YOU are not the owner of what's on the CD. YOU are an end user licensee.

Wrong.

You might want to add which banana republic this refers to.

I wouldn't. I'm on the "wrong" side of the fence for that.

how would you feel if websites then had the power to selectively allow or disallow you access - to the whole site, or parts of it?

Why aren't they doing it, then? The technical point still stands. If you want to control what people can view, maybe develop your own protocol and don't freeride on HTTP which you didn't pay anything for? Same useless argument.

because I like supporting them explicitly through viewing their ads and sometimes even clicking on them

You support Slashdot by writing comments, since that's the real content, not some unedited/badly edited regurgitated "news" the monkeys put up.

Nearly all advertizements pay per impression (view) not per click these days.

See, that's the part I can't stand at all: scumbags trying to mess with people's brains.

We had informative ads once, where a honest producer quickly introduced his quality product and you made the decision to try it or not. These days, we have slimy weasels trying to manipulate our feelings, "generating desire" and whatnot for whatever shitty product they're trying to hawk.

All advertisers need to be shot. They're among the most dishonest and despicable people on earth, right after lawyers.

Don't forget the malware.

You deserve to be banned if you block ads.

Go ahead. I'm stopping noone from blocking me when I block ads.

Strangely, noone is doing it. So what do I care?

Perfect. Then they won't care that I don't download their ad if I don't intend to click anyway.

Sure, get your forum users to join your AD first. Call me when you've succeeded. /facepalm

I can see why all of your posts end up at -1. Lunacy at its best.

Sorry I don't read at -1.

Of course if your clients are competent enough to modify a HOST file then you can probably just tell them to point their DNS client at Google's anycast DNS servers which respect TTL.

See, even in this case there should be no reason to touch the hosts file on a client computer.

Where did you read that I was saying the hosts file is useless?

You equate development work with expecting your clients(!) to modify their hosts file to compensate for the idiocy of ISPs and "forum admins"? Give me a break and get back under your rock. Thank you.

Some ISPs ignore the TTL and cache DNS records for much longer. Sometimes days.

So the answer to stupidity is more stupidity. Great IT skills.

Also, what makes you think I have control over the TTL setting?

Well, your post I replied to? Duh..

I don't run the DNS

So you are tasked with the move of servers and you don't even control the DNS and you can't even coordinate with the "DNS people"?

and when I do have that setting available (e.g. at a registrar) I lower it to 300 seconds for the move and that still doesn't help everyone.

You know you have to lower the TTL and then wait for at least as long as the old TTL was?

It's not random clients either, it's members of forum communities and it works well for us.

They're random clients as far as your control over them is concerned.

Moral of the story: Bad IT at work. q.e.d.

I make use of the hosts file for various purposes, including getting my forum users set up with hosts file entries to the new server, beforehand, whenever our DNS entries are changing so they can still reach the forum while changes are propagating. THIS is a prime example of why the hosts file still exists and the behaviour should not be fucked with by those assclowns at Microsoft.

No, it's a prime example of a bad IT person. If you had any clue about what you're doing, you'd lower the TTL prior to making the change, then make the change, then change the TTL back to normal.

Expecting random clients to modify their config to compensate for your incompetence is just dumb.

Yes, done. Because rm ./* doesn't remove that, either.

Nice try, though.