name and shame man

I've never found a still valid lottery ticket on the ground.

But somehow they were still behind in Manhattan

Actually that took you 150 chars, considering your character count was part of your point. Better luck next time. [127 chars]

Ok, just change the criteria to "Once something has achieved sentience, it is no longer moral to abort/take that away".

Problem Solved?

It seems like a bad idea because it would result in a tyranny of the majority.

Just trying to pick some things that aren't super controversial as an example here, (since bringing up religion or Israel/Palestine is going to derail this thought experiment): properly elected representative world government would probably vote to ban pornography, or marijuana, and I don't want this.
Both of these things are very much legal where I live.

You could address it by writing a well thought out and intellectual world constitution and system of checks and balances though of course. I'd probably be down for one-world government if this could happen, if for no other reason than to finally escape dysfunctional (by western representative elected government standards) United States political system.

How you pick out and establish this constitution? Tell me how you would address *that* specific problem.

Fine. As well they should.

They advertiser can work this out with the website the same way I would have worked it out with the Miami Herald in 1955. Frankly, I'm not sure if that was trusting the newspaper's ad sales department to be not fraudulent when reporting circulation numbers, or if there was an industry group like Nielsen that verified such things or made estimates based on 3rd party polling.

Whatever the method, plenty of ad sales were made, and everyone was happy, and I know it didn't involve 100% tracking of individual readers. Alexa can either adjust the model that they have to account for the growing number of people who block their web bugs, come up with a new process or model entirely, or die in a fire. I don't particularly care. Life went on before all of this big brother tracking shit, and it will go on after it is defeated, or at least marginalized.

No question that it does present a risk, and it's fair to discuss how to mitigate that.

I propose that they can go about it the same way they do in the newspaper industry, it would be fraud for the New York Times or my local free newspaper claim a larger circulation than they really have when negotiate ad sales. I see why no reason why websites wouldn't have to present Alexa type statistics to back up their claim.

Taking out ads on some sketchy Eastern European hosted link farm should be viewed just as skeptically as calling up a Bulgarian local paper and trusting their staff to give you accurate circulation statistics and demographics about their village. i.e don't be xenophobic about it, but realize that there might be some incentive to take advantage of your ad money, and negotiate according to your risk tolerance level.

Download at your own risk indeed. I was curious so I opened a VM with a fresh IE install (no Adblocking) and chose the download.com link for VLC.

Download.com is reputable enough anyway, right? Long history with cnet serving up shareware and all that?

http://i.imgur.com/l8n2ScB.png

WHICH OF THE DAMN DOWNLOAD BUTTONS OPENS ACTUALLY GETS ME VLC?!?!

Obviously I know, but my dad doesn't, and that's why I have no sympathy for online advertisers.

They could just host the ads first party based on CPM statistics like a god damn newspaper, but then they would have to do actual work instead of plugging in some 3rd party malware laden ad engine.

I would have thought the crossover between people who used AdBlock and knew what the hell to do with a .torrent file would have been higher. I wonder how much money they made.

I recently found out (perhaps a bit naively) that there were ads on YouTube, too. It turns out I'd literally been using AdBlock Plus so long that it predated my ever using that site (or at least whenever they introduced ads). Turns out YouTube is a real shit experience when you use it as intended, as I found on my smartphone.

This will be surprising to you I'm sure, but it turns you actually *can't* walk outside in Buffalo, put a finger in the air, and say anything definitive about the weather in Tahiti or Dubai or Moscow or Los Angeles.

Pic related: http://i.imgur.com/lZ7C4nY.jpg

Sell it to me then, jesus. I'll happily pay a yearly subscription to Gmail if they remove all ads and data mining and don't fuck with the interface too much.

I'm adblocking anyway but I'm sure they are still churning away at my data.

Genuinely asking: Not having tried either of these services, how did they solve the problem of vetting the drivers so the public is safe?

One of my favorites is, often employed by CNN, is to disrespect the dead by turning them into clickbait if they aren't 'famous enough'.

They will post links like "60s rocker dies" or "NFL legend passes" but only if the celeb is middling famous. Like Michael Jackson or Joan Rivers will get their actual name in the link, but if you're not up to their arbitrary threshold you'll just be "Actor from James Bond movies dies".

You can mouse over the link to see who without giving them the click, as they always leave the real name in the URL