Rio's awful website

Since the empeg-car is going to become part of that product line, I've just spent a few useless minutes trying to navigate Rio's awful, awful website (www.riohome.com) to no avail... Has anyone been able to get past the front page on this thing? It's probably because I'm running Netscape on Linux, so the "site designed to work on IE5.5 on Windows" won't behave.

I sure hope the empeg fellows keep their site up for the indefinite future. I can navigate theirs no problem. I hope I never have to try to get past the front page on Riohome.com to download software updates for my empeg, though. It just won't happen.

Why oh why do companies believe that a flashy-but-useless-and-hard-to-navigate website is so much better than a simple-but-easy-to-use site? Never mind, I know the answer.... ("First, we kill all the marketers.")

It's based heavily on Javascript mouse-over events - works OK on IE but I haven't tried it on Netscape. The JS looks quite mundane so I'm not sure what the problem could be.

Rob

It's nasty: click the thing on the left, then click "more" in the centre "pane".

Urrrgh.

Hugo

Agree. It's infuriating. And what makes it worse is that you don't find ANY product spec. Terrible.

It's based heavily on Javascript mouse-over events

Do many people actually have javascript turned on? I try to avoid it if possible, but for those short periods when I can't I get mightily peeved at all the things happening without me telling them to. Yuk!

Richard.

Control freaks


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

From the surveys I have seen in the past (collected from actual website hits), most people leave it turned on.

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Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Just curious, but why wouldn't you?

DiGNAN

Some people are wary of potential security problems. There have been security issues found in JavaScript in IE in the past (allowing malicious web sites to read files for your PC etc).

I personally am not too worried about this, so I leave it turned on.

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Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Some people are wary of potential security problems. There have been security issues found in JavaScript in IE in the past (allowing malicious web sites to read files for your PC etc)

I often turn off Javascript if I know I'll be surfing to a site that uses pop-up window advertising. In the case of sites like GeoCities, it can save me 10-20 seconds of "wait for the ad to load before the page is navigable" time.

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Tony Fabris

In reply to:

---

There have been security issues found in JavaScript in IE in the past (allowing malicious web sites to read files for your PC etc).

---

Thats my number one reason for running Netscape. Less security holes. #2 is I just can't stand IE for a few reasons.

See, there is a benefit to using the browser with or so market share, not as many people hammering it for holes :-)

Thats my number one reason for running Netscape. Less security holes. #2 is I just can't stand IE for a few reasons.

I've been switching back and forth between Netscape and IE recently, and I'm starting to warm up to IE.

There is precisely one problem I'm having with Netscape, and it directly relates to this BBS. It's the formatting of tables with long threads. In Netscape, if I open a particularly large thread, the resulting table is huge. As a result, Netscape freezes for several seconds as it attempts to format the table for screen display. That netscape window (and any others I happen to have open at the time) is completely locked and unresponsive during this period. Sometimes this can be as long as 30 seconds for particularly large threads. IE, on the other hand, formats large tables much more quickly and remains responsive even as it churns on the table.

There are other things about IE that I dislike, though. With Netscape, I can use a batch file to clear my cache, history, and cookies with simple DEL commands. IE (at least on NT4) won't let you delete things like the history and cache folders from a batch file (the batch file is denied access). It requires that you go into a dialog box and answer a prompt before that stuff can get cleared. Fortunately, I found WindowWasher to do the cleaning for me, but if you watch it working, you'll notice that it has to open that same dialog box and ghost keystrokes into it to get the job done. What a waste!

Finally, if I want to synchronize my bookmarks between my home and work computers, Netscape is simple: It's a single "bookmark.htm" file, ready to be copied onto a floppy diskette. IE has every bookmark abstracted into a link file scattered in multiple subdirectories. ICK!

So, there are a lot of reasons why I want to like Netscape over IE, but reading long threads on this BBS makes it hard to do so.

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Tony Fabris

Netscape is simple: It's a single "bookmark.htm" file, ready to be copied onto a floppy diskette.

Have you tried IE's "Export Bookmarks" function under "File"? It makes a single "bookmark.htm".

Brian H. Johnson
MK2 36GB Blue
"Born to Lose..."

To be honest, you ought to be using fusionone.com, which is rather wonderful for bookmark synchronisation (and contacts, and calendar, etc). I now have my home/work PCs synced, along with my Palm and my GSM mobile phone (yes, it even SMSes you new contact entries). If I don't have any of those near me, I can still pull up contacts, bookmarks and schedule over a secure web connection... or even my WAP phone. Cool or what?

And it's free too (for the basic service, like I use). Bargain. I'm actually subscribing because it really does what it says it will...

Hugo

Have you tried IE's "Export Bookmarks" function under "File"? It makes a single "bookmark.htm".

Interesting. It seems to work for exporting. I'm having trouble importing my bookmarks from Netscape, though. I'll keep trying.

Of course, it takes me through a 12-step "wizard" to get the job done, so that's just a tad irritating.

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Tony Fabris

To be honest, you ought to be using fusionone.com, which is rather wonderful for bookmark synchronisation (and contacts, and calendar, etc).

Thanks for the tip, Hugo. I'll check them out. The stuff I synch daily is small enough to be handled via phone lines, I'll see what features they offer.

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Tony Fabris

Thanks, Hugo, I'm checking them out now... I know why you like them: They have one of those irritatingly trendy names that starts with a lower case letter.

Since you have obviously been using their service for a little while, and I can't see any easy-to-obtain information on their web site about this, perhaps I can ask you:

What do you get with the "upgraded" version of their service? I can already assume that the adware disappears from the synch box, and I can assume that you get more than four megs of server storage. But are there any feature changes?

The reason I ask is:

Right now, the thing can only synch folders. I'm already in a position where I need to synch individual files in some cases, and it might actually be damaging to my system if I synch the entire folder in this case. An option would be to use the "exclude" lists to exclude extensions that I don't want synched, but those don't seem to be editable. Is there a solution to this in the pay-subscription version of the product?

I did read through their FAQ looking for these answers, but didn't find them. Before I started mailing their support staff I thought I'd ask another user. So do you happen to know the answer to this?

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Tony Fabris

More space, autosync (ie, without user intervention), no adware, etc.

No idea on sync'ing folders, I've not used that part yet as the office is still on a 64k line (until next week anyway!)

Hugo

In reply to:

---

I often turn off Javascript if I know I'll be surfing to a site that uses pop-up window advertising. In the case of sites like GeoCities, it can save me 10-20 seconds of "wait for the ad to load before the page is navigable" time.

---

And this is why I use WebWasher.

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

I stick to IE. I used to love netscape but whenever there is a lot of JAVA it crashes!

In reply to:

---

Finally, if I want to synchronize my bookmarks between my home and work computers, Netscape is simple: It's a single "bookmark.htm" file, ready to be copied onto a floppy diskette. IE has every bookmark abstracted into a link file scattered in multiple subdirectories. ICK!

---

IE 5.5 has a new import/export wizard...
-mark

MK2: 36gb
Tivo: 90gb
CPU: 120gb
...I think drive manufacturers love me!

Hi,

Whoa! This thread is going from disabling Java because of security risks, to putting all your personal contact information into the hands of a third party, who might sell all this stuff to others (says so in their terms of usage). Of course, they can't see your contact information because it's encrypted (yeah, right).

Not for me.



Lars

putting all your personal contact information into the hands of a third party, who might sell all this stuff to others (says so in their terms of usage).

Yeah, but you run that same risk no matter who you give personal contact information to, whether it be Amazon, or Yahoo, Crutchfield, or hell, even Empeg for that matter.

I do, however, protect that contact information whenever possible. For example, FusionOne didn't get my real e-mail address, phone number, or, street address. Unless it's absolutely necessary for me to use the service (for example, if the service won't work until after they've e-mailed me the password), then I always put a fake email address in, for example "[email protected]".

Of course, they can't see your contact information because it's encrypted (yeah, right).

Now, as far as FusionOne having access to my bookmark file stored on their server, I really don't care. Since I wasn't synching my address book, it wasn't important. I was more interested in having FusionOne synchronize snippets of source code that I was working on between home and work.

But alas, even that is "not to be" for me, as the FusionOne client crashes on my Win98 computer at home. Too bad, it was pretty promising and looked like it could do the job for me. Also, I didn't like the way it had to stay active in the taskbar and monitor my file I/O in order to get its job done. I just wanted manual synchs based on file changes, not another complex resource-hogging app in my taskbar.

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Tony Fabris

I have a question for you guys. In my hotmail account a while back, I started getting spam mail from myself!!

I can't remember what it was for, but it was still a litte wierd. because I don't really worry about my hotmail account all that much, I don't mind. I'm still curious as to how they made it appear as if I had sent myself spam mail (ie: my hotmail address was in the "from" column).

DiGNAN

I'm still curious as to how they made it appear as if I had sent myself spam mail (ie: my hotmail address was in the "from" column).

Forging the return address is so simple that my Cat could do it. The return address is just a field in the mail message header, and that field is under the control of the server that sent the message. Since spammers usually use their own mail servers to distribute the messages, there's little to stop them from doing it.

Almost all spam has forged return addresses, but it's not common for them to forge the address by entering your name (although it's not unheard of).

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Tony Fabris

... it has to open that same dialog box and ghost keystrokes...

It doesn't have to...

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    char buffer[4096];
    DWORD cb = 4096;

    INTERNET_CACHE_ENTRY_INFO *p = (INTERNET_CACHE_ENTRY_INFO *)buffer;
    HANDLE h = FindFirstUrlCacheEntry(NULL, p, &cb);
    while (h)
    {
	// Do something with it...
	printf("Deleting: %s...", p->lpszSourceUrlName);
	if (!DeleteUrlCacheEntry(p->lpszSourceUrlName))
	{
	    printf("failed, 0x%x\n", GetLastError());
	}
	else
	    printf("ok\n");

	cb = 4096;
	if (!FindNextUrlCacheEntry(h, (INTERNET_CACHE_ENTRY_INFO *)buffer, &cb))
	    break;
    }

    return 0;
}

Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

In theory yes. But I've found on my Win2k IE5.5 box even once the history items have been deleted this way they sometimes come back again next time you open IE. Go figure...

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Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...