grack.com

An interesting comment posted by one of my readers:

Blocking ads is very nice and all, but you do expect most websites to provide free content don’t you? For most content websites, advertisements are the only way to cover their bills (and maybe even make a little profit). If you and everyone else block these advertisements, content websites will either have to close or go paid-subscription only. Would you like this? I think not, so how about uninstalling that Adblock extension, and viewing a few advertisements now and then?

Dennis assumes that I have some moral obligation to view ads on a site because I am viewing the site itself.

I managed to find an interesting article on Google Groups that sums up my position pretty clearly:

An expectation of revenue on their part is not a commitment on your part.

Personally, I fast-forward through all TV ads on my PVR and block 99% of web ads with Ad-block  I don’t really see how I’m obligated - morally or legally - to view ads on a site’s page to support a tenuous business model.  As well, it’s been legal since the 70’s for me to tape live TV with commercials and watch it any time later sans-commercials.

When it becomes illegal for me to leave the room while watching Fox I might become a little concerned.

I managed to get the majority of the wood cuts done for my MAME cabinet today.  It took about an hour to mark each piece out, then about two hours of clamping the aluminum guide and running the circular saw.

Before I started the project, I never would have guessed how much work it would turn out to be.

The last cuts are going to be the cabinet sides.  Fortunately it’s better to cut both sides at the same time - this ensures that even if you make a mistake the cabinet sides will still match.

CNN.com, before and after installing Adblock.

It takes a bit of getting used to (remember your old DOS wildcard days?), but it’s pretty easy to come up with good patterns to block 90% of all ads within about 20 minutes.

In a word - still really amazing!  Oh wait, that’s three.  Well, Firefox sure deserves all three anyways!

Install it today - even though the promise of automatically installed spyware sure is mighty appealing.

I’m not certain how many of my readers are fellow Canadians, but copyright is certainly something on my mind this coming election.  There’s an excellent editorial in the Toronto Sun that Canadians should read.

I think I’ll be voting NDP this time around.