automatic helpers which really suck!

[R. G. Newbury]

> On 12/13/2012 01:07 PM, François Patte wrote:
>> >  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> >  Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> >  Bonjour,
>> >
>> >  I installed f-17 and wanted to set my mail with thunderbird.
>> >
>> >  New account, name, mail address, smtp....*immediately*  thunderbird
>> >  helper goes on the web to check my email server and don't find it! Why?
>> >  I really don't know: this mail address and server has been in service
>> >  for years now (and I'm using it to send this mail).... I can ping it, I
>> >  can dig it...

You might check first in your ~/.thunderbird/profile.ini file.
IIRC, the last time I installed TBird, it created a *new* xxxyyy.default 
folder, and pointed profile.ini at *that* folder.
Changing the profile.ini to point to the correct, older default folder 
fixed that. It was a while ago, and things "may have changed" (as if we 
can assume that they have not!).

Talking about other 'automatic' helpers which suck: I nominate nepomuk, 
closely followed by zietgeist as "disastrous moronic stupidity of the 
decade".  Not that they might not be useful to someone, but that they 
install themselves like the malaria parasite, suck your cycles and are 
almost impossible to actually kill. Shades of the walking dead.

(Yes I know these are KDE specific, but in my defense I offer: Gnome. 
The defense rests.)

Geoff