wreegab

> Blocking ads is such a dick move. This should be made illegal.

A law to enforce one very specific business model is a terrible idea.

If only I could tip $2 the author for that video I watched and liked (like say, 10,000 other viewers) with as little overhead as possible... No donations, no subscriptions, just a tip with no further obligations. You think ad brokers would welcome this business model?

> Visit this site with "Acceptable Ads" enabled and disabled and you will see the difference

Nowwhere did I say pages with the x-adblock-key were not respecting the "Acceptable ads" setting.

I said that there are more whitelisted sites than just what is presented as the only list in the section titled "How can I see what you are allowing?" on ABP's reference page regarding "acceptable ads" [1].

[1] https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#list

I pretty much all agree with all of Wladimir Palant's post.

But I also have one problem regarding Adblock Plus' "acceptable ads" openness.

When I read about their "acceptable ads" approach, I am led to believe the "acceptable ads" list contains all the sites which are whitelisted for purpose of "acceptable ads". I am invited to consult the list to see for myself which sites qualify.[1]

Problem is, many web sites are not whitelisted through that publicly available list, but through the x-adblock-key HTTP header (which is not something disclosed up front to users).

So in fact there is really a public list and a private list it appears (through the x-adblock-key header), while the public list is presented as all there is to "acceptable ads".

[1] https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#list

> Oculus has used and exploited ZeniMax's technology and intellectual property without authorization, compensation or credit to ZeniMax

When I read this, my thoughts went to all the smart people who created something awesome while employed at a company and were never personally credited.

You forgot:

6. Because this doesn't leave the interlocutor time (as in hours, days) to ponder and reflect carefully.

Email is my favorite way of communicating because it's how I can think carefully.

I get "This page was deleted" from here.

Another lesson for developers OP didn't list is: make the description of your app in the store part of the development tree, so that it can be reviewed by anybody if ever the app is removed from the store.

> I believe channeling energy to make Ms. Rice leave Dropbox solves nothing

To me, your reasoning reads as "accountability solves nothing".

Boycotting Dropbox because of Ms. Rice empowers people to bring symbolic accountability on powerful individuals who have been shielded from being held properly accountable for their actions. So many examples of individuals threatened with decades in jail for really not much, while powerful elites are shielded against being held fully accountable for their roles in infinitely worst.

That people will leverage this to at least bring some sort of accountability, I completely applaud.

It sounds just like typical PR filling, which is supposed to explain why they brought her on board. Will people really buy into this non-explanation?

Of interest I suppose in the context of your comment. Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians: https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

I questioned that a population can be categorized in only two sets. It's unfortunate that a lot of people buy into this, and end up trying to be as faithful to one of the label as they can, just like a fan will dedicate himself/herself to a specific sport team for no good reason really than just picking a side and sticking to it.

I don't get it either. I am an old programmer full of habits too I suppose, but I had no problem to adopt mandatory curly braces after reading the rationale for mandatory curly braces in Golang years ago. I would think the Apple bug was an even stronger rationale to adopt mandatory curly braces habit...

I just noticed that if I switch to "https://", Flash-based videos are now served. Back to "http://", same video served HTML5. So this is it, "https" is the culprit (for whatever reason)?

Edit: On Chromium, "https://" or "http://" I get served HTML5.

So, could it be that Firefox somehow doesn't provide the proper cookie value telling the site to use HTML5 when using "https://" (I did set HTML5 pref with "https://")?

Edit: A cookie named "GED_PLAYLIST_ACTIVITY", used for "[e]ncrypted connections only", is used on Firefox only. I don't see this cookie on Chromium on an encrypted connection. So, there might be a link with the presence of this cookie and the serving of Flash-based videos.

I got the pre-roll ad, yes, which was also served as HTML5. I tried clicking more videos from the front page, so far all HTML5.

Re. author's "I noticed that Youtube would not provide the HTML5 player to Firefox even if requested"...

Tried to repro, Linux Mint 16, Firefox 28:

1) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4

2) Flash-based video served

3) Go to http://www.youtube.com/html5

4) Click "Request the HTML5 player"

5) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4

6) HTML5-based video served

Edit: using a less annoying video as test case.

Well, I had to test this. Using Firefox 28. Went to Youtube front page. Click top video available. Got served Flash-based video. Went to http://www.youtube.com/html5 to request HTML5 to be served. Went back to front page, clicked on top video. I was served a HTML5 video. Linux Mint 16/Cinnamon here.

Yes, he lost me completely there. I was expecting he would at least provide his data (the diff'ed portion) so more knowledgeable people could pitch in. Instead I got no data and a sweeping conclusion.

> Odds of a meteor are absurdly really low

Odds that I win the lottery this week are absurdly low. Odds that someone will win the lottery this week are quite high.

> in service to their country

So common for wrongdoers to resort to such rationalization to justify their wrongdoings.

To help in snapping out of the cultic mindset, replace "country" with "organization". For instance, Scientologists had the same mindset with their Snow White Operation.

> I'd certainly immediately punch them hard in the face

Looks to me you are prone to violence.

Add to this privacy concerns. I un-block such 3rd-party CDNs if and only if it breaks specific web sites which I want really want to un-break.

> "please stop emailing me. I do not use the tool" ... the only apology for rudeness our support team has ever seen ...

"Please stop emailing me" is "rudeness"?

Seriously, is this for real?

> Read foreign country as US here too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHhVhud8_kE

I just can't understand how the people who work in there do not see it.

Looks to me like you are conflating the idea because I rather not see someone using the fruit of work to earn an income I must be "anti-commerce" and need to be lectured about it.

I thought the problem with Black-Scholes is that it didn't factor in the use of Black-Scholes by participants.

As a software developer, I want people to use my stuff. Once over the hurdle of writing something that people might find useful, I have to choose a license. When it's a library, I usually choose something without much restrictions, like MIT or Apache v2, or else developer will just go look elsewhere.

However there is a project which is a full blown application, and I went GPLv3, because I want anybody to be able to use it, or fork it. However it would bother me if someone was using this project to earn money, as I personally forfeited deriving any income from this project (not even donations). Apparently GPLv3 allows commercial use (I didn't realize that when I picked the license).

What license would best match my concerns?

For Saucy, the fix is in:

.../ubuntu/+source/gnutls26/2.12.23-1ubuntu4.2

Yours is:

.../ubuntu/+source/gnutls26/2.12.23-1ubuntu4

See:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnutls26/2.12.23-1ubunt...

Exactly how I feel. I've come to see the U.S. as one of those unsavoury places which is best to avoid. I rather pay extra on my flight tickets than get better deals with transit flights in the U.S. It's sad really.

Bill Clinton once said "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America", and at the time I agreed with that. It has been a while since I do not believe this anymore.