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from the two-googles-is-enough-for-anybody dept.
Two stories about Google graced The Register in recent days.
The First was about Google (allegedly) stripping SSL from British Telephone (BT) mobile users search requests, even when the users had started from https pages, and were using BT WiFi subscribers piggy-backing off wireless connections, (I have no idea what exactly is meant by piggy-backing in this context). Personally, I would suspect BT of having a hand in that.
The open secret here is that for some VIP customers, search requests coming from their networks have SSL stripped as a service. This was mostly developed for schools where Google supplies their mail , web, and search services. Some of these places are statutorily obligated to filter their networks. BT may have been setting this bit themselves, but is difficult to tell.
A google engineer Adam Langly posted in a public forum that you can bypass any institutional ssl stripping by always accessing Google Searches via a different URL:
"However, if you want an encrypted search option, 'https://encrypted.google.com' is always encrypted and isn't affected by these methods."
You might want to set that as your Google landing page on mobile devices if you use wifi on some business or school campuses.
The second story concerns a trial balloon that Google is floating in a few markets called "Contributor" where, for a small(ish) fee, Google will strip ads out of pages, and share that fee with the web site in lieu of advertising revenue. The monthly fee, ranging between $1 and $3 per site, will be paid to the site operator after Google takes its cut.
El Reg speculates:
Perhaps Google and websites heavily reliant on ads are tired of netizens using ad-blocking browser plugins. Perhaps Google just wants to prove that the vast majority of people are OK with ads, and few want to spend even $1 a month on a web subscription.
So the question is, Soylentils: Are there any sites you would be willing to pay a dollar a month to visit without ads?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday November 24 2014, @10:00AM
Yeah... except that's a false dichotomy, and your example is terrible. If I've invented something, then chances are I was participating in the scientific community. We have different ways of "advertising" our inventions, designs, and ideas irrespective of our economic choices.
Is Google advertising *anything* when it lists a product for sale someplace for x$? I think they are not.
This comes down to what constitutes an advertisement. I guess I don't feel that listing your product someplace and participating in reviews and consumer reports is truly considered advertising. Word of mouth is not advertising too. Opening up a retail shop, with a nice and respectable sign, is not advertising.
Advertising is when you actively interfere in the communications of others to force your own, or hijack a space and pollute the public with your communications. Making it worse is when you speak to those you've interfered as child like idiots you can fool with tricks that make any confidence man snicker. Even worse yet, is when they very act of the communication puts you at risk (malware) and costs you money (bandwidth).
So advertising may really be the industry of child like deceit during story telling, both malicious and benign. However, I don't feel irrational in saying that now the child is rather brutish, crude, and needs a bath and some discipline. I'm also paying for the little bastard to have the privilege, so I vote we make him get a switch from the backyard.
Not sorry for the rant :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday November 25 2014, @09:19AM
Advertising is when you actively interfere in the communications of others to force your own, or hijack a space and pollute the public with your communications.
Bullshit. You don't get to define advertising just so you can demonize it. Work within the common definition, or admit your argument was pointless rabid ranting.
The most you can say is if you try hard enough, you can pick a certain small segment of advertising from the vast array of advertising and use that example as soap box to spin your evil conspiracy theories. Who the hell are you to say that one beer is not better than another, or one car is all we ever need? Who are you to say no one should be able to put forth a competing product and tell the market place about it?
We are not a command economy. There are choices of beers, Computers, potatoes, and shoes. And people have the right to find out about these competing products without visiting every little cobbler shop on the planet, or waiting till word of mouth spreads from some tiny Bavarian brewhaus half way around the world.
Advertising serves a vital role.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday November 25 2014, @11:19PM
No, it does not. Advertising only serves for evil. Which, is genuinely funny, you saying I have demonized it.
It serves no purpose at all, other than the entirely selfish purposes of the advertiser. While evil is a nice fun thing to say, I wholly grant you is often used for hyperbole. Just for the sake of common definitions:
Well, morally bad is just way too vague and we can argue that for all time.
"Causing harm or injury to someone" is a completely different situation though. I *do* get to rationally make the statement that advertising is evil, as it causes harm or injury, or is intended to be so".
I have seen different definitions, and cannot find the one I've used for decades, and that indicated that evil possessed the property of awareness. Meaning, that to cause harm or injury with no intention or awareness is not evil.
So let's be clear on what is evil, and that to demonize anything is to state that it is possessing of evil qualities in the majority.
I have not defined it in a way that demonizes it all, nor am I playing language games and attempting to redefine it.
Here is the definition, straight from a Google search (noun, verb):
Now, let's just get straight to the meat of the argument. Movie audiences are NOT receptive to advertising.
For my entire life, and the history that I have been exposed too, advertising as a process dramatically changed. I deny your assertion of any common definition, when the process itself no longer meets the definition.
You act as if advertisements were passive, and merely information you just happen upon during your journey here. They most certainly are not anywhere near as passive or benign as the definitions indicate.
The issue with "advertising" is entirely in the presentation of the information to the public. You take away the fancy technologies, and what you have WRT the movie audiences is one person realizing they have a captive audience.
It's not a coincidence that I've had many heated arguments with marketers, and that they have been quite offended when I remind them that they are "demons".
As a process, and with respect to what actually occurs during the process, advertising includes captive audiences normally unwilling to be exposed to the presentation of the information.
That's a fact buddy. Not an opinion. Millions upon millions of dollars and human man hours have been pumped into technologies, legislation, and court battles to prevent the natural progression of the underlying indisputable fact: People don't fucking want it.
Whether or not you intellectually recognize the importance of this flow of information to the abstract concepts that are economies is irrelevant. You are not in the position to argue that I changed the definition, or that advertising is not evil.
All advertisers are cognizant that they must fight to achieve a captive audience, become aware of the technical tools available to the audience to escape captivity, and that new mediums must be actively discovered that have their desired properties .
I honestly don't see how you have any leg to stand on, but I'll play along.
Advertising, according the strict and archaic definitions that include no visible harm, is required to allow information to flow and for consumers to be aware of new options. Okay. I'll play along. This is advertising.
Except... that's not what occurs is it? Enter information asymmetry (my favorite). If the advertisers were acting in accordance with your definition, you would think the information would be salient and shows how good and effective the product is.
So advertising, even in your definition that clearly excludes the challenges with the presentation, still has a problem in that it does not maturely communicate the required information. If it *did*, then maybe we wouldn't have created Consumer Reports, the FDA, FTC, and the FCC? If we are going to play your game, then Wall Street is "advertising" all the time. I guess we *did* need some regulations to prevent unwanted and undesirable advertisements?
You tell me Frojack, is advertising as we know and understand it, the simple act of transmitting information so that people with challenges are aware of their options? It's not. Don't pretend it is. It's not. If you want to say advertising is required for society to function, *fine*. However, we don't actually need advertising the way it *is*.
I'll stop ranting when the advertisers are not in a real and actual assault mode upon my person to be pushing their information in my face when I don't want it, and when the information doesn't appear to have been directly inspired by the movie Idiocracy. I'll stop when advertisers start actually advertising again instead of what they are doing now, which I guess we don't have a word for that I get to use right? I wonder what the word is that describes the ability to go on the Internet, visit a website, and review the "advertised" specs and features.... It's not advertising, but what *is* it? Accomplishes the same thing, but isn't exactly advertising?
Yes, obviously I'm being a little bit sarcastic at the end here. We all know what advertising is, as advertising is what advertising does. Even a man with a substandard IQ, knows that something is what something does, not what somebody says it is.