Features

FROM THE DESKTOP

Glen Kohler
Saturday January 25, 2020 - 08:03:00 PM

Organizing folders and files, continued….

Instead of littering the desktop with endless files and folders, you can create special icons that often-used folders inside of Documents or Pictures. Such icons are called aliases, and they are really easy to make.

Navigate to a folder in your user account that you use frequently. Say it’s in Documents. Click on it while holding down the Control key to invoke a drop-down menu. About halfway down the menu is the command ‘make alias’. Click on it and a duplicate icon will appear just below the folder you are interested in, named ‘yourfoldername alias’.

The new icon will have a small arrow in the lower left corner, which tells you it is an alias and not the actual folder.

Drag the alias icon onto the desktop. Then when you want to work with the contents of that folder, double-click on the folder’s alias to open the actual folder—which still resides in your Documents folder.

Tech Notes

The State of the Internet

FCC chairman Ajit Pai was formerly Verizon Corp.’s lead counsel before the fool in the Oval Office put him in charge of rules governing America’s communication giants. At the top of Pai’s to-do list was axing the ‘Net Neutrality rule: the 2015 Open Internet Order, which said the Internet is a Public Utility, and that providers of fixed and mobile broadband cannot blocki, throttle, or create paid prioritization—so-called fast lanes. It reclassified broadband as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, and in so granted itself the authority to regulate broadband service nationwide. Pai vacated this order in 2017. 

You would think that Pai still works for Verizon, instead of the American Public, judging by the way he has vacated this and other rules that protected citizens from communication corporations that care for nothing save extracting the final nickel from their customers’ pockets. 

The FCC is currently facing a number of lawsuits: from corporations that want to scuttle every last rule; and consumer advocacy groups that want to restore them. 

Stay Tuned…. 

Homework

Making aliases - https://kb.iu.edu/d/achy - Despite the caveat at the top of the page, these commands still work. 

FCC Lawsuits 

https://gizmodo.com/fcc-faces-off-in-net-neutrality-lawsuit-against-consume-1832269448 

https://www.fcc.gov/major-court-cases-fcc 

Write to Glen at: glen@machead.info