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Being sort of in the business...

There is a special place in Hell already prepared for you guys.

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which is selling bulk emailing to rubes (by proving that x million people received and didn't throw out this mail without opening it first.) THAT'S what these guys sell to their clients, the promise of exposure.

Okay, I didn't really see that aspect of it.

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ONE moron in a blast of five hundred thousand emails (which cost them zero) casts a wide enough net to maybe scam somebody out of a few hundred bucks.

That's always the way I've seen it. Having a passing knowledge of direct mail, I know the amount of hits that is considered satisfactory depends on how much you pay for each exposure. But still, have y'all looked at your inbox lately? Or better yet, take a look at the junk that even stupid spam filters recognize as stupid. But there are some humans out there who obviously are gullible and easily scammed. [I thought about inserting an Obama slam right here but thought the better of it.] It just takes one.

As far as I'm concerned, the only legitimate junk email is the stuff from a known company and one that allows you to easily unsubscribe from their list. I let a few junk mass-market emails continue. I get one from Sears once a month or so about some sail they're having. Fine. I get one from NewsMax. Right now it's way past the boundary of acceptable annoyance, but I'm too lazy at the moment to unsubscribe. Let's see, what else do I allow through? Oh, as good as the content of The Federalist email was, I even unsubscribed from that because it was just too damn many of them. I was reading very few of them, but admit that the content was usually pretty good. I still get one from Golden Bough which is a musical group with NW roots. It's just a email telling of their current schedule. I mean to see them again when they are in the area. And that's about it. I prefer to go out there on the web and actively seek the information that interests me rather than having canned stuff vomited out at me.

Wow, I just downloaded the latest version of Firefox (3.0.10) for OS X and the window, titlebar -- everything but the stupid sausage scroll bar - is an improvement. Very less is more.

The best thing about Firefox is that plugin "Download Helper" that lets you download flash videos from YouTube or wherever.

To me, all these browsers are bloated. I haven't quite yet gotten the hang of tabbed browsing. Seems like a waste of interface to me. And oh god, cover flow in the new Safari beta? Ridiculous. No desire to view my web destinations that way.

At the MOST I will put a "sproingy" in the dock and return to thalo.net or wherever that way.

I've pretty much decided that surfing bores me most of the time anyway. It's only enjoyable when I have some mission, like tracking down something I need to buy and finding the best price on it. I read the news, I track down info, test web sites... that's about it.

I looked at the interface of Spamfire and realized that the Culture of Visual Superabundance might be slowly changing to -- you guessed it -- the Aesthetic of Less-is-More Functionality and Refined Taste. I think the new Spamfire is made to better match the direction of the interface of Leotard which is becoming less clownish and more professional (talking looks, not necessarily features). That's right, and I'm sure it will pain you to hear it, WE WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG.

As for tabbed interface browsing, it really suits the manic way I use the internet. I usually have several half-read articles sitting around in a tab. And I usually get back to them, but they're like bookmarks to me -- true bookmarks. A lot of stuff I like to leave open to remind me to finish it or to remind me to read more stuff by that author or about that subject. What I really hate is the close widgets on the tabs themselves. Horrible interface element because it's too easy to close a tab when all you're trying to do is select a different one. And then "boom," it's gone. For those browsers that have a smart "reopen last closed tab" feature, it's no big deal. But some don't. The one in Safari doesn't work. It has "Reopen last closed window," but that doesn't work for the last closed tab. Interface designers need to come to thalo.net where we talk about real issues and don't stumble around the issues with insane amounts of "don't get me wrong" prefacing as if hurt feelings were more important than things that work well. And any good interface designer is going to get his or her self esteem from making things work well, not trying to hold on with dear life to half-baked ideas.

Spamfire? Or Firefox.

Firefox. I'm screwed up on the terminology. What's the derisive name for Firefox?