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"The Federal Court dismissed legal proceedings against iiNet on 4 February 2010. Judge, Dennis Cowdroy, rejected the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft's claim that the ISP encouraged its customers to engage in piracy."

from http://research.scottrade.com/public/markets/news/news.asp?docKey=100-035i6776-1&section=headlines

It's an HTTP page, but they put a *picture* of a padlock in the middle of the page, so you know it's "ok" to login. And millions of people just go ahead and login from that page.

http://www.scottrade.com/

(Yes, I know the login does go to an HTTPS server. But it's the general idea that counts).

Check out http://www.scottrade.com/

*disclaimer: I work there

Apparently, some people who knew how to "do it right", did so, and called their work "Google".

I began losing respect for Yahoo when they ganged up with SBC to force me to use some proprietary software in my machine, which I perceived as a lock-in to the Yahoo portal, as well as a likely data-mining opportunity to snoop my machine.

Of all the Yahoo offerings, I like Finance.yahoo.com the best.

Here's an example report of some mutual funds I have been tracking. I like it because it gives me a clean display of what I want.

They have not yet implemented technologies which require me to enable Javascript, then use that technology to hound the living daylights out of me. When they do, I will no longer use their site.

I used to find Groups.yahoo.com extremely valuable, but slowly but surely they have been requiring javascript more and more to access mundane functions... but if I enable javascript I am going to be pelted with God-knows-what that I didn't order, and have no idea what the window is programmed to do should I click on it.

Its really hard to tell a big organization what really irks me off. Its much better is someone like Google actually shows them how its done.

I have NEVER had any problems accessing Google from ANYTHING, because Google adheres to WEB STANDARDS. Trying to communicate to many businesses is a royal pain when they adopt weird extensions which screw up my end.

It wasn't easy trying to find a decent internet stockbroker! All the "big guys" adopt untenable crap on their end which forces me to be vulnerable to all sorts of mischief.

Scottrade is the best I have found so far, and even they require Javascript enabled if I wanna BUY anything. All the "big boys" ( Fidelity, Schwab, Merrill Lynch, etc. ) REQUIRED IE, rendering them useless to me. With all those Javascript phishing tools floating around out there, one would think a FINANCIAL INSTITUTION would be leery of using such pornsite-like programming on their site.

Lengthy letters to them regarding my concerns of my vulnerabilities to phishing attacks when I have scripting enabled have had no effect.

I can't force them to use standard HTML protocols.

I hope they won't be surprised that if Google opens a web brokerage that uses pure HTML protocols, where I know my URL bar is not being overwritten, and know exactly where a link is going to send me, I will go to them.

Google is succeeding for a reason. They are doing things RIGHT.

And they are big enough now that Microsoft cannot buy them and force them to use "Microsoft proprietary" protocols - like we discussed in another forum on Slashdot - where things have grown so big and cantankerous that trying to make them secure is damn near impossible.

Its the same old thing. Businesses get so big their leaders determine that they "make the market" instead of "meet the needs of the market", then flounder around while the smaller businesses which are not big enough to "make the market" absorb the big business's customer base.

Despite my constant whining to them regarding them taking security seriously, the only people I could talk to that were high enough to make a difference were also so high up that my concerns, as a lowly customer, were not important. Little guys like me don't mean all that much to multi-billion dollar concerns. They incessantly lace their site with proprietary stuff that forces me to use IE, as well as running JavaScript on, when simple CGI over the SSL link would have worked just fine. They would even use JavaScript links instead of HTML links just so I could not even navigate the site without enabling JavaScript.

It's obvious to me that their expertise is NOT in coding or computer security, rather it's in the psychological maneuvering and office politics to find an executive that considers them worthy of a salary dozens of times what I would make.

The weirdest thing was that the big companies I had to discontinue business with are supposedly the old-time leaders in the brokerage industry... and the guy I run with now is pretty new at it, compared to the old timers.

He's not perfect ( at least in my book, anyway ) but best I've seen so far.

What is it with big companies that makes them so lackadaisical and so lacking in common sense regarding other people's money? Is it that its far easier to issue a EULA disclaiming responsibility than to do things simple and elegantly, using well known and documented methods?

Some of the business sites rank right up there with the porn industry in the amount of unverifiable software I have to install on my machine in order to access their site.

You're going to pay about $20 to a broker to sell the shares, so there's no point unless you're going to put in a couple grand (IMHO).

Point well taken---trading surcharges can make small investments impractical---however, as an investor of extremely modest means I've used ScotTrade. $7 trades is perhaps the biggest selling point for me. Prior to learning about ScotTrade I had always assumed that it would be cost prohibitive for an independent investor with only a couple grand (or less!) to get involved with the stock market.

Impossible though it may seem, I've found analysis on Slashdot to be quite useful in making decisions about where to invest. The frequency that a certain company appears in slasdot headlines is one bellweather. Thoughtful analysis by slashdotters is also useful.

Instead of whining about the machinations of capitalism, join it. Go here, or here, or go through your bank, open an account, and start buying the shares these companies have out on the market.

Way before Katrina came along, I bought $10,000 worth of VLO, back when this company was $10. My mouth was watering after they became the biggest oil refining company in the United States (they took over Diamond Shamrock not too long ago).

After Katrina hit, I had well over 5x my original investment and dumped the stock. So, now I have almost a year's worth of wages I'm sitting on, and I can take this money and go put it somewhere else.

These companies that layoff workers are only doing it for one single reason: to please Wall Street. Any Wall St. analyst would be shocked if a merger or acquisition did NOT involve layoffs, since that is primarily a driver for the merger in the first place (increase market share + lower costs == higher returns).

So, if the company is doing the layoff is a sincere, sound manner... why not invest? Oracle and SAP have pretty-much shutout all the other accounting (er... "ERP") systems on the market... MAS-90/100, Solomon, J.D. Edwards, and a myriad of other big speciality systems... they are ALL going the way of the dodo.

POS vendors are probably the next target to be consolidated after this (which I would breathe a HUGE sigh of relief if that happened... do you know how many different POS systems are out there???)

blah blah blah i am an irresponsible fool. blah blah blah someone else should pay because i don't have the capacity to face up to the result of my own foolhardy actions.

so using this logic then, if i make a bad investment through my online brokerage then Scottrade should pay because they didn't inform me that PalmOne's stock was overdue for a nosedive? right.

maybe you should try SCOttrade

The answer to the issue is quite simple: Banks list their recommended browsers to avoid headaches. Yes, Lynx with SSL support may work well enough, but who wants to go chasing down the an obscure bug that only affects 0.00001% of their users?

Personally, my credit union has no issue with what browser I use; they had a XHTML issue which I argued with the Mozilla people they should allow (because I thought XHTML was grey when it came to someone does <SELECT><OPTION ... />Option_Display</SELECT>), but this resolved itself when the credit union changed their HTML header. I used to be able to get into Ing Direct with Konqueror, although I am presently having issues with logins (I do not know if it is a Konqueror or ING bug; changing browser idents does not fix the issue). First Union/Wachovia historically has not given me issues, although I no longer have an account there. But all my personal banking can be done through Netscape for Linux without issues.

For an example of a system which dicates browsers strictly, I name the brokerage Scottrade. They say you can *only* use Internet Explorer or Netscape (but fortunately, do not name an operating system). Why do they do this? Well, if you read their terms of service, they specifically name a number of programs that you cannot use, which gather quotes, attempt to place stock trades automatically, etc. Here, there is a clear and valid danger should someone use a malicious client to do trades, etc.

While I have not asked, I'm certain that if you told a company like Scottrade that other *legitamite* web browsers existed, that they might allow them. I think many banks/brokerages/etc. just specify specific browsers because they [1] don't want people calling them about bugs while using XXXX (my transfer didn't go through, and browser Y said it did!) and [2] want the extra legal leg to stand on should someone attempt to compromise their system with an alternative Internet client. Of course, malicious clients can act like they are legitamite ones, but the more legal room the banks think they have, the better they feel about being online.