@Cerberus oh. cuz if you were seeing those on facebook, I was gonna recommend you get your computer virus-scanned or re-installed from a known virus-free backup
@Cerberus Well, if you tell me you're seeing virus-like activity on a site that doesn't do that sort of thing, it's suspicious. If you said you saw those popups on a torrent-downloading site, pfft, that's normal there.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Thank you for explaining my joke to me. By the way, I just read that torrent sites are relatively free of malware, as are porn sites, while mainstream sites pose the greatest risk.
Actually, advertisements pose the greatest risk, and mainstream sites are full of those pesky ad networks.
> Cisco found that online shopping sites are 21 times as likely, and search engines are 27 times as likely, to deliver malicious content than a counterfeit software site. Viewing online advertisements? Advertisements are 182 as times likely to deliver malicious content than pornography.
@Cerberus search engines? Like, which search engines? The spammy, malware ones? Because the only engines that matter are bing and google, not in that order.
If you're on bob's discount search, pron and warez (dot com) you mightn't be surprised to find that they serve malware ads or have been hacked to serve up java exploits or something.
@Cerberus we both know that a clean bill of health from a virus scanner is no proof that your system hasn't been pwned by Russian spammers or Chinese hackers.
I just read about a certain Windows update that puts the Windows Presentation Foundation plug-in back in after you delete it, which is a security risk.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Odd.
Oh, and you should probably disable the VLC plug-in too.
Just read about that too.
And Adblock is the best virus protection, says Cisco.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 None of this makes any sense. Lots of malware is distributed through advertisements. You don't seem to be arguing against that, so I don't know what you're saying, but that is my point.
@Cerberus My point is that by design, Java, Flash, etc, are not meant to allow malware distribution. They have many features meant to prevent that. Therefore, malware distribution through those channels is supposed to be impossible.
And the fact is that often, the flaw which allows the malware in was known to the vendor, and FIXED, and the fix distributed, and people did not install it.
@Cerberus The infuriating part wasn't that. It was the "it doesn't make sense for you to say that malware in ads is impossible" which isn't what I was saying.
You seemed really confused at my "supposed to be impossible" statement.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I did my best to answer that. You did not challenge my answer or ask about details. You didn't even say you found my answer unsatisfactory at the time. You just went on in another direction.
@coleopterist: Two former co-workers of mine spring to mind, as well as two of my mom's uncles, but, unfortunately, space won't allow me to elaborate and do those four men justice. As for somebody more famous, I might offer actress and musician Zooey Deschanel as a candidate. Or were you merely suggesting a rephrasing of the question? — J.R.3 hours ago
> If you’re so meteorologically challenged that, upon hearing the unmistakable crack of a storm while staring out a rain-soaked window, you still need to coquettishly inquire, “Is that rain?” then Siri is totally for you.
From Rob's ultimate link on everything you need to know about Siri.
In any case, most people need Flash. It is true that my Noscript blocks Flash outside my whitelist, and it blocks XSS and ABE, but still, who knows whether some clever maleficus won't be able to disguise a Flash attack as coming from an ad domain? I would have to block Flash altogether, which is throwing away the baby with the bath water. So blocking ads seems like a good idea.
@Cerberus I just block flash all the time, with flashblock, which makes it easy to unblock. And java is just off, 99.99% of people have no legitimate use for the java plugin. And active-x, well, I don't use IE. plus IE is doing a better job of preventing active-x exploits these days. And PDF, well, don't install adobe reader.
Really, instead of blocking ads, people should get upset that the software they trusted to be safe turned out to be shite.
When there's an exploit in IE, everyone goes apeshit at MS. When Java has exploits for years, people scratch their heads and wonder what is happening. And nobody even knows about PDF exploits, it seems.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Right, another potential cause for malfunction...I already have Noscript, Greasemonkey, Stylish, and Cookie Monster to deal with! I can't take much more. I will just click on "display in IE Tab" all the time.
> The study ... purports to demonstrate that the way you lose your virginity “is so salient that it is related to future sexual satisfaction and functioning.”
> The study also judges current sexual satisfaction based on “intimate interactions,” which are defined as “any interaction that lasts 10 minutes or longer in which a person is physically intimate with another person.”
> The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Ah, now it is up again.
> But a study published this week in Psychosomatic Medicine uncovered something surprising: Heterosexual men had higher levels of depression than gay and bisexual men.
> the respondents were drawn via online ads and word of mouth
At least they admit this.
> The authors of the study say their findings confirm the importance of disclosure. Hopefully straight men can recognize that they, too, inhabit a closet of sorts, from which they can liberate themselves.
First they invalidate their data, then they go on to provide publishable "hypotheses" about them.
If one study says gay men have a high suicide rate and another says gay men are less depressed than straight men, both could be right. There are various confounding factors.
@MετάEd But it is far less likely than that the "hypothesis" of one study and/or the other is/are weak. The fact that gay men commit suicide more often, if true, is a huge datum that should carry more weight than a low-quality / small sample.
Actually, "what the heck" is the euphemism for "what the hell", and "freaking" is a euphemism for "fucking". I guess perhaps "what the hell" is weaker than "what the fuck", so perhaps some people use that euphemistically...but it doesn't really feel euphemistic.
@MετάEd Is that what I'm doing? No. I am characterising it based on a summary I read in that article. And my negative characterisation is based on the sample and the rather far-reaching conclusions, as I gave them. The headline is my explanation of what is wrong with the system, a cause, so to speak.
I mean, they say some things about the position of straight men that are not absurd, and worth considering; but the statistics only make their musings appear worse, because of the suggested evidence.
@Cerberus I have no way of knowing more than what you say. You are making claims about the study. You seem to be saying you draw the evidence for your claims from a headline and a news article. If that's so, then your logic may be perfect but your conclusions are meaningless.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…