Frooglesim vs. FSXGenius - a general concern

[JRBarrett 3,050]

A poster showed FroogleSim Youtube's in the the Microsoft Flight Forum . AVSIM took it down within minutes.

Probably because such a post would have been off-topic in that forum. The same video is linked in this very thread (a few posts above), and has not been removed - at least not yet.

 

My take on watching FroogleSim's video is that he is concerned that he may have unintentionally played a role in introducing a potential scammer to the flightsim community by initially recommending "FSXGenius" as a knowledgeable source to help simmers with technical issues - back when the fellow was simply offering to assist in resolving configuration problems for a modest fee.

 

Though FroogleSim's vid, (and others in a similar vein) do not constitute "proof" of wrongdoing on the part of FSXGenius, I've seen enough reports, from multiple sources, to give me strong reason to suspect that "where there's smoke, there's fire".

 

I would hope that those who have sent money, and received no product in return, will contact the proper authorities in the UK responsible for investigating consumer complaints of potential fradulent sales activities. If, after investigation, the complaints prove unfounded, "FSXGenius" deserves to be publically exonerated. On the other hand, if the charges prove to be true, he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

[BilboBaggins 82]

FScamp, generally agreed; it's a lot harder, for instance, for the official news in the EU and in the US to pass off the eastern Ukrainians who've been struggling to have a free referendum on whether they want to be part of the Kiev government or not, without being shot, killed, gassed, burned and run over by tanks in the process, as "insurgents."  One corporation's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter," and that is only becoming more clear over time.  This will, eventually, prevent the kinds of widespread abuses of power and money that are so prevalent now.  OTOH: the value of professional, some would call refereed (in academic circles, for journal articles), others would call "curated" (for news -- makes it sound like the News Museum...) information is that there is, ideally, some filtering, translation, interpretation, valid and thoughtful analysis and the context of tested and trained conceptual clarity that is all too absent in the Twitterverse.  It's a balancing act; I like the free-for-all, may the most persuasive win, that's democratic... if the playing field is level.  Which, usually, it's still not.

 

Richie, not picking on you, just trying to be even-handed and pointing out that we have no "evidence" based on what we see on the internet, only hearsay, really.  The bigger issue is, what determines the point at which gossip, innuendo, propaganda, marketing, self-serving and outright lying gives way to trustworthy, validated, accepted by some kind of standard of agreed-upon truth?  It's clear to me right now that there's more of all the former than there is the latter.  Why? Hard to say; you'd think the "open-ness" of the internet would change that....?  Or is it just a dive to the lowest-common-denominator, whatever anyone says is so because they say it's so?

 

Hirdy, well there you go: I specifically made reference to Norton 360.  So AVG doesn't "cause problems" -- maybe it's also not _detecting_ problems, that'd be my concern.  I'd rather have overkill than have my computer hijacked, whatever the inconvenience involved.

 

Agreed if FSXGenius is scamming, he deserves full prosecution.  Only those immediately involved will ever know.

[Gokau 4]

This whole building up trust thing and then screwing people over reminds me a lot of that "hack" that nearly destroyed AVSIM. The whole thing is centered around trust.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

He has energy and time to constantly delete comments from Youtube and Facebook but not enough to make a single official statement and at least try to explain himself? I wasn't sure before if this is just a huge misunderstanding but now it's pretty obvious. He's a scammer - because if everything froogle said is true, than he's very organized in what he does. Although his M.O. is very strange. We all know his name, we all know how he looks, where he lives,.. strange.

[SierraHotel 976]

This might be of interest

 

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/security-software/experts-claim-malware-has-made-antivirus-useless-1231591

[BilboBaggins 82]

Yeah, true re: AV. Also means if you don't use it along with a bunch of other techniques..... you're even more vulnerable.

 

I would be suspicious such claims are just more marketing, but I have a brother-in-law who's an expert in cryptology and works professionally in that field, and he's confirmed the validity of such statements (and not just because he makes a living out of it; he's an extremely moral, truthful guy).

 

He also claims that it is quite literally scientifically impossible to provide any real transactional security on the Internet.

 

Juniper Networks among others is moving towards tech that will integrate security directly into a variety of network hardware components, but even that is no guarantee; and the problem with that is, once the hardware's "cracked," it needs replacing. Buy Juniper stock. <g>

[makdrive 9]

I think froogle is right

Edited May 12, 2014 by n4gix
Removed video link.

[mgh 89]

I imagine AVSIM will take this one too too. Don't some people ever learn?

[FLEX1978 373]

What I don't understand is why he would take the money and run?  What he is offering is not exactly complex... Offer to build a custom spec machine and tune it for FS, add a profit into the whole build, not hard at all to make money if you build your own rigs..

 

Just seems strange, he could of built a nice profitable home based business from this. can't see the logic in ripping a bunch of guy's off  and then destroying your rep and business.  

[Guest]

He also claims that it is quite literally scientifically impossible to provide any real transactional security on the Internet.

 

That's a little misleading ... sure, given enough time and computing power you can defeat any network packet security (1024 encryption), but keep that in context ... time required is 1500 years with 100,000's of computers working on the task.  2048 encryption even longer.  So yes, scientifically possible but realistically not important -- and no the NSA hasn't provided any sort of evidence they really have cracked SSL 1024 nor 2048 -- it's easy enough to bait them, yet they never found the bait ... so one has to assume they didn't crack SSL.

 

And before we start on "look at heartbleed OpenSSL issue" ... it's "open source" ... the term "security" and "open source" are mutually exclusive.  I personally can't imagine why any company would use OpenSSL for anything that is deemed personal or sensitive data ... that's frankly just nuts.  Open source has it's place, but security is definitely NOT one of them.

 

As far as Froogle vs. FSXGenius ... I don't know their revenue streams ... in most cases one needs to follow the money trail to get closer to the truth/reality.  I like Pete (Froogle), he seems entertaining and has a passion for flight ... I don't necessarily agree with Froogle and some of his comments can't be confirmed nor accurate, but he's a "freelance journalist" so you need to keep that in context.  But as with all information, once provided do some R&D to see if it's accurate.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[SolRayz 392]

zoran,

 

Well that's a far different, more trivial story than the implication Frooglesim is making.

 

Sigh... as with anything on the internet these days, it's almost impossible to tell what is real, and not.

 

Oh well.

 

Hirdy2013, same question to you as Marc: what AV do you use?

 

I also use AVG, and rarely have issues with false positives. To each his own, but installing anything Symantec is like installing antequated bloatware. Please find a better AV.

[makdrive 9]

Why AVSIM is not adding this to Hall of shame ? 

are they still investigating or what ?

[Jari Junior 9]

just dont trust in anything frogglesim says.. he sucks

[xplanery 250]

just dont trust in anything frogglesim says.. he sucks

 

Obviously he's speaking the truth in this case at least, such an obvious scam. 

 

And nope, he doesn't suck. 

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

just dont trust in anything frogglesim says.. he sucks

 

frogglesim sucks but frooglesim rocks!