So, the mirror sites would be checked in the extension. As the extension would show the "image" in part of the browser outside of the main browser window (like how the lock is shown for SSL), there's no way they can touch it (I think).
As for 70 million, get real yourself! There are only about a dozen major organisations targetted in the UK. Even stretching it to total banks and building societies + Ebay + Amazon, it's only about 1 hundred. In the US, 1 thousand?
Considering that they are on quite limited resources, and are running a mostly word-of-mouth campaign, they have done stoking well to get 6%.
A lot of the material is very much non-techie as well. The site looks good with nice graphics and colours. The talk on SpreadFirefox is ALL ABOUT reaching out beyond the techs. People are throwing hundreds of mad ideas around. Some will stick. It's going to take time, and it's about winning hearts and minds, about every geek telling his network of people, and some of them telling their friends. It's about credibility through brand recognition - getting well known people saying "I use Firefox".
If you ask non-tech people I know, they'll probably sigh and say "YES I HAVE HEARD OF FIREFOX, IT'S ALL HE TALKS ABOUT". There's a filter down the levels going down. It's moved from geeks to techs to power users already. The next stage will be average users.
Don't underestimate the power of geeks and techs. They are the people that grandmas call to get their computers repaired and ask advice about upgrades.
An extension that gets passed the site domain, and checks the domain against a built in list, and presents an image based on the list. If the image doesn't show, you're being phished.
The list could be refreshed either per day or on user request.
Now, it does mean that someone, somewhere has to be the maintainer for that list.
Paid results are rarely what I'm looking for. Page ranking based on use works much, much better.
As a weird simile, do you read the Good Beer Guide, Ian? It's a publication by CAMRA and the choices are put in based on local branch involvement. In other words, pubs that people use and like get put in there. And IMO anyway, it's the best. Occassionally you get a duff one, but overall it's really good.
Most guides are based on paid inspectors and paid entries. A lot of pubs don't get in because they won't pay for entries. And sometimes, I'm sure these are pubs who just aren't marketing savvy or have a view that they don't see why they should pay to get into a book that is paid for anyway, but are quality places who concentrate on their service over marketing.
True indeed about adverts. There's also a thing about ads as a service (bear with me on this).
I hate big ugly ads, particularly from large corps. If I want to see mega corp ads, I'll watch TV.
A lot of Google ads are small companies. So, if I type in "organic coffee", I might get some specialist provider on the ads who are the sort of company I want to deal with.
that's my thinking though - there's the source code, go and build your own version.
XUL works on FF, which works on a number of hardware platforms, and there's nothing to stop someone with a bit of will making another browser from the FF code.
Lockin is when you don't have that code, and don't have the protocol, and control of the protocol rests with someone else.
Even if you built one and XUL got changed, you'd have the source code to keep up anyway.
Which still assumes that every one will have to get fixed. What are the odds on a repair in your opinion?
The fix/dispose thing is questionable in some areas. A lot of goods aren't constrained in the way you say - in some products there are thousands of shops that can get manufacturer parts.
It does rock, and could be a good converter. If more was built for it, and people could say "yeah just run this, but you need Firefox first", you've got another convert.
My point is, that often companies may even have a good idea that the person caused the loss, but would rather chance giving out a replacement for someone who's a wrong 'un than piss off a good customer.
One of your costs don't come into it. How does a chip manufacturer have "retail shelf space". Packaging is extremely cheap, the space required to store a chip is what? a few square inches. I don't know the price of a fab, but I'd be interested to know what the per/unit price is on a fab.
Honesty doesn't come into it. And I'm not talking about my moral view on it. I'm talking about how companies perceive things. Risk, cost and return are what counts.
I can't speak for AMD, but a lot of companies just swap things out because they've thought long and hard about it, and worked out that the cost of processing and responding over swapping is either more expensive, or will cost you so much damage in goodwill that you might as just swap it. Remember, writing a letter saying "sorry, we think you overclocked this" (and then possibly getting into a long and drawn out paper trail) costs as much money as writing a letter saying "sorry our chip was not satisfactory".
You might not like it, and I personally think it's dishonest, but it's not for me or you to decide. It's between the company and the customer.
The funniest one for me is desktop PCs. If you buy a $1500 desktop PC, it could cost a lot of money to repair.
But, here in the UK, you get 1 year anyway. Now, how much are the parts for your $1500 PC going to cost to have repaired a year from now when that P4 2.8Ghz is "so last year" and people are on the next gen graphics card.
There's probably nothing state of the art from 1 year ago that costs more than $150 to replace.
Forget the interest issue. It's largely irrelevant.
What you are forgetting is the probability. You know what? I've got a laptop, and the heatsink hasn't fallen off the processor. Nor has my buddy's, nor has my fathers. That's 3 that I know of, and I've never heard of it happening.
I would guess that this is an extremely uncommon thing. If it wasn't (like it happened 1 in 5 times), the insurance company would be paying out $3000 for every $1500 in premiums. Hardly a great business model, is it?
There may be some anomalies (I think laptops are about the only thing I'd consider taking a warranty out on), but mostly, warranties are just pissing your money away.
Save your money, put it in a bank, earn that sliver of interest, and with each product that doesn't fail, create a fund of money to cover the ones that do. If you end up in the red, you'd have to be extremely unlucky.
That's quite true. I've bought a lot of electrical items, and I'd say that either I find a fault within a few days, or it lasts for years (or at least, the repairs are so small - like aerial connectors breaking - that it's not worth it).
Slashdot Mirror
what's the sites?
So, the mirror sites would be checked in the extension. As the extension would show the "image" in part of the browser outside of the main browser window (like how the lock is shown for SSL), there's no way they can touch it (I think).
As for 70 million, get real yourself! There are only about a dozen major organisations targetted in the UK. Even stretching it to total banks and building societies + Ebay + Amazon, it's only about 1 hundred. In the US, 1 thousand?
A lot of the material is very much non-techie as well. The site looks good with nice graphics and colours. The talk on SpreadFirefox is ALL ABOUT reaching out beyond the techs. People are throwing hundreds of mad ideas around. Some will stick. It's going to take time, and it's about winning hearts and minds, about every geek telling his network of people, and some of them telling their friends. It's about credibility through brand recognition - getting well known people saying "I use Firefox".
If you ask non-tech people I know, they'll probably sigh and say "YES I HAVE HEARD OF FIREFOX, IT'S ALL HE TALKS ABOUT". There's a filter down the levels going down. It's moved from geeks to techs to power users already. The next stage will be average users.
Don't underestimate the power of geeks and techs. They are the people that grandmas call to get their computers repaired and ask advice about upgrades.
An extension that gets passed the site domain, and checks the domain against a built in list, and presents an image based on the list. If the image doesn't show, you're being phished.
The list could be refreshed either per day or on user request.
Now, it does mean that someone, somewhere has to be the maintainer for that list.
Get major corporations involved, and let them get their names/logos/colours on the skins.
How could you actually do anti-scam?
As a weird simile, do you read the Good Beer Guide, Ian? It's a publication by CAMRA and the choices are put in based on local branch involvement. In other words, pubs that people use and like get put in there. And IMO anyway, it's the best. Occassionally you get a duff one, but overall it's really good.
Most guides are based on paid inspectors and paid entries. A lot of pubs don't get in because they won't pay for entries. And sometimes, I'm sure these are pubs who just aren't marketing savvy or have a view that they don't see why they should pay to get into a book that is paid for anyway, but are quality places who concentrate on their service over marketing.
I hate big ugly ads, particularly from large corps. If I want to see mega corp ads, I'll watch TV.
A lot of Google ads are small companies. So, if I type in "organic coffee", I might get some specialist provider on the ads who are the sort of company I want to deal with.
How did you explicitly do that? Block at firewall level?
Search engines have to serve consumers, not providers.
The deeper I get into Firefox, the more I realise how much I don't like IE.
XUL works on FF, which works on a number of hardware platforms, and there's nothing to stop someone with a bit of will making another browser from the FF code.
Lockin is when you don't have that code, and don't have the protocol, and control of the protocol rests with someone else.
Even if you built one and XUL got changed, you'd have the source code to keep up anyway.
Can open source ever be lockin?
should be your last too. Remember, this is 1.0.
The fix/dispose thing is questionable in some areas. A lot of goods aren't constrained in the way you say - in some products there are thousands of shops that can get manufacturer parts.
(Might be thinking about going Mac or Linux when Win 2K support starts to disappear).
At least we didn't elect someone who uses resignate and subliminabable as words.
That's sort of my point - a printer cartridge when I run out (I keep a spare now anyway!).
It does rock, and could be a good converter. If more was built for it, and people could say "yeah just run this, but you need Firefox first", you've got another convert.
One of your costs don't come into it. How does a chip manufacturer have "retail shelf space". Packaging is extremely cheap, the space required to store a chip is what? a few square inches. I don't know the price of a fab, but I'd be interested to know what the per/unit price is on a fab.
Honesty doesn't come into it. And I'm not talking about my moral view on it. I'm talking about how companies perceive things. Risk, cost and return are what counts.
I can't speak for AMD, but a lot of companies just swap things out because they've thought long and hard about it, and worked out that the cost of processing and responding over swapping is either more expensive, or will cost you so much damage in goodwill that you might as just swap it. Remember, writing a letter saying "sorry, we think you overclocked this" (and then possibly getting into a long and drawn out paper trail) costs as much money as writing a letter saying "sorry our chip was not satisfactory".
You might not like it, and I personally think it's dishonest, but it's not for me or you to decide. It's between the company and the customer.
Speaking to others, that's a common comment.
But, here in the UK, you get 1 year anyway. Now, how much are the parts for your $1500 PC going to cost to have repaired a year from now when that P4 2.8Ghz is "so last year" and people are on the next gen graphics card.
There's probably nothing state of the art from 1 year ago that costs more than $150 to replace.
What you are forgetting is the probability. You know what? I've got a laptop, and the heatsink hasn't fallen off the processor. Nor has my buddy's, nor has my fathers. That's 3 that I know of, and I've never heard of it happening.
I would guess that this is an extremely uncommon thing. If it wasn't (like it happened 1 in 5 times), the insurance company would be paying out $3000 for every $1500 in premiums. Hardly a great business model, is it?
There may be some anomalies (I think laptops are about the only thing I'd consider taking a warranty out on), but mostly, warranties are just pissing your money away.
Save your money, put it in a bank, earn that sliver of interest, and with each product that doesn't fail, create a fund of money to cover the ones that do. If you end up in the red, you'd have to be extremely unlucky.
Insurers are not charities.
That's quite true. I've bought a lot of electrical items, and I'd say that either I find a fault within a few days, or it lasts for years (or at least, the repairs are so small - like aerial connectors breaking - that it's not worth it).