"Lordy. You can disable that by unchecking Save Passwords in Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Passwords"
It's buried THAT deep? That would be fine if the system defaulted to NOT producing the obnoxious pop-ups in the first place. Then I'd dig into obscure menu options to turn them on. It is a design flaw to be sure: if they wanted to make it friendly, they'd have a checkbox on the popup itself to kill all such popups from then on (you know, like the checkbox in the Startup menu). What could be easier?
"Alternatively you can tell it to never save for individual sites and save them for other sites"
Still the easy, up front "no damn popups anymore!!!" option is missing. I hate useless annoying popups like this. Firefox is ABOVE AVERAGE when it comes to suppressing popups from content providers. I don't see why it has to produce popups of its own by default.
"with a misaligned picture for which IE violates the standards to display correctly but Firefox doesn't."
It just means that one browser tries to be more error-tolerant and display things right than the other. I'd rather see a page that looked good than see screen-garbage.
"But seriously, they of course mean elevators from the surface of other planets into the orbit around those planets."
I'd hope so. You wouldn't want the Xindi (or Kzinti or Wraith or what have you) to arrive sometime in the future to destroy the Earth, and all they find is a giant clump of busted planets held together by giant tangled rubber bands.
"Tornado's, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding... Mother nature probably poses a very large threat to this thing"
History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man. You know that once Godzilla gets a bus caught between two gargantuan fangs that he just can't pick out with his silly T-Rex claws, he's going to be looking for some good dental floss.....
I try, but so many pages can't display in the others that the "garbage factor" sends me back to the one that is most full of security holes. One or two of them have annoying "save password? popups that can't be gotten rid of with a simple "never give me these damn popups again for any site!" option because that option just isn't there. Perhaps it is time me to try them again. I know things improve.
Why not let the browser handle it then, if it is so important? It's pretty bad to have an ISP damage information "en route" to the browser. See the other discussion about breaking standards.
Now I know I'll have that blated "Otis Theme" earworm from "Superman" in my head all day. Thanks a lot!!! Brrump, dump, da-da. Dada, dada, da dum dum. Brrump, dump, da-da. Dada, dada, da dum!"
"Nothing is getting sent to the web browser that is of use to an end user anyway. "Server not found" or some timeout message doesn't tell me a goddamned thing"
You have to a real idiot to think that "Server not found" or a timeout message does NOT mean that the page isn't there. I know that you aren't.
If they want a space elevator, they'll have to earn it the old fashioned way: buy enough candy bars to get a golden ticket, and by all means RESIST all temptation to snack on that scrum-diddly-umptious confectionary cornucopia when touring the factory.
I decided from the outset I'd never deal with Earthlink, which is a branch of the Church of $cientology (with its horrendous track record of Internet censorship lawsuits). I don't know of any place in the country where Earthlink is the only choice
"The system is specifically configured to handle only NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic as it is being returned to the user's browser and to not impact email and other non-web-browsing traffic."
Since when is it supposed to be OK for an ISP to hijack and damage the information coming back to a browser? If this is OK, then ISP's should be able to destroy email and non-browsing data as well. Let the browser display what is being sent to it, thank you. I have no problem with Internet tools such as browsers doing what I tell them to do, even if I make mistakes and tell them the "wrong" thing. Accuracy = ease.
"Those "search engines" are not "squatting" ALL unused and mispelled domains. And do keep in mind that the squatters are actually owning the domains they are "squatting"."
Exactly. You know why there are pages found at names like www.altavist.com and www.googe.com? Because someone properly registered the URL the old fashioned way (same as altavista.com and google.com) and put web page material on it. It is not a "problem" that the browser is doing its job and taking you to www.altavist.com and www.googe.com. It's a very bad idea to treat "the browser doing its job" as a problem to be "solved" by an ISP hijacking the browser.
"How is this worse than all those "search engine" sites squatting on unused and misspelled dowmains? At least earthlink is trying to provide some meaningful info to their customers."
It's worse. If you put in an URL to a page that does not exist, all the browser should really do is to tell you that the URL does not exist. The "squatting" you mention is not comparable, and not a problem. If I type "www.yahoqo.com", the browser is just doing its job when it takes me to the squatter page at www.yahoqo.com. After all, it is what I told it to do in the first place.
" it's no skin off my back, and it's more useful than "server not found"."
"Server not found" is actually more useful. Who is in charge here, you or the browser? If I want to go to "www.nascatr.com", instead of "www.nascar.com", that's my choice. The browser should not try to override my choice or second-guess me. The most it should do is make recommendations in the error page, and make it easy for me to correct my mistake.
Easy answer: A is the best, B is second best, C is the worst solution. The browser should take you where YOU tell it go go. It shouldn't second-guess you and try to take you where it THINKS you want it to go, even if you told it something else. The user should be in control, not the browser. If I want to go to www.nascatr.com, that's my own damn business. All the browser needs to do is take me there or throw an error if it can't.
"The Unix Way zealots will tell you that undermining this dirt road area of the internet by returning useful results"
Except that these results are not "useful", and are even less useful than a simple honest error message. When I type in a wrong URL, I don't want to be punished by attempts to redirect me to a useless second-rate search service. I just want enter the correct URL and go about my business. Such redirections to useless sites are like putting deep mudpits in the dirt road.
"There's also no technical reason why Earthlink needs to go ahead with something like this when search engines are already built into most modern browsers."
That's another lousy idea. When you want to search, you go to a search engine site. What could be easier than that? Search engines, like email clients, have no business being built into browsers.
The default MSIE result is lousy too. What I would LOVE to see happen is that, if I get an URL that does not exist, UI control returns to the address window, so I can type another one (most likely just by correcting a wrong spelling). That is what I always do anyway. I never use the useless MSN Search that comes up by default.
"Yet you'll trust the massive telecom corporations to be in control and deliver you unrestricted internet content?"
No. Perhaps I should have said that the massive telecom's were right "in a way", but not in the way they intend. How about that I don't trust the massive telecoms OR the congresscritters on their leash? Does that sound better?
I think they are right in a way. I don't trust anything from Congress that will be called a "Net Neutrality Act" not because I don't favor net neutrality. It's just that Congress will add riders and modify it into the typical Trojan Horse that you've come to expect from them.
Slashdot Mirror
"Lordy. You can disable that by unchecking Save Passwords in Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Passwords"
It's buried THAT deep? That would be fine if the system defaulted to NOT producing the obnoxious pop-ups in the first place. Then I'd dig into obscure menu options to turn them on. It is a design flaw to be sure: if they wanted to make it friendly, they'd have a checkbox on the popup itself to kill all such popups from then on (you know, like the checkbox in the Startup menu). What could be easier?
"Alternatively you can tell it to never save for individual sites and save them for other sites"
Still the easy, up front "no damn popups anymore!!!" option is missing. I hate useless annoying popups like this. Firefox is ABOVE AVERAGE when it comes to suppressing popups from content providers. I don't see why it has to produce popups of its own by default.
"with a misaligned picture for which IE violates the standards to display correctly but Firefox doesn't."
It just means that one browser tries to be more error-tolerant and display things right than the other. I'd rather see a page that looked good than see screen-garbage.
Can you pre-impeach the Ohio legislators to get them out of office?
"But seriously, they of course mean elevators from the surface of other planets into the orbit around those planets."
I'd hope so. You wouldn't want the Xindi (or Kzinti or Wraith or what have you) to arrive sometime in the future to destroy the Earth, and all they find is a giant clump of busted planets held together by giant tangled rubber bands.
"This recording is sponsored by Gromyko's Widget Works of Belle PPlain"
Wondered where he'd gotten to. Didn't know that Roger Rabbit is now doing voice work for phone message recordings.
In North Korea, only old.... oh never mind.
"The same technologies used to build a space elevator from earth would be usable for building other things: space elevators for other planets"
Got enough rubber to mix in with the nanotubes? That space elevator to Mars is going to need a LOT of stretch.
"Tornado's, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding... Mother nature probably poses a very large threat to this thing"
History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man. You know that once Godzilla gets a bus caught between two gargantuan fangs that he just can't pick out with his silly T-Rex claws, he's going to be looking for some good dental floss.....
I try, but so many pages can't display in the others that the "garbage factor" sends me back to the one that is most full of security holes. One or two of them have annoying "save password? popups that can't be gotten rid of with a simple "never give me these damn popups again for any site!" option because that option just isn't there. Perhaps it is time me to try them again. I know things improve.
Why not let the browser handle it then, if it is so important? It's pretty bad to have an ISP damage information "en route" to the browser. See the other discussion about breaking standards.
"I know a man named Otis who invented a room"
Now I know I'll have that blated "Otis Theme" earworm from "Superman" in my head all day. Thanks a lot!!! Brrump, dump, da-da. Dada, dada, da dum dum. Brrump, dump, da-da. Dada, dada, da dum!"
"Nothing is getting sent to the web browser that is of use to an end user anyway. "Server not found" or some timeout message doesn't tell me a goddamned thing"
You have to a real idiot to think that "Server not found" or a timeout message does NOT mean that the page isn't there. I know that you aren't.
If they want a space elevator, they'll have to earn it the old fashioned way: buy enough candy bars to get a golden ticket, and by all means RESIST all temptation to snack on that scrum-diddly-umptious confectionary cornucopia when touring the factory.
"That may be an easy answer for you, but is it also the right choice for Joe User?"
Why would Joe User want a tool where you tell it to do one thing, and it does another instead?
"You are already unable to give a valid address, do you think you should also be expected to be able to decipher what a 404 error means?"
I'm not so much hung on on the error being EXACTLY a 404. For all I care, it can be a simple and easy "This page does not exist". That's all.
I decided from the outset I'd never deal with Earthlink, which is a branch of the Church of $cientology (with its horrendous track record of Internet censorship lawsuits). I don't know of any place in the country where Earthlink is the only choice
"The system is specifically configured to handle only NXDOMAIN HTTP traffic as it is being returned to the user's browser and to not impact email and other non-web-browsing traffic."
Since when is it supposed to be OK for an ISP to hijack and damage the information coming back to a browser? If this is OK, then ISP's should be able to destroy email and non-browsing data as well. Let the browser display what is being sent to it, thank you. I have no problem with Internet tools such as browsers doing what I tell them to do, even if I make mistakes and tell them the "wrong" thing. Accuracy = ease.
"Those "search engines" are not "squatting" ALL unused and mispelled domains. And do keep in mind that the squatters are actually owning the domains they are "squatting"."
Exactly. You know why there are pages found at names like www.altavist.com and www.googe.com? Because someone properly registered the URL the old fashioned way (same as altavista.com and google.com) and put web page material on it. It is not a "problem" that the browser is doing its job and taking you to www.altavist.com and www.googe.com. It's a very bad idea to treat "the browser doing its job" as a problem to be "solved" by an ISP hijacking the browser.
"How is this worse than all those "search engine" sites squatting on unused and misspelled dowmains? At least earthlink is trying to provide some meaningful info to their customers."
It's worse. If you put in an URL to a page that does not exist, all the browser should really do is to tell you that the URL does not exist. The "squatting" you mention is not comparable, and not a problem. If I type "www.yahoqo.com", the browser is just doing its job when it takes me to the squatter page at www.yahoqo.com. After all, it is what I told it to do in the first place.
" it's no skin off my back, and it's more useful than "server not found"."
"Server not found" is actually more useful. Who is in charge here, you or the browser? If I want to go to "www.nascatr.com", instead of "www.nascar.com", that's my choice. The browser should not try to override my choice or second-guess me. The most it should do is make recommendations in the error page, and make it easy for me to correct my mistake.
Easy answer: A is the best, B is second best, C is the worst solution. The browser should take you where YOU tell it go go. It shouldn't second-guess you and try to take you where it THINKS you want it to go, even if you told it something else. The user should be in control, not the browser. If I want to go to www.nascatr.com, that's my own damn business. All the browser needs to do is take me there or throw an error if it can't.
"The Unix Way zealots will tell you that undermining this dirt road area of the internet by returning useful results"
Except that these results are not "useful", and are even less useful than a simple honest error message. When I type in a wrong URL, I don't want to be punished by attempts to redirect me to a useless second-rate search service. I just want enter the correct URL and go about my business. Such redirections to useless sites are like putting deep mudpits in the dirt road.
"There's also no technical reason why Earthlink needs to go ahead with something like this when search engines are already built into most modern browsers."
That's another lousy idea. When you want to search, you go to a search engine site. What could be easier than that? Search engines, like email clients, have no business being built into browsers.
The default MSIE result is lousy too. What I would LOVE to see happen is that, if I get an URL that does not exist, UI control returns to the address window, so I can type another one (most likely just by correcting a wrong spelling). That is what I always do anyway. I never use the useless MSN Search that comes up by default.
"Yet you'll trust the massive telecom corporations to be in control and deliver you unrestricted internet content?"
No. Perhaps I should have said that the massive telecom's were right "in a way", but not in the way they intend. How about that I don't trust the massive telecoms OR the congresscritters on their leash? Does that sound better?
I think they are right in a way. I don't trust anything from Congress that will be called a "Net Neutrality Act" not because I don't favor net neutrality. It's just that Congress will add riders and modify it into the typical Trojan Horse that you've come to expect from them.
"Ahem," he dissembled as he cleared his throat.
A. When their lips are moving.