• Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art

    From calcmandan@VERT/DIGDIST to paulie420 on Tue May 19 05:42:00 2020
    paulie420 wrote to Ogg <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm article in Raspberry Pi Tips, Tricks &
    Fixes
    By: Ogg to All on Mon May 18 2020 05:06 pm

    Hello Paulie420!

    ** On Thursday 14.05.20 - 00:04, paulie420 wrote to DaiTengu:
    I think the reference to digital privacy is more about keeping said
    information out of the hands of those large corporations and less
    about some random sysop having the access. In that respect, BBSes do
    offer a form of privacy that is extinct in the current internet age.

    The public is just blindly carrying on and giving places like FB all our information for nothing but it should be for $omething.

    What I'd prefer, as an alternative, is paying $10/mo for a totally
    ad-free track-free everything-free Facebook. Just let me pay, because
    the service, content and amount of people on it are valuable, for the service that I use.

    And leave me out of all the algorithmn bullshit.

    I would bet a five-dollar-footlong that they make more than $10/month per user. A friend of mine is a market expert and we discussed it one night over dinner. I asked him if they likely studied the cost/month for a user for this experience and the outcome was above what people would pay. He agreed that he had heard from contacts within the company that they entertained the idea but their marketing team discovered that, to stay profitable per unit of sale, the cost would be prohibitive for the standard user. The development cost, alone, to partition users from the facebook treatment would be expensive. Those users would need to log into a separate facebook since all the algorighms are deeply ensconced in the site's code.

    I quit facebook in 2009 after they socially engineered me in a very scammy way and I never looked back.

    Daniel Traechin


    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From calcmandan@VERT/DIGDIST to Ogg on Tue May 19 05:44:00 2020
    Ogg wrote to paulie420 <=-

    Hello paulie420!

    ** On Monday 18.05.20 - 21:13, paulie420 wrote to Ogg:

    The public is just blindly carrying on and giving places like FB all
    our information for nothing but it should be for $omething.


    What I'd prefer, as an alternative, is paying $10/mo for a totally ad- free track-free everything-free Facebook. Just let me pay, because the service, content and amount of people on it are valuable, for the
    service that I use.

    Even $1/mo is too much! It is OUR data that they are using. The
    cashflow should come in OUR direction.

    I would normally agree. If they're going to profit off your data they shoudl pay you. But you are using their 'service' for free so yuo're paying for it with your privacy. All of it. The scope of spying they do would make you sleepless.

    I made one more LAST visit to FB tonight. I'm not going back there for
    at least a month.

    In this last visit alone, my data meter indicated that it took 1.8MB (received) and 500K (sent) just to load all the crap before everything settled down. FB is a very big pig.

    Much of that is analytics and trackers sitting on your cache. Their intrusiveness is astonishing.

    Daniel Traechin

    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to calcmandan on Tue May 19 12:46:00 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to paulie420 on Tue May 19 2020 05:42 am

    paulie420 wrote to Ogg <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm article in Raspberry Pi Tips, Tricks & Fixes
    By: Ogg to All on Mon May 18 2020 05:06 pm

    Hello Paulie420!

    ** On Thursday 14.05.20 - 00:04, paulie420 wrote to DaiTengu:
    I think the reference to digital privacy is more about keeping said
    information out of the hands of those large corporations and less
    about some random sysop having the access. In that respect, BBSes do
    offer a form of privacy that is extinct in the current internet age.

    The public is just blindly carrying on and giving places like FB all ou information for nothing but it should be for $omething.

    What I'd prefer, as an alternative, is paying $10/mo for a totally ad-free track-free everything-free Facebook. Just let me pay, because the service, content and amount of people on it are valuable, for the service that I use.

    And leave me out of all the algorithmn bullshit.

    I would bet a five-dollar-footlong that they make more than $10/month per us A friend of mine is a market expert and we discussed it one night over dinne I asked him if they likely studied the cost/month for a user for this experience and the outcome was above what people would pay. He agreed that h had heard from contacts within the company that they entertained the idea bu their marketing team discovered that, to stay profitable per unit of sale, t cost would be prohibitive for the standard user. The development cost, alone to partition users from the facebook treatment would be expensive. Those use would need to log into a separate facebook since all the algorighms are deep ensconced in the site's code.

    I quit facebook in 2009 after they socially engineered me in a very scammy w and I never looked back.

    Daniel Traechin


    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world

    Years ago I read where email spammers were making a good living with 3% of recipients responding to their ads. This is just with random cold calling.
    I can see where advertising tailored by studying a user's social media could bring in way more revenue.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to calcmandan on Tue May 19 12:53:00 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to Ogg on Tue May 19 2020 05:44 am

    Ogg wrote to paulie420 <=-

    Hello paulie420!

    ** On Monday 18.05.20 - 21:13, paulie420 wrote to Ogg:

    The public is just blindly carrying on and giving places like FB all
    our information for nothing but it should be for $omething.


    What I'd prefer, as an alternative, is paying $10/mo for a totally ad- free track-free everything-free Facebook. Just let me pay, because the service, content and amount of people on it are valuable, for the service that I use.

    Even $1/mo is too much! It is OUR data that they are using. The cashflow should come in OUR direction.

    I would normally agree. If they're going to profit off your data they shoudl pay you. But you are using their 'service' for free so yuo're paying for it with your privacy. All of it. The scope of spying they do would make you sleepless.

    I made one more LAST visit to FB tonight. I'm not going back there for at least a month.

    In this last visit alone, my data meter indicated that it took 1.8MB (received) and 500K (sent) just to load all the crap before everything settled down. FB is a very big pig.

    Much of that is analytics and trackers sitting on your cache. Their intrusiveness is astonishing.

    Daniel Traechin

    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world


    After I started running a Pi-hole with some added lists I noticed in between
    25 and 50% requests blocked on cetain sites. Some news sites would not
    launch at all unless Pi-hole was throttled back.

    Recently I 've been hearing about smart TV's and IP security cameras being quite "chatty" with more than just their manufacturer's sites.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to calcmandan on Tue May 19 17:32:19 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to paulie420 on Tue May 19 2020 05:42 am

    I would bet a five-dollar-footlong that they make more than $10/month per user. A friend of mine is a market expert and we discussed it one night over dinner. I asked him if they likely studied the cost/month for a user for this experience and the outcome was above what people would pay. He agreed that he had heard from contacts within the company that they entertained the idea but their marketing team discovered that, to stay profitable per unit of sale, the cost would be prohibitive for the standard user. The development cost, alone, to partition users from the facebook treatment would be expensive. Those users would need to log into a separate facebook since all the algorighms are deeply ensconced in the site's code.

    I quit facebook in 2009 after they socially engineered me in a very scammy way and I never looked back.

    Daniel Traechin

    Well, I could easily believe all that you stated; and that sure is a sucky thing. I'm worth more than what I'd be willing to pay... ugh. Yea, its probably not a system you want to be on - but I don't know how people DON'T in these days. Its so interwoven in all of my friends and family.... I guess thats what they want... exactly.

    It would be like... I'd lose the connection of many many people in my life. I never "buy" things from facebook.... but I'm not so naive to think that that part doesn't matter.

    Ugh. I'm in the matrix man....

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From paulie420@VERT/PAULIE42 to Moondog on Tue May 19 17:36:58 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Moondog to calcmandan on Tue May 19 2020 12:53 pm

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to Ogg on Tue May 19 2020 05:44 am

    Ogg wrote to paulie420 <=-
    After I started running a Pi-hole with some added lists I noticed in between 25 and 50% requests blocked on cetain sites. Some news sites would not launch at all unless Pi-hole was throttled back.

    Recently I 've been hearing about smart TV's and IP security cameras being quite "chatty" with more than just their manufacturer's sites.

    Yay... after all those facebook posts, I was thinking man Paulie... yer sure deep in that matrix of bullshit!!

    Smart Home is the one place where I do it right... I use Home Assistant and I program everything that my smart home products do. I use Node-Red and MQTT and don't connect to their bs home computers. :P

    Home Assistant is really cool, and you can get actual cheap smart home products... you just gotta do all the programming and automation yourself.

    |08Paulie|15420
    |15M|08@|15STERM|07i|15ND
    |14AmericanPiBBS|04.com|07

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ >>>American Pi BBS @ AmericanPiBBS.com:23>>>Rockin like its 1993!>>>
  • From calcmandan@VERT/DIGDIST to Moondog on Wed May 20 00:32:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to calcmandan <=-

    Years ago I read where email spammers were making a good living with 3%
    of recipients responding to their ads. This is just with random cold calling. I can see where advertising tailored by studying a user's
    social media could bring in way more revenue.

    It's not that simple anymore. The world-wide-web as it was intended is no longer there. As they say 'the web is dead.'

    It's not simply monitoring their online social media habits. They track your web surfing regardless of whether you're logged in or not. Any of those 'like on facebook' graphics you see on websites drops a cookie on your browser and the connectino your browser makes to download that image is hosted by facebook so they track everywhere you go. They build a timeline of your habits.

    Further, their partnerships with other sites, as well as third party tracking and analytics sites, share that information. You are effectively providing them a free means to learn about your habits so they can sell it.

    While I'm a strong proponent in natural capitalistic tendencies of humans, this takes it far beyond the extreme for my taste.

    Facebook has a profile on everyone regardless of their access to the facebook site. If someone searches my name on facebook, there's an empty profile. It's a placeholder for all the data they've stored about me that I never intended to share. Due to their partnerships, that is, they get a big complete picture on this. They're building AI to model YOU and your behaviors to predict what yuo're going to do next. They can even model your moods at the moment it's occuring too. It's creepy. And people are effectively blind to it since all of it occurs in the background. They also utilize this AI to alter your state of mind. Youtube and all the other mainstream sites act the same way. Youtube gives you recommdnations on the side. It's really really good at it. People I know spend hours watching recommended videos they had zero intention of watching before going. Before they know it, the day is over and their projects fell to the wayside. The analytics and AI have used the human brain and turned it against itself.

    It's tough to visit a news site these days without a linked youtube video that, more often than not, autoplays when you load a page. It takes an act of hacking to stop the autoplay. I have to disable all sorts of services on my browser just to enjoy the experience I'm there for. Assuming, of course, the apge includes that information. they'll often require the video to play to describe the information the clickbait drew you there for. Of course, you can't forget the advertisement that starts. Want to see a 30 second vid? Watch this 25 second ad first please, kthxbye.

    I really hate what the web has turned into.

    Long live Lynx.

    Daniel Traechin

    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From calcmandan@VERT/DIGDIST to Moondog on Wed May 20 04:51:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to calcmandan <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to Ogg on Tue May 19 2020 05:44 am

    Ogg wrote to paulie420 <=-

    Hello paulie420!

    ** On Monday 18.05.20 - 21:13, paulie420 wrote to Ogg:

    The public is just blindly carrying on and giving places like FB all
    our information for nothing but it should be for $omething.


    What I'd prefer, as an alternative, is paying $10/mo for a totally ad- free track-free everything-free Facebook. Just let me pay, because the service, content and amount of people on it are valuable, for the service that I use.

    Even $1/mo is too much! It is OUR data that they are using. The cashflow should come in OUR direction.

    I would normally agree. If they're going to profit off your data they shoudl pay you. But you are using their 'service' for free so yuo're paying for it with your privacy. All of it. The scope of spying they do would make you sleepless.

    I made one more LAST visit to FB tonight. I'm not going back there for at least a month.

    In this last visit alone, my data meter indicated that it took 1.8MB (received) and 500K (sent) just to load all the crap before everything settled down. FB is a very big pig.

    Much of that is analytics and trackers sitting on your cache. Their intrusiveness is astonishing.

    Daniel Traechin

    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world


    After I started running a Pi-hole with some added lists I noticed in between 25 and 50% requests blocked on cetain sites. Some news sites would not launch at all unless Pi-hole was throttled back.

    I manage my agency's proxies and yes. They're being really creative with ways to force ads on users. My job is to provide them a sense of privacy as well as a non-distracting browsing experience.

    Recently I 've been hearing about smart TV's and IP security cameras
    being quite "chatty" with more than just their manufacturer's sites.

    big time. My bro has IPcameras and he opened a hole on his firewall overnight to let the cameras update their firmware and they chatted about 2gigs overnight.

    i'm like...

    Daniel Traechin

    ... Visit me at gopher://gcpp.world
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
  • From Vk3jed@VERT/FREEWAY to calcmandan on Wed May 20 17:00:00 2020
    On 05-20-20 04:51, calcmandan wrote to Moondog <=-

    I manage my agency's proxies and yes. They're being really creative
    with ways to force ads on users. My job is to provide them a sense of privacy as well as a non-distracting browsing experience.

    It's become a real arms race now. So many sites now demand that you remove your ad blocker or they will refuse to serve content. :/

    big time. My bro has IPcameras and he opened a hole on his firewall overnight to let the cameras update their firmware and they chatted
    about 2gigs overnight.

    i'm like...

    WTF??? Because that's my reaction to that. :/


    ... Opportunity: A favourable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
    --- MultiMail/Win v0.51
    þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au
  • From Kurisu@VERT/FINALZON to calcmandan on Wed May 20 09:44:36 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to Moondog on Wed May 20 2020 12:32 am

    I really hate what the web has turned into.

    I feel the exact same way.

    In a short rant, it's become an overly-centralized data harvesting mess. The sheer volume of data mining being done is bad enough, but when you add in that people, for the most part, only visit the same few websites over and over (Facebook, YouTube, and other Google services proper) all the power and value of the web has gone to the control of just a few groups. It was never intended to be that way, yet that's what happened. I could go on about that, but the fact that it's become so centralized I think bugs me the most. The data mining wouldn't be nearly as bad if everyone didn't use these same few sites and, even moreso IMO, embrace a company (Google) which literally, and openly, makes its money from data.

    They complain about privacy online, yet see no problem pouring their digital lives into a Google database willingly, all because of "convenience."

    Sorry, I just really needed to rant, as what you typed rang so true with me and how I feel about the subject on a whole.


    finalzone.ddns.net | xadara.com

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Final Zone: The official BBS of xadara.com! telnet: finalzone.ddns.net
  • From Dumas Walker@VERT/CAPCITY2 to OGG on Wed May 20 12:58:00 2020
    "We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes
    to manipulate them" - Jaron Lanier.

    Damn straight.

    ---
    þ SLMR 2.1a þ Hey, how 'bout a fandango ?!?
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From Dennisk@VERT/PALANT to Kurisu on Thu May 21 10:18:00 2020
    Kurisu wrote to calcmandan <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: calcmandan to Moondog on Wed May 20 2020 12:32 am

    I really hate what the web has turned into.

    I feel the exact same way.

    In a short rant, it's become an overly-centralized data harvesting
    mess. The sheer volume of data mining being done is bad enough, but
    when you add in that people, for the most part, only visit the same few websites over and over (Facebook, YouTube, and other Google services proper) all the power and value of the web has gone to the control of
    just a few groups. It was never intended to be that way, yet that's
    what happened. I could go on about that, but the fact that it's become
    so centralized I think bugs me the most. The data mining wouldn't be nearly as bad if everyone didn't use these same few sites and, even
    moreso IMO, embrace a company (Google) which literally, and openly,
    makes its money from data.

    They complain about privacy online, yet see no problem pouring their digital lives into a Google database willingly, all because of "convenience."

    Sorry, I just really needed to rant, as what you typed rang so true
    with me and how I feel about the subject on a whole.

    Add to that the proliferation of 'bait' sites, which are really just mass produced 'information', designed to capture a spot in google search, so that it will be clicked on and ad revenue generated. Quite often, I may search for an answer to a question, and get links to some site, where the web page linked to has the briefest non answer, and heaps of ads, lists, etc. Do we need the crap blog post with two sentences to say that SSH can be used to access a system securely?

    This was bound to happen, with many users expecting to use the Internet without understanding what it is and how it works. People have a mental model of computers, where it is an closed box appliance, rather than a tool. This leads to a belief that these companies provide a service, when in reality, the service they are providing is just taking control of something which the user could have engineered themselves. All to often, I see people subscribe the services of an app/cloud service provider, to do something which could have been done by e-mail, or email and a basic web page.



    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Ogg@VERT/EOTLBBS to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed May 20 22:23:00 2020
    Hello poindexter!

    ** On Tuesday 19.05.20 - 10:41, poindexter.fortran wrote to Ogg:

    Even $1/mo is too much! It is OUR data that they are using. The
    cashflow should come in OUR direction.

    Jaron Lanier has a book called "You are not a Gadget" that describes a micropayment system where art and content creators can be paid
    directly for their work. It's a utopian vision of how the internet
    could be, and how it could directly benefit the people that create the content that now only benefit the investors.

    He's pretty outspoken about the state of the tech, and has an
    interesting Ted talk called something like "Why you need to quit
    social media".

    I'm glad to hear that I was not the only one thinking that the FB/Google model is brainwashing/addiction at its finest.

    We need to have the mindset that our data is *our* data and we should
    expect to be treated with dignity - digital dignity as he puts it.

    I watched a few of his talks. The one on Channel 4, is very good too. In
    it, he admits that even he embraces the companies that he critizes; he
    stated that he sold a company of his to Google. But it's the data
    collection and its use to manipulate the population that is the dystopian sadness.

    Jaron is the voice of reason.

    FB, and many of the similar social media types, purposely uses an
    addiction component in it's operation. I think someone here stated that
    they would be hate to loose all their valuable connections to the people
    they friended. That is the "feeling" that FB tries to inculcate upon its users.

    I have not minded the occassional visit to FB over the years. I would
    have no problem totally ignoring the ads. But it seems lately that FB has become a much greater data pig than I can stand. FB uses between 2 - 3MB
    of tx/rx data before the first page finishes; that is just totally bad,
    and *I'm* paying for all that shit.

    A few years ago I posted some pictures of my then deceased mom on FB, but
    I put them in a private album and I only purposely announced it to one
    family friend. However, the pictures ended up being announced outside
    that privacy barrier! I was furious. I think FB purposely makes these "errors" or makes locking things up difficult to understand so that in the mean time they can continue their social data mining, sharing it as widely
    as possible and feed it to their algorithms, before you can figure out how
    to lock things up better.

    I am tired of these "mistakes" which they historically first deny, or
    later apologize for and just claim to correct later.

    Anyway, I am avoiding FB for at least a month. Then I plan to just empty
    my photo albums and then have longer pauses before my next visits.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Ogg@VERT/EOTLBBS to Dennisk on Thu May 21 12:18:51 2020
    On 21/05/2020 11:18 a.m., Dennisk wrote:

    They complain about privacy online, yet see no problem pouring their digital lives into a Google database willingly, all because of "convenience."

    Sorry, I just really needed to rant, as what you typed rang so true
    with me and how I feel about the subject on a whole.


    Add to that the proliferation of 'bait' sites, which are really just mass produced 'information', designed to capture a spot in google search, so that it
    will be clicked on and ad revenue generated. Quite often, I may search for an
    answer to a question, and get links to some site, where the web page linked to
    has the briefest non answer, and heaps of ads, lists, etc. Do we need the crap
    blog post with two sentences to say that SSH can be used to access a system securely?

    The bait sites are such a data hog. It takes a long time for all the content to
    load and usually they arrange it so that the ads load first.

    At first they look interesting. Who wouldn't want to briefly check out a story on the top highly rated films and their "easter eggs", for example. But each page is just a few sentences with a filler image, and big NEXT / PREVIOUS buttons. The rest of the page is loaded with ads; the flashing or animated ones
    are really annoying to me.

    If you were to take the salient content of each page, you could probably read the relevant story very fast in one page-view.

    Instead, these sites assume you have unlimited time and data to waste.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Ogg on Fri May 22 10:08:31 2020
    Re: proliferation of 'bait' sites
    By: Ogg to Dennisk on Thu May 21 2020 12:18 pm

    Add to that the proliferation of 'bait' sites, which are really just mass produced 'information', designed to capture a spot in google search, so that it
    will be clicked on and ad revenue generated. Quite often, I may search for an
    answer to a question, and get links to some site, where the web page linked to
    has the briefest non answer, and heaps of ads, lists, etc. Do we need the crap
    blog post with two sentences to say that SSH can be used to access a system securely?

    The bait sites are such a data hog. It takes a long time for all the content to
    load and usually they arrange it so that the ads load first.

    At first they look interesting. Who wouldn't want to briefly check out a story on the top highly rated films and their "easter eggs", for example. But each page is just a few sentences with a filler image, and big NEXT / PREVIOUS buttons. The rest of the page is loaded with ads; the flashing or animated ones
    are really annoying to me.

    If you were to take the salient content of each page, you could probably read the relevant story very fast in one page-view.

    Instead, these sites assume you have unlimited time and data to waste.


    I don't think they care, as long as that metric for clicks ticks over. I can't help but conclude that making technology as accessible as possible is a bad idea.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Rampage@VERT/SESTAR to Ogg on Fri May 22 08:26:31 2020
    Re: proliferation of 'bait' sites
    By: Ogg to Dennisk on Thu May 21 2020 12:18:51


    At first they look interesting. Who wouldn't want to briefly check
    out a story on the top highly rated films and their "easter eggs",
    for example. But each page is just a few sentences with a filler
    image, and big NEXT / PREVIOUS buttons. The rest of the page is
    loaded with ads; the flashing or animated ones are really annoying
    to me.

    sounds like you're not using a decent/proper ad filter... i rarely see any ads in my browsing... i'm using firefox with adblock and noscript... when i was using facecrook, no ads... i use twitter all the time, no ads... those click-bait articles you mention above, no ads... amazon, no ads... sure, it took me a little while to get noscript set so that only the stuff needed for a site to work was loaded but once that was done, no ads...


    )\/(ark

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The SouthEast Star Mail HUB - SESTAR
  • From Kurisu@VERT/FINALZON to Dennisk on Fri May 22 08:27:03 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Dennisk to Kurisu on Thu May 21 2020 10:18 am

    This was bound to happen, with many users expecting to use the Internet with understanding what it is and how it works. People have a mental model of computers, where it is an closed box appliance, rather than a tool. This le to a belief that these companies provide a service, when in reality, the service they are providing is just taking control of something which the use could have engineered themselves. All to often, I see people subscribe the services of an app/cloud service provider, to do something which could have been done by e-mail, or email and a basic web page.

    You really were spot on with this. People, on a whole, just don't understand what a computer, in any form, really is from a perspective of captability. Then again I am one of those people who thinks one should understand things as much as they can which, while yes, it's not necessary to use and enjoy something, does allow a person to get maximum usage out of the machine, tool, what have you.

    User ignorance, the nature of relying on SEO or freaking YouTube videos to determine what information a person wil find (see the click bait comment you made as a fine example of SEO being abused for pointlessness) and corporate greed and forcing things all into the same basket (I'm looking at you Google) has just really messed up not only the internet but user perception on what the internet actually is, how it can and should be used, and how it can better ones life.

    It's sad, really.

    ::We require additional pylons::

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Final Zone: The official BBS of xadara.com! telnet: finalzone.ddns.net
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Kurisu on Sat May 23 10:49:00 2020
    Kurisu wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Dennisk to Kurisu on Thu May 21 2020 10:18 am

    This was bound to happen, with many users expecting to use the Internet with understanding what it is and how it works. People have a mental model of computers, where it is an closed box appliance, rather than a tool. This le to a belief that these companies provide a service, when in reality, the service they are providing is just taking control of something which the use could have engineered themselves. All to often, I see people subscribe the services of an app/cloud service provider, to do something which could have been done by e-mail, or email and a basic web page.

    You really were spot on with this. People, on a whole, just don't understand what a computer, in any form, really is from a perspective
    of captability. Then again I am one of those people who thinks one
    should understand things as much as they can which, while yes, it's not necessary to use and enjoy something, does allow a person to get
    maximum usage out of the machine, tool, what have you.

    User ignorance, the nature of relying on SEO or freaking YouTube videos
    to determine what information a person wil find (see the click bait comment you made as a fine example of SEO being abused for
    pointlessness) and corporate greed and forcing things all into the same basket (I'm looking at you Google) has just really messed up not only
    the internet but user perception on what the internet actually is, how
    it can and should be used, and how it can better ones life.

    It's sad, really.

    I work for a large organisation, and their management of information is mind bogglingly crap. We are literally paying people well above minimum wage, to copy and paste information from one document to another, then sometimes, to copy from THAT to another still. Then paying for someone to eyeball the document to make sure the information matches. Huh? Are people aware that a computer can duplicate information flawlessly? Are people aware that you can store data in such a way that you can write queries to extract the data you need? That the computer itself can take that data and put it into a formatted document for printing? That a computer itself can take care of business logic such as when one data set becomes active or inactive? It seems no. They could do so much more with a simple CSV file and some python scripts.

    It's like watching someone with a car, have it pulled by a horse and use it as some kind of carriage, then complaining that the horses are getting worn down and getting MORE horses! All because they don't know what a car can actually do, and people seem to think it is better to just throw more resources at a problem, than make people learn something new.

    Because managers have no idea what computers actually do, that you can actually write new logic and instructions, they either go with the crap status quo, or purchase goliath 'consumer web based' enterprise software with poor interoperability with anything but MS Office. They only think in terms of 'apps', and the 'documents' those apps open and close.

    All this I think came from the expectation that users should just be able to use appplications, which is wrong headed. They are NOT using applications, they are processing data using logic and storage technology. It's a seemingly subtle difference of view, but it leads to vastly different results.

    ... He does the work of 3 Men...Moe, Larry & Curly
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia
  • From Ogg@VERT/EOTLBBS to All on Sat May 23 20:48:00 2020
    Hello Rampage!

    ** On Friday 22.05.20 - 08:26, rampage wrote to Ogg:

    ...The rest of the page is
    loaded with ads; the flashing or animated ones are really annoying
    to me.


    sounds like you're not using a decent/proper ad filter... i rarely see
    any ads in my browsing... i'm using firefox with adblock and
    noscript... when i was using facecrook, no ads... i use twitter all
    the time, no ads... those click-bait articles you mention above, no
    ads... amazon, no ads... sure, it took me a little while to get
    noscript set so that only the stuff needed for a site to work was
    loaded but once that was done, no ads...

    Right. I don't have any blockers installed, anymore. I just have "Disconnect for Facebook" which claims to disable 3rd party websites from accessing my Facebook.

    I did use noscript for a little while. Instead of adblock, I used uBlock. Again.. newer versions just stopped working with my current XP + FF 52.8

    I have something called FBC installed on my Win7 desktop and a newer FF.
    FBC has a rather nice config system perfectly matched to control the many options in Facebook: Rooms, MyStory.. etc.

    Since you mention noscript, I reinstalled it on the Win7 desktop today,
    and got a bit overwhelmed on the per site settings required. I only
    disabled a couple of things and FB complained that "scripting was
    required". So, I allowed scripting and disabled pretty much everything
    else, but then it failed to finish loading the next time.

    My desktop Win7 pc has unlimited DSL, so data use for all the extra stuff
    is not such a noticeable problem.

    My XP machine still remains my go to system for most everything. I have a newish refurbished Thinkpad 540p Win7pro since Dec 2019 too, but I just
    can't wrap myself around to using it full time yet. The chicklet keyboard
    is a bit of a detractor. I like using that laptop for watching films/
    files, but not so much for regular use.

    I might go back and take another look at noscript on the Win7 desktop pc,
    but I am basically fed up with FB anyway. And I should really just steer away from the clickbait "information/news" sites that have 2 sentences of "real" content per page and force you to numerous "NEXT" pages to read the next two sentences. Those are just a complete abomination.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Moondog@VERT/CAVEBBS to Dennisk on Sat May 23 22:22:00 2020
    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Dennisk to Kurisu on Sat May 23 2020 10:49 am

    Kurisu wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Dennisk to Kurisu on Thu May 21 2020 10:18 am

    This was bound to happen, with many users expecting to use the Internet w understanding what it is and how it works. People have a mental model of computers, where it is an closed box appliance, rather than a tool. This to a belief that these companies provide a service, when in reality, the service they are providing is just taking control of something which the could have engineered themselves. All to often, I see people subscribe t services of an app/cloud service provider, to do something which could ha been done by e-mail, or email and a basic web page.

    You really were spot on with this. People, on a whole, just don't understand what a computer, in any form, really is from a perspective of captability. Then again I am one of those people who thinks one should understand things as much as they can which, while yes, it's not necessary to use and enjoy something, does allow a person to get maximum usage out of the machine, tool, what have you.

    User ignorance, the nature of relying on SEO or freaking YouTube videos to determine what information a person wil find (see the click bait comment you made as a fine example of SEO being abused for pointlessness) and corporate greed and forcing things all into the same basket (I'm looking at you Google) has just really messed up not only the internet but user perception on what the internet actually is, how it can and should be used, and how it can better ones life.

    It's sad, really.

    I work for a large organisation, and their management of information is mind bogglingly crap. We are literally paying people well above minimum wage, to copy and paste information from one document to another, then sometimes, to copy from THAT to another still. Then paying for someone to eyeball the document to make sure the information matches. Huh? Are people aware that computer can duplicate information flawlessly? Are people aware that you ca store data in such a way that you can write queries to extract the data you need? That the computer itself can take that data and put it into a formatt document for printing? That a computer itself can take care of business log such as when one data set becomes active or inactive? It seems no. They co do so much more with a simple CSV file and some python scripts.

    It's like watching someone with a car, have it pulled by a horse and use it some kind of carriage, then complaining that the horses are getting worn dow and getting MORE horses! All because they don't know what a car can actuall do, and people seem to think it is better to just throw more resources at a problem, than make people learn something new.

    Because managers have no idea what computers actually do, that you can actua write new logic and instructions, they either go with the crap status quo, o purchase goliath 'consumer web based' enterprise software with poor interoperability with anything but MS Office. They only think in terms of 'apps', and the 'documents' those apps open and close.

    All this I think came from the expectation that users should just be able to use appplications, which is wrong headed. They are NOT using applications, they are processing data using logic and storage technology. It's a seeming subtle difference of view, but it leads to vastly different results.

    ... He does the work of 3 Men...Moe, Larry & Curly

    Several years ago i applied for unemployment, and part of the process was to
    go to an agency that helped find jobs. They had this cool online program
    that aksed questions about where you worked and when, and what you did, then assembled it into a functional resume. For users who worked in jobs that normally do not require a resume, I can see how that would be a time saver.
    I also could bet whatever format they used could be easily stripped down and digested by HR software.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Ogg on Sun May 24 12:08:47 2020
    Re: Re: proliferation of 'bait' sites
    By: Ogg to All on Sat May 23 2020 08:48 pm

    Right. I don't have any blockers installed, anymore. I just have "Disconnect for Facebook" which claims to disable 3rd party websites from accessing my Facebook.

    I did use noscript for a little while. Instead of adblock, I used uBlock. Again.. newer versions just stopped working with my current XP + FF 52.8


    i'm not happy with any adblockers except those youtube ones.

    i use noadhosts now with a popup blocker/prompter
    i have other adblockers installed but they didnt really catch everything.

    for facebook i use facebook purity addon. that's decent.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Ogg@VERT/EOTLBBS to MRO on Sun May 24 15:02:00 2020
    Hello MRO!

    ** On Sunday 24.05.20 - 13:08, mro wrote to Ogg:

    i use noadhosts now with a popup blocker/prompter i have other
    adblockers installed but they didnt really catch everything.

    Maybe editing the hosts files and including the main domains of the
    trackers would block quite of bit of activity and prevent waste of the
    data quota that I pay for.


    for facebook i use facebook purity addon. that's decent.

    Yes.. that's the one I failed to mention by name properly. The config interface seems to be well designed for making adjustments that are
    clearly identified and specific to FB.

    But lately, my solution for all the crap on FB is to just stop using that piece of sh*t entirely. LOL

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com
  • From Dennisk@VERT/MINDSEYE to Moondog on Mon May 25 19:42:00 2020
    Moondog wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Dennisk to Kurisu on Sat May 23 2020 10:49 am

    Kurisu wrote to Dennisk <=-

    Re: Re: Nice BBS/SyncTerm art
    By: Dennisk to Kurisu on Thu May 21 2020 10:18 am

    This was bound to happen, with many users expecting to use the Internet w understanding what it is and how it works. People have a mental model of computers, where it is an closed box appliance, rather than a tool. This to a belief that these companies provide a service, when in reality, the service they are providing is just taking control of something which the could have engineered themselves. All to often, I see people subscribe t services of an app/cloud service provider, to do something which could ha been done by e-mail, or email and a basic web page.

    You really were spot on with this. People, on a whole, just don't understand what a computer, in any form, really is from a perspective of captability. Then again I am one of those people who thinks one should understand things as much as they can which, while yes, it's not necessary to use and enjoy something, does allow a person to get maximum usage out of the machine, tool, what have you.

    User ignorance, the nature of relying on SEO or freaking YouTube videos to determine what information a person wil find (see the click bait comment you made as a fine example of SEO being abused for pointlessness) and corporate greed and forcing things all into the same basket (I'm looking at you Google) has just really messed up not only the internet but user perception on what the internet actually is, how it can and should be used, and how it can better ones life.

    It's sad, really.

    I work for a large organisation, and their management of information is mind bogglingly crap. We are literally paying people well above minimum wage, to copy and paste information from one document to another, then sometimes, to copy from THAT to another still. Then paying for someone to eyeball the document to make sure the information matches. Huh? Are people aware that computer can duplicate information flawlessly? Are people aware that you ca store data in such a way that you can write queries to extract the data you need? That the computer itself can take that data and put it into a formatt document for printing? That a computer itself can take care of business log such as when one data set becomes active or inactive? It seems no. They co do so much more with a simple CSV file and some python scripts.

    It's like watching someone with a car, have it pulled by a horse and use it some kind of carriage, then complaining that the horses are getting worn dow and getting MORE horses! All because they don't know what a car can actuall do, and people seem to think it is better to just throw more resources at a problem, than make people learn something new.

    Because managers have no idea what computers actually do, that you can actua write new logic and instructions, they either go with the crap status quo, o purchase goliath 'consumer web based' enterprise software with poor interoperability with anything but MS Office. They only think in terms of 'apps', and the 'documents' those apps open and close.

    All this I think came from the expectation that users should just be able to use appplications, which is wrong headed. They are NOT using applications, they are processing data using logic and storage technology. It's a seeming subtle difference of view, but it leads to vastly different results.

    ... He does the work of 3 Men...Moe, Larry & Curly

    Several years ago i applied for unemployment, and part of the process
    was to go to an agency that helped find jobs. They had this cool
    online program that aksed questions about where you worked and when,
    and what you did, then assembled it into a functional resume. For
    users who worked in jobs that normally do not require a resume, I can
    see how that would be a time saver. I also could bet whatever format
    they used could be easily stripped down and digested by HR software.

    Sounds like good design. Organised data which can be assembled into whatever required format. Seems the exception rather than the rule.



    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ Mind's Eye - mindseye.ddns.net - Melbourne Australia