Mozilla Jetpack and the Battle For the Web 280
snydeq writes "Mozilla Jetpack makes it so easy to filter, modify, and mash up pages that it might end up pitting developers and users against content producers in a battle for the Web, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. By allowing users to modify the behavior, presentation, and output of Web apps and pages to their liking, Jetpack gives users the ability to 'patch the server, in a sense,' McAllister writes, bringing us one step closer to a more democratic Web. Good news for developers and users; not so good for SaaS providers and media companies that have a vested interest in controlling the function, presentation, and distribution of Web-based content and apps. In other words, as Jetpack produces fruit, expect more producers to call for 'guardrails for the Internet.'"
That's why I stopped using a browser (Score:5, Funny)
I read the raw HTML and compose the pages in my imagination, just like the novel readers of the past used to do.
That really sticks it to the man.
Pining for the good old days (Score:4, Interesting)
I miss the days when just about everyone using the web was a developer, user, and content producer all in one. I think we all saw the commercial 'content producer' jackals circling and licking their lips, but we thought we had the power to fend them off, that the web would never be fully commercialized like every other media. How wrong we were.
Re:Pining for the good old days (Score:4, Insightful)
Pff. I don't pine for those days. You couldn't do half the cool shit you can do with the web now back then, and lots of those things would never have happened without commercial interests getting involved.
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Except for a bit of expansion in DHTML and Flash, you could do everything then that you could do now. The only differences is bandwidth and processing power. The real dynamic changes have been the underlying programming languages and the use of backed databases. You could do it all in perl back then, just no one really thought to.
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why would anyone use perl now? Has the perl6 revolution come without anyone noticing?
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Re:Pining for the good old days (Score:4, Insightful)
Sloppy writing is a very good predictor of sloppy coding.
[citation needed]
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I'd still like to know why frames are considered bad. Take your average web page, which is most likely to be a blog or a video of two girls dressed as robots shoving bananas into each-other's ears (while naked [not in conflict with the previous parts of this sentence, I assure you]). In both cases, the layout, most of navigation, etc, does not change from page to page. People build huge and complex templating systems, entire frameworks, around the idea of making those things be added automatically on the ba
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Frame content doesn't bookmark nor spider very well, resulting in undesired situations. Users end up with bookmarks to entrance content instead of the desired content, or end up without navigation menus when search engines sent them directly to the frame content which didn't include the outerlying frames.
DHTML pages solve this by adding information about inner content into the anchor part of the URL, so every page loads entirely upon first entrance and Javascript takes care of the inner content. Nowadays yo
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By "content producer jackals" do you mean, like, actual writers, artists, and design professionals? Yeah, it's a real shame they found the web. I really, really miss the blink tags and those spinning yellow-and-black "under construction" graphics.
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Now get off my lawn.
Re:Pining for the good old days (Score:4, Funny)
Captain Splended (673276) to spun (1352):
Now get off my lawn.
Never thought I'd see the day.
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Are we reading the same thread? He was responding to an anonymous coward.
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He probably browses at 1 and didn't see the AC's post.
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He probably browses at 1 and didn't see the AC's post.
You mean the post to which he directly responded? You know that doesn't add up, right?
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I don't even see the code anymore. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead...
that explains it! (Score:5, Funny)
And so the new slashdot layout is finally explained in full.
I keed, I keed. But seriously...
Seriously indeed (Score:2)
I've *long* had my slashdot layout set to the minimal markup and styling. That's how I like it. I'm not even sure I can find that setting anymore, and it's not respected in my front page views anymore. Though strangely, it sometimes is when I'm viewing and replying to comments...
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Re:that explains it! - Why Slashdot is so slow (Score:5, Interesting)
And so the new slashdot layout is finally explained in full.
Yes. There's so much crap running on Slashdot's pages now that Firefox sometimes reports that a script is running too long. Pages load slowly because the five or so different ad servers all need time to respond. The page code has "document.write()" calls which load more Javascript, forcing operations which ought to be in parallel to wait for the previous step to complete. I just had a Slashdot page load wait 9 seconds for "bs.serving-sys.com". That's a 9 second delay for a useless site that's trying to load a "tracking cookie". A Jetpack add-on to block all that stuff will be a huge win.
Re:that explains it! - Why Slashdot is so slow (Score:5, Informative)
I just had a Slashdot page load wait 9 seconds for "bs.serving-sys.com".
NoScript (FireFox extension: http://noscript.net/ [noscript.net])
I don't run AdBlock, just NoScript, and the only reason I know that /. has ads now is that people not running NoScript talk about it.
Revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy forgot just one important thing: Most people don't use Firefox.
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The browsers you named have even smaller market share than Firefox...
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chances are almost every computer has at least one alternate browser other than IE installed, it might not be used, but it would still be installed,
More made-up nonsense.
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***The browsers you named have even smaller market share than Firefox...***
True, but they are part of the pack that is nibbling away at the mindset of incompetent web site designers who think that the fact that their abomination worked once for about five minutes in IE means it is correct and the rest of the world is out of step. Sooner or later I'm going to lose it and go after some clown who suggests that I need to upgrade to a "modern web browser" on a site that fails W3C validation with hundreds of lay
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Ok, assuming that most major web surfers are at least somewhat computer literate and have at least heard of Firefox why wouldn't they switch?
Because IE works for them and they don't care to switch? This is the same reason why many computer literate people don't ditch Windows for Linux. If a program or OS works perfectly for your needs there is no reason to switch.
Other then web developers needing to have a copy of IE to test code why would anyone use IE when Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc are all technologically superior and have more plugins?/quote> Because not everyone cares about those features or needs them? Just because people use a different web browser than you doesn't make them computer illiterate or not a "major web surfer"
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More accurately, becasue they believe it works for them.
Whether or not it does work for them is not relevant.
BTW this applies for pretty much everything, not just I.E.
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Re:Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy forgot just one important thing: Most people don't use Firefox.
Regardless of whether or not it is not more than half of web surfers, plenty of people [w3schools.com] use it. In fact, the percentage is so large, 'most' is moot. Most surveys show at least 30% market share.
Also, the number of FF users isn't worth bringing up anyhow - This article in no way says, "Teh Interwebs as we know it are ovur!". TFA simply says that this is a good STEP toward a more democratic web, although the TFS certainly sensationalized it quite a bit.
Numbers really don't matter here. What *does* matter though, is the idea that Jetpack has indirectly brought with it -- more control over web content. This will undoubtedly spread to other browsers in the form of plugins and such, making browser market share irrelevant.
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This article in no way says, "Teh Interwebs as we know it are ovur!".
Don't know about TFA as I don't read crap. But TF summary certainly does say that.
Also, w3schools are a skewed demography. A reality check is here:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2 [hitslink.com]
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Hey, just like with Linux if this *Revolution* allows me to do more, be more flexible, generally control how my experience works then it will be a success. As far as I'm concerned the minute an open source app makes the author(s) and even one other person more productive or happy is a success.
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Most people also don't use ad-blocking.
And most people, when they try Firefox with Adblock installed, never go back.
Sorry Dudes... (Score:2)
However much you might dislike this fact, the internet is not actually television, nor can web pages be designed as though it is(put down the flash and back away slowly).
Re:Sorry Dudes... (Score:4, Funny)
For too long have you created and shared content amongst yourselves without it passing through our hands first, thus depriving us of our entitled revenue. Luckily we have more lobbying money than you, so this state of affairs will not continue.
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Dear "Content Providers",
Good luck with that.
Signed,
BitTorrent.
Re:Sorry Dudes... (Score:5, Insightful)
From day one, the actual rendering (or not) of HTML was intended to be user configurable. HTML was intended to be semantic tagging, not some sort of paste-up specification. A P tag specifies a paragraph, but does not specify what the browser does with a paragraph. The default is a reasonably sane rendering, but if the user wants something else, that's their call. All of the stuff like font, etc and CSS are strong suggestions which most browsers happen to accept and follow by default.
'Content Providers' in print media cannot stop me from drawing Hitler mustaches or horns on the ads in magazines I buy and they can't stop me from wearing tinted glasses when I read them.
Television 'Content providers' cannot stop me from hitting mute, modifying my TV to display the picture upside down, or creating funny commercial mash-ups by changing channels right after the voiceover asks a question.
They'd love the right to strap us down and give us the Clockwork Orange treatment, but that's not something they can have.
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"one step closer to a more democratic Web" (Score:5, Insightful)
So... Tools that make it even easier to strip the content from people who've spent their free time running websites that are expensive, using their bandwidth to do so? How is this democratic? A democracy is about having a say in how a country (the web) is run, not having your say over individuals (websites). It's easy to spin it as "giving the user control back from the big bad corporations" but there are scores of good websites producing quality content that do struggle to even cover costs, let alone make a profit.
power to the people (Score:5, Insightful)
So... Tools that make it even easier to strip the content from people who've spent their free time running websites that are expensive, using their bandwidth to do so? How is this democratic?
Don't make websites that suck and the People won't have to jetpack the suck out of it.
Re:power to the people (Score:4, Informative)
We will still, of course, strip out the adverts, because adverts suck.
Re:"one step closer to a more democratic Web" (Score:5, Insightful)
So?
The internet is designed to allow the user to control how they view content. That is what it does. Don't come whining becasue some people chose to work in that medium.
It's like that guy that buys a house near an airport and then complains the planes are loud. Maybe you should ahve chosen a different medium.
Just becasue some one writes a book, doesn't man I can rearrange the words in the copy I bought, and just becasue you create a website doesn't mean I can change how I want to view it,
It's like complaining becasue someone can change the tint on their TV and ruin the artistic vision of the director.
It is democratic becasue it gives the power to the people. More specifically, it's a Direct Democracy where the people make the decisions. In this case, the decision how they wish to view something.
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So? The internet is designed to allow the user to control how they view content. That is what it does. Don't come whining becasue some people chose to work in that medium.
It's like that guy that buys a house near an airport and then complains the planes are loud.
Unfortunately, it is starting to look like the people who bought houses next to a farm and then got the government to stop the farmer from spreading manure on the field (that the farmer owned) next to their houses because they didn't like the smell (this actually happened).
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So... Tools that make it even easier to strip the content from people who've spent their free time running websites that are expensive, using their bandwidth to do so? How is this democratic? A democracy is about having a say in how a country (the web) is run, not having your say over individuals (websites).
So PVRs that skip commercials are undemocratic because the viewer is altering the content before they view it?
Interesting...
Re:"one step closer to a more democratic Web" (Score:5, Insightful)
A democracy is about having a say in how a country (the web) is run, not having your say over individuals (websites).
The web server provides you with numerous tools to control how the user receives your content. How they view it after that is not up to you, and never has been.
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If your ads are annoying enough that people are willing to write code to block them, your business model sucks. Give me tasteful ads, or I'll remove them.
The real question is, would you rather have me view your page without ads, or not view your page at all?
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If you have a following, it works awesome. Sadly it gets poo-pooed by people that can't cope with the fact that they really aren't that good.
Believe me, if PvpOnline can get a large following, then artistic skill doesn't have to be much past mediocre
Second products are usually the original product plastered onto something else.
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And really if the hosting costs are too high for you, either use P2P to distribute any high ban
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You seem to have built up this notion that you deserve to get free access to any content that you wish, simply because you wish to.
No, I haven't said anything of the sort. I don't believe anyone deserves to get free access to content if the owner doesn't want to.
Yes, content producers certainly have the right to try and profit from their creation.
Sure they have to the right to try to profit from their works but too many of them feel that they are entitled to success and then blame piracy, etc for when they make little or no money rather than maybe looking to see if what they produced was even worth something.
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Piracy is the art of taking something that was worth something and making it worth nothing. Once it is free, the cost is zero and the value for many people is also zero.
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I don't believe anyone deserves to get free access to content if the owner doesn't want to.
The snide 'oh those greedy fatcats feel they deserve to make millions' type comment is belittling the fact that people do need money to get by in life.
It's not greed to ask for people to pay for a service.
Again you seem to be arguing against someone else's post and not mine because I never claimed this.
If millions of people are enjoying someone you made you're entitled to get something out of that if you want to.
Well sure you do. But the fact is that many people who produce content that ends up not selling well will end up blaming everyone but themselves fo
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Well, that's pretty much the intent of the web, considering how it and the protocols were developed.
Money and commercialism were secondary thoughts, they came along and tried to jump on afterwards. So, it isn't any surprise that it is an uphill battle for the paid content stuff. The WWW was never designed to be commercial. Money for content is a relatively new thing to be introduced to the medium.
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content producers certainly have the right to try and profit from their creation.
Sure... and users have the right to attempt to get media on their terms.
If copyright law doesn't serve the will of the people, what good is it?
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Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind if people can't pay via their advertising, they'll likely start charging again.
Which will drive people to free sites.
Once upon a time it was possible to make a living by being the only literate person in town, reading and writing letters for people and the like. Universal literacy killed that business model.
The Web was never designed nor intended as a tool for commercial enterprises--it was intended to allow academics to share information, and however far it evolves under commercial pressure, there is not much that can be done about that fundamental aspect of its architecture. To try to use the Web, which was designed for free and open information sharing, as a tool for restricted information sales is probably going to fail.
The past decade has seen a number of successful businesses based on Web revenue models. There is no promise from anyone that those models will continue to be viable. That's what markets are like, and while it may be a pity that certain things are not available to users because there is no viable way to pay for it, we're still all better off for having the Web than not.
Re:Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only one that finds it interesting how short the lifetime is for Internet business models? Traditional business models can be successful for dozens if not hundreds of years. Web based models seem to only remain viable for around a decade at best, then competition crops up with a new idea or some independent developer ruins the model (Ad-block anyone?).
It seems to me that if your business is going to survive on the web, you'd better be spending time and effort every single day looking for new revenue streams and business models.
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The paid-for news/media is already stupid enough. I can't wait until all the semi-talented writers start charging, and 99% of america gets their news and election info from a right-wing or left-wing blog site... or worse [perezhilton.com].
Seriously, I think the easy availability of respected newspapers such as the NYTimes has helped improved American's awareness of political issues. Whatever my problems with the NYTimes biases are, they're 100x better than the local news.
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The solution is not to get news from one site only. news.google.com is your friend. For any given 'newsworthy' topic, there will be dozens of links to stories on different sites. Oh, and most of them wont have a paywall to view.
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Universal literacy killed that business model.
I think we're about to fix that.
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If you really wanted to support someone it would be far more effective to cut out the middlemen and just send them a check.
Pay-via-advertising is unreliable at best, annoyingly disruptive to readers, and has a tendency to alienate those who would otherwise support you. It only exists due to the lack of an economical micro-payment system. Direct-charge with automatic negotiation would be far superior, but the overhead of handling many small payments is just too high--for now. The incredible degree of regulat
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"It's another way for people who want something for nothing to remove ads"
Giving people a way to do that is democratic.
Step 1: "..start charging again. "
Step 2: Dry up and go away
Step 3: No profit.
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It's another way for people who want something for nothing to remove ads.
I doubt there will be more people killing ads via Jetpack than there are people killing ads via tools and addons like Adblock Plus. Unless doing it with Jetpack is easier, which I doubt is even possible.
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Better yet, it is a way to rebrand web sites. Your content with my brand. Now, if only I can get other people's browsers to view it that way it means I own the Internet.
If as part of the ISP "connection package" Cox can deliver this it means that Cox owns all the web content there is and can use it however they see fit. I'll bet Cox thinks this is a wonderful idea. And Time-Warner, and Comcast. And anyone else in the big-ISP business.
How come so much stuff gets figured out for the Internet without ever
Re:Yeah, Sorry Guys. (Score:4, Informative)
God I hate advertising. I hate the American attitude that advertising is acceptable (indeed inevitable) in all areas of life. Billboards everywhere, sportscasters interrupting their coverage to promote products, ads read by the presenters on NPR, advertising of prescription medication...
These things don't happen anywhere else. It's only in America that you've been persuaded by the advertisers that their hold on your psyche and paycheck is normal.
The figures I have are from 2000, when the total amount spent on advertising worked out to about $5000 per inhabitant of the US per year.
What a stupid tax for us all to be paying! It doesn't go to anything we particularly want. It lines the pocketbooks of advertising agencies and irritates us when we're trying to browse the web or watch television or listen to the radio or see the countryside from our cars.
As a way of funding anything, it's hugely inefficient. I bet it's even more inefficient than taxes.
Ad Injections (Score:2, Interesting)
Once you take the route of deliberately modifying content, this is just next logical step. I hope that is not the case.
2 not-necessarily mutually exclusive perspectives (Score:3, Informative)
As a web user, things like this make me glad. I will be glad if I am given more control of the presentation of poorly-designed websites, because I really don't have any sympathy for someone who designs a site that hinders me from obtaining the information that the site is supposed to be giving me.
Tools like this are not inherently good or bad. People may use them to the detriment of their experience on the web (if they somehow degrade a site's visual appeal or function [not that the two things go hand-in-hand]), or people may use them to make their experiences on the web more efficient, productive, and enjoyable. I say more power to tools like this, because people should be able to have a say about how content is presented on their computers. And perhaps once poor web design dies (as if this will ever happen), the web developer/designer views the web in a different way, or the browser changes the way it presents websites, tools like this will either go out of fashion or become more integral to our idea of what the web is.
failure to read what the average webuser wants (Score:3, Interesting)
i remember reading about a startup in the dotcom days that allows users to annotate webpages in ways that can be shared. complete failure
why? no one wants to exert the extra effort. what's the benefit? the summary makes it sound like some sort of revolutionary anticorporate antimind control movement. guess what: most users not only want to do nothing, they want to make sure they are seeing exactly what everyone else sees
its a basic human desire for commonality of culture: sharing anything on the web is all about being part of contributing to a group, and consuming what is the same for everyone else. this is a basic human social drive. that if they had content that was "special" and only visible to them in a certain way, even if in just cosmetic appearance, you are driving a wedge between the user and that sense of shared commonality. what is the whole point of the internet? what is the driving force behind its popularity and adoption?
this project flies directly in the face of that basic human social impulse and drive
ps: this observation of mine applies most especially to subcultures: small splinter groups that are outside the mainstream and proudly so. their desire to see the same thing the rest of the subculture sees is accelerated due to the fact that it takes more effort to be part of a subculture than be part of the mainstream, they need to "work harder" to remain synchronized in bona fides with the rest of the members of their subculture. suggest to them that they aren't seeing quite what everyone else sees in that subculture and it will disturb to them, that they aren't fully part of the group yet
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Interesting, but wrong.
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this observation of mine applies most especially to subcultures: small splinter groups that are outside the mainstream and proudly so. their desire to see the same thing the rest of the subculture sees is accelerated due to the fact that it takes more effort to be part of a subculture than be part of the mainstream,
And you think that installing an additional set of subculture-specific page transforming filters won't take effort? That subculture members won't pride themselves on their ability to tweak the way those filters work for that subculture and that the other members of that subculture won't reward them with attention and accolades for helping to further delineate their subculture from the mainstream?
barrier to entry (Score:2)
with a webpage, you know you see what everyone else sees. well, you can make scripts to modify pages for certain users, but this is done when you are purposefully attempting to exclude someone, not draw them further into a subculture. and even if such a membership track existed within a subculture (special tweaks per user), it creates feelings of classism and paranoia, which alienates and destroys: fred sees something i don't see, he is more "special" than me (even if what fred sees is random unimportant fl
I remember that too... (Score:2)
i remember reading about a startup in the dotcom days that allows users to annotate webpages in ways that can be shared. complete failure
why?
Because it was really badly implemented. It required an unreliable plugin, didn't stay up to date, and had a lousy user interface. Oh, and it had a really weird name that had nothing to do with the product (something like 'don't trust in TV').
There were a couple of better versions, college projects, that worked a lot better, without the need for browser plugins, and pr
what was it called? (Score:2)
keen.com i think?
one of the most overblown piece of shit dotcom era ideas, ever
Dear Internet (Score:2)
Don't like open standards? (Score:2)
Then don't use them. Seriously, if producers don't like people utilizing open standards to integrate and mashup products delivered using HTML/XML/JavaScript/etc., then don't use those standards. Junk all your wares into a DRM-laden flash applet, sit back and relax - and leave the rest of us to range freely on the other side of the guard rails.
I guess (Score:2)
It would seem that if I want to reformat, rebrand and (obviously) republish content found on the web, I should be able to do so, right?
I guess a further step is putting out a plug-in for any user's browser that automatically reformats and rebrands content found on the web as mine. That way no matter if they go to my site or CNN, they are always seeing content as if I published it, right?
Now, if I can make this happen to users automatically once they visit my pages once, all the better.
Maybe it is just a ma
Greasemonkey (Score:3, Insightful)
I Don't Think It's a Dupe (Score:3, Informative)
CmdrTaco, you posted this dupe to early as the last one [slashdot.org] was only posted 8 days ago. You are supposed to wait at least a month before duping. Thank you.
Today's article is more centered on the battle that the author believes is about to transpire between content providers and users. If you're having trouble finding these parts:
Content producers, on the other hand, might not be so thrilled.
He goes on to cite the New York Times effort to provide an open API to their stories [nytimes.com] as well as Michael Lynton, Sony CEO Troll [slashdot.org] and wraps up with Obama's often referenced cybersecurity czar [slashdot.org] (god, I hate typing that):
So far, calls for action such as Lynton's have mostly fallen on deaf ears. But with President Obama due to announce a "cybersecurity czar" this week, there is every indication that the U.S. government is ready to become more directly involved in the workings of the Internet and the Web. According to the White House, the new position will have "broad authority" over the nation's computer networks, both public and private. If that authority includes protecting the economic interests of American Web-based businesses, we could be heading for a helluva scuffle.
I wouldn't call it a dupe as this gives us something new to talk about from a blog.
Re:Already available (Score:5, Informative)
Or am I mistaken. I use greasemonkey to already accomplish this.
Yeah, if you read the article, they go on extensively about this:
If you're familiar with the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox, you already have a good idea of how Jetpack works. Like Greasemonkey User Scripts, Jetpack-based add-ins are written primarily in JavaScript, and they manipulate browser windows and their contents using familiar AJAX techniques. You install them directly from the Web, and they don't even require a browser restart to take effect. While developing Greasemonkey User Scripts can be somewhat cumbersome, writing add-ins with Jetpack couldn't be simpler.
Jetpack integrates the popular jQuery JavaScript library, the Firebug debugger, and Mozilla's Bespin browser-based code editor to create a complete, interactive development environment. Although it's still in a raw and experimental stage, the combination is both easy to use and incredibly powerful. For example, one of the Jetpack demos is an ad-blocking script that uses a list of regular expressions to selectively filter unwanted graphics, scripts, and iframes from Web pages. The whole script comprises only about 80 lines of code.
It's a little surprising that Mozilla Labs would choose ad blocking as one of its first demos, however, when that's precisely the sort of application that flies directly in the faces of content providers and other Web-based businesses. While the Web is inarguably a mature computing platform, as a platform for business it's still in its infancy. Media companies are struggling to create viable revenue streams, and so far advertising is one of the few that has shown promise. And yet, with just 80 lines of code, Jetpack promises to take it all away.
Of course, ad-blocking plug-ins for browsers have been around a long time, and many users wouldn't fire up a browser without one. But by announcing Jetpack with a demonstration of how easy it is to build an ad-blocking script, Mozilla Labs is in effect saying that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Mashups, filters, formatters, and tools -- when Jetpack is done, anything will be possible, and it will be easy. That's bound to send a chill up any would-be Web mogul's spine.
The big news everyone seems to be missing is that everyone and their mom will be able to block ads with very little knowledge. That's dangerous to content providers and I've highlighted the part in the above text where the author talks about this. Is Mozilla entering a maelstrom that was normally between adblock/noscript and content providers?
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While in theory this will make it accessible to everyone, that doesn't convert to a reality of everyone using it.
Linux, believe it or not, is to the point where to use it you can just pop a CD in the computer and turn it on. Yet how many people actual do use Linux and of those, how many would have not done so if LiveCD's weren't around?
This means powerusers will find being powerusers slight less cumbersome, but not that everyone will become a poweruser.
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While in theory this will make it accessible to everyone, that doesn't convert to a reality of everyone using it.
Linux, believe it or not, is to the point where to use it you can just pop a CD in the computer and turn it on. Yet how many people actual do use Linux and of those, how many would have not done so if LiveCD's weren't around?
This means powerusers will find being powerusers slight less cumbersome, but not that everyone will become a poweruser.
I'm absolutely fine with the fact that not everyone (most people actually) wants to be a poweruser. I just wish they'd accept responsibility for that decision. The easiest way to explain that, is to say that I don't want to hear their complaints when the only reason why something doesn't work out for them is that they didn't RTFM or when they're mystified and frustrated by a task that would be relatively straightforward if they were willing to do a little reading.
To address some knee-jerk responses, be
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes and no, for Linux.
As far as desktops go, no, linux isn't there yet. You can pop in a CD and turn it on and have everything working for a lot of systems, but there are still a lot that that doesn't work on. There were a relatively small percentage of machines that had serious issues with Vista, but it was a lot larger than a normal XP install and it blew up in MS's face. Linux distros tend to have smaller, more persistant issues at a much higher percentage than even the Vista issues. Two ongoing exam
Re:Already available (Score:4, Insightful)
They already can, and more easily if they are using Firefox by installing ad-block plus. I would of thought they could think of better examples than this to show how it can do 'useful' things.
What I find really annoying is the summaries assertion that this is somehow 'web democracy'. Removing adverts and altering how other peoples work is used without their permission is about as similar to democracy as the concept of being able to punch someone in the face for saying something you don't like.
The internet has the capability to be an incredible paradigm change for us all, but it is unlikely that it will be allowed to become this due to regulation that will invariably be placed upon it by our governments and corporations. What is especially sad is that those regulations are being created to stop people doing unimportant but selfish things like ad-blocking and pirating (this is said as someone who doesn't ad-block but does pirate, so please don't think I'm holding myself above my contempt!).
Re:Already available (Score:4, Informative)
That's a bit dramatic. Removing advertisements and altering how Web pages are displayed is more like the concept of being able to ignore or only selectively listen to someone who says things you don't like. It's more like "yes, you have the right to say whatever you want within certain limits, but you do not have the right to force me to listen to any or all of what you say or to make me interpret it any particular way."
I think the real question is, whose Internet is it? Does it belong to the corporations, the marketers, the governments, and other monied interests? Or does it belong to the people who use and enjoy it?
If it belongs to the monied interests, then they should do as they please and we should have to adapt to what they want, by force of law if necessary. If that means that state police power needs to be used to jeopardize people who are doing something that should not be a crime, just refer to it as "collateral damage" or use some kind of specious "greater good" argument.
Here I refer to the local display of information. I am not referring to redistributing someone else's work, which is another matter entirely. If the Internet belongs to the people, then we should do whatever we want with the content that others have chosen to place on the public network. If commercial interests don't like that, they should be told that their choice is to adapt to it and find a way to profit from it or to go bankrupt.
To put that another way, if you don't like the freedoms associated with a particular medium, such as an end-user's ability to control how information is displayed, your option is to choose not to publish your content on that medium. If you do choose to publish your content on a medium that allows many options for how that content is displayed, it's rather underhanded to cry "foul" when those options are exercised. It's downright despicable to use political clout and the legal system to remove some of the freedoms from a medium that never forced you to publish your content on it. At the risk of being accused of hyperbole, the mentality is exactly the same as those psychopaths who murder a woman screaming "if I can't have her, no one can!" Of course one of those expressions is far, far more extreme and ghastly than another, but the underlying mentality is exactly the same.
Re:Already available (Score:4, Insightful)
"Removing adverts and altering how other peoples work is used without their permission is about as similar to democracy as the concept of being able to punch someone in the face for saying something you don't like. "
This doesn't ring true to me. Using ad blocking I only alter how *I* see people's work. I see my attention as a valuable, finite resource and most advertising does not respect that resource. Just check out IMDB, opening a popup window almost every time I click a link. So, to stop this abuse, I am taking measures.
I would rather compare this situation to wearing glasses that make advertising messages disappear. The only person on the receiving end of this is me. Nobody gets punched, including my eyeballs.
Look at how polluted our public spaces are with advertising. Reading these messages because I have no other choice (reading is automatic and I have to keep my eyes open when driving) and unconsciously repeating the written messages in my own head, with my own energy, on my own time, without consent, is unacceptable.
Anyone got a hold of a pair of theseshades [youtube.com]?
I recommend seeing "The Century of the Self" and Carpenter's "They Live." Eye opening :)
Re:Already available (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you imagine if textbook publishers tried this? "Highlighting text in this book without the publisher's permission is contrary to our purpose in publishing this work. If the author had wanted that text highlighted, it would be highlighted. Likewise, margin notes require written permission beforehand. If the author had wanted a note in the margin, one would have been printed."
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The big news everyone seems to be missing is that everyone and their mom will be able to block ads with very little knowledge.
Huh? They can do that now by using one of the many ad blocking extensions. How does the fact that they can do it by writing 80 lines of code make it any easier on them? Sounds much more difficult to me!
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And to a some degree Stylish [userstyles.org] too, yeah. Like how I use it to kill of the pointless and ugly tagging system here. Yay for Stylish!
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It's like the other one in which they want to incorporate command line in Firefox, instead of having it as a addon under the name of Ubiquity.
With Jetpack they want to replace Greasemonkey and also make easier addon development...
I say to you, it's wasted time... Improve Gecko, XulRunner, but not this...