Are email account providers embarking on corroborative spamming?
America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a controversial system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered.
As a subscriber on the receiving end of these email accounts hosts, I would be irate that they would consider accepting money for “preferential treatment” of email. I view this as a blatant attempt to fill my inbox with “legitimate” spam.
For instance, I bought a pair of boots that came with a warranty. I would never waste the money to mail in the warranty card if I could simply fill it out online. Lo and behold, my email address is a required field. My choice is either provide an email address or spend $.39 on a stamp.
I provide my email address. At the first sign of spam, I send all email from this domain to my spam folder, and go on with my life. Is this spam, or legitimate correspondence? Obviously according to the company, this is legitimate correspondence. To me, since I never deliberately signed up to receive anything other the warranty coverage, this is spam.
Would this prompt my email provider to send the emails I have marked as spam to my inbox, as long as the sender has paid the prerequisite postage? I certainly hope not!
Lately, A Family Guy has been taking an abnormally long time to load. It was even noticeable on my connection, so I am sure that it was even more noticeable on dial-up or DSL. I have been trying to figure it out for a week or so, and have done everything from optimizing my CSS(link) (Cascading Style Sheets) to removing images. There is really no way that I can cut down on my script size, as it is part of the WordPress core, but that has never been a problem in the past.
I got the idea in my head that it may be a latent incompatibility issue with one of the older plug-ins and WordPress 2.0, so I went about clearing out plug-ins. I have not used many of these in a long time, and others I just do nut use with the current theme. Along the way I accidentally deleted a necessary file. I did not notice this at first, but I was quite dismayed when I realized what I ad done.
Anyway, if you were one of the eight people that attempted to view this site, sorry.
I am thinking that it may be one of the scripts from Measure Map, as this does not seem to happen when I remove the main script. Does anyone else have any ideas on why the page load may be stalling?
Google has created yet another toy for me to play with. Google Pack. The best part of this, so far, seems to be the Google Updater, which will automatically update all of the software that it installs.
At Google, we put a lot of thought into improving your online experience. We’re alarmed by what we believe is a growing disregard for your rights as computer users. We’ve seen increasing reports of spyware and other applications that trick you in order to serve you pop-up ads, connect your modem to expensive toll numbers or hijack your browser from the site you’re trying to visit.
We do not see this trend reversing itself. In fact, it is getting worse. As a provider of services and monetization for users, advertisers and publishers on the Internet, we feel a responsibility to be proactive about these issues. So, we have decided to take action. As a first step, we have outlined a set of principles we believe our industry should adopt and we’re sharing them to foster discussion and help solve the problem. We intend to follow these guidelines ourselves with the applications we distribute (such as the Google Toolbar and Google Deskbar). And because we strongly believe these principles are good for the industry and users worldwide, we will encourage our current and prospective business partners to adopt them as well.
The basic gist of this seems to be a nice package of software (screen-shot), most of which I already had installed, for those users who not quite as adept as others. It will install the software that you choose, and update it accordingly. If you already have the software installed, and it is up to date, it will do nothing. If you have a previous version of the software installed, it will update it. Unfortunately, it does not update the definitions for all of this software (i.e. Ad-Aware), just the programs themselves.
My initial test was to install Adobe Reader 6, and remove Adobe Reader 7. The upgrade was silent and quick. (I am using a cable modem, so please do not get frustrated if you are still using dial-up). I also chose Firefox, even though it is already installed and I DO NOT WANT the Google Tool-bar for Firefox. I let the upgrade run, and went in and removed the Google Tool-bar extension. Google Updater has not tried to re-install the tool-bar, which is something that I had expected it to try.
I intentionally chose a software package that I did not want to test the uninstallation process. It works great! From the installed software page on Google Updater choose “uninstall” and Viola!, the software is uninstalled. There is no complicated procedure, and the updater will not bother you again, or for at least several hours, as that is the length of time I have had this software installed.
For me, I will probably uninstall the Google Updater in about a week, after giving it a fair shake. I am extremely diligent in keeping my software up to date. For those PC users out there who are more of a “set it and forget it” type, I believe that this would be a truly great application. So much so, that I am going to recommend this to all of my family.
I am showing my Mom how to use Performancing for Firefox.
WordPress 2.0 is officially out. Go and get it, and make sure to back up before you upgrade. (I did not run into any problems, but better safe than sorry, right?)
There was a little conflict with the Enhanced Views and Version Check plugin, but they were very minor and did not break anything. There also seems to be a little issue with the window to add links when using the rich text editor, but I always use code view, so …
Happy Blogging!
