Yammer September 2019
29th September 2019
Dennis Parsons
Chit Chat
We had an interesting and educational thread involving three of Melbourne’s great religions – AFL, Judaism & gambling! Judy heard it mentioned on the radio that orthodox Jews wouldn’t be able to attend the Grand Final due to various strict religious rules but she reckoned a few would manage it by subverting these rules. She explained the lengths that some go to, to circumvent the Sabbath rules, such as pinning tickets to their clothing as they aren’t allowed to carry anything.
Then James mentioned the almighty dollar was the main religion of the AFL which led to pokies in the clubs, with Di opining that you’d need to be brain dead to call them entertainment! Several members proudly proclaimed they were ahead on the pokies having only ever played a handful of times. Football? What’s that? It barely rated a mention!
https://www.yammer.com/melbpc.org.au/#/Threads/show?threadId=342674757885952
Computer Help
With the end rapidly approaching for Windows 7 (support ceases on January 14th 2020) Jan is sensibly looking at her options for moving to Windows 10. Previously her practice had been to buy a new system complete with new operating system rather than upgrading the old, being a good excuse to buy new hardware if nothing else. But she’s happy with her current hardware and doesn’t feel the urge to replace it so is faced with an in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win10.
Her questions were:
- Has the dust settled? Yes.
- Is the upgrade still free? Yes, it appears so.
- Will I need to reinstall all my programs? Opt to leave programs and data in place.
- Can someone please hold my hand during the upgrade? It’s straight forward so you should be fine
https://www.yammer.com/melbpc.org.au/#/Threads/show?threadId=339312222429184
NBN Questions and Comments
Harry reported on an interesting development in the NBN service to be provided to Wye River and Separation Creek, a couple of small towns on the Great Ocean Road. As is usual for difficult to service rural areas Sky Muster (the NBN satellite based service) was the delivery method originally chosen by the NBNCo. Not great as it’s expensive, and suffers speed and congestion issues. It also requires a line-of-sight view of the satellite which is a problem if your house is situated on the wrong side of steep terrain, as is the case for many in these towns.
Sanity has prevailed and FTTP has been chosen instead, meaning they will be in the fortunate position of having a better NBN service than much of metropolitan Melbourne. Not bad for towns that rely on septic tanks and bottled gas. Provided it actually happens of course!
https://www.yammer.com/melbpc.org.au/#/Threads/show?threadId=341328658849792
Security, Scams and Phishing
The scam phone calls purporting to be “Nicole” from the NBN advising the that NBN is now available in your area and your pre-NBN Internet service will be cut off within 24 hours unless action is taken by pressing “1” to talk to a technician continue unabated. Peter mentioned a colleague decided to have some fun by pressing “1” and asked the scammer who answered to agree to the call being recorded as evidence in legal proceedings and for dissemination on social media. They hung up.
While it sounds great fun to bait scammers and maybe waste their time thus helping to protect the more gullible, it’s not recommended to engage with them – don’t press “1” and just hang up.
Another member was assured this was definitely a scam – they’d coincided with a change in his mobile phone service so he’d been wondering if it was related. Sensibly he’d declined to press “1’ regardless.
https://www.yammer.com/melbpc.org.au/#/Threads/show?threadId=319342947827712
