I think this system will work - but with a slight modification. Hopefully, what Yahoo/AOL are now taking is a first step towards setting up a system that completely weeds out spam, atleast on their systems.
1. Economic model: The system should allow the user (me) to block any message from someone who is not on my contact list, unless the person trying to contact me is willing to pay me a certain fee that I decide (AOL/Yahoo can get a cut in this fee). With this system, if I can set the fee to $2, it should keep out almost all the spammers and still allow my long lost friends to contact me. It might be OK if Yahoo/AOL keeps all of the $2 for themselves, since in a year, a typical user might get in touch with mabbe 10 other people, without being able to contact them via any other channel (if you can contact someone via the phone, you can exchange email addresses contact information to your addressbooks)
2. Simple challenge-response model: The system should allow me to create single-use tokens (or a password) that I can hand out with my email address (say, printed on my visiting card). Anyone who has one of these tokens and my email address can send me a mail. I can create 100 of these tokens before hand and give them out to people I meet personally along with the email ID. That way, all the 50 people I meet in a conference can contact me without having to shell out $100 collectively (if this is implemented in cojunction with the previous method).
There are a few effective steps that people who are interested in saving the current ad-model (doubleclick/google/yahoo/etc.) can take to beat ad-blocking software. One simple thing they can do is obfuscate ad-related URLs enough so that they are virtually indistinguishable from actual content. Yes, its going to be a bit of work with re-designing pages, etc. But there is a LOT of money involved and someone (Google?) will come up with a nifty tool for content publishers to accomplish it. And they don't even have to go through this for the majority of the sites on the web. About 5% of the sites attract 90% of the traffic (sorry no handy references to support this claim). They just need to take care of these sites to start with. The ball will be back in our court then.
This simple URL/image-size related rules based ad-blocking is only temporarily effective. We need a better way to recognize ads in webpages. Any ideas?
It is almost trivial to work around AdBlock. You just have to obfuscate all the URLs in your content so that AdBlock cannot single out ads from the other content ((AdBlock is based on simple pattern checks on the URL - so don't have anything like googlesyndication.com or doubleclick.com or onion.com/ads/... etc) Advertisers have to be a bit more smarter and just one step ahead of the ad blocking mechanism. With companies like Google, MSFT and Yahoo who have deep pockets and a lot to gain/lose in this advertising game, I don't think ad supported internet is going to shrink. In fact, I think it is going to grow immensely.
What do you guys have to say about how this compares to ad skipping on TiVoesq DVRs?
> Rather than blocking.scr/Pif/.exe and > deleting any email with such an attachment, > they are letting the group virus scanner on > our exchange servers deal with the entire > load.
This'll be a good argument to use to create FUD against using/exchanging MS proprietary formats... Then the switch to OSX/Linux will be easier! Wow! did not think viruses/worms actually can do some good to the world:)
The certain crowd that is advocating Linux is not advocating Linux only as a better OS than Windows (it is to a great extent). What the "certain" crowd is advocating is the philosophy behind Linux, in the hope we will at some point of time reach a stage where one dominant force will not be able to kill any sort of competition it forsees, as has Microsoft done in the past. This tact of MS is what has lead to the sad state where Linux is the only other option. (I agree with you that it is sad.) So, let us get together and work towards a tomorrow where we'll have more options.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this system will work - but with a slight modification. Hopefully, what Yahoo/AOL are now taking is a first step towards setting up a system that completely weeds out spam, atleast on their systems.
1. Economic model: The system should allow the user (me) to block any message from someone who is not on my contact list, unless the person trying to contact me is willing to pay me a certain fee that I decide (AOL/Yahoo can get a cut in this fee). With this system, if I can set the fee to $2, it should keep out almost all the spammers and still allow my long lost friends to contact me. It might be OK if Yahoo/AOL keeps all of the $2 for themselves, since in a year, a typical user might get in touch with mabbe 10 other people, without being able to contact them via any other channel (if you can contact someone via the phone, you can exchange email addresses contact information to your addressbooks)
2. Simple challenge-response model: The system should allow me to create single-use tokens (or a password) that I can hand out with my email address (say, printed on my visiting card). Anyone who has one of these tokens and my email address can send me a mail. I can create 100 of these tokens before hand and give them out to people I meet personally along with the email ID. That way, all the 50 people I meet in a conference can contact me without having to shell out $100 collectively (if this is implemented in cojunction with the previous method).
Insightful. But you sound like a noobie here. Don't u know that we at slashdot never need to be concerned with 'pills'?
There are a few effective steps that people who are interested in saving the current ad-model (doubleclick/google/yahoo/etc.) can take to beat ad-blocking software. One simple thing they can do is obfuscate ad-related URLs enough so that they are virtually indistinguishable from actual content. Yes, its going to be a bit of work with re-designing pages, etc. But there is a LOT of money involved and someone (Google?) will come up with a nifty tool for content publishers to accomplish it. And they don't even have to go through this for the majority of the sites on the web. About 5% of the sites attract 90% of the traffic (sorry no handy references to support this claim). They just need to take care of these sites to start with. The ball will be back in our court then.
This simple URL/image-size related rules based ad-blocking is only temporarily effective. We need a better way to recognize ads in webpages. Any ideas?
It is almost trivial to work around AdBlock. You just have to obfuscate all the URLs in your content so that AdBlock cannot single out ads from the other content ((AdBlock is based on simple pattern checks on the URL - so don't have anything like googlesyndication.com or doubleclick.com or onion.com/ads/... etc) Advertisers have to be a bit more smarter and just one step ahead of the ad blocking mechanism. With companies like Google, MSFT and Yahoo who have deep pockets and a lot to gain/lose in this advertising game, I don't think ad supported internet is going to shrink. In fact, I think it is going to grow immensely.
What do you guys have to say about how this compares to ad skipping on TiVoesq DVRs?
Time to update the list of vestigial organs in the human body...
> Rather than blocking .scr/Pif/.exe and
:)
> deleting any email with such an attachment,
> they are letting the group virus scanner on
> our exchange servers deal with the entire
> load.
This'll be a good argument to use to create FUD against using/exchanging MS proprietary formats... Then the switch to OSX/Linux will be easier! Wow! did not think viruses/worms actually can do some good to the world
The certain crowd that is advocating Linux is not advocating Linux only as a better OS than Windows (it is to a great extent). What the "certain" crowd is advocating is the philosophy behind Linux, in the hope we will at some point of time reach a stage where one dominant force will not be able to kill any sort of competition it forsees, as has Microsoft done in the past. This tact of MS is what has lead to the sad state where Linux is the only other option. (I agree with you that it is sad.) So, let us get together and work towards a tomorrow where we'll have more options.