Merging the address and search fields is a big drawback. It further confuses people about what a URL is, and it encourages them and others (esp. advertisers) to give directions to web sites as if the keywords == addresses. (Hey, like AOL!)
If this trend continues, we'll have shenanigans and lawsuits claiming that "squatters" are using keywords on their pages that "belong to us". It will open another "IP" can of worms.
Encouraging people to rely on keywords also opens them up to phishing big time. It's like having them clean their teeth with their enema: Very semantically dirty!
If you present yourself as a threat to the project's developers, you will never get commit privs, and most likely your suggestion will just end up in the "blue-sky" milestone. Constructive criticism has its place, but it's all in how you present it.
If his ideas are that good you should be taking them eagerly and maybe even prioritizing some of them to work on yourself despite not giving him commit privs! Saying that recognizably good ideas will get kicked to the curb if they are presented in a way that's counter to your group's sensibilities tells me that you probably developed the attitude problem before the newcomer did.
Swallow your pride once in a while, for crisesakes.
"We'll take your ideas and not let you work on them here" is how you deal with immaturity... not simply "We'll ignore your ideas." The latter attitude makes it easy for all kinds of people to write off your project and eventually walk away in disinterest.
Presumably in a p2p network, where everything is a potential mitm attack, you wouldn't be able to ignore the possibility of it and would thus build encryption, signing, and data hiding into the protocol.
You could say the same about the Internet, though.
What happens, sometimes, is that the US military decides they have to have this power and they set the "defense" contractors in motion to scale such a concept up to where its can be (inadvertently) cost reduced and mass marketed.
Because it runs against even what one is likely to read in business journals.
Recently I heard an analyst say we are #2 in terms of dollars for manufactured goods, but that doesn't mean the same thing as market share.
Also, if your assessment relies on comparing us to EU member states individually instead of the EU as one market (as I suspect you are), then you're just way way off.
with the vocal approval and lion's share of contributions from executives like Sumner Redstone going to Republicans for the two prior presidential elections.
And even Rush Limbaugh said a few years ago that Conservatives had attained control of the mass media. IMO, it really shows.
I'll also point out that coverage of massive anti-war demonstrations was vanishingly small before (and even after) the date when the Bush admin invaded Iraq. But now they can't get enough of those palid;) wrinkled little darlings known as teabaggers with their relatively small demonstrations.
The fact that you have to stoop to ad-hominem attacks and comparisons of a long-time industrialized country like the USA with a third-world country like Brazil to make your point says an awful lot about your "But they like it!" position... it doesn't hold up.
I live in an area with heavy immigration from Brazil, and I don't know a one who would agree with your high-handed "our Yankee repression would feel like freedom to them" line. FYI Brazil cast off dictatorship in the 1980s and the memory is still pretty fresh. Many here are now afraid they may be dealt with as harshly as Hispanics.
As for crime in 1980s NYC, it tends to disprove your point because drugs were illegal and underground across the board: There was no decriminalization before or after (unless you count the original Prohibition era, after which there was a marked improvement). Anyway, the main reason for problems in cities like NYC was the White Flight to the suburbs that took the money, skills and connections to power away from the city -- This began in the 1950s and the reason for moving wasn't drugs, it was a reputation for being cramped and increasingly desegregated.
If you think that repression is necessary for a healthy society, then why is unhappiness and mental illness rampant in this country? People are confused and propagandized by the mass media. But most Americans know that we do not like how things are especially as the will of the people is increasingly ignored by a corporatist political class. The excuses that this situation must be what people voted for or that they like it don't hold up any longer because the system is broken, having been shown to distort information and divide people more than it represents and unites.
you deal with crime in your ideolgoy[sic] first. or your ideology will never have traction in this world. because crime is real, and all of your concerns are secondary. deal with it
I think your own stance against ACTA proves you wrong.
Then again, maybe most people would prefer to have ACTA if they knew about it. I suspect that, like the anti-war protests before the invasion of Iraq, ACTA will be kept quiet in the media, in accordance with their ideas about pursuing profit (the more conflict, initiated on their terms, the better).
If you hold that the problems of society are *primarily* dealt with through punishment with miniscule tolerance for disorder, then that puts your ideology squarely on the side of fascism. It is possible that law-abiding citizens can be anything but good; Good "Germans" and psychopaths perhaps.
And its no surprise that you lovingly compared NYC to Singapore, the latter widely considered to be an example of an explicitly fascist society. Thanks for being so forthcoming.:)
Truly good people realize that much of what qualifies as crime was made criminal with ulterior motives or intentions that no longer fit today's world. So crime cannot be viewed in a Calvinstic black-or-white fashion if justice and civility are to be maintained. This is particularly true when laws are aimed at groups with few if any resources with which to defend themselves. And no, justice is not one and the same as the law, otherwise social justice movements and civil disobedience would not exist.
Flash is still multi-platform and web-delivered. It is much more pro-Web than proprietary binary apps on a closed system like Apple's iOS.
The iPad is so bad, its even worse than Windows! Imagine if people got their computers with a Windows OS that forced you to look at un-blockable ads, removed the ads from any web sites you visit, and forced you to get all your applications from Microsoft. Web sites become something that's only grudgingly accommodated in a system like Apple's latest: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/apples-evil-genius-plan-to-punk-the-web-and-gild-the-ipad.ars
The new iPhones/iPads are designed to kill off the mobile web and force users to invest in proprietary iApps instead.
I'm sitting in the living room typing on a laptop right now. I'm noticing that my lap is getting uncomfortably warm so I'll put this thing aside and go in the other room and sit in my comfy chair at my desktop if I'm going to be writing a lot tonight.
Ah, but IMHO the reason why the analysis was poor is because the laptop/desktop overlap is very large. The differences are that desktops run demanding games better while laptops can move around... that's all nothing more. And since the smaller, simpler games are all the rage now the functional difference is minimized even further for most people.
BTW when I want to sit at a desk, I put my laptop down on the laptop stand and connect it to the USB hub -- instant desktop replacement!:)
People are using laptop hardware for everything now, even servers. The desktop share shrinks while laptops increase, but they're still all personal computers with the same ability to buy 3rd party applications and install them, or to easily write your own programs. To me, that's what matters more.
The longer desktops last (and they're lasting longer than ever these days) the fewer sales the PC industry can make. And the lower the overall price tag on a system, the less wiggle room there is for taking on a margin.
But I think the posted article has the wrong focus... Desktop vs. laptop is a non-issue because they both cater to the same "personal computing" way of doing things.
The real drama is now between PCs and managed handhelds like iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. If all these smartphones end up with bigger-brother tablets that sell well, then PC culture will shrink and the new normal will be systems like iPad that operate within walled gardens that have an anti-Web bias.
...and certain sites like Wikileaks, which uses its own private Tor-based network.
So right now we have the USA crying over "national security" and Italy weeping for the children. That covers the "Terrorism" and "Child Porn" buzzwords. Soon we will learn that drug lords and illegal immigrants use the Internet, too...
The author thinks it may be a setup by the Pentagon to discredit Wikileaks.
I think that the govt has establish a relationship with Lamo in the past. Similarly, just after the Apache helicopter video became news, the govt came down hard on Manning, scared the wits out of him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Now all of a sudden we are hearing about vast amounts of state secrets that nasty ol' Wikileaks took from Manning's tender but misguided hands.
(sniff) 'How could those rats do this to my Homeland?!!!' (sob...)
Only thing is Assange says he has never seen or heard about this supposed cache of stolen communications, and I tend to think that the govt is telling Manning to make this (damaging to Wikileaks) claim as part of a deal.
Because people would actually do that when they're on vacation and trying to check their bank balance from the hotel wifi. Right? Your solution is perfectly secure in theory, and yet it will fail completely, utterly, and totally in real-world conditions when used by actual human beings who are lazy, impatient, and often just plain dumb.
No, your analysis fails completely.
Banks would still use CAs... The expense of using the CAs is justified in their case because they have large revenues and the cert expense is relatively small. It would be nice, however, if banks also made their cert fingerprint available out-of-band for people who want the extra level of verification.
You're also making an unreasonable assumption about travelers: They're either going to use their own computer (which already has the verified certs), or someone else's. In the latter case, anyone in their right mind would avoid accessing their bank accounts and use the phone instead to check their bank balance.
To elaborate, it's not the self-signed cert that's less secure or the CA-signed cert that's more secure, it's the user-verified-and-saved cert that's more secure. It's the user's ability to do the latter that makes the biggest improvement in security.
* SWAT teams, which are militia-like by design. Note they are being deployed against people at alarming rates and for relatively mild transgressions.
* Urban zones where just standing with people on a street corner can be considered probable cause for arrest.
* Zero-tolerance laws which indicate a thirst for exacting frequent and lengthy punishment. No surprise that in 2008 a whopping 1% of the adult population was behind bars, and a staggering 17% had been jailed at some point.
* It is acceptable policy to refuse these throngs of previously jailed American citizens access to voting booths.
* A deliberate tendency of keeping wealth disparity as large as possible, pushing many people to work in the ballooning armed forces and police-state agencies out of desperation.
* An enthusiasm for deploying the latest technologies of force against citizens. That includes the electro-shocks used against even the frail and elderly at the first sign of disagreement.
* Pervasive surveillance (I hope I don't have to explain that one on/.)
* Most of the investment community and large corporations have hung their hopes at least in part on the continued expansion of both the military and police-state. It is built into the culture of Wall St.
* Fabrication of new classes of enemies and prisoners that do not fall under any system of laws, national or international. This now means that torture and summary execution of anyone including American citizens without even so much as a military trial is considered acceptable. The military need only claim such people are combatants.
* Xenophobia leading to walled-off territories, already developing a "shoot if in doubt" enforcement culture at the border.
Frankly I think there are more sure and elegant ways to do it, like making it easy for users to verify certs using fingerprints. Plus making the cert handling more like ssh.
And don't limit it to EFF... Wouldn't it be interesting if suddenly every Ubuntu system had a CA named "Canonical"? It could fit well with their cloud ambitions, esp. if web pages become one of the features in the Ubuntu cloud.
I'm not saying the demand for HTTPS will fit nicely with all the options we have now. But its healthy to grow the demand for it... then more options will open up.
Why is FF showing this to the users as an error? This is not an error, this is by design and it is a special case of usage. Who is not frustrated by the browser treating self signed certificates as if they are some sort of a disease? They provide an important role - a way to secure communications between the server and the browser.
It is an error in judgment on Mozilla's part. Their increasing institutional-mindedness is causing them to send users always into the arms of the CAs -- preferably with no exceptions. The mindset has blinded them to the fact that is it a relatively straightforward UI design issue. Speaking of which, if I were in charge at Mozilla the first thing I would change about the cert warning dialog would be to display the server's fingerprint so its immediately in the user's face. Imagine if websites could publicize their fingerprints (say, on their company letterhead, business cards, in a voicemail menu option, etc.) so anyone could verify your self-signed cert with a little effort. That and a more ssh-like cert recognition could enable a revolution in security.
HTTPS usage is at least as much about preventing surreptitious alteration (facilitating 'unwanted features' and attacks) of web pages. This can happen on unsecured or compromised networks: the 'coffee shop' Wifi scene is a place where people are particularly vulnerable not just to sniffing but to intrusion/infection attacks.
Then again, imagine you've been browsing safe at home and what was this tiny extra ad space that your ISP inserted into the top corner of many web pages became slowly larger over a period of months. Before too long the ads take on a TV-screen appearance and a couple years later you are struggling to keep a 1/8 screen sized virtual television (a subject-sensitive enhancement provided by your generous Cable ISP operator!) from impinging on your browsing. Around this point the basic fact that the TV-thing keeps appearing on so many Web users' screens starts to skew the Web advertising market and what once were many independent sites fall prey to a cycle of consolidation under the umbrella of TV networks.
The nice thing about the extension is that it WILL lead to more demand of HTTPS from users because it makes clear to them when the HTTPS option isn't there. They are bound to think more about the sensitivity of their various browsing activities on a page-by-page basis, so the desire for security will find greater expression.
FWIW, maybe the extra demand will lead to people using free CAs for things like blogs. Maybe even EFF could eventually become a CA...
Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla and Google have got this one WRONG:
Merging the address and search fields is a big drawback. It further confuses people about what a URL is, and it encourages them and others (esp. advertisers) to give directions to web sites as if the keywords == addresses. (Hey, like AOL!)
If this trend continues, we'll have shenanigans and lawsuits claiming that "squatters" are using keywords on their pages that "belong to us". It will open another "IP" can of worms.
Encouraging people to rely on keywords also opens them up to phishing big time. It's like having them clean their teeth with their enema: Very semantically dirty!
If you present yourself as a threat to the project's developers, you will never get commit privs, and most likely your suggestion will just end up in the "blue-sky" milestone. Constructive criticism has its place, but it's all in how you present it.
If his ideas are that good you should be taking them eagerly and maybe even prioritizing some of them to work on yourself despite not giving him commit privs! Saying that recognizably good ideas will get kicked to the curb if they are presented in a way that's counter to your group's sensibilities tells me that you probably developed the attitude problem before the newcomer did.
Swallow your pride once in a while, for crisesakes.
"We'll take your ideas and not let you work on them here" is how you deal with immaturity... not simply "We'll ignore your ideas." The latter attitude makes it easy for all kinds of people to write off your project and eventually walk away in disinterest.
Stackoverflow.com has an area where people can vote for projects that should receive additional help.
One of my favorites is asking for help: the Invisible Internet Project 'I2P'
I'll second that warning: Reporters Sans Frontiers/Reporters Without Borders are exactly the sort of people that whistleblowers need to avoid.
Putting a brave title on an organization does not make it good or trustworthy.
Presumably in a p2p network, where everything is a potential mitm attack, you wouldn't be able to ignore the possibility of it and would thus build encryption, signing, and data hiding into the protocol.
Yes, and anonymity too.
You could say the same about the Internet, though.
What happens, sometimes, is that the US military decides they have to have this power and they set the "defense" contractors in motion to scale such a concept up to where its can be (inadvertently) cost reduced and mass marketed.
p2p is the ENTIRE future of our progress as humanity.
After looking at the charts that kubitus linked above, the scope of your statement seems justified.
But what are these odd-sounding "anonymous p2p" networks you speak of?
USA + British Isles. On those terms, there is practically no other culture in the world outside what US corporations control.
Other cultures have no dollar value!!!
Because it runs against even what one is likely to read in business journals.
Recently I heard an analyst say we are #2 in terms of dollars for manufactured goods, but that doesn't mean the same thing as market share.
Also, if your assessment relies on comparing us to EU member states individually instead of the EU as one market (as I suspect you are), then you're just way way off.
with the vocal approval and lion's share of contributions from executives like Sumner Redstone going to Republicans for the two prior presidential elections.
And even Rush Limbaugh said a few years ago that Conservatives had attained control of the mass media. IMO, it really shows.
I'll also point out that coverage of massive anti-war demonstrations was vanishingly small before (and even after) the date when the Bush admin invaded Iraq. But now they can't get enough of those palid ;) wrinkled little darlings known as teabaggers with their relatively small demonstrations.
The fact that you have to stoop to ad-hominem attacks and comparisons of a long-time industrialized country like the USA with a third-world country like Brazil to make your point says an awful lot about your "But they like it!" position... it doesn't hold up.
I live in an area with heavy immigration from Brazil, and I don't know a one who would agree with your high-handed "our Yankee repression would feel like freedom to them" line. FYI Brazil cast off dictatorship in the 1980s and the memory is still pretty fresh. Many here are now afraid they may be dealt with as harshly as Hispanics.
As for crime in 1980s NYC, it tends to disprove your point because drugs were illegal and underground across the board: There was no decriminalization before or after (unless you count the original Prohibition era, after which there was a marked improvement). Anyway, the main reason for problems in cities like NYC was the White Flight to the suburbs that took the money, skills and connections to power away from the city -- This began in the 1950s and the reason for moving wasn't drugs, it was a reputation for being cramped and increasingly desegregated.
If you think that repression is necessary for a healthy society, then why is unhappiness and mental illness rampant in this country? People are confused and propagandized by the mass media. But most Americans know that we do not like how things are especially as the will of the people is increasingly ignored by a corporatist political class. The excuses that this situation must be what people voted for or that they like it don't hold up any longer because the system is broken, having been shown to distort information and divide people more than it represents and unites.
you deal with crime in your ideolgoy[sic] first. or your ideology will never have traction in this world. because crime is real, and all of your concerns are secondary. deal with it
I think your own stance against ACTA proves you wrong.
Then again, maybe most people would prefer to have ACTA if they knew about it. I suspect that, like the anti-war protests before the invasion of Iraq, ACTA will be kept quiet in the media, in accordance with their ideas about pursuing profit (the more conflict, initiated on their terms, the better).
If you hold that the problems of society are *primarily* dealt with through punishment with miniscule tolerance for disorder, then that puts your ideology squarely on the side of fascism. It is possible that law-abiding citizens can be anything but good; Good "Germans" and psychopaths perhaps.
And its no surprise that you lovingly compared NYC to Singapore, the latter widely considered to be an example of an explicitly fascist society. Thanks for being so forthcoming. :)
Truly good people realize that much of what qualifies as crime was made criminal with ulterior motives or intentions that no longer fit today's world. So crime cannot be viewed in a Calvinstic black-or-white fashion if justice and civility are to be maintained. This is particularly true when laws are aimed at groups with few if any resources with which to defend themselves. And no, justice is not one and the same as the law, otherwise social justice movements and civil disobedience would not exist.
Flash is still multi-platform and web-delivered. It is much more pro-Web than proprietary binary apps on a closed system like Apple's iOS.
The iPad is so bad, its even worse than Windows! Imagine if people got their computers with a Windows OS that forced you to look at un-blockable ads, removed the ads from any web sites you visit, and forced you to get all your applications from Microsoft. Web sites become something that's only grudgingly accommodated in a system like Apple's latest:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/apples-evil-genius-plan-to-punk-the-web-and-gild-the-ipad.ars
The new iPhones/iPads are designed to kill off the mobile web and force users to invest in proprietary iApps instead.
You're right, it a poor analysis.
I'm sitting in the living room typing on a laptop right now. I'm noticing that my lap is getting uncomfortably warm so I'll put this thing aside and go in the other room and sit in my comfy chair at my desktop if I'm going to be writing a lot tonight.
Ah, but IMHO the reason why the analysis was poor is because the laptop/desktop overlap is very large. The differences are that desktops run demanding games better while laptops can move around... that's all nothing more. And since the smaller, simpler games are all the rage now the functional difference is minimized even further for most people.
BTW when I want to sit at a desk, I put my laptop down on the laptop stand and connect it to the USB hub -- instant desktop replacement! :)
People are using laptop hardware for everything now, even servers. The desktop share shrinks while laptops increase, but they're still all personal computers with the same ability to buy 3rd party applications and install them, or to easily write your own programs. To me, that's what matters more.
The longer desktops last (and they're lasting longer than ever these days) the fewer sales the PC industry can make. And the lower the overall price tag on a system, the less wiggle room there is for taking on a margin.
But I think the posted article has the wrong focus... Desktop vs. laptop is a non-issue because they both cater to the same "personal computing" way of doing things.
The real drama is now between PCs and managed handhelds like iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. If all these smartphones end up with bigger-brother tablets that sell well, then PC culture will shrink and the new normal will be systems like iPad that operate within walled gardens that have an anti-Web bias.
...and certain sites like Wikileaks, which uses its own private Tor-based network.
So right now we have the USA crying over "national security" and Italy weeping for the children. That covers the "Terrorism" and "Child Porn" buzzwords. Soon we will learn that drug lords and illegal immigrants use the Internet, too...
The author thinks it may be a setup by the Pentagon to discredit Wikileaks.
I think that the govt has establish a relationship with Lamo in the past. Similarly, just after the Apache helicopter video became news, the govt came down hard on Manning, scared the wits out of him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Now all of a sudden we are hearing about vast amounts of state secrets that nasty ol' Wikileaks took from Manning's tender but misguided hands.
(sniff) 'How could those rats do this to my Homeland?!!!' (sob...)
Only thing is Assange says he has never seen or heard about this supposed cache of stolen communications, and I tend to think that the govt is telling Manning to make this (damaging to Wikileaks) claim as part of a deal.
Because people would actually do that when they're on vacation and trying to check their bank balance from the hotel wifi. Right? Your solution is perfectly secure in theory, and yet it will fail completely, utterly, and totally in real-world conditions when used by actual human beings who are lazy, impatient, and often just plain dumb.
No, your analysis fails completely.
Banks would still use CAs... The expense of using the CAs is justified in their case because they have large revenues and the cert expense is relatively small. It would be nice, however, if banks also made their cert fingerprint available out-of-band for people who want the extra level of verification.
You're also making an unreasonable assumption about travelers: They're either going to use their own computer (which already has the verified certs), or someone else's. In the latter case, anyone in their right mind would avoid accessing their bank accounts and use the phone instead to check their bank balance.
You put your finger on it.
To elaborate, it's not the self-signed cert that's less secure or the CA-signed cert that's more secure, it's the user-verified-and-saved cert that's more secure. It's the user's ability to do the latter that makes the biggest improvement in security.
* SWAT teams, which are militia-like by design. Note they are being deployed against people at alarming rates and for relatively mild transgressions.
* Urban zones where just standing with people on a street corner can be considered probable cause for arrest.
* Zero-tolerance laws which indicate a thirst for exacting frequent and lengthy punishment. No surprise that in 2008 a whopping 1% of the adult population was behind bars, and a staggering 17% had been jailed at some point.
* It is acceptable policy to refuse these throngs of previously jailed American citizens access to voting booths.
* A deliberate tendency of keeping wealth disparity as large as possible, pushing many people to work in the ballooning armed forces and police-state agencies out of desperation.
* An enthusiasm for deploying the latest technologies of force against citizens. That includes the electro-shocks used against even the frail and elderly at the first sign of disagreement.
* Pervasive surveillance (I hope I don't have to explain that one on /.)
* Most of the investment community and large corporations have hung their hopes at least in part on the continued expansion of both the military and police-state. It is built into the culture of Wall St.
* Fabrication of new classes of enemies and prisoners that do not fall under any system of laws, national or international. This now means that torture and summary execution of anyone including American citizens without even so much as a military trial is considered acceptable. The military need only claim such people are combatants.
* Xenophobia leading to walled-off territories, already developing a "shoot if in doubt" enforcement culture at the border.
* And last but not least, "Papers please!"
I remember QNX was once actually "Quantum Unix" but they didn't have the AT&T license and had to remove the explicit "Unix".
RIM bought QNX recently.
I haven't a clue, but they are concerned enough where they would even suggest Tor be used in a 2nd tier verification process:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics/
Frankly I think there are more sure and elegant ways to do it, like making it easy for users to verify certs using fingerprints. Plus making the cert handling more like ssh.
And don't limit it to EFF... Wouldn't it be interesting if suddenly every Ubuntu system had a CA named "Canonical"? It could fit well with their cloud ambitions, esp. if web pages become one of the features in the Ubuntu cloud.
I'm not saying the demand for HTTPS will fit nicely with all the options we have now. But its healthy to grow the demand for it... then more options will open up.
Why is FF showing this to the users as an error? This is not an error, this is by design and it is a special case of usage. Who is not frustrated by the browser treating self signed certificates as if they are some sort of a disease? They provide an important role - a way to secure communications between the server and the browser.
It is an error in judgment on Mozilla's part. Their increasing institutional-mindedness is causing them to send users always into the arms of the CAs -- preferably with no exceptions. The mindset has blinded them to the fact that is it a relatively straightforward UI design issue. Speaking of which, if I were in charge at Mozilla the first thing I would change about the cert warning dialog would be to display the server's fingerprint so its immediately in the user's face. Imagine if websites could publicize their fingerprints (say, on their company letterhead, business cards, in a voicemail menu option, etc.) so anyone could verify your self-signed cert with a little effort. That and a more ssh-like cert recognition could enable a revolution in security.
HTTPS usage is at least as much about preventing surreptitious alteration (facilitating 'unwanted features' and attacks) of web pages. This can happen on unsecured or compromised networks: the 'coffee shop' Wifi scene is a place where people are particularly vulnerable not just to sniffing but to intrusion/infection attacks.
Then again, imagine you've been browsing safe at home and what was this tiny extra ad space that your ISP inserted into the top corner of many web pages became slowly larger over a period of months. Before too long the ads take on a TV-screen appearance and a couple years later you are struggling to keep a 1/8 screen sized virtual television (a subject-sensitive enhancement provided by your generous Cable ISP operator!) from impinging on your browsing. Around this point the basic fact that the TV-thing keeps appearing on so many Web users' screens starts to skew the Web advertising market and what once were many independent sites fall prey to a cycle of consolidation under the umbrella of TV networks.
Sounds great, doesn't it?
The nice thing about the extension is that it WILL lead to more demand of HTTPS from users because it makes clear to them when the HTTPS option isn't there. They are bound to think more about the sensitivity of their various browsing activities on a page-by-page basis, so the desire for security will find greater expression.
FWIW, maybe the extra demand will lead to people using free CAs for things like blogs. Maybe even EFF could eventually become a CA...