Re: X-10 and like behaviour.

[David Shaw <dshaw () jabberwocky com>]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 02:13:53AM -0700, J.D. Falk wrote:
> On 07/18/01, George Michaelson <ggm () apnic net> wrote: 
>
> > Its probably not a big deal, and if selling bits on the wire makes money
> > "the more the merrier" might be a catch-cry but I wondered if there was
> > a NANOG dimension to these bloody irritating X-10 popups that curse me
> > more and more.
> >
> > Is there some well understood non-edge solution to this kind of crap
> > or do we all wind up rolling our own?
>
>       Reminds me a lot of the early days of fighting spam...though
>       a ban on popups has already been mentioned in the US Congress.

X10 offers an opt-out cookie, but the usual issues of scaling apply
when everyone and their brother start doing popups (opt-out from
hundreds of web sites?  Sure, whatever.)

There are a few windows programs that claim to block popups.  X10 even
recommends them for people who don't want to get their ads, which
surprised me since it pretty much admits that they know they're
harassing people to the point of installing special software just to
get some X10 ad relief.  Seems like a poor way to get name recognition
to me ("X10?  Oh yeah... they do those really annoying ads, and made
me buy special software just to be rid of them.  Ooh, I think I'll buy
something from them posthaste!").

I just did:

  echo "127.0.0.1 ads.x10.com" >> /etc/hosts

which solves half of the problem (I get an empty popup).

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  dshaw () jabberwocky com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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