yeah, those are funny to read. Anymore, it's getting hard to get them to do stuff like that for you. Just as we exchange funny stories about scammers, they surely exchange stories about how to detect scambaiters.
I have tried to get them to send me pictures of them in compromising poses, but without success. But if you can just waste some of their time without wasting much of yours, then you have done all that's needed.
That's why your advice of "everybody filling in crap information" wouldn't work, as only geeky ones could handle that.
Please, understand: I see your point here. But think, if someone doesn't have a firewall, or is using unpatched IE6 with default "security" (ha!) settings, they have another problem altogether. One more trojan/keylogger isn't going to make any difference. Their system has already been compromised. That's a separate problem altogether. It's not that they should have a fully patched system before going to phishing sites; they should have this in place before even venturing online. Would I tell my grandmother to go to a phishing site and enter bogus info? No. Would I tell my marginally PC competent friends to do it? Sure. I don't think there's an extreme amount of danger in going to these sites, at least no more than going to places like whitepages, myspace, (I mentioned these earlier. I don't go to myspace, but once when using whitepages.com to look up a number, one of the many ads on the site started auto-installing something via Firefox! I was totally shocked, and I won't go back there.)
Anyways, they could automatically/massively validate the information they collect, or am I missing something?
Maybe, I don't know. I am sure some scammers are capable of this, but I am sure a lot of them aren't. Someone else posted what seemed to me a very good point -- that some of these sites validate the information real-time, which breaks my crapflooding theory. I am sure, though, that there are a lot of two-bit scammers. I mean, have you actually looked at some of their sites? They don't exactly scream sophistication, so I doubt they lack the resources to automatically winnow away bad information. Then you have left the ones who have resources, and which are probably backed by organized crime. That's another matter altogether. You have to fight that on a different level.
The main thing I am trying to say is that coming up with more rules and laws and certifications is going to be of limited value. The scammers who are perhaps backed by organized crime have the resources to circumvent these measures. Educating people so that they implicitly distrust all unsolicited emails isn't working. As someone once said, never underestimate the ingenuity of stupid people. The only way to stop these scammers is to take away the reason that they do it: because they make a ton of money without doing any work. Make 'em work harder. They'll move on to something else (and then we'll have another problem to solve, yes its like a game of whack-a-mole.)
That has to be the most foolhardy advice I've seen in a long time.
DONT go to the phishing site as advised. It *may* just contain a form to accept information, but its *just* as likely to contain an exploit that might auto install (if you're not patched).
The best way to avoid these kindof problems is:
1. Don't go there with internet explorer 2. patch your system properly 3. have a firewall
Yes, if you are stupid enough to go to a phishing site without having done all three of these, then yes, you are indeed a fool. But then again, you probably already some some crap running on your PC that someone else auto-installed (let's think of all the legit sites that have been known to have ads that auto-install crap...whitepages.com and myspace.com come to mind immediately). Crap bring auto-installed is a separate issue and is not directly related to phishing scams.
The only beef you could legitimately raise with my advice is that now the phishing site has your IP. But, as I mentioned, you all do have firewalls running, right? And by firewalls, I DO NOT mean windows firewall. I mean something that stealths ports properly.
I see your point, but someone will come up with ways around this. Even if its just the classic user@domain spoof or if its something more legitimate looking. This is not a "root of the problem" solution.
You take away the profitability, then you've taken away the whole incentive for phishing. Schemes like this TLD thing are not cutting into the profits. It's just a more advanced "ignore them and they'll go away" strategy. That won't work here, since it only takes (SWAG alert) 1 in 1000 people to actually fall for it in order for it to be profitable. Crapflooding them will make sure they never find that 1 in 1000 who is credulous enough to give personal information to someone with a somewhat credible looking website.
This whole TLD thing is more of the same old thinking, that we'll just make up more rules to prevent crime. We'll legislate morality. We'll make up unenforceable laws. Look where that's gotten us: check your spam folder if you have a yahoo or gmail account, and marvel at the sheer volume of scam spam. I maintain that in this case, the only effective way to fight these crooks is with some of their own medicine. Fight fire with fire.
Have you ever tried messing with 419 scammers or phishing sites? It's quite fun. Try checking out 419eater.com or whatsthebloodypoint.com if you want to see for yourselves (didn't check those URLs before pressing submit, but that'll get you there).
When you mess with 419 scammers, you get the added bonus of being creative. You get to play whatever role you want, you get to mess with someone's head, and you are on the moral higher ground because they are, after all, trying to steal your money!
No way would I let a program do that for me!
I guess the only concern I can think of with going to phishing sites is that they then have your IP. So don't do that if you don't have a firewall. Then again, rip your network cable out of the wall if you don't have a firewall.
There's one way to end phishing. IE's anti-phishing service is a laugh. This TLD crap won't work. Here is how to end it:
When you get a phishing eMail, go to the URL. Enter some information. Not valid information unless you are a fool. Enter bogus crap. It's fun, and if everyone did it just once a month the phishers would be so crapflooded with false information that it'd be nigh impossible for them to separate the crap from the valid information. Phishing won't be worth the time anymore.
Same with the 419 scammers. I particularly enjoy messing with the 419 scammers for this very reason.
The only, and I mean only, reason these things proliferate is because its profitable. This type of scamming is VERY profitable. So, we should be focusing on how to make it a waste of time. That would attack the problem at its root: its profitability.
Obviously, this would take a large bite out of spam, another problem in itself. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
It seems obvious to me, but clearly not so obvious to others. Instead of spending time making a decent browser that supports modern standards properly (though better than IE6), Microsoft spent (probably) millions of dollars developing this ridiculous phishing filter for IE7. That is NOT dealing with the problem at its root. Obviously, they don't get it. Am I alone here? Hello? Anyone?
I know you were joking and all, but here are mine: Tidy Validator, Firebug, Scrapbook, lori (life of request info) (all of these plus stumbleupon at home).
The fact that Firefox 1) allows extensions and 2) has such an awesome community of extension developers, makes it the swiss army knife of the web.
Yes, software like Apache and IIS and PHP and MySQL help make the web. But Firefox allows it be browsed and developed.
Anyone can appreciate the browsing aspect by using Firefox with <<insert extension>>
But the angle I am coming from is from that of a web developer. Without Firebug and the Tidy HTML validator, it would take me twice as long to develop good code and debug it. At work I regularly call Firefox my #1 development tool. I could write all my HTML, PHP, ColdFusion, Javascript, PL/SQL in a Notepad and SQL*Plus if someone were to take jEdit and Oracle SQL Developer away from me. But without Firefox debugging javascript would be a total pain, validating markup would be a pain, and profiling xmlhttprequests would be a pain. Firefox does all of this for me while, you know, actually using my web pages. I'd choose Firefox over any extremely expensive development tool out there, at least for web dev.
The good part is that if I ever have to take my children to Disneyland we won't have to step over the hordes of Chinese tourists (who will ALL be wearing bright orange shirts with a slogan like "China Happy Mikey Mouse clud!").
It does tickle me so to see Disney get pwned. Around here, of course Microsoft is the big evil company. They have nothing on Disney.
Re:Falling does not kill you
on
Treating the Dead
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It was a grave mistake to make such a stiff joke. I cadaver get excited about jokes like that. Oh well, we have to commend you for the undertaking.
That's part of it, Vista is certainly the shot-to-the-foot that Microsoft needed. But have you used Feisty? Personally, I think they finally made the Windows killer. If I could use my crappy VPN software on Linux (so I can work from home..important!) I think I would be 100% Ubuntu. That is an awesome OS. Shuttleworth and Co have really outdone themselves. I look forward to the next release.
Earlier this week, I posted that Beryl isn't that great. But after I pared out some of the glitz and chrome, Ubuntu is a more usable OS than Windows XP (which is much better than Vista). So I was wrong about Beryl. It's very nice. It makes Ubuntu that much nicer.
But, this is Dell...I wonder if they'll try to cram bloatware on their Ubuntu boxes like they do on their Windows boxes? It's not like its needed (hello, Multiverse?) but this is Dell we are talking about here.
I don't feel sorry for that guy at all. If you spend weeks developing something and don't back it up, it's your own damn fault. There isn't a way to backup this information you say? Then don't spend weeks doing it
Yes. And thanks for making the exact point the OP is making. Google's customizable home page is a web page. You can't "back it up", as you mention. Now, I'll agree that it's quite ridiculous to spend that much time tweaking a home page. But if a company offers the service, then some people will take it to that degree. Ok, so Google doesn't charge for the service. But still, if you offer it, you kind of have to support it or this is what happens: people get in a snit. Blaming the user for using a service with the reasonable expectation that his settings aren't going to be suddenly dropped is not productive and makes you sound like an Apple Fanboy.
This is exactly why people will never (or, should never) use an online office suite. This is why there will never be a google OS with your personal data strewn across the web. I think that's the point of this discussion, not whether it was a good idea for someone to spend three weeks tweaking a stinkin home page. This calls into question, and rightfully so, this whole hew and suddenly hip practice of putting everything on the web. The web is an awesome content delivery medium. So is UPS. That doesn't mean that you store your personal valuables at the UPS warehouse.
yes, and note that the good mascots are very simple. Many of the tech mascots are overly detailed (like glenda? oh my goodness!). For making something recognizable and memorable, detail is bad. Clippy actually might have been good had he not been inextricably linked to useless "help".
Tux seems to be like a perfect mascot. The author mostly took issue with the creepy empty stare that he has. Well, who can disagree? But then again, who looks mascots in the eye? Also, Larry the Cow is a good mascot. Simple, and sufficiently distorted to make it recognizable. Nobody spent, like, three hours trying to get the shading right on his upper lip. That's a good thing.
When you try to make something realistic and it fails, that's worse than anything at all since that puts you right in the uncanny valley. Not where you want your mascot residing. Looking at you Adobe. The Court Jester is the perfect example of a mascot hailing from the Uncanny Valley. Besides, doesn't that whole jester/clown thing have sort of a stoner connotation?
your reply made no sense. Do geeks not like eye candy? Or did you object my ironic blanket statement and thus show that you have no sense of humour and no sense of irony? Or are you just being obtuse?
I've switched it on, noted all the candy, and switched it off. Maybe I didn't give it a chance. I like a nice looking UI, but to me nice looking == simple. I will agree with you though, Ubuntu is a quite dull (and also quite usable).
Funny, all of the replies to my post have been from geeks who use Beryl. I guess that goes to show you two things: geeks like candy like every else, and blanket statements are never true. Thanks for the reminders.
that reasoning sounds familiar...were you an Apple fanboy in a previous life?
In all seriousness, though...I haven't had any problems with Feisty, and Beryl, well, who cares? I mean, really? I don't think many linux geeks care about Beryl other than maybe to turn it on and say "wow, that's neat" and turn it back off.
The target audience for something like beryl doesn't know enough to use linux anyhow. These are people who are captivated by glitz and chrome. They're prisoners of Bill through and through.
Don't get me wrong; I think it's neat that it was developed. It goes to show that OSS can be as pretty as proprietary software. But other than proof of concept, it adds little value.
Am I glad to see you guys. Two other people who think this is a lame idea.
First, can you imagine how much javascript code it would take to replicate OOo online? Ack! That's a lot of non-compiled code running on a multitude of platforms. So you are on your freeBSD / KDE box using Konqueror, happily typing away at your 65K "word" doc, and crash! Not fun. As someone who does a lot of AJAX development (w/prototype), I have to say I love ajax. But making an html document/javascript app (or whatever you want to call it) behave like a desktop app? The mere thought makes me shudder. Forget who would want to use it -- who would want to develop it?
Second, just as you said...besides a perceived cool factor, what is the point? Does anyone share documents so stinking much that eMailing them or sticking them on a pen drive won't suffice?
One also has to wonder what computerized teaching is *failing* to get into kids' heads -- both by unduly fatiguing their eyes and brains, and by information not being as well comprehended and/or retained (which probably goes right along with the fatigue factor).
Yes! I don't mind online manuals for programming languages, etc. I retain these things as I use them, not as I read them. But you are right -- what about schoolchildren reading encyclopedias online, on cd-rom, etc? What about online college correspondence courses? You just have to wonder how much benefit there actually is. I guess it depends on the subject matter. Computer programming stuff, you essentially repeat that by using it. But what about literature, theory (of various disciplines), history? I dunno, books just seem to have it.
Right. Even if we could get the kerning right, I'd bet we would still retain more by reading from the printed page rather than from the computer screen. That's why books and newspapers will never go away.
Really, other than on blogs and news sites, if you are presenting on the web you should write for the web. That means writing something clear and coherent and then paring it down as far as you can. News sites and blogs should just use a good serif font on the web and move on. If someone really wants to nitpick, let them get the hard copy.
Your analogy between God and man is dangerous, He does not like Him comparing to any of His creations.
The Bible uses various anthropomorphisms. I intend no disrespect.
What I believe from the Bible tells me that God's purpose is for humans to live on earth, just where he put Adam and Eve. The notion of all good people going to heaven or hell is a bit foreign to me. I believe that God's purpose is as stated in Jeremiah 45:18 "...[he] created the earth to be inhabited...". As for the notion that God burns people in a burning hell, the Bible doesn't teach this either. The Bible teaches that God is love. Let me preface this next statement so that it's not offensive to you: I am not a Zionist. God's favor left Israel 2000 years ago. I do not believe that the physical nation of Israel has any special favor with God, nor do people of the Jewish faith any more than anyone else. I honestly have no idea why the US, a "christian" nation backs Israel so fervently. Anyhow. Now, God said he would displace the nations around Israel and give them some land. Why? Partially because of the practices of many of the people (who clearly at the time were not Muslims). They sacrificed their children by burning them alive. They engaged in sex worship (sound like anyone today?). God hated their practices. So I don't personally think it is very consistent with His personality to have such a place as a tortuous hell. If God is love, justice, etc, I personally believe that he doesn't want to torment people. So what is the deterrent from doing bad, you may well ask? Well, if we do bad we don't get to live. We die. In fact, the Bible teaches that the dead are unconscious. The hebrew word for soul, "nephesh" literally means "one who breathes". And according to the original Hebrew, the soul can die. In fact, in the Christian scriptures the Bible says "the soul that is sinning, it will die". So death is the ultimate punishment. That's because we serve a loving God who gives us the choice to serve Him or not.
Organized religion has corrupted itself so badly. It is responsible for most of the wars of the last millennium, maybe even before. It is responsible for mankind being so divided. And yet, you make a good point. How have we, since becoming such a secular society progressed? Technologically, sure. In the US, equal rights are *starting* to get a foothold (though worldwide there are more slaves than ever, as I recently read). But our moral relativism helps nobody and leaves people feeling empty. As Jesus said, "happy are those conscious of their spiritual need". People who give no attention to this need cannot possibly be happy.
About the shooting...I totally agree with you. People feel they have the right to do anything. Everyone is accountable, though, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, those are funny to read. Anymore, it's getting hard to get them to do stuff like that for you. Just as we exchange funny stories about scammers, they surely exchange stories about how to detect scambaiters.
I have tried to get them to send me pictures of them in compromising poses, but without success. But if you can just waste some of their time without wasting much of yours, then you have done all that's needed.
Please, understand: I see your point here. But think, if someone doesn't have a firewall, or is using unpatched IE6 with default "security" (ha!) settings, they have another problem altogether. One more trojan/keylogger isn't going to make any difference. Their system has already been compromised. That's a separate problem altogether. It's not that they should have a fully patched system before going to phishing sites; they should have this in place before even venturing online. Would I tell my grandmother to go to a phishing site and enter bogus info? No. Would I tell my marginally PC competent friends to do it? Sure. I don't think there's an extreme amount of danger in going to these sites, at least no more than going to places like whitepages, myspace, (I mentioned these earlier. I don't go to myspace, but once when using whitepages.com to look up a number, one of the many ads on the site started auto-installing something via Firefox! I was totally shocked, and I won't go back there.)
Maybe, I don't know. I am sure some scammers are capable of this, but I am sure a lot of them aren't. Someone else posted what seemed to me a very good point -- that some of these sites validate the information real-time, which breaks my crapflooding theory. I am sure, though, that there are a lot of two-bit scammers. I mean, have you actually looked at some of their sites? They don't exactly scream sophistication, so I doubt they lack the resources to automatically winnow away bad information. Then you have left the ones who have resources, and which are probably backed by organized crime. That's another matter altogether. You have to fight that on a different level.
The main thing I am trying to say is that coming up with more rules and laws and certifications is going to be of limited value. The scammers who are perhaps backed by organized crime have the resources to circumvent these measures. Educating people so that they implicitly distrust all unsolicited emails isn't working. As someone once said, never underestimate the ingenuity of stupid people. The only way to stop these scammers is to take away the reason that they do it: because they make a ton of money without doing any work. Make 'em work harder. They'll move on to something else (and then we'll have another problem to solve, yes its like a game of whack-a-mole.)
The best way to avoid these kindof problems is:
1. Don't go there with internet explorer
2. patch your system properly
3. have a firewall
Yes, if you are stupid enough to go to a phishing site without having done all three of these, then yes, you are indeed a fool. But then again, you probably already some some crap running on your PC that someone else auto-installed (let's think of all the legit sites that have been known to have ads that auto-install crap...whitepages.com and myspace.com come to mind immediately). Crap bring auto-installed is a separate issue and is not directly related to phishing scams.
The only beef you could legitimately raise with my advice is that now the phishing site has your IP. But, as I mentioned, you all do have firewalls running, right? And by firewalls, I DO NOT mean windows firewall. I mean something that stealths ports properly.
I see your point, but someone will come up with ways around this. Even if its just the classic user@domain spoof or if its something more legitimate looking. This is not a "root of the problem" solution.
You take away the profitability, then you've taken away the whole incentive for phishing. Schemes like this TLD thing are not cutting into the profits. It's just a more advanced "ignore them and they'll go away" strategy. That won't work here, since it only takes (SWAG alert) 1 in 1000 people to actually fall for it in order for it to be profitable. Crapflooding them will make sure they never find that 1 in 1000 who is credulous enough to give personal information to someone with a somewhat credible looking website.
This whole TLD thing is more of the same old thinking, that we'll just make up more rules to prevent crime. We'll legislate morality. We'll make up unenforceable laws. Look where that's gotten us: check your spam folder if you have a yahoo or gmail account, and marvel at the sheer volume of scam spam. I maintain that in this case, the only effective way to fight these crooks is with some of their own medicine. Fight fire with fire.
Have you ever tried messing with 419 scammers or phishing sites? It's quite fun. Try checking out 419eater.com or whatsthebloodypoint.com if you want to see for yourselves (didn't check those URLs before pressing submit, but that'll get you there).
When you mess with 419 scammers, you get the added bonus of being creative. You get to play whatever role you want, you get to mess with someone's head, and you are on the moral higher ground because they are, after all, trying to steal your money!
No way would I let a program do that for me!
I guess the only concern I can think of with going to phishing sites is that they then have your IP. So don't do that if you don't have a firewall. Then again, rip your network cable out of the wall if you don't have a firewall.
There's one way to end phishing. IE's anti-phishing service is a laugh. This TLD crap won't work. Here is how to end it:
When you get a phishing eMail, go to the URL. Enter some information. Not valid information unless you are a fool. Enter bogus crap. It's fun, and if everyone did it just once a month the phishers would be so crapflooded with false information that it'd be nigh impossible for them to separate the crap from the valid information. Phishing won't be worth the time anymore.
Same with the 419 scammers. I particularly enjoy messing with the 419 scammers for this very reason.
The only, and I mean only, reason these things proliferate is because its profitable. This type of scamming is VERY profitable. So, we should be focusing on how to make it a waste of time. That would attack the problem at its root: its profitability.
Obviously, this would take a large bite out of spam, another problem in itself. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
It seems obvious to me, but clearly not so obvious to others. Instead of spending time making a decent browser that supports modern standards properly (though better than IE6), Microsoft spent (probably) millions of dollars developing this ridiculous phishing filter for IE7. That is NOT dealing with the problem at its root. Obviously, they don't get it. Am I alone here? Hello? Anyone?
hahahaha, well done.
I know you were joking and all, but here are mine: Tidy Validator, Firebug, Scrapbook, lori (life of request info) (all of these plus stumbleupon at home).
I'd say Firefox, and <>.
The fact that Firefox 1) allows extensions and 2) has such an awesome community of extension developers, makes it the swiss army knife of the web.
Yes, software like Apache and IIS and PHP and MySQL help make the web. But Firefox allows it be browsed and developed.
Anyone can appreciate the browsing aspect by using Firefox with <<insert extension>>
But the angle I am coming from is from that of a web developer. Without Firebug and the Tidy HTML validator, it would take me twice as long to develop good code and debug it. At work I regularly call Firefox my #1 development tool. I could write all my HTML, PHP, ColdFusion, Javascript, PL/SQL in a Notepad and SQL*Plus if someone were to take jEdit and Oracle SQL Developer away from me. But without Firefox debugging javascript would be a total pain, validating markup would be a pain, and profiling xmlhttprequests would be a pain. Firefox does all of this for me while, you know, actually using my web pages. I'd choose Firefox over any extremely expensive development tool out there, at least for web dev.
to sum it up: You can put a bullet in my head, but you can't kill the word I said.
This AACS entity just needs to give it up. They got pwned, plain and simple.
Ricky Rouse...nice
The good part is that if I ever have to take my children to Disneyland we won't have to step over the hordes of Chinese tourists (who will ALL be wearing bright orange shirts with a slogan like "China Happy Mikey Mouse clud!").
It does tickle me so to see Disney get pwned. Around here, of course Microsoft is the big evil company. They have nothing on Disney.
It was a grave mistake to make such a stiff joke. I cadaver get excited about jokes like that. Oh well, we have to commend you for the undertaking.
Hot cha cha cha cha!
I dunno, guys. First the Zune, now Vista...This is a man who knows a busted product when he sees one.
Excuse me while I go throw a chair.
That's part of it, Vista is certainly the shot-to-the-foot that Microsoft needed. But have you used Feisty? Personally, I think they finally made the Windows killer. If I could use my crappy VPN software on Linux (so I can work from home..important!) I think I would be 100% Ubuntu. That is an awesome OS. Shuttleworth and Co have really outdone themselves. I look forward to the next release.
Earlier this week, I posted that Beryl isn't that great. But after I pared out some of the glitz and chrome, Ubuntu is a more usable OS than Windows XP (which is much better than Vista). So I was wrong about Beryl. It's very nice. It makes Ubuntu that much nicer.
But, this is Dell...I wonder if they'll try to cram bloatware on their Ubuntu boxes like they do on their Windows boxes? It's not like its needed (hello, Multiverse?) but this is Dell we are talking about here.
Yes. And thanks for making the exact point the OP is making. Google's customizable home page is a web page. You can't "back it up", as you mention. Now, I'll agree that it's quite ridiculous to spend that much time tweaking a home page. But if a company offers the service, then some people will take it to that degree. Ok, so Google doesn't charge for the service. But still, if you offer it, you kind of have to support it or this is what happens: people get in a snit. Blaming the user for using a service with the reasonable expectation that his settings aren't going to be suddenly dropped is not productive and makes you sound like an Apple Fanboy.
This is exactly why people will never (or, should never) use an online office suite. This is why there will never be a google OS with your personal data strewn across the web. I think that's the point of this discussion, not whether it was a good idea for someone to spend three weeks tweaking a stinkin home page. This calls into question, and rightfully so, this whole hew and suddenly hip practice of putting everything on the web. The web is an awesome content delivery medium. So is UPS. That doesn't mean that you store your personal valuables at the UPS warehouse.
yes, and note that the good mascots are very simple. Many of the tech mascots are overly detailed (like glenda? oh my goodness!). For making something recognizable and memorable, detail is bad. Clippy actually might have been good had he not been inextricably linked to useless "help".
Tux seems to be like a perfect mascot. The author mostly took issue with the creepy empty stare that he has. Well, who can disagree? But then again, who looks mascots in the eye? Also, Larry the Cow is a good mascot. Simple, and sufficiently distorted to make it recognizable. Nobody spent, like, three hours trying to get the shading right on his upper lip. That's a good thing.
When you try to make something realistic and it fails, that's worse than anything at all since that puts you right in the uncanny valley. Not where you want your mascot residing. Looking at you Adobe. The Court Jester is the perfect example of a mascot hailing from the Uncanny Valley. Besides, doesn't that whole jester/clown thing have sort of a stoner connotation?
aarrgghhh, so I guess I am the one with the infected humour gland :). Thanks for the reply.
...that US policymakers don't listen to some guy who serves as an advisor to the Canadian government.
Oh, never mind. We don't even listen to our own scientists who repeatedly tell us about global warming.
your reply made no sense. Do geeks not like eye candy? Or did you object my ironic blanket statement and thus show that you have no sense of humour and no sense of irony? Or are you just being obtuse?
Funny, all of the replies to my post have been from geeks who use Beryl. I guess that goes to show you two things: geeks like candy like every else, and blanket statements are never true. Thanks for the reminders.
that reasoning sounds familiar...were you an Apple fanboy in a previous life?
In all seriousness, though...I haven't had any problems with Feisty, and Beryl, well, who cares? I mean, really? I don't think many linux geeks care about Beryl other than maybe to turn it on and say "wow, that's neat" and turn it back off.
The target audience for something like beryl doesn't know enough to use linux anyhow. These are people who are captivated by glitz and chrome. They're prisoners of Bill through and through.
Don't get me wrong; I think it's neat that it was developed. It goes to show that OSS can be as pretty as proprietary software. But other than proof of concept, it adds little value.
Am I glad to see you guys. Two other people who think this is a lame idea.
First, can you imagine how much javascript code it would take to replicate OOo online? Ack! That's a lot of non-compiled code running on a multitude of platforms. So you are on your freeBSD / KDE box using Konqueror, happily typing away at your 65K "word" doc, and crash! Not fun. As someone who does a lot of AJAX development (w/prototype), I have to say I love ajax. But making an html document/javascript app (or whatever you want to call it) behave like a desktop app? The mere thought makes me shudder. Forget who would want to use it -- who would want to develop it?
Second, just as you said...besides a perceived cool factor, what is the point? Does anyone share documents so stinking much that eMailing them or sticking them on a pen drive won't suffice?
Then there are the privacy concerns you bring up.
No thanks.
Yes! I don't mind online manuals for programming languages, etc. I retain these things as I use them, not as I read them. But you are right -- what about schoolchildren reading encyclopedias online, on cd-rom, etc? What about online college correspondence courses? You just have to wonder how much benefit there actually is. I guess it depends on the subject matter. Computer programming stuff, you essentially repeat that by using it. But what about literature, theory (of various disciplines), history? I dunno, books just seem to have it.
Right. Even if we could get the kerning right, I'd bet we would still retain more by reading from the printed page rather than from the computer screen. That's why books and newspapers will never go away.
Really, other than on blogs and news sites, if you are presenting on the web you should write for the web. That means writing something clear and coherent and then paring it down as far as you can. News sites and blogs should just use a good serif font on the web and move on. If someone really wants to nitpick, let them get the hard copy.
What I believe from the Bible tells me that God's purpose is for humans to live on earth, just where he put Adam and Eve. The notion of all good people going to heaven or hell is a bit foreign to me. I believe that God's purpose is as stated in Jeremiah 45:18 "...[he] created the earth to be inhabited...". As for the notion that God burns people in a burning hell, the Bible doesn't teach this either. The Bible teaches that God is love. Let me preface this next statement so that it's not offensive to you: I am not a Zionist. God's favor left Israel 2000 years ago. I do not believe that the physical nation of Israel has any special favor with God, nor do people of the Jewish faith any more than anyone else. I honestly have no idea why the US, a "christian" nation backs Israel so fervently. Anyhow. Now, God said he would displace the nations around Israel and give them some land. Why? Partially because of the practices of many of the people (who clearly at the time were not Muslims). They sacrificed their children by burning them alive. They engaged in sex worship (sound like anyone today?). God hated their practices. So I don't personally think it is very consistent with His personality to have such a place as a tortuous hell. If God is love, justice, etc, I personally believe that he doesn't want to torment people. So what is the deterrent from doing bad, you may well ask? Well, if we do bad we don't get to live. We die. In fact, the Bible teaches that the dead are unconscious. The hebrew word for soul, "nephesh" literally means "one who breathes". And according to the original Hebrew, the soul can die. In fact, in the Christian scriptures the Bible says "the soul that is sinning, it will die". So death is the ultimate punishment. That's because we serve a loving God who gives us the choice to serve Him or not.
Organized religion has corrupted itself so badly. It is responsible for most of the wars of the last millennium, maybe even before. It is responsible for mankind being so divided. And yet, you make a good point. How have we, since becoming such a secular society progressed? Technologically, sure. In the US, equal rights are *starting* to get a foothold (though worldwide there are more slaves than ever, as I recently read). But our moral relativism helps nobody and leaves people feeling empty. As Jesus said, "happy are those conscious of their spiritual need". People who give no attention to this need cannot possibly be happy.
About the shooting...I totally agree with you. People feel they have the right to do anything. Everyone is accountable, though, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
Anyhow, I gotta run now. Hope to hear from you...