It sounds like they're cringing in response to the NewDotNet trojan DLL that's altering peoples' DNS configurations to use new.net's proprietary TLD extensions (.shop,.mp3,.family, etc.), which are then sold off to unsuspecting registrants [more on this below]. What worries me about some of these new registrars is they seem to be intentionally stepping into namespaces already in use by older new registrars (Alternic, OpenNIC...). As if there aren't enough domain-name lawsuits already, what happens when the SAME domain name can be owned by several people at once, and typing the domain name brings you to a different site depending on your ISP or what dodgy shareware you've installed?
On a personal note, I just got an email yesterday from someone trying (unsuccessfully) to get a refund from this 'bogus name registrar' (new.net) because they did not adequately disclose that their domain names are currently invalid on most systems, and apt to stay that way, or that they are selling off names that may be *already taken* by other sites on other DNSes. (Also, in part, because the new.net trojan causes one of her favourite internet programs to pagefault on startup, but that's a separate rant.) Personally, I think they should submit a refund to ALL of their customers.
To top it all, this unhappy customer informs me that they are charging $50 USD for 2 years. An utter rip, IMHO, considering their domain-names aren't valid on systems that don't have their Trojan horse installed and aren't on one of their bed-partner ISPs. (For reference, I paid $35 to register my *real* domain [cexx.org] for 2 years, and have the guarantee that it will be valid on *any* system running *any* internet-ready operating system, and won't display a porn site to Earthlink/Juno/NetZero customers.)
I have to disagree a little with the comment on original names. Do any of you remember starting out in Linux, and trying to keep track of what all these little programs with the clever names actually did? Mail programs named mail, mailsort, getmail, etc..make sense to everyone, beginner or not--but pine, elm, exim...
Then Hunter S. Thompson pulls a lever somewhere and the going just gets wierder. Now you've got all these clever, but totally nondescriptive acronym-as-program-names floating around, so that the package descriptions look something like: [1]
xKFjeeter - An address book utility for KDE GRAPPLE - the GNU Remote Authenticated Potato Peeler Library for EMACS PsYChoDELiC - A fast, monochrome mail reader TUTBCGAIMBTLGU - An instant messaging client (This Used To Be Called GAIM Before Their Lawyers Got Us) for Gnome FungusFlower - A database backend program using 3000 other libraries with equally nondescriptive names
I think Linux needs a few programs whose names actually tell the user what they do (in this case, ILLUSTRATE things). If nothing else, to at least reduce the learning cliff enough that more Windows-pissed potential converts will attempt the jump...
[1] These names are made-up and intended to illustrate (oops! I mean articulate) a point. Any similarities to actual programs is coincidental. Please don't wipe out both my karma points, I have worked so hard to achieve them!:)
Heh...at my high school (ah, the memories) they used Win95 machines with some kind of security app to keep people from doing much of anything (right-clicking the desktop, etc...stupid stuff.) I don't remember the name of it, but it's the one that gives you a password prompt if you shift-click the start button. Trouble was, MS Word's (and most other programs) Open/Save dialogues would let you go anywhere in the filesystem, including the networked drives(!) which had a directory for every user, including students, teachers, etc. Suffice it to say that they were not passworded, and every dir was read/write for every other user. The ol' schoolyard bully's jaw dropped when I asked him about his English report on the relative merits of different brands of garbage bags, as did those of a couple teachers when I pointed out ambiguities in their upcoming quizzes. Needless to say, their network came under new management shortly...
I recently acquired (legally) two DECserver 200/MC boxes and haven't the slightest what to do with them. So of course I took one apart...it's powered by (of all things) a Motorola 68000. It seems like there would be all kinds of fun things to turn these into, but can't find someone who's hacked one ANYwhere. Anyone, anyone?
(http://proxomitron.cjb.net)... amazing little regexp-like filter for Windows (& Linux if you have Wine installed) can filter plopups, banners, IFrames, Java/JS, whack annoying Javascripts ("Disable Right Click / Obfuscate Links / Status Bar Scrollie / Cookie scripts / etc."), auto-kill connections to junk factories (doubleclick.net), force cookies to session-only, block some/all cookies, show webpage comments on-page, silence Flash/MIDI/sounds, change colours/background, prevent smalling fonts or perform pretty much ANY other operation on HTML. You just write (or download) filter expressions and Prox. does the rest.
The site is... interesting. Would be much better without so many ads for OfficeXP, which are probably limiting the effectiveness of "email to
friend" viral marketing ploy. Maybe you ought to have a link to the definitive "Clippy" animation?:
http://cexx.org/snicker/clippy.htm
Instead of roasting the turkey, it's "lightly warmed", then the outside is toasted with a blowtorch for that honey-roasted look. Sometimes gelled or painted, too. (Similar to what is done to the Whoppers and Big Macs, etc., you see on TV--the meat is only lightly cooked, if cooked at all (cooking makes the meat shrink, which is not desirable in an ad where you want a cheeseburger to look big and juicy), then a 'cooked' colour and char-broiling lines are painted onto the patty.)
Bubbles in coffee and hot cocoa are made with detergent, "milk" in cereal ads is Elmers white glue (cereal doesn't get soggy in glue), etc.
The problem with portals is that a long time ago, someone, somewhere, said, "Hey, this new Portals thing is The Wave Of The Future! You'll make money hand over fist, and make it almost completely automated! A few Perl scripts and a static IP address, and you've got a money machine in your basement..."
Now there are a jillion useless portals, centered not around useful information or services, but Eyeballs (that magic number that brings in money) and Content (that junk you put between the ads to get the Eyeballs). To maximize the income per Eyeball, too many portals consist of nothing but useless paid-placement links...and find out that people tend not to stick around for that crap. Leading, of course, to mousetrapping (a.k.a. "circle-jerking"), home page hijacking, and the ever-popular "Browser Enhancement" that will change your homepage, Search, email signature, etc., and prevent you from changing it back.
It's a shame that the more 'upstanding' portals had to be hit by the portal-potty-itis aftershocks... --
By this definition, a computer virus is "life", as is a thought meme (such as religion)--these things are self-propagating and some, self-modifying. Wake me when we have self-aware artificial life:)
(My guess is, this will not be possible until we can give a machine sensory perception--the ability to fully observe the world surrounding, and to experience pleasure and pain...I challenge the AI professionals to prove me wrong:)
...Or has this been blown way out of proportion? AOL didnt' say point-blank that it was wrong for someone to try to find out who an actual defamer is. All AOL is saying (and I agree with them!) is that those seeking such identity information should be required to present actual proof that the person has committed defamation. E.g. no "Joe Blow posted naughties, tell us who or we sue", only "Joe Blow posted naughties, and we put our right hands on a big UNIX manual and swear under penalty of perjury that we're not making this up, (insert actual, legally-binding proof here), NOW tell us whodunnit." --
How long can a browser string (aka. User-Agent header) be? Many filter/proxy programs (e.g. Proxomitron) allow you to set your own user-agent field. Imagine the fit MPAA would be in if every major site's server log had copies of this ultra-small deCSS in it... --
There's a newsgroup dedicated to specifically discussing the ethics of ad-blocking (@ grc.com), and I found one of the threads particularly interesting:
[Begin quote]
Ironically, one thing that doesn't hurt CTRs is ad-blocking software
like WebWasher and Proxomitron. Really, if you look carefully at the
issue, these ad blockers actually help most of the advertising industry.
First of all, I'm assuming that most, if not all, of the people who
think that it's worth the time to obtain, install, configure, and use
this software are the ones who would be least likely to respond to
banner advertising. This seems like a reasonable hypothesis, given the
trouble they are going to to avoid even seeing these web ads. Now,
consider the effect that the use of these programs has on the various
segments of the ad industry:
- Advertisers who pay per ad view are saving a lot of money here. Since
these programs keep the ads from being viewed, and the people using them
have no interest in seeing these ads, the advertisers aren't paying to
show ads to people who won't respond.
- Advertisers who pay per click are not neccesarily saving money
directly. However, their click-through rates will go up, because they
are serving fewer ads and still getting as many clicks as they would if
the indifferent visitors who are using the ad-blockers were viewing
their ads.
- Sponsored sites who are paid per click are in the same
situation...they don't lose any money from the visitors using the
programs, since those visitors wouldn't click on their ads anwyay, and
becuase they aren't serving as many ads, but are still getting the same
number of clicks, their ratios get better, and their site looks more
attractive to advertisers.
- Sponsored sites who are paid per ad view are the only ones who lose
out when visitors use these ad blockers. Obviously, fewer visitors
viewing their ads means less money from the advertisers.
However...pay-per-view banner ads are very rare on the Web today,
because of the declining CTRs. Most programs that I know of pay
sponsored sites per click, not per view. As a result, there are few
sites that would be negatively affected by these filtering and blocking
programs.
I've been considering instituting a voluntary donation system (Paypal?) on my own site for some time now, so I wouldn't have to resort to flickery banner-ads. Does this mean now that if I do it, Amazon can sue me? (Great, just what I need, line forms to the left, etc..)
That reminds me, it's been months and my CueCat letter *still* hasn't arrived! (C'mon, y'all chicken or what?) Some of these so-called lawyers are really dropping the ball lately...
...that the purpose of COPYright was to prevent illegal COPYing of a work. If I want to buy a Britney Spears CD and use it to make lightning in my microwave, or shine a light on it to make colourful reflections on my walls, or slice pizza with it, or use the data bits on it to seed a random # generator, that's my own damned business.
When the RIAA/MPAA's profit-hungry 'updates' to our copyright laws are finalized, do we have to start calling them 'userights'?
Slashdot Mirror
On a personal note, I just got an email yesterday from someone trying (unsuccessfully) to get a refund from this 'bogus name registrar' (new.net) because they did not adequately disclose that their domain names are currently invalid on most systems, and apt to stay that way, or that they are selling off names that may be *already taken* by other sites on other DNSes. (Also, in part, because the new.net trojan causes one of her favourite internet programs to pagefault on startup, but that's a separate rant.) Personally, I think they should submit a refund to ALL of their customers.
To top it all, this unhappy customer informs me that they are charging $50 USD for 2 years. An utter rip, IMHO, considering their domain-names aren't valid on systems that don't have their Trojan horse installed and aren't on one of their bed-partner ISPs. (For reference, I paid $35 to register my *real* domain [cexx.org] for 2 years, and have the guarantee that it will be valid on *any* system running *any* internet-ready operating system, and won't display a porn site to Earthlink/Juno/NetZero customers.)
--
(Granted, not everyone will want to have a copy of Wine eating up memory while they surf...)
--
Then Hunter S. Thompson pulls a lever somewhere and the going just gets wierder. Now you've got all these clever, but totally nondescriptive acronym-as-program-names floating around, so that the package descriptions look something like: [1]
xKFjeeter - An address book utility for KDE
GRAPPLE - the GNU Remote Authenticated Potato Peeler Library for EMACS
PsYChoDELiC - A fast, monochrome mail reader
TUTBCGAIMBTLGU - An instant messaging client (This Used To Be Called GAIM Before Their Lawyers Got Us) for Gnome
FungusFlower - A database backend program using 3000 other libraries with equally nondescriptive names
I think Linux needs a few programs whose names actually tell the user what they do (in this case, ILLUSTRATE things). If nothing else, to at least reduce the learning cliff enough that more Windows-pissed potential converts will attempt the jump...
[1] These names are made-up and intended to illustrate (oops! I mean articulate) a point. Any similarities to actual programs is coincidental. Please don't wipe out both my karma points, I have worked so hard to achieve them! :)
--
--
--
I'm going to go out ass-first on a limb and suggest that Stupid probably hasn't applied the latest patches...
--
--
...nevermind...
--
(Anyone notice that the Subject field is too darn sho
--
See http://proxomitron.cjb.net ... well worth your attention investment.
--
Pissedoff.com has some very...interesting disclaimers. If you can connect, that is.
--
--
--
--
The site is ... interesting. Would be much better without so many ads for OfficeXP, which are probably limiting the effectiveness of "email to
friend" viral marketing ploy. Maybe you ought to have a link to the definitive "Clippy" animation?:
http://cexx.org/snicker/clippy.htm
Rgds,
Bill
--
--
Bubbles in coffee and hot cocoa are made with detergent, "milk" in cereal ads is Elmers white glue (cereal doesn't get soggy in glue), etc.
--
Now there are a jillion useless portals, centered not around useful information or services, but Eyeballs (that magic number that brings in money) and Content (that junk you put between the ads to get the Eyeballs). To maximize the income per Eyeball, too many portals consist of nothing but useless paid-placement links...and find out that people tend not to stick around for that crap. Leading, of course, to mousetrapping (a.k.a. "circle-jerking"), home page hijacking, and the ever-popular "Browser Enhancement" that will change your homepage, Search, email signature, etc., and prevent you from changing it back.
It's a shame that the more 'upstanding' portals had to be hit by the portal-potty-itis aftershocks...
--
(My guess is, this will not be possible until we can give a machine sensory perception--the ability to fully observe the world surrounding, and to experience pleasure and pain...I challenge the AI professionals to prove me wrong :)
--
...Or has this been blown way out of proportion? AOL didnt' say point-blank that it was wrong for someone to try to find out who an actual defamer is. All AOL is saying (and I agree with them!) is that those seeking such identity information should be required to present actual proof that the person has committed defamation. E.g. no "Joe Blow posted naughties, tell us who or we sue", only "Joe Blow posted naughties, and we put our right hands on a big UNIX manual and swear under penalty of perjury that we're not making this up, (insert actual, legally-binding proof here), NOW tell us whodunnit."
--
How long can a browser string (aka. User-Agent header) be? Many filter/proxy programs (e.g. Proxomitron) allow you to set your own user-agent field. Imagine the fit MPAA would be in if every major site's server log had copies of this ultra-small deCSS in it...
--
[Begin quote]
Ironically, one thing that doesn't hurt CTRs is ad-blocking software like WebWasher and Proxomitron. Really, if you look carefully at the issue, these ad blockers actually help most of the advertising industry. First of all, I'm assuming that most, if not all, of the people who think that it's worth the time to obtain, install, configure, and use this software are the ones who would be least likely to respond to banner advertising. This seems like a reasonable hypothesis, given the trouble they are going to to avoid even seeing these web ads. Now, consider the effect that the use of these programs has on the various segments of the ad industry:
- Advertisers who pay per ad view are saving a lot of money here. Since these programs keep the ads from being viewed, and the people using them have no interest in seeing these ads, the advertisers aren't paying to show ads to people who won't respond.
- Advertisers who pay per click are not neccesarily saving money directly. However, their click-through rates will go up, because they are serving fewer ads and still getting as many clicks as they would if the indifferent visitors who are using the ad-blockers were viewing their ads.
- Sponsored sites who are paid per click are in the same situation...they don't lose any money from the visitors using the programs, since those visitors wouldn't click on their ads anwyay, and becuase they aren't serving as many ads, but are still getting the same number of clicks, their ratios get better, and their site looks more attractive to advertisers.
- Sponsored sites who are paid per ad view are the only ones who lose out when visitors use these ad blockers. Obviously, fewer visitors viewing their ads means less money from the advertisers. However...pay-per-view banner ads are very rare on the Web today, because of the declining CTRs. Most programs that I know of pay sponsored sites per click, not per view. As a result, there are few sites that would be negatively affected by these filtering and blocking programs.
[End quote]
--
Ya, you tell those damn Americans :)
--
That reminds me, it's been months and my CueCat letter *still* hasn't arrived! (C'mon, y'all chicken or what?) Some of these so-called lawyers are really dropping the ball lately...
--
...that the purpose of COPYright was to prevent illegal COPYing of a work. If I want to buy a Britney Spears CD and use it to make lightning in my microwave, or shine a light on it to make colourful reflections on my walls, or slice pizza with it, or use the data bits on it to seed a random # generator, that's my own damned business. When the RIAA/MPAA's profit-hungry 'updates' to our copyright laws are finalized, do we have to start calling them 'userights'?