OT - Internet and on-line booking questions for the group

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 15:36:03 -0500, "Trent Moorehead"
wrote:

Yesterday NPR announced that only a third of internet users are connected
at
high speed, using either DSL or cable. This truly surprised me, and I'm
absolutely amazed that so few people have made the jump to high-speed
internet -- I could never, ever go back to dial-up, and have been on cable
modem for years.

The cost Jay, the cost.

Corky Scott

Hey Jay,


How many of you guys actually make real-time, on-line hotel reservations?
Whenever I book a hotel. I'll search online for rates/discounts the
book whatever looks to be the best deal.

--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL, IA Student, airplane partnership student

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there
you will always long to return"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

Jay Honeck asks:
Does anyone know what the average speed modem is being used by the 70% of
people still using dial-up?

I'd imagine that 56K and 2800 would be the most common speeds, but
there are people who are on much slower connections, either due to
their location (availability of connections) or equipment (old
laptop). Some access by PDA, especially while travelling.

2. I hear people say that Java is "evil" all the time -- yet it seems that
every cool effect on a webpage requires Java. What is bad about Java
scripting? How about "Flashmedia"?

Java is executable code. Executable code can be harmful so many
people turn it off. It also is the source for many annoying popups,
animations, and "exciting messages" most people would just as soon not
be bombarded with. Java can be useful in specific contexts, but the
main pages and the navigation struture should not require it, and
should function fine without it.

Flash is worse. It is the way advertisers force themselves upon users
with distracting animations. I want to see the content, not have my
attention stolen (and theft is the appropriate word, just like theft
of service) by unwanted animations. Flash has no off switch. It
cannot be deactivated internally (I have disabled flash on my system
by renaming the flash.ocx and swflash.ocx files everywhere on my
system, and clicking NO! to all the resulting "Would you like to
download and install Flash?" popup boxes.) Flash also takes up a lot
of bandwidth (read "makes the page load slower and requires the user
to have more horespower")

There are occasional uses for flash - they should be relegated to
their own pages, with a suitable warning on the link.

Some web sites are entirely flash, or have home pages that force the
user to set through a thirty second flash animation of their logo and
a sales pitch before letting the user in. The business owner and web
designer think they are cool. Nobody else does. I skip them totally.

Flash seethes with evil.

3. I have pared our opening page back to practically nothing, yet it STILL
seems to be taking too long to open.

It takes me ten seconds on a DSL line. I'm not sure why, but you
still do have scripts running on the site. And what use is the hit
counter (except to you?)

4. I tried to look at the page from Mary's computer (which has the screen
resolution set to "Mr. Magoo" settings) -- and it locked up her computer.

I'd guess the scripts have something to do with it, but Mr Magoo has a
point. Your picture takes up way too much space. Not everyone has a
21 inch monitor, and of those that do, not everyone wants to =have to=
devote it all to your picture. They may well be running another
browser window, a calendar program, and notepad at the same time.
Your picture is pretty, but to make people scroll back and forth just
because it's there is not good design from the users perspective.

How many of you guys actually make real-time, on-line hotel reservations?

I do sometimes, but I prefer to call and speak to a person. People
listen; computers don't. Online booking does not require a high speed
connection (unless the company you are contracting with has a terrible
interface, which is all too common).

Keep it simple. Keep it personal. Keep it up.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

Java is executable code. Executable code can be harmful so many
people turn it off.

Java is not executable code. Java is interpreted code. It can be irritating
(like popups that won't go away), but it cannot be harmful. Unsigned Java
applets are not allowed to access most of the memory of your computer (the
phrase is that they "run in the sandbox"), they aren't allowed to access the
file system, and they can't establish a network connection with any server
except the one you got it from.

Signed applets can do some of these things, but you have to explicitly give the
server permission to download them every time you download one. Signing for one
of these can allow damaging software on your machine.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Java is not executable code. Java is interpreted code. It can be irritating
(like popups that won't go away), but it cannot be harmful.

This is a fine point that is important in some contexts. However, it
is code. It causes your machine to do something interactive (granted,
at the behest of the interpreter). It can certainly be harmful - a
trivial example is a popup loop that crashes the machine. Similarly,
Microsoft Word documents with scripts built in are also interpreted,
but can carry viruses and trojans.

I turn the stuff off.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
m...
This is a fine point that is important in some contexts. However, it is
code. It causes your machine to do something interactive (granted, at the
behest of the interpreter). It can certainly be harmful - a trivial
example is a popup loop that crashes the machine.

I have seen loops that clutter up my desktop, but never had one crash my
computer. I just bring up task manager (which is always a top-level
window), and kill the iexplore.exe process). All the popped up windows go
away, no fuss no muss.

Of course, now I use a browser that blocks pop-ups altogether, so that's
just not an issue. In any case, I believe that George's point was simply
that Java in and of itself doesn't allow an unsigned applet to do anything
that could be permanently harmful to your computer.

Similarly, Microsoft Word documents with scripts built in are also
interpreted, but can carry viruses and trojans.

Terrible comparison. Word's macro language is basically Visual Basic, and
includes all sorts of "dangerous" stuff, including file i/o. Even so, all
of the Word macro viruses I've heard of infect only other Word documents,
and are trivial to block (just turn off macros for Word). They are only
dangerous as long as you aren't aware you're infected.

Word macros and unsigned Java applets have very little in common with each
other.

Pete

Terrible comparison. Word's macro language is basically Visual Basic

Visual Basic is interpreted, which was the point being made about Java
scripts.

I have seen loops that clutter up my desktop, but never had one crash my
computer. I just bring up task manager (which is always a top-level
window), and kill the iexplore.exe process). All the popped up windows go
away, no fuss no muss.

Some loops cause a new instance of Explorer each time, and they pile
up faster than you can click them away, let alone give the three
finger salute.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

In article ,
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:

Jose wrote:

Java is executable code. Executable code can be harmful so many
people turn it off.

Java is not executable code. Java is interpreted code. It can be irritating
(like popups that won't go away), but it cannot be harmful. Unsigned Java
applets are not allowed to access most of the memory of your computer (the
phrase is that they "run in the sandbox"), they aren't allowed to access the
file system, and they can't establish a network connection with any server
except the one you got it from.

Signed applets can do some of these things, but you have to explicitly give
the
server permission to download them every time you download one. Signing for
one
of these can allow damaging software on your machine.

you have way more faith in the correct operation of software than I.

--
Bob Noel

Bob Noel wrote:

you have way more faith in the correct operation of software than I.

The software in question (the interpreter) is provided by the internet browser.
I suppose it's always possible for sloppy coding in the Java interpreter to
screw up memory management, but the instruction set doesn't exist in Java to
allow a Java coder to do it. The same is true of file access - Java is incapable
of accessing your computer files or creating files on your machine because the
commands to do this don't exist in the language. This makes it impossible for a
hacker to modify your OS or install things like trojan horses by using Java.
About the worst they can do is cause other applets to start up when you try to
close a window. I've always found that killing the browser from the task window
takes care of that. I've also found that this never happens anyway if I stay
away from pornographic web sites.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

I've always found that killing the browser from the task window
takes care of that. I've also found that this never happens anyway if I stay
away from pornographic web sites.

It happened to me from acronymfinder.com.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.