I'm done with "educating the masses". The masses don't want education. They are not hungry for wisdom, they're just greedy. They want everything and for free. Nothing else. And this isn't worth risking even more limitation to my freedoms, sorry.
Sure, everybody loves getting something (of value) for free!
But that NOT what's driving piracy and downloading. The leeches only account for less than 10% of those downloading stuff illegally. The huge majority is what the media companies only can describe as "good customers", i.e. people buying media significantly above average. They download to get access to stuff, not to get it for free. Many even buy the stuff if and when it finally becomes available for purchase despite that they already have it from illegal downloads.
This means that simply by releasing stuff simultaneously worldwide they can get rid of 90% of all piracy and make a ton of extra money, because even though the downloaders mean well, they might forget to buy the stuff later (interest faded or similar), so allowing them to buy upfront should lead to additional sales. Why the media companies continue to ignore this boggles the minds. It's so stupid it hurts.
Note that for at least a year TPB has not done anything Google, Bing etc. doesn't do - TPB is strictly a portal and indexing site with no trackers or similar. They provide exactly the same when it comes to potentially illegal content as Google, Bing etc. - a link. It's amusing that rlslog.net has bowed to legal pressure and removed their download links, but they replaced them with Google searches for the same thing. So now they only link to Google
Sure, TPB is specialized in torrents while Google provides a lot of other stuff besides torrents, but otherwise they're providing the very same thing. It is time to stop the witch-hunt and realize that TPB is nothing more but a politically motivated search engine, and that these Rights Alliances simply does not like that policy, and through lobbying they try to make things illegal in other to fight the political goals of TPB and their 'colleagues'.
On the other side of the coin, I find humor in the fact that supporting facts of such conspiracies, such as the FEMA facilities to... lets say "secure" a large number of people at many different locations throughout the US....
I thought that was something Hollywood made up... Really?
Then there certainly is a need for militias capable of raiding such facilities and destroying them. Concentration camps, especially in a time of crisis, is the worst thing a civilized society can employ. They are useless for anything except intimidation. A viral outbreak? People would die trying to escape and people from the outside wold die trying to help their loved ones escape. It can never be as secure as a prison, and once the perimeter is broken, it's game over. Such camps cannot be sustained beyond 2-3 hours and then everybody is free again, except now with a serious grudge against Uncle Sam and his FEMA henchmen. This will make things a lot worse than just letting people go about their business because now you will have a lot of angry and possibly infected people seeking vengeance...
Anybody who's really determined can get a bomb on a 'plane using this method and nothing the TSA does will prevent it. I know it, you know it, Al Qaeda knows it, even the TSA knows it.
A much bigger threat than passengers are airport employees. It was quite the scandal when it turned out that three security employees at Londons Heathrow Airport were illegal aliens with fake documents. Two of these were from Afghanistan by the way, They had full clearance and could roam the entire airport and board planes if they liked. Just think of all the harm they could have done.
Oh, and airport infrastructure as well. A random check at an airport whose name I don't remember right now prompted by an anonymous tip revealed that many so-called alarmed doors weren't. Turns out bad wiring or wear and tear caused numerous false alarms, which made the officials turn off the alarm system. Then, when the employees found out the alarms didn't work, they blocked the doors open for convenience in their daily jobs, leaving open unmonitored doors for anyone to use.
Last but not least - there was a jewellery heist at a Dutch airport the other day. The thieves simply rammed and broke through the airport fence, drove up to a plane that just finished taxiing, opened the cargo hold, grabbed some containers (which contained a significant quantity of diamonds) and drove back out and away. Terrorists could easily do the same except they could be bringing explosives or worse aboard a plane which they then proceed to fly away in and later crash it somewhere important.
About license plates... Although it's still rampant with theft of these (to be put on other cars so they can steal gas or commit other crimes), downright fake plates are starting to get big. If you steal someone's plates, they're bound to be missed and reported stolen. If you instead copy the plates from a similar car, you can get away with it for a long time, and would even pass a cursory police check (until you commit crimes with it of course).
You don't even have to mess with cardboard, stencils and paint - there are sites on the internet where you can buy any license plate you want (any state, any country) with any number you want, no questions asked. They are very good and often impossible to distinguish from the real thing.
So the real owner gets blamed for the gas theft etc. - until it becomes obvious that there's two almost identical cars with the same license plate.
The gun analogy doesn't fly... An IP can be abused or shared without actual knowledge. This is much harder with a physical item like a gun.
Remember - not only can members of a household share an IP and not only can wireless access be hacked/abused to allow unknown external parties to participate in the sharing - external parties also hook into the network either by ethernet cable or through a rogue access point hidden somewhere. This has actually happened in real life.
The judge got it right: You cannot use an IP to unique identify the user of that IP. Too many possibilities for abuse and/or misidentification.
Weird list. They include zippyshare.com, a fairly new player, but omit uploaded.net (ul.to), much more established and possibly the current 'MegaUpload' of the scene... They include rlslog.net which has removed all download links but omit scnsrc.net (the alternative release log) which still has all download links, both torrent and file lockers, in both posts and comments...
Clearly, they did not secretly spend as much as they should have, word on the street is that there might actually be Climate Change.
But is it warming? - In the past 5 years our winters here in Europe and North America have been significantly COLDER than normal. If there's warming it's elsewhere because here it's been colder, especially during the winter.
I went to school in a town where religion ruled in science class. There was NO evolution ever mentioned, nor anything that might make the universe look older than the fundies allowed.
I am not american, so pardon me if I sound naive, but as far as I know the US constitution bans religion from public schools? - Except for the "... one nation under God..." part of TPoA of course... So how come we're even having this discussion? - Wanna be taught religion? Go to Sunday School. Public school should teach everything not religion, any religion actually.
If we actually stopped indoctrinating children with the seeds to grow the God Delusion, many more would become atheists (or at least agnostics) and thus make the world a better place. This is a fact, although we of course don't know what all the morons currently running around with a severe God delusion would have done if they weren't indoctrinated as children. But assuming people are basically good unless corrupted, just think of all the crimes both throughout history and still happening daily that are caused by religion: From crusades, over most bigger and smaller wars throughout the ages, to witch trials, 'modern' terrorism and hate crimes. If there were no religion, they might never have been...
A usable progress bar is based on basic statistics. Given that we know where we are and when we're done, it's just a matter of estimating when we get there. Now, it can be proven that all factors affecting the progress can be considered static after enough samples have been collected, it's just a matter of applying statistics on the last n otherwise identical chunks of progress. It is of course important to do it right, i.e. to throw away samples that are too far from the meridian/norm, but you won't know this until you're some samples further along. But if you do it right, and circumstances don't change, your progress and calculated ETA will be spot on.
Way back on the old shareware days I created many progress bars from scratch, complete with ETA, and they were rarely off by more than a second or two for long jobs (several hours), and spot on for small jobs.
How to lose weight... There are obviously many ways (and many endless detours) but here's my experiences.
1) Diet drinks don't work; they actually made it worse. When I started trying to lose weight I was 115 kg and after a year on diet sodas only I had gained 10-15 kg! 2) Eating less works far better than eating low-fat. Carbs, fat... all is good in decent amounts. Eat more smaller portions. 3) Water is good, really good. When you're really thirsty, drink (lots of) water, not sodas. Most people tend to drink too small amounts of water, even including sodas and what's in the food. 4) Sugar-sodas are fine for recreational purposes. 5) Supplement with the greens you like. Avoid oily dressings but salt & pepper is okay.
My results:
November 2011: 145 kg November 2012: 103 kg February 2013: 96 kg.
4) Believed that people can remember a 7-digit number - they can't, unless it is one they use regularly
Really? - Numbers here in Denmark are 8-digit and I remember most of the numbers in my contact list and often dial them directly instead of using the contact list.
Oh, and US numbers are actually 10-digit, but for most local and semi-local calls the 3-digit area code can be omitted.
We used to have the same kind of area codes in Denmark (6-digit numbers and 2-digit area codes that could be omitted on local calls) but about 20 years ago it was decided to throw away the disposable area codes and merge them with the phone numbers, making them always 8-digit. This also allowed for portable numbers that could be moved all over the country, from provider to provider and of course from fixed line to mobile and back.
I were among those that discovered that the rubber keypad on the "Danmark" phones could be cut and the wires to the rows could be switched (individual wires), so we simply cut up the keypad in three rows, switched the wires for the top and 3rd row and voila! - We had the old ordering back.
Not only are these scanners a very expensive waste of money as they fail to detect what they're supposed to detect, they're also a health hazard. Please stop this overpriced security theater and use the resources to actively prevent wannabe-terrorists from becoming the real thing. That's much more effective on every level. I mean even if the scanners actually work, what's to prevent a terrorist from setting off a bomb in the queue of people waiting to be scanned...? - By removing the terrorist of course. i.e. preventing radicalization or use early detection to identify and incarcerate those beyond prevention.
Some would say you are doing a disservice to your customers by continuing a practice that is hurting their business in an effort to promote a technology standard that is not working.
SPF not working? - Seriously?
If we didn't have the fail-open option of allowing mail from senders with no SPF, it would be a flawless system that would block all spam.
I do occasionally get spam through hacked gmail or yahoo mail accounts and while they pass the SPF check, they don't pass my spamassassin though, and I've added a penalty score to all mail from those and similar email providers. No enough to block all mail but if the mail posses other spam characteristics, it will be blocked. And no serious 'prospective clients' uses a free email account anyway.
And meanwhile in the real world where nailing some important email because the sender was sending all his email through a local MTA because his ISP doesn't have an externally accessible MTA, your boss is right now handing you your walking papers.
The only sane way to use SPF is to drop a spam score of an email. Outright filtering on bad or missing SPF records is just a recipe for a large number of false positives.
You don't know how SPF works, right? - Because that would excuse your statement...
Basically, SPF is a fail-open system:
A) No SPF: Allow the mail (fail-open) B) SPF present and the mail fails the check: Refuse the mail C) SPF present and the mail passes the check: Allow the mail
Option B has an exception for 'soft-fail' if the SPF uses the ~all. It will allow all mail through but tags those that fail SPF.
There's absolutely no reason not to refuse mail if the SPF check fails.
Remember, an incorrect SPF will result in a lot of mail lost, and it won't take many minutes before this is noticed. The fastest way to fix it is not to contact every single communication peer and have them bypass their SPF check; it is of course to just fix the SPF record. A 10-second dialogue with a competent postmaster at just one of the failed recipients should yield the reason for the fail, like the missing mail source. All that's left is to fix the SPF by adding the relevant "a:xxxxx.xxx" or "ip4:xx.xx.xx.xx" to the record.
That works fine until the CEO misses an email from a prospective client.
Unless you plan to profit from stupidity, that prospective client is worthless if they can't even set up a functional SPF record. Either you're too stupid to know about SPF or you do it right. Everything else is dumb beyond reason.
In a lot of cases you don't have permission to post "the original" without a corresponding copyright notice on the page. In that case, linking directly to the image without displaying the copyright notice is a copyright violation on Google's part. Even most Creative Common licenses have that particular term.
Isn't the copyright notice also listed in the image's metadata, which is still available if you save Google's copy of the image?
If yes, there's no violation. It's not a legal impairment that you require a tool to read it; fine print on contracts have been equally binding for centuries and this is no different.
Besides, fair use of an image has always been legal, and online re-use of online images have been ruled fair use many times. As long as you don't claim ownership, your own copyright or similar, or use it commercially, and credit the source, it's fair use.
I doesn't have to be all or nothing with robots.txt. You can simply exclude certain paths, like/pics, and then the stuff in there won't be indexed. Quite simple and handy actually.
Dear "Webmaster", nobody cares about your shitty website packed full of annoying ads. Get over it already.
Spoken like a typical leech. No surprise, but always amazing.
Absolutely! - I know I am, and I know many others are... Leeches that is. Proud user of AdBlock-style software for two decades.
Advertising has gone from bad to painfully awful in amazingly short time, rendering most pages useless without ad-blocking software. It began with that first animated banner, blinking or jumping to attract attention and today you get full page ads, competely blocking the real page, complete with loud music, a semi-yelling salesman or worse.
IO loaded the example forum with NoScript enabled. Absolutely no formatting present, the only way to differentiate individual posts was by the "#1" "#2" numbering each one individually, inlined with the body text of the comments.
We don't need more client side code, we need less. Formatting should be in CSS, the content should degrade sanely for text only and mobile browsers / screen readers. I shouldn't have to allow javascript through in order to format the page content.
Worse - when I did enable javascript to see what it actually is intended to look like, they've got one of those "fixed position" menus at the top of the page that doesn't scroll away, and I absolutely detest webpages that use those. I prefer being able to see more of the content, and can navigate my way to the top of the screen for a seldom used menu with one keystroke, or a short drag of a scrollbar handle. The site also has a maximum width for the content section, on a 16:9 1080p screen, 2/3 of the page is blank when my browser window is full screen. If this is the future of webforums, I don't want it.
Agree 100% - I use NoScript for this exact reason: JavaScript is heavily abused by hackers and advertisers alike - evil people hell-bent on destroying our online experience.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm done with "educating the masses". The masses don't want education. They are not hungry for wisdom, they're just greedy. They want everything and for free. Nothing else. And this isn't worth risking even more limitation to my freedoms, sorry.
Sure, everybody loves getting something (of value) for free!
But that NOT what's driving piracy and downloading. The leeches only account for less than 10% of those downloading stuff illegally. The huge majority is what the media companies only can describe as "good customers", i.e. people buying media significantly above average. They download to get access to stuff, not to get it for free. Many even buy the stuff if and when it finally becomes available for purchase despite that they already have it from illegal downloads.
This means that simply by releasing stuff simultaneously worldwide they can get rid of 90% of all piracy and make a ton of extra money, because even though the downloaders mean well, they might forget to buy the stuff later (interest faded or similar), so allowing them to buy upfront should lead to additional sales. Why the media companies continue to ignore this boggles the minds. It's so stupid it hurts.
Yes, this is very sad.
Note that for at least a year TPB has not done anything Google, Bing etc. doesn't do - TPB is strictly a portal and indexing site with no trackers or similar. They provide exactly the same when it comes to potentially illegal content as Google, Bing etc. - a link. It's amusing that rlslog.net has bowed to legal pressure and removed their download links, but they replaced them with Google searches for the same thing. So now they only link to Google
Sure, TPB is specialized in torrents while Google provides a lot of other stuff besides torrents, but otherwise they're providing the very same thing. It is time to stop the witch-hunt and realize that TPB is nothing more but a politically motivated search engine, and that these Rights Alliances simply does not like that policy, and through lobbying they try to make things illegal in other to fight the political goals of TPB and their 'colleagues'.
On the other side of the coin, I find humor in the fact that supporting facts of such conspiracies, such as the FEMA facilities to... lets say "secure" a large number of people at many different locations throughout the US ....
I thought that was something Hollywood made up... Really?
Then there certainly is a need for militias capable of raiding such facilities and destroying them. Concentration camps, especially in a time of crisis, is the worst thing a civilized society can employ. They are useless for anything except intimidation. A viral outbreak? People would die trying to escape and people from the outside wold die trying to help their loved ones escape. It can never be as secure as a prison, and once the perimeter is broken, it's game over. Such camps cannot be sustained beyond 2-3 hours and then everybody is free again, except now with a serious grudge against Uncle Sam and his FEMA henchmen. This will make things a lot worse than just letting people go about their business because now you will have a lot of angry and possibly infected people seeking vengeance...
Anybody who's really determined can get a bomb on a 'plane using this method and nothing the TSA does will prevent it. I know it, you know it, Al Qaeda knows it, even the TSA knows it.
A much bigger threat than passengers are airport employees. It was quite the scandal when it turned out that three security employees at Londons Heathrow Airport were illegal aliens with fake documents. Two of these were from Afghanistan by the way, They had full clearance and could roam the entire airport and board planes if they liked. Just think of all the harm they could have done.
Oh, and airport infrastructure as well. A random check at an airport whose name I don't remember right now prompted by an anonymous tip revealed that many so-called alarmed doors weren't. Turns out bad wiring or wear and tear caused numerous false alarms, which made the officials turn off the alarm system. Then, when the employees found out the alarms didn't work, they blocked the doors open for convenience in their daily jobs, leaving open unmonitored doors for anyone to use.
Last but not least - there was a jewellery heist at a Dutch airport the other day. The thieves simply rammed and broke through the airport fence, drove up to a plane that just finished taxiing, opened the cargo hold, grabbed some containers (which contained a significant quantity of diamonds) and drove back out and away. Terrorists could easily do the same except they could be bringing explosives or worse aboard a plane which they then proceed to fly away in and later crash it somewhere important.
About license plates... Although it's still rampant with theft of these (to be put on other cars so they can steal gas or commit other crimes), downright fake plates are starting to get big. If you steal someone's plates, they're bound to be missed and reported stolen. If you instead copy the plates from a similar car, you can get away with it for a long time, and would even pass a cursory police check (until you commit crimes with it of course).
You don't even have to mess with cardboard, stencils and paint - there are sites on the internet where you can buy any license plate you want (any state, any country) with any number you want, no questions asked. They are very good and often impossible to distinguish from the real thing.
So the real owner gets blamed for the gas theft etc. - until it becomes obvious that there's two almost identical cars with the same license plate.
The gun analogy doesn't fly... An IP can be abused or shared without actual knowledge. This is much harder with a physical item like a gun.
Remember - not only can members of a household share an IP and not only can wireless access be hacked/abused to allow unknown external parties to participate in the sharing - external parties also hook into the network either by ethernet cable or through a rogue access point hidden somewhere. This has actually happened in real life.
The judge got it right: You cannot use an IP to unique identify the user of that IP. Too many possibilities for abuse and/or misidentification.
Weird list. They include zippyshare.com, a fairly new player, but omit uploaded.net (ul.to), much more established and possibly the current 'MegaUpload' of the scene... They include rlslog.net which has removed all download links but omit scnsrc.net (the alternative release log) which still has all download links, both torrent and file lockers, in both posts and comments...
Clearly, they did not secretly spend as much as they should have, word on the street is that there might actually be Climate Change.
But is it warming? - In the past 5 years our winters here in Europe and North America have been significantly COLDER than normal. If there's warming it's elsewhere because here it's been colder, especially during the winter.
I went to school in a town where religion ruled in science class. There was NO evolution ever mentioned, nor anything that might make the universe look older than the fundies allowed.
I am not american, so pardon me if I sound naive, but as far as I know the US constitution bans religion from public schools? - Except for the "... one nation under God..." part of TPoA of course... So how come we're even having this discussion? - Wanna be taught religion? Go to Sunday School. Public school should teach everything not religion, any religion actually.
If we actually stopped indoctrinating children with the seeds to grow the God Delusion, many more would become atheists (or at least agnostics) and thus make the world a better place. This is a fact, although we of course don't know what all the morons currently running around with a severe God delusion would have done if they weren't indoctrinated as children. But assuming people are basically good unless corrupted, just think of all the crimes both throughout history and still happening daily that are caused by religion: From crusades, over most bigger and smaller wars throughout the ages, to witch trials, 'modern' terrorism and hate crimes. If there were no religion, they might never have been...
I do not think, therefore He is.
Actually: He is because I do not think. There, obvious for everybody - only the unthinking ones believe in a God.
Ha! - Good one!
A usable progress bar is based on basic statistics. Given that we know where we are and when we're done, it's just a matter of estimating when we get there. Now, it can be proven that all factors affecting the progress can be considered static after enough samples have been collected, it's just a matter of applying statistics on the last n otherwise identical chunks of progress. It is of course important to do it right, i.e. to throw away samples that are too far from the meridian/norm, but you won't know this until you're some samples further along. But if you do it right, and circumstances don't change, your progress and calculated ETA will be spot on.
Way back on the old shareware days I created many progress bars from scratch, complete with ETA, and they were rarely off by more than a second or two for long jobs (several hours), and spot on for small jobs.
How to lose weight... There are obviously many ways (and many endless detours) but here's my experiences.
1) Diet drinks don't work; they actually made it worse. When I started trying to lose weight I was 115 kg and after a year on diet sodas only I had gained 10-15 kg!
2) Eating less works far better than eating low-fat. Carbs, fat... all is good in decent amounts. Eat more smaller portions.
3) Water is good, really good. When you're really thirsty, drink (lots of) water, not sodas. Most people tend to drink too small amounts of water, even including sodas and what's in the food.
4) Sugar-sodas are fine for recreational purposes.
5) Supplement with the greens you like. Avoid oily dressings but salt & pepper is okay.
My results:
November 2011: 145 kg
November 2012: 103 kg
February 2013: 96 kg.
4) Believed that people can remember a 7-digit number - they can't, unless it is one they use regularly
Really? - Numbers here in Denmark are 8-digit and I remember most of the numbers in my contact list and often dial them directly instead of using the contact list.
Oh, and US numbers are actually 10-digit, but for most local and semi-local calls the 3-digit area code can be omitted.
We used to have the same kind of area codes in Denmark (6-digit numbers and 2-digit area codes that could be omitted on local calls) but about 20 years ago it was decided to throw away the disposable area codes and merge them with the phone numbers, making them always 8-digit. This also allowed for portable numbers that could be moved all over the country, from provider to provider and of course from fixed line to mobile and back.
Yes! - I remember that!
I were among those that discovered that the rubber keypad on the "Danmark" phones could be cut and the wires to the rows could be switched (individual wires), so we simply cut up the keypad in three rows, switched the wires for the top and 3rd row and voila! - We had the old ordering back.
Not only are these scanners a very expensive waste of money as they fail to detect what they're supposed to detect, they're also a health hazard. Please stop this overpriced security theater and use the resources to actively prevent wannabe-terrorists from becoming the real thing. That's much more effective on every level. I mean even if the scanners actually work, what's to prevent a terrorist from setting off a bomb in the queue of people waiting to be scanned...? - By removing the terrorist of course. i.e. preventing radicalization or use early detection to identify and incarcerate those beyond prevention.
Some would say you are doing a disservice to your customers by continuing a practice that is hurting their business in an effort to promote a technology standard that is not working.
SPF not working? - Seriously?
If we didn't have the fail-open option of allowing mail from senders with no SPF, it would be a flawless system that would block all spam.
I do occasionally get spam through hacked gmail or yahoo mail accounts and while they pass the SPF check, they don't pass my spamassassin though, and I've added a penalty score to all mail from those and similar email providers. No enough to block all mail but if the mail posses other spam characteristics, it will be blocked. And no serious 'prospective clients' uses a free email account anyway.
And meanwhile in the real world where nailing some important email because the sender was sending all his email through a local MTA because his ISP doesn't have an externally accessible MTA, your boss is right now handing you your walking papers.
The only sane way to use SPF is to drop a spam score of an email. Outright filtering on bad or missing SPF records is just a recipe for a large number of false positives.
You don't know how SPF works, right? - Because that would excuse your statement...
Basically, SPF is a fail-open system:
A) No SPF: Allow the mail (fail-open)
B) SPF present and the mail fails the check: Refuse the mail
C) SPF present and the mail passes the check: Allow the mail
Option B has an exception for 'soft-fail' if the SPF uses the ~all. It will allow all mail through but tags those that fail SPF.
There's absolutely no reason not to refuse mail if the SPF check fails.
Remember, an incorrect SPF will result in a lot of mail lost, and it won't take many minutes before this is noticed. The fastest way to fix it is not to contact every single communication peer and have them bypass their SPF check; it is of course to just fix the SPF record. A 10-second dialogue with a competent postmaster at just one of the failed recipients should yield the reason for the fail, like the missing mail source. All that's left is to fix the SPF by adding the relevant "a:xxxxx.xxx" or "ip4:xx.xx.xx.xx" to the record.
That works fine until the CEO misses an email from a prospective client.
Unless you plan to profit from stupidity, that prospective client is worthless if they can't even set up a functional SPF record. Either you're too stupid to know about SPF or you do it right. Everything else is dumb beyond reason.
MegaUpload was not evil - or copyright-infringing, except in the warped minds of some very naive FBI agents...
In a lot of cases you don't have permission to post "the original" without a corresponding copyright notice on the page. In that case, linking directly to the image without displaying the copyright notice is a copyright violation on Google's part. Even most Creative Common licenses have that particular term.
Isn't the copyright notice also listed in the image's metadata, which is still available if you save Google's copy of the image?
If yes, there's no violation. It's not a legal impairment that you require a tool to read it; fine print on contracts have been equally binding for centuries and this is no different.
Besides, fair use of an image has always been legal, and online re-use of online images have been ruled fair use many times. As long as you don't claim ownership, your own copyright or similar, or use it commercially, and credit the source, it's fair use.
I doesn't have to be all or nothing with robots.txt. You can simply exclude certain paths, like /pics, and then the stuff in there won't be indexed. Quite simple and handy actually.
Dear "Webmaster", nobody cares about your shitty website packed full of annoying ads. Get over it already.
Spoken like a typical leech. No surprise, but always amazing.
Absolutely! - I know I am, and I know many others are... Leeches that is. Proud user of AdBlock-style software for two decades.
Advertising has gone from bad to painfully awful in amazingly short time, rendering most pages useless without ad-blocking software. It began with that first animated banner, blinking or jumping to attract attention and today you get full page ads, competely blocking the real page, complete with loud music, a semi-yelling salesman or worse.
No. just... no.
IO loaded the example forum with NoScript enabled. Absolutely no formatting present, the only way to differentiate individual posts was by the "#1" "#2" numbering each one individually, inlined with the body text of the comments.
We don't need more client side code, we need less. Formatting should be in CSS, the content should degrade sanely for text only and mobile browsers / screen readers. I shouldn't have to allow javascript through in order to format the page content.
Worse - when I did enable javascript to see what it actually is intended to look like, they've got one of those "fixed position" menus at the top of the page that doesn't scroll away, and I absolutely detest webpages that use those. I prefer being able to see more of the content, and can navigate my way to the top of the screen for a seldom used menu with one keystroke, or a short drag of a scrollbar handle. The site also has a maximum width for the content section, on a 16:9 1080p screen, 2/3 of the page is blank when my browser window is full screen. If this is the future of webforums, I don't want it.
Agree 100% - I use NoScript for this exact reason: JavaScript is heavily abused by hackers and advertisers alike - evil people hell-bent on destroying our online experience.
It looks horrifyingly bad. Just looking at their test forum makes me want to run away screaming.
FidoNet was better.
Agree. FidoNet was amazingly functional given the technical limitations of the day.