Brendan Eich claims to "fix" the web with an ad browser

[Frank Lion]

How did them folks without electricity hear the electric company ads on the radio?

Well, I know old printed ads are a hobby of yours and I bet you also know the answer to that one anyway. For others -

This is a Roger's Batteryless Receiver Model 130, built in 1925. It is typical of radios in the twenties in that it is battery operated and has three dials and five identical tubes. The move to battery powered radios resulted in an enormous upsurge in public popularity of the radio. Radios could more easily be incorporated into the decor of private homes. It furthered the mass consumption of the radio, producing new demands for this technology. This radio is very similar to the Stewart Warner 300, of 1925, seen below.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug00/3on1/r ... 0radio.htm

As a kid, I built a crystal radio (from a kit). Worked very well, as I recall.

I guess the fridge was a major argument to get electricity. .

I reckon so, these ads were mainly aimed at the Mid-West, who already had lighting and heating pretty well covered.

The only need required to transform the telegraph into the internet was the need to talk to someone else.

Yep, the Internet really is that sad. All that technology just for the need of 'I'm here, I exist'. Well, that and watching lolcat vids on YouToob.

[mightyglydd]

Randall Rothenberg....Internet advertising industry chief: "Adblock Plus is an 'unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabes".
http://www.businessinsider.com/iab-chie ... ans-2016-1
http://www.businessinsider.com/interact ... ?r=UK&IR=T
http://www.iab.com/news/rothenberg-says ... xpression/

[Frank Lion]

Randall Rothenberg....Internet advertising industry chief: "Adblock Plus is an 'unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabes".

Didn't even bother to look at the links. What is the point at which the desire to make a living tips over into salivating furious blind greed?

Around 7 billion people in the world and what? 3 billion of them use the Internet, let's say. Adblock Plus is used by 50 million on Android and 22 million on Firefox. Thus, just 2.4% out of 3 billion Internet users are not worshipping at the feet of the Golden Calf.

@ Rothenberg, speaking crap in a confident tone, doesn't make it any less crap. Your greed is overriding your judgement, as the ancient Greeks will tell you -

Erisychton (Er-is-ya-thon), according to Ovid’s tales from Greek mythology was a wealthy timber merchant and Thessalian King. He was a greedy man who thought only about profit. To him, nothing was sacred. The goddess Demeter had a sacred grove with a special tree beloved by the gods. Prayers of the faithful were tied to the tree branches and holy spirits would dance round its magnificent trunk. This meant nothing to Erisychton, all he cared about when he saw a tree was the volume of timber it would produce. Against all protests, he takes an axe to the sacred grove and he chops until the trees fell and the divine life that inhabited the grove had fled. So Demeter put a curse on Erisychton for his greed, from that day forward he would be consumed by an insatiable hunger. He began to eat all his stores; when that was finished he turned his wealth into food and consumed that as well. Driven by his insatiable hunger he ends up consuming his wife and children, and in the end, with nothing else left he consumes his own flesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HazQlWgdzg

[mightyglydd]

Rothenberg has a...cough..very interesting past.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Rothenberg

A real nasty piece of work IMIO..

@ He's already played the Diversity Card, no doubt the Race Card is up his sleeve ready to be played..

[patrickjdempsey]

Freedom of Expression? Only under the very unpopular Citizen's United Supreme Court decision, and there's signs that Obama's getting ready to kick Citizen's United in the pants. Also, since when does "freedom of expression" include distributing malware? Slippery slope.

[trolly]

And what's about the "right" to not want to hear or see?

[Grumpus]

Seems like a Yertle the Turtle kind of issue, must be a long fall.

[mightyglydd]

You think someone in his current position who was a high muckety muck at Booz Allen Hamilton and the NY Times is a joke?

[Drumbrake]

Fair point indeed.

While on regard to this

Around 7 billion people in the world and what? 3 billion of them use the Internet, let's say. Adblock Plus is used by 50 million on Android and 22 million on Firefox. Thus, just 2.4% out of 3 billion Internet users are not worshipping at the feet of the Golden Calf.

maybe (just maybe) it isn't solely about greed and the Golden Calf (although, it surely starts there) but also about 2.4% of global users that can't be properly tracked, spied and profiled just as effectively as the rest, probably because of adblockers.

As it happens, ads (as you all know) aren't just annoying ads, on occasion they happily double as vector of malware/spyware, when plugins alone won't do.

[Grumpus]

You think someone in his current position who was a high muckety muck at Booz Allen Hamilton and the NY Times is a joke?

For the most part, particularly BAH, in my opinion, yes.

[Drumbrake]

(...)
I dislike "suggestions" if they have a mercantile intent laying in the background and it shows a questionable marketing intent which defeats the educational and research concepts of the Internet. (...)

Where have you been all these years? Do you use the internet at all ?

I think that purpose

the educational and research concepts of the Internet

is long gone as we speak, and it has in reality never been a guideline for the lords of the internet - if anything, quite the opposite.

[Grumpus]

@Drumbrake - it's a question of balance. Too many of the so called Internet offerings are just "Middle man" sites with no real redeeming creative, production or access value other than some other less than notable site or group of sites stating how wonderful the useless sites are to qualify them. It's one thing to sell and manufacture a product, it's something else to have a bunch of useless twits make sites which do nothing but maintain a degree of self approval or charge for what has been traditionally free, like government information. There's also the data mining and personal information mining which seems pervasive in these sites and there's no doubt in my mind, a lonesome place most of the time, much of the Internet commerce is bogus crap.
Maybe it's time to turn things around or call them the fraud they are instead of supporting them.

[WaltS48]

Installed Brave 0.9.0 development version today to see what the fuss was about.

Newspapers to Brave browser: Don't mess with our ads -- or else - CNET

Not many preferences to set, and only Google and DuckDuckGo search engines.

I may give it a workout later today while its snowing in this early spring the groundhog predicted.

EDIT: Passed my daily routine test.

[patrickjdempsey]

Since the advent of Brave, I've noticed many websites are now flat-out blocking me from browsing their site with an adblocker running. Oh well, Forbes has been a joke for a long time now anyway.

[Virtual_ManPL]

@ patrickjdempsey - time to block offending script that is causing this