Yes, there are legitimate reasons to use referrers, but not in the majority of cases. Mostly it's sites more interested in knowing where you're coming from to place advertising and so on.
If someone is worried about lamers stealing their content, then there are several ways to combat it:
Strongly brand your site. Put big notices up telling people that your service is free and they're being ripped off if they're paying for it.
Use cookies. Issue a cookie from the home page. If people don't have the cookie redirect them through an "about our site" page before letting them go to the link.
Embed session ids into the URL. Lamers can't link to a URL if it changes all the time.
If the lamer is loading your content into a subframe, use Javascript to force your content to the whole window.
If you really want to see how referrers are an invasion of privacy, try putting a sophisticated web counter into your homepage and read the statistics that it gathers about your friends when they visit. Next time you're out on the town you'll be able to ask which of them was visiting www.xxxgaybondage.com before they went to your site.
Credit cards are extremely limited in what the can tell a supermarket, even assuming they are legally allowed to correlate card numbers to purchases. For example a credit card doesn't say the age, sex (not all the time), income, address of the person doing the purchasing. Some people pay with cash too so the store knows very little about them though they can gather some data.
Supermarkets love to know as much as possible about their customers so they can 'serve you better' (i.e. sell you more) by targeting you with special promotions, vouchers etc. That's why loyalty cards were invented - not for the benefit of shoppers, but so they can gather all the information about your purchases, how much you buy, how many times you visit, when you visit, how far away from the store you live, your social class (extrapolated from your postcode and what you buy), whether you like brand names or not, whether you are loyal to a brand or not, whether you are susceptible to special offers or not and so on. The amount of data a loyalty card gives a store is staggering and boundless. Tesco and their ilk set up large IT centres to mine this information.
Some websites use the user agent to deliver "enhanced" (i.e. browser proprietary) content. For example, if a site knows you use IE it might draw the shopping basket as a fixed element instead of a frame etc. It sounds like Tesco is doing this too, though at the very least it should drop down to HTML 3.2 if it can't figure out what you're using.
The most annoying thing a website can do is refuse to work in such circumstances. The same goes for those shitty websites that refuse to work without a referrer URL.
Why the fuck would anyone do online grocery shopping? I don't know about others, but when I go looking for meat, vegetables, fruit or anything else, I carefully inspect the selection and choose the freshest items there. I fastidiously avoid nearly out-of-date produce, bruised/unripe fruit/vegetables, dented tins, fatty meat, squashed packets and so on.
Does anyone think that the poor sod having to walk around Tesco or one of the warehouses to fulfill your online order will do that to? Of course not, they'll grab whatever's at the front of the shelf whether it's had manky or not.
So consider yourself lucky that their silly website doesn't work through junkbuster.
That's a stupid comment. Why should any company give a rat's ass about Linux development if they have no vested interest in its success or failure?
AOL is a consumer ISP and doesn't particularly care what operating system its software gets ported too as long as there are sufficient customers to warrant it.
Perhaps there are people out there who use AOL for it's convenience but also use Linux?
Perhaps Linux will become user friendly someday and AOL is anticpating that day?
Perhaps having AOL on Linux will accelerate Linux takeup with novices?
Perhaps AOL is killing two birds with one stone - writing a client that works on Linux and their settop boxes with little modification?
Mozilla does one thing extremely well and people just haven't got it yet. It's a platform-neutral application engine. The entire Mozilla (the application) is written on top of that engine in Javascript, CSS & XML.
If you don't like the way Mozilla (the application) behaves you can dig into the JS/XML source and change it. You could even write a whole new application if you wanted - anything from a cut down lean'n'mean browser to an encyclopedia application. Best of all your app would run on any platform and benefit from one of the best HTML engines around at the moment.
Download M17 if you don't like something stuffed with commercial links to AOL/Netcenter pages.
Download PR2 if you want integrated AIM or if you use my.netscape.com and want to see your news headlines, stock quotes, weather reports in the side panels.
Both are pretty much the same thing otherwise (being released at the same time and all).
When will the programmers realise that all we want is a simple browser that supports industry standards such as CSS, XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript and XML?
Since when did VBScript become an industry standard? Answer: it never has and isn't likely to ever be. Otherwise Mozilla is pretty much on the ball, though I don't know what the state of XHTML is at the moment.
We don't need an integrated browser/mail reader/newsreader/coffee maker. For an operating system based on the idea of small modular tools that can be combined, the Mozilla guys sure don't get it do they?
Jesus. Don't choose to fucking install the mail/news component if you don't want it! It's optional! And Mozilla is extremely modular - the entire user interface is replaceable and many of the things in the components directory could go if you knew what you were doing.
WAP hasn't increased the problems at all because it uses WML not HTML. And WML is an XML based language.
Yes, most pages that use Javascript need a browser sniffer and that's because until now no one has bothered following the DOM & Javascript standards properly so different browsers have different objects and different methods. Mozilla follows the standards as closely as possible, but your javascript still needs to know that to make the standards compliant calls. Mozilla.org has a very good browser sniffer on it that detects all the popular browsers.
Mozilla has been in feature freeze since M16 - a fact that would have been apparent if you'd stayed in touch with recent developments instead of recycling uninformed Slashdot comments.
And to suggest that it should be dumped! I was using M17 last night and I found it to be remarkably stable and fast considering that the "final" release is supposedly 5 months away. Yes there are bugs but generally they're more of the "quirk" than the "crash" variety. It's definitely beta quality now and it's just going to get better.
I'm sure Opera is great for some people - those who value speed over standards compliance, but I'd rather have an open source, feature complete and *free* browser any day.
And if you're so upset that Mozilla/Netscape has a mail client, then I suggest you choose not to install that component when you're given the option during installation. Gosh that was difficult wasn't it?
I wouldn't take anything this guy says too seriously since it's obvious he's more interested in sensationalist angles than reporting the facts as they are.
His last Mozilla scoop accused AOL of being at cross-purposes with itself over instant messaging because Mozilla contained an IRC chat client written by a contributor and that another developer was writing a Jabber client for Mozilla. Yeah right.
That Mozilla has a built in IRC client tells you how successful the project has been. Chatzilla was a third party contribution and wasn't part of some insidious Netscape feature creep conspiracy. The same goes for the third party contributions to add MathML support, XSL, SVG, MNG, an ActiveX control, skins and much much more.
If you don't any of these things simply build the source code with the right switches and you won't get them. If you only have executables, you can delete the components and XUL from your installation folder and you won't have them any longer.
You could probably even the mail and news components if you don't want them.
EQ would be a good game if Verant were more concerned with fixing obvious and annoying problems with the client software that have been there since day 1 than raking in the cash.
For example, why is it that 1 1/2 years after its release, EQ still insists on "popping" my monitor 5-6 times during startup because EQ programmers are too retentive to figure out how to enumerate DirectX screen modes properly?
I read Mozilla articles that appear here and it's laughable how laughably inaccurate and misinformed they often are.
Take this "announcement" for instance. A simple check around the Mozilla website would make it OBVIOUS that M17 is NOT out and won't be for a month or more.
Why is it then that Slashdot seems incapable of checking it's facts before announcing it's "scoop" to the world? Hilariously this is not the first time either - Slashdot announced M16 was out a good four weeks before it actually was.
Exactly. It's fucked up because it's almost impossible to have the thing setup without human help. It's filled with cryptic errors, cryptic & redundant fields, has no online help and has a UI that behaves like no other program I've seen (and not in a good way).
This doesn't mean to say that the Jabber infrastructure is rotten, but WinJab definitely needs a serious overhaul. I suspect that part of the problem is that WinJab looks more like a test harness than a client application.
Microsoft and every other rival seems to be all pissy that AOL won't let them use their IM infrastructure for free. Is it any wonder? If I had spent hundreds of millions on all the software, hardware and labor to implement an IM system, the I wouldn't want a competitor such as Microsoft leeching off it either.
Perhaps AOL would be more amenable to opening up if other IM vendors were prepared to "pay" for using their servers (e.g. by carrying AOL adverts) rather than expecting a free lunch.
This doesn't negate the need for an open gateway standard of course.
Yes, Mozilla is highly modular thanks to XPCOM. In theory you could strip the thing to the bone and it would still run. Obviously there are some hardcoded assumptions still to be weeded out but nothing insurmountable for an open source project. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came out with a version the size of Opera at some point by stripping away a lot of the extra stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone is worried about lamers stealing their content, then there are several ways to combat it:
If you really want to see how referrers are an invasion of privacy, try putting a sophisticated web counter into your homepage and read the statistics that it gathers about your friends when they visit. Next time you're out on the town you'll be able to ask which of them was visiting www.xxxgaybondage.com before they went to your site.
Supermarkets love to know as much as possible about their customers so they can 'serve you better' (i.e. sell you more) by targeting you with special promotions, vouchers etc. That's why loyalty cards were invented - not for the benefit of shoppers, but so they can gather all the information about your purchases, how much you buy, how many times you visit, when you visit, how far away from the store you live, your social class (extrapolated from your postcode and what you buy), whether you like brand names or not, whether you are loyal to a brand or not, whether you are susceptible to special offers or not and so on. The amount of data a loyalty card gives a store is staggering and boundless. Tesco and their ilk set up large IT centres to mine this information.
The most annoying thing a website can do is refuse to work in such circumstances. The same goes for those shitty websites that refuse to work without a referrer URL.
Does anyone think that the poor sod having to walk around Tesco or one of the warehouses to fulfill your online order will do that to? Of course not, they'll grab whatever's at the front of the shelf whether it's had manky or not.
So consider yourself lucky that their silly website doesn't work through junkbuster.
AOL is a consumer ISP and doesn't particularly care what operating system its software gets ported too as long as there are sufficient customers to warrant it.
Perhaps there are people out there who use AOL for it's convenience but also use Linux? Perhaps Linux will become user friendly someday and AOL is anticpating that day? Perhaps having AOL on Linux will accelerate Linux takeup with novices? Perhaps AOL is killing two birds with one stone - writing a client that works on Linux and their settop boxes with little modification?
It shouldn't matter in the slightest what the WAP phone says it accepts as long as it says it prefers WML before HTML.
If you don't like the way Mozilla (the application) behaves you can dig into the JS/XML source and change it. You could even write a whole new application if you wanted - anything from a cut down lean'n'mean browser to an encyclopedia application. Best of all your app would run on any platform and benefit from one of the best HTML engines around at the moment.
Download PR2 if you want integrated AIM or if you use my.netscape.com and want to see your news headlines, stock quotes, weather reports in the side panels.
Both are pretty much the same thing otherwise (being released at the same time and all).
Ignore the italicizing on the last paragraph.
Since when did VBScript become an industry standard? Answer: it never has and isn't likely to ever be. Otherwise Mozilla is pretty much on the ball, though I don't know what the state of XHTML is at the moment.
We don't need an integrated browser/mail reader/newsreader/coffee maker. For an operating system based on the idea of small modular tools that can be combined, the Mozilla guys sure don't get it do they?
Jesus. Don't choose to fucking install the mail/news component if you don't want it! It's optional! And Mozilla is extremely modular - the entire user interface is replaceable and many of the things in the components directory could go if you knew what you were doing.
Yes, most pages that use Javascript need a browser sniffer and that's because until now no one has bothered following the DOM & Javascript standards properly so different browsers have different objects and different methods. Mozilla follows the standards as closely as possible, but your javascript still needs to know that to make the standards compliant calls. Mozilla.org has a very good browser sniffer on it that detects all the popular browsers.
And to suggest that it should be dumped! I was using M17 last night and I found it to be remarkably stable and fast considering that the "final" release is supposedly 5 months away. Yes there are bugs but generally they're more of the "quirk" than the "crash" variety. It's definitely beta quality now and it's just going to get better.
I'm sure Opera is great for some people - those who value speed over standards compliance, but I'd rather have an open source, feature complete and *free* browser any day.
And if you're so upset that Mozilla/Netscape has a mail client, then I suggest you choose not to install that component when you're given the option during installation. Gosh that was difficult wasn't it?
His last Mozilla scoop accused AOL of being at cross-purposes with itself over instant messaging because Mozilla contained an IRC chat client written by a contributor and that another developer was writing a Jabber client for Mozilla. Yeah right.
If you don't any of these things simply build the source code with the right switches and you won't get them. If you only have executables, you can delete the components and XUL from your installation folder and you won't have them any longer.
You could probably even the mail and news components if you don't want them.
Eh? It's an open source project already.
For example, why is it that 1 1/2 years after its release, EQ still insists on "popping" my monitor 5-6 times during startup because EQ programmers are too retentive to figure out how to enumerate DirectX screen modes properly?
I thought the Everquest people were doing a StarWars RPG already? Judging by how stinky EQ is, I really hope someone gets to do this.
VGS is a much better emulator. Bleem seems to serious problems with too many games.
Take this "announcement" for instance. A simple check around the Mozilla website would make it OBVIOUS that M17 is NOT out and won't be for a month or more.
Why is it then that Slashdot seems incapable of checking it's facts before announcing it's "scoop" to the world? Hilariously this is not the first time either - Slashdot announced M16 was out a good four weeks before it actually was.
PNG is not a huge success because browser support for the format has been so shit. Hopefully, Mozilla and future versions of IE will put that right.
This doesn't mean to say that the Jabber infrastructure is rotten, but WinJab definitely needs a serious overhaul. I suspect that part of the problem is that WinJab looks more like a test harness than a client application.
Jabber.com supposedly has a a better client in beta but http://www.jabber.com is so fucked up I've yet to be able to try it out.
Perhaps AOL would be more amenable to opening up if other IM vendors were prepared to "pay" for using their servers (e.g. by carrying AOL adverts) rather than expecting a free lunch.
This doesn't negate the need for an open gateway standard of course.
Yes, Mozilla is highly modular thanks to XPCOM. In theory you could strip the thing to the bone and it would still run. Obviously there are some hardcoded assumptions still to be weeded out but nothing insurmountable for an open source project. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came out with a version the size of Opera at some point by stripping away a lot of the extra stuff.