@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Have I killed a few too many braincells last nightOh shit, fuck horsecocks buggery shit. Make that 'did I kill'. Let's just pretend I didn't post anything at all today, ok? Move along, nothing to see here.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Have I killed a few too many braincells last nightOh shit, fuck horsecocks buggery shit. Make that 'did I kill'. Let's just pretend I didn't post anything at all today, ok? Move along, nothing to see here.
@blakeyrat said:
Then don't do that.
Either don't maximize them, or don't set the non-maximized version to "take up nearly the whole screen". I mean, what do you want from us?
As I said, I'm pretty happy with my solution. Why the blithering fuck are you telling me I should do something else and then a few posts later ridiculing me for the stupidities in what you said? Have I killed a few too many braincells last night and lost the ability to read and write English?
I understand the difference between strong and weak typing - and explicitly declaring it in VBA where necessary* - but that wasn't really what I was asking. I was just trying to think of a scenario in which you might use "false"=true as a test for any reason other than as a short-cut exploiting a trick of the language. The main effect of the string/boolean behaviour in VBA is really just that "false" and FALSE are alternate ways of referring to the boolean.
@Jaime said:
So, exactly what is taken when ads are blocked?I begin to see what you're asking here. The content would be what is 'taken'. 'Obtained' might have been a better choice of word; 'taking' really means 'taking possession of', or something similar here, but it's complicated by the nature of the good/service we're dealing with. Obviously, a tv programme, say, is intangible, so we might talk about (fairly or unfairly) obtaining the moral right to watch it.
@Xyro said:
adblocking/dabflurpsing != stealingThat should be 'adblocking != stealing/dabflurpsing'. The moral definition of stealing is the only relevant one in a discussion of morality, and it's a very broad one. Morally, stealing is only definable as taking that which it is wrong - that is, immoral - for you to take. If adblocking is immoral, it's a form of stealing to obtain the related content. If it's not immoral, it can't be stealing in a moral sense. The criminal aspect is the totally irrelevant part in this debate.
@Xyro said:
And WhyTF are we on the fifth page of this ridiculous thread?I'm guessing it's my fault, mainly. :)
@Xyro said:
In some window managers like KDE's KWin, right-clicking the maximize button will maximize the window vertically, which is very handy. Likewise, middle-clicking maximizes it horizontally.
That sounds genuinely useful. If you go from (1) windowed, to (2) vertically maximised, to fully maximised, and then return to windowed, will it go back to state (1) or (2)? I suppose there's no reason why, instead of the window/maximise buttons replacing each other as you toggle the state, you couldn't retain the windowing button and be able to go back through previous window sizes and positions with repeated clicking.
@b-redeker said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
You should be using [if (isnull(foo)=true)] instead of [if foo= true] - or whatever check it is you actually want to do.I didn't want to do a check; I wanted to show that variants in VBA/VBscript will take a string and treat it as a boolean, which was I think what the OP expected JavaScript to do.
Sorry, on re-reading it seems I slightly misunderstood your original post. Anyway, it still served as a good starting point for my explication. Can you think of any good reason to do it that isn't just to prove the concept?
@blakeyrat said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:I want to have non-maximised windows that don't take up the full screen vertically,So... a normal window?
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
and that's not compatible with having ones that do.How do you figure? My copy of Windows doesn't have any problems with it.
You're telling me that your copy of Windows will remember the sizes of windows that you set at one time, even after you subsequently set them as something different? Don't be daft. It's not telepathic.
I have a use for non-maximised windows which don't take up nearly the whole screen. If I set non-maximised windows to take up nearly the whole screen, then I am no longer able to switch between having maximised windows and windowed ones, because the windowed ones will be almost exactly the same size as the maximised ones. If I could choose from a number of different stored sizes, it would be fine, but that functionality doesn't exist in any GUI that I know of.@blakeyrat said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:and that if you overshoot the scroll-bar at the side slightly, you click on a different window and lose focus.That's a slightly valid complaint, but is this really something that happens so often that it's a concern?
It was just an example, really. Your contention is basically that there are no benefits to maximising windows, but in fact there are, which is why the maximise functionality exists.
@dhromed said:
What's the relevance of the legal definition? Unless the (demonstrably dubious) statement that that which is legal is moral, and that which is illegal is immoral is held to be true, legality is entirely irrelevant. There's no suggestion that ad-blocking is a crime, but if you think legality alone makes something morally right, I despair.@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
the difference between the legal definition of a specific crime, and the moral crime that lies behind the law.Objection!
Relevance?
@blakeyrat said:
We actually use the windowing OS the way it's intended, instead of maximizing everything.Oh, great, so I'll lose nothing except the middle option from 'maximise'/'window'/'minimise'. If windows could remember a number of intermediate sizes, it would be fine to do as you suggest. I want to have non-maximised windows that don't take up the full screen vertically, and that's not compatible with having ones that do. Not to mention that there is no way to line them up neatly, so it's annoying in an OCD sort of way, and that if you overshoot the scroll-bar at the side slightly, you click on a different window and lose focus.Unless your wide screen is super low-res, you don't lose anything from switching to widescreen. On the contrary, you gain a nice little strip of pixels perfect for your IM friend list, or your Windows widgets, or whatever you want to use it for.
@b-redeker said:
are you originally a VBA (Access) programmer?
I thought I posted that was where I was starting from, but it seems to have vanished into the ether. It's just another way of handling it - not better or worse in general, and no more or less logically correct. Due to the way the whole language works, I don't think it presents a problem in practice, because whilst it's easy to demonstrate the behaviour, it's not something you'd be likely to do. Why would you test a string to see if it was boolean true or false? Only reason I can think of would be as a horrible hack relying on the odd result comparing booleans to strings gives, instead of checking the contents properly.@b-redeker said:
@VBA said:
foo = "true": if foo = true then print "Yes" else print "No"
Yesfoo = "false": if foo = true then print "Yes" else print "No"
No
You should be using [if (isnull(foo)=true)] instead of [if foo= true] - or whatever check it is you actually want to do.
@Jaime said:
And they made up the name "TWOCing" for the act because calling everything "stealing" makes communication difficult.'Stealing' actually has no meaning at all under UK law. We talk about distinct sub-categories such as 'theft' - appropriation with the intent to permanently deprive - and fraud - obtaining goods or services by deception - and so-on. If you were to ask what all these offences have in common, the answer would be 'stealing'. Stealing is not a narrowly defined term, but the exact opposite. It bears the same relation to 'theft' that 'computers' does to 'laptops'.
@dhromed said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
This is a practical problem, not a matter of principle or logic. Different languages handle it differently. Certainly, "false" being boolean true makes no more sense, so you're just swapping one problem for another. The only strictly correct thing to do is not to allow comparisons of strings and booleans.I principally disagree that dynamically treating "false" as false makes sense.
I agree that you shouldn't be comparing strings and bools directly in the first place.
I might agree that the language could have a method of prohibiting it.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
The alternative is to decide which way round will be the most useful in most situations, and define in your language how you will treat the comparison.There's a tradeoff in that decision, between formally predictable vs. handy. In this particular case, I prefer it being predictable, because if it were handy, you would be comparing bools to strings, and we both agree that this shouldn't happen.
But perhaps we can agree to disagree on this one :)
I think to a large extent we're not disagreeing. From my perspective, though, you're not giving enough weight to the totally abstract nature of a boolean variable, and the resultant necessity for kludging whenever and however you de-abstract it to make it useful. It always has to be a compromise of some nature, so perhaps I didn't go far enough last night. By bringing a boolean into the real world, you compromise it to start with. Everything else is just about the best way to handle those compromises. Unless you have a computer that, instead of using high and low voltages to indicate 1/0, can deal in abstract logical concepts such as true and false, everything is an arbitrary interpretation.
Ooh look, another person who can't understand the difference between the legal definition of a specific crime, and the moral crime that lies behind the law. You do realise that in this country we have a specific offense relating to motor vehicles of TWOCing - taking without owners consent - precisely because joy-riding was not considered theft legally speaking since there was no intent to permanently deprive? Laws are just a codification of our moral views, no more. The important part is the moral aspect, not the legal one. As I explained before, many morally abhorrent things have been perfectly legal under abhorrent regimes.
@esoterik said:
. So Cisco won't help me because i don't own the support contract, so we had to conference in the customer to get Cisco to help us. HickCable gives us their dimest emplyee to try talk to support. They spend the first hour arguing with the support tech, that they authorized MIN to call support on their behalf and they should be able to hang up now. Cisco wouldn't have it, the contract holder had to be on the line. The first tier support quickly escalated to the second tier. Neither tier would acknowledge my input, so the next couple of hours went like this:
Cisco Support: some techincal question
Me: some technical answer
Cisco Support: "your not on the support contract. Someone who is ..."
HickCable: "what he said"
Is it just me who'd have hung up as soon as Cisco started being stupid, and then called back claiming to be from Hicknet? I detest companies who insist that they won't deal with anyone except the customer, but have no way of actually telling the difference unless you tell them.
@Daniel15 said:
Javascript apparently thinks that the string "false" is true for purposes of boolean logicHow would treating the string "false" as boolean false make any sense? If you had some code like this:
var test = prompt('Enter something'); if (test) { alert('You entered: ' + test); } else { alert('You did not enter anything'); }and used your logic, it would fall into the else branch if the user entered the word "false" into the prompt (which really makes no sense, as strings are meant to be literal).
That's a good illustration of the problem, but look at what boolean false actually means. This is a practical problem, not a matter of principle or logic. Different languages handle it differently. Certainly, "false" being boolean true makes no more sense, so you're just swapping one problem for another. The only strictly correct thing to do is not to allow comparisons of strings and booleans. The alternative is to decide which way round will be the most useful in most situations, and define in your language how you will treat the comparison.
@Master Chief said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Yes, absolutely. Looks are not a high priority for me in that equation (perhaps because I grew up on Windows 3.1...). If someone made a good-looking minimal skin, I'd happily use it, but I'm not willing to sacrifice usability for looks. I could shrink stuff down even further, but it would sacrifice significant usability. At the moment, text I need to read is large enough to do so, but things like the taskbar text are too small to read - I get by on a combination of (shrunken) icons and the general shape of words because I already know what the text says.The reasons for this balance being optimal (which aren't WTFs) are much more to do with screen shape - I'm using a wide-screen laptop, so vertical space is at a premium - than anything else. The difference between wide-screen and square monitors is such that, allowing for bottom margins not being important and so-on, you can squeeze enough extra onto the screen to make UIs designed for square screens usable in wide-screen. Well, taste also plays a part - curvy aero styling is fucking hideous.
If your screen is small to the point where you need to butcher and beat Windows into smaller pieces just so you can use it, you might consider investing in a new machine. Maybe one manufactured post-1999?
Thanks for the advice, but this is a normal sized laptop of no great age. I feel no need to proselytise my way of doing things, so what makes you think you need to do so with yours? On a bigger, screen with the same aspect-ratio, I'd do the same. As I'm sure many people would agree, wide-screen may be good for video and gaming, but they're completely the wrong shape to read from.
@Jaime said:
Anyways, Intel cranking up the clock on the P4 was not a factor in it's market dominance of the PPC, as evidenced by that same behavior causing them to go under 50% marketshare in new PCs for the first time ever.Logically that only holds true if the behaviour has a constant effect at all times. It seems to me that unless every part of processor design marches in lock-step with materials advances, there will be different advances that are the most beneficial for the least effort at different times. The reason Intel got into the whole marketing-led clock-speed ramping-up was that, for a very long time, it was a good measure of performance. It was only when the focus was entirely marketing-led, and only on cranking out a certain set of headline numbers, that they ran into trouble.
The proof of how well Intel did generally is that the major significant remaining driver for processor speed increases is the server market. For everyday use, processors are fast enough, and have been for a while. Home and business PC life-to-obsolescence is now about the same as, or longer than expected lifespan of the components. I was involved recently in a purchasing evaluation that had been a regular 18-monthly event for a fair few years now, relating to replacing the desktops for a company. Previously, they replaced every 18 months to keep their hardware vaguely current. This time, there was no really good reason to replace, although the cost of replacing a hard disks and PSUs in each, plus the labour to do so, came close enough to the cost of a new PC that the new warranties swung it. In the past, though, it wouldn't even have been close; this time round there was no noticeable benefit from getting faster hardware.
@newfweiler said:
I know what the musicians do, and I know what the recording engineer does, but what does the "Producer" do?In some genres - notably rap and reggae - the producer writes the tune or creates the beat/rhythm, and the singer does the words. In others, he does a job not much different from a recording engineer in practice. The difference is like that between an architect and someone who draws up blueprints for an architect.
@dhromed said:
@ekolis said:I totally disagree. Whilst it is entirely understandable that for practical reasons it's impossible to do what he says, it's a sensible thing to say, in a way.or am I the WTFQuite.
False is not the same as zero. Using 0 for boolean false makes all kind of sense, but it's still entirely arbitrary. It makes just as much (non-pragmatic) sense to arbitrarily use a string "false". The logic is slightly different as a result, but generally behaves the same way. VBA at least is quite happy with the concept that the string "false" is the same as boolean false in a boolean compare, despite the boolean values actually being 2-byte integers.
@Cad Delworth said:
So, which of us is right? (CLUE: Both of us.)You lose 10 internet points.
@Master Chief said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
I do it, but not because I don't like change. I just don't like the transparent-curved look, and like to minimise the amount of screen space taken up by title bars etc. It is eye-gougingly ugly, mind you. I would give a screenshot, but I don't hate you that much.So you're willing to use an ugly window system to save 3 or 4 pixels worth of vertical space in your windows?
You sir, are TRWTF.
Yes, absolutely. Looks are not a high priority for me in that equation (perhaps because I grew up on Windows 3.1...). If someone made a good-looking minimal skin, I'd happily use it, but I'm not willing to sacrifice usability for looks. I could shrink stuff down even further, but it would sacrifice significant usability. At the moment, text I need to read is large enough to do so, but things like the taskbar text are too small to read - I get by on a combination of (shrunken) icons and the general shape of words because I already know what the text says.
The reasons for this balance being optimal (which aren't WTFs) are much more to do with screen shape - I'm using a wide-screen laptop, so vertical space is at a premium - than anything else. The difference between wide-screen and square monitors is such that, allowing for bottom margins not being important and so-on, you can squeeze enough extra onto the screen to make UIs designed for square screens usable in wide-screen. Well, taste also plays a part - curvy aero styling is fucking hideous.
@Sir Twist said:
Well, yes, we could hack up software solutions to regain backwards compatibility, if the hardware supports it. That would be 'legacy shit', though. If we're starting from scratch with the hardware, even abstracts like design patterns will need rethinking to some extent - there's no guarantee that what was true under one set of hardware conditions will be true under another.@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
It seems logical to me that 'getting rid of all legacy shit' means starting from scratch.Er, no. Not "throw away all the languages we already have and make up new ones." Have you ever heard of a cross-compiler?
@DescentJS said:
Unless I misunderstood, he's talking about developing on the machine he is developing for. The problem isn't arising with the use of the PC for development purposes, but with the testing of DLLs. Testing isn't really use in the normal sense of the word.@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@blakeyrat said:@Xyro said:@blakeyrat said:
Think of it like the DLL cache in RAM-- there's no possible way it can hurt, and there's a lot of situations where it helps.Hahahaha, have you never done any development work on DLLs? You never really know when those things are fully unloaded ...Ok, there's ONE possible situation where it could hurt, that 99.9% of users will never encounter. Happy?
100% of users. Development work is not use in that sense.
Wat? You are running a computer which has that operating system, and you are developing software on it. How is that not using it?
That doesn't come across very well, so I'll try and complicate clarify matters with an analogy. If I make parts for a lathe, on a lathe, it is reasonable to criticise the usability of the lathe, but not so much to complain that it's hard to swap the part you're building in and out for testing purposes. Of course, it's reasonable to have that complaint if normal use requires regular swapping of that part, but if not, it's not something it makes sense to criticise. Might as well complain that the lathe is no use as a frying pan.
@blakeyrat said:
@Xyro said:@blakeyrat said:
Think of it like the DLL cache in RAM-- there's no possible way it can hurt, and there's a lot of situations where it helps.Hahahaha, have you never done any development work on DLLs? You never really know when those things are fully unloaded ...Ok, there's ONE possible situation where it could hurt, that 99.9% of users will never encounter. Happy?
100% of users. Development work is not use in that sense.
@blakeyrat said:
That's basically what shadow copy is... it's not a WTF at all. The only difference between having Shadow Copy on and Shadow Copy off is that if it's on, Windows'll let you recover those files. (Which is kind of goofy, but people would have bitched if they removed the option to turn Shadow Copy off altogether.The theory is that when you write a new file, it'll overwrite the absolute oldest file you deleted. So on the off-chance you need to undelete or revert a file, you'll have access to the most recent versions of it. It doesn't slow down your drive, it doesn't "waste" any space, it's a good feature.
Fair point. On the other hand, just because something has a good reason doesn't stop it being a WTF in the literal sense - if it makes you go WTF on first sighting, it's a WTF.
@blakeyrat said:
@Master Chief said:Also, who the HELL uses Windows 95 windows? Even my shitty little netbook running Vista HP can handle Aero just fine.Seriously.
Oh wait, it's those "geeks" who are so afraid of change that they bitch and moan at every pixel that changes. The kind who get foaming-at-the-mouth-mad when Chrome removes the letters "http://" from their URL bar. Those kind of "geeks."
I do it, but not because I don't like change. I just don't like the transparent-curved look, and like to minimise the amount of screen space taken up by title bars etc. It is eye-gougingly ugly, mind you. I would give a screenshot, but I don't hate you that much.
@tdb said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:@bannedfromcoding said:IF WE COULD GET RID OF THE ALL LEGACY SHIT and deploy a completely modern architecture, computing would move a few thousand light-years forward.Hardware would move forwards by a good bit, but software would be set right back to square one. We would literally have to start again from nothing.Nothing you say? So this new hardware architecture would be so radically different that it would be impossible to write, say, a C++ compiler for it? Or an OpenGL implementation?
Er, if it's not going to be completely different, what was the point? It seems logical to me that 'getting rid of all legacy shit' means starting from scratch. If you start by making it compatible with what we already have, then you're still going to have the backwards compatibility/'legacy' shit.
@bannedfromcoding said:
IF WE COULD GET RID OF THE ALL LEGACY SHIT and deploy a completely modern architecture, computing would move a few thousand light-years forward.Hardware would move forwards by a good bit, but software would be set right back to square one. We would literally have to start again from nothing.
@mott555 said:
I found that if I show hidden, system, and protected operating system files, open my C: drive in Explorer, select everything at the root, right-click and choose properties and wait 45 minutes for it to calculate total size, it told me I had selected ~220 GB.I forget exactly what causes that, but it's not a bug as such. Vista has genuinely padded out your data to that extent with things that will be stripped out if space gets tight. Hyperbolising to an extent that is barely true but sounds good, if you give Vista a hard disk, it will keep copies of almost anything that changes until the disk starts to fill up. Not that that's not a WTF all by itself.
We've done this bit already. You can call it whatever you like. If you don't think that's what stealing means, call it something else. I call what I'm talking about stealing, since it is by my broad, morally-based definition - but if you want to get hung up on exact technical definitions, go for it. Let's stipulate that, indeed, by your narrow legalistic definition it is not stealing, and move onto whatever it was we were talking about now that might be of some vague interest to an intellect bigger than that of an amoeba.
@Jaime said:
Unfortunately, you can't both view the ads to decide if you want to see them and make the choice to not see them.Only if you view each ad view as a separate event, surely?
@b-redeker said:
Oooh, selective snipping FTW. The full quote was:@b-redeker said:
They offer ads; I refuse. Whether I do that by choosing not to look or not to see them at all or just telling them "piss off" is irrelevant.
OK.
@Me said:
That's a mis-statement. They offer ads, you refuse to entertain their offer.The answer hasn't changed.
@b-redeker said:
They offer ads; I refuse.That's a mis-statement. They offer ads, you refuse to entertain their offer.
@b-redeker said:
As it so happens, I don't use AdBlock right nowOK, or not :)
@b-redeker said:
No, the dice rolling is in whether or not you notice the ad. By blocking it, you're stopping them rolling the dice. Fair game? Really?@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@b-redeker said:The deal to me is: "hey, you like our content? Cool! Here's some ads you might like too!"Yes. So if you refuse to allow the ads...?Then they rolled the dice and hey, no dice. Fair game.
@blakeyrat said:
If you know the trick, it no longer works. Placebo effect goes away if the patient is told he's taking a placebo.I have to disagree with that. One of the more bizarre parts of the placebo effect is that you can tell people it's a placebo and it still works to some extent. With ads, you can know that the brand-name is being repeated frequently just so you think of it when you look at the supermarket shelf, for example, but that won't prevent it being the brand-name you know best.
@joe.edwards said:
That's ludicrously wrong, verging on propaganda. The Democrats are far closer to (although still far from) fascists than the Republicans, for whom individualism and small government is a core principle.@b-redeker said:
The deal to me is: "hey, you like our content? Cool! Here's some ads you might like too!"Yes. So if you refuse to allow the ads...?
@Jaime said:
There is no deal. Advertisers roll the dice every time they sponsor content.Perhaps I haven't been very clear, then. I agree that advertisers roll the dice, and I think that's fine. I also think, though, that blocking all ads is like letting them pay to play and then taking away the dice.
@Jaime said:
This sounds like classic RIAA "please don't kill my business model" thinking, only the RIAA at least has a written contract with society called copyright law.I think much of my position comes from an opposition to the concept of copyright. I believe we should replace IP with an honour system of acknowledging your moral obligations and making appropriate payments to content producers - old-fashioned patronage brought into the long-tail age. Part of that is the acknowledgement that the basis on which someone provides something is morally important.
@blakeyrat said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:I think the whole concept of right-wing is about slurring people who don't agree with you, myself. The evil-minded fuckers are everywhere, not just on the right. Aside from that, though, 'right-wing' people generally don't oppose principles of 'the left', but have pragmatic objections. To my mind, politics would benefit greatly if the left were to propose nice ideas, and the right to be responsible for implementing them to the greatest practical extent.@Xyro said:Like a right-leaning liberal?That's not a bad description of what most people think. I'd be happy to be called that, since, at least to me, it would imply some degree of pragmatism allied to a healthy dose of liberal idealism.We need a 2-axis system. I'm socially liberal, but fiscally conservative... right now there's no party that helps me. (And the worst part is both large American parties are fiscally liberal, the only way to get fiscal conservatives in office is to vote for crackpot parties. RON PAUL!)
That said, right now I'd vote for almost anyone if he/she actually had some integrity. There's no doubt in my mind that the worst part of our political system is the politicians.
@Medezark said:
web ad's serving drive by malware,Oh yeah, people get malware from ads, just like they get STDs from toilet seats. Just conceivably, it's happened very rarely. In practice, it's normally an excuse. I have no idea whether your daughter is making an excuse, but if she was a middle-aged man I'd be willing to bet on it.
When I used to do a lot of malware removal for clients, I'd generally give them a tactful talking to about 'sites you might have been using at home,' 'taking matters in hand' etc. Most people (not just men) would sheepishly accept it, although a few would bluster. If they did, I apologised for the assumption, and told them that we'd need to analyse their hidden browser history/cache in that case to find the source. Not one failed to back down at that point, and one of them must have been looking at something he was really ashamed of, because I heard a crash, and then he said 'oops, just knocked the laptop on the floor and it's died, might as well get a new one so no need for you to bother'.
The only significant malware outbreak I can think of which wasn't the result of one-handed surfing was at the company who managed to get a virus on their web-server - at which point, everyone in the company visited the damn page to 'have a look'.
@Jaime said:
Is fast-forwarding through commercials in Tivo morally wrong?I think we're right in that grey area again - although as Terry Pratchett puts it, there is no grey, just white that's got grubby. If you use Tivo largely or solely to avoid the ads, I'd say it's morally wrong. If you use Tivo anyway, and the ad avoidance is incidental, I would say it's OK.@Jaime said:
For example, why should I feel morally obligated to watch a commercial for a weight loss product when the FTC data shows that many weight loss products are scams and the scams are scarily effective.
Now we're into interesting territory. I've already said, I think, that the moral duty on you is to give the ads a reasonable chance, rather than to study them closely. If the ad itself is immoral, I'd say you have every right to avoid it, but you'd have to know it was there and block it specifically, rather than blocking all ads because one is for a scam. Whilst blocking ads is morally wrong, in my opinion, it's obviously not a very big moral crime. There are many things that might outweigh it. In general, though, I'd say that you're selling the right to be subtly influenced by ads in exchange for the programme content you receive, and if you don't like that, don't consume ad-supported content.
In an ideal world, ads would be things we'd be much happier to see than we are at the moment. The kind of general influence ads we see the majority of the time, which, as you say, are 'designed to mess with the viewer's decision making process' are only used because they're the only effective way of advertising on something as non-specific in its targeting as TV. What Blakey's working towards is ending that kind of thing by making informative, targeted ads the most effective way to promote your produce. As I said, I look forwards eagerly to the day when I receive ads for the exact products I would want to buy.
@Xyro said:
Like a right-leaning liberal?That's not a bad description of what most people think. I'd be happy to be called that, since, at least to me, it would imply some degree of pragmatism allied to a healthy dose of liberal idealism.
@fluffy777 said:
Hint: they're probably orthodox jews. We (not that I practice) are not allowed to "work" on saturdays.
"Work" includes turning things on, like lights and airwicks.
It's possible, but I wouldn't go as far a saying probable, for two reasons: 1) a lot of Orthodox Jews won't use time-switches, because there is such a thing as sticking to the spirit as well as the letter of the law; and 2) you'd think power-saving isn't an issue here. I guess if it's about making sure it doesn't smell too much or something, there might be a reason for it.
@b-redeker said:
@bertram said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:The Indy is a very upper-middle-class newspaperYou obviously don't read much. The Independent's readership is probably 95% left-leaning liberal.I don't see the contradiction.
Because there isn't one. I'd point you to an example of the Indie's middle-class credentials, but they're endless if you take a look at the website - from the ski holidays to the 'executive jobs' to the £1000+ "cheap high street handbags", and on ad hypocritical nauseam. Very sadly, the Indie is one of the better papers left in this country, as well.
@__moz said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@Xyro said:So are usersNope. Because no-one said ads are only visual. A
of text-only browsers (e.g., the visually impaired) all culpable of thievery?
blind person blocking audio ads would be just the same.A blind person will always block audio adverts on a visual web page. Think about it.
Not seeing it. Wait, that's not the best choice of words. I don't understand the point you're making. Is it that blind people use text-to-speech engines to read webpages? Because that doesn't preclude having ads inserted, although I'll grant that it's purely hypothetical at the moment since the software doesn't actually do that.
@DaveK said:
You need to take things less seriously; I find your stupidity merely tedious and disappointing, rather than painful.True stupidity hurts. QED.@DaveK said:
You need to take things less seriously; I find your stupidity merely tedious and disappointing, rather than painful. We are talking about the validity of your calling the use of adblockers "stealing". Everything else you have mentioned since then is an attempt at diversion.@DaveK said:
No, that's your (irrelevant straw-man) point. Mine is that it is not stealing to block ads. You are making the Humpty-Dumpty argument that "stealing" means whatever you say it means.
You're the one debating a semantic point and ignoring the salient one. You can call it sheep-buggering for all I care; it's still morally wrong, whatever arbitrary combination of sounds you choose to represent it.
@b-redeker said:
That's a pretty much self-debunking study, if you read even just the Indy article. They asked people with breast cancer if they used cleaning products. It's so flawed as to be completely meaningless. I would note that generally in the UK, cleaning is seen as a lower-social-class activity, and the Indy is a very upper-middle-class newspaper, so they like stories that have a subtext of 'being lower class than our readers gives you cancer'.A recent article in the English Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/breast-cancer-link-to-cleaning-products-and-air-fresheners-2030342.html The next link on Google was also interesting, in that respect.
So, I'll withhold my scepticism for a bit; I can't find a reputable source that debunks it either.
@alegr said:
cancerogenesI thought that was a joke, but then I googled it to be sure, and it appears to be French. Is it directly equivalent to 'carcinogen' or does it mean something different? Because I very much doubt that an air freshener is significantly carcinogenic - you'd breathe in more unburnt hydrocarbons on any city street.
@DaveK said:
You didn't say it was "immoral". You said it was "stealing", which is a far more precise term referring to an illegal act of theft.Don't be painfully stupid, please. It hurts me. Stealing is a moral wrong that coincidentally is also a crime in most jurisdictions. We're specifically talking about morals, not laws here, as is completely obvious when you read the thread.
@DaveK said:
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
There's no law against many things that are wrong, but that doesn't make them right. Not to get all Godwin on you, but the Nazi death camps were legal in Nazi Germany. Stalin's purges were legal in Soviet Russia. Closer to home, it's legal to lie, or to cheat on your wife. Does that affect the morality of those things?None of those things are "stealing" either, which is all we're discussing here. Your straw-man is irrelevant.
Your point relies on morality and legality being the same thing. It's not a straw man to point out that this is obviously untrue.
@b-redeker said:
Well, if you put sth outside your property, and don't leave a tag on it, either the garbage man will take it, or if it's still worth sth, one of your neighbours. Neither of those is stealing.Just to hammer home the point about morality and legality being different, a starving man taking food from someone else's garbage can is committing a crime in most countries.
@b-redeker said:
Similarly, if a site offers me content for free, and they don't expressly say "but if you look at this you have to see all the ads too", how is it immoral for me to just look at their content and not the ads?This is the difference (again) between legal and moral. You're not being forced to view the ads, and you have no legal obligation to do so. They don't need to explicitly state that they want you to view the ads because it's self-evident from the fact that they have put them on their site.