THE AD BLOCKING CONTROVERSY. IS IT DEFENSE OR PIRACY?

THE AD BLOCKING CONTROVERSY. IS IT DEFENSE OR PIRACY?

Originally published at Setuix.com 31 JULY, 2015 BY JOHN BEAULIEU

Edited and posted March 24th, 2016 to nytegeek.blog.com by John Beaulieu

Most legitimate web sites don’t use the types of ads that we all know and hate. Animated ads with loud sounds and distracting motions, Pop-ups/unders, and other sorts of intrusive advertising that interrupt people are the reason many have turned to ad blocking extensions. Ads that are so intrusive that they actually disrupt the intended use of a website don’t help anyone. Often the types of sites that use intrusive and or misleading ads of a questionable nature to begin with. Web sites that provide or aid in the ability to obtain copy righted material for free are often an example of the type of site that still resorts to this type of advertising. Anything from fake download buttons, pop-ups, misleading leaks, phising attempts, or even advertising links that if selected install malware. At any rate not running flash or java plugins would easily mitigate this without ad blocking in most cases.

But what about ad blocking on legitimate sites? What about sites that get most of their revenue with a few well placed banner ads that don’t disrupt the content or use of the site? Some will claim that since they never click on ads that the site doesn’t lose any money on them when they use an ad blocker. This isn’t necessarily true. Most sites are payed per view, not payed per click-through. If you block the ads from displaying you are effectively taking money out of the site owner’s pocket without even realizing it. The site still has to pay for the content, hardware, bandwidth, power, and an Internet connection. Delivering content to a reader is not cheap or free. If you block ads on a site the site doesn’t have that income to cover the cost of your use.

The piracy argument is that ad blocking allows the reader to obtain content for “free” without paying the price which is loading the ads. The difference between this and traditional piracy is that traditional piracy is using a software product or obtaining content that is meant to be paid for with money directly for free. Some people believe that viewing content on-line with an ad blocker is fine because it is “free” anyway. They don’t view the ads as a price for the content.

Regardless of how you see it there is an undeniable truth about the effect of ad blocking on legitimate sites. The sites are denied income needed to provide the content that people with ad blockers are reading or viewing. In some cases that means that site owners feel forced to create ways to squeeze more revenue out of ads and this can have a negative impact on people viewing the sites without an ad blocker.

On the other hand ad blockers may contribute to the site in other ways even if they are a net loss when it comes to viewing content and not viewing ads. They may post content like comments, links, and other content that can generate traffic to the site. They may share content on social networking sites and generate more traffic and content as a result. These are necessary for advertising to fund a site, so if any of the new traffic is from people that don’t block ads it is a plus.

The key to this dilemma may be in educating both site owners and site users. Site owners should learn about the types of advertising schemes that have fueled the ad blocking epidemic. They shouldn’t resort to intrusive, misleading, and or over the top methods of advertising to fund their sites. There are WordPress plug-ins that can be used to communicate with ad blockers. You can educate them about white-listing or ask them to turn their blockers off.  People probably aren’t going to turn their ad-blockers off, but if they can be persuaded to white-list non-offensive sites it would help.

Unfortunately there is not an easy fix for the situation. Ad blocking falls in an ethical and legal gray area without any clear answers. Ad blocking cant be defined as traditional piracy. It is still relatively new in the arena of socially acceptable practices and it hasn’t been tested under current law enough to be defined as a legal or as an unlawful practice. The only thing that is clear is that this issue will continue to become more important and divisive with time. There are many differing opinions on the matter and many of us are still on the fence about the whole mess.

For people that want to visit sites that use intrusive ads I understand the utility of an ad-blocker. I would suggest that these people take a few steps to make things better for everyone involved. First of all, learn how to white-list the sites that aren’t intrusive that you wish to visit instead of taking a shotgun block everything approach. Secondly, disable both Java and Flash in your browser. You likely do not need them and you will be a whole lot more secure when visiting sites that use intrusive advertising. Thirdly, practice “Intelligent Computing”. Don’t click on, download or run anything suspicious. My fourth and final bit of advice is to use a real time anti-virus suite if you are surfing from Windows. It is your last defense when “intelligent Computing” isn’t enough.

Windows 10 Battery Report

There a hidden feature in Windows 8 and in Windows 19 that allows you to generate a battery report This report will allow you to examine battery health, how capacity has decreased over time, and various stats like how many complete discharge and charge cycles you have used. You only get so many. It can range between 500 and 1000 depending on the manufacturer and the conditions the batter are exposed to like heat and usage.

To use this feature you need to use PowerCfg command line tool. PowerCfg can generate the “Energy Report,” for information on how to reduce your energy usage and  hopefully extend its battery life as well as a battery report. I will onlt be focusing on generating the battery report here.

The battery report you generate is a s simple web page file. It can be created with a single command. You just need to issue it from the command prompt.

Open the Command Prompt window. Right-click in the start button and select Command Prompt from the menu if you Windows 10. If you are in Windows 8 click bottom-left corner of the screen or press Windows Key + X, and then select Command Prompt.

From the Command Prompt window that appears just type this command and press the Enter Key:

powercfg /batteryreport

You have just saved a battery report to your user account folder C:\Users\YOUR USER NAME\battery report.html. Use File Explorer to load the folder and double-click to launch the file in your default web browser.

The right way to serve steak

I have seen a lot of images on social media shaming those of us that enjoy well done meet so it is my turn to have some fun with it! Mine is a modified image much like theirs, except I have at least tried to provide credit to my source below.

For those of us that enjoy a lowered risk of live parasites and microbes in our beef, or just plan don't appreciate our steak mooing at as and running off. (credit for original image this was modified from to looloo Insights: Steak 101: 6 Tips On Eating The Perfect Steak)

You name it! Pick an operating system for me to review!

I'm considering setting aside a partition on my drive for testing other operating systems and then reviewing them here. I would also test and compare the operating systems in a virtual machine.

I am still deciding on what parameters and format both the testing and review will take.

Here is what I would love to hear from you in comments here or in messages on my google+ or Facebook wall:

1. What operating system would you like me to review? Anything that can be installed legally for free on my laptop or anything I have a valid software license for is okay. I can review every released copy of Microsoft Windows for example (American releases). FreeDOS, virtually any Linux, ReactOS, Haiku, you name it!
2. What are make or break features for you? What can you absolutely not live without in an OS?
3. What is your comfort level? Do you like a challenge, or would you like less of a learning curve?

Let me know what you think. I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions! Let's have some fun with this! I plan to do several reviews so there are plenty of chances for your pick to get reviewed.

Wisdom in curiosity

We didn't have much in the way of snow this winter, but 3 or 4 days before it did snow Owen told me it was going to. I discounted it because the sky was clear, it was to warm for it to stick, and I had heard no mention of it on the weather report. Also, if I'm to be honest, he is only 4 and I assumed he just wanted it to snow. Owen was right though, we got some snow. Owen had probably caught a bit of a report I missed or heard something from his friends or teachers. At any rate he knew something I didn't and I discounted it because he is a kid.

When I was a child we were learning about resting heart rates from our PE teacher in elementary school. I don't remember what grade I was in or what my heart rate was before and after activity, I just remember it was the highest in the class. I told my father about it and instead of checking or showing concern he expressed frustration with my PE teacher and told me that my PE teacher wasn't a doctor and wasn't qualified to be teaching us about such things.

Now that I am an adult I know that you don't need to be a doctor or have a medical degree to understand such a basic indicator of our overall health. I suffer from tachycardia and from other heart related issues that are being treated properly, but the tachycardia that my father didn't want to hear about from a child or a teacher could have been addressed years ago.

Regardless of the topic, be it weather, health or anything in between we should at the very least try to listen to and understand our children without discounting what they say based solely on their age. Sometimes children are asking questions that need to be asked that adults don't consider. Children have a unique perspective that can be very useful in addressing a wide variety of issues.