Όλα είναι κόπος, αλλά η δακτυλογράφηση από την αρχή, είναι ένας σχετικά ευχάριστος κόπος. Ξεμάθαμε το πληκρτολόγιο του pc από τις άλλες συσκευές, και ...
Ηλίας,
Thanks for the encouragement...
My Greek friends usually cut and paste the output of these site builder programs, like Frontpage, to reduce the text they produce, which they universally judge to be excessive...
I was thinking, if diceman could reduce the complexity of the output generated by his site builder using this technique, he could pass a simplified document into the pdf creator; he might be able to isolate the problem.
On Tripod:
My friends like the advertising on
http://modern-greek-verbs.tripod.com. The ads seem to add credibility. They ask me, "How did you do that?"
I say, "I didn't."
(My next book will be "Modern Greek Nouns". There are 13 classes of nouns, times 3 genders, which yields 39 different declinations, too many for a mere mortal to remember. The ultimate goal is to create a mechanical brain capable of translating greek/english and vice versa. I'll need to convert these sites to XML first.)
Tripod scans my html for keywords so it can produce context-sensitive banner advertising. Some of the ads even promote, "Learn Greek the Easy Way." They might even put a link to the translatum site, if you advertised with them.
There is no spyware, rest assured.
Yes, I could pay Tripod $4.95 to get rid off the adds, but I like it this way, for the time being, anyway.
I haven't seen one for a while, so I forgot to mention it... Occasionaly tripod will create a pop up the first time you visit the site (if they have the advertising, I guess. Popups are usually very expensive, more expensive than embedded advertising.)
Careful! Don't close it, just minimize it.
I'm willing to bet the Tripod JS creates a cookie when it creates the popup, and removes the cookie, when you close the window. If you delete the cookie by closing the popup, you'll get the same popup the next page you visit, so just leave it in the task bar.
Personally, I'm also annoyed by those sites which throw up popups every time you click on the page, especially when you try closing the window, like on the porno sites... :)
If it's any encouragement to anyone out there, I removed my "protection" software years ago.
I have never been infected.
Also, I have never been willing to pay my ISP extra for pop-up blockers. You see, popups can be useful, especially for Print Preview...
But if you visit a site which uses a popup for advertising (like hotmail) you'd be better off not using that site, than using a popup blocker. Try Yahoo, or Gmail (anybody want an invitation?)
As for antivirus, these programs do absolutely nothing, beyond giving you a warm, fuzzy feeling. They make their money by playing on the fear of the masses. It's shameless self-promotion. The browser is, by nature, a very poor attack vector. Languages like Java and JS simply do not allow any client-side file or network IO.
Only Microsoft products seem to create problems -- primarily because it has a predominate position in the marketplace -- especially those "Active-X" components, which are small, binary load modules. These components have access to the entire API, the "Application Programming Interface", so they can do anything on your machine you can do.
It is never a good idea to accept an Active-X componet from the web, and the browser should warn you if a page wants one.
Another problem is Visual Basic, because it too has almost complete access to your computer's IO subsystem. VB is the hacker's language of choice. Most attacks are written in VB and hidden in email attachments. Open the attachment, and the VB runs, potentially corrupting your entire file system.
Incidently, in a properly designed OS, damage to your pc should be confined to your desktop. Windows 98 was not a serious OS in any sense of the word. Rogue programs could install themselves anywhere, even in system directories.
Windows XP, on the other hand, uses the NT file system which is "access controlled", so any virus you might download as a normal user could, at worst, delete your files, and annoy your friend with unwanted email.
1) Never browse the web as a supervisor. Use your personal account, or better yet, create a simple account, with an empty desktop, especially is you are going to visit risky sites.
2) Never visit hacker sites, blogs, or bulletin-boards. Unless you know what you're looking for.
I still see Windows 98 machines out there, infected with spyware, which popup unwanted messages at frequent intervals. We even have them here, at the University of the Aegean... You needed protection software to compensate for the shoddy design of Windows 98.
Windows XP should present virtually no problem, because of its NT (non-FAT) file system.
As I said, I removed all my protection software years ago, even on an old Windows 98 pc. The machine booted 10 times faster, because there were no splash screens for MacAffee or Norton, and no download time for "updates".
My browser ran better, because the protection got in the way of the normal mode of operation.
Joe
PS
Which brings up the question of DOS, Denial-of-Service. Such attacks usually rely on the cooperation of hundreds, if not thousands, of unwitting participants, and are almost always launched from trojan horses hidden in Microsoft email, first, because Microsoft is the most popular OS, and secondly, because of Visual Basic.
A one-on-one DOS doesn't make sense: 1) it monopolizes the attacker's machine and 2) It comes from a single IP address, which is easily blocked.