/20/2008, jon louis mann wrote:
>>--- Max Battcher <me at worldmaker.net> wrote:
>>>jon louis mann wrote:
>>>is this what you mean?
>>>
>>>Yes that's basically what is standard.
>>>
>>>>it looks like gobbley gook.
>>>
>>>Yes, but computers like gobbley gook.  So do computer people.  There
>>>things out there to make it all look prettier.



In fact, to the computer hardware,

"It looks like gobbley gook."

looks something like

"010010010111010000100000011011000110111101101111011010110111001100100000011011000110100101101011011001010010000001100111011011110110001001100010011011000110010101111001001000000110011101101111011011110110101100101110"

where the ones and zeroes represent different 
electrical signals (think of a switch with "0" 
representing the signal when the switch is "off" 
and "1" representing the signal when the switch 
is "on").  Even computer people think that is too 
much gobbley gook.  Especially those who remember 
the days of the first computers in the 1940s and 
50s when EVERYTHING that went into the computer 
had to be translated into a series of zeroes and 
ones by hand before it could be entered into the 
computer, and entering it often meant physically 
setting a bank of actual electrical switches to 
"on" or "off" to represent those values . . . of 
course, since switches take up space, you'd have 
to do it a few at the time and wait for the 
computer to read those and accept that part of 
the input before you could do the next few, so 
perhaps you can see how programmers in those days 
spent most of their time.  Over time, programmers 
came up with ways to make the machine do most of 
that grunt work of translating human-readable 
input into electrical signals which the machine's 
hardware could interpret and then translating the 
electrical signals inside the machine into 
human-readable output.  (Yes, of course I used a 
program to convert the sentence above into a 
string of 0s and 1s!)  And one reason some parts 
of programming seem so complicated to the 
beginner is that such translation methods were 
not created all at once according to a plan, but 
like many other things humans have created were 
developed one piece at a time, and sometimes 
whatever was easiest to accomplish or whatever 
kludge could finally be made to work became the 
accepted standard because it was first, not 
because it was "best."  (Because of this, the 
above string of 0s and 1 does not in some 
absolute way represent "It looks like gobbley 
gook." but is understood to represent that string 
of letters and spaces and punctuation when 
translated by one set of translation rules which 
happens to be the one most often used in the US 
today.  If frex we were using an IBM mainframe 
from the 1960s or 1970s, the string of 0s and 1s 
which corresponds to each individual letter in 
the alphabet would be different, so the above 
string of 0s and 1s inside one of those old 
mainframes would produce a completely different 
string of characters when printed or displayed on 
a screen (probably meaningless gobbley gook 
rather than a readable sentence in English.)

Modern operating systems do a better job of 
translating what the machine understands into 
something that can be easily understood by 
average people who have no more idea or desire to 
know what goes on inside the computer than they 
do about frex what goes on inside a television 
set in order to give them pictures and sound when 
they hit the "ON" switch, which is all they care 
about.  It is basically the fact that computers 
can do so much more than simply play pictures and 
sound sent from a station via radio waves or 
cable or pre-recorded on a tape or disc that 
means that ultimately getting them to do exactly 
what you want requires more controls than a TV 
set has, controls which in most modern computers 
are selected from the screen rather than being 
represented by individual buttons on a remote 
control unit.  Operating a computer and getting 
it to do what you want then becomes simply a 
matter of finding out where those controls are 
located and what they do in much the same way 
that operating your TV, cable box, and 
VCR/DVD/DVR is a matter of finding out which of 
those 30 or 40 or 50 buttons on that remote 
control unit which is usually lost between the 
cushions of your couch tells the TV, etc., to do what you want it to do.



>>>>i tried the link
>>>>and googled e-mail program, and understood about half of what i read.
>>>>  i still have no idea what e-mail program i use...
>>>
>>>It appears that you use Yahoo!'s web-based email.
>>>
>>>May I suggest giving a Gmail account a try?  I think that Gmail's web
>>>interface is far superior to Yahoo!'s



I agree that it is.  However, although some 
people really like Gmail, many of us prefer even 
more control over our e-mail which lets us manage 
it the way we want to.  (Frex, as Jon mentions 
below, he doesn't like all of his e-mail being in 
one giant and ever-growing in-box.  I agree with 
Jon on this, but others like the one giant 
in-box.  As they say, there's no accounting for individual taste . . . )



>>>and it might make things easier on
>>>you if you don't mind learning to like/love/accept the differences
>>>between Yahoo! and Gmail.
>>>
>>>(Personally I used Yahoo! for several years, got angry at some of their
>>>stunts and quit...)



As did I.  As have many people.

(So, for Max and others who have had such 
experiences, do you think that Yahoo! will 
improve if/when Micro$oft finally gets hold of 
them?  Or is this one of those rhetorical-type 
questions which also qualifies as a stupid question?  :P)



>>>You don't have to use a dedicated email program, but they certainly
>>>help.



Amen.  And that means that _you_ will find 
managing your e-mail lots easier than it is with 
a web-based mail service or using the mail 
feature of a browser program because both of 
those are usually much more limited in what you 
can do than is a dedicated e-mail 
program.  (FWIW, to answer something I saw in a 
previous post from you, the program you use to 
handle e-mail is also sometimes called an "e-mail 
client."  Just another name that for all 
practical purposes can be treated as synonymous with "e-mail program.")



>>>On the other hand you could look into tools for your particular
>>>web browser to see if any would help with your email.
>>>
>>>Looking for Firefox I found no plugins and 1 semi-working GreaseMonkey
>>>scripts that would help you Jon:
>>>
>>>* http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5594 - For Yahoo! Mail: Colors
>>>each level of indentation differently so that you can visually
>>>distinguish the differences when reading quoted email.  (I can't believe
>>>that Yahoo! still doesn't do this automatically!?‽) Caveat: Only works
>>>with "Classic" view.
>>>
>>>I couldn't find an easy plugin to do Paste as (Email) Quotation,



[Primarily in response to Max:]  In Eudora, frex, 
"Paste as Quotation" is Ctrl+' (single quote), 
while regular "Paste" is the regular Ctrl+V.



>>>which seems a shame.  I would assume that you could easily adapt one from
>>>Thunderbird's source...



[Primarily in response to Max:]  That of course 
ass/u/mes that Jon is a programmer rather than a 
turnkey end-user, and from his questions in this 
thread it is obvious that he is much closer to the latter than the former.

[To Jon:]  That is not some sort of geek-speak 
insult.  "Turnkey" means that the user (in this 
case, you) wants the computer to work much like 
an automobile does, where all you have to do is 
to "turn the key" and go, rather than have to get 
out and spend an hour rewiring things under the 
hood to get the car started every time you want 
to go to the store a few blocks away or to go to 
work in the morning or come home in the evening, 
or iow every blessed time you want to use the car.



>>>I did not find any addons for IE that would help.
>
>
>i have a gmail account, but i hated how it bunched all my e-mails
>together.
>jon



(My response above.)



At 10:05 PM Tuesday 5/20/2008, jon louis mann wrote:

>--- William T Goodall <wtg at wtgab.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>On 21 May 2008, at 00:36, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:
>>>  At 05:58 PM Tuesday 5/20/2008, William T Goodall wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Safari is a web browser so Jon must be using web mail of some sort.
>>>>
>>>>Since it seems rather feature poor I suspect 
>>>>it is his ISP's basic web mail access.
>>>
>>>
>>>Sounds about right.
>>>
>>>So can you think of any e-mail program he might be able to download
>>>from the web which would give him more features without having too
>>>steep a learning curve?
>>
>>I can't think of one that is any simpler than Mail.app, the one that
>>
>>comes with the computer. The only bit that could be considered hard is
>>setting up accounts which is much the same with every mail client.
>>
>>Apple provide an illustrated walk-through of setting up and using Mail here:
>>
>>http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304773
>>
>>Tricky Maru
>
>
>i misunderstood and thought safari was an operating system, but it's a
>browser.  all i know is i click on the safari icon and it takes me to
>my home page - yahoo.



Okay, a _little_ bit of detail here.  What 
happens when you click on the "Safari" icon on 
your screen is that by doing that you are telling 
your computer's operating system to start the 
program that that particular icon is associated 
with.  (The reason it takes a few moments is that 
the OS has to look up where on your computer's 
hard drive the program you asked for is located 
and then to load it into working memory and tell 
it to get started, but for the moment you don't 
absolutely have to know those details.)  When 
Safari starts, it looks up the settings you (or 
your tech guy) set when Safari was first 
installed on your computer and finds that the 
setting for "Home Page" tells it that your home 
page is yahoo.com (that's the main page at 
Yahoo!:  if you told Yahoo! to remember your 
username and password when you get to yahoo.com 
it checks and sees that you told it to remember 
your information and so takes you on to your 
individual home page at Yahoo!, typically too 
fast for you to see the intermediate steps on your screen).

My point in describing all that is so you realize 
that when you click on the Safari icon it sets 
into motion a series of several steps which 
involve both your operating system and the Safari 
browser (as well as in this case stuff that 
Yahoo! has at their web site), which means that 
one reason that explaining what you need to do to 
set things up is complicated is that two or more 
different programs are involved, each with its 
own range of options that can be changed, and so 
to set things up so they work the way they ought 
to we first must determine which program is 
actually responsible for accomplishing the 
function we want to change and then locating how 
to make the change.  And if it all seems like it 
is way too complicated, actually much of the 
reason it is so complicated is to make it less 
complicated for the user like you who doesn't 
want to know all this stuff, much less have to do 
it all by hand every time you want to run any 
individual program.  (Others here on the list who 
have been fooling around with computers long 
enough to have worked on mainframes when you did 
have to do so much of this stuff for yourself 
instead of being able to leave much or all of it 
up to the machine will be able to verify how much 
easier it is now . . . once they stop shuddering 
from the horrible memories of those days that 
this discussion has stirred up, that is. ;))



>  when i got this computer the genius guy set up
>the mail program that is on the computer (the postage stamp icon with a
>hawk).  i didn't like it.  i eventually lost all the data when they
>replaced my hard disk



Okay, perhaps after we get you up to speed with 
what's going on when you send and receive e-mail 
someone should introduce you to the very 
important concept of "backing up your files."



>and logic board.  fortunately i still had
>everything that was stored on yahoo.



Yep.  That's because when you use Yahoo! or Gmail 
or a similar on-line service all of your e-mails 
are stored on the hard drive of _their_ computer, 
so if the hard drive on _your_ computer has to be 
replaced, the e-mails are still on their 
computer.  However, you should still make and 
keep backups for yourself, in case someday 
something happens to their copies or their 
service and as a result you cannot access their copies.


. . . ronn!  :)