Dion Moult Seriously who ever reads this description.

hari says: (28 July 2009)

I think that the worse problem is the huge number of free hosting services that act as a magnet for spammers and the newbie. I think that if people stopped using free hosting services or at least got themselves a reasonable domain name, 99% of the spam can be blocked without cutting off legitimate users.

Unfortunately, free hosting, free e-mail and free social networking has led to a boom in spam like never before. I am not being an elitist, but I think that if most of the less efficient free hosts can be shut down by lack of patronage, a lot of spammers will shut shop. Typically not many spammers are going to pay money to host spam websites or send out spam e-mail.

The free providers have a responsibility to be very vigilant. Unfortunately most of the free providers turn a blind eye to this problem.

hari says: (28 July 2009)

Well, my above comment is not exactly on the topic you wrote about, but I believe that because of the mass-amateurization of the internet, spam is a growing menace because most people just aren’t bothered or aware of good security practices and avoiding unknown or disreputable websites or services.

For instance too many people give away their e-mail in public without understanding the implications. A treat for the spam-harvesters, indeed. And people using free hosts are blissfully unaware that they’re sharing their webspace with disreputable spammers.

Even today, people are blissfully and ignorantly spreading forward e-mails by using the CC field and exposing my e-mail to hundreds of potential spammers. Sadly being tech-savvy has very little to do with common-sense.

Dion Moult says: (28 July 2009)

Hari, the point I was trying to make was that the internet is more open to people irrespective of their background – and enables them to learn anything and pretty much everything they want.

hari says: (28 July 2009)

Well, I get your point.

I was pointing out the negative aspects of the “mass amateurization”. Yes, there are lots of positives that most people have internet access. The bad thing is that this has led to an explosion of spam as well, partly due to the popularity of the online medium and partly because most people who use the Internet are not aware of the security and privacy issues.

Reyn says: (28 July 2009)

Setting “mass amateurization” aside, I really found your post very interesting and attention-grabbing. I would have laughed my ass off and conversed further with “P” if I were you. Even kids here in my place (Philippines) often have “technology secrets” that they acquire through plain browsing and playing around on the web. I wouldn’t blame them for their gained thoughts, as a matter of fact, it’s quite an advantage, and an impressive one I might say. I could never imagine the generation two decades from now. My grandson (though that’s a far-fetched idea yet), could be tinkering his own coded-from-scratch robot and whatever mechanism and intelligent has been put into it. Who knows? Nice post. Really amazing kid. ^_^

-Reyn

Dion Moult says: (30 July 2009)

Reyn, thanks for your input and throughout the past two days I have indeed chatted more with him and I am truly shocked with what he knows. To say he knows more than most of my school is an understatement – he probably knows more than everybody else in my school that is a student (myself being a humble exception).

Also, nice website :)

Phil Sturgeon says: (30 July 2009)

I have to agree Dion. I went to college to study HND Computing after being a self-taught programmer for several years. The idea was to fill in the gaps of my knowledge and hopefully meet clever people in my area with similar interests.

Turns out that the vast majority of students in my class were f**king useless at programming. Fair enough, they had not been learning for years, but these guys left college to seek employment and most of them couldn’t even understand what an array was, let alone begin to think about OOP or even basic functions.

Towards the end of my college course I set up a web-development studio which heavily used freelancers to complete projects. The kicker of it all is that a 14yr old Indian kid and a few young Chinese developers ran circles around all of the guys that were now “Higher National Diploma” holding students who were all of to uni to get a degree, or out into the real world of development.

It scares the sh*t out of me sometimes…

Dion Moult says: (30 July 2009)

Phil, I’m 16.

Phil Sturgeon says: (30 July 2009)

Right, and you clearly know what you are doing. Is that through Internet tutorials and experimentaion?

I think I got carried away with a college rant and made my point badly. I don’t believe the Internet is the fault of so many amature developers as it actually helps them a lot. I think the only problem is these days it is much easier for idiots to get online and share their content. The Internet isn’t making more idiots, it’s just helping us see their work easier.

Shit developers have been around for years. They are either self taught or try to learn at colleg but useless coders are all around us and sadly as time goes on we’ll see more and more of them.

Dion Moult says: (30 July 2009)

Yes through Internet tutorials and experimentation – isn’t that how almost everybody begins?

pujiyanto18 says: (31 July 2009)

hay,
is that’s story me…
internet is world me
where I story all experience me
and internet teach me hacking and all.
^_*

thinkMoult - The Euphemism Website – the failed idea. « says: (4 September 2009)

[...] One of the websites I always wanted to make was a Euphemism dictionary. It would be pretty similar to urbandictionary in terms of concept and allow user-defined euphemisms for common insulting phrases. This would thus prevent us racking our brains every single time we wanted to come up with another creative way of saying “my aunt’s maid’s son is better at computers than you“. [...]