...since your ISP has full control over the data reaching you, they could replace any image on an html page with an ad without changing the apparent source, thus getting round pretty much all ad-blocking software.
Liquid, there's another viewpoint here; the ISPs have been looking for years for a way to get rid of their "heavy users" (i.e. the unprofitable ones) without being sued for breach of contract. Now they'll be able to say "...but we're legally obliged to let you go."
adding AOL’s visitors to Yahoo!’s puts Yahoo! at almost 200 million monthly uniques
This assumes, I suspect erroneously, that there is zero overlap between the set of people who visit AOL and Yahoo!...
I think it's far more likely that both sites have a very high proportion of surfers with the "Portal mentality", and thus combining their userbases will leave them with not much more than the larger of the initial two userbases.
You're lucky. I had no choice when they bought over Netscape and "migrated" my rather nice Netscape.com email account to a crappy, ad-encrusted AOL.com account. :'-(
Never before has the analogy with "covering yourself with faeces" seemed so understated. It's difficult to think of anything as demeaning and demoralising as being forced to merge with AOL.
If I put my old couch out on the curbside with a "FREE" sign sitting on it and someone takes it without asking me, is that stealing?
In many cities, technically, yes. Items left at the curbside(sic) automatically become the property of "the city" and no amount of attached notices can negate that.
The reason for the majority of "unintentionally" unsecured wifi isn't stupidity or apathy; it's uncertainty.
When your granny connects to her router for the first time, she's so happy to have a connection of any sort at all that she'll stop there rather than risk losing the connection again by fiddling with any of that "security" mumbo-jumbo. That way they can brag to their friends that they set the system up themselves without having to ask their grandchildren for help.
Again, the only solution to this lies in the hands of the companies who make the wi-fi routers. They should amend their installers in such a way that they demand a WPA key by default, and only after that is set up should they allow access to a control panel that gives the option to reduce the security settings, complete with stern warnings about why you might not want to do that.
That way, people who want to leave their connection open will still be able to do so, and those seeing an open connection would have a reasonable expectation that it was a deliberate invitation to use it.
I live in the UK, and have had over-the-air digital TV for more than three years now. It's fabulous.
Later today I'll be nipping over to Maplin (UK equivalent of Radio Shack) to buy a £50 ($100) "barebones" digital PVR for a friend's Christmas present. That, plus any old ATA hard drive, will give them TiVo-like functionality and ad-skipping, with no subscriptions.
Oh, wait, you Americans have "special interest groups" dedicated to preventing people from enjoying television, don't you? Forget I mentioned it. :-D
A little, true, but less so than in the past. WD have improved a little, while Seagate are less impressive since their acquisition of Maxtor. Seagate still give the best warranties, but that's little comfort if your data is gone.
It was back in the heyday of the Atari ST, when floppy-disk viruses tended to be more playful than malicious. One common virus just swapped all your mouse directions by reprogramming your keyboard, so you had to turn the mouse upsides-down to use it sensibly. A month or so later there was a "blank" floppy disk available through the ST PD community that was "infected" deliberately with a virus that overwrote the mouse-swapper virus and then "inoculated" the bootsector to prevent it from recurring. The idea was that you made sure your most commonly used disks were infected/inoculated and then just let the rest of your data disks get cleaned as and when you got round to using them.
Not only are services capped in the UK, but all domestic service contracts have a clause prohibiting the "sub-letting" or resale of bandwidth. So, even if open wi-fi wasn't a breach of criminal law it's still a breach of civil (contract) law.
They store the info on filing cards because the Freedom of Information Act makes it much easier to request computer records rather than physical paperwork. (And filing cards are easier to misplace/shred without leaving any evidence...)
This happened to me twice in 2003. Basically, it cost the "bulk registrars" as little as 10 cents per name per year, so they would register thousands every day in the hope of selling just one back to the original searcher for $200.
I got so annoyed I wrote a script that submitted searches for plausible-sounding domain names based on dictionary words and ran it for a couple of days. I only gave up when they stopped registering domains searched for from my IP. ;-D
UK TV networks invest huge amounts of cash to get these shows, yet a massive chunk of their potential audience got impatient and has already watched it.
In most cases, though, the target audience for these bought-in shows are anybody who is stupid enough to actually buy something based on in-show commercials and not tech-savvy enough to skip those commercials. Thus, the mostly tech-savvy downloaders who do all their comparison shopping online shouldn't really be losing them any revenue. :-)
Even if teleportation = duplication it can still be a useful process, for example in the quick populating of distant planets: the same "team" could populate thousands of planets with no problems as the resultant "transporter clones" could never physically meet the originals or any of the other duplicates. ;-)
Actually, it's how I work too, except it's "Adblock Plus" in Firefox on Linux and "AdMuncher" on Windows.
"AdMuncher" does cost money, but it's a one-off fee, and it works as a transparent proxy, blocking ads in all applications and browsers on the system on which it is running. $40 for life (£20) IIRC, and if you're forced to use Windows I think it's well worth it. It's extremely configurable and can do the jobs of the "Adblock Plus" and "Flashblock" extensions, plus smart image filtering.
On the post: UK ISPs To Start Tracking Your Surfing To Serve You Ads
More worryingly...
On the post: UK To Force ISPs To Kick Casual File Sharers Off The Internet
Re: No more Internet:
On the post: Yahoo Now Thinks AOL Will Be A Savior?
Re: My second correction of a
This assumes, I suspect erroneously, that there is zero overlap between the set of people who visit AOL and Yahoo!...
I think it's far more likely that both sites have a very high proportion of surfers with the "Portal mentality", and thus combining their userbases will leave them with not much more than the larger of the initial two userbases.
On the post: Yahoo Now Thinks AOL Will Be A Savior?
Re: A sad (but necessary) parting
On the post: Yahoo Now Thinks AOL Will Be A Savior?
Re: Funniest and truest article ever
On the post: Security Firm Sophos Calls WiFi Piggybacking 'Stealing'
Re: part of the problem is also ISP's
On the post: Security Firm Sophos Calls WiFi Piggybacking 'Stealing'
Re: Open Wi-Fi
In many cities, technically, yes. Items left at the curbside(sic) automatically become the property of "the city" and no amount of attached notices can negate that.
On the post: Security Firm Sophos Calls WiFi Piggybacking 'Stealing'
Re: Re: Finally! A Techdirt Mistake!
When your granny connects to her router for the first time, she's so happy to have a connection of any sort at all that she'll stop there rather than risk losing the connection again by fiddling with any of that "security" mumbo-jumbo. That way they can brag to their friends that they set the system up themselves without having to ask their grandchildren for help.
Again, the only solution to this lies in the hands of the companies who make the wi-fi routers. They should amend their installers in such a way that they demand a WPA key by default, and only after that is set up should they allow access to a control panel that gives the option to reduce the security settings, complete with stern warnings about why you might not want to do that.
That way, people who want to leave their connection open will still be able to do so, and those seeing an open connection would have a reasonable expectation that it was a deliberate invitation to use it.
On the post: Can The FCC Actually Manage The Switch To Digital TV?
Digital
Later today I'll be nipping over to Maplin (UK equivalent of Radio Shack) to buy a £50 ($100) "barebones" digital PVR for a friend's Christmas present. That, plus any old ATA hard drive, will give them TiVo-like functionality and ad-skipping, with no subscriptions.
Oh, wait, you Americans have "special interest groups" dedicated to preventing people from enjoying television, don't you? Forget I mentioned it. :-D
On the post: Western Digital Decides That You Shouldn't Be Allowed To Share Any MP3
Re: wd drives suck compared to seagate
On the post: Is It A Good Idea To Violate The Security Of Your Customers If They're Security Ignorant?
I remember this happening 20 years ago...
I thought it was kind of cool. :-)
On the post: Wireless Piggybacking Is Still Not A Problem
Re: Raising costs
On the post: Comcast Sued For Traffic Shaping
Re: Rip Off ?
Tell that to users of this device, who will also be suffering: http://www.vudu.com/
On the post: Anonymous ISP Owner Speaks Out, As Feds Appeal Ruling Against Patriot Act
Guess why filing cards...
On the post: ICANN Investigating Sites That Buy The Available Domain You Just Searched For
Re: scam them back
On the post: ICANN Investigating Sites That Buy The Available Domain You Just Searched For
Me too.
I got so annoyed I wrote a script that submitted searches for plausible-sounding domain names based on dictionary words and ran it for a couple of days. I only gave up when they stopped registering domains searched for from my IP. ;-D
On the post: Linking To Unauthorized Content Is Copyright Infringement In The UK?
Re:
In most cases, though, the target audience for these bought-in shows are anybody who is stupid enough to actually buy something based on in-show commercials and not tech-savvy enough to skip those commercials. Thus, the mostly tech-savvy downloaders who do all their comparison shopping online shouldn't really be losing them any revenue. :-)
On the post: How Far Are We Away From Teleportation?
Re: never
On the post: Ads On eBay Piss Off Sellers
Re: Re: Ad Options?
Actually, it's how I work too, except it's "Adblock Plus" in Firefox on Linux and "AdMuncher" on Windows.
"AdMuncher" does cost money, but it's a one-off fee, and it works as a transparent proxy, blocking ads in all applications and browsers on the system on which it is running. $40 for life (£20) IIRC, and if you're forced to use Windows I think it's well worth it. It's extremely configurable and can do the jobs of the "Adblock Plus" and "Flashblock" extensions, plus smart image filtering.
On the post: Ads On eBay Piss Off Sellers
Re:
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