Ad blocking
Andrew your Computer World link whines about ad blocking which is deliciously humorous for an article on privacy.
Posts by John Lilburne
1026 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2009
Who'll guard your personal data post-Brexit?
Apple pollutes data about you to protect your privacy. But it might not be enough
Tuesday 21st June 2016 11:33 GMT
Sick and tired
Of people suggesting hacks, workaround, and obscure settings, to temporarily avoid corporate surveillance. You really don't need any of the shit that is tracking you. We got on very well for years and years without some GPS enabled device, without broadcasting to the world exactly what we were doing, and without the constant need to check messages, tweets, or status updates. It is all bullshit and hasn't enhanced our lives at all.
Dump the crap.
This is how the EU's supreme court is stripping EU citizens of copyright protections
Tuesday 14th June 2016 23:39 GMT
Re: I don't fully understand...
'If the cupboard were locked, clicking on the link would result in a "forbidden" message'
As stated above most people do not have the ability or resources to maintain their own site. They rely on things like FB, Flickr, and other services. Pretending the John and Jane Doe who simple want to share images of their kids with their families can't do so because they aren't webmasters is typical geek shite.
Tuesday 14th June 2016 14:49 GMT
Re: I don't fully understand...
Once again your justification resolves down to "Internet".
It makes no difference whether the security measure is crap or not. The clear intention is that the images aren't for general public consumption. The hyperlink breaks the lock and it does not matter how the hyperlink escaped.
Yes one can put the images on personally hosted web servers and use .htpasswd to protect access. But that is really outside the scope of the vast majority of people and is quite frankly elitist bullshit.
Tuesday 14th June 2016 12:45 GMT
Re: I don't fully understand...
Someone puts family images on flickr marked as private viewable only by family, so the pages are protected. However, some one gets the links to those images and puts them on a website that is viewable to all. The hyperlinks are to images that the uploader never intended to be public. In fact the hyperlink is no more than a skeleton key to the contents of someone's locked cupboard.
Wales gives anti-vaping Blockleiters a Big Red Panic Button
Judge slams BT for blaming engineer after 7 metre ceiling plunge
Tuesday 14th June 2016 13:42 GMT
Seen that happen before. Company tried to blame worker for accident. Court demanded evidence of written procedure and proof that employee had been given the appropriate training. When company couldn't provide any evidence, they got ripped apart. Later they tried to give the employee a written warning, but the Union Rep knew what had happen in court and ripped them apart again.
Microsoft's paid $60 per LinkedIn user – and it's a bargain, because we're mugs
Google doesn’t care who makes Android phones. Or who it pisses off
Google snubs 'dark money' questions at AGM. Shareholder power? Yeah, right
Friday 10th June 2016 09:41 GMT
Re: Good for them
"they've done so by often bucking the conventional wisdom."
What like obeying laws rather than disregarding them and seeing who has the money to stop them? being prepared to spend 100s of millions to circumvent that laws that honest people abide by is not 'bucking conventional wisdom' its is quasi-criminal activity.
Tinder bans under-18s: Moral panic averted
Model's horrific rape case may limit crucial online free speech law
Digital ad biz is fraudulent by design, complain big brands
Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick... Hang on. They're back
Bloke flogs $40 B&W printer on Craigslist, gets $12,000 legal bill
Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest password was 'dadada'
Why Oracle will win its Java copyright case – and why you'll be glad when it does
Smartwatches: I hate to say ‘I told you so’. But I told you so.
Thursday 2nd June 2016 14:55 GMT
Way back in 1982 ...
... I was used a watch to time a darkroom print exposure, during one session I dropped the damn thing in a stop bath tray. It never worked again and I've not used a watch since. If I need to know the time it is displayed on my computer, iPod, and old nokia phone. Around the town there are big towers which display the time, it is displayed on the dashboard of my car, and is usually displayed on the wall in cafes and shops. Why would I need to pay £20 let alone several £100 for another time display?
Arrests for 'offensive' Twitter and Facebook messages up by a third
Uber, AirBNB: Lay off 'em, EC tells member states
Brexit? Cutting the old-school ties would do more for Brit tech world
Tuesday 31st May 2016 12:58 GMT
Much of the BREXIT arguments ...
... are bogus. Various governments over the years have had opportunities to opt-out of EU regulations. The ones they have opted out of are all concerned with removing rights from the people of this country granted by the EU. They don't want to opt out to give us more right they want to opt out to take more rights away.
I'm told that we have a load of people from Poland (whenever I hear it it seems to be similar to the old Windies/Indian Sub-Continent racism of old) that are taking jobs and depressing wages, in low paid jobs such as care. Seems to me that the wages in these jobs are mainly depressed because successive Tory governments have reduced the grants to Local Government, made it easier to sack people, and allowed zero hour contracts. Same thing has happened with the NHS.
I gather that many of the Brexiters also want to renege on the European Convention on Human Rights. We are supposed to believe that these self same people are going to be looking to improve rights in this country.
Google still faces legal spat with SEO biz that claimed it was wiped from web
Monday 23rd May 2016 08:33 GMT
Re: SEO - The lottery that you can't win
It was solved on the basis that "you are profiled". So they present you with search results from sites that you and your social network like. Google+ was meant to hid+ the fact that the search engines don't know shit, so you could thumb up a site and get similar crap next time. So thriw in a couple of wikipedia pages, and a handful of sites you've previously shown interest in and good to go. There is no attempt to winnow out the wheat from the chaff.
The ‘Vaping Crackdown’ starts today. This is what you need to know
Friday 20th May 2016 13:05 GMT
Re: So the bar is now much higher for e-cig makers
I don't really care if e-cigs have cancer in them or something else but ... recently whilst driving into work I've been seeing plumes of smoke emanating from the windows of cars. It is almost as if the Flying Scotsman is in there. That in itself seems to be a risk of blow back into the car, or into the car of someone waiting at lights besides them, making visibility inside the car a problem.
Besides its bound to irritate Craig so that's a good thing in itself.
GM crops are good for you and the planet, reckon boffins
Wednesday 18th May 2016 14:36 GMT
Re: When electricity was first introduced....
They would have had better environmentalist response if the first GMO had been drought resistant and not designed to require the seed company's fertilizers, pesticides, and where the seeds were infertile so that farmers couldn't put aside some of the crop for sowing the following year.
As it was the impression was that these new organisms were designed for the profits of the petro-chemical industry not 3rd world farmers.
Queen’s Speech: Digital Bill to tackle radicalisation, pirates
Wednesday 18th May 2016 11:38 GMT
Re: Still might be a tad excessive
No one has said that all acts of piracy are lost sales - though recent research reckons about 10-20% are for major blockbusters etc.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dongroves/2016/05/10/new-research-debunks-one-myth-piracy-site-blocking-does-not-work/#48008445ee38
The long-tail however, is reckoned to be hardest hit by piracy. IE the non-major media publishers are the least likely to be able to whether a 10-20% drop in revenue.
Tuesday 17th May 2016 18:55 GMT
Re: Still might be a tad excessive
Where do you get the idea that this is about big media. The biggest losses are from small creators. Big media suffer loses but not on the same scale. Small creators are looking to sell stuff to large publishers, large publishers reduce the amount they are willing to pay because of piracy. Example: Google pay next to nothing and demand that someone's entire catalog is turned over to them. Otherwise they just let people upload stuff to YT and pocket the ad-revenue. Spotify work on the same principle "It may be peanuts but at least its more than nothing".
Brit twitchers a-tizz at bearded vulture sighting
EU mulls €3bn fine for Google
Blocking ads? Smaller digital publishers are smacked the hardest
At the BBC, Agile means 'making it up as we go along'
Can ad biz’s LEAN avert ADPOCALYPSE?
Sneaky Google KOs 'right to be forgotten' from search results
Wednesday 20th April 2016 10:21 GMT
It is more than Orwellian
"Why would any mature society trust its digital archive to a Californian consumer data processing corporation that sold ads."
Why would any mature society allow the same company to build a database of everyone's reading list, the music they listen to, the videos they watch, where they go, and who they communicate with?
If this was a State we'd have some very harsh words to say about it. As it is this company appears to be at the centre of governments. Pumping $millions into political lobbying every week or so.
So you’d sod off to China to escape the EU, Google? Really?
Google's 'fair use' mass slurping of books can continue – US Supremes snub writers' pleas
Tuesday 19th April 2016 07:49 GMT
Re: I simply do not understand copyright anymore.
I don't think there is a single instance of Google paying someone for the content they've taken. In fact there is a lawsuit outstanding where they have used works on Google Play that they haven't got licenses for, and where there is tandard process of making payments even if they can't find the songwriters. Instead they've just used the works and sit back until someone complains.
Monday 18th April 2016 21:59 GMT
Years ago Google books wasn't simply snippets it was huge great chunks. It was only after the lawsuite that they started to tone it down to snippets. I predict that they'll go the same way as Images search which started out as thumbs that linked to the website, to what we have now where they are displaying great big downloadable images where the link to the creators site is hard to find. And least any one thinks I'm picking on Google, Bing is just as bad.
Music's value gap? Follow the money trail back to Google
Google ads probe blow
UK.gov watchdog growls at firms that pass off advertorials as real opinions
Google tried to be funny, cocked it up, everyone thought it was a bug
That one phone the FBI wanted unlocked? Here are 63 more, says ACLU
Water treatment plant hacked, chemical mix changed for tap supplies
Thursday 24th March 2016 15:10 GMT
Hey shit happens. Back in the 1990s, when I worked in a chemical factory, we had a water treatment guy in to dose the cooling tower water with biocide (legionnaires). Unfortunately they didn't tell anyone that they'd done it. So some maintenance fellows comes on shift and opens up a valve to let water into the local canal. A few hours later the surface of the canal was covered in dead and dying fish.
Web ads are reading my keystrokes and I can’t even spel propperlie
Friday 18th March 2016 14:24 GMT
If I want to buy something I look for it. I'll have a specific item in mind and when I find it I buy it. Recently I bought a monitor, SATA hard disk, SSD disk, and sound card. I don't need any more for quite some time. So any one paying money to some ad network for dump any of those items on my screen is wasting their money (though the ad blockers will most likely filter them out anyway). Similarly I recently bought some photographic filters, I don't need any more. I don't need a draw full of wallets containing Cokin ND filters.
Yes I did also look at some remote controlled off camera flash guns, but I decided not to buy one now, maybe a couple of months just before I go photographing wild flowers in French woodland. If and when I do need one I'll find one I like within a couple of hours, it will be bought before any of these networks can react, and I won't want another one.
Online ads are not only intrusive and creepy they are also always irrelevant.
Apple tells iPhone court 'the Founders would be appalled' by Feds
Thursday 17th March 2016 14:02 GMT
Re: misinformed arrogance
Typical digiterati bullshit.
If the data was contained on paper in manilla folders inside locked in a safe, the cops would have had it opened weeks ago and no one would have batted an eyelid. No one would be whining that it was a slippery slope to Armageddon where everyone's safe was open to the world and its dog.
Court+Search warrant for specific object == Legal Oversight.
If it works for your bedroom closet it works for your phone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
