Why the registration madness?

[plindboe]

Why do so many internet sites want you to register? Why do nearly all programs you download want one to register? Is it just because of some statistics obsession that they want to know my age, gender and haircolor? It's freaking annoying that everytime I need a certain program that I have to waste 5 minutes on some boring form. I always say I'm born in 1900 or something, that I am female and my name is Abe Lincoln because I find the needless waste of time so frustrating. Argh! Thanks for letting me rant. Feel better now.

[tamiO]

Originally posted by plindboe
It's freaking annoying that everytime I need a certain program that I have to waste 5 minutes on some boring form.

Damn kids. When I was young I had to walk 10 miles through the snow, uphill, both ways... to BUY software from a store.

[DangerousBeliefs]

Originally posted by tamiO


Damn kids. When I was young I had to walk 10 miles through the snow, uphill, both ways... to BUY software from a store.

You BOUGHT software? We had to type it in... from magazines... compile and debug ourselves.

[Pragmatist]

Originally posted by plindboe
Why do so many internet sites want you to register? Why do nearly all programs you download want one to register? Is it just because of some statistics obsession that they want to know my age, gender and haircolor? It's freaking annoying that everytime I need a certain program that I have to waste 5 minutes on some boring form. I always say I'm born in 1900 or something, that I am female and my name is Abe Lincoln because I find the needless waste of time so frustrating. Argh! Thanks for letting me rant. Feel better now.

Download and install the Firefox browser from www.mozilla.org, and then link in an extension called "BugMeNot". When you hit a site that needs registration, you just right click on the screen, and BugMeNot supplies you with a ready log in code for the site (well most of 'em anyway!).

Enjoy! :)

[CFLarsen]

Once, I was stationed at a company in the tri-state area, and was in the process of analyzing some uability issues. When looking at a registration form, I found an entry field that was not listed in the database - after submit, the data simply disappeared!

When I pointed it out, I was told to leave it as it were - "we might want to use it later!"

[plindboe]

Originally posted by Pragmatist
Download and install the Firefox browser from www.mozilla.org, and then link in an extension called "BugMeNot". When you hit a site that needs registration, you just right click on the screen, and BugMeNot supplies you with a ready log in code for the site (well most of 'em anyway!).

Enjoy! :)

Thanks alot. :D I will try that.

[ShowMe]

Originally posted by DangerousBeliefs


You BOUGHT software? We had to type it in... from magazines... compile and debug ourselves.

We WISHED we could have magazines. Our town crier would yell out the ASCII codes and we had to hadn scribe them, then type in the compiler so we could type in the program and compile it.....

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by plindboe
always say I'm born in 1900 or something, that I am female and my name is Abe Lincoln because I find the needless waste of time so frustrating. Argh! Thanks for letting me rant. Feel better now.

I can understand how frustrating it might be, but the data is probably used to make the program better, or advertise better, etc., since they'd know what "l'homme moyen" is like.

[Wudang]

Originally posted by ShowMe


We WISHED we could have magazines. Our town crier would yell out the ASCII codes and we had to hadn scribe them, then type in the compiler so we could type in the program and compile it.....

Ooooh - we used to dream about typing. We had to toggle every address by hand.

[plindboe]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi
I can understand how frustrating it might be, but the data is probably used to make the program better, or advertise better, etc., since they'd know what "l'homme moyen" is like.

I don't see how they can make a program better by knowing what gender and age the users are. How can an antivirus program be more efficient in removing virusses because they know that 70% percent of it's users are male, and 30% of it's users have dark hair color? And why do they almost always want to know one's name? What can they possibly achieve by that? The only thing I can understand is if they want one's email address so they can send spam, but I really don't see how they can benefit from the other information.

*Edited to add* Just noticed you also said "advertise better". Good point, that's probably the main reason.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by T'ai Chi
I can understand how frustrating it might be, but the data is probably used to make the program better, or advertise better, etc., since they'd know what "l'homme moyen" is like.

Rubbish. Programs are made better because you test them on people. You simply don't learn anything about how a program works by collecting personal info about the users.

Advertizing is the only reason why information like this is collected, and it is highly misleading anyway. Very little can be gained. It is simply a matter of "Oh, the others are doing it, so we'd better do it, too!"

[plindboe]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
Very little can be gained. It is simply a matter of "Oh, the others are doing it, so we'd better do it, too!"

Indeed, I think so too, and that's why it's so frustrating, because it seems so pointless.

[Thumbo]

Originally posted by Wudang


Ooooh - we used to dream about typing. We had to toggle every address by hand.
PDP-8 boot code, yes?

Seriously, that's how these machines were brought to life: the initial boot was toggled in through switches.

[garys_2k]

Originally posted by Wudang


Ooooh - we used to dream about typing. We had to toggle every address by hand.
You had switches? What we wouldn't have GIVEN to have had switches. Had to cross each wire by hand, for a moment, then get the output by sticking our finger in an electric socket wired to the blinky lights on the front panel.

[iKwak]

Forums require registration for various reasons.

[scribble]

Originally posted by iKwak
Forums require registration for various reasons.

Welcome to JREF. I can see you're almost as helpful as I am.

[iKwak]

Originally posted by scribble


Welcome to JREF. I can see you're almost as helpful as I am.
Hahaha. Today's forum software requires registration because it is built into the software. The forum administrator really does not need all your profile and information, other than your e-mail. The e-mail is to check whether you are a real user (prevent spambots) and require unique emails so spammers will not register on the board and cause chaos.

Sites beside forums require registration because they want to know what/where/how/and how the user ended on their board and the reason why they are interested on the product/service. And besides, there really is not privacy if you are using the internet because they can find EVERYTHING about you.

[garys_2k]

Some sites require registration to harvest email addresses for later sale. Best to only use junk addresses for that.

[DrMatt]

Originally posted by Thumbo

PDP-8 boot code, yes?

Seriously, that's how these machines were brought to life: the initial boot was toggled in through switches.

In my case it was a Xerox Sigma-9. The "CPU" was the size of a large refridgerator and had blinking lights representing the program status double-word, and toggle switches next to each blinking light so you could write a boot loop in registers and then run it to start loading software from Device Zero. It also had two rows of 8 more fridge-size boxes each, holding ram which added up to a whopping half a meg. It supported 80 simultaneous users!

The computer center decided to offer Wordstar-for-CP/M via terminals, and got Z-80 daughterboards for the Sigma. The Sigma then slowed to a crawl, spending most of its time servicing I/O for the Z-80s. The head of the computing center asked the Sigma to compile statistics about its load, and the load-measuring application couldn't get enough resources to run while the Z-80 boards were in service, so of course it finally started up late at night and reported that the system was running very fast with very little load. I explained this to him, and he tried to get me in trouble with the college administration for telling the truth about the matter when he had statistics to deny it. A few months after I graduated, he announced my findings as his own, and I just smiled when I read about it in the alumni news.

Anyhow, there are sites like New York Times that I just don't go to.

[Soapy Sam]

Wires?
We used to DREAM about wires.
Up all year we were, suckin' air out of vacuum tubes...My cheeks are rosy to this day.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by Pragmatist


Download and install the Firefox browser from www.mozilla.org, and then link in an extension called "BugMeNot". When you hit a site that needs registration, you just right click on the screen, and BugMeNot supplies you with a ready log in code for the site (well most of 'em anyway!).

Enjoy! :)

You don't need to install anything to use BugMeNot
http://bugmenot.com/

[garys_2k]

Originally posted by Soapy Sam
Wires?
We used to DREAM about wires.
Up all year we were, suckin' air out of vacuum tubes...My cheeks are rosy to this day.
Well at least YOU had tubes! Did our calculating with wheels (not gears, couldn't afford the teeth, mind you). Had to count the turns to ourselves, we did.

[Blue Monk]

Originally posted by garys_2k

Well at least YOU had tubes! Did our calculating with wheels (not gears, couldn't afford the teeth, mind you). Had to count the turns to ourselves, we did.

You had wheels?

We had no devices at all and I couldn’t count to eleven unless I got naked.

[hlehmann]

Originally posted by Thumbo

PDP-8 boot code, yes?

Seriously, that's how these machines were brought to life: the initial boot was toggled in through switches.

That was my first experience with a computer that you could actually touch and control directly, rather than through a clanking teletype.
LED's hadn't been invented yet, so the state indicators used small light bulbs. On any given day at least one of the light bulbs would be burnt out, so we had to keep in mind that bits 3 and 8 could be on or off, no way to tell for sure.
You had to manually toggle in a boot loader (sort of like BIOS, except it goes away when power goes off.) After getting all 30 words or so of that, you crossed your fingers and started it up, which would make it load your actual program from the paper tape reader.
If the boot loader didn't work, you had to go back and check every bit that you had entered via the row of toggle switches, but that was impossible what with the burnt out light bulbs, so you just started over from scratch.

To top it off, it was a 12-bit machine. When was the last time you used Octal?

[jj]

Originally posted by Wudang


Ooooh - we used to dream about typing. We had to toggle every address by hand.

0177403 to you!

[jj]

Originally posted by hlehmann
To top it off, it was a 12-bit machine. When was the last time you used Octal?

About 25 minutes ago.