Curious -- who blocks Ads, and Why?



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    BMW == _______

    @$$hole driver?



  • @Jeff S said:

    @tster said:
    Hmmmm, a couple comments.

    I do believe HD content is able to be broadcasted over the air.  I'm sure that if it is the quality will be somewhat degraded.  that being said, I'm never actually seen it.



    It works fine.  Here in boston, you can get about 10 channels in HD using a regular antenna.  Free!  Looks absolutely perfect, I was amazed. Now and then it gets pixelated or freezes up when the reception is bad, but overall I couldn't believe it.   I did eventually break down and pay for HD through my cable provider since I am a sports nut and wanted ESPN, NESN, etc.




    Damn.  I live like 50 miles away (in Worcester) and I don't get anything.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @tster said:

    Damn.  I live like 50 miles away (in Worcester) and I don't get anything.

    Didn't the FCC mandate that stations broadcast in HD by 2006? OR maybe that was 2007 or 2008 ... but I'm pretty sure it's mandated to come in soon.

    But you're not missing too much -- seems the only things in HD is the Local News (could you think of a better use of HDTV?) and a few network syndicated shows.



  • I have to get my info about the MEASLES in HD dammit!    seriously, I was at pizza shop which had the news on and you would think hanta virus, ebola, and AIDS has mutated into a single super virus that was airborne and ravaging the Boston area.  now if only I could see the reporters face clearly enough to tell what brand of makeup she used I'd be set!



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    @ammoQ said:

    the "camcorder in a theatre" example shows that consuments don't care that much about quality

    I've read that this is becoming less and less the case with surround sound and HD becoming the norm.

    @ammoQ said:

    All it takes is just one HD-DVD player which is less-than-perfect tamper-proof

    I haven't thought about this too much, but from a theoritical standpoint, would it be feasible to sign all hi-fidelity media and have TVs that will only display content in hi-fi if it has a valid signature? Would require all DVD print shops would have the key? Or, perhaps, just some central organization that signs the content?


    The only way to make it so that media cannot be copied is to take away our freedom to watch it the way we like.  There would have to be a closed system where only a select few organizations can create devices that consume media.  If that weren't the case, then anyone could create a video driver that records the video stream to a drive.

    Right now I have a home-brew PVR setup that allows me to record stuff and play it on any device throughout my house.  I can change recording schedules from work.  Sure, I could buy a system that does this, but I like to build them.  In the very near future, my system is going to become useless and the tools to create the same system for the new media will not be available to the general public.  Already, putting my DVD library on my system would require breaking the DMCA.

    What bothers me is that all this is unneccesary.  If the only goal was to stop copyright violation, then watermarking is the way to go.  Just watermark all delivered content so that the original source can be identified.  Every DVD every sold can be traced back.  No loss of flexibility or freedom, no inconveniences.  Let the courts figure out the guilty people and make them accountable.

    The big problem is that copyright protection is being used to leverage other unnecessary restrictions on us.  There is absolutely no reason for unskippable ads in the front of purchased DVDs, no reason to prevent me from recording TV for my personal use, no reason to try to force me to buy the same song for my CD player, my iPod, my phone, and for use as a ringtone.  Yet all these things are coming.  They are coming because we let them, not because they are needed.

    As long as content producers continue to overstep their bounds, I'm going to try to find a way to make life bad for them.  I haven't bought (or downloaded) a CD from a major record label in five years.  I just don't want their music anymore.  I used to buy a lot, I have hundreds of CDs from the 80s and 90s.  I used to go to the movies a lot, now I go once or twice a year.  I make sure to educate everyone I know about abuses like the Sont rootkit fiasco so they know what is coming.

    Oh, and as for the top comment, consumers really don't care about picture quality that much.  Last year I had a choice.  I have an HD-ready TV, so I could get programming in HDTV.  However, with standard TV, I can do anything I want with it.  If I got HDTV, a TIVO would cost hundreds more, I would need a lot more hard drive space, a new capture card, and a system upgrade in my PVR, I couldn't do multiple simultaneous streams over my existing network.  And for several thousand dollars up front, and ten more bucks a month I would get the piece of mind that the new DRM schemes coming out in the next years will break everything I have.  Yippie.  I'm not selling my freedom for a few more pixels.



  • HDCP is already broken : http://apache.dataloss.nl/~fred/www.nunce.org/hdcp/hdcp111901.htm.

    The authors conclude that "we can:

    Eavesdrop on any data
    Clone any device with only their public key
    Avoid any blacklist on devices
    Create new device keyvectors.

    In aggregate, we can usurp the authority completely."

    In DRM, you hand over the data, the key and the algorithm to the consumer. You can try to obfuscate, but sooner or later it will be broken. :P



  • @jsmith said:

    The only way to make it so that media cannot be copied is to take away our freedom to watch it the way we like.  There would have to be a closed system where only a select few organizations can create devices that consume media.  If that weren't the case, then anyone could create a video driver that records the video stream to a drive.

    ...

    The big problem is that copyright protection is being used to leverage other unnecessary restrictions on us.  There is absolutely no reason for unskippable ads in the front of purchased DVDs, no reason to prevent me from recording TV for my personal use, no reason to try to force me to buy the same song for my CD player, my iPod, my phone, and for use as a ringtone.  Yet all these things are coming.  They are coming because we let them, not because they are needed.



    Thank you.

    It's coming soon, too.  Vista and HDCP

    Note, the above link is not posted through any hatred of MS, if they want to be able to play HD, then they have to make a pact with the devil.  Of course, it's the punter whose soul is involved in that deal, but hey.  Collateral damage, innit.

    Fair use vs HDCP and PVP-OPM



    The only good news is that HDCP is, apparently, cryptanalytically flawed, and, of course, devices like this (which take the same approach as DeCSS, that is, taking a known key) could well make a mockery of HDCP anyway.  Not that this will benefit the average user, only the pirates; it's more likely that devices whose keys have been leaked / discovered will suddenly stop working for newer media, and the average punter, who has paid for a player, and paid for the media will be SOL.

    Simon



  • @tufty said:


    Not that this will benefit the average user

    Except maybe a user like me who has a computer that would be capable of playing HD and a monitor with a resolution high enough to play it but some one has deemed that it should not play it. I don't want to pay another 800 pounds or what ever a 24" HD tft for a PC will cost just so they can encrypt the data to the monitor. If I was going to copy it then at some point I could find a way regardless of what they do, so in the end they are just persuading me to stop buying their media because I don't want to buy a new HD gfx card, mobo, processor, TFT, ram and any thing else they decree one could copy the data from.

    And to the original question:

    I tend to block all flash (ads or not) as I often browse with many sites open and this slows my pc down.

    The other ads I block is all popups / popunders as I don't like my desktop swampped with windows.

    Any thing animated gets blocked as I don't like things moving around when I'm trying to read, this includes non-ad animated gifs (especialy in forums).

    The last type of ad I block are the ones I often see on news sites where the ad is in-line with the text leaving the text at around 5 words per line as at this point I can no longer read the text.

    The point to note is if the ad pisses me of when trying to read what the content I avoid that product out of spite anyway as its to me it's like those people who stand in the street handing out leaflets or harrasing you to see if you've recently had an accident at work.

    Ads I don't mind are of the kind I see on this site where they are fairly unobtrusive and site happily just out the way. Their success is increased if they are targeted at the audience such as sqlservercentral.com often have ads for Sql Server products that I sometimes follow because they seem like they may have a useful product for me. I often won't buy the product right away but will make a note of it for if the problem the product solves should ever arrise as then I know where to look (which is why I think sales based don't reliably work as I make most purchases up to 6 months after I see the ad).



  • I use Firefox, which by default blocks popups -- in my opinion one of the most annoying types of ads.  In general, I don't block advertisment images as long as they're not huge.  If a site I'm reading plants a giant advertisement after the first 3 lines of the article, I'm gonna block that image with adblock.  The same goes for Flash and movie based ads -- I HATE those, and will do everything I can to block them.  Not only are they incredibly distracting, but they just make that page a hell of a lot larger to download.  The flash ads that actually give you the option of whether to play them or not aren't as bad, since they're not moving as soon as they load.

    The last type that I absolutely cannot stand is the full page animated overlays -- you know, the ones where the ad floats out from the side of the page and slides back and forth a few times, preventing you from actually clicking anywhere on the page, and when its done, you have to find the tiny 'close' button before you can do anything useful.

    So to answer your question Alex, yes I do block ads, but only the ones that are truly invasive.  The ads on TDWTF (so far) have escaped my adblocker, unless you've got some popups hidden on here :p



  • @jsmith said:

    Oh, and as for the top comment, consumers really don't care about picture quality that much.  Last year I had a choice.  I have an HD-ready TV, so I could get programming in HDTV.  However, with standard TV, I can do anything I want with it.  If I got HDTV, a TIVO would cost hundreds more, I would need a lot more hard drive space, a new capture card, and a system upgrade in my PVR, I couldn't do multiple simultaneous streams over my existing network.  And for several thousand dollars up front, and ten more bucks a month I would get the piece of mind that the new DRM schemes coming out in the next years will break everything I have.  Yippie.  I'm not selling my freedom for a few more pixels.



    so wait.  do you seriously think that most people have a setup like you?  When you say "consumers really don't care about picture quality that much" are you referencing some big survey, or are you just stating that you don't care about it?  judging from your argument I'd say you are talking for a single person and not "customers" in general.  I'd wager that in general customers do care about picture quality.  If they didn't why would they be replacing their VHS collection with DVDs at such a rapid pace.



  • @tster said:

    When you say "consumers really don't care about picture quality that much" are you referencing some big survey, or are you just stating that you don't care about it?  judging from your argument I'd say you are talking for a single person and not "customers" in general.  I'd wager that in general customers do care about picture quality.  If they didn't why would they be replacing their VHS collection with DVDs at such a rapid pace.


    If they did care that much, they wouldn't be torrenting DivX's at a rate that terrifies the cartels, though, would they?

    Simon

     



  • @tster said:

    thank god I put my foot in my mouth.  I almost said, "I'd wager that this website is hosted my open source software. (Apache)."  but I booted into linux and ran a little web client I just made and this website is infact hosted on a Windows box with server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

    Yeah, I'm don't think Linux will run ASP.Net applications.

    This entire advertising thing has turned into a war between consumers and advertisers.  Advertisers play ads during TV shows, so people mute them, so the advertisers make them more visually "loud", so people fast forward them, so then they switch to popup ads.  People don't like advertising - it's distracting and annoying, and it detracts from the experiance. 

    Any kind of content-protection system can be thwarted, and if they become too insane (someone suggested TVs that only play digitally signed and secured content) then the public will drop the medium and someone will come up with something better.  When channels started DVR-thwarting (randomly changing show broadcast times, running them 4 minutes past the end time so DVRs miss the ending), many people started getting shows off services like Bittorrent - it's fast, eay, has all of the commercials stripped out, and you can be sure that you got the entire show. 

    The main gripe that I have about advertising on websites is that when I'm browsing over a cellular connection ($1-5/MB anyone?) and the site loads (without asking) a 10mb Flash-based TV-quality video advertisment, eating up my bandwidth allowance for the next six months and forcing me to spend hours on the phone trying to purchase more bandwidth.

    With regards to rights of data, the internet is a great divider.  You can do whatever you want on your end of the connection - you can send me useful content, advertising, or whatever you want, and I can do whatever I want with it on my end.  If I ignore some of the data you sent me, that's my choice.  If you want to ignore my request for a page of you website, that's your choice.  I did not sign a legal contract saying that I was required to view your advertising, and you did not sign a legal contract saying that you were required to give me copies of your webpages.

    If you want me to sign a contract saying that I had to watch all of the advertising before I could watch this week's episode of House, well I have a choice to sign it or not. 



  • @tufty said:

    @tster said:
    When you say "consumers really don't care about picture quality that much" are you referencing some big survey, or are you just stating that you don't care about it?  judging from your argument I'd say you are talking for a single person and not "customers" in general.  I'd wager that in general customers do care about picture quality.  If they didn't why would they be replacing their VHS collection with DVDs at such a rapid pace.


    If they did care that much, they wouldn't be torrenting DivX's at a rate that terrifies the cartels, though, would they?

    Simon

     


    haha.  I'd bet that more DVDs are purchased than illegal DivX's are downloaded.  Most people care about the quality of picture and sound.  what your refering to is some people's concern with their wallet which has nothing to do with sound and picture quality :)



  • @tster said:

    @jsmith said:

    Oh, and as for the top comment, consumers really don't care about picture quality that much.  Last year I had a choice.  I have an HD-ready TV, so I could get programming in HDTV.  However, with standard TV, I can do anything I want with it.  If I got HDTV, a TIVO would cost hundreds more, I would need a lot more hard drive space, a new capture card, and a system upgrade in my PVR, I couldn't do multiple simultaneous streams over my existing network.  And for several thousand dollars up front, and ten more bucks a month I would get the piece of mind that the new DRM schemes coming out in the next years will break everything I have.  Yippie.  I'm not selling my freedom for a few more pixels.



    so wait.  do you seriously think that most people have a setup like you?  When you say "consumers really don't care about picture quality that much" are you referencing some big survey, or are you just stating that you don't care about it?  judging from your argument I'd say you are talking for a single person and not "customers" in general.  I'd wager that in general customers do care about picture quality.  If they didn't why would they be replacing their VHS collection with DVDs at such a rapid pace.

    DVDs are better than VHS because they are smaller, easier to rewind, and cheaper to produce (therefore generally cheaper to buy).  DVDs really aren't very much better quality than VHS tapes.  If a cable network advertised it had new "480p" HD channels, they'd get laughed out of the building by the press.  Yet 480p is the maximum DVD quality, and compressed at that.  Dark movies often look bad on DVD or digital channels because of the compression.

    If consumers care so much about picture quality, then why did BetaMax and LaserDisc die a horrible death?  VHS crushed them despite having a lower quality picture and sound.

    MP3 is another great example.  I've seen people pay even for low bitrate MP3s.  How about people that watch ABC shows on their video iPods?  Do you think they do it for the quality?  TV on cellphones, streaming video on the 'net?  Pretty much every successful new technology for media except HDTV has worse quality than was previously available.  Even HDTV is having a hard time being successful, the FCC keeps moving the date of the mandatory HDTV broadcast switchover because of slower than expected adoption.

    Customers want convenience.  Very few technologies have won market acceptance if you couldn't record your own stuff.  Most people didn't throw away their VCRs until recordable DVD drives were readilty available.  You say I'm in a unique situation, yet eveyone who lives a "TIVO lifestyle" faces the same choice I do -- spend $1000 (in addition to the HDTV itself) and get less recording time, give up the TIVO while making the switch to HDTV, or stick with SDTV and the old TIVO.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @jsmith said:

    If consumers care so much about picture quality, then why did BetaMax and LaserDisc die a horrible death?  VHS crushed them despite having a lower quality picture and sound

    I'm sure that it had nothing to do with the fact that you had to flip and swap the LaserDiscs every fifteen fricken minutes. At least most movies fit on only two Beta tapes ...



  • haha, good one.   dark movies don't look bad on DVDs.  480p isn't HD but it is better than VHS.  the real thing is that VHS degrade over time.  plus the sound quality (which is actually what I'm more interested in) is many times better.  you can watch it as many times as you want with no loss in quality.



  • I block everything that is animated or uses sound because this highly disturbs my browsing experience. A simple banner here and there is acceptable to me.



  • @tster said:


    haha.  I'd bet that more DVDs are purchased than illegal DivX's are downloaded.


    Some people even buy DVDs they never watch - they are just collecting them.


    Most people care about the quality of picture and sound.  what your refering to is some people's concern with their wallet which has nothing to do with sound and picture quality :)


    Sometimes, one has no choice. Remember that Aeon Flux movie with Charlize Theron? Here in Austria, after months with lots of advertisement, the film company finally decided not to launch it. It wasn't played in a single cinema (maybe in sneak previews, but not in the regulare programme). This was the point where honest people realised that the company knows better what is good for them, so they are not meant to see the movie; all others got it from bittorrent.



  • @tster said:

    haha, good one.   dark movies don't look bad on DVDs.  480p isn't HD but it is better than VHS.  the real thing is that VHS degrade over time.  plus the sound quality (which is actually what I'm more interested in) is many times better.  you can watch it as many times as you want with no loss in quality.


    Its true that DVD quality is much better than VHS.
    But I've never heard anyone who wasn't IT refer to the quality of DVDs, even remotely. I've rarely even heard anyone who [i]was[/i] IT refer to the quality of DVD.

    Never, not once, had the quality of sound and image entered into my mind at the time of purchase.

    DVD's are also smaller and easier to transport and store.

    But that's also not the reason why people are flocking to DVD. In fact, nobody ever chose to switch to DVD. The reason people are getting DVDs is because you can't get anything else. Early on, only a small portion of people got DVDs using 'quality' as the argument. DVDs for the masses didn't become interesting until those and their players reached a certain level of commonness and DVD began to really replace VHS. After people saw that VHS was going down, they became interested in DVD. It took a flight when rewritable/recordable DVDs entered the scene.

    People didn't go with DVD for the quality. They got with it because:
    - they were forced to by "the market"
    - more playback control (though that only becomes apparent after the sale) for all types of meda
    - you can record more stuff on a DVD
    - periferal usage, such as photo-DVDs, audio-DVD, movie extras.

    Quality?
    Nu-uh.



  • Another reason to go to DVD players: pricing.
    DVD players are cheap - or, if you watch DVDs on the computer, included in something you already have.
    DVDs and VCDs are also cheap. Not the latest and greatest movies, but you can get older movies for, say, 5 EUR. In Poland, many glossies come with free DVDs or VCDs, for (say) 12 Zl = 3EUR.



  • @jsmith said:

    DVDs are better than VHS because they are smaller, easier to rewind, and cheaper to produce (therefore generally cheaper to buy).  DVDs really aren't very much better quality than VHS tapes.  If a cable network advertised it had new "480p" HD channels, they'd get laughed out of the building by the press.  Yet 480p is the maximum DVD quality, and compressed at that.  Dark movies often look bad on DVD or digital channels because of the compression.


    Indeed.  DVD is massively better than VHS in a couple of areas, particularly with regard to those areas that use NTSC, but comes with some drawbacks - the "regioning" concept in particular is a load of old cock (If anyone can defend that as providing a benefit for the customer, I'd like to hear it) and unskippable ads have already been mentioned.

    However, ripping DVDs to AVI / whatever generally provides adequate quality; certainly the quality gain of a "real" DVD over a ripped DVD is nothing over the gain from NTSC to either of the two.

    So why buy a "real" DVD as opposed to torrenting a copy?  You own the object, with all the packaging tralala.  And you have the "extras" (although in many cases these are of minimal value).  Otherwise, the usability is identical, the convenience is identical, and no unskippable ads, for a minimal degradation in quality.

    @jsmith said:

    If consumers care so much about picture quality, then why did BetaMax and LaserDisc die a horrible death?  VHS crushed them despite having a lower quality picture and sound.

    MP3 is another great example.  I've seen people pay even for low bitrate MP3s.

    Indeed.  If people _really_ cared about quality, they would be listening to good-quality vinyl on good quality kit (whatever you say about digital, bit-for-bit quality and all that, analogue reproduction has much more bandwidth) in acoustically balanced rooms. At the very least, SACD and / or DVD-Audio would have taken off in a big way.

    But that's not what people want.  They want convenience.  They bought into CD because it was hyped as being "better" than vinyl - no need to worry about scratches, it's small, it's convenient, you can easily skip tracks.  Never mind the fact that the lifetime of CD is actually much lower than that of vinyl - I have 1950s albums that play _perfectly_, whilst I have a bunch of 1980s CDs that simply won't play (CD players won't recognise them any more), or which skip incessantly.  And I treat my CDs in the same sort of way that my vinyl gets treated.

    MP3 is even worse.  The quality of even the best MP3s is well below that of even CD - I ripped a bunch of jazz vinyl for a friend, 320Kbps, all the quality notches up to the max and ripped from a very high quality deck - it sounds "okay" down here in my office, but if you play the two back-to-back on a decent rig the mp3 is "muddy" at best.

    But most people don't have good quality hifi gear.  They have cheap crap.  It doesn't matter, though because they listen to their cheap crap in a noisy environment.  The difference between a good recording and a "good enough" recording is not enough that they care; the tradeoff between a quality difference you won't even pick up and a distinct usability benefit is a complete no-brainer.  Even relatively low bitrate mp3s are good enough if you're listening to them in your car.

    If the new HD DVD formats are "better" than DVD as it stands, it doesn't matter anyway.  They will provide very little real benefit for the consumer (who has not-very-good eyesight and is probably not paying full attention to what's going on anyway), but the costs are astronomical - new "trusted" player, new "trusted" screen, new "trusted" audio system etc.  That's without taking into account the loss of freedom; the paying customer will be treated (as usual) like a criminal by the cartels.  And, of course, being reamed to buy all those episodes of "Star Wars" all over again. This is not to say that they will fail, of course.  People will fucking lap it up.  Because people are stupid.

    And we'll do it all over again in 5 years time when the new new format comes out.

    Simon


  • Fuck the edit timeout.

    I mentioned "cheap crap" hifi above; this is not to say that I'm advocating multi thousand dollar tube amps; my high quality amp / speaker setup cost less than 250€.  Admittedly, I had to build the amp and speakers myself (amp from kit at 39€, speakers from reference plans provided by the driver manufacturers) and it's marginally less convenient than an "all in one" system, but the sound quality blows away systems costing 10 times what I paid.

    You pays your money, you takes your choice...

    Simon



  • @dhromed said:


    But that's also not the reason why people are flocking to DVD. In fact, nobody ever chose to switch to DVD. The reason people are getting DVDs is because you can't get anything else. Early on, only a small portion of people got DVDs using 'quality' as the argument. DVDs for the masses didn't become interesting until those and their players reached a certain level of commonness and DVD began to really replace VHS. After people saw that VHS was going down, they became interested in DVD. It took a flight when rewritable/recordable DVDs entered the scene.

    People didn't go with DVD for the quality. They got with it because:
    - they were forced to by "the market"
    <snip>


    it sounds like you have no concept of capitalism.  if noone switched the market wouldn't have forced it.  It  could be I was around crazy technology freaks, but everyone I knew were into DVDs at the very begining.



  • @tster said:

    @dhromed said:

    But that's also not the reason why people are flocking to DVD. In fact, nobody ever chose to switch to DVD. The reason people are getting DVDs is because you can't get anything else. Early on, only a small portion of people got DVDs using 'quality' as the argument. DVDs for the masses didn't become interesting until those and their players reached a certain level of commonness and DVD began to really replace VHS. After people saw that VHS was going down, they became interested in DVD. It took a flight when rewritable/recordable DVDs entered the scene.

    People didn't go with DVD for the quality. They got with it because:
    - they were forced to by "the market"
    <snip>


    it sounds like you have no concept of capitalism.  if noone switched the market wouldn't have forced it.  It  could be I was around crazy technology freaks, but everyone I knew were into DVDs at the very begining.


    HAHAHAHAHA

    You owe me a new keyboard.

    Forcing people to switch is what "the market" does.  Sure, it makes tentatives that fail, but without a turnover of technologies "the market" stagnates and dies. 

    Ask yourself these 2 questions...
    1. Will Vista be that much better than XP that you can't live without it? 
    2. Will you be forced to switch?
    Simon




  • @tufty said:


    Forcing people to switch is what "the market" does.  Sure, it makes tentatives that fail, but without a turnover of technologies "the market" stagnates and dies. 

    Ask yourself these 2 questions...
    1. Will Vista be that much better than XP that you can't live without it? 
    2. Will you be forced to switch?
    Simon



    OH I KNOW I KNOW

    1. it'll look prettier!
    2. Totally! Microsoft will drop XP, and everything older, like a brick once Vista gains foothold!

    ) A valid counter-argument here is a comparison with Apple. How did they handle OSX introduction and the total incompatibility with that pitiful OS9? They also forced the issue ("Fuck OS9. Buy a new Mac. zippp Suck on my iPod."), but how does it differ in te details from what M$ will do?


    it sounds like you have no concept of capitalism.  if
    noone switched the market wouldn't have forced it.  It  could be I was
    around crazy technology freaks, but everyone I knew were into DVDs at
    the very begining.


    Then I do indeed conclude that your group was technophile in nature.

    The public/consumers can vote by wallet by not buying crap, but:
    A) people are just people. For many things outside of a person's domain, they have no concept of what constitutes "crap" without decent research and experience. That goes for all of us. I know what a good computer is and won't buy crap parts. However, I know jack squat about cars and my first one may be crappity crap crap. It's also possible that I will not buy optimal audio equipment, because, despite living quality sound, I currently don't have all the knowledge to make a truly informed purchase.
    B) The consumer has no control over which products get [i]offered in the first place[/i], or how aggressively crap is marketed, drowning out the kind whispers of superior products.

    Markets are not strictly consumer-driven. Only if all products are equally available, advertised with equal power and the Consumer has Product Knowledge and Research Stamina, will he control the market. This is ideal-world economics, and does not exist.



  • I simply block pop-up ads, and ads that make sounds (its the only tiem I'll actually intentionally block a host). Pop-up ads are anonying and quite a few of them make it so you get rid of one, and ten more popup. I don't believe this is theif for the simple reason that I won't go to sites with banner ads if I couldn't block them, and if the site offers a subscription thing (like Slashdot or ezBoard's CSC) to remove ads, and I visit regularly, I buy it. As for ads on TV, we're all forgetting one major thing - when are you susposed to go to the bathroom during a two hour movie after you drink that whole thing of cola?!



  • @Michael Casadevall said:

    As for ads on TV, we're all forgetting one major thing - when are you susposed to go to the bathroom during a two hour movie after you drink that whole thing of cola?!

    I don't know about you, but I'm sure that I don't have to go to the bathroom *every ten minutes* when the ads start playing - sure, maybe one ten-minute break between shows, but the rate they are playing them now, with shows lasting 40-43 minutes long, there are only so many things that I can do to ignore them..



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    I've noticed that quite a few visitors use plugins (or whatever) to block the javascript-driven ads that run on this site, and I'm curious as to why they do this. Does anyone do this now and, if so, why?



    I'll just ignore the "flamewar" and answer the survey.

    I installed an AdBlock plugin maybe 1-2 years ago, and have been adding hosts whenever one really annoys me. I don't know when googlesyndication.com's show_ads.js made it on the list, but I've been noticing much nicer/spacier layouts on a lot of sites with the ad div empty. Google's urchin.js has been blocked on principle a while ago (I don't like the centralized tracking across so many unrelated websites.)

    I can still see the blogads on this site, and click them every once in a while. They never bothered me. Fark.com, on the other hand, had some really annoying flashing .gifs that made it to the shitlist. I don't block ads on principle, but i do ignore them.



  • I'll also avoid the flamewar regarding DVD, HD-DVD, BR, etc and answer Alex's original question.

    I don't block ads except whatever comes vanilla in IE 6 SP2/IE 7 & Firefox 1.5.X.  In both cases I think thats pop-ups/pop-unders.  I can't be bothered installing any ad-blocker plugins for either.  In fact I don't really like plugins at all because of my experience in cleaning up end-users' machines for downloading toolbars/adware/spyware.  If a site has intrusive ads littered through out the content, then I have to ask myself whether the site's content is valuable enough for me to deal with it.  More often than not the answer is no.  I've found that most reputable & well-designed sites feature relevant ads out of the way.  I would guess that this is done to avoid alienating visitors.




  • How come anytime there is disagreement on the internet it is instantly labeled a flamewar?  I personally thought it was a very civil and interesting conversation. 



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    @tufty said:

    Ads have always existed, since well before TIVO and bittorrent.  So have "watermarked" TV programs

    The ads I'm refering to are not distinct from the content, they are integrated into it (see the last reply regarding the Discover Commercial) -- they cant be cut out because they're overlayed on the content. These "pop-ups" are a direct result of DVRs.

    Actually, I'd say they're a direct result of the fact that absolutely no-one wants to watch ads (with a few exceptions). Fortunately, the UK has some fairly tight regulations on advertising on broadcast TV, so we don't suffer the worst excesses of US television yet (apparently, it's always been worse for ads than the UK, even pre-DVR). Unfortunately, the ads are getting more and more annoying - so much so that it's just too frustrating to watch certain shows (mostly popular Channel 4 ones) live. Apparently, they're thinking of changing the rules to allow shorter, more frequent ad breaks - I may have to set up automatic ad detection, since otherwise it'll drive me slowly insane.

    Edit: And no, I don't block the ads on this site, because they're relatively unobtrusive and usually at least vaguely relevant (the unobtrusive is the really important part IMO). Actually, I currently don't block ads anywhere, but I really need to do something about the annoying Flash ones on certain sites, especially after I heard about a certain incident with Livejournal, a cunning ad, and some malware popups...



  • @tster said:

    How come anytime there is disagreement on the internet it is instantly labeled a flamewar?  I personally thought it was a very civil and interesting conversation. 


    You're right, it was mostly civilized, and what I meant to convey was 'skip the ongoing discussion and just answer the original post.'

    If you do go back to page one, though, you'll find the nice "It's little better than theft, and people who block adverts are scumbags," as well as a lot of back and forth arguing without any real conclusion (which obviously isn't possible, with the conflicting opinions on the issue.)

    That's not really a discussion I'm willing to get involved in. I don't have a problem answering the original post, but I don't care whether anyone thinks that's 'right' or not. I will do as I please, and I will let you do as you wish. A technical discussion is fine, but anything more is of no interest to me; hence the 'flamewar' label :)



  • I had forgotten about that particular quote....  good point.



  • @tster said:

    I had forgotten about that particular quote....  good point.

    You know it's going south fast when nearly every other post in a discussion about ads contains a reference to Linux, Firefox, and the license that should probably just be renamed the Holy of Holies for all the brain cycles wasted defending it.



  • Ah now I remember why I block ads, its sites like these http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn9428&feedId=online-news_rss20

    I just can't stand motion on a page (non ad included) when I'm reading it. I'm not about to block things on an individual basis, so one animated ad, and the entire ad server goes into my block list.

    I don't use the filter sets however so companies that produce decent ads still get through (i.e. google ads).



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Let's consider television. As a consumer, I want to be able to watch TV shows in HD at my convienience. I don't mind paying (with eyes or money, but would prefer the choice) for this experience because I believe it's reasonable for what I'm getting in return.

    But TIVO and bit-torrent have made this impossible. Now I have to watch invasive ads and wait until broadcasts are fully monetized before the DVD is released. Wouldn't it be nice if there would be a way to prevent commercial-skipping and DVD-ripping? With DRM, this can and will happen.


    ..I've been one of the people knocking this thread off topic, so I'll get myself back on...

    So, you think that if everyone played nice, then you would get better content.  Isn't that a bit selfish?  That's like refusing to put salt on your food in hopes that the poor sales will cause the manufacturer to add more salt at the factory.  Then, blaming your bad experience on the rest of us for salting our food.

    The argument that "you made a deal to watch it this way" has the same flaw.  If I buy health food and add chocolate syrup, I might like it.  That is entirely against the wishes of the manufacturer, but it's my food.  The manufacturer shouldn't be allowed to put a license agreement on the back of the box prohibiting me from making the food non-healthy.

    We didn't invent a revenue system that was built the premise that people wouldn't skip the commercials -- they did.  Yes, it is easy to skip ads.  That's a fact of life.  The solution isn't to disable our remote controls so we have to watch the content as it is delivered to us, the solution is for the market to find a happy place.  Artificial government controls are just going to make it take longer and be more painful and more expensive finding that happy place.

    I'm all for protection of copyrighted material.  But, I feel it should be done in a traditional American way.  Don't restrict people from breaking the law, find the law breakers and hold them accountable for their actions.  That's why I'm all for watermarks and against DRM.  In my world, new cool devices will come to the market regularly and they will live or die at the whim of the market, the average consumer will be king and be catered to.  In a DRM world, my choices will be made by lobbiests(sp?) and the only ones who will really be able to enjoy the content will be those who have no qualms about breaking the law.  In a DRM world, manufacturers will have a guarantee that their products will succeed, because better products will be against the law.  Because of this lack of feedback, we will have a guarantee of inferior products.

    Sure, we (TIVO people) are screwing up your TV shows.  But the people who started the American Revolution got a lot of innocent people's houses burnt down.  Did that make it a bad thing?  The solution is rarely to sit back and take it.  (Yes, I just compared TIVO to the American Revolution.  I like extreme analogies.)



  • @Oscar L said:

    @tster said:

    I had forgotten about that particular quote....  good point.

    You know it's going south fast when nearly every other post in a discussion about ads contains a reference to Linux, Firefox, and the license that should probably just be renamed the Holy of Holies for all the brain cycles wasted defending it.



    Trying to start a flamewar or what?


  • @ammoQ said:

    @Oscar L said:

    @tster said:

    I had forgotten about that particular quote....  good point.

    You know it's going south fast when nearly every other post in a discussion about ads contains a reference to Linux, Firefox, and the license that should probably just be renamed the Holy of Holies for all the brain cycles wasted defending it.



    Trying to start a flamewar or what?


    I'm not sure why he quoted my last post but last time I checked the Mozilla Publix License and the GNU General Public License are distinctly different things.   Not only that but that is the first time I've ever seen someone say/imply the GNU GPL is actually a bad thing.


  • @tster said:

    @ammoQ said:
    @Oscar L said:

    @tster said:

    I had forgotten about that particular quote....  good point.

    You know it's going south fast when nearly every other post in a discussion about ads contains a reference to Linux, Firefox, and the license that should probably just be renamed the Holy of Holies for all the brain cycles wasted defending it.



    Trying to start a flamewar or what?


    I'm not sure why he quoted my last post but last time I checked the Mozilla Publix License and the GNU General Public License are distinctly different things.   Not only that but that is the first time I've ever seen someone say/imply the GNU GPL is actually a bad thing.


    I think maybe he has an axe to grind :)  Quite a few people think that the GPL is a bad thing, and expound publically on it in a negative (and generally untrue, hence the brain cycles spent defending it) manner, but they tend to be the sort of people who are getting hurt by it.  You might like to check out some of the postings by "backinfullforce" on the Yahoo SCOX messageboard, for example. 

    One might disagree with RMS, but what he has kicked off is a major change;  the GPL and licenses like it have, for better or worse (depending on your viewpoint), changed the software development and distribution landscape forever.

    Oh, and Oscar - the comments about the GPL and the MPL thus far have been, although mildly offtopic, in direct response to points raised in the thread.  If this veers much further off course, though, we might want to start a new one.

    Simon


  • @tufty said:

    @tster said:
    @ammoQ said:
    @Oscar L said:

    @tster said:

    I had forgotten about that particular quote....  good point.

    You know it's going south fast when nearly every other post in a discussion about ads contains a reference to Linux, Firefox, and the license that should probably just be renamed the Holy of Holies for all the brain cycles wasted defending it.



    Trying to start a flamewar or what?


    I'm not sure why he quoted my last post but last time I checked the Mozilla Publix License and the GNU General Public License are distinctly different things.   Not only that but that is the first time I've ever seen someone say/imply the GNU GPL is actually a bad thing.


    I think maybe he has an axe to grind :)  Quite a few people think that the GPL is a bad thing, and expound publically on it in a negative (and generally untrue, hence the brain cycles spent defending it) manner, but they tend to be the sort of people who are getting hurt by it.  You might like to check out some of the postings by "backinfullforce" on the Yahoo SCOX messageboard, for example. 

    One might disagree with RMS, but what he has kicked off is a major change;  the GPL and licenses like it have, for better or worse (depending on your viewpoint), changed the software development and distribution landscape forever.

    Oh, and Oscar - the comments about the GPL and the MPL thus far have been, although mildly offtopic, in direct response to points raised in the thread.  If this veers much further off course, though, we might want to start a new one.

    Simon

    Uh oh, did my axe grinding agenda show again? :P

    Upon further review of the thread, I think what Alex had to say about it best sums up my reaction

    @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Your explanation is helpful, and gives me some more insight into the matter. A lot of my information/prejudice has been gathered from Slashdot, and I think we all know that those folks live in a slightly different plane of reality.

    I spent a spell fighting the Evil Slashbots under an assumed name(Thank God), so every once in a while the old habits come out.  I think I'll go create a "vent about liscensing thread" and blow off steam there.

    Sorry everyone, you now have my blessing to debate away.  I'm sure you're all hanging on the edges of your seats waiting for my official response, so I'll get this posted.



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    I've noticed that quite a few visitors use plugins (or whatever) to block the javascript-driven ads that run on this site, and I'm curious as to why they do this. Does anyone do this now and, if so, why?


    Well, at first I was just using adblock and made a point not to block ads from small websites that I appreciate like osnews and thedailywtf.com.

    As the ads grew more and more disruptive and annoying on other websites, with lots of cheesy flash animated bullshit, large dhtml overlay popups with forced minimal delays before they can be closed, and other kind of bullshit, I ended up just installing filterset.G, a firefox extension that provide a premade filtering list
    which auto-updates (http://www.pierceive.com/).

    Now about every ad anywhere is blocked and I must admit I didn't go in the trouble of figuring if I could explicitely exclude some websites from the adfilter.

    If people don't care about what you're selling, trying your best to interfere with what they're trying to do to convey your marketing message has little chances to be well received.
    Yet advertisers can't restrain themselves and keep pushing it, becoming a nuisance. They don't realize that in the end we are the one who decide what content ends up on our pc and that by being excessively disruptive they just make people block all ads altogether.

    So bottomline, thank all the stupid abusive advertisers all over the net to have motivated the creation and usage of very potent ad blocking systems.



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    I've noticed that quite a few visitors use plugins (or whatever) to block the javascript-driven ads that run on this site, and I'm curious as to why they do this. Does anyone do this now and, if so, why?




    Alex,

    I have to admit that after reading this thread, I white-listed thedailywtf.com so I can see the advertisements  again.  Like others, I use FireFox with the "Adblock" and the "Adblock Filterset.G updater" extensions.  There are many sites out there who's advertisements are way out of balance with the content they supposedly offer.  So my default setting is to block everything I can.

    On the other hand, I have found that the ads on your site fit right in.  For example, there have been many entertaining comments about the "Cambrian House Girl" (who, at this very moment, makes me wish I was playing Foosball so I could ....errr... nevermind). The point is,  as long as your ads do not get annoying or overdone,  I will continue not to block them.  Heck, I may even click on them from time to time.





  • I think it was kidding.  At least I hope so...

    I don't have to use any third party ad blockers, as XP/SP2 will do that for you.  If there's a popup you want to see, or a site you want whitelisted, easy to do.     



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    Does anyone do this now and, if so, why?


    This site? I don't. But this site has ads that don't want to brainwash me with blinking colors. Besides bean girl and football girl are ok, and don't differ from page to much.
    Google will be always my favourite advertiser, as context based text ads are as visible as others and even worth a click once a decade...

    But flash bars that cover half of the screen, placed at the top of the page and other flashing things intentionally covering my view always land in the adblock. If there was a blocking extension that runs those scripts / sends requests for images, but hides it's effects from me, I'd use it. I don't care if it's downloaded - I just don't want to see it.

    On the war topic:
    - DRMs and protections - I bought 1 cd/mp3/ogg/aac/wma player - I want to buy cds that I can hear on it. Sony fails to produce them. So what should I do? Buy another one just for them? Get real... Anyways - you can always crack DRM - it's just that many people and much time are needed.
    - DVDs? I've already bought the movie - what now? Charge me for every time I see it? I don't want unskippable ads.
    - TV... I just stopped watching it. New hits comming to my country can get up to 30 min. commercials per 1 hour of content. Only public TV inserts ads between movies, not into. Sucks.

    "They" will just hit a spot one day, where noone wants to see content spoiled by ads in 50% any more, and noone wants to pay more for a disc, that they already paid for, just because they want to use it once more.



  • I used to use adblock/flashblock/noscript etc, but browsing this site was nigh impossible since it required javascript to do paging(I do believe this has be described as 'the Real WTF' before.) and such.  One of the main reasons I did it was that the flash ads and javascript would frequently spike my laptop's (meager 400Mhz) cpu which made browsing very sluggish and utterly killed battery life.   Like others in the thread have expressed, I even would whitelist certain sites that I visited frequently if they were not annoying.  One particular example for me was penny-arcade (except flash).  The ads were topical (a web comic about gaming, with ads targeted for gamers), did not blink or flash excessively, and sometimes were even drawn by the artist of the comic.   Contrast
     that with a site such as IGN.  The ads are all over the place, place themselves over content, show up on those click through pages, and were generally not things I would be interested in (I /know/ that Franchise X11: The Last Redemption is coming out and I do not want a McGriddle).  Another issue that irked me was, as alluded to, the threat of malware and such being distrubuted by ads (not Bonzai buddy, but through ActiveX exploits and such... I got bit by one that redirected all search engines to theirs through %WINROOT%/etc/hosts or whatever it is just by viewing the ad).

    I think it is incorrect to blame <change in advertising technique> on <technological measure used by some consumers>.   Why does only TiVo share the blame for the TV "popups"?  Hell, they were around /before/ TiVo was around.  Is Picture and Picture also not to blame?  People (I know I do sometimes) could put the ads in the pip and channel surf until the program is back on.  What about people that get up or just do not pay attention to them?
    There is a never-ending cycle of evolution of ads, but it is driven by the users instead of technological measures.
    Example:
    First there were banner ads.
    People get used to them and start to tune them out.
    Then, there are banner ads that blink.
    People get used to them and start to tune them out.
    Popup ads.
    People start using popup blockers and furious closing popups.
    Popunders
    Repeat.
    Next, they add sound (this also drives me crazy!).
    People get used to them and start to tune them out.
    Ads are placed in line with content.
    People get used to them and start to tune them out.
    Ads /cover/ up content and on clickthru pages.

    How many of these can you honestly blame on technological measures (i.e. on TiVo)?  The only one that I can think of that is really widespread is popup-blocking (how many ads for ISPs say "free popup blocker" and such? I know I have seen a good many.) 

    Ads being integrated with content isn't a new thing anyways.  Product placement has been around since the 80s, it is just becoming more overt (instead of the implicit "Okaleys are cool" because Tom Cruise wears them in Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise's character in Mission Impossible mentions his cool Okaleys).

    I don't see how you can honestly think "Oh those nasty <something I don't do> are to blame!"  Companies want money (imagine that?), they will do anything they can to get it.  Advertisers will know that their ads are not having as much effect and foist more invasiveness on content producers.  Where is the tivo that 'forced' the unskippable ads and trailers on DVDs?  How about the commercials (not just trailers) shown before movies for the last few years?  Were these due to some magic goggles that people bought that blocked out 3 minutes of pre-movie rubbish?  Is CallerID to blame for telemarketers, or the other way around?

    /a linux commie that doesn't believe in patents (software in particular), copyright (as it exists now in every growing or infinite duration), etc
    //Thinks RMS is insane and that the gpl is horrible
    ///My code is MIT, advertising-free BSD, beerware, or public domain where possible--but I'll still contribute to gpl projects




  • @tster said:

    haha, good one.   dark movies don't look bad on DVDs.
    While this is an extremely late reply, I have a unique experience of this.  The local IMAX theater, briefly, experimented with showing DVD movies.  Obviously they didn't think this through very far -- pixels the size of hams, yes.  Also compression artifacts blown up to terrifying size.  It was worst when the picture was dark.



  • I can''t believe so many of you care about blocking ads, i personally don't block them because my brain uses it's own ad filtering technology, i just don't see ads i just look straight past them, i've never clicked on one and probably never will.  I spent ages on a site the other day looking for a link just because it looked like google ad sense ad i couldn't even see that it was actually their navigation menu because i just automatically don't even read ads.

    Who cares if people block them anyway, if you care enough to block them then you're never going to click them anyway so why does it matter. 

     And as for tv advertising, when they put on decent shows,at a good time slot and in a timely fashion(here in the au we get lost, family guy etc. about 2 years after the US) maybe i'll watch tv but until then i'll stick to my ad free bit torrent.



     



  • @Corona688 said:

    @tster said:

    haha, good one.   dark movies don't look bad on DVDs.
    While this is an extremely late reply, I have a unique experience of this.  The local IMAX theater, briefly, experimented with showing DVD movies.  Obviously they didn't think this through very far -- pixels the size of hams, yes.  Also compression artifacts blown up to terrifying size.  It was worst when the picture was dark.

     Definitially a bad idea.  I'm not saying DVDs are HD quality, but they are a factor better than VHS.   I can see pixels sometimes in animated (especially high quality computer animated pixar stuff) movies like Finding Nemo, with the high contrast between Nemo's orange and the oceans dark blue on my 80 inch TV (projection FTW).  However, VHS is pretty much unwatchable at that size because of grains and blips.
     



  • @tster said:

      I can see pixels sometimes in animated (especially high quality computer animated pixar stuff) movies like Finding Nemo, with the high contrast between Nemo's orange and the oceans dark blue on my 80 inch TV (projection FTW).  However, VHS is pretty much unwatchable at that size because of grains and blips.
     

    Awesome, how much peoples opinions can differ with respect to unwatchable quality. Some time ago i was watching Richard Feynman explaining some quantum physics in a 1h20 movie of 45 megabytes (you didn't know that was possible eh? At least i didn't :-) ), and enjoying myself at that. As long as i can follow what's going on, i couldn't care less for the quality.


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