Stray Dog wrote:

One of the guys here talked about losing internet newsgroups and some of
us said how he can still get them.

The "other" end of newsgroups is that -- particularly where there is any
chance of politics to be involved -- they are being taken over by kooks
and extremists who practice one form or the other of shouting,
huffing-and-puffing, yelling-and-screaming, beating-the-chest, posting
one liner insults (or even one or two word insults), name-calling,
cussing, trivia, superficialities, and other meaningless-purposeless
Neanderthalisms.

??? How is this any different from what the newsgroups used to be 5, 10
or 15 years ago?

The commercialization of the internet (blogs and website chat rooms)
allows the owner of the blog to censor out the "noise" but then it might
not be all noise, just something the owner doesn't like.

And? Who gives a ****? As if blogs and such are in any respect relevant
to anyone and anything.

And if you think that the newsgroups are full of illiterate idiots who
are hardly able to scramble together three or four coherent words, you
should read the comments sections below any Youtube video.

One of the technical problems of blogs and websies is the chance that
they can download malicious code onto your computer (keystroke loggers,
rootkits, viruses, spyware, trojans, etc), and collect personal data on
you, too. Software firewalls and AV are helpful, but a lot of them,
too, collect
data on you (so they are spyware, too).

The risk is minuscule. You run a bigger risk contracting a swine flu
virus from a phone conversation.

With ID theft said to be the fastest growing crime, I'm wondering if the
degredation in the quality of internet security is, some few years in
the future, going to lead to another form of economic melt-down as
people start geting seriously hit in the wallet by the hackers.

We've been hearing the same tired story ever since the Internet got
invented. The only thing that is the fastest growing in this whole story
is the news media bleating about this "huge threat" in between the
Cheerios and Viagra commercials, then it's off to another "huge threat"
for two minutes, then Cialis and Geico.