Slashback: Pie, Election, Alarm

Slashback this evening with another batch of updates and responses to previous Slashdot posts, including: how Firefox users can avoid post-cookie Web tracking (for now), more on open-source graphics drivers, and an alarm clock that sounds perfect for annoying a spouse. Read on for the details.

Does he feel like Reese Witherspoon? Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier writes "After many years of trying, Branden Robinson has finally won the Debian Project Leader election. Linux Magazine has an in-depth interview with Robinson about his plans as DPL, the problems that face Debian, and what it's like to finally win the election."

(We mentioned Robinson's election a few days ago.)

In lieu of perfection, fixability is a good start. gyardley writes "After discovering that a company called United Virtualities was making use of Flash's Local Shared Objects to silently restore my deleted cookies, I decided to combat this marketer behavior with a Firefox extension.

Objection 0.1 adds a 'Local Shared Objects' line to Firefox's Options > Privacy panel, allowing you to delete them as easily as you'd delete cookies. It's still pretty rudimentary - all or nothing deletion, working on Windows only - but Slashdotters are more than welcome to improve it. Since Local Shared Objects have the same functionality as cookies, we need the same amount of control over them as we do over cookies - and built into the browser, not tucked away in some obscure Macromedia page."

Sure, come on in, there's still some punch and snacks left, I think. orv writes "The Unichrome project has issued a response to VIA's recent open source announcement covered on Slashdot.

The response (and further comment) clarifies the current Unichrome driver situation and whilst welcoming VIA's move suggests that VIA should become more involved in existing open source projects rather than simply issuing repeated grand sounding press releases. The Unichrome project has provided and supported a full open source driver, including MPEG support, for the Unichrome and Unichrome Pro chipsets for the past two years."

But this implies that 'perky' is the desired state. dhalsim2 writes "Yahoo reports of a Smart Alarm Clock Set for Perky Wakeups. On the heels of Clocky comes this new alarm clock that will monitor a sleeper's brain waves to determine the best time to wake him up. The device uses a microprocessor within a headband that wirelessly transmits brainwaves to the clock. When the person is in a light sleep and is likely to wake up 'perky,' the alarm will go off. Brain wave monitoring? Sounds a lot like Plankton's Plan Z."

Comments

Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[WillAffleckUW]

on the heels of this, comes news of a Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups ...

Yes, but make sure you don't get the Darth Vader edition of the Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups.

That one not only reads your brain waves, but instead of adjusting itself to help you, it uses the dark side of alarm clock force to ring just a little bit too much ... and then on alternate Tuesdays it doesn't wake you up at all and laughs in an evil way when you finally regain conciousness ... plus it always broadcasts CNN.

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN isn't a radio station. If you had said "always broadcasts a Clear Channel station", it would have made sense. :)

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the real problem is that I only wake up perky after 11:00AM. I woudln't object but my boss might.

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[filmnorthflorida]

Many markets do in fact have CNN on the radio. My hometown, for instance. It's just an audio feed of CNN HN, plus some local ads and a smidgen of specially produced content, but it does exist.

CNN Radio homepage

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice hit on the evil empire of Clear Channel Communications. I think they are an evil empire. Did I say I think they are evil? And by the way: This is completly false Except the one part about the Pro-war rallies, its the only redeeming thing they have done.

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[Anonymous Coward]

"Watch out for this alarm clock. It'll make you feel perky."
"Well what's wrong with feeling perky?"
"Ask a pot of coffee."

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[swimin]

The reality is far worse, it tunes into Fox news, and if that can't be found,it randomly chooses between NPR, and NOAA weather radio.

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[jonadab]

I think the ultimate alarm clock program would play Buddy's Carpet commercials, or possibly car dealership commercials, but in the absense of that, a fairly effective and very easy one to write does this:

* Uses a fractal to generate the sound. A basic plasma fractal in one dimension (wavelength) creates a rather irritating sound that is hard to ignore.
* Increases the volume with each passing second.
* Is easy to snooze (press any key), but requires significant brain function to turn off (type complicated command sequence involving the current date and time, which must be accurate within one minute, so you can't just type it with muscle memory).
* Reduces the length of the snooze period by 1/3 to 1/2 each iteration.
* Stores the wake time on the filesystem, and checks it at system startup time. This way a power outage during the night does not foil the alarm clock.

When I was in college, I wrote this in GW-BASIC on my 8086 system and used it for several years.

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[Chuq]

If I had points I would give +1, just for the veiled HHGTTG reference!

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[WillAffleckUW]

Many markets do in fact have CNN on the radio. My hometown, for instance. It's just an audio feed of CNN HN, plus some local ads and a smidgen of specially produced content, but it does exist.

I know. When I travel that's what I tune to on the alarm clock, if they don't have NPR.

Seriously.

So an evil alarm clock will be tuned to Faux News, and a good alarm clock will be tuned to CNN radio (or at least NPR).

The thing is, one the days when the evil alarm clock purposefully doesn't wake you up, it will laugh in the dark laugh of Darth Vader, who as we all know is CNN's intro voice by James Earl Jones.

Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great!

I used to have a VB program that used my modem to dial my home phone number repeatedly to wake me... works every time!

Broken Link

[Anonymous Coward]

The unichrome link is broken:

http://unichrome.sourceforge.net/

Re:Broken Link

[bosewicht]

rightclick the file and "save as" then open it with firefox locally. It's works

The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[jessmeister]

I have blogged on this repeatedly and even mentioned a good article which should give some perspective on this whole cookie question. Its not that cookies are such a bad thing when used correctly. Some people dont want to use them and thats fine. For them let them log in repeatedly and see ads that arent relevant or contextual to what they have been doing or watching. Coming up with another way of tracking users isnt the problem. The problem is that users are scared of the tracking. Educate the masses on the benefits and advertisers would see positive results. Who knows maybe they wouldnt have to resort to making ever more annoying advertisements just to try and snare my attention.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

the marketing writes itself...

http://www.jinx.com/scripts/details.asp?affid=-1&p roductID=406

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

It's just I really DON'T want people knowing I spend 40% of my time on slashdot. I don't have a reason in particular, I just DON'T. I place a significant value on NOT having information about be spread willy nilly everwhere.

Regarding Javascript, I REALLY don't like the idea of my browser automatically running code that someone else has written without me having the chance to check it out first. I don't think javascript is evil as a language, I just don't like the idea of going to a website and blindly running code from there. I don't care that it's in a sandbox -- all it takes is one exploit for the code to break its way out of the sandbox and boom. (And hopefully I'm running Linux and the developer is too focused on Win32 for his payload to do anything once it's out of javascriptland, but you never know.)

Seriously, I'm never going to put instant, blind trust in anything online until I've checked it out first, and even then on general principles I won't enable cookies or jscript unless there's a compelling reason to do so.

(3 the session-only feature in Moz browsers) =D

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

Cookies. Have. Nothing. to do. With. Adware! "Eh?" you say? "But i thought cookies were teh evil?"

I dunno. Perhaps you could be so kind as to educate the audience.

Why is it when I do random web surfing, web sites are able to detect my email addresses and turn around and spam me ON TOPIC within a day or two after the fact? I blame cookies. Am I wrong in this? Thanks.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[whitehatlurker]

Well, as a web viewer, I have to ask - "why do you need to use cookies and javascript?"

If I want to browse with Lynx, and miss your fancy graphics and stuff, Why. Do. You. Care?

Why do you need to know that I spend 94.3% of my time on /., particularly when you also (think you) know my employer? (If I have /. open in a tab in the background all day ... what does that prove?)

I don't know what sites you've developed, but I think that, in general, web developers are too demanding of their viewers.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[jessmeister]

There is no way that a cookie is relaying your email information. They only way a site can even look at a cookie is if they set it. Otherwise its a no go. The only way a cookie could contain your email address is you gave it previously to that site. In which case thats the source of your spam

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

How about advertisers can go fuck themselves? How about I'm going to employ every blocking technology I can get my hands on because it's none of your damn business? How about I'll delete all my cookies at the end of a session except the ones that I whitelist to leave alone? I want to know why people, advertisers in particular, are so damn interested in what I choose to do with my computer? Fuck off you assholes. I want to do my shit and be left the fuck alone. Okay? You can't have my money. Go to fucking hell you rat bastard scumbags.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[jdhutchins]

Cookies are very useful for session management. The only other real way to do session management is through URL rewriting, which is ugly and has more security problems than cookies. And many websites do need session management. Anything where you log in, anything where you have a shopping cart, etc, pretty much need a cookie. Javascript may be another story, but cookies are needed for many websites to work.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[NickFortune]

Its not that cookies are such a bad thing when used correctly

Bad for whom?

Educate the masses on the benefits and advertisers would see positive results. Who knows maybe they wouldnt have to resort to making ever more annoying advertisements just to try and snare my attention.

And no doubt spammers worldwide would suddenly see the errors of their ways and spam no more, give that targetted ads driven by tracking cookies were suddenly so effective...

I'm sorry, I can't see it. Advertising is not an industry known for it's string ethical stance, and let's face it, such plagues as popups and flash ads were rife long before most people started disabling cookies.

Logging in isn't such a big problem. I allow session cookies where they have a clear and useful purpose, so I only have to click that button once or twice a day.

And besides which, my surfing habits are none of their business.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, i'm not an email slut :-) It's simply damn odd that my professional email gets dinged after browsing web sites. Maybe it's crackers. Hmm. Thanks.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Mr. Slippery]

Anything where you log in, anything where you have a shopping cart, etc, pretty much need a cookie.

Why is it that no one uses the HTTP authentication mechanism for logins, and instead makes cookies do the job?

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I infer correctly that cookies must be tied to the ip of the site placing them in order to be retrieved?

If so, then what's to stop sites from working with 3rd parties who place the cookies exchange data with the site?

So:

1) I go to A and provide my e-mail address
2) While at A, through a link, C places a cookie
3) A then passes the e-mail address to C
4) I now visit B, also working with C
5) a link on B's page allows C to retrieve its cookie
6) C tells B "here's the e-mail address".
7) (I'm sorry for this one, but) C Profits.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Short Circuit]

HTTP authentication would require the server to track session state.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[sqlrob]

That's what companies like DoubleClick do, and MSN pulls tricks to allow the cookies to work across domains.

And it's tied to the domain of the site placing it, not the IP. Many sites have an image from the ad trackers (a single, invisible pixel, aka web bug) for placing the cookie. Those images can also be in e-mails that are rendered as HTML (look below the final </html> in the message source, they're commonly there)

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Allnighterking]

Oh no I'm very well educated in what happens with the data collected. I've seen way to many cookies used to follow me around the net. Gage my surfing habits, then once certain companies compile the data in reference to my IP number, Internet account etc. All that remains is to let their servers get broken into and the lives and lifestyles of now it seems hundereds of thousands (not the original thousands as we were told originally) of Americans are wide open to identity theft. Not that the cookies were the only seed in the forest but rather a seed you don't want to sprout. Seems that the only way to be protected these days is to either be a crook or a polititian .... not being redundant at all.

As for the shear crap called adds. Sorry for years they have had highly targeted adds. (just under a different name so it has to be something different right? A rose by any other name is someones patent. One thing they have learned. 2 kinds of adds get noticed. Really Good ones. Really bad ones. Most people don't remember the company attached to the really good ones. Everyone remembers the company attached to the really bad ones. Guess which one causes the most revenue increase.... yep. The one you love to hate.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[noidentity]

Even the Cookie Monster is having to cut back on cookies.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Mr. Slippery]

HTTP authentication would require the server to track session state.

How? I don't follow. Maybe I wasn't clear.

Some sites use a simple cookie for login without any other session state tracking. Seems to me that the HTTP crafters provided a mechanism to do that. Why does everyone re-invent the wheel?

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[TiggsPanther]

Its not that cookies are such a bad thing when used correctly. Some people dont want to use them and thats fine. For them let them log in repeatedly and see ads that arent relevant or contextual to what they have been doing or watching.

That's why I have my browser set to ask me what I want to do with cookies, then I use per-site allow/block settings depending on whether I need to log in or not. If I don't need to log into it, or don't need settings to persist, then I don't let the cookies get set. (Although MSN/Hotmail/Passport is a real pig, as it seems arbitrary as to which cookies are required for Hotmail to load)
But at the end of the day it's up to me which of these do and don't persist on my computer.

And as for advertising, well I don't care as I mostly ignore them anyway. If I lack the money/justification to pay for a subscription to a site than I probably lack the same for whatever the adverts are trying to sell at me.
The ads here on Slashdot are about as relevantly targetted as they will get for me. But that doesn't change the simple fact that these days if I do want to spend money I'll go do my own damn legwork. Adverts really don't encourage me to seek out a product.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Ford Prefect]

Why is it that no one uses the HTTP authentication mechanism for logins, and instead makes cookies do the job?

Because the standard HTTP authentication mechanism is a bit ... Crap?

The standard, most widely supported 'Basic' version makes the browser send the username and password in plaintext on every page request. Okay, without SSL, any login mechanism will transmit the password at least once, but 'Basic' makes it a bit too easy for packet sniffers and the like.

Also, a bit more seriously, there's no standard way of getting the browser to clear its cached username and password beyond quitting the browser completely. It's as if someone entirely forgot that part of the standard, and thus it's a bit annoying.

Cookies are a useful side-route around these problems; I rewrote my standard login system thingy recently to use a cookie containing a username and a long 'hash' string - the password is only transmitted once, then that login session is tied to a specific IP address (or rather, range of addresses to take account of multiple proxy servers and similar). It's hardly hyper-secure, but it's an improvement, and it's far easier to do with cookies than with any standard HTTP authentication.

I do agree that cookies are horribly overused. I only ever set them when I absolutely need to store information client-side (and then it's only ever a reference to stuff stored in a database on the server) - other programmers seem to set as many cookies as they can, in the hope that some might be useful...

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen way to many cookies used to follow me around the net

You've seen way too many cookies, dude. Learn it, live it, love it.

Gage my surfing habits

How about we gauge your surfing habits instead.

it seems hundereds of thousands

Hundreds, even.

either be a crook or a polititian

Can I be a politician too?

As for the shear crap

Sheer crap, maybe.

called adds

What are these "adds" you speak of? Are you down on arithmetic for some reason? (Oh, you mean advertisements? Funny, we here on Earth call them ads.)

Zero tolerance, people. Zero tolerance.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Brian Blessed]

I don't think javascript is evil as a language, I just don't like the idea of going to a website and blindly running code from there. I don't care that it's in a sandbox -- all it takes is one exploit for the code to break its way out of the sandbox and boom.

I think we should try to design trustworthy sandboxes for using javascript because the problems you list could just as well apply to other incoming files from the net such as images, or html. I know that these types of file are not usually considered turing-complete, but that is not a requirement for an exploit that would have the same effect as one in a javascript sandbox.

- Brian.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[(54)T-Dub]

I found your problem.

1) I go to A and provide my e-mail address

Don't go giving out your email address to just any site. Read their privacy policy and/or give them a throw away email address (ie: hotmail, gmail). Cookies aren't generally used for transfering private information from one site to another. They are more commonly used to track ad revenue. 1) Surfing on site A 2) Click a link to site B 3) Signup/purchase on site B 4) Site A gets a piece of the revenue Is that so evil? No. Site A supplied the lead why shouldn't they get part of the profit.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[CDarklock]

> Advertising is not an industry known
> for it's string ethical stance

I wonder why?

"Hey," says the advertiser, "we'll give you free internet service if you use our special browser that shows you ads."

"Why, that *is* a good deal," says the consumer, who signs a contract and gets online with the free account.

Then he runs off and downloads a program that hides the ads, so he doesn't have to see them. Now he's got free internet service at the advertiser's expense, but the advertiser isn't getting to advertise.

Eventually, the people who buy the ads realise they don't get any business through this advertiser, and they go to another one. The advertiser loses all his sponsors, can't afford to continue providing internet connections, and shuts down.

"Hey!" shouts the user. "We had a DEAL, scumbag."

Ethics, like morals, are a luxury. You have them when you can afford to have them. When times get rough, ethics start getting fuzzy, and eventually they disappear altogether. So the advertiser has few if any ethics, because he cannot afford them.

But what's the user's excuse? He signed a contract and took his share of the bargain, but wouldn't honor his own obligations.

"Of course not," scoffs the user. "It was an obligation to an *advertiser*. Advertisers are scum, and have no ethics, and never keep their word. So it's *okay* to lie to them, and cheat them, and steal from them."

Self-fulfilling prophecy, ne-c'est pas?

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[Short Circuit]

Gah...on second thought, maybe not. However, the state information would still need to be contained in the URL.

Also, look at the URL you're browser's at while you read this if you reply, you'll see "&op=Reply" added to the URL, which is stateful information.

Slashdot does store a lot of configuration data in a DB, though.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[HugeFatty]

It's just I really DON'T want people knowing I spend 40% of my time on slashdot.

And then you went and told us. ;-)

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[NickFortune]

You seem to be saying that it is acceptable for advertisers to embrace the postmodern amorality so popular in corporate circles, and yet that consumers who do the same are bad people.

I pay for my connect time in cash. Your hypothetical user may operate a double standard but your scenario hardly applies to the majority of internet denizens.

On the other hand, the amorality of internet advertising is far from hypothetical. Just look at the prevalence of popups and popunders. Look at the ads that jump, flash, play sounds and generally attempt to prevent the user from attending to his online pursuits.

All these deliberate distractions waste my time. If we accept the notion that time is money, and my time is most definitely worth money, then these advertisers, by wasting my time, are stealing from me.

And the response of the advertising community to the complaints of users has been to research more intrusive advertising techniques. Popups without close buttons, popups that launch new popups on exits, browser traps and re-directs...

If the ad industry is suffering at the hands of advert blockers, they have only themselves to blame. This software was developed in response to the overly intrusive nature of online advertising, and its popularity only reflects how widespread the is dislike of current advertising methodologies.

In any case, cute as your story is, I still don't see a compelling case why I should enable cookies and allow advertisers to compile a dossier on my web browsing habits. Like I said, it's none of their business.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[CDarklock]

> If we accept the notion that time
> is money, and my time is most
> definitely worth money, then these
> advertisers, by wasting my time, are
> stealing from me.

No, they're not. You *trade* watching the ad for using the web site, so you don't have to pay any actual money.

But you're stealing from *them* when you use an ad blocker. Either they paid for something they didn't get (showing you the ad), or you DIDN'T pay for something you DID get (viewing the web site).

Which is just like my example. Only instead of getting your WHOLE internet connection for free, you get little slices of it, and the cost is spread out among all the various people who operate web sites you like. So when you really think about it, you're hurting THEM, not the big bad advertiser.

And besides, it's people like you that give the advertisers an excuse to make all the ads that waste MY time. They have to try so much harder to make their numbers, you know, because of all the ad blockers!

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[NickFortune]

No, they're not. You *trade* watching the ad for using the web site, so you don't have to pay any actual money.

Really? According to whom?

But you're stealing from *them* when you use an ad blocker. Either they paid for something they didn't get (showing you the ad), or you DIDN'T pay for something you DID get (viewing the web site).

Show me where I signed. For my ad blocking to be considered theft, I would have to have made a formal agreement. You obviously feel that there is some sort of contract implicit in the act of accessing a web site. I strongly disagree.

One thing that seems beyond dispute is that your argument has no legal force.

My computer means my rules. If you want an explicit contract, make your site subscription-only and I will not view it at all. If I attempt to access that site without paying and in full knowledge of the terms and conditions, then, maybe I could be convicted of theft. Other than that your assertion is debatable at best.

If you don't like that, you could try making ads that don't actually annoy me, and then I would not block them. I have no objection to well behaved ads and I only block those that are overly distracting, intrusive or that try to install malware.

Unfortunately, not annoying people doesn't see to be a high priority with online ad agencies. Which is what prompted me to install adblock and privoxy in the first place. believe it or not, I was strongly in favour of the first few web ads I saw. This was back when all you saw were discrete banner ads that didn't get in the way of my conducting my online business.

You still haven't made anything resembling a case for why I should leave cookies enabled on my browser. In fact unless you count personal insults, you haven't even made a case for why I should allow any advertising at all.

I'm still not convinced

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[CDarklock]

> According to whom?

According to the site's owner and advertisers, which outvotes *you* at least two to one.

> For my ad blocking to be considered
> theft, I would have to have made a
> formal agreement.

Not really. If you do something that costs me money, and you *know* it's going to cost me money, and I haven't agreed to let you do it, most legal precedents I've seen seem to be in agreement that you are in fact liable.

Of course, nobody is going to sue you for two bucks, so it doesn't make much practical difference to YOU; it only makes a difference to the webmaster with thousands of people who *all* steal two bucks. But that's not your problem, is it?

I have noticed a certain pattern where people who don't produce anything of value seem to believe that they should have free and unlimited access to anything *I* create, if they find it valuable. However, I propose that the time I spend *creating* something is more valuable than the time you spend *consuming* it, and that through the act of consuming it you necessarily place yourself in my debt. I also propose that while the give-and-take sort of evens out in the grand scheme of things among serious content creators, the vast majority of content *consumers* are not content creators at all, let alone serious ones.

(After seeing your comment about insults, I feel compelled to clarify that the above is not a personal accusation, merely an observation of a pattern.)

> One thing that seems beyond dispute
> is that your argument has no legal
> force.

It's *legal* to take things out of someone else's cart at the supermarket, because technically it's still the property of the supermarket until they buy it. That doesn't make it right.

> Unfortunately, not annoying people
> doesn't see to be a high priority
> with online ad agencies.

The highest priority at ad agencies is to sell more ads, which they do by making better ads. How do they do this? Why, by tracking consumer response. Viewing ads and accepting cookies is how you vote, and if you don't vote, you can't complain.

And since you don't vote, you're the most convenient place to dump garbage! Consider this: an advertiser has a contract to give five thousand ad impressions to a company that makes cool stuff, and another five thousand to a company that makes crap. Looking over the tracking cookies he sees, everybody hates crap, so he shows the cookie-accepting viewer ads for cool stuff. Unfortunately, he still has to show crap five thousand times... but luckily, here you come with no cookie! Maybe you *like* crap! We certainly have no evidence to the contrary, so you get to see a bunch of ads for crap.

Believe it or not, advertisers WANT to make better ads, but if you don't tell them what's wrong... well, they can't fix it. That's how things work.

> In fact unless you count personal
> insults

Where did you see a personal insult? I don't even *know* you.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[NickFortune]

> According to whom?

According to the site's owner and advertisers, which outvotes *you* at least two to one.

That presumes that my computer is a democracy and that you and your advertisers are citizens of it and have votes. I know that none of you paid for the hardware, nor for the electricity or connection costs, so it's "no representation without taxation" as far as I'm concerned.

But assuming for a second that your logic is sound: There are you and your advertisers on the one hand. That's how many? A dozen? No more surely. Now how many on my side. Let's assume that your site has a thousand visitors. Given the popularity of software like adblock, it's likely that the majority of them dislike your adverts. At one thousand to a dozen, I think you'll find that we outvote you. Or are you going to tell me that I don't have a vote on your computer?

Isn't it interesting the arguments you can construct when you abuse the notion of democracy?

So once again: according to whom?

> For my ad blocking to be considered
> theft, I would have to have made a
> formal agreement.

Not really. If you do something that costs me money, and you *know* it's going to cost me money, and I haven't agreed to let you do it, most legal precedents I've seen seem to be in agreement that you are in fact liable.

Let's say you run a stall selling apples. I walk past and do not buy an apple. You then say "By willfully not buying my apples, you are costing me money. That's against the law!" I can't see this one flying in court.

Historically, the web has always been free to access except in cases where a formal agreement is made in advance. Even today there is enough free-to-access content that I think court would find that a reasonable expectation. If you cover your costs by making an agreement with one or more advertising companies, that agreement is between you and them. It does not compel me to view the advertising.

If you don't like that, then take your site subscription only. If you do so, then and only then, are you in a position to dictate the terms under which I view your site. That way I know in advance how much access is going to cost me, unlike adverts where I pay with my time, again and again and again. But if you do go for a subscription model, I shall expect it to be advert free.

Of course, nobody is going to sue you for two bucks, so it doesn't make much practical difference to YOU; it only makes a difference to the webmaster with thousands of people who *all* steal two bucks. But that's not your problem, is it?

But you seem to think it's OK for popups and other distractions to steal twenty minutes of my time for each hour I surf? I charge by the hour for my time. Bad adverts can waste as much as one third of my browsing time. And they do this to everyone. Do you not think you're operating under a double standard here?

I have noticed a certain pattern where people who don't produce anything of value seem to believe that they should have free and unlimited access to anything *I* create...

I can sympathise with that. For what it's worth I do offer the fruits of some of my labors to the world. It's not a huge contribution on the cosmic scale of things, I'll grant :)

> One thing that seems beyond dispute
> is that your argument has no legal
> force.

It's *legal* to take things out of someone else's cart at the supermarket, because technically it's still the property of the supermarket until they buy it. That doesn't make it right.

See, this is the problem I have with your argument: When it's the website owner or advertser, it's ok

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[CDarklock]

> That presumes that my computer is a
> democracy and that you and your
> advertisers are citizens of it and
> have votes.

Nope. It presumes that your connection to my web site is a shared property, because you are on one end and I am on the other, and if either end is dropped the connection doesn't exist. Your end of the connection contains exactly one person: you. My end, on the other hand, contains all the people involved in the maintenance of the site. So you get one vote on how this connection is used, and we get several... but you still have the right to veto the entire connection at will.

Your example is flawed, anyway, because there's no rational reason I couldn't turn it around and say every web site you ever visit has a vote over your browser. That would be clearly wrong, so your converse argument is probably just as wrong.

> Let's say you run a stall selling apples.

Bad analogy. We're not talking about passive failure, we're talking about active subversion.

Let's say I make some lemonade, and an advertiser agrees to pay me for the lemonade by counting how many cups people throw away and giving me a nickel for each one. So I put up a sign that says "free lemonade".

You come over with your *own* cup, and you fill it with lemonade. (This is an ad blocker that DOESN'T leave you counted as having seen the ad.) It's not illegal! I said "free lemonade". I didn't say "free lemonade in my cups but not yours".

So I say "hey, you know, I don't get paid for the lemonade unless you use my cups; my advertiser counts the cups in the trash every day". You say "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know" -- and you throw away a few cups. (This is an ad blocker that DOES count you as having seen the ad.)

Not the perfect analogy, but somewhat closer. If you want the lemonade, someone has to pay for it, and if YOU don't want to pay for it -- you have to deal with the conditions someone *else* sets on paying for it.

> You do not get to define the rules of the
> game to suit yourself.

I didn't. I defined the rules of the game as they currently exist: advertisers don't share information. They consider the information they have on who likes which ads to be a "trade secret", so each of them has to research and discover these things separately. Attempts to centralise -- most famously, DoubleClick -- have been met with suspicion at best and complete outrage at worst. So instead of having one election, we have a whole bunch of them.

And while I sympathise with your decision never to vote in any election, and fully support your right to make such a decision, those votes still don't get counted. Installing ad blocking software isn't a vote, because by its very nature it can't register that vote with the advertiser. Standing up and screaming "I refuse to vote!" is not a vote.

> I have no faith in cookies as a feedback
> mechanism.

It doesn't matter; they're the only feedback mechanism we have. We need to say "who are you?" and get something back that can be looked up in a database to figure out what ads will suit you best. Cookies can do that. What else can do that?

> I'm not offering so much to change my
> behavior as explaining how to craft an
> advert in such a way that I will suffer
> its presence on my desktop.

Surely you understand that to gather this kind of information from EVERYONE is an overly large burden without automated response systems, right?

But you've opted out of the automated systems. You're making things harder for the advertisers, and then complaining that they still haven't gotten it right.

This whole thing is a massive Catch-22. The advertisers say "give us your information", the public says "what about our privacy?!", and the advertisers say "trust us!"... which obviously means you can't.

My take: it will get worse before it gets better. We need to just bite the bullet and let the advertisers gather their data for a while, bec

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[NickFortune]

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-196948-highli ght-agetty.html

> That presumes that my computer is a
> democracy and that you and your
> advertisers are citizens of it and
> have votes.

Nope. It presumes that your connection to my web site is a shared property,

Odd, I could have sworn you told me that I was not entitled to do as I wished on my own computer because you and your advertisers outvoted me.

Your example is flawed, anyway, because there's no rational reason I couldn't turn it around and say every web site you ever visit has a vote over your browser.

Damn right it's flawed. It's your logic.

So I say "hey, you know, I don't get paid for the lemonade unless you use my cups; my advertiser counts the cups in the trash every day". You say "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know" -- and you throw away a few cups. (This is an ad blocker that DOES count you as having seen the ad.)

Do these cups follow me down the road making notes on my activities for the day. Do they interrupt my every conversation, my every sentence, telling me how great your lemonade is, sometimes long after I've left your stall? Do they jump up and block my path when I try to leave?

No? Then it's hardly analogous, is it?

> You do not get to define the rules of the
> game to suit yourself.

I didn't. I defined the rules of the game as they currently exist:

I keep asking you this question and you keep ignoring it. According to whom? You cite these supposed "facts" of yours in a tone of absolute authority, but you have yet to offer any evidence in support of your theories. Until you do, all you have for me is opinions, and mine are at least as good as yours, possibly better since I don't attempt to misrepresent mine as facts.

And while I sympathise with your decision never to vote in any election

More abuse of the notion of democracy. The system under discussion is not a democracy, there is no common constitution, and kindly stop trying to project electoral stereotypes onto me, thank you so very much.

> I have no faith in cookies as a feedback
> mechanism.

It doesn't matter; they're the only feedback mechanism we have. We need to say "who are you?" and get something back that can be looked up in a database to figure out what ads will suit you best. Cookies can do that. What else can do that?

I could certainly debate the notion that cookies are the only feedback mechanism we have. You'd have to be blind not to realise how hated are some tricks of online advertising, not that the industry seems to pay any attention. Indeed the adblock software you complain so bitterly about is itself a feedback signal. One of deafening magnitude, I should have thought.

But that's not really the issue. The issue isn't even one of whether the industry will pay any attention to these supposed "votes". The biggest flaw in your argument is this: Cookies cannot convey my dislike of an advertisement, and without that information the only "improvement" will be in the level skill manifest in the adverts which seek to manipulate me.

Suppose I see some popup ads and allow them to plant cookies. When the data gathered makes it back to home base, the agency says "hey, he's seen a whole bunch of these popup ads - he must like them. Let's send him a whole load more". Or are you now going to tell me that to "vote" I have to click on the damn things as well?

Cookies cannot convey my hatred of popup and popunders. They comminicate neither the loathing I have for animated flash banners that make sounds to draw my attention, nor the depth my dislike of ads that flash, jump about or masquerade as system error messages. All cookies do is tell if I've viewed these ad

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[CDarklock]

This is getting tedious.

Let me spell it out for you. My company *used* to do web advertising. We never used popups. We never installed malware. We just wanted people to accept a cookie so we could gather data.

Unfortunately, people were so reluctant to accept cookies, we couldn't gather valid data. We'd have twelve thousand impressions in a week, and only two hundred cookies returned. So no matter *how* much we wanted to cater to people's preferences, we didn't have the information to do it.

We're not in the web advertising business anymore. We're not in the SEO business, either. We've had to retarget our entire company focus, because you can't succeed in those businesses *honestly* anymore. We won't conduct dishonest business, full-stop. Not gonna happen.

So I have something of a problem with your position, because I *enjoyed* working in web-based marketing. It was fun. For a while, we could actually make decent money from it. But today, you don't make anything unless you're ready to operate in the multi-million impression range. That's where you start getting enough economies of scale that you can sell trash to idiots at random and make a profit.

And blocking cookies doesn't hurt those people, because they don't care what you think *anyway*. Blocking the ads doesn't help, because they don't *expect* you to click; you're not their target market. So what you're doing DOESN'T WORK. It is never GOING to work. It just drives the honest companies out of the business. And that's sad.

But if that's what you want, you go right ahead.

Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me

[NickFortune]

We're not in the web advertising business anymore. We're not in the SEO business, ei

Let me spell it out for you. My company *used* to do web advertising. We never used popups. We never installed malware. We just wanted people to accept a cookie so we could gather data.

Thank you for that. It's so much easier to appreciate your points with a little bit of context.

I also agree that this is getting tedious, so I'll try and be brief.

I applaud your moral stance, I acknowledge your propriety in your business methods. I even sympathise over the failure of your advertising business, since lord knows the world could use more ethical advertisers.

We've had to retarget our entire company focus, because you can't succeed in those businesses *honestly* anymore.

[ My initial comment that you took such exception to, was that the ad industry is not renowned for its strong ethical stance. Here you are echoing that sentiment. After all this effort... ]

I'm not objecting to you, or to any of the companies out there who do business honestly. The trouble is I never seem to see any of them, just doubleclick and their ilk. I'm sorry that they've given a bad name to an industry that you enjoyed working in, and I acknowledge that this is not your fault.

But that doesn't mean the bastards have stopped being bastards. And as you say, they rather outnumber the ethical organisations.

And blocking cookies doesn't hurt those people, because they don't care what you think *anyway*. Blocking the ads doesn't help, because they don't *expect* you to click; you're not their target market. So what you're doing DOESN'T WORK. It is never GOING to work. It just drives the honest companies out of the business. And that's sad.

I don't want to hurt them particularly - I just don't want them to know any more about me than is absolutely necessary. Because if they have that data, they will use it, and since we seem to be in agreement on their ethical standards, I hope you can understand my reluctance.

I regret the impact on honest businesses. On the other hand, I don't leave my front door unlocked. You could argue this makes it harder for my friends to visit, and that it doesn't bother the thieves who will just go steal from someone else. Nevertheless, I lock my door just the same.

But if that's what you want, you go right ahead.

It's not what I want, but I don't see myself as the author of your misfortune. Your anger would be better directed at those agencies who earned the distrust and hatred of so many people by their relentless exploitation of the online community safe in the (as it turns out fallacious) knowledge that there was nothing we could do about it.

As you describe your business, I doubt I would have blocked your adverts anyway. I try to block only on need, when something gets in the way of my getting the job done.

I doubt I'd have enabled cookies though. Do you remember what it was like five years ago even trying to block cookies? Every widget on a page had it's own cookie. There were webbugs from companies that had no ads on the page and no connection with it - other than that they wanted to know where I'd been and what I was doing. It got to the point where, at dial up rates, a significant part of my surf time was being spent downloading cookies.

And there comes a point where you say "whose machine is this, anyway?"

Debian needs a release

[bonch]

Okay, they've gotten the election out of the way. Now release Sarge! Seriously, they haven't had a stable release in nearly three years. Ubuntu was created due to the complete lack of leadership on Debian's part. And with Red Hat's withdrawal, Debian should be thriving right now. But it's not.

A lot of people didn't seem to realize in the Ubuntu compatibility article that if Debian dies, so does Ubuntu.

Re:Debian needs a release

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks like a repost, are you are the same person that did it before...

Just what we need

[Alien54]

An alarm clock that transmits our dreams to the FBI. Or let's the FBI sends it's dreams to us.

But If I wore my tin foil hat, it would be kind of counter productive ....

Wouldn't it?

Re:Just what we need

[RevDobbs]

FWIW, I know that I feel much better after four hours of sleep than I do after six; I always assumed that the reason the extra sleep left me groggy was that I was being jarred awake from deep sleep (details here). I find sleep fascinating, and always enjoy reading the disussions on it -- especially on how to get the most out of it. It seems like quite a safe tuning parameter to optimize, and a lot easier to get into than nootropics.

I gladly, and with out hesitation, welcome our brain-monitoring alarm clock overlords.

Re:Just what we need

[artifex2004]

An alarm clock that transmits our dreams to the FBI. Or let's the FBI sends it's dreams to us.

But If I wore my tin foil hat, it would be kind of counter productive ....

Wouldn't it?

That's why you should be sleeping in a Faraday Cage, of course. Problem solved.

Re:Just what we need

[Exatron]

That depends, if you rewired the alarm clocks so the dream the FBI sends to you is immediately sent back by the second alarm clock, it could be quite entertaining.

Wakeup watch...

[Polo]

There's already a watch that helps you wake up at the "optimal" time:

http://www.sleeptracker.com/

Re:Wakeup watch...

[Daath]

Do you know if that works?
Looks interesting - If I'm not woken during a light sleep-phase I am completely wasted myself, it would be nice to have something to help ;)

Re:Wakeup watch...

[JupiterX]

Gear Live posted a very favorable review of the SleepTracker watch.

Re:Wakeup watch...

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is blogging about it, but it doesn't seem so positive. http://waterflavored.blogspot.com/

Re:Wakeup watch...

[jacobcaz]

• Do you know if that works?
  Looks interesting - If I'm not woken during a light sleep-phase I am completely wasted myself, it would be nice to have something to help ;)

It actually does work really well. I bought one (read about my experience here on my blog).

It does sense when I'm mostly awake and starts beeping which fully wakes me up. I'ts still an exercise to pull myself out of the soft, warm, fluffy bed at 6:30 in the morning. Goddamn corporate job, sucking the life right out of me!

Re:Wakeup watch...

[Anonymous Coward]

It uses an accelerometer to gauge periods of semi-awakeness.
Why pay $149 for a watch when I can strap my new Powerbook G4 to my chest and accomplish the same result?

Uhhhh

[elid]

On the heels of Clocky comes this new alarm clock that will monitor a sleeper's brain waves to determine the best time to wake him up. The device uses a microprocessor within a headband that wirelessly transmits brainwaves to the clock. When the person is in a light sleep and is likely to wake up 'perky,' the alarm will go off.

What if I go to sleep late? Will this thing let me sleep till 2PM? I don't really understand the use of this thing.

Re:Uhhhh

[Sparr0]

The device monitors how deeply you are sleeping, if you are dreaming, etc. If you are woken up when you are sleeping lightly you are likely to wake up quickly, but if your alarm interrupts a dream you tend to wake up slowly and more tired. Have you ever woken up early and felt ready to go, but felt like sleeping til your alarm goes off... then when it does you feel tired? This prevents that by picking a time close to your target wakeup time (but before your cutoff time) when you are the least likely to wake up tired.

Re:Uhhhh

[David Gould]

That's what it sounded like to me -- that you'd set it for a time range, long enough to be pretty confident of hitting a light-sleep phase. It sounds like a really great idea; something I think I'd love to have. I just have one question:

Who gets to wear the headband -- me or my girlfriend?

Re:Uhhhh

[Adult film producer]

I've noticed this myself, it's like my brain needs so many hours (or minutes) of dreaming every night. A lot of times I'll wake up really groggy and feel tired for the rest of the day.. but as soon as I take a nap I'll start dreaming, almost as if I'm picking up where I left off. 75-100 mins of extra sleep & dreaming and I'm feeling great for the rest of the day.

Wish I could use some of the pillows at work :|

Re:Uhhhh

[Erik Fish]

Just wait for the model that can monitor more than one headband at a time.

Re:Uhhhh

[David Gould]

Okay... and when does the alarm go off? When I'm in the optimal light-sleep phase, or when she is? (I thought that part of the question would have been obvious from my original post.)

I'm thinking the real solution would be to have small speakers mounted the headband itself, right near the wearer's ears, with the alarm only loud enough to wake up that person; then we could each have one and both benefit.

Now we just need ATi...

[dhasenan]

If only ATi would release drivers for its cards supporting 3d acceleration on Linux. Never buying from them again.

Re:Now we just need ATi...

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI's cards are currently the fastest Free Software 3D acceleration available, with the DRI project's R200 drivers and a Radeon 8500 aka 9200

The R300 drivers (for cards like the 9600 or the X800) need more help. Volunteer to test things, report what works & what doesn't. If you have the know-how, help to reverse engineer more of the fragment shader programming.

http://r300.sf.net/

Re:Now we just need ATi...

[mp3phish]

Agreed. I will not purchase an ATI drive until they release a top notch driver (with similar quality to nVidia's official linux drivers) on a regular basis...

Currently, nVidia has a stronghold on the linux market and it shows. It is simply ridiculous that I cannot buy a new model ATI card, plug it in, and have it work with video games under linux. Not only is it ridiculous, it is embarassing.

Re:Now we just need ATi...

[cfalcon]

I like their script that overwrites your xorg.conf file. That thing is great. It breaks my keyboard, my mouse, assigns arbitrary and wrong refresh rates for my monitor, and a couple other things I'm too tired to think of right now. Last time it didn't even work.

I'll give the Free software thing a try soon, but it hasn't been a high priority for me, as I don't use my hardware acceleration near as much as I thought I would (I thought my nice job would give me money to play games: it did, but took away my time!).

Re:Now we just need ATi...

[Anonymous Coward]

If X had a proper configuration framework instead of relying on a flat file, maybe ATI wouldn't need such gross hacks to try to make things work. Just a thought.

Morning Wood

[Anonymous Coward]

When the person is in a light sleep and is likely to wake up 'perky,' the alarm will go off.

Hardware hack, anyone?

Re:Morning Wood

[circusboy]

as I understand the biology, this is already in hand. (forgive me ;))

since you are biologically wired to "wake up" about 5 minutes before you wake up, this would work out just about right.

Warbraining anyone?

[Tackhead]

> The device uses a microprocessor within a headband that wirelessly transmits brainwaves to the clock.

If you want to make it to work in the morning, you've gotta take the tinfoil hat off before you go to bed. And pay no attention to the black van with the three dozen Pringles cans mounted on the roof. We^H^HThey are not monitoring your dreams. Honest.

Open source drivers/and so forth...

[kangpeh]

The article stated that VIA is releasing grand statements, rather than actually doing something. The truth is, though, it isn't just VIA. It's everyone. Even you. Everybody's problem is, even if you have an idea and a plan, going through with it is difficult. 100% of my clients are fully capable people, however, sometimes they just need a little bit of a push. That's why we need to SHOW these companies that they WILL get something out of coming into the open source community. We need to show them we love them. We need to show them they will make money. We need to show them we don't like their non-open-source competitors. I mean seriously, can't you guys checkout the battle between Nvidia (awesome commitment to open source) and ATI (recent but poor commitment)? ATI's reputation has plundered quite a bit due to their lack of open source gangsterism.

Firefox and cookies

[ad0gg]

Firefox needs to disable third party cookies by default. There's no reason why images/iframes from other(3rd party) domains should be allowed to set cookies. I don't see any reason why 3rd party cookies should be allowed, they are frequently abused and used as web bugs that track your web browsing from site to site.

Re:Firefox and cookies

[Greyfox]

A lot of web sites now complain when you don't have cookies enabled. I like the mid-way solution of having them enabled for the session only, with a few exceptions (Like slashdot.)

As for flash local shared objects, that's easily defeated simply by not installing flash. If I wanted to watch animated commercials I'd be watching TV (I don't allow animated GIFs either.)

Re:Firefox and cookies

[Jobe_br]

Actually, its also used by sites that use an ASP for site-statistics. Such as HBX (formerly Hitbox) by WebSideStory. These systems depend on cookies (and since they're set by the HBX servers, not by your site, they're third party). These ASPs provide accurate "visit" tracking, instead of just hits, page views, etc. Tracking a visit accurately does require some client-side involvement.

I can't say I particularly like it, but, it is a perfectly valid use of third party cookies.

Re:Firefox and cookies

[Martin Blank]

I have never installed Flash on Firefox, leaving that to IE. Aside from the lame timesheet program we have to access via IE at work, viewing Weebl and Bob, and the occasional Flash game, I almost never use IE for anything.

Re:Firefox and cookies

[iainl]

That's the Hitbox I've got blocked at DNS level, yes?

Why would I to let them set cookies?

Water + Elec+Forehead?

[bosewicht]

Hope you don't have a leaky ceiling!!!

Re:Water + Elec+Forehead?

[Nermal6693]

Or, if it wakes you up at the 'wrong' time and leaves you tired, you could potentially turn it off then fall back to sleep, then get up later, forget you're still wearing the thing, and shower with it on.

of course

[Alien54]

drilling the tiny holes for the elctronic probes doesn't hurt one bit

Re:of course

[binford2k]

You know, if you friend's story was a little more readable, I might actually finish reading it!

Slashbacks really need a tag line

[Eradicator2k3]

Something along the lines of:

Slashback: Because you enjoyed these articles the first TWO times around.
or
Slashback: The nice way to say DUPE!!!
or
Slashback: This time we realized we've duped a story before we posted it.

OTOH, what's to prevent unscrupulous editors from going back and editing the topic from Linux, YRO, etc. to Slashback in an attempt to cover their butts?

Re:Slashbacks really need a tag line

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, what's to prevent unscrupulous editors from going back and editing the topic from Linux, YRO, etc. to Slashback in an attempt to cover their butts?

The same thing that prevented them from suppressing the duplicates the first time around. Laziness.

Re:Slashbacks really need a tag line

[DJCF]

Note to editors: I think slashback is really good. Many many times have I thought "That's an interesting story", and wondered what happened because of it. For example: Pressuring a multinational corporation. That kind of stuff always appears in the news, but very rarely do we actually see the effect of that pressure (because it isn't deemed "interesting"). In conclusion: I think slashback is one of the best things I've seen on slashdot in a long time.

Am I the only one?

I submitted a story about PIE

[RM6f9]

when I first saw it - the /. editors in their 9sic) "wisdom" elected to reject it. Thank you for the extension. Maybe it should make /. front page as an article in its own right.

Smart Alarm Clock for Yuppy Wakeups

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about anyone else but I DON'T NEED PERKY WAKEUPS! I prefer to roll over, smack the clock, and roll right back to sleep.

I don't want "perky."

[Shag]

I just want a clock that'll make my wife wake up non-grouchy. I'm sure there's a huge market for this device.

Re:I don't want "perky."

[Geek of Tech]

>> I just want a clock that'll make my wife wake up non-grouchy. I'm sure there's a huge market for this device.

Why? How many different people have to worry about your wife waking up grouchy? :P

Re:I don't want "perky."

[michrech]

I don't believe it's possible for a woman to not be grouchy.

Sure, sometimes they seem like they are in a good mood -- but behind that facade, they are just waiting for the right time to blow up.

Re:I don't want "perky."

[mr_walrus]

>Why? How many different people have to worry about your wife waking
>up grouchy? :P

at least as many as the Private Eye he hired told him
about...

Re:I don't want "perky."

[NanoGator]

"Why? How many different people have to worry about your wife waking up grouchy? :P"

Geek of Tech wins: HUMILIATION.

Re:I don't want "perky."

[thegrassyknowl]

I just want a clock that'll make my wife wake up non-grouchy

Isn't that called "divorce followed by property settlement favouring 90% your ex wife followed by child support payments totalling 80% your take home to your ex"?

The whole business thing really bugs me

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who knows maybe they wouldnt have to resort to making ever more annoying advertisements just to try and snare my attention."

Going out of business will take care of that.

In fact a lot of problems will go away if that happens.

Alarm clock?!?

[El]

1) I'm never likely to wake up "perky"!

2) I don't need an alarm clock to annoy my spouse -- I can do that just fine all by myself!

3) I've never actually used an alarm clock. I tell myself what time it is and what time I want to get up just before I go to sleep, then I wake myself up at the optimal point in my sleep cycle. Only problem with this is I tend to wake myself up too early!

nonononononononoononononono!!!

[macintoshguy]

"plus it always broadcasts CNN" Aaaagh! Make it stop... :(

Hear^2!

[interactive_civilian]

I completely agree. Or, even as a compromise, for those of us who want to be notified of cookies and choose to allow, deny, or allow for session, it would be REALLY nice if the default button was "deny" rather than "allow".

it is really annoying to have to mouse over to the button that I choose the most often.

btw, if there is anyway to change this behavior short of recompiling, I would love to know how. :D

Re:Hear^2!

[Bill Barth]

How about 'alt-d' rather than 'enter'?

Slashbacks really need a tag line-Can you Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

"OTOH, what's to prevent unscrupulous editors from going back and editing the topic from Linux, YRO, etc. to Slashback in an attempt to cover their butts?"

Memory.

Cookie Madness

[shirai]

I'm probably not the first one who's thought of this but it seems to me that cookie abuse could be reduced dramatically without affecting most websites by doing the following:

"Disable cookies on all images that are being pulled from another domain."

That is, if a web page grabs an image from another domain (a banner, pixel, etc.) then pull it but don't send any of the cookie information for that image.

I mean isn't that the way that most developers track access across websites? You put a one-pixel image and set the cookie through there. Then by reading the http_refer, you know where they've been and associate it to a single user. To track across sites though, this pixel is usually on a separate domain than the site being accessed.

By the way, I originally thought to disable cookies on all images but realized some servers may do security checking via cookies before sending an image. But there is very little legitimate use for sending cookies on images that are outside the domain.

Also, the same could be said of ANYTHING that is pulled off a different domain including scripts, css, etc. If it is on the same domain, send the cookies. If not, then make the request but don't send the cookies.

I would say precious few sites would depend on this behavior and it shouldn't break anything except for the tracking (which we want to break). Not saying that a site couldn't be made to break on this but I can't think of many reasons why a site would.

By the way, I think cookies are great for the most part. SlashDot uses them, I use them, anything with a login (mostly) uses them. I find it humorous when people insist that cookies are evil and you shouldn't have a single one. You can just as easily fake a cookie for a session by sticking an ID in the URL which, personally, I think is worse. Now your personally identifying tracker is available for all to see.

Re:Cookie Madness

[mabinogi]

actually, I dislike cookies as session identifiers, as it limits you to one session per browser.
A session key in the url allows you to log in multiple times, and possibly as multiple users.

It's not something that you need to do every day - but when you're trying to set up something like a CMS with varying levels of access control, it becomes a pain in the neck to either have to keep logging in and out to verify the way it looks to different users, or have IE, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox all open at once.

Re:Cookie Madness

[NanoGator]

"By the way, I originally thought to disable cookies on all images but realized some servers may do security checking via cookies before sending an image. But there is very little legitimate use for sending cookies on images that are outside the domain."

Seems to me that'd be a great way to deal with image leeching on the web. Not the only way but not a bad way. One of the neat features of the web is that it can be so inter-connected, but since bandwidth costs money, not everybody feels those features are so neat.

I don't have a strong opinion either way (frankly, I like the idea of having the client specify whether it'll accept the cookies or not), but nearly ANY feature can be both useful and abused.

Re:Cookie Madness

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is another way to do this. Just set up multiple subdomains when testing. Shouldn't take a lot to mod your code to do this.

For example:

a.mytestsite.com

b.mytestsite.com

c.mytestsite.com

If you have your own DNS server, it is really easy because you can wildcard the first part. Something like *.mytestsite.com all point to 127.0.0.1 (or whatever your web server is).

Even if you don't though, it is easy to add a bunch of entries into your hosts file (or mac/linux equivalent).

Sunny

Re:Cookie Madness

[Mage Powers]

But logging in multiple times is only good for you, the builder, it's nice being able to log into a site, lose the window, go to the site again and I'm still logged in.

I personally think things should be built to work well and coherantly for the average person, but not screw up the rest of us.
Which will waste more time in total?
You opening up a few web browsers
People having to log into sites a lot more

Ya know what'd be worse? web browsers sharing cookies, then you'd have to use multiple computers.

soap boxing to counter your soap boxing? ;)

Re:Cookie Madness

[mabinogi]

Yes, I admit it's not really much of a problem.

>I personally think things should be built to work well and coherantly for the average person, but not screw up the rest of us.
Definitely - particularly that last bit, which seems to be forgotten by a lot of people who think usuability stops at the first part (see .sig).

> Ya know what'd be worse? web browsers sharing cookies, then you'd have to use multiple computers.
heh, part of me cringed at the thought, and the other part thought "that'd be cool".
Of course if you combined that with Netscape 4.x's remote profile, then you'd be completely screwed, because your cookies follow you around, so even different computers wouldn't help ;)

Re:Cookie Madness

[merlin_jim]

The default behaviour in IE for sites in the internet zone is to block all cross-domain cookies.

IIRC, the W3C even recommends that HTTP clients do not send cookies across domains.

Re:Cookie Madness

[m50d]

That's already an option in mozilla. One problem is it breaks MSN passport - any site which uses it needs to be able to use a cookie from the passport domain rather than their domain. There's probably other cross-site logins like that it causes problems with. And while you or I may not like passport, there are many many people who use it.

Re:Cookie Madness

[pla]

That is, if a web page grabs an image from another domain (a banner, pixel, etc.) then pull it but don't send any of the cookie information for that image.

I think you might have missed the point of webbugs...

If you let the image itself load, the site that hosts it doesn't need you to allow a cookie, you've already given them 90% of what they want... Any site they partner with, that you visit, will record you as visiting in their log file. If, on any of those sites, you enter some personal information, they can then go back and correlate all that information.


"At 1113572714, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-X, who reports the visitor gave email address foo@bar.com. At 1113572790, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Y, who reports the visitor gave the name John Doe. At 1113572842, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Z, who reports the visitor gave a zip code of 64105. We therefore know that John Doe, from Kansas City MO, has email address foo@bar.com".


See the problem? As mere humans, we tend to think in terms of what we ourselves know. Data colleting corporations will quite happily go through a few hundred tiny chunks of data to piece together a profile of you with such detail that your own mother probably wouldn't know it all.

Re:Cookie Madness

[fireklar]

Better features are already available for Firefox. Although you can, in most browsers, refuse cross-domain cookies, with the proper Firefox extensions you can: whitelist sites for cookie use, only store the cookies you want past the end of the session, and edit the cookies to expire when you want them to.

The http referer is not something you should depend on since users such as myself disable it for privacy reasons.

Cookies and URL session IDs are equally insecure and should both be limited by IP address to avoid such session theft. Both the cookie and the url session id are just as 'available for all to see'.

Now once elinks can do all these things as easily, it will be the best browser in existence.

VIA Open Source & the binary MPEG driver

[jonwil]

It might be that VIA had to release the MPEG part of the driver the way they did in order to comply with the patent licence they got from whoever owns the relavent MPEG patent(s).

Re:VIA Open Source & the binary MPEG driver

[orv]

Nah, the binary interface just hides the register specs to their chipset. All the actual mpeg code is inside the chipset.
This is more likely simply an attempt to control the provision of the API to their own proprietary VMI (VIA MPEG Interface) SDK. Basically an attempt to tie people to their platform, so that once you write yoru code to work on VIA systems, you'll have to write it over again if you want to use anyone elses hardware.

Curse my n00b skills!

[macintoshguy]

I wan't paying attention when I posted this; it was meant to go at the top as a reply to the "Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups " comment.

Re:Curse my n00b skills!

[Actuator Man]

Sheesh, you have only one mouse button and still you click in the wrong place.

Best. Alarm Clock. Ever!

[Indy Media Watch]

Clocky is a clock for people who have trouble getting out of bed. When the snooze bar is pressed, Clocky rolls off the table and finds a hiding spot, a new one every day.

Re:Best. Alarm Clock. Ever!

[Mr. Slippery]

When the snooze bar is pressed, Clocky rolls off the table and finds a hiding spot, a new one every day.

I really don't get the idea behind that. When I need to get up, I set a second alarm on the other side of the room (these days it's "at x:yyam\n xmms -p" on the command line, but same idea). I have to get up to turn it off, regardless of whether it "hides" or not.

First one wakes me up, I turn it off and snooze for ten, second one fires off and I have to get up to turn it off. Very simple.

Re:Best. Alarm Clock. Ever!

[Daengbo]

xmms has a plugin for this, called "Alarm." It might be easier for you to set the alarm once for the whole week (different times for each day...)

Re:Best. Alarm Clock. Ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes having to get up is not enough, if the clock is always in the same place. I have at times been able to routinely turn off the alarm or hit snooze on an alarm clock ten feet away and have no memory of having heard the alarm or gotten up at all.

Is it just me...

[jptechnical]

or does this guy look alot like the south park creator? - http://www.axonlabs.com/images/ben-whiteboard.jpg

Personally, I don't want anything attached to my head while sleeping that was built by this buncha goobers. - http://www.axonlabs.com/images/group-daniel.jpg

You don't need to bookmark the Macromedia page...

[eco2geek]

...referenced above, and in the previous YRO article, to set your privacy preferences, or use a Firefox extension. All you have to do is right-click on a Flash object in a web page to bring up a context menu, and choose "Settings..." (although one wonders if this could be disabled at the Flash object author's choosing).

(Actually, I find it more disturbing that a Flash object in a web page could access a local webcam or microphone. Has anyone seen this capability in use?)

Thanks to "bigtallmofo" for bringing this to our attention in the previous YRO article. Who knew?

Not true!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Debs can be made from tarballs, deb binaries constructed from source... Deba can be made from RPMs. Ubuntu would survive, as would Knoppix and other Debian-based distros with good developers. Besides, where do you think all those "former" Debian developers would do if Debian goes under because of the twits at Debian legal? Create RPMs for Red Hat?

Alarm clocks

[Sir Holo]

This may beat the 90-minute rule.

Sleep cycles are about 90 minutes long, so setting the alarm at a 90-minute interval from when you fall asleep will make it more likely that you'll wake up on the high side of sleep, and more likely that you'll feel refreshed. The rule fails if something disturbs your sleep pattern, though, which is where this device (if it exists) would be better.

Re:Alarm clocks

[iamlucky13]

I've heard 90 minutes and I've heard 3 hours. I guess the 90 minutes must just be a further break down of the 3 hour cycles.

From my own experience, it definitely seems to work. If I take I nap and I wake up before 1.5 or 3 hours, I feel really groggy. If I wake up in the morning after getting less than 3 cycles (actually about 8.5 hours for me), I generally have more trouble motivating myself to move. In fact, it seems to be harder to wake up after 7 hours of sleep than 6, I assume due to the cycles. Thank goodness graduation is less than 3 weeks away. Then those horrible all-nighters in the lonely engineering lab will be over.

How is this different?

[krautcanman]

What's the deal? Editors running out of material to post? How is this any different than multiply posted "news" items?

Actually come to think of it ... this is good news! The /. editors have finally seen the light! Cheers!

Objection...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the objection extension include an option to completely disable shared objects? After that article came out a while ago, I went to Macromedia's site and deleted everything and set it to deny-all. It would be useful to have that option without having to go to Macromedia's site.

Kind of like iron . . .

[SEE]

To see anybody associated with Debian quoting "release early and often".

Re:Kind of like iron . . .

[advocate_one]

To see anybody associated with Debian quoting "release early and often"

The problem is, the rest of the Linux world just won't stand around and wait for Debian... I just wish they'd go and say "ach, to hell wi'it..." and shovel it out the door and then issue a service pack some months down the road... you know, like Microsoft do...

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, what's to prevent unscrupulous editors from [...] editing

Hi! You must be new here! All our "editors" have more scruples than that. Or, umm, something here clearly prevents it, at least :-)

Sarge and Ubantu comparison

[jesterzog]

I asked this in the earlier Debian/Ubantu article but I think I was a bit late for it to be seen, so I'll try again.

Is there much of a reason to actually switch from Sarge to Ubantu? Right now I'm running a workstation and a laptop on Sarge. It seems to work very nicely, and it's very up-to-date because I keep it up to date with the Sarge repository, which with the occasional exception (eg. still waiting for x.org), is about as up-to-date as most other distros.

I was quite surprised to see the total bashing of Debian in the earlier article in favour of Ubantu. Complaining about Debain and its slow official releases might be justified for everyone who needs official support, but the only advantages I was really able to discern from people's posts was that the installer is apparently a lot nicer, and that it has official releases more often.

In my case at least, the installer isn't an issue. I already have Sarge installed and configured and it works very well. As a home user running it on my desktop, I'm also not too concerned about the official-ness of the distribution. Although "official support" doesn't yet exist for Sarge, there's stacks of unofficial support out there, whether it comes from the community in general or the Debian maintainers who are looking to keep their packages working.

I'm really just interested if it's worth me bothering to nuke Sarge to try out Ubantu. Is there anything other than its regular official releases and and an installer that makes it worth switching?

Re:Sarge and Ubantu comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to nuke anything. Try out the Ubuntu live cd first.

Re:Sarge and Ubantu comparison

[poofyhairguy82]

A couple things:

Xorg (I bought an NVIDIA card just to use its new features). Fading and transparacy is awesome.

Much better art.

Community

Newer version of GTKPod.

Re:Sarge and Ubantu comparison

[GigsVT]

Yes.

Not Debian stable = no committment to timely security releases = Can't use it at work.

Period. I'm not alone.

Flash bypassing cookie protections

[mckyj57]

Objection 0.1 adds a 'Local Shared Objects' line to Firefox's Options > Privacy panel, allowing you to delete them as easily as you'd delete cookies. It's still pretty rudimentary - all or nothing deletion, working on Windows only - but Slashdotters are more than welcome to improve it. Since Local Shared Objects have the same functionality as cookies, we need the same amount of control over them as we do over cookies - and built into the browser, not tucked away in some obscure Macromedia page."

I find it easier just to use the Flashblock extension. In the (very rare) event I need to run a Flash display, I just click the play button.

Right man for the job?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done debian, you've gone and elected a jerk to office. Nicely done.

I'd like to quote JWZ's comment on this issue, Please choke on a bucket of cocks. Thank you.

So, Branden. How's that going?

Re:Right man for the job?

[nycbicyclist]

I'd agree, except that exchange makes JWZ look like just as much of a jerk in my opinion (his original message has a couple of rhetorical touches that would probably put lots of people on the defensive). Do you have any other evidence that this guy is a jerk? How many of us haven't been a jerk at one time or another?

'alt-d' doesn't work on a Macintosh

[interactive_civilian]

Sorry...I should have been more specific. I'm using the Mac version of FireFox. Alt(option)-d does nothing. nor does command-d.

HOWEVER, after trying one more combination, I am ready to kick myself in the head. Thanks for putting me on to this line of thinking.

Control-d works perfectly!! :D

I withdraw my earlier complaint (though it still kind of makes sense, at least to me, to have deny as the default choice in that dialogue). Cheers. (^_^)v

But this implies that 'perky' is the desired state

[GimmeFuel]

But this implies that 'perky' is the desired state.

Who else read this and thought 'boobs'?

Come on, this is /., 'fess up....

Re:But this implies that 'perky' is the desired st

[thegrassyknowl]

Does it count that I thought of boobs before, during and after reading it?

Bad troll alert (me or the post above)

[SmallFurryCreature]

There is a simple reason that the most powerfull PC is used to run Windows games. Because Linux doesn't need an overclocked processor to run a bloody desktop. It will in fact run much better on a P3 dual (easy to get if you realize a lot of dell office machines were sold as dual ready) then on the latest P4.

Overclocking to run a desktop application seems kinda silly. What are you going to do? Overclock your modem so mozilla loads pages faster? Time check the time it takes openoffice to print a page? Better replace the motor on your printer so the head can move faster!

Nah this guy is a troll. He is not consitent. He first claims that both desktop applications AND games are lacking on linux but only proofs this for games.

As for the overclocking crowd being important. HAHA. Yeah right, grow up. That market is so tiny that only the smallest companies care about it. The real hardware market is in office machines. Look at the prices on IBM/HP-Compaq desktops vs the hardware costs and you can easily spot where the real margins are.

I know the crowd of linux desktop/windows gamers all to well being one of them. MS makes great software. It runs my games perfectly (windows 2003 server). It is everything else I don't trust it with. This in turn helps gaming performance no end. You will be suprised how many of the weenies above overclock and tweak and bitch about +1 fps when they got torrents, virus checkers, that really funny wallpaper, those handy free icons all running in the background.

Linux can do without those people. Those who think linux is secure have never seen what a true idiot can do.

A hybrid?

[zkn]

The perky smart alarm clock will monitor your brainwaves and constantly roll away from you. Making it imposible to turn off without the aid of shootgun.

My Unichrome

[Lovesquid]

When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School, it's a wonder I can think at all...

How to disable Flash cookies

[AnonymousDot]

To stop Macromedia Flash Player 6.0 to store personal information, create an empty file named Flash Player in this folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\user profile\Application Data\Macromedia\
You may have to delete a previous Flash Player folder before.

Now, with a file having the same name as the required folder, Flash will not be able to recreate the folder...

Alarm clock idea?

[gr8_phk]

I had the same idea about 2 years ago. I checked last night and it's written down in one of my notebooks. Just goes to show that if you think up an idea, chances are someone else has thought of it, or will shortly.

Should have gone for the patent back then ;-) Actually, my problem isn't a lack of ideas, it's not having experience with starting a startup...

Call me a dinosaur if you like

[Martin Spamer]

BUT I prefer to 'wake up feeling perky' the old fashioned low tech way.

Or they could be smart about it.

[cfalcon]

Well, that would solve the problem, true...

But so would not having them feel as if they have to write the damn file from scratch. Is it like totally impossible to just go to the part of the file that it cares about and edit that? I mean, in your universe, they would still have to just modify the fields that they want, they would just have a little less effort to do it.

Additionally, if they (and ATi might not do it, but someone would) break it in a registry-looking thing, it's a pain in the ass to put back together. No matter how fuxx0red my machine has gotten, vi has always worked.

Basically, the issue is with ATi, not X.

And you know this, even.

Wow. I just died a little.

[(54)T-Dub]

Javascript makes a browsing experience a lot more powerfull. DHTML is fun to program and to use. Do you inspect the code for all the software you run on your computer? If you are that paranoid about exploits you should use Links because your browser of choice is far more likely to have an exploit. Or you could simply excersise a little surfing common sense by not visiting sites that are likely to take advantage of an exploit. It's pretty simple to realize that by clicking on a free pron banner that you are putting your browser at risk.

Just to clear up a misconeption (that I helped perpetuate) about cookies, they generally aren't used for collecting or distributing information. As I stated in a post below they are more used for revenue sharing partnerships between sites and for tracking ad campaigns. Not to mention the most basic session cookie which allows you to login to many sites because passing a session ID around in the query string is a fat pain and quite a database hit.

I don't have a problem with a few paranoid experts clearing or selectivly disabling cookies, my problem is that the myth that cookies are evil has made it to the masses and they are making my life difficult. I mean these people somehow think they are making themselves safer by turning off cookies & javascript yet they are perfectly willing to enter their credit card number to get access to my site. Not that I'm complaining about the latter, but the dichotomy astounds me.

Cookie Culler can ease your pain.

[MCRocker]

Firefox needs to disable third party cookies by default.

Well, until they do that, I've found the Cookie Culler extension very helpful for clearing out the dead wood quickly without killing the cookies that I actually do want to keep.