I expected that new installs would have Yahoo as the default, but I didn't expect them to change settings on already installed and configured browsers. Nobody with any brains or ethics changes settings on someone else's computer without permission. It's just wrong.

Exactly. You simply don't change settings on someone else's computer unless they ask you to.

Who else is hurt by it? Their stockholders? They OWN Sony. The employees? They ARE Sony. Playstation owners? Serves them right for buying Sony equipment.

There are no innocents here.

Sony is hardly a "little old lady" and ruining someone's computer is hardly "cutting someone off"; it's a felony that should have been prosecuted, but wasn't. The guy who burglarized my house a couple of years ago is lucky the cops caught him before I did.

If Sony had repaid me for the damage and apologized I would forgive them, but if you want something from me you have to ASK. They didn't.

Again, fuck Sony, I wouldn't feel sorry for the asshole who broke into my house if someone broke into his. And I don't feel sorry for Sony.

Actually when I read, especially something by a good writer, it is like Total recall; I get immersed. And I don't think I'd want to use that machine for a virtual vacation!

Have you seen Asimov's Dreaming is a private thing? It's in his anthology Earth is Room Enough. All I could find on the internet was a pdf; there is an intro by someone else.

It was 10 years ago.

So what? They have shown no indication that they will become less evil. Why would you buy computer equipment from a company willing to hack its customers?

Lots of large companies do lots of suspect things and you never hear about it.

I'll know about it if I'm one of their victims. And, so it's "well, everybody else shoplifts and teases nerds, why shouldn't I?" Just because someone else is being evil gives you no right to be evil as well.

You might think its karma for Sony getting hacked but what about all the innocent people who get hurt too?

I don't believe in karma, and I was one of the innocent people Sony's hacking hurt. If Sony's stockholders get hurt, GOOD. Owning Sony stock is evil. Their employees? What is a company, but its employees? Would you work for the Cosa Nostra just because they were hiring? Then why would you take a position with them?

Hacking Sony harms no innocents. If you work for them, you're part of the problem. If you own stock you're the biggest part of the problem.

Why are defending evil? Are you a Sony employee?

Sony's sins go far beyond XCP and OtherOS.

A simple mark and sweep would solve the recursion issue. Hash table of places you've visited, although it's tough to say if it should be by domain or by URL. If by domain you may only click once per ad network. If by URL, you could still hit recursion if a page generates random URIs. A recursion depth of 1 seems easier to implement than any of that though, requiring that each page load be configured to either apply the clickspoofing feature or not apply the clicking feature.

One of the most popular browsers is controlled by an advertising company, I'm not sure how popular such an extension could become.

But yes, if we add lots more clicks that can never be converted to every page visit that will dilute the value of clicks. I think it's brilliant, but it is an arms race. And there is a better infrastructure for advertisers to use a cost per action model, I could imagine them all jumping over there if cost per click model is exploited.

Perhaps automatically ordering something with an invalid credit card number could make CPA less compelling, but that might be considered wire fraud. I'm not sure if it would be feasible to prosecute millions of people for thousands of spoofed orders, at least not feasible in criminal court (you can't do class action suits for crimes). Maybe the plugin author could be sued for damages in civil court though.

These kids have my thanks, as does North Korea. Sony hacked my computer with the XCP trojan they loaded on a music CD my daughter bought at the record store she worked at. So any time Sony is hacked, I cheer and hope the attackers do a lot of expensive damage.

Yes, over ten years ago and I'm still enraged over it. Someone should have gone to prison for that.

Fuck that evil God damned Sony and the ass it rode in on, the fucking bastards. DIE, SONY, DIE!!!

I think losing keys, at least outside, is worse. especially in the winter.

Actually, I'm having the time of my life.

If I had to choose (which I don't) between the life of those cows and the ignorant dirt bags that have by any definition tortured those cows. I would still preserve human life. That's not to say those people don't deserve to be in prison. But in the culture I was raised in, the same culture that you yourself live in (whether you like it or not) considers taking a human life to be taboo. We're a complex society, so we have a lot of exceptions to that taboo, but cows are food and humans are my peers.

We should be very careful about killing even the worst human beings. And I can't think of any situation today where it would be acceptable to execute a person to punish them for torturing an animal. Nor can I think of a situation where a snap decision between saving an animal and a human being would allow you to evaluate a human's worth in a nuanced enough way to choose the animal's life first.

As for your final comments. You need to be a little more rigorous on the accurate of your information sources. Perhaps diversify. As there are plenty of examples where animal experimentation are a vital training tool.