Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Is there actually any evidence...

Neil Barnes,

I can answer your question. Users want advertising. They've shown this by mostly refusing to pay for websites, when there was a free alternative with adverts.

Like any opinion poll question, you have to be careful how you ask it. I'm sure that if you asked people "do you like advertising" you'd mostly get a resounding raspberry. But, if you asked the same people 'would you prefer The Daily Mail online to be free (supported by ads), or would you rather pay for it' - you'd get a different answer.

Admittedly many might say 'yuck, I'd like the Mail to go out of business'... But the point stands. People put up with ads to get the stuff they want for free. It's a perfectly reasonable transaction.

The problem is that people in general aren't particularly bothered by what's going on (don't really think about it), until someone points it out in a way that they notice. Then they'll be annoyed. So the industry will walk a creepy fine line between what it thinks it can get away with, and what it would like to try. There will be scandals and campaigns. But I suspect that most people are happy to be advertised at, and even happy to be tracked (at least a bit), in exchange for free stuff that they value. How much of it they'll put up with, is still anybody's guess.

Re: A quick question

Tools > Options > Privacy tab > tracking is the first bit of the page, just click in the box you want.

Admittedly it's buried away and this is an interesting argument. MS turned it on by default, and took a whole load of crap for doing so. Presumably on the grounds that no-one is going to choose to turn tracking on. And default opt in is always the most convenient option for advertisers / Ryanair trying to sell you insurance / junk mailers / Google giving you their toolbar / Adobe giving you McAfee...

So Mozilla have it turned off. Chrome has it hidden behind an advanced settings hyperlink in the settings page, also off by default.

Of course the problem with all the browser makers turning it on by default is that the advertisers can then say that this wasn't a user choice, so we'll ignore it. So there's no easy answer.

Maybe the ad-block writers could have a 'block some' option where adverts that behave don't get blocked. It could train the others to start behaving if others are getting their ads served up.

That's surely one possibility. Say some of Firefox, Opera, MS and Apple got together and have a set of obnoxious advert tools. Then if enough users click on the 'kill this crappy ad' button, it gets blocked on all their browsers. Even FF with its 20% market share could have a big impact on its own. MS might get into trouble with regulators if they go it alone. It could even be a popular feature that pull users away from Chrome, and forces Google to join in.

Re: 105

Of course it does. Follow the money. A substantial amount of the internet is paid for by advertising. Including most of the shiny stuff Google do. Therefore the advertisers are going to demand a seat at the table. Therefore a compromise will have to be reached that doesn't piss off one side so much that they throw the whole deal up in the air, and piss all over everyone else's chips.

Given that only a limited subset of internet users seem to care about privacy, and not many more seem interested in bothering to learn the issues, there's a lot that the advertisers can get away with.

To quote Eric Schmidt, "There is what I call the creepy line. The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."

Which is a pretty good summary of the situation. Don't wake the twin sleeping giants of government or public. They're happy when they're asleep, they don't really want to have to care about this sort of thing. Therefore they get very grumpy if you wake them up, and force them to take notice by taking the piss too much. And then they may over-react and bugger-up your whole business by mistake.

Re: Balaclava anyone?

No, not army style face paint. Actor style... Just make yourself up to look 40 years older, or optionally like a zombie, and enjoy all those creepy adverts for sweets and funeral plans.

What adverts do zombies watch?

Re: Could've Been Worse

Worse than that, if he says he's about to roast faggots...

Or do you boil them? I've never been tempted by them. Despite that advert, "Brain's Faggots. So good, you'll wish you tried them years ago." It took me a while to work out that Brain's was the trade-name, rather than the ingredient... And while we're at it, you can keep your mushy peas as well!

I want proper, honest, food like toad-in-the-hole...

I think my mouse tends to sit somewhere to the vague right-hand side of the screen. So it would pretty much always be hovering over Facebook adverts. Or at least it would if I logged on more than once every 6 weeks...

I use the mouse wheel to scroll, so the only time the mouse moves, is when I'm moving it to click on something. At which point I click on it, unless interrupted.

Maybe Facebook are hoping that this is the case for most people. A large majority being right-handed. In which case they can blame the advertisers. They can say, our users were hovering over your ads, ready and waiting to click, but your ads were so shit - they just didn't bother. We're doing our job, sack your ad agencies...

It's also doubly-impressive because I was at the cinema yesterday and I saw an advert for the Snapdragon range of processors. Obviously, having seen the little dragon flying through the air I now must have a phone with one in!

Other than Intel, I don't ever recall seeing a chip advert before. Except from McCain... I can't imagine many mobile users are going to notice it, given you'd have to read the spec sheets to know if you've got Qualcomm inside.

I have to agree with you though, those specs don't look half bad at all, particularly from something that's going to be around £250.

Re: @drewc

Evil Auditor,

The ignore button never went away. Or at least I've always had it - and still do. Have they taken it away from everyone then? I'd be interested to know how much it gets used, although as they only gave it to about 10 people at first, it's unlikely to be much.

Silver badges are on 2,000 upvotes, and it's not net. So even if you manage to get 20,000 downvotes in the process, you still get to have the badge.

I'd like to see them award badges for downvotes too. Maybe just a brown one, for achieving your first 1,000. Or perhaps a halo above your badge for anyone managing to achieve a ratio of 10 up to 1 down.

Re: @Evil Auditor

Ralph B,

You've shattered my illusions now. I was just about to congratulate you for the new word predant: to correct someone before they've made the error. And now you tell me that it was just a typo. Boo!

Still, quite a nice one. As I know that in your reply to me, you will incorrectly use the word whom...

Re: @Drewc

Ralph B,

You've only got 10 minutes to edit. So you need to be watching pretty closely, and for your victim to be answering pretty quickly, and then for them not to see the change in time to edit their post. Plus they can always delete at any time.

I think your depraved commentard brain is running away with you... Although I'm sure someone will manage something amusing. For the particularly paranoid, there's always the solution of not replying to any post that's under 10 minutes old.

They gave the ignore button and ten minute edit to gold-badgers almost as soon as they handed out the badges. As a test apparently. So perhaps we're not the superior forms of life I supposed, merely the beta-bitches...

Then the silver badgers got the edit, months ago. Although weirdly I keep seeing it referred to as 5 minutes, can't imagine why they'd only get half the time. So I guess they've now rolled it out across the board. I suspect they've been meaning to for ages, and just not got round to it.

I've tested my ignore power, but never used it in anger, as I'm too damned nosy. It's not like I have to read more than the first few words of any comment, if it's annoying me.

I do remember being a Mod on a huge forum, many moons ago. And some of our more troublesome users would beg for an ignore button, as they didn't think they had the self-control to ignore the posts of the ones they didn't like. But then in my experience they'd probably put them on ignore - loudly telling them they'd done it - but then take them off ignore to see what was being posted behind their backs, then flame away regardless, ending with the loud promise to ignore them again.

I even got asked by some if we could control an ignore list for them. We didn't have that tool, but I found the ban-hammer to be quite effective at stopping people from flaming all over the forums. Until the ban ran out at least...

Re: Where's my tinfoil hat...

I shouldn't worry about them, they're the least of your troubles. Your hoover and your digital camera are conspiring against you.

When you're being blackmailed with that incriminating photograph, don't say I didn't warn you!

Oh dear. I've just bought a teasmade...

Perhaps I now understand why the light on the clock is so alarmingly bright. Low-light cameras are expensive.

Google are one of the biggest browser makers. I think you'll find this is no coincidence.

Just as they went into mobile OS design in order to defend their dominant position in advertising (amongst other aims), they also went into browsers to protect their core business, as well as to ensure compatibility with docs.

Re: Speaking of rudeness...

so all they end up with is tannoy, static and children's screams.

That seems perfectly OK to me. An appropriate soundtrack to most meetings in fact...

You can hope that this sound signals and imminent attack by reavers which will at least put an end to the misery of the meeting. OK, there's being eaten alive as a downside, but having once got up at 3am, to catch an early flight to get to a meeting that started at 08:45 and didn't end until 17:00, this would have been a blessed relief. Just to enhance my concentration it was of course a workingpower [spit!] lunch. I wouldn't have minded if it was urgent and vital, but it wasn't, and could have been sorted in a 2 hour meeting with some follow-up conversations, or 2 meetings. Apparently I was important enough to fly over for the meeting, but not so vital to company survival that my full concentration was required. Then I hopped back on a plane, and was home by 10pm. Just in time to eat some dinner and get a restful night's sleep for tomorrow's work.

How very dare you! Willard Price was my favourite author when I was 9.

Re: No war

In a real war people know who the enemy is and what victory looks like. Bletchley Park staff knew that why secrecy was paramount and looked forward to they day they could all stop doing it.

Magnus,

Except that the people involved in Bletchley Park kept the secret after the war was finished. When that same technology continued to get used in the Cold War - even though that wasn't a real war either.

And it isn't all bullshit. There is a real problem with international terrorism. It may be used as an excuse by governments and intelligence agencies to hoover up more power and money than they possibly should. But even that's no easy call. They're going to get blamed when there's a terrorist attack, as has happened with every major recent attack, for failing to stop it. And they're going to get blamed when they gather too much data in trying to do so.

There is no perfect solution. But denying there's any problem at all, is just plain silly.

Re: It just goes to show....

Well, there actually have been some terrorist attacks. Quite big ones, that have killed quite a few people. And there have definitely been some attacks planned that have definitely been blocked. The wood just up the road from me were searched for a year, and yes they did find lots of bombs, apparently destined for aircraft. Admittedly there could have been a vast conspiracy involving about 200 police, some shadowy spooks, a bunch of lawyers and the terrorist concerned (given some of them confessed and claimed to be morally justified). But it's quite hard to believe.

So given the fact that there really are some terrorists, that do live in Britain, what level of spying is acceptable? Remember that if you say none, real people will get blown up. And if you're totally anti-spying and want all CCTV cameras removed, those real people will be even harder to catch and will kill several times before they're finally caught.

There ain't no easy answers here. One big problem is that if you give power and secrecy to a small bunch of people, some of them will abuse it. Even if you watch them carefully. But you probably need to do that for some things, such as international relations and counter-terrorism. So in an imperfect world we have only imperfect answers to difficult questions.