I just tried to use go111, but I get the following message:
>[7] Access Not Configured. Cloud Build has not been used in project <project> before or it is disabled. Enable it by visiting https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/cloudbuild.go... then retry. If you enabled this API recently, wait a few minutes for the action to propagate to our systems and retry.
So go111 cannot be used without Cloud Build, for which I have to activate billing?
Did you replace the wifi card yourself or mail in the whole laptop? Was dell helpful diagnosing this, and what was your general impression of their committment to linux support?
I replaced it myself. Actually, I didn't bother to ask Dell for support ;-)
Regarding their general commitment to linux support: frankly, I don't know. Everything just worked out of the box (besides the Broadcom WIFI, which gave me a hard time), so I have not spent much time to investigate this further.
And the gap will only increase if the proposed intelligence services act (Wiv20xx) is passed by parliament. The act allows the intelligence services to mass surveillance all electronic communication and forces all service providers (not just telecom providers) to pay for surveillance equipment.
Besides being morally wrong to mass surveillance everyone when the current act already allows the intelligence services to monitor the few thousand potential terrorists and spies, it would also hurt the Dutch economy. International companies would move their European cloud infrastucture to e.g. Germany and Dutch startups providing a communication service (i.e. almost any startup) would be less trusted by their users and run the risk of paying for expensive surveillance equipment.
If you are Dutch i recommend reading the reaction of Nederland ICT [1] to the proposed act.
The MP who proposed the law has lost support of his party recently (The Labor party) to keep on pushing the law in current form.
Also the CTIVD ,the organization that supervises the AIVD (The dutch NSA) has told the law isn't possible to implement in current form.
So the chance that it will pass it pretty small. Though they'll probably juggle around some words and try again so we should stay alert. Luckily it has gotten quite some media attention and people seem to be aware that the law is a bad idea.
Well, to be fair, AMS-IX is located around the Amsterdam Area (a circle of around 30 km orso), while DE-CIX has locations in the US as well.
I'm not familiar with the specifics, but based on these locations, I'd say AMS-IX is the biggest internet exchange serving europe.
Both DE-CIX and AMS-IX have exchanges in NYC now. Both have actually started branching out and building exchanges in many new cities. The traffic levels they're talking about are specific to both of their home markets (Amsterdam/Frankfurt).
The DE-CIX graph seems to be about the Frankfurt exchange. AMS-IX doesn't just serve the Amsterdam area, it's where many undersea cables from North America and the UK enter the European mainland.
I'm more surprised that 'List of Internet exchange points' isn't dominated by North American and Asian exchanges. Do they have a larger number of smaller ones?
My traffic in philippines would actually go out of the country and back in, occasionally via los angeles (like 500ms+) because the incumbent monopoly telco refuses to peer with any other isp, so if you don't use them your traffic is intentionally screwed [there is an IX there for small ISPs, the 99% market share one just doesn't peer there]
Aside from singapore, every other country has something approaching this level of fucked-ness - HK to CN traffic often goes via LA/seattle, TW to CN traffic often goes via LA/seattle, all of china telecom's peering links are oversubscribed to death anyway and fall over during peak hours, a lot of the SEA traffic i've seen traverses singapore or worse, even if it's entirely domestic bound
no, Amsterdam does not have the size amount of peering it does because of submarine cable landings, and DE-CIX is largest by bits exchanged in one single metro area (Frankfurt)
He surely just forgot to mention that Google allegedly payed 25 million € to Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus, in order to participate in the "acceptable ads" program, a "feature" which is turned on by default and allows users to "surf more comfortably".
And that he is (or at least was) one of the directors.
I'm most certain that there are people out there who would call this business model "blackmailing", but I could also be wrong.
AdBlock Plus is installed on an extremely large sum of devices in Germany. I read somewhere close to 25% with non-technical users (!) and 50% among technical users.
What they basically did is to approach companies like newspapers (Spiegel Online) and told them: Look, if you pay $LARGE_SUM, we will whitelist you. Otherwise, since 25-50% of Germans use our software, your advertisement won't make you much money.
I'm not a law expert and I guess technically, it isn't called blackmailing, but then it is, sort of. It's a dark-grey zone which discriminates against smaller companies that can't afford to pay and heck, who gives Eyeo the right to decide over the business models of other websites?
If nobody was shown ads, then all would be in the same boat again. But this way, there's a privileged class of companies that may have ads enabled.
The problem is that advertisers' business model essentially relies on the silent cooperation of the consumer. The ads are rendered on my device which is under my control. I'm under no obligation to render any content from anyone who buys ads from anybody. Not to mention the advertisers are using my $'s to push content to my device.
The amazing thing is that this business model continues to operate reasonably successfully and that more people aren't actively working against it. On the other side of this, I think the "extortion" business model is limited because there'll be alternate providers of ad blockers. To some extent we've seen similar tactics in the TV world with digital video recorders that allow you to mask/fast forward through commercials.
Now one might argue that the way content providers can fund good content is through advertising, which is true to some extent but it's not a very fair or reliable business model.
This isn't blackmailing or extortion. This is what monopoly on a group of users looks like. Apple also charges 30% for anyone allowing in-app purchase on their devices. Is that also blackmail or extortion? Sure made Amazon drop in app purchases in a hurry (and yank them from comixology after Amazon purchased them)
This is not blackmailing but a mafia-like protection racket scheme: They create a problem (ads not showing up) that they offer the solution for themselves as well (white-labeling).
AdBlock Plus sold out. Google's Sponsored features continue to be automatically white-listed as part of that deal, even when "acceptable ads" is not selected. You can't block them using Element Hiding Helper.
Not ads - Sponsored listings. A good example is the YouTube video feed; the first video is usually a Sponsored video. I wouldn't care so much except they're usually link bait videos with hot girls or people getting hurt in "funny" ways. Don't want.
EasyList and other filter sets work on most AdBlock versions. I also use the social filters to speed up page load since most pages are waiting on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc auth & cookies before they can finish displaying.
I wouldn't mind unobtrusive ads to be whitelisted, were the man not charging money for the service.
Ads aren't inherently "wrong". people tend to block ads because many are unsightly, bandwidth consuming, etc.
Simple ads that don't have JS, don't have trackers, and blend with a site should be encouraged. But making beaucoup money on extortion payments is pretty bad.
There are the ads that feel totally out of place and are animated near the text that make it unreadable. I call these obtrusive. And then there are the ads that kind of fall into place on the website and while they attempt to get your attention, they don't cause epileptic spasms and mostly can be scrolled out. I tend to accept the later ones on sites I frequent often so that they get a revenue for their effort. The earlier type makes the sites totally useless, so I fail to see the point in them.
That's not true, you're equating how they have being practically implemented for their definition. There's nothing stopping ads from being useful and beneficial to society at large.
If I need computer repair services, then looking through advertisements for shops that can offer that service is not a detriment to me, or a distraction. The reason we block them is that they are being implemented in an antagonistic way. You can have a beneficial ad.
> If I need computer repair services, then looking through advertisements for shops that can offer that service is not a detriment to me, or a distraction.
I don't really understand the part about "looking through advertisements". If you're actually doing a web search, what you're looking at is a list of web search results, not ads. Any ad that is inserted in that list is there by virtue of that shop having paid for that privilege, which does not necessarily mean it's relevant; it just means that its ranking got artificially boosted.
On the other hand, if you're not looking at a web search, then you're probably doing some other kind of research on computer repair services, such as looking at reviews, blog posts and such. In that context, ads are being displayed based on the context of what you're viewing, as determined by a computer algorithm, but you're already actively looking for human recommendations, so ads won't benefit you either.
The way I see it, ads fall into two categories: 1) artificially boosting the search engine rankings and 2) do-you-want-fries-with-that offers based on what you're currently doing. Most of the time, that doesn't seem to add any special value to the consumers.
The only situation I can think of that might be helpful is when you're not already looking for a solution to some problem and an ad suggests something you didn't even know existed. For example, you're looking at cooking recipes and an ad shows up for a kitchen gadget that would really help you cut down the preparation time in half. Even then, the rational choice would not be do go buy that particular gadget, but to do some research on gadgets of that type in general and choose the best one.
All in all, I agree with GP: ads are neither information, nor decoration, but an obstruction.
>The only situation I can think of that might be helpful is when you're not already looking for a solution to some problem and an ad suggests something you didn't even know existed.
I was driving at that, though on review I realize I wasn't clear.
There's nothing stopping an ad from being useful, it can be an option you didn't realize existed, or it can be an option you might not of considered for review (number 2).
Neither of those are an obstruction, so:
>All in all, I agree with GP: ads are neither information, nor decoration, but an obstruction.
This is where we disagree. They could be information, they could be useful, it's just that their current implementation is not like that.
Ad Block Plus used this argument to set up their payment scheme. Which is a shame, but just because an idea is used for slimeball tactics doesn't mean the idea is wrong.
the key to current and future advertising is not manipulating the person, but rather taking advantage of the fact that everyone wants something.
modern advertisements are making an effort not to sell you their specific 'ProductX', but to sell you products that you desire/need from their outlet. That feels more honest than advertising did in the past, at least now they are assessing the relevance of the ads you're exposed to and making efforts to target.
I will, however, agree that relying on the needs of others to fill your coffers is probably immoral -- but that condemns most of marketing, and I don't know how well that opinion will fly here.
usually bandwidth, or unsightliness is not the main problem... they distract so much from the content that sometimes it can be almost impossible to differentiate the two.
I wouldn't call it blackmailing. It's flat out extortion; they build a script that blocks ads for specific domains then tell the owners they can pay to have it removed.
To be fair: Adblock Plus does not simply block ads on some specific domains, EasyList and other filter lists are pretty extensive. I do not like the business model either but how else could they make the necessary profits?
Adblock Plus (and similar add-ons) were not created because of such a business model but because of annoying and sometimes even dangerous ads.
I don't think Adblock Plus is worthy of revenue - their "business model" is to squash other companies revenue then make them pay to get it back. Sure, they block a lot of super annoying and even some potentially dangerous ads, but most of the time they're blocking harmless banner ads on small sites that need the revenue to stay online. This obviously isn't just Adblock (Plus)'s problem - there's always going to be someone trying to remove ads from websites, I just wish those creating the scripts would apply their talents elsewhere.
Free Alternative that exists since since 1996!!! It's much faster and browser independent. Based on "Proxy Auto-Config". It blocks most ads really well. Having a referrer- ,cookie- and ua-srting blocker also comes handy. Ad-Block Plus or anything else won't hide your personal details that your browser submits.
I think there are people out there that would call this business model "finding the least objectionable and most useful way for users to fund the development of the tool they value".
Corrupt, yes, but blackmail isn't quite right. More like private security offering to look the other way if you can pay enough to make it worth their while.
It honestly looks like a mixture of blackmail and Tortious interference.
Blackmail: pay us or we will cut your advertising revenue.
Tortious interference: Your company counts on (double_digit)% ad revenue. We're going to harm you in significant ways... unless you pay.
>Blackmail: pay us or we will cut your advertising revenue.
As others have said, not blackmail, but extortion. Blackmail would be the threat of revealing embarrassing or financially harming information.
>Tortious interference: Your company counts on (double_digit)% ad revenue. We're going to harm you in significant ways... unless you pay.
Another name for that here in the US is racketeering, or running a protection racket. It's the classic "pay us X dollars or we'll destroy your store/break your kneecaps/kill your family" only with a digital/financial threat.
With more than 17 million users and their mafia-like business model (i.e. protection racket), they have been able to pay for at least 15 employees. Not bad for a free browser add-on. German source: http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-...
Speaking of git completion and branch info on the prompt, there are plugins in zsh for this and they're very easy to customize thanks to well-established conventions in oh-my-zsh.
It took me couple of hours to migrate from bash but it was time well spent.
>[7] Access Not Configured. Cloud Build has not been used in project <project> before or it is disabled. Enable it by visiting https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/cloudbuild.go... then retry. If you enabled this API recently, wait a few minutes for the action to propagate to our systems and retry.
So go111 cannot be used without Cloud Build, for which I have to activate billing?