Slashdot Mirror
French Publishers Prepare Lawsuit Against Adblock Plus
HughPickens.com writes Frédéric Filloux reports at Monday Note that two groups of French publishers, the GESTE and the French Internet Advertising Bureau, are considering a lawsuit against AdBlockPlus creator Eyeo GmbH on grounds that it represents a major economic threat to their business. According to LesEchos.fr, EYEO, which publishes Adblock Plus, has developed a business model where they offer not to block publishers' advertisements for remuneration as long as the ads are judged non-intrusive (Google Translate, Original here). "Several criteria must be met as well: advertisements must be identified as such, be static and therefore not contain animation, no sound, and should not interfere with the content. A position that some media have likened to extortion."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
...as someone else will develop a list, and just a list, of hosts serving ads, and someone else will develop a plugin that can read lists of any kind to block content, with claims that the content blocked can be for adult material or any other form of objectionable content. The user will put the location of the list in to the program themselves, and they'll continue to block the content. If the list gets taken down in one place, it'll be propped-up again somewhere else, or even stale, would still be better than no list at all.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They use my bandwidth (without permission) to peddle me ads for things I don't want and they think the courts should force me to look at their ads by removing my choice? I use ABP specifically because I don't want their invasive rubbish. The courts should be forcing them to ASK me if I want them using my bandwidth if anything as they are effectively stealing it.
IANAL, so I'd like a tort guru to enlighten us on exactly how creation and distribution of a product (AdBlock) that that gives consumers an informed choice over another product (advertising bullshit) is an actionable case. It sounds like a water utility company suing faucet makers for making a device that restricts flow of billable water, or the electric company suing light switch manufacturers.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I predict these companies will try to make it illegal for users to use any form of ad blocking.
Good luck with that.
Greedy bastards seem to think their desire to get paid means we're legally obligated to do so.
If your site wants to display ads, host them yourselves. But if you think I'm going to allow 3rd party trackers to support your business model, you're horribly mistaken.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So what they are saying is that I should not have any say in which bits get pulled through the internet pipe into my home?
I suggest people run the Firefox Addon called 'RequestPolicy' (I am not affilliated with it in any way, shape or form) even just to see how many different domain a website pulls data from these days... If I don't allow my computer to pull data from your ad-serving server, then that's YOUR problem and not mine. Who are you to say that I should pull data from that server?
Good Lord Jibbers Crabst, you'd almost start thinking that that stupid APK dude had a solution after all...
In reality, the French fought hard for 45 days and suffered over 350,000 casualties. France, Belgium and the Netherlands fell because Germany gained superiority in the air and through the use of highly mobile armored divisions.
Wonder if i should sue those french publishers for using my bandwith without my prior consent for their marketing crap... Im sure 200€/100.000 bytes transferred is fair price for unauthorized use of my bandwith.
AdBlock is clearly doing something right, and for every google action there will be equal and opposite reaction.
If internet is called an ecosystem, then we, the small fish, have every right to the cloak of invisibility.
The big fish forgot that the the right to spy should be consented. Of course, there are certain type of fish that does not give a damn and use all kind fishing tools, starting from targeted baits, evolving to infections and ending to the 100% filtering.
If AdBlock will be drifted to playing both sides against each other, get the funding from both marketing companies as well as from the small fry being fished, alternatives will appear.
In reality, the French fought hard for 45 days and suffered over 350,000 casualties.
Was that a whole 45 days, including weekends and holidays?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Is the day I stop browsing the net.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I browsed the internet with ads for so many years, they didn't really bother me and the flash was blocked (but available) with flashblock.
I finally had to give in and install Adblock Plus everywhere (even on throwaway firefox profiles) because friends rely too much on youtube for music. Then I realized that we're in the days of needing multiple gigabytes of memory for browsing, and bandwith isn't getting better (maxed out DSL lines) or even going backwards (using a wifi hotspot). The web content is huge and inefficient so it uses too many CPU cycles, too much memory and too much bandwith. An adblocker has become a way to trim that down, especially as the average PC is about 5 to 7 year old. And that's not touching the security issue, for people on Windows or maybe OS X (and arguably everyone, because the tracking still happens if you have a 100% secure OS and browser)
Arguing againt an ad blocker is thus becoming like arguing against firewalls, antiviruses and spam filters. Afterall a firewall hurts communication products (IM, etc.), an antivirus hurts a program that would like to patch a binary on the fly and a spam filter hurts commercial prospection.
Millions of people have never heard of Ad Block Plus. Until today. I once dreamed of buying a TV ad for ABP during the Superbowl. The Streisand effect will do the job.
Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
My ad block counter says it has blocked 3.7M ads. My head would have exploded if I had actually looked at 3.7M ads. Maybe there are teensie bit too many ads? So at three seconds viewing time per ad, that would be about a year's worth of full time ad viewing.
I use AdBlock not because I believe no one with a website shouldn't have the opportunity to make money via advertising, but because of the METHOD of advertising.
Flashing ads, quick movements, anything with Flash that can crash and stall my use of my browser, or any ad of more than 600 KB in size is intrusive. I don't mind being advertised at, but if you DEMAND my attention via tactics instead of attempting to CONVINCE me to buy a service or product with the facts of that service or product, then I will turn off and walk away.
Example of good Slashdot-based advertising for me: "Newegg - 15% off orders $25 - $100. December 8 ONLY. We know there's a couple things you've been meaning to buy. Be smart about it and buy them now. CLICK HERE to apply coupon." The coupon could take effect only via clicking in from Slashdot.
Also, I pay for my bandwidth and if you want to advertise to me, cool. Just don't take liberties with the size of your advertisement. Keep it small. Maybe a 2-3 frame gif changing every 20 seconds.
Lastly, I don't like the tracker cookies. I know some people say that tracking one's surfing habits enables more relevant ads to be used, but I don't like being tracked at all. Why not just use advertisements relevant to the site content? It's Slashdot -- post tech stuff. Slashdot builder? Then push 3D printer filaments.
As a result of some really BADvertisers, no one gets to put advertisements in front of my web-surfing eyes. I don't even know if a site has changed to less-obtrusive ads unless they tell me. (And if they do, I turn off AdBlock.) It's as simple as that.
Please make and publish software that can block your fucking posts?
There's really no other rational choice than to block most/all ads, in a world where ads can do just about anything they want. The annoyance and performance slowdown are trivial issues compared to the real problems. The same openness that allows Web-based ads to track you using cookies, launch plugins and pop-up windows, and prevent you from viewing content until you watch a video or wait some time, also (fortunately) allows users to fight back as a natural defense mechanism against these predatory tactics. For the advertisers to abuse this openness for their own personal monetary gain, while presuming to control what *I* run on *my* computer, while being appalled at my choice of doing the same, is ridiculous and contradictory.
Far and away the gravest problem with ads today is that the vast majority of them pose *serious* security and/or privacy issues. Most ad networks do very little to prevent bad actors from embedding malicious content that tries to exploit browser zero-days, steal cookies, track your behavior, or trick you into visiting malicious websites. Until website owners and ad networks decide to completely purge all the security and privacy risks, advertising is essentially synonymous with an opportunistic attack on each user who visits an ad-infested site.
On the open web, the only way advertisers are going to get any revenue is through earning the trust and goodwill of their customers. And we ARE customers -- customers who are currently being treated like shit. How would you like it if a car salesman walked up to you and started giving you a tattoo on the arm with the manufacturer's logo, seconds after you get out of your car and step foot on the lot? That kind of intrusive behavior should not be tolerated. And it isn't: users are doing exactly what the advertisers should expect them to do, given how they are being treated.
Ad networks should start by having a manual screening process for each entity that wants to submit ads through their network. The integrity, ownership, and status of each entity should be scrutinized to ensure that they are a legitimate business and are registered with the proper authorities. Additionally, the network should perform constant random sampling of their current ads being run, and employ experienced security auditors or penetration testers to examine the source code and other dynamic behavior of the advertisement payload on various popular browsers, to determine if it is tracking the user or malicious in any way. If it is, all further business with that partner should be stopped immediately, and the advertisement removed from the network. Website owners and users should not be the ones having to push the ad networks to remove these abusers.
The open Web is not going away. Users are in control of what displays in the web browser. Advertisers must either learn to work within a system of reasonable rules that do not attack users' systems or try to compromise their privacy, OR just keep fighting until their revenue stream is slowly strangled to death by their own despicable policies.
Seriously, I *work* for a communications marketing company, and still, I think the whining and gnashing of teeth over plug-ins like ABP is misplaced!
You can't realistically expect to stop people from blocking your ads with software any more than you can stop people from pressing "mute", channel change buttons, or just the "on/off" switch on the television when commercials come on!
The truth is, ad banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, animated page overlays and the rest of it are just distractions. If you create one that's minimal enough so most people can't be bothered to actively use a tool like ABP to filter it? Then you've probably just made an ineffective advertisement that people aren't even paying attention to in the first place. Advertisers who "get" this and have worked hard to build more effective ads are prompting people to "fight back" with these blocking tools. The takeaway we probably all SHOULD be getting from this is that this form of marketing isn't a very good one.
The fact that many site operators out there can barely make enough revenue to cover their costs of hosting means there's a strong interest in keeping the current business model in place and pretending it works. But truthfully, I think things would work out far better if marketers would agree to sponsor web sites likely to have an audience interested in one of their products. Just flat out pay their hosting for them, in exchange for the site making it clear your company is doing that for them. THEN you'd win the respect of the userbase and generate good P.R. and sales.
pas de peau de mon cul, je ne lis pas le franÃais
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just like the LimeWire lawsuit ended music piracy, right? Its so much easier to cling to a bad marketing model for dear life and sue anyone who gets in your way. Of course, contrary to their beliefs most of my own clients didn't even know what adblock was until I recommended it. I suppose while they're at it they should sue Microsoft, too, for introducing their own content blocker and opt-out do-not-track requests which uses the same lists as adblock.
IMO, win or lose they won't survive any longer for it.
I like how APK is spamming us to promote his adblocking solution. Buying his solution is in effect supporting spam!
It has apparently never occurred to publishers to band together and fund the creation of a system for buying content at dirt cheap prices using something like ACH transfers to keep the transaction costs low. How about a one-click purchase model where you pay $0.50/article or $3 for all content published that day? Nah, couldn't do that. That would require someone to say "this isn't working, let's try finding a new way to sell this stuff."
The reality, though, is that you'd never get them to realize that opening it up to all publishers, even prominent blogs, is a great idea. They'd never be able to fight their political biases and elitist views on new media and blogs to make a content sale system capable of replacing advertising.
Correct. Then a large fraction of the government capitulated, formed a puppet government, and did the Nazis' bidding, including rounding up people for shipment to concentration camps. And in some cases, like in North Africa, fought (weakly) against the allies.
At the same time, the parts of the government and military that were caught in or escaped to England made themselves royal pains in the ass to the allies, posturing and playing politics to try to claim they were in charge of the government in abstentia, This greatly complicated the invasion planning and led to poor tactical decisions based on maintain the pride of strutting martinets like DeGaulle. This allowed the Germans to escape through the Falaise gap, for example, when they were otherwise going to be caught. This probably extended the war another 6 months.
The ultimate was in the 60s. DeGaulle demanded that all American tropps be removed from French soil. Lyndon Johnson asked him "does that include the 65000 that died lliberarting it*.
That's why we hate the French.
I run all my desktop browsers with ABP. I thought I never click on Google Ads, however recently I checked the history of my primary Google account and was very surprised to find that I had, and not just a few times, many times, and on things I had been interested in.
You can see your own history through Google's History site: Google History for Ads. It's pretty interesting. I don't know how they're getting me, but I assume it's on my phone. In any case, it's been so subtle (and useful) that I am in no way upset (I actually needed/wanted these things).
That's how advertising should be. Beyond that, all the un-targeted stuff deserves to be blocked.
So we can mourn with those poor, poor autoplay video ad creators.
There's a local (well, national) newspaper that I read frequently. They implemented a paywall (five free articles / month) few years ago - it's trivial to bypass, naturally, clearing out cookies or using "porn mode" does the trick, but why bother, a simple ABP rule works. However, in doing so the comments are hidden as well. Most of the time this is entirely positive, but I guess I have some masochistic tendencies; when there's a really controversial (or bound to wake up the retards) topic, I sometimes like to read them. Call it self-trolling (trollorbation?) maybe. And to do so, I use another browser (that I can just wipe clean as needed).
And oh-my-$DEITY. It is absolutely horrible. We're not talking just about a few ads here and there. The entire page background can change. Popups that use position:fixed. Fucking animated ads. I do realize they have to pay for the content somehow. Some sites I frequent, I might even whitelist them. But as long as no ABP means being bombarded with ads, ABP it is.
That was quick. An article about ads devolved faster than anticipated. On /. We strive for excellence.
The United States suffered less than 1% of those casualties on Sept. 11th and more or less surrendered its freedom on the spot. Fuck off.
France had a population of only 40 million at the time, so I think it would be rather difficult to have that many casualties.
+1 funny
I remember not that long back...early to mid 90's when you rarely ever saw an advertisement.
People need to be reminded that the internet is supposed to basically be a large network, where anyone can connect and set up a peer computer/server and trade information. I wasn't set up for making $$. While business is extremely valid on the internet, that is not the primary reason for its creation, and hopefully...not for its continuance nor regulation.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
France. A country that used to matter.
If having to submit to a little extra time and security checks at the airport constitutes a massive loss of freedom for you, you have your priorities in a tangle. I don't know about you, but I lived my life more or less exactly the same before and after Sept 11th.
While true, they also tended to fight using outdated tactics, such as forcing millions of men at gunpoint to advance, regardless of the odds or support. Russian "tactics" were a partial cause of them losing so many men.
A whole 45 days? 350,000 casualties?
Such effort.
The Soviet Union fought the Germans for more than four fucking years, suffering somewhere between 20 and 40 million casualties.
The Soviets were very proud of the fact that, having executed all of their competent commanders, they relied on brute-force meat-grinding in place of actual strategy. Make no mistake, it wasn't the Germans that killed all those Soviets; it was their generals and kommissars, sending them into needless suicide. And at the end of the day, they ended up killing as many Jews and enslaving half of Europe in place of the Nazi's.
Fuck the Soviets. It's their own fault. Next time don't trade oil for land to Nazis.
I don't hate the french; I just find them amusing. I find the antics of De Gaulle during WWII absolutely hilarious, as in, Monty Python-esque funny. He would march down the Champs Elysees when he did virtually nothing in the immediate aftermath of D-Day to help liberate his own country. Even Montgomery, who himself was insufferable, found De Gualle insufferable.
Oh APK, I was wondering when you'd show up. So riddle me this. Getting around the paywall involves blocking specific JS files. That come from the same domain as rest of the content. So please, in your infinite wisdom, how would HOSTS file help?
The Anti-French sentiment stems from lingering inadequacy on the part of the Americans. France did not give the US the Statue of Liberty just because they thought the US was a bunch of really nice guys.
The American Revolution was a proxy war, by France against Britain. It was very similar in many respects to the Soviet-Afghan War, where the United States funneled arms and billions of dollars to the Afghanis. The French involvement in the American war was of a vastly greater scale.
The French supplied almost all of the gunpowder used through at least the first half of the war, almost all the cannon used throughout the war, tens of thousands of muskets, an army about the size of the Continental Army, military advisors, and vast amounts of money. In total they spent about a billion livres and increased their national debt by a third. The ante-climactic battle of the war involved a massive fleet engagement of French and British vessels and forced Gen. Cornwallis' surrender to the American forces. The Americans had no naval force worth mentioning (the description of a sixth-rate frigate as being "rough equivalent of half of a 64-gun ship of the line" is hilarious), and it is difficult to overstate either the power of a massed group of warships or their impact on warfare. Considered from an objective perspective, the American Revolution was an important but not decisive campaign in what should be known as the Second Hundred Years' War.
Why did Americans turn against the French after the war? It's simple: they wanted to promote their own heroes, and the idea that they had won the war all by themselves. It's really embarrassing to have to teach your children that your country wouldn't exist except that it happened to be a bone of contention in someone else's scheme. Similarly, I spent quite a bit of time down in Panama this last year, and I met very few people who had any idea of the US involvement in the creation of that country. They make anti-gringo jokes pretty often too, and they're funny for the same reason that anti-French jokes are in the US, but in both cases the joke is on the one telling it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Some jackass just had to say something about HOST files and summon the APK.
Anyone have some raid?
I don't think you're familiar with the patriot act.
While i agree about blocking intrusive ads, the fact that adblock are demanding money from advertisers really is extortion.
If they were just allowing unintrusive ads by default and not taking money for it they might actually encourage advertisers to clean up their act.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The French would probably have done a lot better if they'd had a thousand miles or so where they could burn all of the crops and retreat across during winter, stretching the Germans supply lines and making a lot of their equipment stop working due to the temperature.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
^APK Shill posts.
It's a different web without adblock, and it's not pretty one. It does more than just hide advertisements, it also reduces bandwidth usage considerably. I've been using adblock since I was stuck on dialup. It was critical to me back then to make pages load faster. Then I was on satellite and adblock helped keep me under my data allotment. On the rare occasion that I have to use a computer without it, I'm always taken back by how bad the web is with all the ads. According to some estimates, we're exposed to over 3000 marketing messages every day, on average. I'm all for anything that reduces that number, whatever it actually is. Every person that I show Adblock to, has been very, very happy with the results.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I use Adblocker Plus and it works wonders. It eliminates tons of crap. However, some site ads still get through. I'm assuming that the hosting site has directly incorporated a sponsor's ad into their site structure, thereby bypassing Adblocker's filter. This works because the site owner now has a stake in not pissing off their readers and will only incorporate non-intrusive ads in their site. This is exactly the opposite of what DoubleClick does.
You gest, but during WWI they actually had a Christmas truce in 1914 where the troops came out to play football. No, the kind played with your feet. The commanders in chief were not amused. In WWII the Germans overran the trenches with armor, so there was no time for that sort of thing. The actual people in the trenches were pretty much the same, called to war because your country asks you to. Cannon fodder meats cannon fodder.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I would think it would be trivial to circumvent adblock plus. It's a free download so as soon as they
release a new version you could load your site and check to see if it is working and if not then
adjust accordingly. It's an arm race that adblock can't possibly win. Spamassasin is much harder
to fight because it is based on text and is based on the individual's personal heuristics but I would
think circumventing adblock plus would be trivial.
Can't say I'm surprised. I really get fed up with these kinds of memes: 'murica!, "Germans are Nazis", and, "the French are cowards" .. and so on.
Can't we all just get along?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Advertisement / marketing organizations that want the status quo to remain should not press the issue. Some simple facts are going to come out of any meaningful conversation on the topic: 1) we don't want your cookies. we didn't ask for them, and we don't like them. 2) we'll be happy to pay a small fee to not see your ads, and you won't see any of that $.
Most (all?) ABP users use blocklists that are updated frequently, the plugin itself doesn't change that often. And you can naturally add your own (regex-based) rules. Sure, it might work, for a little while. But it is ultimately futile.
There was another huge contributor to The Fall of France. The french doctrine relied heavily of fortifications in the form of the Maginot Line. It was an impressive installation and would have stopped the German army except for one major flaw; The main fortifications stopped at the Luxembourg border. The French Government did not want to isolate Luxembourg and Belgium. The German forces easily out flanked the static heavy defences.
In other news in 9 months:
Closing of "Adblock Plus" forces millions of ABP users to waste 90 seconds to search for an alternative. Film at eleven.
Seriously, WTF?
This is probably just some publishers organisation trying to show publishers that "they are doing something!".
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This after suffering 1.4 million military dead in the previous generation during WW1. US losses during WW1 were about 117,000.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
-We can think of all sorts of analogies for intrusive ads (which are perfectly valid) but the truth is is that most people don't block ads on most sites unless someone can cite some statistics suggesting otherwise so I suggest a technologically feasible approach to serve unobtrusive ads to adblockers.
-As such, if website publishers want to get paid more for their content and think they are being shortchanged by ad-blockers, they could insist that the networks they work with provide them with a less interactive/obtrusive (i.e., non-flash, etc.) ad which will display when the user is using adblock (presumably in conjunction with the functionality already embedded in adblock to allow for those unobtrusive ads; presumably in the form of a cookie that an ad server could read then determine what th serve the user?)
As well as a complete and utter disdain for the lives of their own troops and civilians.
My FREE hosts program adds speed, security, reliability & more, doing more, more efficiently vs. addons + fixes DNS' redirect security issues:...
So, this is apparently security software designed by the Time Cube guy? I'm sold.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
As an end-user, I expect my ad blocking to block ads. If they sell out and let some ads in for a fee, why would I use it? I don't know anything about French law; but this sounds a lot like the Yelp problem, except they're shaking people down to let their ads in instead of shaking them down for good reviews.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I've also heard that a lot of their soldiers played Russian Roulette in their free time.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Most (all?) ABP users use blocklists that are updated frequently, the plugin itself doesn't change that often. And you can naturally add your own (regex-based) rules. Sure, it might work, for a little while. But it is ultimately futile.
I don't think it's futile. A website knows if you view their ads. There are already websites that block your access if you
turn off their ads. You're viewing their ads because you're viewing their content. Worst case scenerio is that the website
makes ads indistinguishable from content then there is no way to block the ads. This can be accomplished by embedding
the ad as an image in the website, writing the website in flash, product placement, etc... It's the same thing that will
happen with blockbuster movies. If the studios can't make money by selling the movies then they will make money with
tie-ins, product placement, etc... It will degrade the movie, sure, but they have to pay for it somehow.
The same will happen with the web. If ads ultimately fail then websites will start doing product placement, charging for
access, etc... New scientist went the pay route. Their free content is basically gone. I could see slashdot easily going
the product placement route where every 5th article is an article that was paid to be put there.
Which one do you want?
~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid1]
md127 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sdg1[4] sdh1[2]
488375864 blocks super 1.0 [2/2] [UU]
bitmap: 0/466 pages [0KB], 512KB chunk
md0 : active raid5 sdd1[2] sdf1[5] sde1[3] sdb1[0] sdc1[1]
7814052864 blocks super 1.0 level 5, 128k chunk, algorithm 2 [5/5] [UUUUU]
bitmap: 3/15 pages [12KB], 65536KB chunk
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
Can users (or the website owners) sue them whenever it's shown that their streams are vectors of malware? I think advertisers suing might be opening pandora's litigious box.
Dice. And Bennet Haselton.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Hey APK, what's your IP address so I can block all the spam you've been posting? I want to add it to my hosts file.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Are they going to sue my pop-up blocker now to?
What about my email spam filter?
I find the content you distribute on the internet to be offensive. I have every right to reject it. In fact, I think your continued attempts to get around my firewall/filters to be an attempt to attack me and my network. In my opinion, what you're doing is illegal and you should be jailed.
what are you swiss?
oh wait, no you're not a grave robber.
Don't worry. That checkbox doesn't do anything since Dice took over anyways.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
I don't think you lost many freedoms. You think you did, but you didn't.
Because WW2 involved Hitler. Godwin wins, every time.
No, I live in America, and never felt in any way constrained by any part of the Patriot Act.
Jerry Lewis?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1.) Secure you vs. known malicious sites/servers (beyond malicious adbanners - see 2 thru 6 below next)
2.) Secure you vs. downed DNS servers aiding reliability
I run my own DNS server.
3.) Secure you vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns servers
See the answer to 2 above
4.) Protect you vs. fastflux using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
Yup. Don't install shit from unknown sources.
5.) Protect you vs. dynamic dns using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
See Answer to #2 above.
6.) Protect you vs. domain generation algorithm using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
Again, see #2
7.) Speed you up for websurfing not only by adblocking but also hardcoding favorite sites
Utterly stupid approach since every decent site used CDNs now.
8.) Get you past a dnsbl you may not agree with
See #2 above
9.) Keep you off dns request logs
See #2 above
10.) Do all of those things and block ads (better than adblock) more efficiently in cpu cycles and memory usage
Show me the benchmarks
11.) Work on ANY webbound application (think stand-alone email programs, for example).
See #2.
12.) Give you direct, easily notepad/texteditor controlled data for all of the above
Hmm. vi on my dns server seems to work fine.
13.) Block out trackers
See #2.
14.) Block spam mails sources
Don't sign up for stupid sites using real email addresses and/or use an email specifically for those sites and blackhole the resulting email.
15.) Block phishing mails sources
Have a little common sense and this isn't an issue.
Debating if I should paste this after every one of your spam posts...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
I think they are fighting for page neutrality. Why would one image not be loaded and the other one will be? Who is the author and holds the copyright? Who is the receiver to modify such works? I think they have a point (when net neutrality would be law; oh wait it isn't)[/evil grin]
nosig today
Fuck the Soviets. It's their own fault. Next time don't trade oil for land to Nazis.
AMERICA, ARE YOU LISTENING?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Because I use my mouse to close adverts, are mouse manufacturers vulnerable?
From a free speech perspective, this is an idiot joke- obviously the guy should be able to publish an add blocker.
From a property ownership perspective, this is an idiot joke- obviously, the property owner (me) should be able to control what my property fucking DOES, and what it doesn't do is show me dumb adverts.
From a moral perspective, this is an idiot joke- advertisements are objectively harmful to the recipients, and those who do not wish to be subject to harm should not be.
So if this DOES go through, what it means is that ad blocking software will be moved to places where these guys have no jurisdiction. Note that it's happening in France by French companies, so they are hoping for a home team advantage. But hopefully their courts aren't fans of idiot jokes.
When they are NOT shown to people I get reimbursed?
Anyone see the flaw in this?
I won't even have to have a real product! Just make ads people don't want to see for products they don't want and that doesn't even exist.
Because I would think a single "Your computer has a virus" ad would serve as a slam dunk for the defense.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Godwin is no longer a conversation ender, since the Snowden revelations.
You have to be able to talk about Nazi's when your country is going that way...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
[Citation needed]. Wikipedia mentions nothing of the sort.
Fuck you.
No ads.
Sell your product.
Here's the truth, if you pay them XYk-XYZk (They NDA you) per year you get added to their "safe" list no matter what. Google, Facebook & pretty much every semi-legit ad network does. They brag about it & it's expensive.
It's not about the ad's being "safe" it's about how much you pay them. They have TONS of shady networks that pay the fee because it's ROI effective to do it.
It's a genius business model with almost no costs at all.
Adblock in my experience is roughly 10-15% of all internet traffic. This is based on real stats, impressions go up this much when you get around it.
Conversely for advertisers, the traffic generally is almost worthless & generates very little revenue at all. But the Ad network's don't care because the majority of Ad networks operate on a CPM basis. It's dirty.
No, I live in America, and never felt in any way constrained by any part of the Patriot Act.
That's because you haven't seen the effects directly, yet. Once the investigation is further along, you'll see how badly your rights are going to get trampled on.
What's that...you say you've never done anything to warrant investigation? That's exactly the same as many of the people on the No Fly List. And, you're not one of the nearly 10 million US citizens who are three steps away from a "selector"? So far, then, you've been lucky.
Completely agreed. I don't watch any* commercial television or listen to any commercial radio because of the ads. The internet is a refuge with its ability to filter content. If it weren't for ad blockers, the internet would be similarly useless. Since the Clinton era I've had a personal policy that if I find myself using a browser without AdBlock, I install AdBlock (or ABP, whatever, any of them are okay) before doing anything else.
* except football which is hard to get any other way
That isn't true. Slashdot doesn't have advertisements, just like the rest of the web doesn't have advertisement. ...right? I mean, I almost never see any ads.
"Don't mention the war"
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
what are you swiss?
oh wait, no you're not a grave robber.
That's a new one on me. I imagine there's a pretty good story behind that reputation, though.
:D
Besides, how do you know I'm not a grave robber?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
APK's posts aren't moderated down because people don't want others to know about the magic of hosts files. They're moderated down because they are spam.
...it's intended to block the typical addresses used by copyright monitors, but it also blocks malware and ads.
I remember a few years back you could download a host file. It was intended to block the typical sources of malware. But for some unfathomable reason, malware and ads seemed to share the same hosts 90% of the time so it would block advertisements too.
Citation needed. 30 seconds on Google had France at 92% of usa for gdp per hour in 2009.
Yeah, but those are metric hours.
The French poured buckets of money into the Maginot line. The Germans just went around it. The Germans had tried the same end around in WW-I (though failed), so the lack of defense at the BeNeLux border was a costly strategic mistake. Hitler had it in for France because of the Treaty of Versailles, and even went so far to track down the rail car that the Treaty in Versailles was signed in, to rub Gallic noses into. Even the new tactics could be seen on their doorstep in the Spanish Civil War. The French should have seen it coming.
I think the part of the "cheese eating surrender monkeys" comes not from the initial invasion, but the puppet government that was Vichy France. The Russians fought to the last man in horrible siege conditions for years. France started to be a puppet regime paying tribute to Hitler and rounding up Jews just a couple months after initial invasion. Only later when Hitler changed terms of the agreement did the French underground resistance really form.
That, and there were two, probably more interesting "surrenders". When the French left the colonies of Algeria and Indochina (Vietnam), there were those that saw that as surrender. I call them interesting because they didn't leave because of being defeated, but they realized that the barbarism that it would take to hold these territories would change the national character. It's hard to talk about "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" when you're tossing people off of helicopters or torching villages. Was this surrender? Maybe on the ground, but to win a military would entail other surrenders of character, again, an interesting trade off.
In reality (and I'm of Polish descent) the Polish fighters lasted longer. (Compared to the French) the Polish had the disadvantage of being a new country, (re)formed in 1919 after, in effect, disappearing completely for a hundred years or so. Oh yeah, and they got attacked on two fronts.
I don't begrudge any credit to the French resistance. Their fighters fought bravely. The Poles fought just as hard against two armies, with less notice and much fewer resources. I wish they got more credit. Part of the Polish jokes were real - you did have farmers on horseback with single shot rifles going against tanks. But what else are you gonna do, let them roll into Warsaw without a fight?
- Contrary to what you seem to think, as far as we're concerned you didn't really have to come save us, the war was already won by the Russians. (Although I do thank you for protecting us from them).
- Historically, French military fares rather well. I'm not even proud of it, it's just a fact.
- A lot could be said about the reasons for the rapidity of the German invasion in WWII, but cowardness of the soldiers wasn't such an important factor.
- This page should be about the future of ad-blocking, using it to express your negative feelings about the French people is stupid and childish.
It is a loss of freedom. And with little benefit. Every loss of freedom should come with a benefit, and their is none here. I get into line, get irradiated by an X-Ray that can't even find what it's looking for (and the irony of me "assuming the position"). It's all security theater, from the XRays that can't find the bombs that they were designed in reaction to, from the change of the uniform color from white to blue (to look more police-ish).
The USA PATRIOT Act was in response to 9/11. We don't even know what freedoms we gave up because much of the law is secret. The US should not have secret laws. How many NSA violations came as a result of laws passed at that time? Google the term LOVEINT for a small taste of violations. If i want privacy, I need to look like a kook and be completely off the grid. Or else the NSA (or some other TLA) can get data from pretty much any big corporation. There are "border" checkpoints hundreds of miles inland in the US. You can probably find a bunch of confrontations on Youtube, where the agents pretty much refuse to answer direct questions about your rights (these are all "voluntary" stoppings, but some agents don't see them as such) until you comply.
Don't reduce the 9/11 changes to taking your shoes off at the airport. We're in a much different world. We're over a decade after 9/11 and we still have a massive security apparatus probing every US citizen with little oversight.
Firstly the distance was almost half to Paris (lower if you count the army basis in the Ruhr), making it very easy to crush anything or send reinforcement, bombing, and the german had a very good air and tank superiority (even if they still used a lot of horse caried stuff lilke everybody) etc... Secondely the climate , the countryside, is much harsher toward the east than toward the west. There was a running joke that the best german soldier killer of the russian army was named "colonel winter". Winter on the other hand is way survivable with the quasi oceanic climate north of France. Finally the capital with 15-20% of the french was already at the mercy of an attack, with practically nothing to stop german. That made the french position untenable no matter what resistance you could offer. Russian position was more tenable because they could play with the time and meat grind people.
Secondly do you find it really good to send human to the meat grinder like the russian did ? Personally I think people like you which think sending millions of people to the meat grinder is a valid tactic disgusts me. It is neither courageous to send people to their death that way, nor is it cowardice to admit defeat when your position cannot be maintained. Hey anonymous coward, WW1 missed you !
I am ready to bet you would not be in the first wanting to be grinded in such a way, but I am also betting your FAT ASS is nice and comfy in your parents basement typing your usual "surrender joke", far away from any risk of war.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"We're all wondering"? You and your side personalities? Glad you're finally coming to terms with it. You do realize, by the way, that by posting I can't mod in this thread. So I'm not the one modding you down. THEY are.
So your only comeback is that a DNS server uses more power? Really? Is that the best you got?
Still no response to #10. Come on buddy... show me the benchmarks. I want to see the speed difference between parsing a 1,000,000+ text file vs a single dns query.
Take your time.. I'll wait.
Are you sure you're not the lovechild of Bennett Haselton and the Timecube guy?
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
The part of this article that has not been mentioned yet is that the developer of Adblock Plus (forked from the original Adblock) has decided to take money in exchange for allowing "non-intrusive" advertising through its lists, pretty much against the interests of it's users who don't want any ads. This puts them directly in the line of fire when media publishers get irate enough to sue, as advertisers see them as a blackmailer. You can see the whitelist of allowed sites here: https://easylist-downloads.adb... - along with Google and it's Doubleclick network, other notables and other publishers and trackers not easily recognized have paid up. Adblock Plus got the install base and trust, then they change the arrangement.
I turned off the ads on utorrent after a particularly salacious ad featured a lingerie clad derrière of a young woman squatting over a golden egg. It literally looked like she had just shat a golden egg. Not an image I want when I'm downloading Gravity Falls.
And then there's the stupid video, and voice ads that pop up, and takes me forever to figure out how to turn off. I'm sick of having cocks, and boobs waved in my face when all I want to do is look at a comic. Thank Dawkins I don't have any kids. I don't know how I'd explain that egg ad to them.
Websites can post, at users, any legal material they wish.
Users can curate, of what is available, what their computer displays.
Unless either of those two facts change, everything else is details that will persist or substitute in some form. So I'll oblige the article: "Yes, they're dumbfucks (better incompetence than malice) betting on bigger dumbfucks to do ruling."
I block most everything by default and have gradually learned exactly what scripts to allow in order to access the content I want. It's a little tedious but I'm completely used to it and don't have to think about it. Of course, remembering which sites to temporarily allow googleapis to run on would drive many people nuts.
And in some cases, like in North Africa, fought (weakly) against the allies.
Funny story: the French port of Oran was tasked to the Americans because Britain and France were at odds before the German occupation. The allied commanders believed that they would not shoot at Americans, but would instead join them. They were wrong; the French at Oran fought to the bitter end. The French soldiers in North Africa, unfortunately, had more mettle than their continental counterparts, and paid with their lives.
Soccer == football. Soccer is just an old-fashioned word that means association football.
I suppose we should be thankful that apk is the only one here on slashdot spamming us (well other than some of the actual articles).
Definition of "conflicted"... trying to figure out which side to support when the French ad agencies sue APK.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
"Several criteria must be met as well: advertisements must be identified as such, be static and therefore not contain animation, no sound, and should not interfere with the content. A position that some media have likened to extortion."
Those are ads I can tolerate. The moving, noisy, noxious distracting ads are intolerable. AdBlock rules get rid of them.
"On /. We strive for excellence."
Well, excellence in being stupid and wasting everyone's time is, in fact, excellence, I'm sure you'll agree.
+1 to that sentiment. If this was freaking 4chan, I bet he'd be blocked.
If ads didn't cause so many problems, people like me wouldn't be blocking them. And I dont mean problems like obtrusive ads that hover over the page content. Or ads that play audio. Or even the tracking that ad companies do.
The biggest problem with ads is that compromised ad servers are a BIG delivery vector for malware though things like Flash vulnerabilities and drive-by downloads.
Unlike the US, who didn't trade with them at all, right?
Fuck the US. It's their own fault 9/11 happened. Next time don't fund terrorists.
So if you hit a site that has 5-10 of your "blocked" sites, you have to parse that file each time, for each query. Talk about a waste of resources.
Also, my DNS box is doing more than just serving up dns requests. You still haven't shown me any kind of benchmark. Only your made up numbers and statistics.
Come on... Step up. Show me a single study that compares a million+ line host file against a single dns query for the same item.
As for adding complexity... Yah, I guess it does add some. Things that someone that only knows how to parse a plain text file in notepad might not grasp...
Bring it on! Show me the study!
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Thank god Jack Pershing told the French and the British what to do with their plans of using Americans as replacements for their units.
French and English leadership in WWI was criminally bad. Same as Frog 'leadership' in WWII.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
ABP used to be great, then they sold out, and now they're basically a protection racket. Once again, we the users are not the customers, we're the product. I've long jumped ship to one of the forks (AdBlock Edge, in case anyone cares).
It was obvious that turning it into a "nice ads you have there, would be a pity..." game would land them in trouble sooner or later, so my sympathies are very limited. Especially once you dig through the connections between the various companies belonging to the same corporate network and realize that magically, their own or ally companies are all on the whitelist.
To the publishers, meanwhile: If your business model is threatened by users telling you to fuck off because you've become obnoxious, then maybe the problem is in your business model, isn't it?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
French publishers, welcome to our Internet for Dummies course. Today, we will learn about the Streisand Effect.
Is there an apkblock plugin out there?
Quit using flash and javascript.
The oil traded to the Nazi's was specifically for their war machine, in exchange for the mutual carving of Poland. See the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact. How much war material did the US sell to Nazi Germany?
If you refer to the mythical CIA-Bin Laden connection, you need to listen to less Alex Jones.
Read the "Liberation Trilogy" by Rich Atkinson. Brilliant work. The Americans had some good commanders and terrible ones. The Brits were hit or miss, but their men loved them in a way the yanks never could. The French generals hated everyone and each other, constantly vying for prestige and insulting the men whose help they needed. Even in defeat, they could not swallow their pride. But then, there were a number of British and American generals of whom the same could be said. Only the diplomatic genius of Eisenhower and the strong rapport of Churchill and Roosevelt held the operation together.
Access2.ME also works with ad publishers to ensure minimum levels of compliance with user non-annoyance policies.
A buggy whip.
Simply because a product threatens your business doesn't mean you are entitled to get it legislated out of existence.
AdBlock puts out a product that saves people bandwidth and filters out all sorts of noxious, potentially dangerous content.
However, there ARE ways around AdBlock. At the root of it, your ads simply CANNOT utilize any of the aforementioned noxious, potentially dangerous means to FORCE views.
If this breaks your business model?
Get a better fucking business model, as the one you're using now sucks.
Also, end users VOLUNTARILY install AdBlock. It isn't a default install anywhere. So these are people who have made a choice NOT to accept traffic from your crappy ad network. AdBlock didn't FORCE their product on ANYONE. Again, you don't have a right to force people to view your content.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You have forgotten what freedom is and why people fight for it.
They must have finally gotten their act together, because the original french text is now available. It's the usual whine about how they can't stay in business because less than% of people now have AdBlockPlus installed.
They brought it upon themselves by making ads more and more intrusive. I don't mind the occasional side-bar add or banner, but pop-overs, pop-unders, ads that track everything I do and phone home, ads that auto-start sound or video, these need to die.
This is no different from broadcast regulations that don't permit stations to increase the sound modulation (and hence the volume) of ads.
And now AdBlockPlus is taking aim at "publi-reportage" - news reports that are really advertisements. Coming soon to a slashvertisement near you?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Something like maybe, iBlocklist, the providers to Peer Guardian/Peer Block. They work well, when they work, but that's the issue- they are just as extortive as everyone else. If you want daily updates or anything requiring heavy traffic, you gotta pay. I understand that, and I'm not decrying the process, but mainly trying to point out that there are no saints on the internet.
Hey APK, what's your IP address so I can block all the spam you've been posting? I want to add it to my hosts file.
Hi Pikoro,
I think this might be what you're looking for.
Your pal,
Jeremy.
cat
I could see slashdot easily going the product placement route where every 5th article is an article that was paid to be put there.
That would be at least an order of magnitude better than what we have right now.
http://computer.howstuffworks....
It appears posted in 1999, I know I read it a long time ago and thought are you nuts!
Mythical uh. You do know Bin Laden used to be in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union with the backing of the USA right?
As for 9/11 conspiracies that's something else.
And when you've got lots and lots (and lots) of men, who all have to be fed and housed and clothed, but no minesweeping equipment - what better way to clear a minefield than to order your troops to march across it in close formation?
IIRC they used the penal battalions for that not regular troops.
Yes Zhukov was a brilliant general. You just have to read about the Battle of Khalkhin Gol where he had less troops than the Japanese (but better hardware). There losses were much different. He basically saved the Soviet Union twice. First by knocking Japan out of the field and then Germany. He relieved Moscow from being encircled and the knocked the Germans back all the way to Berlin. Had he not been pressured into speeding things up all the time by Stalin I think he could have had much smaller losses in the Eastern Front than what happened.
That's Frahnk-in-steen!
You can see the whitelist of allowed sites here: https://easylist-downloads.adb... - along with Google and it's Doubleclick network, other notables and other publishers and trackers not easily recognized have paid up. Adblock Plus got the install base and trust, then they change the arrangement.
There's a little box in the settings.
Next to it is the text "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"
I unchecked that box a long time ago and haven't thought about it until just now.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
On the contrary. Allowing non-intrusive ads (by default--you can disable this feature in: Preferences) is the best thing any Adblock type program has ever done.
It's actually offering content producers a significant incentive for using ads which are less objectionable to users. The alternative is advertisers benefit by doing worse and worse things, and those who choose to block ads are silent and uncounted. This could help reverse the trend, and keep sites and advertisers honest and decent, and offer counter-incentive to irritation.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And that isn't even what caused most of the casualties.
The Soviet policies of scorched earth combined with the military receiving priority for absolutely everything created the perfect environment for disease and famine to claim more civilian casualties than their idiotic military policies.
The Soviet government killed more Soviet civilians than the Nazi government did.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well the Soviet Union had a lot more strategic depth to it than France. The logistics chain was much smaller to attack France. I mean Hitler invaded Ukraine just fine and that is about the same size as France.
The failure was due to organizational problems more than anything else. Claims that the Nazis had superior weapons in the Battle of France are plain bullshit. The French and British had more weapons and better weapons. However it was not easy to fight under a non-unified command and the armored corps were spread thin. While the Germans were under air cover because the front was close enough to German airfields.
The French government could have retreated to North Africa along with the Navy and in fact there were plans to do so. However there are other countries which capitulated after losing their capital before.
http://computer.howstuffworks....
It appears to of been posted in 1999, I remember reading it a long time ago thinking are you nuts!
(might be a dupe post, wasn't logged in the first time around).
i use adblock (not plus) on chrome, but i also use dnsmasq/dhcp and some scheduled scripts on my home router running tomato usb to block almost all ads on all devices.
i don't get ads, so i don't get ads.
Sure, I'll stop using ABP. They have to just agree to compensate me with $1M if their ad network sends me malware. Can't guarantee that? Then I'll keep on running ABP thank you very much.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Compared to what Europeans had already given up or compared to what North Koreans never had?
Ah yes, reveling in ungratefulness, so hip.
The French military fares well. The French high command however sucks donkey dick during the day and llama dick during the evening, except on Sundays where it is a steady helping of duck dick.
Dear publishers who totally missed the point,
Fuck you.
Sincerely,
Everyone who proactively chose to install ABP and thus won't buy shit from your ads in the first place, you dolts.
This can be accomplished by embedding the ad as an image in the website, writing the website in flash, product placement, etc.
Embedding the ads as an image: Problem fucking solved. Images aren't half as obtrusive as the script ads.
Writing the website in Flash: They won't because that doesn't work for mobile users.
Product placement: see image.
Any solution that is worse as what is no will be blocked. Any solution that is less bad is a partial solution.
The problem is that the balance is lost. One end is no ads and thus no income from websites. The other end is the current mess. The website operators need to go back to the middle so users will disable ABP. NoScript, ScriptDefender and all others.
They need to regain the user's trust. That is a long way to go.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Yeah, it's not as if there was a checkbox in it's preferences to (dis-)allow these ads, and you don't get asked on first run what you want...
Oh wait, there is and you are.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
I really didn't know blocking ads was a matter of international warfare... but hey, whatever helps.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
was referencing the fact that we still don't know where some jewish possessions are, and are most likely in swiss vaults.
In some dusty vault in switzerland, on some dusty table probably sits some dusty cup filled with some dusty gold teeth.
(And before anyone starts flaming me - I don't want adds any more than the next man, and use ABP myself to block them.)
OK - there's a lot of predictable slagging off here of the advertisers (with which I broadly and mostly agree). But let's not, in the process, ignore the fact that EYEO aren't exactly behaving in a spotless manner either. Summed up, their position now seems to be "Pay us, and subject to a few conditions we'll stop our add-on blocking your ads".
Well - firstly, for my part, I don't want to see even the ads that EYEO deems "acceptable". I don't want ads, full stop, and will either be near the head of the queue to blacklist anything that ABP starts letting through, or will be looking for another add-on.
But secondly, the idea of trying to EYEO trying to monetarise ABP on the basis of "We have a headlock on part of your revenue stream, but we'll let go if you pay us" is extremely questionable - whether I like what the advertisers want to send me or not, that approach strikes me as a cynical business tactic verging on the unethical, and (whilst it's always dangerous to try to second-guess the courts) I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see them make a degree of headway on their challenge. Blocking everything across the board? Probably legally fine - it's the users' choice whether or not to use the add-on, and I strongly doubt that advertisers have any right to require people to let their ads be seen. Blocking everything but sufficiently "nonintrusive" ads, again across the board? Probably fine again, on the same basis. Telling people that you'll only let their stuff through if they pay you, though? Morally broken, and dodgy legal ground; I can see how a court might quite easily judge that to be extortion.
Huh.. I always thought he was German.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
It does, sometimes. It is inconsistent. Makes no sense, but that has been my experience of it.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Said the AC ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
IBM sold them computers, so a fair bit.
This and...
Facebook, contrary to popular belief, is not an international official authority whereby everyone must identify themselves to prove that they are allowed access to sites across the planet.
Facebook is a goddam revenue generator and its members' information is the commodity.
While Facebook can and will terminate an account for violations of terms and conditions, Facebook can't throw your ass in jail.
I don't use my real name on Facebook. My employer asked for my Facebook name so he could cruise it. I told him I don't have one.
He said get one.
I did.
The fucking site had not one single solitary entry except for the default Profile picture and a blank timeline.
Then I just deactivated that empty account and told them they banned me.
When he asked me why they did that, I told him I didn't bother to ask.
Then he told me to get a LinkedIn account ...
See above.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
That's a very simplistic reduction of what actually happened. IBM bears no responsibility for either the Holocaust or how Nazi's misused Hollerith machines sold long before the war.
I don't do FB or any of the social networking sites, never have.
Actually, I've found having none of these type sites is good in that I often work areas of privacy or require clearance. Not having so much info out there is a good thing usually in my fields of employment.
I've never had an employer ask to look for one, much less insist that I have one?!?!
Might I ask what area of IT you work in? What part of the country?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A common misconception. We could argue about the expense of the Maginot Line, but it did protect the Franco-German border well and served for economy of force. The French plan had the Germans go through the Belgian plains, where they would meet the best French forces and the BEF. General Gamelin thought that would be the main battle.
The French plan did not envision a drive through the Ardennes Forest, thinking that essentially impassible for large military operations. They were wrong. The Battle of the Bulge in 1944 showed that it was very defensible terrain, but there were enough roads to allow offensives to pass through it. Since the Ardennes was Belgian, and the Belgians had no intention of holding it, and the French had no plans to move forward into it. the German offensive went through as the Germans planned, and hit a very weak section of the French line.
Exactly why General Gamelin thought the Ardennes was impassible is unclear. General Georges, the man responsible for carrying out Gamelin's strategy, wanted to backstop that area of the front with an army, but couldn't get permission.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Try Soviet lack of tactics. Stalin's purges had resulted in having commanders at many levels new to their jobs and not understanding what to do. Stavka (the Soviet High Command) had to issue an order in 1941 that commanders were not supposed to space their anti-tank guns out evenly, but concentrate them where the most danger was. Soviet attacks were similarly inept.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The diplomatic situation was more complicated than you suggest.
In 1939, the Soviets had a (very reasonable) fear of being attacked. The Japanese did attack them that summer, but they were mostly worried about Germany. They therefore set out to make a military alliance with France and Britain. While there were other factors contributing to the breakdown of negotiations, the French and British didn't take them seriously at all. Until it was too late, the British envoy had enough authority to pee without clearing it with London, and not much more. Since Stalin was after some security, rather than being set up as the fall guy for a German attack, he tried plan B, which was an alliance with Germany, which he thought would likely keep the peace between them while he rebuilt the Red Army.
In return for resources, the Soviets received stuff from Germany (less than Hitler promised, of course), some additional territory to use as a buffer, and time to rebuild the army. It turned out not to be enough time (a German attack in 1942 instead of 1941 would have had a lot more difficulty), and Stalin refused to believe Germany would attack when they did, but it was a lot more favorable to the Soviets than what the West was offering.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you give an inch, they take a foot. Any time you give an overarching exception to the rule of law, it will be abused. I'm not interested in comparing our freedom losses relative to anything or anyone else. We can do better than we are doing now. For example:
--US Gov. can hold you indefinitely without pressing charges. (gitmo)
--Big data queries without warrants can cause false positive flags on innocent civilians
--Recent choke hold fiasco has shed light on the police force being slapped on the wrist for killing using methods outside their own approval
--CIA lies to senate in front of the world (about spying on citizens). Faces no charges or repercussions
--Michael Chertoff (got money from US citizens for backscatter machines without the proper vetting and RFPs)
Might I ask what area of IT you work in? What part of the country?
I don't mind the question, but the answer is moot.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
everyone can write their own ad-blocker, I have my own, neoeblock on github, firefox has good support for blockers. everyone like money, everyone hate ads. blocking ads is very personal options.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It might be a little bit of both. I have found a couple of references that state that before Belgium declared neutrality in 1936 that France did not want to cut them off. After 1936 they had little time to complete the fortifications.
Indeed.
A pity how poorly he was treated after the war's end by the very country he fought so hard to protect!
Allowing non-intrusive ads is an option in Adblock Plus, that you can set as you see fit during the initial configuration step (it's all explicitly spelled out). And my understanding is that the money they're asking for that categorization is basically a fee for the service of verifying that the ad is, indeed, "non-intrusive" under their established criteria.
Let's settle at 10-20% of the prewar population, then.
It would also be a lot more expensive, in several ways, to run the fortress line through the heavily populated and industrialized northern border of France. Running it along the Meuse through the Ardennes, on the other hand, could have been a very good idea.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The problem with online advertising is that on most pages 80% is ads and 20% is content. And not just 80% placed around the edges and at the bottom, no, it is constantly right in your face, over and over again. Online advertisers need to drastically change their approach to be welcome by web users. Put the ads on the right side of a page or at the bottom, or alternatively show me an ad upfront that I can close at will. Above all, show me something that is actually worthwhile looking at or clicking on.
I'll decide what gets downloaded onto it. I really wish these commercial sites would just stop cluttering the internet. They just make it harder to find the good stuff.
I think I'll kick in a few more bucks to AdBlock, today. I'm happy to donate to people like that, (although I wish Wikipedia would've given me a cookie when I donated, but ok, maybe they did, and I deleted it).
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Ugh... I get your point, but you couldn't pay me to look at advertising. And of course they're not going to pay us - they're trying to extract money from us. I'd rather give my money to deserving sites, and the AdBlock (and Ghostery) people.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped