Archive for July 3rd, 2008
WOT Plugin for Firefox
When I went to look for a Firefox extension this evening, I noticed that Mozilla had put the WOT Firefox extension in its top “We recommend” slot.
The idea is that people rate web sites they visit based on how trustworthy they are — is the site running malicious Javascripts, for example — and then the extension warns you when you are about to visit a site that has a rating that indicates it might be malicious.
So, in effect, is a blacklist of sorts for websites. Which brings up all of the issues that accompany blacklists for e-mail. I was trying to decide just how useful this was when I ran across this exchange in the extension reviews on the Mozilla site,
WOT-NOT-YET
Not yet rated by computermancan on March 21, 2008Great idea BUT VERY DANGEROUS WHEN ONE PERSON CAN CHANGE RATING SO MUCH AND POSSIBLY FOR ulterior motives.
I thought this was the best thing since sliced bread until one day when I went to my own site http://www.church-software-store.com to have it come up black and with all sorts of yellow circles.
Then I knew something was wrong. The concept is great but regardless of what they say about weight it doesn’t stand up. I found that some Google sites also popped up warnings. I went to the forum to complain and found people saying that they down-rated my site for reasons such as DESIGN, the fact I had affiliate links and banners, and other such totally common links on the web. The criteria should be more like SiteAdvisor, sites that are actually linked to harmful sites or where background popups are found or spontaneous downloads occur or where spam mail is received after visiting the site. I hope they use better criteria and come back with a more trustworthy product not so influenced by individual whims.Developer Reply: Re: WOT-NOT-YET
Reply by Against Intuition on March 21, 2008Charles, the reason other users don’t find your websites trustworthy is probably because you attacked and insulted them on our forum, which usually isn’t a good way to gain trust or make friends. We’ve already explained this to you in the email where we told you this kind of behavior isn’t acceptable in our community.
What comes to your concerns about “individual whims” and “ulterior motives”, WOT is an open community where no single user has the power to determine ratings. If you don’t agree with a website’s rating, you can always rate it yourself. I can assure you we have no intention of censoring anyone’s opinion even if you disagree with them.
Tags: Firefox, MyWOT.Com, Web of Trust
Godzilla Crumble Zone Playset FTW
Superhero Times points out this awesome Godzilla Crumble Zone playset available from Monster Island Toys. According to Monster Island’s promo text the playset,
Comes complete with backdrop, collapsing buildings, falling bridges, and five 4 inch monsters; Baragon, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Godzilla, and Mothra Larva. Finally you can play out your fantasy of destroying a small piece of Tokyo and terrorizing the general Japanese population. Gojira!!!!
Tags: Godzilla, Kaiju, King Ghidorah, Mothra, Toys
Lego for Adults
Hmmm . . . a book called Lego for Adults has a lot of possibilities, but it turns out its just about making cool guns out of Legos (perhaps “Legos for Adolescent Men Over 30″ would have been a better title). And these are some cool-ass looking guns,
