Quote of the week!

[Disembodied]

That's a very good point ... even leaving malware aside, as bandwidth has grown adverts have gone from static images to animated ones, to floating not-technically-popups to autoplaying videos. If they weren't such intrusive hogs, then I doubt if nearly so many people would look to block them. Granted, a static image isn't as attention-grabbing, but then again, is triggering hostility in your audience a good sales tactic? Static images seem to work fine in print.

[Cody]

A health and safety training event has been cancelled because of health and safety concerns.

[spud42]

That's a very good point ... even leaving malware aside, as bandwidth has grown adverts have gone from static images to animated ones, to floating not-technically-popups to autoplaying videos. If they weren't such intrusive hogs, then I doubt if nearly so many people would look to block them. Granted, a static image isn't as attention-grabbing, but then again, is triggering hostility in your audience a good sales tactic? Static images seem to work fine in print.

i was looking at a stie today and it had a link to wired. followed the link got to see a little bit before the whole screen changed to a nag screen about using adblock. even allowing all the page did not let me see the page. so now we get site that wont load if you have an adblocker installed on your browser.

did it make me want to whitelist is as suggested by the nag screen? no. all it did was stop me wasting time going down the rabbit hole of link surfing. so now if i see a wired link i know not to bother following. their loss not mine.

[Disembodied]

so now we get site that wont load if you have an adblocker installed on your browser.

Yeah, that's only going to work if people are desperate to visit the site. It's just another sort of paywall, really, and - with a handful of very specific exceptions - they don't seem to work ... I suspect that your reaction will be the norm.

On a related note: Cory Doctorow's article The Internet Will Always Suck:

Every time the Internet gets cheaper, or more pervasive, or faster, the applications that it is expected to bear increase in intensity, precarity and importance. As with printers – as with every technology – users and businesses push each innovation to the brink of uselessness, not because they want useless technology, but because something is usually better than nothing.

[Disembodied]

EVE Online - The only game that's more interesting to read about than to actually play.

How a failed Kickstarter sparked EVE Online’s second-largest battle ever

[Cody]

EVE Online - The only game that's more interesting to read about than to actually play.

<chortles>

[Cody]

Vote Leave and Britain Stronger in Europe have been designated as the official Leave and Remain campaigns in June's EU referendum.

BSE? Not the best acronym, that's for sure!

[kanthoney]

I got my leaflet today! I may be too excited about reading that to continue with the external view thing, sorry.

[Cody]

Ah yes, HMG's leaflet - overjoyed, I was, when it dropped onto my doormat this morning!

[Cody]

The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a 'religious exercise' on any other work of fiction. A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Bokononism or the Church of All Worlds.

[Cody]

Therefore, under EU law in force since May 2011, people must give their consent before an anti-ad-blocker script can run and hide content on a page. Of course, while waiting for that consent from a visitor, the site could refuse to show anything, but then the publisher will scare off all readers, even the ones who turn out to be not running anti-ad plugins. If the page is viewable while waiting for the consent, then blocking ad-blockers is pointless.

<chortles>

[Cody]

It's World Intellectual Property Day! So it's time again to think about the plight of IP lawyers, tens of thousands of whom are forced to undergo the daily indignity of people shaking their heads at them as they try to explain why everything in the world, including your own thoughts, are owned by someone else and you should pay a licensing fee to be allowed access to them.

[cim]

It is a rare treat to have members from so many emergency services here on the school grounds at the same time.

[Cody]

Estonian robo-commissioner Andrus Ansip works in one of this favourite suggestions: using national ID cards to log in to online services: “Online platforms need to accept credentials issued or recognised by national public authorities, such as electronic ID cards, citizen cards, bank cards or mobile IDs”.

Why? Apparently, “for every consumer to have a multitude of username and password combinations is not only inconvenient but becomes a security risk.”

[Cody]

Andre Vallini, Secretary of State for Development and Francofonie, said it was "incomprehensible" for the French team's song to be in English.

<sniggers>