"Controlling what my own mechanical device does with the information it receives from other people's machines.
Even if the internet had no ads and no tracking code and no malware anywhere whatsoever, there would still be a need for the technology to block and change the way in which my computer handles the things sent to it by other computers before showing them to me. "
This is not true at all.
You see ads all the time in apps you have on your mobile device (i.e. non browser) - and there is nothing you can do about it. Is the world freaking out over the consumers ability to 'control which ads come up in a specific app'? Not really.
> Is the world freaking out over the consumers ability to 'control which ads come up in a specific app'?
They should be. Unfortunately, most people don't understand what a Turing machine is, and so it is difficult to explain why it is important to fight back against the people - like you - who are waging a War On General Purpose Computers[1].
I'm sorry if your business model relies upon most people not using all of the capabilities of their General Purpose Computer. I suggest updating to a business model that is more compatible with modern technology, because trying to prevent people from controlling their own devices is a civil war[2] that will cause increasingly worse problems into the future.
> If you don't want ads - then you have to pay for the apps.
Some apps don't even offer an ad-free option. I'll pay if they provide me value, I won't pay if they don't, simple as that. This used to be a more standard model called shareware, but it kind of died out in the mobile app decade.
> No pay / No ads = no content.
> None of you teenagers have been able to counter that point yet.
Why can't I pay them just as much as the ad-revenue they'd earn from me? It'd be fractions of a penny per page, nothing like the cost of most of these sites paid models.
If they offered a reasonable payment model, I'd be much more open to it. But until they're willing to accept their real value per page view, I'm not interested in paying $10/mo for everything I use, when I wouldn't even provide them with $0.10/mo in ad revenue.
For now, blocking ads is the only option if you want to get a full internet experience without the ads, if enough people block ads that advertising is no longer a viable model and more viable models become available, I'm more than open to them. But we have to get the industry to that point where they're at the consumer's whim and not like it is currently where the consumer is at the advertiser's whim. The advertisers having all the power is not a good solution here.
No, if I want to support the creators i'll pay for the app. If I don't want to see ads, I'll block ads. It's a false equivalency to conflate support with willingly subjecting yourself to ads when other options exist, and as you can see here most people are rejecting it
This is incorrect. A primary motivation I have for asserting ownership of my mobile (aka rooting) is system level adblocking. Adaway is what I use for this BTW.
Apps are free to work or not if I kill ads. I just shrug and either buy the app or use something else. I absolutely do not put up with the interface of my mobile looking like the Vegas Strip.
They are willing to serve my general-purpose computer a stream of data over the wire. What I do with that stream of data is none of their business. It's as simple as that. If they want me to view that data only if some conditions are met, it's their right - but they have to enforce it before sending the data, and not retroactively complaining afterwards. There's no moral issue here, except publishers trying to guilt-trip people into viewing ads, because they're too scared of actually asking for money[0]. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
[0] - rightly so, but that's a feature of capitalism, isn't it?
Even getting entirely away from the argument that ad networks can host malicious code, it's quite simple. I send a burst of information to a server. The server sends a burst of information back. I then decode the information to reveal a set of instructions.
Demanding that I execute all these instructions without exception is like a subscription service sending me a newsletter in the mail and demanding that if I pick it up, I've somehow agreed to read the whole thing, beginning to end, out loud. Absurdity.
>No they are not. They are willing to serve you pages with ads. Not pages without ads.
This is an out-and-out lie. They are willing to serve me pages without ads, because they do it every time I browse there with an ad-blocker. I make an HTTP request, their site responds. The HTML code asks me to download an ad, and I, through my ad-blocker, decline. That doesn't stop their server from sending me the content.
If they don't like that, they're perfectly free to design their site to force me to download ads in order to view the content. They have every right to, for instance, show me a video ad, and then have me take a quiz to demonstrate that I viewed the ad and remember it, before continuing on to the rest of the site. If they don't want to do this, that's their problem, not mine.
>No ads = they don't exist = no content.
It's not my job to worry about their business model.
>My bet is that companies just find a way around ad-blocking
Well, they could just embed the ads into the page, such as by serving them from the same domain and making it non-obvious which images are ads and which are not. People have been proposing this for ages. But the ad companies don't like it because they don't trust their own clients to accurately report ad-servings. Again, not my problem. They need to fix their own business model. If they can't do that, and go out of business, that's their problem. They should have done a better job coming up with a viable business model.
This may sound greedy to you, but for you to have the absolute gall of telling people that they need to expose their computers to malware is purely asinine.
"This is an out-and-out lie. They are willing to serve me pages without ads, because they do it every time I browse there with an ad-blocker"
You people are naively deluded.
" No ads = they don't exist = no content.
It's not my job to worry about their business model."
You don't seem to grasp the realpolitik here.
No ads = no content - in the long run.
Get it?
You don't seem to grasp the math here.
If there are no ads, they, and all their peers cease to exist.
Or else they go full paywall.
I'm not even making an ideological statement - although I could very well do that, I don't need to.
Do you know the reason that there are maybe 1/3 the number of foreign correspondents for major news networks - and why there is so little coverage of Middle East etc? Because CNN now competes with click-farms like Buzzfeed. Less revenue = less product.
So it's the 'choice' consumers make.
These things don't exist in a vacuum they are real.
You don't want ads, you don't want to pay - they you are 'de facto' saying you don't want the content in the long run.
There is no argument against this - you can rant and rave as much as you want about side issues such as 'the http stream belongs to me' yada yada yada - it's totally irrelevant.
No ads (or pay, or donations) = no content.
It's as simple as that.
"This may sound greedy to you, but for you to have the absolute gall of telling people that they need to expose their computers to malware is purely asinine."
No - I am not exposing people to malware by suggesting that they 'not use ad blockers'. Because 99.9% of the world does not use adblockers and don't face such malware problems. I'm not even suggesting they 'not use ad blockers'. I'm merely pointing out the reality of the situation.
Denying reality is the only 'asinine' thing going on here.
If there are no ads, they, and all their peers cease to exist....Or else they go full paywall.
You didn't mention the other options -- publishers could get together and come up with a micropayment standard so users can pay the few cents for each view that the advertiser would have earned from ads.
I use an ad blocker, not because I am opposed to paying for content I view, but because ads are annoying and distracting, and I'd be happy to pay them the money they are earning from ads.
But what I'm not willing to do is pay "just $3.99 for unlimited access to our site!". I'm not going to pay $50/year for access to a site that I might only visit a couple times a month or less.
But let me fund $10 a month into a micropayment account, and then dole out payment for each page view, and I'll gladly sign up -- as long as it's an open standard so with one funding account I can visit pretty much any micropayment site.
If it was just paying publishers a portion per page that would be okay. I don't like this setup of trying and sometimes failing to outbid ads at whatever price that keyword is this second.
> What makes you think they're bidding against ads?
"Here’s how it works: when Contributor users visit a site in Google’s network, their monthly contribution is used to bid on their behalf in the ad auction—so they, rather than an advertiser, end up buying the ad slot."
> It allows you to do what you described as wanting for most sites, and you're not going to use it because it's not perfect? You should try it.
Someone being able to pay extra to get past my ad blocking is not what I want. Nor do I like the way money is allocated from such a system. But beyond that, being adsense-only means it doesn't affect the worst quarter of ads, and I can't even lobby those sites or ad networks to join the micropayment system. Also the system I want has a "this site tricked me, don't give them money" button.
If it could merge with flattr and invite other companies, then it would have a real path forward toward an ad-free landscape and I would be much more willing to use it.
> Realpolitik will very quickly trump any ideological arguments.
Waiting for it. Because I predict that with ads gone, the content that will be gone is the worthless kind. People are fine with sharing stuff for free out of the goodness of their heart, and they're also fine with asking for money for their services.
The problem with ads is that ad-driven sites serve content created only to support their ad-driven business model.
I always think it's funny when people point out that all the ad-driven content would be gone if nobody viewed ads. So what? I'd pay for the few things that were really worth it, and the rest would be provided by people who just wanted to share. That would be amazing.
Meh. Some of this "content" doesn't really qualify as content, though. I suspect a lot of sites on the bubble of being eliminated by ad blocking are just derivative, reposting sites, and should probably be culled from the herd anyway. For example, how many "Apple news" sites do we really need, posting and reposting the same dubious rumor eleventy-seven times?
It seems fairly easy. Even when ads are being blocked, images on the page are not blocked. So the content creators will need to dump the ad networks and host the ad images on their own servers. If it is impossible for the ad blocker to tell the difference between a content image and an ad image it can't block the ads without blocking all the images. Of course I realize that this is far from ideal. Now there is no ad tracking. And each content creator has to roll their own ad image system (including hiring sales people to get companies to purchase ad space, handling the payment system, etc.). And so forth.
>My bet is that companies just find a way around ad-blocking.
No they won't. The entire way the web works gives far more control to the client with regards to what they do and don't see. There will never be a way around ad blocking.
Fired - you did something wrong, incompetent (or pissed someone off) and they are doing it specifically to you.
Laid off - your group is redundant or discontinued, they have no need for you or your team/product, they're closing an overseas business unit, or culling 10% of their staff. You're in the wrong boat at the wrong time.
Star Wars villains in the first series use such accents.
A) The Imperial Navy is a euphimism for the British Navy / Empire.
B) It was filmed in the UK with almost all UK actors.
The new Star Wars - none of the accents are posh really.
Just English accents, again actors, filming etc. - although - I think there was some attempt by JJ to keep it UK-ish in that manner, though I'm not sure.
It makes a bit more sense when you realize that the Empire saw themselves as the continuation of the Republic (the Senate wasn't abolished until partway through A New Hope, for example), and Obi-Wan was very much a part of the Republic's leadership, being a sitting member of the Jedi Council and all.
So it's not so much a "villain accent" as it is a "Republic leadership accent", where the Empire is just a corrupted Republic.
Played by Guinness who was half Scottish and educated in Edinburgh and Mcregor who seems completely Scottish.
Do we Scots get an exemption from the "evil Brit" trope - (OK apart from Begby or Fred the Shred, but there aren't really people like that in Scotland, honest).
"That kind of reminds me of Ballmer's "FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS?" moment."
$500 is not that much more expensive than a Nokia device at the time, and well within the surplus that a good chunk of people have to pay - especially when subsidized by carriers.
$30 000 - $100 000 - is another ballpark entirely in terms of cost. And it has to work out economically or it won't get anywhere, many ingredients are needed to make it work right.
Rolled up into a 30 year loan that turn into a few hundred a month. Much less if you can subtract your electricity and gas bills from that. I remember the biggest turn off for me on the original iPhone was the $70 a month data plan contract. But people bought it.
From a popular perspective - you are maybe right - they 'sexified' something not quite so sexy.
However - I suggest this won't work out like the iPhone.
Why?
Because --> 'new roofs' are not built that often, by that I mean new homes and roofing replacements. And the construction industry has totally different dynamics.
Putting on a 'regular' new roof is expensive. Most people won't consider this tech unless their home is up for a new roof. The other market would be new homes.
So there's a growth/market limit.
Second is price. This kind of technology exists already in many forms. It hasn't been adopted because it's very expensive, and requires some other ugly equipment that has put a drag on PV installation like the conversion technology required to connect to the grid.
The choice to purchase an iPhone is mostly emotional.
The choice in roofing is not. It's definitely mostly a calculation. They are very expensive, and people will look into the long-term conversion value etc.
I'll wager that this new Tesla roof will not be price competitive for current solar/roofing situations, moreover, even if it were - it still might not make sense from a dollars perspective, as the current solar/roof installations basically don't work out economically. It's for wealthier types and/or those with 'green aspirations'.
Finally - these are not things you can buy from wallmart and install yourself. You can't even get your local roofer to do it. Typically, roofers have to be trained on the materials, installation etc.. There is the issue of warranty and distribution for 'new tech' in building - which is slow to adoption. Builders etc. are not 'magpies' like techies. They are averse to new gear, and typically wait for others to figure it out before buying in. Also - they simply tend not to be ver progressive.
Go and ask your local builder if he wants to send his crew to California for 'Training on Tesla's new roof' and his mental calculation will be 'how many of my current customers are asking for it'? And of course the answer will be none.
The fundamental issue with all of this solar tech is that it simply does not generate enough electricity to quite warrant the cost unless all the conditions are right.
+ If it's really sunny a lot
+ Major government subsidies
+ A new subdivision was created with 'all solar roofing' thereby keeping the costs down to economies of scale
+ High electricity prices in the region
+ The grid is fundamentally designed for renewables
Interesting points, thank you. EEVblog agrees with some of them and did the numbers on others, I might link it if I remember(it's bed time here soon)
One thing where I don't agree:roofs being an unemotional decision. Everything is influenced by emotions. All Solarcity has to do isb make it at least feasible for everyone price wise, then having the combination of the (apparently very fancy) French something style+the feeling you are a part of the solution for the planet+the tesla allure will do the rest for a suitable percentage of the market. That is iff the numbers work out enough to not make it an unreasonable choice.
The iphone would have failed at 1500 say. But 500 was barely cheap enough for what people got and felt they got to be worth it.
I'll second that from personal experience, roofs are definitely an emotional decision. They can look great, be artsy, and even cover your house in the most visible of manners.
Source? Roofs last 20-30 years. 125 million homes in the U.S., with roofs being replaced every 25 years means 5 million roofs per year. Triple that for Europe, China, and the rest and you've got 15 million a year. It's a big ticket item so you don't have to capture that much of the market to start hitting pretty serious revenue numbers.
In Europe (or at least the parts I've been in) roofs last much more than that. At least twice as long. Esp in countries like mine (Spain) where climate is much less aggressive with rooftops. And we don't use tar shingles.
iPhone was a platform. As more people bought the iphone,
- the phone became more attractive to 3rd party accessory makers (protective cases, cables, etc) and apps makers.
- the phone itself became more valuable to owners, as more complementary products became available.
- the phone became more valuable to Apple, who could get feedback and make the phone better.
The hockey stick on the analogous factors for Tesla is much shallower. The "complementary products" for owners of cars will be primarily recharge stations. Still few and far between.
There is no benefit to 3rd parties, that I see. No benefit to other stakeholders like utilities. And Tesla itself does not enjoy a growing, self-reinforcing cycle of value, as sales increase. It's really just economies of scale.
An entire charging industry akin to gas/petrol stations is another side benefit. These businesses could be located in "unusual" areas such as multi storey car parks because there isn't the same danger posed by large amounts of liquid fuel. This alone will be an enormous industry.
> Nuance's new voice recognition technology - the entire thing except for the voice libraries are in Node
That basically means it's not even built with it. The only thing it provides are JS bindings. Nothing more. Something like JNI. And I basically can confirm that their voice recognition (Dragon) was NEVER written in node and NEVER will.
It's written in C. And they provide bindings for C# and Visual Basic and C++, however they have ActiveX in place which means that there are way more languages that can use it. I guess at some point they even added Node bindings.
Of course Dragon is not written in 'node' - nobody would write such a thing in javscript, moreover, if it were, it would be described as 'written in JS' not 'Node'.
Second - what you refer to as 'just some bindings' is false.
The Nuance product I have access to (NTE) - is probably something you don't have access to, as very few do.
There's a huge pile of code written 'on Node' because just as JS would be the worst choice of languages to write Dragon in - C#, C++ or Java would be the worst choice in languages to do the stuff they did using Node for, which has a mostly to do with HTTP services, file management, versioning, REST api etc.. The choice of Node + platform libraries made perfect sense for Nuance - and it's perfect validation of Node.
I'll wager you any amount of money that Node is going to grow quite a lot over the next 4-7 years to the point wherein it will be seen as de-facto institutional.
Node has flaws, many of them due to JS, and they have some ugly new NPM fragmentation issues, but it's only growing to grow. Of that there is no doubt.
Node will replace a significant chunk of Java and more-web oriented backend stacks in the years to come.
We've even replaced a bunch of Python scripts with JS, not because JS is better than Python (Python, syntactically is superior) but because of the libraries and platform opportunities. JS/Node is a much more natural fit for large, async tasks than Python.
Finally - the ability to use the same object mode on both front end / back has significant operational advantages when it comes to reuse of components, which we do quite a lot - and don't have time to deal with various bindings.
Node is 'here to stay' as much as any other technology is/was.
It's hard to measure what 'benefit' means.
These things are a matter of choice as much as anything else.
Moreover, it may very well be that some of the answers were 'primed' by the content of the retreat.