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This program is developed by a friend named Span
FerryMan Fractal is a freeware program that generates fractal images. With FerryMan Fractal you can generate color images of the most popular fractal, the Mandelbrot set, and also generate images of the associated Julia sets. You can also generate an unlimited variety of fractal types based on rational functions, including fractals based on Newton's method and Halley's method.
FerryMan Fractal has many options for producing striking variations of fractal images, and includes a lot of advanced features for producing high-quality images.

NOTICE: You must create an account before using the program, although the software is totally free. And you must have an internet connection when starting up the program.Is a little tricky to made an account cose the site is in chinese but if you go on the menu and stay a little the description is in english.

The link to the english site : http://www.ferrymanfractal.com/
Here is one of tutorials created by me:http://www.websyters.com/video/2d3d-video-tutorials/viewvideo/14/fractal/ferryman-fractal-1layer

Have to agree here.

My Art Computer is totally disconnected from the internet.  Never has, and never  will be, online.

I use junk computers for web surfing and downloading stuff to move over to the good computers (after scanning for problems!).

I guess I'll never get to try this one...

But as a wise man once said - "There are too many programs to try them all in one lifetime" and things like this help me narrow down my choices.

You should ask your friend why they feel this suspicious practice is necessary!

Any software that wants you to be on-line to just start it, but is free, quite probably has ulterior motives.  Also, in the wake of recent and newsworthy large-scale hacking and such originating in China, the fact that it is a Chinese site magnifies the possibility in my mind that this software is mal-ware.  Many ghost-nets and zombie-nets can be traced back to China.  Many computers that become part of these hacker controlled networks are infested via mal-ware.

I was a systems analyst for many years at a large university and I absolutely would not let any of my users even try software with this type of description.

If it is legitimate, I suggest making sure your friend is aware that the current arrangement of having to be on-line goes against general best practices and many people may avoid the software because of that.  Also, a full English disclousure of exactly what data is transmitted back and forth would be helpful.

A few articles I found on Google quickly about the recent hacking coming from China:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8460819.stm
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/hacking/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/01/14/2010-01-14_security_experts_china_hacked_google_to_steal_us_defense_secrets.html
(most of these relate to Google, but that incident was somewhat indicative of the current climate with regards to hacking.)

Respectfully,

Will

That makes the program absolutely useless to me!!

My art computer never goes online.

I re-iterate the highly suspicious, dubious, and uncalled for nature of that line of programming!!

It scares me, and I will never use such software.

I'd be curious to hear why anyone feels this is needed, especially in  free programs.  Some expensive software uses the technique to avoid piracy, but there is no possible justification in freeware