This is absolutely no surprise. It's also inconceivable that this is simply an honest bug. It's a backdoor.
PGP 5.x was, is, and will continue to be a screwup.
They deliberately changed the command line interface to break every PGP-interoperable tool out there.
They released the Windows version months before the UNIX version.
When they finally were releasing the UNIX versions, they were binary-only.
Eventually, they got around to releasing the source code to the world. This was supposedly because of legal concerns, but that explanation doesn't really hold water. The binaries were released and restricted to the U.S. The source code was written in book form and exported, then to be scanned in, which was legal. Of course, the binaries made it out of the U.S. in about 45 minutes. The source code could have easily been released and restricted to the U.S., but wasn't. This didn't sound right at the time either.
They deliberately broke interoperability with older versions of PGP, which in effect forced people to upgrade. Because they didn't release source code, people were upgrading with binary-only versions.
Anybody searching the Cypherpunks archives from around the time PGP 5.0 was released can find several large threads on these topics.
So, again, it doesn't come as a surprise that PGP Incorporated is a government shill organization, particularly after they joined the KRAp.
Screw them. They and the government can go fuck themselves.
Considering that it appears someone crashed it...
on
Geek Flavor
·
· Score: 1
Considering that it appears someone crashed it, perhaps letting people ssh in wasn't such a great idea.:)
And of course even if a web site requires a confirmation mail, if they keep sending the mails with each request, their site is nothing less than a open-server from which to execute a denial of service attack.
The Cypherpunks mailing list was recently hit by the fuckwits at sparklist.com . They've sent literally hundreds of spam messages to the list. They were called about it when it all started July 10th, and assured people that they would fix the problem and send an apology to the list -- they lied. Now on July 15th, the list is STILL getting crap from Sparklist.
As far as I'm concerned, what Sparklist is going is basically the same as having a "spam this address" button which people can click for a cheap thrill, and they're no different than someone who is running an open relay.
Maybe MAPS will RBL sparklist.com. I hope so.
Re:Slashdot Emergancy Broadcast
on
Open Grill
·
· Score: 1
I heard this yesterday thought I would share, not sure how long its been up as it has not been announced!
What are you guys smoking? This is episode 3.1 (three point one). In other words, it's an addendum to Geeks In Space *3*, and was released July 29th of 1999.
Re:What kind of performance hit does it take?
on
OpenBSD 2.7 Released
·
· Score: 1
I'm wondering how this problem was addressed, and weither it could be ported to Linux easily?
Why? Linux has done encrypted swap and filesystems for years.
This is nothing new. Linux has been able to encrypt filesystems and swap space for several years now with no problem.
Go grab a new 2.4.0-test1-ac* kernel, apply the 2.3.42 kerneli patches (which aren't available on ftp.kerneli.org, ironically. Check the linux-kernel archives.), handle the conflicts, and update the kernel utilities. If you don't want to mess with all this, you can get a 2.2 patch from ftp.kerneli.org and use it.
It's already possible to do private DNS. Just set up your DNS server and have it do whatever you want. If you want people using your DNS server to have microsoft.com resolve to microsoftsucks.com, you can.
Of course, it gets a bit more complicated when you start querying other peoples' DNS servers (e.g. Microsoft's in that example) for third and higher level domains.
Perhaps a better way to do this is:
1) Define a new TLD. ICAAN doesn't have to support it. You can make it.biteme if you want.
2) When the (modified) DNS server gets a request in the.biteme TLD, it strips the.biteme TLD off of the request. So in the Microsoft example microsoft.com.biteme would become microsoft.com, but a flag would be set saying that it's on the alternative DNS system.
3) If the flag isn't set, proceed as things are now.
4) If it's in the alt DNS system (there could be many of these, actually), all DNS requests would take place on a different port. (e.g. not port 53).
The "trade secrets" Microsoft is whining about were just anonymously remailed to Cypherpunks in text form by what looks like two different sources. As a result, it's now in all the Cypherpunks archives, and on a lot of peoples' hard drives.
No, I was not the one who posted it to Cypherpunks.
I've already mailed my legislators asking them to introduce legislation to repeal the DMCA. I cited the deCSS fiasco and Microsoft's latest power ploy. I also pointed out what we all know: This law will not stop piracy.
I suggest that everyone reading this who is a U.S. citizen and objects to the massive abuses which the DMCA has allowed write to their legislators and demand that this oppressive law be repealed.
After you do that, go get involved with the Freenet Project. One of the first things that project needs is for someone to get it away from Java. The protocol hasn't been fully implemented and still has some holes, I think, so that needs some help too. Then it needs a better interface. (They don't have much of one right now because it's still prealpha.)
If we all make Freenet really secure and implement it, this will really be a thorn in the side of the intellectual gestapo. If you're able to code on it, do so. If you aren't, comment (intelligently) in the fora. Set up nodes. Write user interfaces. Look over the protocol and see if you have any suggestions. If even a fraction of the coders on Slashdot worked on this, we could have an implementation up very quickly, either as Freenet or as a separate project.
The censors of information can go find other jobs.
Since when does a civil lawsuit need the defendant's consent?
In the United States, the defendant does have to consent if the defendant is the government. They've gotten themselves a buttload of roads they can take to get out of a lawsuit.
Well, the lamers have stormed the gates of GNUtella. Seeing "PANDA BEAR PORN $39.95" and similar things is cute for about the first five seconds. Then the DoS attacks involving those kinds of idiotic and repeated search patterns just get annoying.
The argument that these artists are losing money is about like an argument from NBA players if they were to be told that instead of making $10 million each this year (for example) they would only make $1 million.
Some fields have a high barrier to entry. As groups like Hansen and artists like Britney Spears prove, the barrier to entry in the music industry isn't any kind of musical skill level, but rather marketting. The simple fact of the matter is that even if these people were only making $5 million per year instead of $20 million per year, they would still be doing what they're doing. Why? Because it's what they like to do, it's what they're successful at, and people (generally) appreciate their work (or they wouldn't be making anything anyway).
The music industry would like us all to believe that this music ``piracy'' will drive people out of the music business, or somehow rob the artists of massive quantities of legitimate earnings. However, the artists would still live pretty well (still better than, say, your average doctor, who has 26 or so years of education after kindergarden, has a life-or-death critical job, and has tons of liability), and the incentive for entry into the field isn't gone. If anything, the music industry will just improve because most of the crappy artists will leave.
I don't buy CDs much at all. When I do buy them, it's usually when I've heard almost every song on the CD. Otherwise, I'm not going to buy the CD anyway. If later I happen to get a few MP3s of songs which are on that CD -- listen here ---
The artist loses NOTHING.
The artist loses nothing because I wouldn't have bought the CD anyway. If anything, the artist benefits because if I decide that I really like his or her music, I might buy the next CD as soon as it is released, without hearing every song first.
This policy is the direct result of getting ripped off on way too many crappy CDs. The return policies suck, so after you pay $18 for an overpriced CD which sucks, you're stuck with it and out $18.
There is a difference between unsolicited email and unsolicited commercial email.
There isn't much of one, except for the fact that one is commercial and the other isn't. If 500 people send you mail about "hot free sex" or about Taiwanese politics or something, does it annoy you any less than if the messages are "hot slutz want you! 1-900-FUCK-YOU" or "GET COLLEGE DEGREES FAST LIKE NOW"?
Spam is annoying and is theft of service. If I subscribe to linux-kernel, then I ask to receive the email. If I send mail to linux-kernel, then I expect emailed replies. (People who falsify their email addresses get their mail and news auto-killed at my site.) But I don't expect the Linux-kernel folks to just start flooding me with list traffic because I run Linux, or someone said that I might be interested, or they think that it's a great way to promote open source software.
I suggest that you go ahead and interview Al Gore. Of course, he won't respond, so you'll have to do a parody interview. It could start out being reasonably plausible, then get gradually more wacko, like his stories about campaign finance scandals and his list of claimed accomplishments.
What worries me a bit is that if I can have frightening dreams where I get my heart racing, can I have a dream that I have a heart-attack followed by a ral-life heart stoppage?
Most likely not. There are several different kinds of fear. The first is composed more of worry than actual fear and is mostly psychological, not involving the adrenal glands too much. We all experience that a lot. The second type, which most of us don't experience as much, is accompanied by a rapid release of epinepherine and a bunch of sympathetic nervous system activity.
An example of the second kind is if you're walking down a corridor then suddenly hear a gunshot and see a bullet hole appear in front of you: Your body dumps epinepherine into the bloodstream which increases the heart rate and strength of contraction. It also acts on muscle cells and causes a chemical cascade which results in glycogen being broken down into a phosphorylated glucose, which is then shot down the glycolytic pathway; this is why your muscles seem to have a huge amount of energy when you're terrified, and why people can do some amazing things when high on epinepherine. The effect doesn't last forever, of course. Then there are the activities of the sympathetic nervous system which come into play, such as shutting down digestion. If you're running from the bear, you don't want to waste the blood in the stomach.
There's a reason I went through all that. Your brain probably can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality in a dream, so it gets scared and triggers the flight or fight response. One of the reasons you don't start killing people is that your brain paralyzes your body; this is why sometimes you get blown out of bed and can't move for a while. If you dream that you have a heart attack, the same thing will probably happen and you'll wake up with your heart pounding.
This has interesting implications. Sure, if they got it right they could turn people into Borg. But there are more agreeable things which could be done.
1) Telepathy. Your brain links to an encrypted radio link, sort of like mental wireless Ethernet.
2) Direct computer-human interfaces. People could control their computers, fly airplanes, and perform other tasks merely by thinking of them. Obviously, this would still require training.
3) Mental HUD displays. A user could allocate a portion of his visual space to a visual computer display.
4) Probably the most interesting implications would involve improved learning abilities. It would be really interesting to have the capability to link a kind of mental hard drive into someone. This would be sort of like Neo in The Matrix when he plugs himself into a computer, and several seconds later wakes up saying, ``I know Kung-Fu!''
Obviously, any kind of interface like this would probably require a lot of training. If people are able to allocate part of their visual field to a display, they have to be able to turn it on and off, and that would require training if the interface is to be truely transparent.
I don't think we're anywhere near this point yet, though. Give science a few years and we might start seeing very interesting applications of hardware-wetware interfaces.
Look at/. they have banners. I don't have to click the banners, but i could also find a way to turn them off. But if I did that, as well as others, the advertisers would stop giving them money. I click on ads rarely as i would think others do as well.
Until you mentioned it, I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that Slashdot had ads in the first place. No joke.
The advertisement industry is dying in part because of the Internet, but not because advertising is cheap. The industry is dying because many of the people who actually buy things are using the Internet. Yet these very same people have gotten so completely sick of the ads that they ignore them. Eventually these people get sick of privacy-violating trash like Doubleclick, loads of cookies being blasted into their machines, annoying web sites which are purposefully designed so that you can't back out of them in Netscape, web sites which open new windows for no reason, annoying animated GIFs, porn advertisements, stupid pop up ads, USENET spam, and Email spam.
Not only do I block advertisements, but I make value judgements on companies based on how annoying their ads are. If it's related to computers and they do something that really grates my nerves, I will never buy from that company if I have a choice. If they're popping up stupid ads in new windows, I will not give my business to that company.
In some cases the ads are offensive. In many cases the ads are stupid. In almost all cases the ads are annoying. In the majority of cases the ads take up far more bandwidth than they're worth. Therefore, I block dedicated ad sites using Junkbuster. I block cookies except from some sites. I don't visit sites which are incompetently designed (e.g. using Java all over the place for no good reason) or which are designed to be annoying (e.g. opening every clicked link in a new browser window). If I keep seeing the same ad many times, I block that ad specifically.
If the advertisement and website industries don't like this, then they can fix the problems without violating my privacy. I don't know how they'll do it, and I don't want to waste the energy thinking about it. Only very rarely do I buy a product because it's advertised on the TV or radio, and I have never bought a product bceause of an annoying pop-up or banner ad.
After hearing about CNN and other Internet sites being bitch slapped over the last week, President Clinton today released a statement condemning the behavior.
Every thirty seconds in the United States, a bitch is slapped up. I have proposed the most stringent anti-bitch-slapping legislation in our nation's history which passed by a two to one margin in Congress.
But a bitch slapping problem continues to plague our nation. I hope young people will learn from this disturbing video that slapping your bitch is not cool. Respect your bitch!
And bitches, if he loved you, he wouldn't slap you. It's a serious offense and should be reported to authorities immediately. And know this: If you are slapped up, it's not your fault, bitch.
I hope that all Americans join me in fixing this disturbing problem for the new millenium. Thank you, and good night.
Bill Clinton then proceeding to break into a chorus of "Getting Sticky Wit It" to the tune of Will Smith's "Getting Jiggy With It."
1) This was funded by the United States government. I paid for it, and obviously it has been declassified, assuming that it was ever classified in the first place, so I have a right to use it.
2) Software patents are routinely abused and are argurably unethical and immoral. "One click shopping," CGI scripts, loadable modules (e.g. browser plugins), and other things have been patented, for instance.
Once HDTV-capable sets become affordable, there will be a demand for HDTV broadcasts. Until HDTV-capable televisions stop costing thousands of dollars, there is little or no incentive for HDTV broadcasts to be made. Now there is an incentive for high definition filming to be done. That's because DVD players are getting cheaper, and have finally become affordable. Like anything else, the more it costs, the fewer people will buy it, unless it's a virtual necessity like telephone service or even (to a certain extent) cable television.
Of course, it could be argued that people who are opening domains on the Internet should be familiar with the RFCs, and the customs, traditions, and manners of the community. That would eliminate most of the braindead behavior we see on a daily basis.
That having been said, there are two larger issues here.
1) We have a massive congestion problem. There's a problem with "cybersquatting," and there's a problem with conflicting companies, people, organizations, etc. of the same name.
2) The majority of the people who are using the Internet, as well as the majority of the people administering and opening sites these days don't have the first clue how anything works. That's bad, but what's worse is that they don't care, and they don't want to learn.
I don't know how to fix this, really. One way would be to junk the DNS system completely and go to something which is vaguely similar to a Yellow Pages, but that has its own massive problems, most of which are blatently obvious so I won't go into them here.
The entire problem has been complicated by people registering domains which have nothing to do with their company names, and not knowing about or not caring about the TLD which they've put their domain in. If people can't figure out the difference between the various TLDs now, what makes us think that they'll figure them out or care about them if we got a system which was actually somewhat complicated?
Things have gotten bad enough that I'm tempted to suggest that a lot of the things which we use need to be either redesigned or sanity enforced in their use. This includes things like HTML, which has all sorts of browser-specific, platform-specific, OS-specific trash added to it now. This includes the mail system, which could really benefit from some kind of reputation capital system or something being added to cut down on spam, junk email, and to improve mailing list quality. Web browsers in general could use some help. And of course there's the matter of people making huge files available only by HTTP so that they're almost impossible to get over anything except a T1 or greater, and sometimes not even then. (There's no resume capability that I'm aware of.)
Face it. The Internet is a great thing, but it's gone straight to hell and it needs serious help.
Just remember always the Wizard's First Rule:
Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid.
I'm sorry to say that clues must be eventually enforced, one of these days. If we don't do it, sooner or later it will be done by force of law with anti-spam legislation, domain name legislation, copyright and trademark suits, and other things, and the situation will actually be worse.
Slashdot Mirror
PGP 5.x was, is, and will continue to be a screwup.
They deliberately changed the command line interface to break every PGP-interoperable tool out there.
They released the Windows version months before the UNIX version.
When they finally were releasing the UNIX versions, they were binary-only.
Eventually, they got around to releasing the source code to the world. This was supposedly because of legal concerns, but that explanation doesn't really hold water. The binaries were released and restricted to the U.S. The source code was written in book form and exported, then to be scanned in, which was legal. Of course, the binaries made it out of the U.S. in about 45 minutes. The source code could have easily been released and restricted to the U.S., but wasn't. This didn't sound right at the time either.
They deliberately broke interoperability with older versions of PGP, which in effect forced people to upgrade. Because they didn't release source code, people were upgrading with binary-only versions.
Anybody searching the Cypherpunks archives from around the time PGP 5.0 was released can find several large threads on these topics.
So, again, it doesn't come as a surprise that PGP Incorporated is a government shill organization, particularly after they joined the KRAp.
Screw them. They and the government can go fuck themselves.
Considering that it appears someone crashed it, perhaps letting people ssh in wasn't such a great idea. :)
The Cypherpunks mailing list was recently hit by the fuckwits at sparklist.com . They've sent literally hundreds of spam messages to the list. They were called about it when it all started July 10th, and assured people that they would fix the problem and send an apology to the list -- they lied. Now on July 15th, the list is STILL getting crap from Sparklist.
As far as I'm concerned, what Sparklist is going is basically the same as having a "spam this address" button which people can click for a cheap thrill, and they're no different than someone who is running an open relay.
Maybe MAPS will RBL sparklist.com. I hope so.
What are you guys smoking? This is episode 3.1 (three point one). In other words, it's an addendum to Geeks In Space *3*, and was released July 29th of 1999.
Why? Linux has done encrypted swap and filesystems for years.
Go grab a new 2.4.0-test1-ac* kernel, apply the 2.3.42 kerneli patches (which aren't available on ftp.kerneli.org, ironically. Check the linux-kernel archives.), handle the conflicts, and update the kernel utilities. If you don't want to mess with all this, you can get a 2.2 patch from ftp.kerneli.org and use it.
# losetup -e
Of course, it gets a bit more complicated when you start querying other peoples' DNS servers (e.g. Microsoft's in that example) for third and higher level domains.
Perhaps a better way to do this is:
1) Define a new TLD. ICAAN doesn't have to support it. You can make it .biteme if you want.
2) When the (modified) DNS server gets a request in the .biteme TLD, it strips the .biteme TLD off of the request. So in the Microsoft example microsoft.com.biteme would become microsoft.com, but a flag would be set saying that it's on the alternative DNS system.
3) If the flag isn't set, proceed as things are now.
4) If it's in the alt DNS system (there could be many of these, actually), all DNS requests would take place on a different port. (e.g. not port 53).
Obviously, this needs some refinement. :)
No, I was not the one who posted it to Cypherpunks.
I suggest that everyone reading this who is a U.S. citizen and objects to the massive abuses which the DMCA has allowed write to their legislators and demand that this oppressive law be repealed.
After you do that, go get involved with the Freenet Project. One of the first things that project needs is for someone to get it away from Java. The protocol hasn't been fully implemented and still has some holes, I think, so that needs some help too. Then it needs a better interface. (They don't have much of one right now because it's still prealpha.)
If we all make Freenet really secure and implement it, this will really be a thorn in the side of the intellectual gestapo. If you're able to code on it, do so. If you aren't, comment (intelligently) in the fora. Set up nodes. Write user interfaces. Look over the protocol and see if you have any suggestions. If even a fraction of the coders on Slashdot worked on this, we could have an implementation up very quickly, either as Freenet or as a separate project.
The censors of information can go find other jobs.
In the United States, the defendant does have to consent if the defendant is the government. They've gotten themselves a buttload of roads they can take to get out of a lawsuit.
Yes, only if it's a government agency. It isn't a government agency.
Well, the lamers have stormed the gates of GNUtella. Seeing "PANDA BEAR PORN $39.95" and similar things is cute for about the first five seconds. Then the DoS attacks involving those kinds of idiotic and repeated search patterns just get annoying.
Some fields have a high barrier to entry. As groups like Hansen and artists like Britney Spears prove, the barrier to entry in the music industry isn't any kind of musical skill level, but rather marketting. The simple fact of the matter is that even if these people were only making $5 million per year instead of $20 million per year, they would still be doing what they're doing. Why? Because it's what they like to do, it's what they're successful at, and people (generally) appreciate their work (or they wouldn't be making anything anyway).
The music industry would like us all to believe that this music ``piracy'' will drive people out of the music business, or somehow rob the artists of massive quantities of legitimate earnings. However, the artists would still live pretty well (still better than, say, your average doctor, who has 26 or so years of education after kindergarden, has a life-or-death critical job, and has tons of liability), and the incentive for entry into the field isn't gone. If anything, the music industry will just improve because most of the crappy artists will leave.
I don't buy CDs much at all. When I do buy them, it's usually when I've heard almost every song on the CD. Otherwise, I'm not going to buy the CD anyway. If later I happen to get a few MP3s of songs which are on that CD -- listen here ---
The artist loses NOTHING.
The artist loses nothing because I wouldn't have bought the CD anyway. If anything, the artist benefits because if I decide that I really like his or her music, I might buy the next CD as soon as it is released, without hearing every song first.
This policy is the direct result of getting ripped off on way too many crappy CDs. The return policies suck, so after you pay $18 for an overpriced CD which sucks, you're stuck with it and out $18.
There isn't much of one, except for the fact that one is commercial and the other isn't. If 500 people send you mail about "hot free sex" or about Taiwanese politics or something, does it annoy you any less than if the messages are "hot slutz want you! 1-900-FUCK-YOU" or "GET COLLEGE DEGREES FAST LIKE NOW"?
Spam is annoying and is theft of service. If I subscribe to linux-kernel, then I ask to receive the email. If I send mail to linux-kernel, then I expect emailed replies. (People who falsify their email addresses get their mail and news auto-killed at my site.) But I don't expect the Linux-kernel folks to just start flooding me with list traffic because I run Linux, or someone said that I might be interested, or they think that it's a great way to promote open source software.
I suggest that you go ahead and interview Al Gore. Of course, he won't respond, so you'll have to do a parody interview. It could start out being reasonably plausible, then get gradually more wacko, like his stories about campaign finance scandals and his list of claimed accomplishments.
If it takes you that long to determine what dihydrogen (two hydrogen) monoxide (one oxygen) is, you have greater issues to deal with.
Most likely not. There are several different kinds of fear. The first is composed more of worry than actual fear and is mostly psychological, not involving the adrenal glands too much. We all experience that a lot. The second type, which most of us don't experience as much, is accompanied by a rapid release of epinepherine and a bunch of sympathetic nervous system activity.
An example of the second kind is if you're walking down a corridor then suddenly hear a gunshot and see a bullet hole appear in front of you: Your body dumps epinepherine into the bloodstream which increases the heart rate and strength of contraction. It also acts on muscle cells and causes a chemical cascade which results in glycogen being broken down into a phosphorylated glucose, which is then shot down the glycolytic pathway; this is why your muscles seem to have a huge amount of energy when you're terrified, and why people can do some amazing things when high on epinepherine. The effect doesn't last forever, of course. Then there are the activities of the sympathetic nervous system which come into play, such as shutting down digestion. If you're running from the bear, you don't want to waste the blood in the stomach.
There's a reason I went through all that. Your brain probably can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality in a dream, so it gets scared and triggers the flight or fight response. One of the reasons you don't start killing people is that your brain paralyzes your body; this is why sometimes you get blown out of bed and can't move for a while. If you dream that you have a heart attack, the same thing will probably happen and you'll wake up with your heart pounding.
1) Telepathy. Your brain links to an encrypted radio link, sort of like mental wireless Ethernet.
2) Direct computer-human interfaces. People could control their computers, fly airplanes, and perform other tasks merely by thinking of them. Obviously, this would still require training.
3) Mental HUD displays. A user could allocate a portion of his visual space to a visual computer display.
4) Probably the most interesting implications would involve improved learning abilities. It would be really interesting to have the capability to link a kind of mental hard drive into someone. This would be sort of like Neo in The Matrix when he plugs himself into a computer, and several seconds later wakes up saying, ``I know Kung-Fu!''
Obviously, any kind of interface like this would probably require a lot of training. If people are able to allocate part of their visual field to a display, they have to be able to turn it on and off, and that would require training if the interface is to be truely transparent.
I don't think we're anywhere near this point yet, though. Give science a few years and we might start seeing very interesting applications of hardware-wetware interfaces.
Until you mentioned it, I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that Slashdot had ads in the first place. No joke.
The advertisement industry is dying in part because of the Internet, but not because advertising is cheap. The industry is dying because many of the people who actually buy things are using the Internet. Yet these very same people have gotten so completely sick of the ads that they ignore them. Eventually these people get sick of privacy-violating trash like Doubleclick, loads of cookies being blasted into their machines, annoying web sites which are purposefully designed so that you can't back out of them in Netscape, web sites which open new windows for no reason, annoying animated GIFs, porn advertisements, stupid pop up ads, USENET spam, and Email spam.
Not only do I block advertisements, but I make value judgements on companies based on how annoying their ads are. If it's related to computers and they do something that really grates my nerves, I will never buy from that company if I have a choice. If they're popping up stupid ads in new windows, I will not give my business to that company.
In some cases the ads are offensive. In many cases the ads are stupid. In almost all cases the ads are annoying. In the majority of cases the ads take up far more bandwidth than they're worth. Therefore, I block dedicated ad sites using Junkbuster. I block cookies except from some sites. I don't visit sites which are incompetently designed (e.g. using Java all over the place for no good reason) or which are designed to be annoying (e.g. opening every clicked link in a new browser window). If I keep seeing the same ad many times, I block that ad specifically.
If the advertisement and website industries don't like this, then they can fix the problems without violating my privacy. I don't know how they'll do it, and I don't want to waste the energy thinking about it. Only very rarely do I buy a product because it's advertised on the TV or radio, and I have never bought a product bceause of an annoying pop-up or banner ad.
Bill Clinton then proceeding to break into a chorus of "Getting Sticky Wit It" to the tune of Will Smith's "Getting Jiggy With It."
2) Software patents are routinely abused and are argurably unethical and immoral. "One click shopping," CGI scripts, loadable modules (e.g. browser plugins), and other things have been patented, for instance.
Once HDTV-capable sets become affordable, there will be a demand for HDTV broadcasts. Until HDTV-capable televisions stop costing thousands of dollars, there is little or no incentive for HDTV broadcasts to be made. Now there is an incentive for high definition filming to be done. That's because DVD players are getting cheaper, and have finally become affordable. Like anything else, the more it costs, the fewer people will buy it, unless it's a virtual necessity like telephone service or even (to a certain extent) cable television.
That having been said, there are two larger issues here.
1) We have a massive congestion problem. There's a problem with "cybersquatting," and there's a problem with conflicting companies, people, organizations, etc. of the same name.
2) The majority of the people who are using the Internet, as well as the majority of the people administering and opening sites these days don't have the first clue how anything works. That's bad, but what's worse is that they don't care, and they don't want to learn.
I don't know how to fix this, really. One way would be to junk the DNS system completely and go to something which is vaguely similar to a Yellow Pages, but that has its own massive problems, most of which are blatently obvious so I won't go into them here.
The entire problem has been complicated by people registering domains which have nothing to do with their company names, and not knowing about or not caring about the TLD which they've put their domain in. If people can't figure out the difference between the various TLDs now, what makes us think that they'll figure them out or care about them if we got a system which was actually somewhat complicated?
Things have gotten bad enough that I'm tempted to suggest that a lot of the things which we use need to be either redesigned or sanity enforced in their use. This includes things like HTML, which has all sorts of browser-specific, platform-specific, OS-specific trash added to it now. This includes the mail system, which could really benefit from some kind of reputation capital system or something being added to cut down on spam, junk email, and to improve mailing list quality. Web browsers in general could use some help. And of course there's the matter of people making huge files available only by HTTP so that they're almost impossible to get over anything except a T1 or greater, and sometimes not even then. (There's no resume capability that I'm aware of.)
Face it. The Internet is a great thing, but it's gone straight to hell and it needs serious help.
Just remember always the Wizard's First Rule:
I'm sorry to say that clues must be eventually enforced, one of these days. If we don't do it, sooner or later it will be done by force of law with anti-spam legislation, domain name legislation, copyright and trademark suits, and other things, and the situation will actually be worse.