Ask Leo! #585 - The Ask Leo! Forum, "Recommended" Add-ons, Delayed mail, and more... - Confident Computing

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Introducing the Ask Leo! Forum

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Featured

Do I Need this Add-on Recommended by this Software Installation?

When installing some software programs I purchased on the web, it says while installing to click on, say, Ask Jeeves for a search engine. This is "recommended" and also is the Ask Jeeves toolbar again recommended. To be quite blunt about this, Leo, I did not click those even though they were recommended. In the past, I recall that some of this stuff is quite aggressive and soon after the install, my PC wasn't running right. Can the seller that I purchased my software from cause the software to not run correctly because I didn't install the search engine or toolbar that was recommended with the software?

You did the right thing. If the software is truly optional, then saying "no" should have no impact on your ability to use the software you actually want.

Software installations have become more and more aggressive in attempting to get you to install add-ons that are unrelated to the software you've actually purchased.

Continue Reading: Do I Need this Add-on Recommended by this Software Installation?
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Why Am I Getting a "Delivery Status Notification (Delay)" on an Email I Sent?

I am trying to send an e-mail to a co-worker and I keep getting the following message:

Delivery Status Notification (Delay)
 This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
 THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.
 YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.
 Delivery to the following recipients has been delayed.

The strange thing is that it is only happening with that specific email address. What does it mean, and why it is happening?

It means exactly what it says: the email you sent hasn't been delivered yet; it's been delayed.

The mail system will continue to attempt to deliver the email. Eventually, it'll either be delivered, or you'll get a fatal-error message.

Why? Because.

Seriously, there are many, many reasons that email could be delayed.

And if that's a problem for you, then you may be thinking about email the wrong way.

Continue Reading: Why Am I Getting a "Delivery Status Notification (Delay)" on an Email I Sent?
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Glossary Term

packet

The term packet is typically used in reference to communications – or, more specifically, data transfer. At it's simplest, a packet is nothing more than some number of bytes of data communicated from one point to another, as a single entity.

The best example might be the transfer of a large file of, say, many megabytes. Rather than just sending the data as one long transmission of data, it's broken into packets of smaller size. Each packet must be acknowledged by the recipient, or it will be re-sent until it is (or until some limit is exceeded).

As an oversimplification, a file transmission might conceptually look like this:

Here's file "a.jpg" --->

<--- I'm ready for file "a.jpg"

Here's a packet of data -->

<-- I got the packet of data

*** repeat send & acknowledgement many times ***

Here's a packet of data -->

<-- I got the packet of data

That was the last packet of data -->

<-- OK, we're done.

Breaking larger communications into streams of packets allows errors to be tolerated by retransmitting the smaller missed or erroneous packets, rather than having to retransmit the entire file.

Glossary Terms are featured selections from The Ask Leo! Glossary.
Have a term you'd like defined? Submit it here.

Featured Comments

Stopping Spam is Harder Than You Think

Ray Smith writes:

It's also worth noting that a significant proportion of spam originates from botnets/compromised systems. Reporting it is really quite pointless.

anne-ology writes:

Well said!!! :-)

Actually, doesn't it come down to non-thinking folks not using common sense ;-(

I wish you'd do one of these great videos on these non-thinking folks who continually forward hoaxes;

to me, it's the same lack of common sense.

Leo writes:

No video, but it's one of my oldest articles: https://askleo.com/why_shouldnt_i_forward_this_email_asking_me_to_forward_to_everyone_i_know/

Ray Smith writes:

'Actually, doesn't it come down to non-thinking folks not using common sense?' - Yup, and this is what spammers and scammers count on. Take phishing emails, for example. While there are some exceptions, most are very obvious scams that would never fool a smart person. And that's by design. The scammers don't want to deal with smart people as it'd be a waste of their time. Even if they could trick a smart person into replying to an email, they'd almost certainly not be able to get them to part with their money. By dumbing-down the emails the scammers ensure that they'll be dealing with the people who are most likely to part with money: in other words, the extremely gullible and/or vulnerable.

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