Site Privacy issues

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Fri Sep 17 20:57:21 2004

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:

>
> "absurdum", if my grasp of Latin isn't quite as rusty as I fear it may be.
>

   Just read the def.


> I don't know, it just seems that it's people who either don't understand how
> web browsers and non-static sites work, or relative newbies to the Internet,
> seem to shout and rave about cookies "OMG, that site sent me a *cookie*! I'm
> being hacked! They're going to steal my credit card number and my pr0n
> stash!"

   What irked me (and still irks me) about your post, was *not* your
feelings towards my admittedly paranoid view anent intrusions on my
personal computers - no, what pissed me off was that I was ready to learn
from you and honor your knowledge - I was thinking that rather than engage
in jejune absurdities, you'd have taken the time and space to help me out
a bit - show me that perhaps I'm over-reacting - tell me why I oughta let
the little cookies live on my machines.

   Instead, you very heavily patronized *myself* with your adolescent
screed of more-and-more ridiculous questions... "do I remove the battery
at night and re-set the BIOS every morning" indeed!

  So if you're going to join this list and then demean folks you've not met
or seem to know little about - I would think that occasionaly you're going
to get called out over it.

   I have had this IBM Thinkpad for about five years now, and got it while
I still lived and working in Southern India. I have a firewall, a
virus-checker, a spyware checker, and I disallow active-X, Java, Flash,
Coookies (unless I can't get business done w/out them)etc. To date I have
had one 'infection'; the Welchia Worm. And I got that during a network
setup sesson at my employer's - I had to shutdown my firewall to
synchronize permissions and set up various clients, someone else on the
network was infected and I got it. Noticing that my port was communicating
at nearly it's capacity and my computer was getting slow, I scnned it
and killed the bug. And that has been the only problem I've had to deal
with in five years.

   Thus am I being: Paranoid? Careful? Absurd? You tell me, Gordon. Just
keep the sarcasm and grandiose flights of superiority to yourself, please.

   Cheers

John
Received on Fri Sep 17 2004 - 20:57:21 BST