Quite good, yes, except in cases where they're not. For every linguistic concept in existence you will likely find pieces missing in any dictionary. At absolute best they are an approximation, and sometimes even common themes can be absent from them. They're like a linear approximation of a function: close enough for many/most uses, but if you rely on them rigidly in all cases you'll miss important things.
The concept that a claim of self-righteous behavior can directly imply hypocrisy and/or arrogance has been in the vernacular for at least 500 years. The works of Martin Luther are an easy starting point, but there are many others from the intervening centuries. Books dealing with religious breaks are frequently a good source, as are those on political history, military history, and social psychology.
Of course it requires a site to have something of value to those who provide revenue: # of eyeballs, typically. I don't think that point is in any way a contravention of the basis on which my posted opinion was formed. It goes along perfectly well with it.
Those people who have their noses in the stratosphere are frequently willing to push their zealousness to an extreme in other areas, such as blocking even the modest ads on/. The attitude you describe from the sites which have died is exactly the one I take the most issue with.
I know in many discussions of advertisement, and even occasionally cropping up off-topic elsewhere, there are comments of long-time supporters refusing to opt out of/. advertising because they know it is an important part of what keeps this community alive. People who would never have reason to click those ads still help finance a community they derive some obviously-perceived benefit from (else why would they continue to come read and/or post?). The users who most value the discussion on a site like this should be the last to block their primary revenue stream unless they have a really good reason to. They contribute in that their posting draws people who do support/. financially, but they themselves are unwilling to do the same.
The more widespread auto-blocking becomes, the less user contribution matters. Sure, you will draw the same number of users, but only so long as those who maintain the infrastructure are willing to do so at a loss. Loss-leaders only work long-term if they're small or if there is some expectation of value elsewhere.
In that we disagree. I believe a lack of caring regarding the consequences of one's actions is implicitly arrogant behavior. A couple more extreme results of that type of outlook are clear cutting and strip mining. The ultimate import is the desires of the person outweighing any harm their actions might have on an ecosystem (be it natural, social, commercial, whatever). Perhaps you might prefer the term "predatory" to "arrogant." I use the latter because people are capable of acting apart from instinct, but they both work.
Since "arrogant" is subjective, what does it matter? It matters to the degree any issue of social discourse matters. To most people, not at all. To others, it matters in passing. To still others, it is highly important. There are an extraordinary number of shades in between. The way people approach the use of resources is of interest and importance to me. It doesn't matter if it's informational, natural, social, or any other resource. It's important to me because I choose for it to be important to me.
I don't really care about ads that are just static images and text. I'll block anything beyond that, though. And if that makes me "arrogant" in your eyes, then so be it. That was exactly what I was describing as reasonable behavior. Dealing with specific issues that you determine to impact the usability of sites you visit. Flash ads are frequently annoying and can cause serious performance degradation. Short of having a pathological aversion to advertisement, the above is an eminently reasonable approach to dealing with ads. It still allows conscientious providers to make advertising revenue while blocking the more offensive elements. It promotes the usefulness of unobtrusive advertising while eliminating income from those ads that many find distasteful. Advertisers see page views and the occasional click-through of passive advertising while losing views on aggressive advertising.
What appears to be a description of an almost pathological aversion to advertisement would at least be a logical reason to disable ads.
It'd at least be consistent if you boycotted sites that used ads. If you don't support the revenue model, don't use the resources provided which are based on that revenue model unless you are intending to cause harm as a method of protest. If the latter, at least be clear that is the basis for you engaging in an act which is directly harmful to the content provider.
Zero tolerance ad blocking is identical to extreme DRM. It only really impacts the good guys. The bad guys just move on to nastier methods of maintaining revenue streams.
No, they're not entitled. However, intentionally choosing to cut off a passive* revenue stream while continuing to use the resources which are provided based on that revenue stream isn't the most polite thing in the world to do. If you don't like how they support themselves, don't use the medium. If you use the medium and intentionally interfere with the mechanism that pays for it, you are being actively hostile toward the provider. If that's your intent, at least you have a logical reason for engaging in the behavior (which is not to say there is a logical basis for the belief that is the basis for the behavior). Otherwise, it's just being a dick unless there are real usability or content issues you have with the advertisements. Well, or being unable to use the site because of the mere presence of any advertisement, as apparently afflicts one of the posters above.
I'm also not talking about just Flash ads. In fact, I tend to specifically disclaim them (as I did in my original post) because they frequently cause performance issues of some sort or another. At the very least, they are usually not unobtrusive. It's also hard to selectively block Flash advertisements.
*Yes, I understand it requires end-user resources to display the ads. If it's noticeably impacting your finances or bandwidth, by all means block. Just don't try to tell me something less than hundredths of a percent is "noticeable."
In one sense, if they don't care it would be meaningless to search out a method to block that which they don't care about.
If you mean they don't care about the indirect consequences of their actions, yes, I believe that to be an act of arrogance.
On this specific issue. I'm not a fundamentalist, so on the majority of issues I have little care if someone disagrees with me except insofar as that disagreement has a tangible impact on me. (This being/., it will not surprise me if some random poster seizes on this statement and berates me for cases of intentional maliciousness which can be extrapolated out of it.)
The prevalence of the "all advertisement is evil" zealotry does impact me. It indirectly leads to lower quality or lesser quantity content production by producers who actually strive to provide a good value for their consumers. Those who refuse advertisements consume resources while intentionally cutting off the ability of the producer to recoup any costs. So they choose to do with less and the attendant cuts to product that entails, or they choose more aggressive means to make money. As the web currently exists, conscientious producers who place ads which are audience-relevant and not intentionally distracting or obtrusive can make enough money to support staff and pay for the resources consumed by their distribution infrastructure. A case can even be made that leaving ads enabled for someone who conscientiously avoids purchasing from advertisers (not that many exist in actual practice) is detrimental to the advertiser while benefiting everyone downstream from them. People who go out of their way to block all ads either don't think about the unintended consequences, believe themselves to understand all of them, or don't care. All of these constitute a form of arrogance in one way or another. Some to a lesser extent than others, but present in some way in each.
That particular misspelling is apparently not in Opera's dictionary, so I missed the typo (A and O are right next to each other on a Dvorak keyboard). Great way to start a response though, by attacking someone directly, rather than starting out attacking the ideas you disagree with. Well done.
Non-flash ads don't distract me, so they typically don't affect site usability for me. If I were like you and they did affect my ability to use a website simply by being present, I would block them. A concentration handicap is a rational reason for blocking ads. The implication that they distract all people is disingenuous at best, which is likely not the case here.
"Self-righteous" is usually used to describe someone speaking from an assumption they have the moral high ground while exhibiting hypocrisy on the same grounds. If you believe that applies to what I wrote, that's your prerogative. Hypocrisy is a matter of opinion, but those who care to make an honest argument usually make an attempt to convey the basis on which their opinion is formed.
It's incredibly arrogant of people to block ads simply because they dislike advertisements on an idealogical basis. They want free websites, but they don't want them to be able to make any money to pay for all the work that goes into it. Like it or not, advertising is the primary way websites fund themselves, and punishing all of them instead of targeting specific misbehavior (like Flash advertisements that destroy usability of a site or consume lots of system resources, or ad networks that track cross-site) they decide to cut off all advertisements for all sites.
Myself, I block ads selectively when they disrupt the usability of a site in one way or another. If they are not obtrusive, I am perfectly happy that the sites I use can make money simply from me loading them. Kudos to others who aren't selfish and self-righteous.
That only works when there's an actual search box though. Many of the things I use the functionality for have no search. It's simply a key replacement in any URL I want, so the "quick way" in Firefox would be irrelevant to me in most of the contexts I use the function in. It's creating a search mechanism where none exists on the site, or to do something that isn't easily replicable through the search engine.
Granted, that lets you pick from installed search engines, and adding a search engine to Firefox isn't quite as easy as adding a keyword search bookmark.
That's the key though. Being able to create a new search mechanism with a couple clicks and having it instantly integrated into the context menu is a massive time saver for me.
Thanks for the reply. I never would have thought to look for it under bookmarks. A bit too transparent for my taste, but at least the functionality exists.
I have to say though, it still can't replace how I use them in Opera. Being able to highlight anything, right-click, and choose any custom search to send the selected item to is a massive time saver for me. It basically turns any text into a three-click custom hyperlink to any resource I want.
Yes, I am saying the Oregon State jury instructions directly contradict the Oregon State Constitution.
Article 1, Sec. 16 Oregon Constitution: Excessive bail and fines; cruel and unusual punishments; power of jury in criminal case. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed. Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted, but all penalties shall be proportioned to the offense.–In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law, and the facts under the direction of the Court as to the law, and the right of new trial, as in civil cases.
Juror Handbook as published by the Oregon State Bar Association: The trial judge presides over the trial and decides what laws apply. The judge then instructs the jury as to the correct law in each case. Although some people may claim that a jury can “nullify” the law, this view is legally incorrect and severely prejudices the administration of justice. Jurors who disregard the trial judge’s instructions have violated their oath.
An infection can write to the MBR without destroying the data; many malware programs do exactly this.
If it destroys the data, there's a large possibility that the drive will be erased completely, thus obliterating the malware. By only writing over the first section of the MBR the partition table remains intact, so nothing appears to be wrong with the drive.
I wasn't aware of that. So far, I've been unable to find a way to replicate the ability to create custom searches of any website that you can GET or POST to in a browser other than Opera.
Just looked through the Chrome and Firefox menus and there's nothing. If it's functionality provided by addons, is there a name associated with it so I can actually find them?
This might be true, except that it's not. There are states which explicitly give juries the power to decide both law and fact in their Constitutions. Oregon is one such state, though the jury instructions they give directly contradict the state's Constitution.
Given how much is being linked to a cellular number, I actually would support making number portability more difficult (in that securing a process almost always makes that process more difficult/complex).
Unfortunately, politicians seem to swing from one extreme to another with little in between, so any regulations mandating increased security are likely to either be completely ineffective or much more inconvenient than necessary.
Something like SIM registration seems like it would go a long way toward combating this sort of hijacking, and should be relatively easy to implement.
This just goes to show that you should always have additional protections in place for protecting accounts (in this case, a mobile number) that can be used to control, secure, or otherwise materially modify other important accounts.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite good, yes, except in cases where they're not. For every linguistic concept in existence you will likely find pieces missing in any dictionary. At absolute best they are an approximation, and sometimes even common themes can be absent from them. They're like a linear approximation of a function: close enough for many/most uses, but if you rely on them rigidly in all cases you'll miss important things.
The concept that a claim of self-righteous behavior can directly imply hypocrisy and/or arrogance has been in the vernacular for at least 500 years. The works of Martin Luther are an easy starting point, but there are many others from the intervening centuries. Books dealing with religious breaks are frequently a good source, as are those on political history, military history, and social psychology.
Of course it requires a site to have something of value to those who provide revenue: # of eyeballs, typically. I don't think that point is in any way a contravention of the basis on which my posted opinion was formed. It goes along perfectly well with it.
Those people who have their noses in the stratosphere are frequently willing to push their zealousness to an extreme in other areas, such as blocking even the modest ads on /. The attitude you describe from the sites which have died is exactly the one I take the most issue with.
I know in many discussions of advertisement, and even occasionally cropping up off-topic elsewhere, there are comments of long-time supporters refusing to opt out of /. advertising because they know it is an important part of what keeps this community alive. People who would never have reason to click those ads still help finance a community they derive some obviously-perceived benefit from (else why would they continue to come read and/or post?). The users who most value the discussion on a site like this should be the last to block their primary revenue stream unless they have a really good reason to. They contribute in that their posting draws people who do support /. financially, but they themselves are unwilling to do the same.
The more widespread auto-blocking becomes, the less user contribution matters. Sure, you will draw the same number of users, but only so long as those who maintain the infrastructure are willing to do so at a loss. Loss-leaders only work long-term if they're small or if there is some expectation of value elsewhere.
In that we disagree. I believe a lack of caring regarding the consequences of one's actions is implicitly arrogant behavior. A couple more extreme results of that type of outlook are clear cutting and strip mining. The ultimate import is the desires of the person outweighing any harm their actions might have on an ecosystem (be it natural, social, commercial, whatever). Perhaps you might prefer the term "predatory" to "arrogant." I use the latter because people are capable of acting apart from instinct, but they both work.
Since "arrogant" is subjective, what does it matter?
It matters to the degree any issue of social discourse matters. To most people, not at all. To others, it matters in passing. To still others, it is highly important. There are an extraordinary number of shades in between. The way people approach the use of resources is of interest and importance to me. It doesn't matter if it's informational, natural, social, or any other resource. It's important to me because I choose for it to be important to me.
I don't really care about ads that are just static images and text. I'll block anything beyond that, though. And if that makes me "arrogant" in your eyes, then so be it.
That was exactly what I was describing as reasonable behavior. Dealing with specific issues that you determine to impact the usability of sites you visit. Flash ads are frequently annoying and can cause serious performance degradation. Short of having a pathological aversion to advertisement, the above is an eminently reasonable approach to dealing with ads. It still allows conscientious providers to make advertising revenue while blocking the more offensive elements. It promotes the usefulness of unobtrusive advertising while eliminating income from those ads that many find distasteful. Advertisers see page views and the occasional click-through of passive advertising while losing views on aggressive advertising.
Nothing inherently wrong with it.
It is definitely interesting to watch people discuss their skill at shipbuilding while they're actively trying to burn the shipyard down though.
Arson works, but tends to create as many or more problems than you had before.
You've just displayed a pristine example of the attitude which was my primary target.
I'd elaborate if you'd logged in, but if you can't be bothered then neither can I.
If language was math, you'd be correct. It is not.
What appears to be a description of an almost pathological aversion to advertisement would at least be a logical reason to disable ads.
It'd at least be consistent if you boycotted sites that used ads. If you don't support the revenue model, don't use the resources provided which are based on that revenue model unless you are intending to cause harm as a method of protest. If the latter, at least be clear that is the basis for you engaging in an act which is directly harmful to the content provider.
Zero tolerance ad blocking is identical to extreme DRM. It only really impacts the good guys. The bad guys just move on to nastier methods of maintaining revenue streams.
No, they're not entitled. However, intentionally choosing to cut off a passive* revenue stream while continuing to use the resources which are provided based on that revenue stream isn't the most polite thing in the world to do. If you don't like how they support themselves, don't use the medium. If you use the medium and intentionally interfere with the mechanism that pays for it, you are being actively hostile toward the provider. If that's your intent, at least you have a logical reason for engaging in the behavior (which is not to say there is a logical basis for the belief that is the basis for the behavior). Otherwise, it's just being a dick unless there are real usability or content issues you have with the advertisements. Well, or being unable to use the site because of the mere presence of any advertisement, as apparently afflicts one of the posters above.
I'm also not talking about just Flash ads. In fact, I tend to specifically disclaim them (as I did in my original post) because they frequently cause performance issues of some sort or another. At the very least, they are usually not unobtrusive. It's also hard to selectively block Flash advertisements.
*Yes, I understand it requires end-user resources to display the ads. If it's noticeably impacting your finances or bandwidth, by all means block. Just don't try to tell me something less than hundredths of a percent is "noticeable."
I'm not sure what you mean by "don't care."
In one sense, if they don't care it would be meaningless to search out a method to block that which they don't care about.
If you mean they don't care about the indirect consequences of their actions, yes, I believe that to be an act of arrogance.
On this specific issue. I'm not a fundamentalist, so on the majority of issues I have little care if someone disagrees with me except insofar as that disagreement has a tangible impact on me. (This being /., it will not surprise me if some random poster seizes on this statement and berates me for cases of intentional maliciousness which can be extrapolated out of it.)
The prevalence of the "all advertisement is evil" zealotry does impact me. It indirectly leads to lower quality or lesser quantity content production by producers who actually strive to provide a good value for their consumers. Those who refuse advertisements consume resources while intentionally cutting off the ability of the producer to recoup any costs. So they choose to do with less and the attendant cuts to product that entails, or they choose more aggressive means to make money. As the web currently exists, conscientious producers who place ads which are audience-relevant and not intentionally distracting or obtrusive can make enough money to support staff and pay for the resources consumed by their distribution infrastructure. A case can even be made that leaving ads enabled for someone who conscientiously avoids purchasing from advertisers (not that many exist in actual practice) is detrimental to the advertiser while benefiting everyone downstream from them. People who go out of their way to block all ads either don't think about the unintended consequences, believe themselves to understand all of them, or don't care. All of these constitute a form of arrogance in one way or another. Some to a lesser extent than others, but present in some way in each.
That particular misspelling is apparently not in Opera's dictionary, so I missed the typo (A and O are right next to each other on a Dvorak keyboard). Great way to start a response though, by attacking someone directly, rather than starting out attacking the ideas you disagree with. Well done.
Non-flash ads don't distract me, so they typically don't affect site usability for me. If I were like you and they did affect my ability to use a website simply by being present, I would block them. A concentration handicap is a rational reason for blocking ads. The implication that they distract all people is disingenuous at best, which is likely not the case here.
"Self-righteous" is usually used to describe someone speaking from an assumption they have the moral high ground while exhibiting hypocrisy on the same grounds. If you believe that applies to what I wrote, that's your prerogative. Hypocrisy is a matter of opinion, but those who care to make an honest argument usually make an attempt to convey the basis on which their opinion is formed.
There is such a thing as unobtrusive advertisement, because "unobtrusive" is a subjective term.
^ This.
It's incredibly arrogant of people to block ads simply because they dislike advertisements on an idealogical basis. They want free websites, but they don't want them to be able to make any money to pay for all the work that goes into it. Like it or not, advertising is the primary way websites fund themselves, and punishing all of them instead of targeting specific misbehavior (like Flash advertisements that destroy usability of a site or consume lots of system resources, or ad networks that track cross-site) they decide to cut off all advertisements for all sites.
Myself, I block ads selectively when they disrupt the usability of a site in one way or another. If they are not obtrusive, I am perfectly happy that the sites I use can make money simply from me loading them. Kudos to others who aren't selfish and self-righteous.
I'm not sure why the education undergrad degree was a BS
To inflate the importance of their degree by comparing it to a real science. It's sort of like calling a janitor a "maintenance technician."
That only works when there's an actual search box though. Many of the things I use the functionality for have no search. It's simply a key replacement in any URL I want, so the "quick way" in Firefox would be irrelevant to me in most of the contexts I use the function in. It's creating a search mechanism where none exists on the site, or to do something that isn't easily replicable through the search engine.
Granted, that lets you pick from installed search engines, and adding a search engine to Firefox isn't quite as easy as adding a keyword search bookmark.
That's the key though. Being able to create a new search mechanism with a couple clicks and having it instantly integrated into the context menu is a massive time saver for me.
I thought that was a job requirement to work there.
Thanks for the reply. I never would have thought to look for it under bookmarks. A bit too transparent for my taste, but at least the functionality exists.
I have to say though, it still can't replace how I use them in Opera. Being able to highlight anything, right-click, and choose any custom search to send the selected item to is a massive time saver for me. It basically turns any text into a three-click custom hyperlink to any resource I want.
Yes, I am saying the Oregon State jury instructions directly contradict the Oregon State Constitution.
Article 1, Sec. 16 Oregon Constitution:
Excessive bail and fines; cruel and unusual punishments; power of jury in criminal case. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed. Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted, but all penalties shall be proportioned to the offense.–In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law, and the facts under the direction of the Court as to the law, and the right of new trial, as in civil cases.
Juror Handbook as published by the Oregon State Bar Association:
The trial judge presides over the trial and decides what laws apply. The judge then instructs the jury as to the correct law in each case. Although some people may claim that a jury can “nullify” the law, this view is legally incorrect and severely prejudices the administration of justice. Jurors who disregard the trial judge’s instructions have violated their oath.
You can use a public-facing web app which requires authentication; then it's no longer a violation of the ToS.
An infection can write to the MBR without destroying the data; many malware programs do exactly this.
If it destroys the data, there's a large possibility that the drive will be erased completely, thus obliterating the malware. By only writing over the first section of the MBR the partition table remains intact, so nothing appears to be wrong with the drive.
Using Ghostery and "plugins disabled until clicked" setting in Opera 11.51. Site works flawlessly. What's broken?
I wasn't aware of that. So far, I've been unable to find a way to replicate the ability to create custom searches of any website that you can GET or POST to in a browser other than Opera.
Just looked through the Chrome and Firefox menus and there's nothing. If it's functionality provided by addons, is there a name associated with it so I can actually find them?
In the case of tabbed browsing, over a decade before the others.
This might be true, except that it's not. There are states which explicitly give juries the power to decide both law and fact in their Constitutions. Oregon is one such state, though the jury instructions they give directly contradict the state's Constitution.
Given how much is being linked to a cellular number, I actually would support making number portability more difficult (in that securing a process almost always makes that process more difficult/complex).
Unfortunately, politicians seem to swing from one extreme to another with little in between, so any regulations mandating increased security are likely to either be completely ineffective or much more inconvenient than necessary.
Something like SIM registration seems like it would go a long way toward combating this sort of hijacking, and should be relatively easy to implement.
This just goes to show that you should always have additional protections in place for protecting accounts (in this case, a mobile number) that can be used to control, secure, or otherwise materially modify other important accounts.