Ryanware

I finished The Time Machine by H.G. Wells the other day. This is the second book I’ve read by him, the first being The War of the Worlds. I quite like his writing style. The Time Machine, as I understood it, is more of a political statement than a science fiction book about time travel. It’s a warning to humanity that this quest for the perfect world, the quest to remove all hardship will backfire if done in the way it’s currently being handled.

H.G. Wells wrote the book in the late 1800s and saw then this trend towards all play and no work. It’s worse now. Think about all our modern inventions: cars, planes, computers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, heating, air conditioning, TV, iPods, bread makers, etc. All these things can make life easier and can even allow us to spend more time on what matters most to us. But where does the luxury stop? If the current course follows it won’t be too long before everything is all taken care of for us. What happens when so much is done for us that we forget to do things any other way? What happens if it all goes away? With all the computerized advances cars are making, they’re getting harder to fix. I don’t even know how to fix a traditional car without any computers in it, let alone these new amazing pieces of machinery.

With all the technological and even biological advances we are making, we would be wise to learn how to live without it all. Life without all our present luxuries (for that is what they are) is not frightening if you’re prepared.

Danny Carlton has an interesting battle going on over on his website, jacklewis.net/weblog/

You’ll notice, if you try and go to his website in Firefox, that he’s blocking all Firefox users. Why? See for yourself.

Below is my response to Danny Carlton. Please understand that I do not wish to disrespect him in anyway, shape, or form. I only wish to question his idea.

Danny,

You are fighting an interesting battle. People who block ads wouldn’t click on them anyway, so essentially you’re wasting a whole lot of time trying to prove a point to a bunch of people who will never agree with you anyway.

To claim ad blocking as theft is incredibly disingenuous to people who, like me, are blocking ads in order to be *more* honest. In the 12+ years I’ve been using the internet I’ve probably clicked on 10 ads on purpose, and many more than that on *accident*, causing advertisers to pay out for an accidental click-through.

Also, there are those who (again, like me), are trying to protect themselves and their families from as much of the filth and garbage on the internet as possible. There have been several large websites (Tom’s Hardware, MySpace, and others) who have unknowingly distributed viruses through their advertising (via JPEG security vulnerabilities). (described in twit.tv’s Security Now Episode #102)

I understand, as you’ve stated, that your site doesn’t have super annoying or dirty ads. I will not, however, take the time to selectively block ads from different sources (besides, what is a “trusted ad source” when previously trusted ad sources such as those found on Tom’s Hardware had a huge virus problem?). I respect your decision to try and maintain control of your website’s content. I ask you to respect my decision to choose to protect myself in a way that keeps a little bit of accidental revenue from heading your direction.

I also invite you to take a moment to consider the unintended consequences that this statement could have:

“You shouldn’t have the freedom to block [ads], when I specifically don’t want that, and have attempted to prevent it.” (part of one of his comment’s in his “Hectic weekend” post)

What would it require to take that freedom away from me? What kind of legislation would have to be passed? What kind of software would have to be installed on our computers? Would you really be better off with that freedom taken away? I dare say you would not.

Lastly, I do not think this kind of battle does the rest of your opinions any credit. I haven’t read much of your site so I’m not claiming to either agree or disagree with you on your opinions, but you might consider how this battle will effect all these silly people. You stated that many of these Firefox users probably wouldn’t have ever visited your site anyway, so there’s been no harm done. But you’re missing something. Sure, there’s no significant harm done to your readership, but what of all the people who have visited, skimmed your posts and written you off as crazy? They’re not just writing you off as crazy, but your ideas too. When they read the same or similar ideas from other people, they are now more likely to write them off as crazy as well.

I do not think that one should compromise beliefs in order to gain popularity, but I do think that one must determine whether or not a battle is firmly based in truth, or just a pet peeve. To me, your argument about ad blocking feels like your pet peeve, and has too little basis in truth to be really meaningful.

First off, I’m surprised that Apple released Safari for Windows. Second, I think it’s pretty cool that they did it, mainly because people like me who need to test websites in a bunch of different browsers can now do that a lot easier. It does, however, seem a bit pointless because really, Firefox is way cooler. But I’m always open to more competition in the market. Competition means that people will create even cooler software.

I still think the OS X gray theme is really really ugly. I hate how iTunes looks and I hate how Safari looks. I’m glad that Safari isn’t a freaking 30+ MB downoad like iTunes is. Safari is 8 MB, which is completely fine. I bet they could get it down further if they’d take out all their crazy OS X theme stuff. Oh well, I guess that’s part of the Apple experience.

As far as functionality goes, I haven’t used it too much yet, but I like how it works. Web pages look good and load quickly.

Way to go Apple. I’m not gonna switch to Safari, but from my first impressions of it I’d rather use it than IE or Opera.