(no subject)

[the_rck]

More tiny frustrations today—

I tried watching a DVD that was recommended to me. It’s not close captioned, and the sound quality is so poor that I couldn’t understand what was going on. It’s Gilbert and Sullivan, so being able to hear is kind of important. I’ve seen this particular operetta in a live production, so I know the basic story, but I’m not so much interested in watching actors talk at and sing at each other when I can’t understand a word. I let it run a lot longer than I should (35 minutes) before I stopped it and put in the library bag.

The next DVD I tried is also not captioned. The sound quality is better, but I’m still having trouble following the dialogue. It’s another adaptation of something I’ve seen before, and this time I think I can manage, more or less. I just shouldn’t have to.

Apparently I can’t put downloads on library lists. I don’t see why I can’t since the library provides the downloads and lists them with full entries in the catalog. I don’t want to try to download anything right now because Cordelia’s attempting to download a movie. That will take hours.

Scott wants us to do family sharing through the iCloud for purchased music and video which sounded great until I discovered that, if I click that I’m willing to use the iCloud, Apple will upload all of my files. It will let me set things to 'private' so that Scott and Cordelia can’t see them (which… I don’t actually care if either of them sees anything on my laptop), but it won’t let me say that I don’t want, for example, my word processing files or my photos or what-have-you uploaded to anywhere unless I specifically choose to.

I have no interest at all in cloud storage for anything personal. I have no Apple devices beyond my laptop and don’t plan to any time in the next few years, so synching files is decidedly not useful and not something that I would actually want to do anyway. When I had a iPod, I very, very carefully disabled synching. I had to keep disabling it over and over again because all of Apple’s software assumes that synching is something one would want to do. I really don’t understand why for any of the things I’m likely to do.

I don’t like using storage unless I’m pretty sure that it’s secure and that I know clearly what will be done with my files. It bothers me a lot to use Gdocs, for example. I do because I haven’t found a better way for collaborating on things, but I try very hard not to put anything up there that I’m not willing to have data mined and available to the entire world.

Comments

[nucleosides.livejournal.com]

iCloud can be finicky like that sometimes. I like Apple a lot, but that's one of the few things I wish they'd work on (just general Cloud crap).

[the_rck]

I know that, by having a file on a computer connected to the internet, I make it insecure, but I feel like large storage places make more tempting targets for data thieves. I suppose they might be more risky for such folks, too, the way that robbing a bank is riskier than breaking into a parked car, and I do still use banks.

But there's no insurance provided for storage in iCloud.