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Posted by Jochem Maas on 05/23/05 15:40
Andy Pieters wrote:
> On Friday 20 May 2005 20:46, Graham Anderson wrote:
>
>>Can the server variable 'user agent' be modified/spoofed by the user?
>
>
> I whish people would stop implementing these kinds of things!
>
> Question: do you deny access to your home because the person ringing the bell
> is African? Or maybe because he is Muslim? Or because he/she doesn't speak
> English? There are laws against discrimination and you shouldn't create
> applications that deny access based on where the user comes from, what
> browser they use, or what language they speak.
>
> Just because someone is using a browser doesn't mean they can't play QuickTime
> movies. In fact, It is something that has been bothering me endlessly. I am
> usually forced to hack around the site to find the url of the movie, then do
> a wget on that url and xine the resulting file. All that for a lousy 30 sec
> movie!
>
> Can you at least think of only one valid reason to do the stuff you ask to do?
> I don't think so.
good point in essence but the 'access your house' analogy is a little lame....
denying/allowing access to my house is my perogative... legally I am entitled to
apply a racist/prejudiced door policy on my own frontdoor - however abhorent
such an idea might be to the most of us.
and the same goes for a site I create - I'm entitled to grant/deny access to whomever I please,
in the real world this most often translates into constraints that are placed on
intranet/extranet systems whereby your userbase is known/controlled and
certain functionality may require a decent browser (as opposed to the POS that is IE ;-)
.... and sometimes its is completely valid and correct to deny access.
----
having said that if you want to attract customers/users to your content then
forcing them to use specific applications/tools to do something which could be
handled by any number of different tools (on different OSes) is plain stupid...
oh and if anyone here works at a bank, maybe not forcing users to use IE when visiting
your site would make you look less like monopolistic idiots (why is it that the
organisations with the most freaking money are the least capable of providing a
_proper_ site...?)
Welcome to Monday ;-)
rgds,
Jochem
>
>
> Andy
>
>
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