Slashdot Mirror
Worm Exploit Distributed by Advertising Network
Zocalo writes "Given that a lot of Slashdot readers also check The Register, it's important to note that their Internet advertising provider, Falk AG, was compromised by the BOFRA exploit yesterday. The Falk AG service has been suspended by The Register and a statement from Falk AG is due on Monday. The upshot is that if you visited the Register yesterday morning and use IE as your browser, then you probably need to run a full virus scan with up to date data files. Of course, those of us running other browsers and something like AdBlock have nothing to worry about. Again." You're OK for now if you're running SP2. There's also a good security writeup about the problem.
LOL. Yet another reason to not use IE!
This is a really big problem. Okay, so its Register and they realized this and stopped it. But we visit so many other websites - how are we to know which one of those ad providers are infected and which are not?
Sheesh, where is accountability? Blame the sysadmins, blame the software, pity the customer. Lather, rinse repeat.
Maybe site owners will start moving or demanding text-based ads (like Google's)?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
.. falkag.net are the second entry in my ad filter, right after doubleclick
how many ie users have switched to sp2 ,yet ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
You're OK for now if you're running SP2.
Ummm... My Win machine is running SP4. Oh, you mean XP SP2. Not on my machines, man... The highest I'll go on my personal machines is 2k.
Aside, you left out another browser of very worthy note. Oh, well, make that two.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Sad thing was the company was based in the Netherlands so it wasn't even worth pursuing legally... but if you are on the net, you aren't safe. MS products are more insecure, but you should always take steps to protect yourself, like keep the OS and applications up to date, etc etc
Agile Artisans
Don't you mean no IE users?
Yeah, that's why they stopped serving ads for a day and lost the ad revenue.
Just so that they can try can be "anti-Microsoft" by spreading worms to their readers.
Brilliant, do you by any chance work for Microsoft?
I guess I should stop using Lynx then! It's unethical since I don't see images.
What's with all this "Microsoft should patch this", "Microsoft should patch that". I am NOT a pro Microsoft person, but they made SP2 for a reason. If SP2 fixes it, why in the hell should they go back and patch an older version? If you don't like SP2 that's your problem, but if you want to actually get the latest updates, use it. Don't complain if sticking with SP1 (or no SP) is going to stop you from getting any security fixes.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
I wonder what the Fud Factory spin will be on that then?
At least they will have some activists in the neck...
Miles Angaard
So if your XP machine is up to date you're ok?
That's kool, because all I do is download new browsers for security and never run windows update. That would make too much sense...
If there were a beggar on your way to work, and you went out of your way to avoid him, it would be fine. If there were a beggar on your way to work, and you surrounded him with some walls so no one would see him, that would be unethical.
Same thing goes here.
Utter drivel. I suppose you think that it is "theft" to change the channel on the TV when adverts come on, as well. Is it also "theft" to turn the page of a magazine without looking at the adverts on it? As far as I am concerned, advertising is a form of pollution. It reduces the visual beauty of the environment and I don't want to see it.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
What if I walk by while wearing headphones and sunglasses?
"Extensions and programs like AdBlock are tantamount to theft; you are acquiring the content but not "paying" for it by loading the advertisements."
Um, it is clearly *your* problem if your website's cash flow relies on wasting my bandwidth with advertisements.
Your supposed 'right' to profit does not extend to the point where I have to bend my life around your profit model. Thanks.
Are you saying that it is wrong to house the homeless?!
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
So seeing how I don't force other people to use adblock, it's fine?
You are quite within your rights you download advertising without viewing it and the advertiser is none the wiser. This is how adblock works IIRC and to argue the point would like saying I'm not permitted to go pee during commercial breaks on TV.
It's certainly not theft, whichever way you look at it.
If you may have visited The Register between 6am and 12.30pm GMT on Saturday, Nov 20 using any Windows platform bar XP SP2 we strongly advise you to check your machine with up to date anti-virus software, to install SP2 if you are running Windows XP, and to strongly consider running an alternative browser, at least until Microsoft deals with the issue.
I just wanted to make this comment. One of the SP2 versions trashed my computer so bad when I ran it. And I'm still suffering from the effects. Such effects include freezing on websites for minutes at a time. Installing it also took my computer like 10 minutes to boot if I remember correctly.
If you can get an anti-virus program, do it. It's better than nothing.
I hate third party ads. www.tvtome.com serves one malicious ad, unless they took care of it already. If I remember correctly, the "ad" kept asking me to do something, in which I had to end up killing the IE6 process to stop it. But I run an ad blocking program most of the time. I really hope websites switch to text ads, like Google does.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
AdBlock is unethical [...] Extensions and programs like AdBlock are tantamount to theft
It's kinda ironic that a lot of the ads on tech sites are advertising anti-spyware/pop-ups/ads/adware/spam tools, isn't it?
Maybe if these companies agree with you that the use of these tools constitute fraud/theft, then they should stop advertising them.
Great. Fscking. Analogy.
You Rock!
I make a point of not adding Google's adverts to my adblock list - they don't annoy me, so they get to stay.
I virtually never click adverts anyway, so it's not like anyone's losing my custom, but the sooner websites learn that flashing "Punch The Monkey" banners just piss visitors off, the better.
The subject says it all.
If there's a point, I don't see it.
Why bother googlebombing a phrase that nobody in their right mind would want to search for? Sure, I don't particularly like Microsoft either but this "project" seems like one big self-righteous circlejerk to me.
You're a troll, but I'm biting even so.
We are under no obligation to play by whatever crooked-up business model a company cooks up. Unless I sign/click an agreement to view the ads, they don't have a legal leg, nor a moral one for that matter, to stand on.
They offer a web-page because they have something to say. I select how to view it. What more is there to it?
I guess you're ok with printer cartridge prices too? After all, its 'their business model' and not following it would be 'theft of service and fraud'?
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
This worm gives new meaning to the term "viral marketing"...
-Valen
Windows update has fixes for more than just holes in IE. Remember the Sasser worm that came out in March? That bastard propogated through a security hole in windoze...it didn't matter whether you had ie or mozilla or whatever. People who got the patch were fine. Those who didn't suffered.
And before anyone starts knocking ms for having such a "crappy os", you try finding every hole in millions of lines of code. I'm impressed that ms gets updates out as fast as they do.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
It's not the first time this has happened either, see this article relating to an incident that happened back in September with Falk AG.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Well, still waiting for that Windows build of Konqueror to get rid of my explorer.exe shell... Hehehe...
This type of argument is invalid because of the premise that being explicitly forced to do something is not the same as being tacitly forced in some (these) instances. For example, when I apply for IT jobs I am not explicitly forced (in most cases) to use MS Word, yet if my CV is not in
It is pretty much the same with some websites. No one is forcing me to view the Register, yet I must in order to keep up to date in one of the most rapidly changing professions the world has known. The reasons why some websites become obligatory reading is more off topic than I want to go (already way off right here), so we'll leave that.
But please, do not use the "nobody forced you to" argument as it ceased to impress after primary school.
Also, not paying for something which is put out for public consumption on the web is not stealing. It is the equivalent of throwing away the last few pages of a newspaper which are filled with advertisements (and sport;).
And IE worms are the gift that keeps on giving...
What would Groucho do?
Please clarify. Did you mean what you said (i.e., that we need to meet both conditions), or did you mean:
"those of us running other browsers or something like AdBlock"; or
"those of us running other browsers and those of us running something like AdBlock" ?
Some days I really hate the English language.
There are alternates to explorer.exe, you know.
In that case, feel free to use this version that uses "0.0.0.0" instead.
I'll reiterate what I've said before regarding skipping advertisements.
For decades, advertisers have seemingly understood that what they do is a gamble. There is absolutely no guarantee that the advertisement will be viewed, paid attention to, or even work well to sell a product. Just because this model has worked in the past does not guarantee it will continue to work for all time.
If companies involved can no longer take the risk that people may not see advertisements, then they should reconsider their business models.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The *only* thing I block with AdBlock on Mozilla is falkag.net - they've been serving up trojans for some time and my PC is all the safer for it.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
It's not quite so clear cut as that, though. As I see it:
For adverts:
- Running a web site costs money. The guys running it might even want to make a living
- hiring good writers is expensive
- Advertising money is a proven revenue source for media outlets
- subscription sites don't seem to be a popular option
but, against that:
- The adverts many sites run are overly intrusive and bandwidth-intensive
- people who block adverts probably aren't the kind of people who are going to take notice of them anyway
- just cramming more and more adverts down the throats of consumers is not a sustainable policy: evevntually, everybody will block them because it's impossible to read anything on the web otherwise.
But, sites have to be paid for somehow. Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit models for web sites?
Penny-arcade seems to get by well enough on its merchandise, advertising, freelance art work etc revenue, for example. I'm not sure how well that scales to smaller sites, though.
The ISC has more details here and here.
Your claim of censorship is unfounded. I had that happen to me once as well, and it wasn't because of anything I'd said, in fact I couldn't find anything that would have warranted it.
Interesting. Adblock still shows this blockable item when I visit theregister.co.uk :
s
http://f.as-eu.falkag.net/dat/cjf/00/15/57/05.j
So much for suspending ad service from that company...
For the last friggin time, Adblock set to 'hide' downloads the content, so it's no more unethical than taking a pee during commercials.
- you are stealing bandwidth and content without also viewing the means for which the web site creates enough revenue for the web site to sustain itself
Most ads only pay out per click, not per view. So are you stealing from such a website if you don't click on the ads, to give them a tiny sliver of money, even if you don't block the ads?Happens to me all the time, my ISP uses caching proxies :-(
I suppose your living room has 500 TVs all tuned to different channels and you watch them 24 hours a day, just so you can't miss any adverts...
Oh well, what the hell...
If people were reading The Register over the weekend, they were probably doing it from home.
There was never any agreement between me and the website admins that I had a limited license to view the content predicated by my looking at ads. Websites that are on the internet are free to the consumer, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
Please post all criticisms of parent to:
MaelstromX@doubleclick.net
Thank you for your support
This really helps add credibility to the claim that blocking ads can help aid security, giving ad blocking credibility outside of the "I don't want to look at irritating banners" department.
How long until anti-virus software has built-in pop-up and ad blocking? It's past due.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I consider this to be a troll in a way but I'd like to see what others think about it just the same:
What if this advertiser wasn't actually exploited? What if this was all just plausible deniability and really an intentional way of getting more spyware and crap out there? We have no way of measuring the ethical standards of these essentially unknown parties but we do know there are people out there willing to make a buck while invading the computer systems of private individuals.
"Oh, we're sorry... we were hacked and now there's all these victims... we're sorry..." Should we really believe it?
To add to that, I think that slashdot offers a free light version of the site for avantgo and other situations. I'm too lazy to check.
testing out my trending skills
> No. Do you get paid to post here for The Register? Is that why you're standing up for them?
I don't think he's standing up for them, he's just using common sense (which you're not)
The write up for the attack is incorrect. The correct sequence of events is at http://www.finlandforum.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=768 5. I know because I noticed it at The Register first and contacted Falk AG. Thanks for the aknowledgement too Slashdot, NOT.
Not sure where I heard this one but
"A rich man will sell you the rope you'll use to hang him"
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
I still see the adds on penny arcade because they are small enough it's not worth my effort to block them, and occasionally something interesting comes up.
:\
I see no adds here because they are huge flash obscenities for Microsoft FUD campaigns.
You want clickthroughs? Rethink your ad placement policies. (If I could select as a pref nothing but text adds for Linux/Unix/Hardware with _informational_ content - I might well see adds on Slashdot. And you might get paid more that the 0 you get for me at present.)
The thing that pisses me off most of course is that the ultra lightweight version still has the heavy and blotated flash/animated adverts
Beep beep.
Last time I read about the Microsoft's buffer overflow protection implementation in Windows PX Service Pack 2, they were talking about the NX bit present in page entries when the PAE mode was active in AMD x86-64 processors. Even though that protection exists in the new AMD x86-64 processors' MMUs, Intel P4 as well as older AMD processors do not yet support that bit, which means that processes running over them do not get any page-based protection against code execution, even while running SP2.
However I see many people trusting their lives on SP2's protection even without processor support, and I don't see Microsoft willing to clarify this issue either, so I'm starting to believe that probably there is something else that I am not aware of in SP2 which simulates the same kind of protection on processors without hardware support.
Is SP2 really protecting against stack smashing (for example) on processors without hardware support for non-executable pages? Or is it just general ignorance that Microsoft exploits for their own profit?
Looks like yet another reason for people to be using real operating systems. Such as Linux, BSD, MacOS X. Heck even SCO's UnixWare is probably more secure than the mess of code and goto statements that is Windows.
As soon as there are web ad's that are certain not to infect my computer with a tidal wave of spyware...I will stop using tools to block them. Till then, I'm making my computers safety paramont over other concerns.
Smaller scale websites don't make that much money off advertising. Personally, I've always prefered sites that require a small subscription fee. Even a tiny sum of money from as many readers as Slashdot has could help to make the sit considerably better than it is now.
If you can't find a business model for posting content on the Internet, don't do it. You can't complain that people block ads because you were stupid enough to rely on them for income. You can't just make a bad business model, then expect the law to enforce it.
What about the bandwidth they steal from me, when the serve ads I don't want?
tell me where those so called terms are listed, that i have to view those ads?
did i sign something to that extent, or was it ever implied that i MUST view them
they publish a bunch of html codes, i choose how to interpret them
i suppose you have a problem with Links and other text only browsers too
I dont use any MS software (OS or apps), and my solution for the people that want 'DOC' resumes is to send them a PDF. Their Wincrap OS recognizes it, views it, and they most likely wont even know the difference, unless they try to edit it (which is probably a good thing anyway)
Or better yet, if they are on MS-crack, then I just figure I wouldnt want to work there anyway.
...Mozilla need not support firefox 0.9.3 for two very good reasons. First, it is a pre-release piece of software (or preview if you prefer), second the cost of "entry" to obtain Firefox 1.0 is merely a 4-7 MB download.
If Microsoft say they will support older operating systems (i.e. Windows 2000) then they need to support it 100% (not 90%, for the extra 10% upgrade to XP that they are now). Lots of people paid good money for Windows 2000 and were led to expect full support, including security updates, for a substantial period. This period has not passed and as such Microsoft is re-negging their side of things.
I am NaN
You can't just make a bad business model, then expect the law to enforce it.
Who the hell said anything about the law? What is wrong with you people?
I definitely read that post as "Not to mention the activation issues that make XP not run at all after installing SP2. Microsoft should have fixed those long before releasing SP2 because they screw over-paying customers."
Upon realizing my mistake, I'm actually not sure which reading is more accurate.
If you did that, then he wouldn't be homeless anymore, now would he?
I consider Adblock as more of my vote against which ads are appropriate and which are not. Bright flashing image ads, flash ads, etc, will be blocked. However, I will not block a Google ad, because text is not nearly as obnoxious. Heck, I click on text ads to support developers who use unobtrusive advertising.
It happens because of the broken moderation system. I was not insinuating that I was actively silenced by the powers that be.
Your logic is flawed. You can do the same thing by not going to websites with advertisements. Blocking them is equal to cutting out the advertisements from the magazine, and there's no direct match towards TV ads minust DVR devices.
As I stated already in this thread somewhere, I was not describing a LEGAL obligation to download the ads with the rest of the content, rather I was describing an ETHICAL one.
But, sites have to be paid for somehow. Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit models for web sites?
Yes, it's called subscription. Look into it.
Personally I'd pay for slashdot, but I find it's worth $5/1000 page only to the point that it holds my attention. Not a bad price, I simply have enough grievances that I won't pay. Fix the faults and I'll pay for it.
> If you did that, then he wouldn't be homeless anymore, now would he?
Does this make sense to you?
"I'm going to eat a chocolate bar"
It does? I thought so.
But wait a minute, by your logic; if I ate the chocolate, how can I eat it?
Do you see where your logic falls apart?
> Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit
> models for web sites?
Paid subscription?
Seriously, thanks to the Internet I've now exceeded the number of advertisements I'm prepared to view in my lifetime. I now block them on *any* site that I'm likely to visit more than once or twice. Advertisements stopped having any positive effect on me many years ago, and some are now so obtrusive (i.e. personally offensive) that I not only block them - I actively avoid buying those products.
Be honest - how many times have you seen an ad for e.g. some new model car, and decided "You know, I was just in the market for a car today. Good thing this ad appeared as now I know what to buy and where to go to buy one. And, what the hell, I'm not gonna buy the family wagon we really need; I'm gonna buy one of these fancy BMW sports cars because of the cool lifestyle aspects shown in the ad"? If what they're really trying to do with that ad is not sell me a car, but give me "brand awareness", then thanks - I'm aware of the brand, but I also feel free to remove it from my vision wherever and whenever it appears.
In my mind, and I suspect many others, Web advertising is now useless. The only Web ads I now notice are those that are too obnoxious to ignore, and I specifically block those out using AdBlock. I use Gmail constantly, but don't remember a single ad I've ever seen on Gmail; I know they're in the right-hand column, but my brain just doesn't parse them.
But if I follow your argument further than you have, I am required to click the link as well. Then I'm required to buy something, right? Or else I'm ripping off the advertiser.
What if I don't block the ads, but I never click on any of them. Isn't that a form of theft? I mean, the ads are LINKS, after all. I should be clicking them.
The upshot is that if you visited the Register yesterday morning and use IE as your browser.
A few years ago I would have laughed at anyone who said something like that and just ignored it as paranoia by someone who didnt really know much about computers and security or who had been watching too many hacker films. Of course you can't get a virus from visiting a web page thats just stupid, who would allow such insane breaches of security? But Microsoft saw a market: they realised that since most people believed you could get a virus that way, why not match their products with peoples expectations? Next slashdot poll should be who uses IE and why...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Bitter and proud of it.
For one, to those people commenting about how some people say that they don't want to use SP2... It isn't their fault that they don't want to. When I installed SP2 on my computer, that was using a legal copy of Windows XP, my computer BSODed and the boot sector was screwed over. This was a mistake on the count of Microsoft that deleted a number of documents that I thought were in a stable, safe place. I now make a backup of all my data to an external hard drive every other day to make sure this doesn't happen. Another comment I would like to make is for the people that are saying that ads are the only sources of revenue that websites have and we should be forced to read them and not block them. Yes, I agree that some websites need ads for money to run the site, but some ads are downright obnoxious. There are, however, sites that live off of things such as Google text only ads. www.neowin.net is an example, where you see at the top of the page only a simple text ad, or once in a while a picture ad. They are a fairly large website, and yet they support themselves by only a text ad. Interesting, isn't it? People rave about how websites absolutely have to have tons of ads to live, and yet Neowin has been living for a good 5 years now on text ads...
When the advertising industry becomes ethical, so will I. Why is it that advertisers EXPECTED to stretch the truth and try to sell me a product I don't need, and yet, when I say "I refuse to buy this. Try the next guy," I'm being unethical?
Advertising is built on deception. You're essentially saying: you are UNETHICAL for refusing to listen to someone who is trying to take advantage of you. Do you understand how silly that sounds? When advertisers respect the customers and stop trying to trick me into buying their products, then I will give them the respect of listening to their sales pitch.
I don't use AdBlock carelessly. I will use adblock at the point where an advertisement is getting in my way. If it's full of colour and movement and lookatmelookLOOKFUCKINLOOKBITCH! syndrome, it'll go. If it's unethical for me to block someone's revenue stream, it's just as unethical for that person to thrust their advertising upon me.
What's with the BS concerning "if you had other browsers you're safe" ??!
I have Internet Explorer V6, SP1 with manually installed updates, Ad-Aware and Norton running simultaneously. I also am a reader of the Register.
I also have no problems with any type of virus.
Please, stop the garbage.
PS - a linux-Jedi friend who swears by Mozilla got the worm. Ahem.
I always wonder, when people claim "Sp2 shat my machine" if they are installing on a fresh, or fairly clean system. The machines i've seen that have really screwed up Sp2 either had spyware/viruses or traces of them or some weird software (usually only one application breaks)
Sometimes its not fair to claim a service pack broke your gatored and cometcursored box!
Your views on the legitimacy and sincereness of advertising are irrelevant to the topic at hand.
The fact of the matter is that there is no free lunch. Every web site on the internet is up there because somebody is paying or paid (directly or indirectly) for its hosting, maintenance, and the creation of content. In the case of commercial web sites, which typically run up large bandwidth bills anyway, there has to be a way to recoup that cost if the web site is to remain in place. The most popular way is ads. Ads work, because people click on them, and people click on them after viewing them. Now if you remove yourself from the possibility of viewing ads, you are basically getting a free ride while everyone else watches the ads. If everyone did that, the web site would not exist or would become subscription based. Why are you any better than anyone else that you don't need to view the web page with its ads? Do you think anyone else wants to? No, but we do it because it's the ethical thing to do.
Yeah, they do. But you still see the ads. Comment 10884314 by Realistic Dragon gives more info.
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?
Wow, thrust upon you? Someone came in your house, put a gun to your head, and made you go to the URL where that ad was displayed?
Funny how everyone says "I never click on ads" yet hundreds if not thosuands of websites turn a profit based on that revenue model.
If there were a beggar on your way to work, and you went out of your way to avoid him, it would be fine. If there were a beggar on your way to work, and you surrounded him with some walls so no one would see him, that would be unethical.
Same thing goes here.
Ah, the Chewbacca defense.
That premise only even begin to make sense if people were preventing OTHER people from seeing the-paid-for advertising. Lets look at it in more detail though...
If you saw a beggar on the way to work the ethical thing to do would be to report him to the authories - begging is illegal in most modern westernised nations after all, and with good cause.
Very often it's done on private property (shop doorways, underground stations), often very assertively/aggressively causing harm to local business and increasing fear of crime (and increase in actual crime) in the area . It does very real damange to communities and the issues of drunkeness, instances of public disorder and the proliferation of hard drugs that go along with it to name but a few. It's such a problem in London that many local councils have put up paid advertisements trying to get it into peoples heads NOT to give to street beggers.
I could say "It's unethical to set kittens on fire and kick them around, same applies here." that would make about as much sense. Setting fire to kittens is something I'd consider unethical, and just like your analogy it doesn't in any way relate to the ethics of blocking adverts however.
Is it unethical to go to the bathroom during a TV ad? Fast-forward through them?
sorry, you lost me...
Are you saying that chocolate doesnt exist, or that only ex-homeless people in donated houses are allowed to eat chocolate.
Thanks.
(PS - I dont read these forums much so please email your explanation to jon@AOL.com )
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Really?
I assume you are referring to this: http://slashdot.org/palm/
I see where it says "AD:" but I have never seen anything after it, not on my phone browser, not on Mozilla.
.
I think the only theft that has taken place was the IQ points I lost from your inane troll. If you want to look at the pretty ads go right ahead. People that go through the extra trouble to download and install AdBlock, then install and extend a filterset for it, are people who are not going to click a banner to begin with. In fact, they were so motivated by it they went to the trouble of blocking them, when they could have just ignored it. A huge percentage of them are sick of being bombarded by the damned things and having thier bandwidth sapped and screen cluttered. And why shouldn't they? They get 40Kb or more of banners for every 1Kb of content. It's not a very balanced ratio, and it kills the Internet for dialup users.
And what differnce does it make if I block them if I wasn't even going to acknowledge them to begin with? It is my perogative to choose what content appears on my screen, much the way I can mute or turn off the TV during commercials. (Those poor sponsors) Besides, I don't hear you lamenting pop-ups. Pop-ups generated revenue for the websites just the same. Simply put, they pissed people off to the point where people did something about them. Next on the list are the obnoxious tower and banner ads and the tracking cookies that come with them.
Lastly, many of these banners are offensive. There is no short supply of pages indexed in search engines that display adult content ads without any warning or relation to the content. And many of those ads leave nothing to the imagination.
What about lynx users? They don't get the banners either, those lousy thieving bastards.
Finally, you cannot control what other people do. It doesn't matter if it's AdBlock or an entry in the hosts file. If people really don't want to be bothered with intrusive ads, they will find a way to get rid of them. And all your whining wont make a bit of differnce becasue what they choose to do on thier computers is thier business. There is an equilibrium that must be reached between what is acceptable and what is not for online advertisment, and the benchmark isn't what you think it should be but what the net in general is willing to put up with. And for some people, the only thing they will accept is none. The websites, not the users, will have to adapt to this.
Noone makes you use AdBlock, and noone using it cares what you think of them for doing it. So get off your soapbox and STFU.
No where on slashdot or any other site I've ever been to did it say "load our advertisements ... and we will make available to you our content, free of charge" or anything even close to that. They provide content, and link to ads. Some of those ads aren't loaded on my browser because i block the servers they comefrom using AdBlock. There was no EULA I had to agree to to load this or any other page. Just like I am not required to follow every advertising link (which is what they would prefer mind you), I choose not to even load the ads.
To summerize: Websites send content, they also send links to ads. My browser displays said content, but does not follow links to ads. Maybe I'm missing out, but I doubt it.
That depends on if you also got him a building permit.
Here's two slightly more appropriate viewpoints.
This is a free market economy. If advertising in exchange for "free" services isn't becoming viable as a business model.. don't do it! The internet will survive without doubleclick.com and the countless "free" webmail vendors. If you gave away cars to people with "adverts" on the bonnets, and you went flat broke after giving away two cars with cola ads on them, don't complain. Don't complain if people paint over the ads, either. You gave away the cars. What did you expect? It's like people who build their houses in flood plains who whine when the flood comes and takes away thier houses. There's no guarantee that if you provide a service for "free" on the expectation that people will in turn do you a favour, they will.
But you seem to say there is!
Extensions and programs like AdBlock are tantamount to theft
Theft is a very strong word. The basis you ply is, to say the least, a poor understanding of the legal state of the world (despite efforts by the US congress to change it). Theft is a crime, crimes are enforced by laws. Let's look at the law. You assert there exists a "contract" between the client and the server. The client, under your contract, views the adverts and views the meaningful content. Adblocking is therefore a circumvention of this contract. Sounds reasonable. But consider this. Nowhere does the website state that viewing of advertisements is mandatory in exchange for content. The advertisements are imbedded within the content, and there is no way for me to avoid them, even if the content should be offensive to me in some way (and really, you can be offended by anything these days, personally, I'm offended by ads). So I'm getting my content, and I'm getting these ads. But I haven't agreed, signed, clicked, on anything that states I explicitly need to see these ads. I haven't agreed to any contract. If you don't agree to a contract, then there is no contract. But you've already "given" the content away. It's on a public web server. So I'm free to view what is visible on that basis, in the same way that if I left a newspaper on my front lawn you could read it. I can also choose which parts of the freely visible information I want to see - because again, there's no contract, and copyright is not an issue because I'm not altering or republishing this information, just reading it, and only the non-advertising parts of it.
If you find adblocking annoys you - don't run a website with an unworkable revenue methodology. The free market economy is unforgiving, even less so when you give things away with no conditions attached.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Don't stress about it, I think when some one starts a post with "I don't care what you say" and then proceeds to show that he really doesn't care what anyone says, it's safe to assume that they're trolling.
.doc. The irony is that the people they represent (some quite enlightened companies sometimes) most likely feel the same way about .doc as I do, so it's really just for the sake of the agency.
As for the PDF solution above, yeah I tried that. The problem is that it's mostly agencies that I have to deal with. I offer my CV in both PDF and Openoffice format, but they don't even look at it before saying they need it in
Check the root of your C: for a file named bla.exe.
Thanks for pointing this out. I set my Adblock back to Hide now.
---John Holmes...
Huh.
Thats strange this post was blocked by my adblocker.
I strike a compromise: I block flash. Flash ads suck. I dont mind banner ads, but some flash ads have sound many have animation. If your site relies 100% on flash ads, then screw you. If I was on dial up, I guarentee you, I'd block all ads.
I diddn't know Jamie Kellner read Slashdot.
For Windows NT 4 *ALPHA* SP6a!
But this is the real world. Everyone won't.
Why are you any better than anyone else that you don't need to view the web page with its ads?
Because I know how to block ads, and 99% of the population doesn't.
No, but we do it because it's the ethical thing to do.
You can never depend on the "ethics" of the general public. If website operators really think that this is a problem worth worrying about, they're free to try technical means to ensure that the ads get displayed.
Maybe I should have a +5 insightful filter on to avoid this sort of trolling.
"And all of you bitching about it being within your rights to view content how you want, blah blah blah, shut up already."
Listen to your own advice. His right to control his content and bandwidth is the only one that matters. If the website chooses to block people who block ads, that's also thier right. So shut the fuck up and go back under your bridge, troll. You haven't made a decent point in you favor yet, only finger pointing, badmouthing, and FUD.
What it really comes down to is that it's none of your fucking business what they do on their computers. You don't have to like it, you just have to get over it.
> (PS - I dont read these forums much so please email your explanation to jon@AOL.com )
Hey, thats my email! arsehole.
Where MS has to donate $10,000,000 to the EFF for every security exploit in IE that gets used in the wild...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Not sure how this would affect protection from malware, but as for "stealing"...
From AdBlock's FAQ:
Q: But I want to support my favorite site! Can I set Adblock to download, and then hide stuff?
A: Yes, see next question.
Q: What's the difference between "hide" and "remove"?
A: "Hide" preserves a page's layout -- content being downloaded, but not visibly rendered.
"Remove" collapses the layout -- no content is downloaded.
I really have no pity for websites that cry out "oh woe is me, those thieves are robbing me blind by blocking my ads". Remember, you are not given a right to profit. There are no laws stating people cannot block your ads. Accept it as a cost of advertising in a risky medium with a non-captive audience.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
True story: When I first put up Google ads I had a hell of a time figuring out why they weren't working. As it turned out, I had them Adblocked!
I both run ads and Adblock. What are you going to call me, a hypocrite?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
"Web pages like slashdot are available to you on the following basis: load our advertisements which bring us revenue that allow us to pay for bandwidth, salaries, etc., and we will also make available to your our content, free of charge. Extensions and programs like AdBlock are tantamount to theft; you are acquiring the content but not "paying" for it by loading the advertisements."
You know once I might have believed that. But anymore with as intrusive as adds are getting I don't buy it. At one time the courts declared that if you had to pay for the services you could not get adds through it. (Faxes)
Now the way the advertising people are acting it is your duty to watch their stupidity. If they don't want me to block their adds don't put their adds out there. If that means there is less content on the net hence less people on it, FINE! It could be that I have been on the net since the September that never ended. But as long as I am paying for this net connection I will block any data I don't want. If you don't like it don't count on a failed and discredited distribution method. Using stupid and pointless laws to back up your business model will just make sure that I am willing to take the extra effort to block them. And apparently enough people agree with me so they think that they need to try to force it with stupid non enforceable laws.
Your views on ethics are irrelevant to the topic at hand.
There is a free lunch, and I'm eating it right now.
AOL would never let me down.... They would never use spyware like Wildtangent, or let me be jeapordized with nasty unsigned Active-X like Microsoft has...
(But seriously...) Until they dump the Netscape/Mozilla browser build for IE again.
Now to get back to this email about Hopkin Green Frog from Sierra Leone and how he's going to give me 25% of $14 million if I become his next of kin.....
Ooh ooh.. I'm, not trying to troll you, we are on the same side, but there is a hole in part of your argument.
I live near a guy who won a Dodge Viper through the McDonald's monoply game a few years back. It has the big yellow arches everywhere there would normally be the Viper logo. As a term of his acceptance of his winnings, he cannot remove those from the car... ever.
I imagine most intelligent comanies woudl do the same thing. Technically, they retain ownsership of the car, you are awarded entitlement to use it provided you agree to maintain advertising for them. It's a great ploy.
The IE vulnerability exists in IFRAME and other HTML elements. Text-based ads aren't any less vulnerable.
Those responsible for the operation of the web sites that depend on such ads can respond in several ways. They can block users who block ads. They can write code that does not render well in IE, a task that relatively trivial, and thus encourage users to use a more secure browser. They may promise to provide or pay for the technical support needed to clean a machine infected through their negligence.
Now, those who do not use MS Windows or IE might still use an ad-blocker. This a grayer area as there has been no significant exploits for non-MS software. An argument could be made for theft. However, there are two other issues. First, just because there has been no exploit, does not mean there will not be. History tells us that malware will adapt as new dominating environment develop. Second, Not all ads are safe for work, children, or sensitive audiences. As such, it may be prudent to block all ads.
Taking all this into account, there is perhaps less than 5% of the web browsing populace that does not have a legitimate reason to block ads.
Much of this could change if the web advertisers were subject to the same rules of other media, with consequences for inappropriate advertising. Or if the web advertisers explicitly guaranteed their content was appropriate and uninfected with malware, again, with appropriate consequences. I know of no web site that actually does this,
Wow, you paid for all that 3rd party crud to protect yourself when all you had to do was install any other browser to make it a non issue.
Then you imply your Linux using friend got the Windows only worm.
Your not the brightest light on the Christmas tree there, are you.
Please stop your garbage.
I swear on just about EVERY website i visit, i briefly see "contacting host falkag.net" flash by. No, not one website I contact often. Not just a few sites, but EVERY site that finds it necessary to have banners from 20 different websites, and have all the images hosted on a server that has about a tenth of the bandwidth needed to function properly.
What's falkag's ip? 127.0.0.1
And WTF do you get off saying, "he". There are a few female IT professionals.
It's correct English to speak of a fictional person of unknown gender as "he."
There are no laws yet. I'm sure someone's trying to buy one.
And, I thought the reason accountants (and everyone else) didn't like advertisers was becasuse they're lieing, souless bastards.
Just making an observation about Slashdot's choice of icon images. :)
I mean, here I am, someone from the industry, and I'm reading Slashdot, consider myself a full-fledged geek, am a huge privacy advocate (oh the irony), hate Microsoft, like OSS, know all the Slashdot inside jokes, etc.
God, give it up people, everybody is an individual, and while some individuals have tarnished our industries good name, and while you may not like the fact that someone tries to figure out ways to sell you things, we are necessary to make the world go round, and some of us are actually nice, caring, intellectual, and ethical INDIVIDUALS.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
No, it's more like when you just happen to be walking down the street when the guy with the gun jumps out at you.
Many of the flaws in Windows are architectural. Fixing them will break things. SP2 did as much as possible to minmize breakage of apps that are in many cases frightening garbage internally, while making some big changes.
I'm no MS fan (and am typing this from a Linux box) but geez, give them credit where it's due. Nobody but MS would've gone to the incredible time and effort of including thousands of compatibility hacks and tweaks so braindead, broken apps could keep on working.
Most other OSes would simply break the apps and be done with it.
Freeware nLite removes IE from 2000, 2003, XP before installation
Technical Details on Reming IE from Windows 2000 before installation
I propose to stop using frames and always click the "no frames" option in every website which provides it. If you believe that frames are evil, please read my relevant blog entry and say all over the world that you hate frames. Perhaps we can make a difference and teach webdevelopers that frames are annoying.
No. Do you get paid to post here for The Register? Is that why you're standing up for them?
Even if I did, would it make any of what I said any less valid?
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/21/2 247232
I find it some what disgusting that there has yet to be one person to post that it might be their own fault for putting themselves in danger of this exploit, when, if they are registered with Slashdot, should be aware of the dangers of using IE in the first place.
Please, stop blaming others when you have at least a choice of 4 other browsers available to you without the same level of security issues as IE:
Who cares what every one else should be doing when YOU YOURSELF are not willing to every thing YOU can to avoid these dangers?
My CV is not in Word format and I have a job. Yes, I've refused to transcribe it into Word and that's surprised the shit out several people. I only had to compromise as far as supplying it in PDF.
Maybe your American employment agencies are stupider than the ones we have here in Australia. That would be pretty unlikely though as ours are dumb as bricks.
Probably true, but it sure isn't you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Seriously, those colors are hideous.
Oh, you mean like making movies and music? Go Google it and you will see that free software mixed with non-free on Linux dominates the business now and has for years. When your job depends on this and your company wants to be competitive, you will use Linux.
On the personal level, you should read this glowing Mepis review by a long standing Winblows professional who detailed how to do every conceivable multimedia task, including DVD watching and video editing. If you want a computer that will do tomorrow what it does today without getting schmegged by scammers, advertisers and others, you want Linux.
Where do you want to go today? Free software will get you there with less trouble and cost.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That's true, you would be foolish to trust an automatic software updater from a company with M$ style QC. They have a long record of breaking applications and not caring. That's why companies pay people to evaluate "updates".
The burden is considerably less in the free software world where there's no incentive to spaghetti code and break other people's applications. When code is properly modularized, it has a tendency not to break other code. I can contrast my experience with frequent distribution upgrades of Debian Unstable without problems to single applications frying Winblows.
In any case, the need for upgrading is much less in the free software world. Exploits there remain largely a laboratory exercise, despite volumes of FUD. Exploits in the Winblows world translate to a mean life for networked machines that are much less than the time it takes to use Winblows updater.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Surely not many regular Register readers?
I've been running Linux since 1999, and I've never been impressed by the major GUI distributions - they always feel quickly-put-together, like they're elaborate constructions of balsa wood. So, I used Debian, which gave me the power to control the system and high-quality packages to build it into what I wanted.
Lately, I've been using Ubuntu on my laptop, and I love it. It's a clean, simple-to-install, simple-to-administer GNOME-based Debian fork where things just work. Give it a look-over if you're ever in the market for a distribution for other family members. (Karma bonus declined because this is not very on topic.)
|/usr/games/fortune
"hacked by chinese"!?
...you want to have an EULA click-through for every site too? As if having one with every program, every forum, every service wasn't enough?
Advertisers rely on some fraction of their users seeing their ad. Not all of them (some are completely oblivious to their presence), not all of the time (you switch channels sometime) but some.
I could live with that if that was all ads do. But I block them, because several have greatly abused their rights to throw me into endless pop-up loops, ads flowing over content (when not using IE, sigh), minimize-on-show pages that you can't close easily and so on.
I'm sorry that some unserious sites destroy it for all the serious ones. But I'm not unblocking ads until browsers can block the abuse, and they don't. Instead they seem to go the ad-block route themselves. That'll only push advertisers to use other ways like flash, css areas and whatever.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When my anti-virus program went off a few days ago about an .htm file with the IFRAME exploit, I was convinced it came from the ads displayed on AOL IM since the file was in an IE.Cache folder and I only use Firefox. I wasn't even browsing the web at the time, but AIM was running and displaying its little ads. I assumed I might be overreacting by blaming AIM for the problem, but now I guess it really could have come from the ads on AIM. AIM started using popup ads last week too.... Anyway I'm now using GAIM.
Falk AG is not the only advertising provider that has been compromized.
K-otik reported that Realmedia (OpenAdStream, those oas.* hosts) where compromized as well.
{{.sig}}
A lot of websites ARE adapting a different model - many sites that were previously free to access even the most basic content now require a user account to view them - in Australia a stack of news sites started doing this recently).
I'd rather have the ability to browse websites anonymously and freely than have to subscribe (even if its free) and/or pay to do so.
I don't block ads; I also encourage other users not to do it either.
he means in case they really deciede to forbid using the adblock softwares
.... *big bank**cough*cough*cough* "wisely" institute IE explorer as the official browser to use corporate wide (in spite of the outcry of UNIX people, that keep using anything else under the table anyway).
:-P ) was using a sane Web browser.
The tragic thing is that this is to access mostly internally developed sites. The company could be following standards, using safe browsers and making sure that everybody (including Windows SAs
THe "developed for IE only" internal policies of some comapnies is pure insanity, and hopefully some people taking those decisions will be burned, and badly (i.e. unemployment) for their misguided stuborness.
If you visit the Falk AG website, there is nothing on the exploit. The management clearly doesn't know what to do with the problem - otherwise they would have posted a full explanation by now. Ah well, I guess they need some time to wiggle themselves out of this one.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Tell them that somebody could upload kiddie porn on their hard drives and then tip off the police.
That concentrates minds wonderfully in my experience.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I was wondering what all you guys reply to, had to browse at -1 to see guys comment.
:)
There is nothing to be troll on such comment, I personally run a $60 firewall on my mac and never run its ad blocker. As a guy working at TV media, I think same as that "troll guy".
As a protest of "ad blocking" fans and their attempt to silence the guy, I am pasting his comment below without anything changed with "karma bonus" , I know this one will go -1 too but what's a protest if you don't lose anything like stuupid karma?
---
AdBlock is unethical (Score:-1, Troll)
by MaelstromX (739241) on 2:33 22 November 2004 (#10883951)
Why was it necessary to praise AdBlock in the writeup considering it would not have made a difference if the user had it installed or not? Even if AdBlock were responsible for preventing a user from getting a virus this time, that's hardly enough to make up for the theft of services and fraud that people who use it commit every day.
Web pages like slashdot are available to you on the following basis: load our advertisements which bring us revenue that allow us to pay for bandwidth, salaries, etc., and we will also make available to your our content, free of charge. Extensions and programs like AdBlock are tantamount to theft; you are acquiring the content but not "paying" for it by loading the advertisements.
If you find a site's ads to be so intrusive as to make the page unviewable, don't go back. I doubt anyone forced you to go there in the first place.
MS feels like they own your damn PC.
Applications should have a target that is not moving all the time. A stable OS.
Once that is provided then MS should not be responsible for making apps work, but the application developers.
They have got the working relationship backwards. Don't ask us to praise them fur such braindead apporach to software development.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The fact that this attack happened
or,
The Register editors sacrificed their sacrosanct weekends to post the warning story.
Any regular reader would see that most of the stories abruptly stop at Beer O'Clock on Friday [4 p.m. roughly, depending on British Sunshine].
Due to the regular lack of stories over the weekend, I think the number of readers exposed would have been much less. If it had happened about this time [Monday morning London time] a lot more people would've been exposed.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
http://isc.sans.org/
Important note: Due to a major disk failure, the database is not available right now. At this time, we are waiting for replacement hardware, and it looks like we will be back around Thursday.
The class I'm referring to is the Datacentre Class.
All those hardworking infrastructure people who've managed not to be outsourced to the Cayman Islands.
All those admins who surf to TheRegister from their Win2k3 Advanced Server terminals IN the datacentre via their KVM.
Some SysAdmins don't, granted, but SOME do. When I was doing Unix work at Level3 and Colt, we did it all the time. It's a per company, per employee based decision as to whether it occurs.
These servers are much more likely to have gone unpatched due to availability/stability concerns.
So here you have important computers left on all the time, with ph@t bandwidth exposed. Not just some home win98 pIII over a 56K link.
A bit worrying.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Now of course microsoft has changed their operating system to match the Hollywood expectations, and I have seen it take ~30 seconds to delete a 1K text file...
There's not a single thing flamebait about this. Because MaelstromX said something you didn't like, you modded him down. Censorship at it's finest. Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:-1, Flamebait) by MaelstromX (739241) on Sunday November 21, @08:02PM (#10884143) Well you can keep attacking that straw man argument if you want but it has nothing to do with AdBlock. If a commmercial web site operator knew that a user had AdBlock installed, they would NOT agree to the terms of that user accessing the website, not only wasting bandwidth but acquiring the content contained on the website (which costs money to produce). Their website, their rules. Nobody is forcing you to go, you can leave at any time -- or you can stay and use unethical methods to make your visit slightly more convenient. And all of you bitching about it being within your rights to view content how you want, blah blah blah, shut up already. I am addressing the ethical wrongness of AdBlock -- you are stealing bandwidth and content without also viewing the means for which the web site creates enough revenue for the web site to sustain itself. -- As a side note, observe what happens when you go against slashbot groupthink: Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner .
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
What's the difference?
SiMac only said walls---nothing about a roof or a door!
Sorry, I don't get that---what's the "Chewbacca defense"?
Sure. I subscribe to Slashdot although I have AdBlock. I'm sure I'm not the only one!
What are the faults that bug you?
The vagueness of the report has me a little confused. It looks to me like the Load Balancer got hacked and someone loaded some malcode on it that took advantage of end users via the IFrame BO exploit, which Bofra also exploits. Did the attacker load Bofra onto the ad server or are they misreporting this as a virus. Also what was the compromised server trying to upload onto victims machines? (This sort of reminds me of the EBay/Kelly Blue Book/MLB web site hack using a cross domain exploit)
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
>> Of course, those of us running other browsers and something like AdBlock have nothing to worry about Hey don't forget Konqueror! Or lynx and links! Some of us don't need no fancy graphics....
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
win98se ie5.5/128 spybot nav2001 hijackthis ad-aware
installed in 99, never reinstalled, used daily
there's jus nuthin like the golden oldies
I wonder why after first posting an explanation The Register would then back out of what was said and change their story?
a _statement. It looks a little different to what was said earlier.
The current story can be found on their site. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/22/falk_bofr
Falk statement on Bofra attack
By Falk eSolutions
Published Monday 22nd November 2004 10:04 GMT
Site notice On Saturday, The Register suspended service by third party ad serving supplier, Falk, following security issues detailed here.
Falk fixed the problem within six hours of notificatin. Here is its account of what went wrong:
Summary
Incident at delivery level - Between 6:10 AM and 12:30 AM (GMT) on Saturday, 20th November 2004 Falk sSolutions clients using AdSolution Global experienced problems with banner delivery. This started on Saturday morning with a hacker attack on one of our load balancers. This attack made use of a weak point on this specific type of load balancer. The function of a load balancer is to evenly distribute requests to the multiple servers behind it. The system concerned was only used to handle a specific request type to our ad server and has now been investigated. The results are outlined in this document.
Description of the problem
The use of a weak point in one of our load balancers type FLB02/CP lead to user requests not being passed to the ad servers. Instead the user requests were answered with a 302 redirect. This happened with approximately every 30th request. Users visiting websites that carry banner advertising delivered by our system were periodically delivered a file from the compromised site. This file tries to execute the IE-Exploit function on the users' computer.
Problem analysis
The weak point occurred due to a memory leak on the load balancer concerned. After the load balancer was taken out of service on Saturday at 11:30 AM (GMT) this was no longer possible. Because of this it was difficult at the beginning to find an error on our side. The servers that deliver the banners were not affected at all. Only afterwards we were able to find the error on the load balancer by analysing its log files.
Results of investigation
By attacking a single load balancer type FLB02/CP it was possible for users to be redirected to 'search.comedycentral.com' which tried to install the exploit type 'Bofra/IFrame-Expoit'. With approximately every 30th request for banner media this redirect occurred.
Further measures
The load balancer concerned has been taken out of service indefinitely and has been replaced with a newer model. An additional monitoring has been instated that supervises the load balancing process and whether this has been interrupted of manipulated. Further, a policing tool that supervises redirects to unknown, erroneous or infected files has been deployed.
We need more people like this guy. Thanks man!
1) Incorrect html code
2) Modding up someone funny then modding down slightly is a net karma loss
3) Progressively worse stories are being posted.
4) "Redundant" moderation should not exist. Either people found it useful to begin with or they didn't. I don't care if one person's time stamp is 30 seconds ahead of someone elses. Speaking of redundant, what's the difference between "flamebait" and "troll"? Surely we can think of something better than that!
Ok really only 1, 2 and 3 bug me. The fact that slashdot blocks the website which scans for correct HTML is a punch in the face. The fact that they've never fixed it over the years I've gone here is even worse. I don't think I've seen any real change to the site in all this time. Sure there's been content (which I can only see after hitting control+/-), but the content is becoming worse and worse.
Oh yeah, there is also that whole thing about slashdot itself manually modding down into oblivian any messages they don't want people to pay attention to. I don't know if it's a violation of any of their claims, but it's not very nice at all.
So, by not loading the ads i won't click on anyways, I might actually be saving the site some bandwidth while yielding the same income from the advertisers?
Sad thing was the company was based in the Netherlands
tell us the company, so the dutch readers can find the company if it ever does this again. We do have an anti spyware commnuity over at the netherlands.
1) I've never noticed the bad HTML ("it works in my browser") but it is pretty sleazy that they've blocked the W3C validator (it gets 403 Forbidden). Will this post should now get modded down into oblivion for mentioning it?
2) You mean the "overrated" mod? I agree: that shouldn't affect the poster's karma.
3) Ooh---this is highly subjective and could be the fault of Slashdot's readers too!
4) I agree but it's not too serious.
The green dude in the picture is a larva.
It's all just for fun.
It is never even meant to do real harm. If it were, it wouldn't work.
Remember the "Litigious Bastards" campaign with sco? That worked, and it used the same concept...
Yep I agree. The thing about slashdot is a large part of the content is the other people. Obviously slashdot itself can't be held accountable entirely for the other users' actions, but they could say something.
A swift Google led me to this site.
...what ads?
To the cowardly prick who modded this as a troll: fuck you. Opinions that differ with your "all my web sites should be free at the owner's expense" religion are not fucking trolls.
Unethical? Whatever.
LOL! PWN3D!
Then he's entering an official contract, which websites don't ask you to agree to, instead providing the content on the assumption that you'll happily review advertisements for their sponsors (which more and more people choose not to do).
Interesting anecdote, though. I wonder what the conditions for that are. It would be a shame if vandals scratched the paint on the car, even bigger shame if those scratches strategically removed every instance of those logos.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
No vested interest in advertising then ?
Tell me, do the web site creators get payed for clicks or impressions ?
I think you'll find its per click, so if I don't click on an ad, they don't get paid !
For the record, I have never clicked on an ad.
So what difference does it make if I never see them either ?
If the ad blocker was installed without the end users notice, then that could be considered a breach of some law, as the user wouldn't know what they were missing, but as they are nearly all installed as a matter of preference, then the theft angle does not stand up.
I'm getting sick of hearing people whining about the theft of their intangible, electronic, "property" !
As far as I'm concerned, computer programming, (which is what it all boils down to, ads and all) is a virtual "art", and art is not available for patent. Thank you.
There is a real risk that people could start thinking that the people advocating the FireFox browser are the same group of people creating MSIE exploits. That would not be a good thing. Cheer at your own peril.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
If I had mod points, I would give you +5. You really know how to post on slashdot.
;)
Thats all I had to say
Ilgaz
I agree to a degree. Well placed text links and text ads (such as what you can get with google adsense). I would love it if they moved from flash ads back to text only. I too would be less likely to block them. As it is I have all images from doubleclick and many other ad sites blocked, then use adblock to take it even further and am blocking flash ads.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
"Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit models for web sites?"
:).
The issue was if it was 'unethical' to block ads. My statement is that it is not *unethical*. Another seperate but interesting arguement is over whether it is not generally a good idea to block ads since your website will close from a lack of revenue.
That is why I do not block ads, as of yet, on my own browser - since I support websites I visit. However I reject totally the idea that it is 'unethical' for me to use my computer to block people's profit models that waste *my* bandwidth and try to penetrate *my* conscisousness with their ads if i choose to do so.
"Penny-arcade seems to get by well enough on its merchandise, advertising, freelance art work etc revenue, for example. I'm not sure how well that scales to smaller sites, though."
Yes, finding a way to fund content is a useful discussion. Micropayments maybe an answer I'd like. If I could give 1/100th of a penny I would, esp. to some of the more amusing and insightful comments on here
Their website, their rules.
Sorry guy...MY computer, MY rules. If they don't like it they can take their damn site down. So simple it can't possibly be true, but you were joking...right??
What?