gzipped_tar's Journal: More on ads

Following this story: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/11/30/166218

Let the Q & A begin:

Q: There's no free lunch. You view ads so that the content producers are paid. Are you a Chinese commie zombie hacker Muslim terrorist?

A: We're talking about bandwidth here. I'm a geek and by definition I'm smart enough to block the ads so that I'm able to enjoy faster, less annoying Web experience. However, most people aren't, and they are served ads. Those ads traffic eventually makes everyone else's link slower (and more expensive), including mine, because it eats up the ISP's bandwidth. So I suffer because someone else's not doing something. That's ungood.

Q: Commie terrorist confirmed. You paid for your bandwidth and they paid for theirs. That's it.

A: If I use BitTorrent, I'll be throttled down so the good non-filesharing subscribers can have a reasonable bandwidth. Same thing should happen to them when they're wasting bandwidth on ads and I'm actually using the Internet. Just wait until the ads traffic volume grows to have a non-negligible impact on normal web usage.

Q: You don't seem to like the idea of using the hosts file as a blacklist like everyone else. What's your problem?

A: The hosts file should be used to do what it is supposed to do: tell facts about hostnames, aliases and ip addresses, not lies. Don't use it to cheat the OS even if you don't run your own Web server on your localhost. Use a firewall, NoScript, proxy server, anything.

Q: Is this write-up a rant or a flamebait or are you simply trolling?

A: Yes.