0 users browsing Discussion. | 1 guest | 12 bots  
    Main » Discussion » Mozilla, *sigh*
    Pages: First Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next Last
    Posted on 19-05-04, 23:53

    Post: #132 of 449
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 8 days
    Last view: 4 hours
    I'm trying Vivaldi, let's see how many of my extensions can be installed/substituted there.
    It can even stack tabs, though apparently not to unlimited depths like Tree Style Tab.

    As for email - I just use the Notifier for Gmail extension.

    My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
    Posted on 19-05-05, 10:02
    Post: #9 of 10
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 1777 days
    Last view: 1537 days
    I've updated my Seamonkey to the 2.53 (from Bill's repository, at wg9s.com)

    Something I awaited for quite some time now, but could not upgrade because Mail had a bug, displaying nothing but a blank page.

    Sticking to 2.49.4 started to become cumbersome as there were more and more site displaying warning banners (Github on the top of my head), visual glitches everywhere (riot.im, yeah I know that electron thingie) or could not play music/videos at all (mixcloud.com, ...)

    ... Now I wish Chatzila allowed me to connect to my quasselcore
    Posted on 19-05-05, 11:39
    Full mod

    Post: #235 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 60 days
    So I woke up yesterday to cries of "oh no, all our add-ons are disabled", and talk of the magic incantation that only works on Beta or Nightly channels. I deliberately didn't invoke that incantation, even though I'm on nightly, because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

    It turns out, about 4PM Tree Style Tab disappeared, and an hour or two later it re-appeared. That was about it.

    Actually, it seems that in addition, all my search engines have been removed, except for (for some reason) Amazon.com. That's going to get annoying. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fixed in a few days' time.

    Lots of people have been proclaiming the DEATH OF MOZILLA over the past day or so, which I think is a ridiculous overreaction to being mildly inconvenienced for a day or so. On the other hand, this is definitely a dent in their reputation, and Mozilla's reputation is the one place where Google can't beat them by just throwing money at the problem. I'm going to be very, very interested in the post-mortem analysis when it gets released - it better be a pretty wild chain of unlikely circumstances.

    > What do you mean by "toolbar+address/search bar"?

    "toolbar+address/search bar" is not the feature, the feature is that tomman wants the toolbar to appear above the tab-strip instead of below it.

    Seems pretty minor to me, but people like what they're used to, I guess.

    > Mozilla doesn't want any new competitors because they'd primarily threaten them, and they believe themselves to have a duty to strive to hold a position of monopoly (which, incidentally, is not even wrong).

    [citation needed]

    Pretty sure when Chrome first appeared on the scene, Mozilla welcomed the competition, even though Firefox was still fighting against IE at the time. Mozilla specifically does *not* strive to hold a position of monopoly, although I guess you could argue they strive to hold a position of... oligopoly?

    > The only hope for the future of the web (lol, who am I kidding) is that Mozilla shoot themselves in the foot by accidentally making their browser too simple, so that they again fall victim to the downsides of open source.

    I think you're confusing two ideas - if Mozilla makes their browser *UI* too simple, so that people are inspired to create forks with a more flexible UI, that doesn't make the browser *engine* simple, and the browser engine is where most of the engineering effort goes. If Mozilla made their browser engine too simple, it wouldn't render websites correctly, or at least not efficiently and correctly.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-05-05, 12:28 (revision 1)

    Post: #116 of 210
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 1638 days
    Last view: 1610 days
    I woke up, saw a message that some add-ons had been disabled, checked them out, found out nothing had been disabled and continued on my merry way. Even my search engines are still there. If it wasn't for that message and everyone crying Bloody Mary, I wouldn't have noticed anything.
    Posted on 19-05-05, 16:09
    Dinosaur

    Post: #293 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Posted by JieFK
    I've updated my Seamonkey to the 2.53 (from Bill's repository, at wg9s.com)

    Something I awaited for quite some time now, but could not upgrade because Mail had a bug, displaying nothing but a blank page.

    Sticking to 2.49.4 started to become cumbersome as there were more and more site displaying warning banners (Github on the top of my head), visual glitches everywhere (riot.im, yeah I know that electron thingie) or could not play music/videos at all (mixcloud.com, ...)

    ... Now I wish Chatzila allowed me to connect to my quasselcore


    The only reason I haven't tried Bill's builds yet is the lack of localizations (and the fact he builds his Linux binaries against slightly newer versions of libc/libstdc++6 than the ones found on Debian Jessie, but this is mostly a moot point now that I'm pretty much done updating to Stretch). He has working Win64 builds which is something I really want to check it out.

    As for sites nagging me about "YOUR BROWSER IS A DINOSAUR!!!", I tend to ignore them. GitHub still works fine (you can dismiss their warning, which for some reason has a IE icon). Google search box is somewhat broken, but I pay no attention to that too as long as search works fine (I usually use the tiny search box on my browser toolbar anyway). The rest of the sites I use on a daily fashion? (Danbooru, Pixiv, Slashdot, banks) They all work fine.

    The only concern would be security issues, but running an adblocker greatly helps mitigating those.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-05-05, 17:23 (revision 1)
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #235 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1525 days
    Last view: 1523 days
    Posted by Screwtape
    > What do you mean by "toolbar+address/search bar"?

    "toolbar+address/search bar" is not the feature, the feature is that tomman wants the toolbar to appear above the tab-strip instead of below it.

    Seems pretty minor to me, but people like what they're used to, I guess.

    Right, that makes sense.

    > Mozilla doesn't want any new competitors because they'd primarily threaten them, and they believe themselves to have a duty to strive to hold a position of monopoly (which, incidentally, is not even wrong).

    [citation needed]

    Pretty sure when Chrome first appeared on the scene, Mozilla welcomed the competition, even though Firefox was still fighting against IE at the time. Mozilla specifically does *not* strive to hold a position of monopoly, although I guess you could argue they strive to hold a position of... oligopoly?

    Mozilla considers themselves to be good (virtuous, moral), not only in the sense of making good browsers but also as a wider social mission (spreading open source, etc). So if Mozilla would have a monopoly (or, say, 80% control), they could for instance force projects like DRM to be dead on arrival. Thus, they, like any other organization in that position, do (and have the moral duty to) strive to obtain a position of monopoly, while vigorously claiming they don't, in order to easier obtain said monopoly.

    As for the new entrants only being issues for them: Firefox' users are more concerned about freedom and such, while Chrome's just use it and will keep on doing so until it starts to have actual issues. So if a new browser emerges that's superior to both, Mozilla's user base would switch over in far greater numbers.


    > The only hope for the future of the web (lol, who am I kidding) is that Mozilla shoot themselves in the foot by accidentally making their browser too simple, so that they again fall victim to the downsides of open source.

    I think you're confusing two ideas - if Mozilla makes their browser *UI* too simple, so that people are inspired to create forks with a more flexible UI, that doesn't make the browser *engine* simple, and the browser engine is where most of the engineering effort goes. If Mozilla made their browser engine too simple, it wouldn't render websites correctly, or at least not efficiently and correctly.

    Yes, I'm talking about the code only. Oxidization. Not only in LOC, but also stuff like modularity: how tightly coupled is the engine to the UI?

    If forks were easy to make, then people would make them whenever they have some minor gripe with Firefox. But due to the immense complexity of it, they end up just being rebrands with some config setting flipped, because anything else is too much effort. (unless they are run by insane and devoted people, like Terry Davis, and those projects aren't a threat because the maintainer can not build up a community of developers, making it a one-man job)

    So Mozilla, having as goal to protect their own, has a vested interest in making sure the standards they follow are as complicated as possible, to make sure forks keep not posing a threat, and Google wants to protect Firefox from death because they control Mozilla, because Mozilla are pliable, and because Google needs a competitor due to antitrust legislation. Who this competitor is is completely irrelevant, but they would rather have Mozilla than Microsoft or Apple as the latter two might cause actual threats to their position of power due to vertical integration, having more money, and being willing to spend disproportionate amounts of money to secure the seat as #1.

    The only way Mozilla can save themselves from this situation and get at least a shot at becoming #1 again is to drastically cut their budget, start implementing ad blocker by default (opt-out, but including anti-anti-adblock and the like, and possibly even blocking of "please disable adblock" messages), and other "ugly tricks" (that Google are already doing) like website-specific hacks to make YouTube and other common sites run faster. The means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

    Of course, Mozilla would never do this because they are controlled by Google and because they might even believe, as you suggested, that the means justify the ends. At any rate they seem conflict-averse (and according to the former Mozilla VP, incompetent), and as such would have no interest in improving things if it were to cause any conflict, and would rather just watch the slow decline of the web, look out for their own, and constantly point out that the choices they made were the virtuous ones.

    I think that if one is interested in fostering competition in the browser market, the best choice would be to go with Brave, not because it is technologically any different, but because it at least attempts to secure new sources of funding for itself and is not too tightly bound to either project. That it's utter garbage doesn't matter so much, since it at some point in the future might improve and because Brendan Eich is CEO of it.

    Posted by tomman

    As for sites nagging me about "YOUR BROWSER IS A DINOSAUR!!!", I tend to ignore them. GitHub still works fine (you can dismiss their warning, which for some reason has a IE icon). Google search box is somewhat broken, but I pay no attention to that too as long as search works fine (I usually use the tiny search box on my browser toolbar anyway). The rest of the sites I use on a daily fashion? (Danbooru, Pixiv, Slashdot, banks) They all work fine.

    What about spoofing UA?

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-05-06, 03:24
    Custom title here

    Post: #432 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 6 days
    Last view: 1 day
    Posted by Screwtape

    ... Mozilla's reputation is the one place where Google can't beat them by just throwing money at the problem. I'm going to be very,

    Except with their ad network, where they've been hyping Chrome for years.

    Want a faster browser? Try Chrome today.
    Want a secure browser? Oownload Chrome now.
    YouTube works best with Chrome. Try it now.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-05-06, 11:43
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #236 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1525 days
    Last view: 1523 days
    Yeah, but among the in-group. Joe Q. Public doesn't give one shit that there was some error message and a bit more ads for a few hours, and he'd have been using Chrome anyway.

    Among technology enthusiasts, they might have a slight edge, but hardly anyone has any actual fondness for them, at least not after the events of 2014. It's more of a "lesser of two evils" type situation, and Firefox probably has a few good years left until they go the way of Netscape.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 09:12
    Full mod

    Post: #238 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 60 days
    Posted by sureanem
    Mozilla considers themselves to be good (virtuous, moral), not only in the sense of making good browsers but also as a wider social mission (spreading open source, etc). So if Mozilla would have a monopoly (or, say, 80% control), they could for instance force projects like DRM to be dead on arrival. Thus, they, like any other organization in that position, do (and have the moral duty to) strive to obtain a position of monopoly, while vigorously claiming they don't, in order to easier obtain said monopoly.

    Making something happen is harder than stopping something from happening. Making something happen requires everything to go right, but preventing something only requires one thing to go wrong. Mozilla would need monopoly-tier power to enforce good things, but preventing bad things like DRM requires much less power.

    For example, one of the reasons for Chrome's success is that at the time it was introduced, Firefox had already achieved comfortable market share and Mozilla had started diverting resources to their wider social mission instead of putting everything into improving the browser. Looking at browser market share in 2008 on Wikipedia, when Chrome was introduced in 2008 Firefox had around 25-30% market share, and peaked in 2009 at around 30-35%. So apparently Mozilla was perfectly happy with a *way* lower market share than monopoly control.

    Of course, Mozilla would never do this because they are controlled by Google and because they might even believe, as you suggested, that the means justify the ends. At any rate they seem conflict-averse (and according to the former Mozilla VP, incompetent), and as such would have no interest in improving things if it were to cause any conflict, and would rather just watch the slow decline of the web, look out for their own, and constantly point out that the choices they made were the virtuous ones.

    Man, if Mozilla were happy to collect a Google paycheck and watch the slow decline of the Web, we'd all still be using SeaMonkey on the few sites that weren't entirely rendered by ActiveX controls. Heck, just look at how often and repeatedly Mozilla's tried to find *some* non-Google-based way to finance themselves without getting screamed at by the Slashdot crowd.

    I think that if one is interested in fostering competition in the browser market, the best choice would be to go with Brave, not because it is technologically any different, but because it at least attempts to secure new sources of funding for itself and is not too tightly bound to either project. That it's utter garbage doesn't matter so much, since it at some point in the future might improve and because Brendan Eich is CEO of it.


    Because Brave is based on Chromium, pretty much anything that works in Chrome will work fine in Brave, and Brave automatically picks up any compatibility changes Chrome makes. That's not exactly *competition* in the browser market.

    Brave *is* very interesting for competition in the *website* market, since it's one of the few funding models that's distinctly different from advertising. But it doesn't help the browser market any more than Dell buying CPUs from Intel helps competition in the CPU market.

    Posted by CaptainJistuce
    Except with their ad network, where they've been hyping Chrome for years.

    That's what I mean. Mozilla has the whole "wholly owned by a non-profit" thing which they hype. All Google's advertising dollars can't make that not true, or somehow make it true of Google too.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 10:05
    Custom title here

    Post: #435 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 6 days
    Last view: 1 day
    Posted by Screwtape

    Posted by CaptainJistuce
    Except with their ad network, where they've been hyping Chrome for years.

    That's what I mean. Mozilla has the whole "wholly owned by a non-profit" thing which they hype. All Google's advertising dollars can't make that not true, or somehow make it true of Google too.

    Google AdSense would like to remind you that Firefox development was moved to the for-profit Mozilla Corporation.

    Actually, I've never really understood how a non-profit can 100% own a for-profit and still be non-profit. Does this just mean they have to spend all the profits before the end of the year?

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-05-07, 10:27
    Full mod

    Post: #239 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 60 days
    If I'm reading this Wikipedia page correctly, the "profit" in "non-profit" means "money extracted from the organisation and paid to investors", it doesn't mean "income in excess of expenses". For example, if/when the for-profit Mozilla Corporation makes money, it pays the excess as dividends to its investor/shareholder, the Mozilla Foundation. If/when the Mozilla Foundation makes money, it's not allowed to give the money away, it has to be spent to advance the Foundation's cause.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 13:10
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #239 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1525 days
    Last view: 1523 days
    Posted by Screwtape
    Making something happen is harder than stopping something from happening. Making something happen requires everything to go right, but preventing something only requires one thing to go wrong. Mozilla would need monopoly-tier power to enforce good things, but preventing bad things like DRM requires much less power.

    For example, one of the reasons for Chrome's success is that at the time it was introduced, Firefox had already achieved comfortable market share and Mozilla had started diverting resources to their wider social mission instead of putting everything into improving the browser. Looking at browser market share in 2008 on Wikipedia, when Chrome was introduced in 2008 Firefox had around 25-30% market share, and peaked in 2009 at around 30-35%. So apparently Mozilla was perfectly happy with a *way* lower market share than monopoly control.

    But in retrospect, you'd agree it was a mistake to divert resources, yeah?
    Mozilla clearly didn't have enough power to prevent DRM now, for instance. So it'd have been a much better idea to cut the ballast when the going got tough.

    Man, if Mozilla were happy to collect a Google paycheck and watch the slow decline of the Web, we'd all still be using SeaMonkey on the few sites that weren't entirely rendered by ActiveX controls. Heck, just look at how often and repeatedly Mozilla's tried to find *some* non-Google-based way to finance themselves without getting screamed at by the Slashdot crowd.

    That depends on when it happened. I believe they're more or less doing that now, or at least working at a severely reduced rate compared to what they could.
    I don't think they need to find alternative funding sources. They earn half a billion a year. If they'd slim down their organization, they could save the excess and be independent in just a few years. Naive calculation. They spent about $200 million on actual development, for context. That's assuming no income at all as well.

    Also, Mozilla has rejected alternative funding sources. They started blocking cryptominers by default, which raises the question, why still allow ads? With cryptominers, there's no tracking or Google, just you, your CPU, and some incredibly shady company in Germany that at least doesn't track you. No website can get suspended from Monero mining, while websites can and do get suspended from AdSense due to pornographic content, political reasons, quarrels with Google, etc. This goes for the really sleazy ad providers too (e.g. the ones that the likes of The Pirate Bay use)

    The only answer I can come up with is that Google threatened them into cutting their competition out. I mean, they could at least cut a deal with whatever other ad providers that aren't Google there are (Yandex?) to allow them but block Google, ostensibly due to privacy reasons. Mozilla has about one card up its sleeve here, and this is that they aren't vertically integrated and so have less burdens in the way of antitrust law to deal with. They ought to exploit this, rather than just sit on their hands and do nothing.
    Because Brave is based on Chromium, pretty much anything that works in Chrome will work fine in Brave, and Brave automatically picks up any compatibility changes Chrome makes. That's not exactly *competition* in the browser market.

    Brave *is* very interesting for competition in the *website* market, since it's one of the few funding models that's distinctly different from advertising. But it doesn't help the browser market any more than Dell buying CPUs from Intel helps competition in the CPU market.

    It does. Sure, right now Brave is just a Chrome reskin. But they have no loyalty to them. If Chrome starts acting up, they should be able to swap out the parts, at least in theory. If they gained significant enough market share, they could start to develop a real browser.

    Posted by Screwtape
    If I'm reading this Wikipedia page correctly, the "profit" in "non-profit" means "money extracted from the organisation and paid to investors", it doesn't mean "income in excess of expenses". For example, if/when the for-profit Mozilla Corporation makes money, it pays the excess as dividends to its investor/shareholder, the Mozilla Foundation. If/when the Mozilla Foundation makes money, it's not allowed to give the money away, it has to be spent to advance the Foundation's cause.

    Yes, with the minor caveat that they can still pay their employees however much they want.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 13:46
    Dinosaur

    Post: #296 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    I'll take ads over forced buttcoin mining any day of the week, thanks.

    If your site engages into CPU assraping, that's a site most likely I'm not coming back. If your cryptoshit is served from a third-party domain, it's gonna straight to my adblock DNS lists. If you actually serve said scripts from your own domain... well, goodbye forever, and rot in hell.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-05-07, 14:03
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #242 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1525 days
    Last view: 1523 days
    Posted by tomman
    I'll take ads over forced buttcoin mining any day of the week, thanks.

    If your site engages into CPU assraping, that's a site most likely I'm not coming back. If your cryptoshit is served from a third-party domain, it's gonna straight to my adblock DNS lists. If you actually serve said scripts from your own domain... well, goodbye forever, and rot in hell.

    It doesn't have to use 100% of CPU. At 25%, it would be far less noticeable. It could also use WebGL, which would be both less bothersome and more effective.
    It's worse than ads, yes, but it's the only serious alternative to them I've seen other than micropayments (an alternative, at least) or running websites for free. I do however think the last one is seriously underrated. Often you hear of websites which need to run ads/get donations to pay hosting bills, but by just reconfiguring their software they could severely reduce said hosting bills. (see: tvtropes, 8chan)

    What would you suggest for a website that has actual expenses?

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 14:47
    Secretly, I'm Kevin Flynn

    Post: #216 of 598
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 86 days
    Last view: 1 hour
    All this on a board that has self-hosted self-made no-profit ads.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 16:10
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #243 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1525 days
    Last view: 1523 days
    Posted by Kawa
    All this on a board that has self-hosted self-made no-profit ads.

    Those aren't what I mean. If they're not for profit, they're arguably editorial content. Same as imageboards' banners for other boards (subforums) on the same website, which aren't even blocked by ad blockers. (Unlike the ones on this board, oddly enough - I'd think it has to do with the URL rather than a manual block)

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely, the expenses of hosting a forum which receives a handful of posts a day can't be staggering?

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-05-07, 16:11
    Dinosaur

    Post: #298 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Posted by sureanem
    Posted by tomman
    I'll take ads over forced buttcoin mining any day of the week, thanks.

    If your site engages into CPU assraping, that's a site most likely I'm not coming back. If your cryptoshit is served from a third-party domain, it's gonna straight to my adblock DNS lists. If you actually serve said scripts from your own domain... well, goodbye forever, and rot in hell.

    It doesn't have to use 100% of CPU. At 25%, it would be far less noticeable. It could also use WebGL, which would be both less bothersome and more effective.
    It's worse than ads, yes, but it's the only serious alternative to them I've seen other than micropayments (an alternative, at least) or running websites for free. I do however think the last one is seriously underrated. Often you hear of websites which need to run ads/get donations to pay hosting bills, but by just reconfiguring their software they could severely reduce said hosting bills. (see: tvtropes, 8chan)

    What would you suggest for a website that has actual expenses?

    Going offline, maybe? Or, non intrusive ads served from your OWN domain. No scripts, no client-side tracking shit, just a clickable banner.

    CRYPTOJUNK IS NOT REAL MONEY. There is no admissible CPU load AT ALL, hence I will be closing that browser tab to never come back as long as I notice the CPU load (and since not everybody browses from a top-of-the-line i9/Ryzen, I'll notice it, oh yeah). Web pages are for displaying information, while allowing to a limited degree of interaction, not for pushing client-side workloads (use a native application for that if you must!), much less for burning my precious CPU cycles on buttcoins.

    I'll take the chance to inform you guys that my personal site is going offline on May 28th (that is, 3 weeks from now on): I've just got the yearly bill from my hosting, and instead of just being "expensive, but I can stomach it just like I've done in the last 3 years because it's not THAT bad" to "severe jab to the liver". I haven't served a SINGLE AD since 2001, I have never profited from having an online presence. Hell, I don't even track my users (outside of the heavily outdated statistics PHP junk I had installed in 2007 or so, which doesn't even recognize Webkit-based browsers at all, and only recognizes Firefox because I hacked the script in 2008).

    Since the site isn't "sustainable" (and unlike previous years, "cheap" is no longer a valid word in our dictionary), I guess my only option is to shut down the lights for a while. C'est la vie.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-05-07, 16:35
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #245 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1525 days
    Last view: 1523 days
    Posted by tomman

    Going offline, maybe? Or, non intrusive ads served from your OWN domain. No scripts, no client-side tracking shit, just a clickable banner.

    But going offline isn't a solution to the problem of "continuing the website," it only solves the lesser problem "not going bankrupt".

    Soliciting advertisers yourself is bloody hard, as The Pirate Bay learned. It would be the ideal, yes, but it has significant administrative costs and carries with it a much greater intimacy than just advertising through AdSense. For instance, if my brand of, say, flour would advertise in, say, the National Review through AdSense, that wouldn't be odd. But if it'd have a direct relationship with them, then it gets a strong association as an "American conservative" flour brand. This might be good or bad, but it's hardly the same thing. Likewise, odd AdSense ads won't tarnish your website's reputation, but odd direct advertisers will.

    So it's only even an option for a very specific set of websites. For the really controversial websites that nobody would like to touch with a ten-foot pole, you can only really get porn/Russian mail order bride/FREE DRIVER DOWNLOAD NOW ads, if even that.
    CRYPTOJUNK IS NOT REAL MONEY.

    It can be exchanged for real money transparently, so it doesn't make any difference to the proprietor.
    There is no admissible CPU load AT ALL, hence I will be closing that browser tab to never come back as long as I notice the CPU load (and since not everybody browses from a top-of-the-line i9/Ryzen, I'll notice it, oh yeah).

    It can be tailored to use 25% of YOUR CPU, if you want. I don't know what the option is here. Ads, too, require CPU.
    Web pages are for displaying information, while allowing to a limited degree of interaction, not for pushing client-side workloads (use a native application for that if you must!), much less for burning my precious CPU cycles on buttcoins.

    Couldn't the same thing be said for ads?
    "Web pages are for displaying information, while allowing to a limited degree of interaction, not for pushing other people's messages (use the newspaper for that if you must!), much less for wasting my precious eyeballs on crap I don't want to buy."

    I'll take the chance to inform you guys that my personal site is going offline on May 28th (that is, 3 weeks from now on): I've just got the yearly bill from my hosting, and instead of just being "expensive, but I can stomach it just like I've done in the last 3 years because it's not THAT bad" to "severe jab to the liver". I haven't served a SINGLE AD since 2001, I have never profited from having an online presence. Hell, I don't even track my users (outside of the heavily outdated statistics PHP junk I had installed in 2007 or so, which doesn't even recognize Webkit-based browsers at all, and only recognizes Firefox because I hacked the script in 2008).

    Since the site isn't "sustainable" (and unlike previous years, "cheap" is no longer a valid word in our dictionary), I guess my only option is to shut down the lights for a while. C'est la vie.

    RIP

    Is everything in archive.org?

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-05-08, 08:59
    Full mod

    Post: #240 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 863 days
    Last view: 60 days
    Posted by sureanem
    But in retrospect, you'd agree it was a mistake to divert resources, yeah?
    Mozilla clearly didn't have enough power to prevent DRM now, for instance. So it'd have been a much better idea to cut the ballast when the going got tough.

    In retrospect, Mozilla squandered some of Firefox's head-start against Chrome, yes. But since Chrome was top-secret at the time, it's hard to blame them.

    Again according to Wikipedia, Firefox started shipping the EME DRM plugin in mid 2016, and according to Wikipedia's historical browser stats, Firefox had about 15-20% market share at the time. So clearly that is Not Enough.

    I don't think they need to find alternative funding sources. They earn half a billion a year. If they'd slim down their organization, they could save the excess and be independent in just a few years.

    Mozilla positions Firefox as "the trustworthy browser that doesn't invade your privacy", which is a good thing. But Firefox is funded by Google invading Google users' privacy, and many Firefox users are also Google users, so reality is a bit murkier than the Firefox marketing material would have you believe. I don't blame them at all for wanting to diversify their income sources at all.

    As for slimming the organisation, they probably could do that if they were going to be Just A Browser Vendor, but this is the ol' non-profit optimism in practice: Mozilla don't see themselves as a browser vendor, they're a non-profit who want to *use* the browser achieve their real goals. From that point of view, slimming down operations to the point where they could maintain/develop Firefox indefinitely would be just as much a failure as going broke would be.

    Also, Mozilla has rejected alternative funding sources. They started blocking cryptominers by default, which raises the question, why still allow ads? With cryptominers, there's no tracking or Google, just you, your CPU, and some incredibly shady company in Germany that at least doesn't track you. No website can get suspended from Monero mining, while websites can and do get suspended from AdSense due to pornographic content, political reasons, quarrels with Google, etc. This goes for the really sleazy ad providers too (e.g. the ones that the likes of The Pirate Bay use)

    So... you're proposing that Firefox charge cryptomining companies to run miners or Firefox users' computers? Why bother doing mining in JS/WebGL then, when it could be built right into Firefox?

    Of course, the real issue is that advertising costs users "attention", which is a nebulous, hard-to-measure thing so people can't get too annoyed about. Cryptomining drains users' batteries, which is very clearly measured in cents-per-kilowatt-hour. Battery power is already a scarce resource for most users, so they'd be doubly annoyed at Firefox consuming more than necessary.

    The only answer I can come up with is that Google threatened them into cutting their competition out. I mean, they could at least cut a deal with whatever other ad providers that aren't Google there are (Yandex?) to allow them but block Google, ostensibly due to privacy reasons.

    I think we've had this discussion before, but Google is just the middleman that rakes in the cash, there's a huge constellation of advertisers and advertising service providers and advertising industry organisations that would take a built-in adblocker as a declaration of war.

    It's very tempting to say "this advertising ecosystem is poisoning the ecosystem, let's starve it to death so people will invent some healthier model" but even if Mozilla were big enough to make that happen, "carrot and stick" is always more effective than "stick" alone.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-05-08, 11:34
    Dinosaur

    Post: #300 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Posted by sureanem

    But going offline isn't a solution to the problem of "continuing the website," it only solves the lesser problem "not going bankrupt".

    Soliciting advertisers yourself is bloody hard, as The Pirate Bay learned. It would be the ideal, yes, but it has significant administrative costs and carries with it a much greater intimacy than just advertising through AdSense. For instance, if my brand of, say, flour would advertise in, say, the National Review through AdSense, that wouldn't be odd. But if it'd have a direct relationship with them, then it gets a strong association as an "American conservative" flour brand. This might be good or bad, but it's hardly the same thing. Likewise, odd AdSense ads won't tarnish your website's reputation, but odd direct advertisers will.

    So it's only even an option for a very specific set of websites. For the really controversial websites that nobody would like to touch with a ten-foot pole, you can only really get porn/Russian mail order bride/FREE DRIVER DOWNLOAD NOW ads, if even that.


    Posted by sureanem

    There is no admissible CPU load AT ALL, hence I will be closing that browser tab to never come back as long as I notice the CPU load (and since not everybody browses from a top-of-the-line i9/Ryzen, I'll notice it, oh yeah).

    It can be tailored to use 25% of YOUR CPU, if you want. I don't know what the option is here. Ads, too, require CPU.
    Web pages are for displaying information, while allowing to a limited degree of interaction, not for pushing client-side workloads (use a native application for that if you must!), much less for burning my precious CPU cycles on buttcoins.

    Couldn't the same thing be said for ads?
    "Web pages are for displaying information, while allowing to a limited degree of interaction, not for pushing other people's messages (use the newspaper for that if you must!), much less for wasting my precious eyeballs on crap I don't want to buy."


    If you run a popular site, advertisers will find a way to reach you, since they know your place is a good vehicle to sell whatever products and services they have, assuming they understand the following:

    1) Target: obviously you're going to have a hard time selling flour on a PC overclockers' site.
    2) Don't overdo it!

    If you run one of said "controversial sites" (politics, Nazi/KKK/Taliban shit, Poetteringware™, etc.), no sane advertiser will want to touch it, but I'm pretty much sure their target will find a way to support their site. Just not involving buttcoins or PayPal buttons you can't use anyway, since historically there have been other ways to do so.

    "People not wanting to pay for things" are a completely different problem, and advertising/cryptojunk won't solve that - it's a SOCIAL problem product of the inherent selfishness built into the human being. "Adware" is just a consequence of that fact - at a first look ads aren't evil (if you aren't interested, just scroll down), but the "Big Data" era perverted the concept down to the bone, and advertising is now considered an evil greater than wars and communism.

    I don't mind a discreet 468x60 ad banner at page top or bottom, linked to a simple redirect server-side script ("servername/foo/adclick.something?adID=whatever"). But the moment you go over that simple threshold and start shoving down client-side tracking scripts, pop-ups/pop-unders, Flash, autoplaying audio/video, aggressive jQuery abuse, shitcoin miners... well, now you understand why adblockers exist and why anyone (outside of normies) want the advertising industry to die in a sea of fire.

    To be clear: I don't block ads out of privacy reasons (as I've said countless times: I am statistics noise, I live in a shithole where I can't even buy your shit even if I really wanted to!). I started blocking ads out of PERFORMANCE reasons: my hardware is old, and my network access is slow and very unreliable. It first started with Flashblock when websites started abusing Flash for autoplay crap, and now extended to a DNS block which kills most adverts dead in the water, safe or not. And even without ads, the modern web is just a bloated unbrowsable mess for anyone without a top-of-the-line Mac/gamer-class rig/$1000 flagship cellphone :/

    Posted by sureanem

    CRYPTOJUNK IS NOT REAL MONEY.

    It can be exchanged for real money transparently, so it doesn't make any difference to the proprietor.

    So are illegal drugs, slaves, pirated software, stolen goods, Enron shares, tulips, WoW gold, and most poisons.
    The fact I can exchange something for money doesn't really makes it a form of money, or even something of value. It only shows that with enough BS/force, I can convince a fool to lose their money.

    Repeat after me:
    CRYPTOJUNK IS NOT REAL MONEY.
    It has never been, it will NEVER be, no matter how many Silly Valley VCs and vulture banks you get on board.
    (And don't come with me with "butbutbut your bank accounts are nothing but numbers on a database on a computer!" Those numbers ARE backed and protected by a complex regulatory system in place by the government, which I trust more than any idiot doing a ICO despite being... well, a bunch of communists!)



    Posted by sureanem
    Is everything in archive.org?

    http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mi.tsdx.net.ve/
    Archive sez "maybe, kinda". The main place is there, but then there are plenty of non-public links there (mainly pictures, as I've used my place in the past as my own image host for message boards and stuff). Thankfully I've just done a backup of everything there (I just use imgur nowadays), and if I get real bored, I may just clean it up and drop it at Mega or something, if someone gives a damn.

    No, losing a website that barely anyone visits anymore (and that hasn't been updated in over a decade because personal homepages are for dinosaurs) doesn't bug me. What is really going to HURT me is the loss of my personal email address there, as I'm using that one in plenty of places around the Internet. Oh boy, switching email addresses on those places is going to be fun: on most messageboards it's simple, on some places it's a minor annoyance at best (get confirm link on old email first), then there are places like Steam where anything could happen... and then there are BANKS, where "changing email addresses online is a SECURITY CONCERN, therefore you gotta move yer ass to the nearest branch and spend half a day there!".

    And I'm not fond of switching everything back to GMail, as I would be down to a single point of failure: my CANTV address stopped working last year just like everything at that commie ISP, and while I do have an Hotmail account since forever, I haven't used that one in years, plus you can't use it with real mail clients unless if you pay, I guess. That is the whole point of paying for your own email, but you can't just have your own cake and eat it since that's now verbotten here :/

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Pages: First Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next Last
      Main » Discussion » Mozilla, *sigh*
      [Your ad here? Why not!]