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Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All?

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On 2014-09-10, Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:

>
> At home I use Netscape 4.76 with js, stylesheets and images disabled.
> Recently I bought a new laptop, installed the latest Slackware, so's
> to be able to go out to wi-fi-land to fetch big data lumps such as new
> Linux distros or reference data without hogging the phone for days at
> a time.  And every time I run Firefox on wi-fi I'm just *shocked*,
> totally gobsmacked, to see how much advertizing crap I've been
> missing.  Not to mention the banners, icons, stock photos, 50K
> pictures of 5-letter words etc. etc all laid out by someone with the
> same aesthics as the people who design the the glossy advertizing
> blow-ins for K-Mart.  It's just visually nasty out there. I'm fher nf
> fuvg not going to buy a product that scatters visual pigeon poo on the
> screen of *my* network tool.

My experience in 2010 when I got thrown into the Windows Server world was
very similar to yours.

My introduction to the Bad Things That Can Happen with Javascript enabled
came circa 2000 when a spam post to a newsgroup tried to redirect me to a
hard porn site.  Fortunately I caught it in time but it could have been
very embarrassing in an open plan office.  As it happened I had initiated
Netscape from the command line and a swift Ctrl-C killed the browser
window immediately.

The other thing Javascript was guilty of was refreshing a newspaper page
on my home system so that they could display a ticker tape.  This was when
I was on dialup so it hit my phone bill. Nobody messes with my phone
bill...

Anyway, I had got into the habit of disabling Javascript unless really
needed but in 2010 I was all of a sudden using a locked down XP system at
work that I couldn't tailor myself *and* had to visit Windows-centric
technical sites.

It wasn't the presence of ads on the sites I had traditionally visited
that shocked me but the sheer amount of crap on the Windows centric, so-
called technical sites.  Various of those sites employ devious methods to
make it difficult to locate the download you are really after; even with
concentration you can download some registry cleaner or other "go faster"
tool without wanting to.

The net outcome was that I managed to get a Windows 7 box that I
controlled where I was free to employ NoScript, ad blockers and change the
download behaviour to simply dump stuff to disk without opening it.

The majority of folks who don't know how to do that really are exposed to
a tremendous amount of rubbish.

-- 
People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know
we don't                                           -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-09 02:57 +0000
  Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-09 07:58 +0000
  Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2014-09-09 20:15 +1000
  Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2014-09-09 16:14 +0000
    Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2014-09-09 19:23 +0000
      Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2014-09-10 09:18 -0400
        Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-10 16:28 +0000
        Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-10 16:37 -0300
          Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2014-09-10 20:10 +0000
          Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2014-09-10 20:35 -0400
            Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Anssi Saari <as@sci.fi> - 2014-09-11 10:24 +0300
          Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-13 10:51 +0200
            Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2014-09-13 15:51 -0300
        Re: A Dangerous Question: Does Internet Advertising Work at All? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-13 04:17 +0200

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