[Leaplist] someone is trying to block FireFox

John Simpson jms1 at jms1.net
Sat Aug 18 20:31:15 EDT 2007 

On Friday 17 August 2007 20:02, Chris wrote:
>
> He's got a bad business model, and an abundance of ignorance.
> More contact won't sort that out. Only Darwin can.

i love this line... but i wonder, does darwin know where "catoosa,  
oklahoma" is? maybe it's my "big city bias" showing through, but the  
word "catoosa" sounds like a sleepy little back-woods town in the  
middle of nowhere...

On 2007-08-18, at 0853, Steve Litt wrote:
>
> His business proposition is that he'll give you free content if you  
> look at
> his ads. I see his point. Heck, Troubleshooters.Com operates on a  
> similar
> business proposition, except that the ads are for my own products  
> and they're
> not graphical.

speaking personally, it's the "graphical" part that upsets me. i  
don't use "adblock plus", but i do use the original "adblock", and i  
maintain my own list of domain names and URL fragments that i block.  
i generally don't mind google's text ads, in fact i have them at the  
bottom of my own web sites. however, the graphic ads, the animated  
ads, the flash ads with the embedded flash code that installs spyware  
and sends a copy of your entire browsing history back to the  
mothership, THAT i have a problem with.

> He has every right to block looky-loos who will never buy. Try  
> hanging around
> a car dealership day after day without purchasing, and see how  
> welcome they
> make you feel. Try sitting in a restaraunt the whole day without  
> buying, and
> see what happens.

and if i use something like privoxy to block the ads- there's no way  
he can detect that either. doesn't that mean that, if he's going to  
be true to his claim, he needs to start blocking everybody who uses  
ANY browser at all?

> The comment about theft is stupid hyperbole, but it doesn't change  
> the fact
> that he's got every right to do what he's doing. I commend him for  
> at least
> trying -- lesser men would give up and go on welfare.

sure, he's got the right to refuse to serve his web pages to firefox  
users. my web sites have been blocking IE for several years.

however, there's a difference. my reasons for blocking IE have to do  
with helping people protect themselves, and not have viruses and  
spammers taking over peoples' machines. i have no commercial interest  
in what browser you use. the closest i get to any kind of "commercial  
interest" is the fact that i have a google adsense ad at the bottom  
of the page, and a "download firefox" button which, if you click on  
it and then download firefox, google pays me a dollar. and the site  
even TELLS the user that i'll get a dollar, so there's no way anybody  
can say i'm trying to hide any kind of commercial interest.

if you're not using IE but you'd like to see what IE users see when  
they visit my page, here's the direct URL for the page they are  
redirected to. in fact, i just added a section replying to this  
joker's web page.

	http://www.jms1.net/ie.shtml

> My preceding four paragraphs defending his actions assume they're  
> his actions
> and not Microsoft's. Microsoft has a history of paying professional  
> writers
> to write letters to the editor simulating grassroots support of  
> Windows. I
> would not put it past Microsoft to pay webmasters to screen out  
> Mozilla. If
> Microsoft is paying this guy, I have a lot less sympathy for him.

if microsoft is paying this guy, i have ZERO sympathy for him. in  
fact, since his objection to firefox is purely commercial, i have  
very little sympathy for him. it's MY BROWSER, and if i don't want it  
to show me third-party ads, that's MY choice. you'll just have to  
find some other way to make money- maybe by creating better content  
in the first place?

you do, however, raise an interesting point- is this even a real  
person, or is this a made-up person that microsoft is using to put  
this anti-firefox web site out there? at first it appears that  
something is fishy- the "whois" data shows the web site owner's zip  
code as "75015", which is in texas rather than oklahoma.

however, the real zip code for catoosa, OK is 74015, so it was  
probably just a typo. and 918 IS the new area code for tulsa and the  
surrounding area, so that makes sense as well... and if you do a  
"whois" on "dannycarlton.net" (the owner's email address) it's a  
domain with the same contact info, which has existed for seven years.  
so i'd say this is a real person, rather than a microsoft strawman.

however, that doesn't say anything about whether or not microsoft is  
paying him to host the site, or the fact that he's a greedy scumbag  
either way. again, it's MY BROWSER, not yours.

if nothing else, seeing a redirect to this "whyfirefoxisblocked.com"  
page just tells me that the original page i was about to see was full  
of advertisements, and therefore probably full of javascript which  
would have tried to snoop around in the browser and/or my system, and  
send my personal information back to some advertising company.

he's actually doing people a SERVICE by keeping their browsers away  
from the potentially malicious content on his web pages.

> I'd also have a lot less symptathy for him if IE has its own ad- 
> blocker. I
> don't know -- does IE have its own ad-blocker?

there have always been third-party plug-ins for blocking ads...  
however most of the the ones which actually work add themselves to  
the "User-Agent" header, so the server can tell it's in there. look  
at the logs on your web site some time, you'll see that most of the  
"MSIE" agents have two, five, or more, other programs' names and  
version numbers tacked on to the end. here are some samples from my  
own web logs:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; AT&T CSM6.0;  
FunWebProducts; AT&T CSM8.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR  
1.1.4322; MEGAUPLOAD 2.0)

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322;  
IEMB3; IEMB3)

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; SIMBAR= 
{10E6402F-832B-49fa-8101-8D1B0550E84D}; InfoPath.2)

these are funny, because "FunWebProducts" and "MEGAUPLOAD" are both  
known to be spyware. and i don't recognize "IEMB3" but it must be  
important, it's in there twice.

and the last one's even more amusing- not only does it have  
"SIMBAR" (known adware), but it also has a unique identifier for the  
browser in which it's installed, presumably so they can tell which  
victim^Wbrowser requested the ads...

of course, IE isn't the only browser out there with "bad" add-ins.  
even if the guy we're talking about can't deal with the fact that the  
entire world doesn't run under IE7, the spyware vendors are starting  
to realize that people DO use other browsers...

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/ 
20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6;MEGAUPLOAD 1.0

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| John M. Simpson    ---   KG4ZOW   ---    Programmer At Large |
| http://www.jms1.net/                         <jms1 at jms1.net> |
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