Safety glitch

The offspring has lately been amused by using neighbours’ wireless Internet connections. I have been very doubtful about the sanity of doing so as I want to try keeping my PC as clean as possible and up and working at all times, instead of catching virulent malware, viruses and what ever they all are called these days. It is hard to keep up with all the terminology of the high-tech world if you are not in the business.

Anyway, getting into your neighbours wireless Internet connection is not that hard, I have noticed myself. I have on several occasions just checked up the availability of WLANs and you would not believe the number that usually turns up on the list on my screen. Surprisingly many leave their access totally, and completely, unprotected and left originally named default.

I have avoided trying them out of safety reasons, and today I got an even better reason for it. Microsoft just announced that their 7 version of their net browser Internet Explorer has serious safety glitches in it and that phishers are able to phish secret info like banking data and passwords etc. from your PC.

Just one more of Mr Gates’ products that has not been up to promised standards.

This gives us one more reason on top of all the previous ones for not being too dependent on the biggest software manufacturer of the world. Not only that their software is more often targeted by malicious hackers hence being more vulnerable, but the default reason for avoiding Mr Gates’ products is, that they apparently keep on promising more than they can deliver.

A thing that sadly has become a routine over the last few decades.

Just not in time

We have now had digital television in Finland for more than a year with the broadcasting having begun in August last year.
There has been complaints about the subtitling that still at times has difficulties in loading in time and sometimes it is completely missing, and this seems to have no coherence what so ever with the channel you are currently looking at. As many as 10.000 households have given up their TV licences since then, a great deal more than was expected.

One thing I still keep wondering about, is the announced beginning time of programs in the TV guides of the digital-box. The channel announces the program to begin at say 9 PM, well, first there are the usual advertisements then, when the program due is announced with either my just a voice or by an actual person on the screen, followed by some more ads and the program itself doesn't begin until 3-4 minutes after the time it was supposed or rather announced to.
Does this mean they lie on TV? One thing it for sure tells people is, that it does not matter if you are not in time.

Anyway, the actual or real beginning time is in no way to be seen anywhere, not in the TV guide of the digi-box, text TV or elsewhere. Even the beginning times varie a bit from channel to channel, and here I mean the duration of the advertisements.

Another problem is when some program drags overtime resulting in either the following program to be either postponed or beginning later than it should, whihc alters all the following programs of that day.

How hard can it in these times of high-tech culture with computers as aids, to synchronize the guide in the TV, both on the text TV pages and on the digi-box, so you can actually seen when the program begins and the interludes done by the ads, or if the program gets postponed because of a so called "force majeure" . Then you would not have to waste time programming your digi-box to save the program on its' harddrive, making you disappointed as the program never was sent anyway and instead you see something else utterly boring.

Problems, problems

I am sorry to tell you that I still haven't worked out the problem. It's either on Blogspot or I have wrong options on my upgraded browser....

Less privacy

Finland has earlier been ranked as a top country concerning the integrity of the citizens but as it turned out now in the latest research done by Privacy International Finland is on a mere shared 11^th place in the EU together with Ireland and Czechoslovakia. Okay, I thought the Czechoslovakia was divided into Czechia and Slovakia or have I got this wrong?

Something here seems odd and peculiar, anyway, it seems odd that Greece and Rumania should have better security concerning the privacy of citizens, Canada I still somehow can buy. The reason for Finland to rank as low as this consist of several factors such as the phone company Sonera’s spy scandal, GPS satellite tracking and that the police can get your tax information to their mobile phones when on duty. Here comes my question, can the police do that even in their spare time?

Isn’t the tax register official knowledge anyway in Finland? And is it not good to be able to rack your own offspring by GPS to know at east where they are up to something?!?

Shopping today, the last day of this year, was as unpleasant if not to say as awfully hideous as it always is when the shops are crowded. I tend to avoid having to do any shopping at these times but this year’s holidays were quite placed unfortunately, I had no other choice. Everywhere I went I had to queue, at the pharmacists, at Alko for the midnight celebration bubbles, at the supermarket for some groceries and a couple of smaller specialized shops where there hardly is anyone else normally when I shop there. Being without wheels all of a sudden is the oddest experience. You take your car for granted, having access to it at any time of the day, and night for that matter, and always ready to go.

Well, sometimes you just have to give up your transportation, either out of convenience for mere peace in the house’s sake or to do someone a favour as they need the wheels more than you do. Having normally need for a car about twice a week, and here I strain on “must have” as in compulsory appointments in addition to all the other “just easier this way” or “just lazy right now”. When these appointments are in the middle of town it would be much easier to go by public transport as finding a parking space sometimes can be hell in bigger cities, even here in Finland. Not to mention the prices of the parking fees, and having forgotten about the parking fees the tickets are no fun to receive on your windshield. Anyway, where am I now going with this?

All of a sudden finding out what bus goes where, and when they leave can be hard enough if you are unused to it well that can be mended by either googling or asking the offspring about it as they are used commuters by now. No that hard part of it is the noise that all of a sudden surrounds you. Women happily chatting away their pastime on the bus, louder than convenient to any sitter nearby, brakes screeching, doors slamming open and shut and the odours, or maybe I should be all frank with you, the stench of bodily odours of the person sitting three rows away!

Imagine, wintertime not even summer when you get all sweaty and hot, no this fellow smelled like a full dustbin that had not been emptied for a fortnight, and believe me I do know what it smells like.

It does not smell like roses!

Swedish Finnish?

Since the digital TV was introduced as all over standard in television broadcasts here in Finland,

50.000 households have cancelled their paid licenses. The main reason for viewers to cancel their license fees has been the subtitling of programs that has not worked out to their satisfaction.

Loosing the license fees means about 10 million euros less for YLE, the Finnish government TV and bropadcast company, in their budget and closing down radio stations and TV channels have been discussed as means to maintain the same quality of programs. The administrative council of YLE has been discussing more collaboration between the Swedish and Finnish YLE news which might mean having to let hand some people their notice. So the Swedish news staff of YLE in protest against the it by a walk out today, so no there were no news in Swedish neither on the radio nor the TV tonight.

I have for long been wondering about if you are Swedish Finnish or are you Finnish Swedish if you are Finnish and your native language is happens to be Swedish. As Sweden Finns should be the Finns living in Sweden and Finland Swedes should be the Swedish citizens living in Finland.

Technical problems

Moving my Blog here seems to have been a success, many readers have followed the link here but I had technical difficulties with getting into my account, not out of bad memory, forgetting my password, but with accessing the Net. Nothing wrong with the cords, the adapter or the PC, just the socket to plug into for accessing the Net.

After awhile of trying various combinations to find out which was causing the problem, changing the socket did the trick. Strange, one moment it worked and in the second the connection just went dead so now I have to call the janitor about it.

Anyway, there are a surprising amount of small beer and cider breweries around Finland.

Wait a minute, do you brew cider?

There are also some restaurants that brew their own beer, lager and stout and it has grown quite big here in Finland. I think this is nice even though I am not personally into beer, am more of a cider woman.

Anyway, both bars and supermarkets nowadays keep in stock many differently flavoured ciders and I am especially fond of the light ciders as I am no huge fan of sugar and sweet things and a long the years I have come to taste many excellent ciders to remember but astonishingly much awful stuff. My personal favourite has for many years now been the Vanilla light cider which at first only was sold in the Christmas season but now is available all year around. Two to remember to avoid are the blueberry cider together with the lime flavoured cider. I have never really tasted dishwater but I remember blowing soap bubbles in my childhood and the taste was similar enough. A Salmiakki cider also comes in mind as not being good, at least according to my taste that is. I think it is good that everyone has something to their taste and I enjoy trying new things, new flavours even if I might not like them.

Learning new things and getting new experiences makes life worth living.

On break

The south-eastern parts of Finland have not been able to see digital-TV during the weekend and some areas are still without it. This is said to be due to a mechanical failure and it should have been fixed shortly but nobody has protested against not being able to see TV.

In Venezuela there are rallies against the most popular TV-station being closed down after having had discontinued its’ broadcasting license on May 27th 2007 for not agreeing with the current government policies.

Without knowing it here in Finland the most discussed subject on daytime TV-chats is the “Mi Gorda Bella” Show going on summer break and s said to come back after the summer break on August the 27th.

“Mi Gorda Bella” is a Venezuelan Telenovela and as it happens, produced by the same company that was just taken off air over by the Venezuelan government.

Even though TV series are fiction there always are some hints of the truth, or are there?!?

Sleepless nights

All Finnish TV is changing into digitalizing all transmissions this year in august, so you will have to get yourself a so called digi-box to be able to see any TV. We just got one and I am ever so happy as I like French old films and there are quite a lot of them on Tv5. Earlier most of the films were subtitled into German and the text-TV pages were in Russian so I could understand most of the speaking but the subtitling in either German or Russian I could not enjoy them as much as I now can, even with the sound turned off at night when my husband is asleep next to me in bed. I just love Don Camillo and his eternal fight with the communist mayor Peppone. They are a great comfort in sleepless nights as you always know it all turns out for the best in the end.

Difficult eating

Xmas is always a difficult time if you are into serious TV-watching as no advertising is allowed on TV at Xmas in Finland. How on earth ere you supposed to be able to get your sandwiches in between the programs if no ads in between?!?

Or my biggest Xmas problem being that Donald Duck is not on TV at 3 pm as every year before, so I have recorded it to have it on TV to get the Xmas going at the right hour!

Thank God for burning DVD’s and digi-boxes able to save the programs on their hard-drives!

If they did not exits we would not have to do any promises on New Year’s Eve that we do not keep anyway, as one of the most common one must be to loose some weight, at least after Xmas as it is the time for merriment and to eat. According to the Norse tradition you were to eat as much pork as possible and the midwinter solstice so the coming year would be as giving and plentiful in wealth and harvest as possible, so what we actually still do at Xmas, over eat, is an old pagan tradition, to over-eat!

Bringing up children conveniently

In the 60’s mummy was a housewife, in the 70’s it was “key-children” as neither of the parents were home, in the 80's some daddies were housewives and today “distant-up-bringing” of children is the issue.

Parents are now tracking their off-springs’ activities by their mobile-phones and the Internet. For toddlers and younger children you can log into the Homepage of your children’s kindergarten and see what they have been up to during the day. There you are presented with the photos the kindergarten-personnel have taken of their daily activities. Uploaded and updated on the Net several times a day.

And this is also so handy for all kinds of perverts!

Elder children you track down with a GPS-device, to know their exact whereabouts. You ring them once in a while to know everything is okay, tell them what to do and to ask them if they have done their home-work and heated up their TV-dinner in the microwave-oven. Not to mention the excellent use of Nanny-cams, then you really have control of what the kids were up to the when you were not at home. Well, at least you know what they did during your absence.

How is this for convenient for mummy and daddy? Now you don’t even have to afford to have a nanny or an au-pair to take care of your children, just check how they are doing on the Net, get home check the tapes taken by the Nanny-cam and tell the kids to brush their teeth and to go to bed! Nothing to worry about.

And all this to one day surprisingly to discover, that your child has got a driving license and borrowed your brand new BMW without your permission, crashing it under the influence of alcohol...

Thanking God nobody was killed!