Carl Blare

Open source software is one of the great benefits of belonging to the internet community.

Open source software is one of the great benefits of belonging to the internet community.

But the download sites which act as the gateways for accessing open source material can be somewhat tricky.

I went looking for “Virtual Audio Cable”, an editing tool mentioned at our recent ALPB Meeting, and upon finding it, hit the big DOWNLOAD button which seemed to be associated with the description for “Virtual Audio Cable”.

But afterwords I could not find the expected software anywhere on my computer, so I went on to other business and forgot about it.

This morning on bootup my new home page was a trashy AOL Page which I never sought to allow, and it took about 10-minutes to figure out how to get my own self-designed home page reinstated.

AOL is America On Line, the same people who provide Shoutcast, of which I am a member of longstanding. But this does not forgive the deceptive and pushy way an AOL Homepage tricked its way onto my computer.

Other recent hackings include a sleaze by my website provider, who switched my account to “Automatically Renewing”, and was all set to renew me for 3-years, which would NOT be my choice. Fortunately I discovered the change and got it corrected, with some little girl somewhere claiming that I had “selected” auto-renew, which was a lie she was put up to telling.

So far I have described actual experience, and when I come back I will do so with an editorial commentary about the struggle for money on the web.