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Last post Author Topic: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox  (Read 20778 times)

40hz

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #25 on: October 09, 2015, 06:39 AM »
Good to see you back 40hz.  :up:


Good to see you too!  :)

I don't post and blather on and on as much as I used to. But I do try to drop by very day or so and see what the crew is getting up to. And I'm always interested in the discussions that go on around here. DoCo is one of the few places I've ever encountered on the web where people actually have something worthwhile to say - and say it well they do!  :Thmbsup:

IainB

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #26 on: October 09, 2015, 10:38 AM »
Okay, this is not "Devil's Advocate" because I think she is *partly* right. And I think we're at risk here of "glossing over her well tuned language". I'm just gonna put stuff in quotes because I don't feel like scissoring parts of the original.

1. To begin this discussion with respect, *spell her name correctly*. (I like to joke it was 5% of my old job because I have an eye towards these things.) Its *Denelle*. Not "Danielle". And then the last part of you calling her "Dixon-Fire" is just ad hominem. ...

By all means @TaoPhoenix, go half-Devil's-advocate or whatever it is you intend to mean there, but please don't accuse me of ad hominem. Argumentum ad hominem is defined as a logical fallacy - an argument against the person - rather than a reasoned argument against the point being debated. I would never intentionally employ that fallacy, as it is one step towards the abandonment of reason.

I would make four points about your remarks there:
  • 1. You might consider that you know better than I what I was doing, but as far as I was aware I was intending neither debating a point nor putting forward any particular argument. If you think I was, then you are confused. Thus, saying that I was making an argumentum ad hominem would rather seem to be inapplicable and a mistake of relevance.

  • 2. In fact I was very simply mocking the post, having a Yorkshireman's typical zero tolerance for people who utter facile BS and doublespeak (please call a spade "a spade") and for people attempting to tell me what to think. Therefore, if you are unable to see that it was mockery, then you have my sympathies.

  • 3. I also have a Yorkshireman's typical zero tolerance for people who make the mistake of sporting silly, jumped-up or affected or pretentious names or double-barrelled surnames without anticipating potential consequences/mockery of same from schoolboy humourists at least, and who make what seem to be egregiously poor BS and doublespeak posts for all the public to see. They must expect some comment - indeed are inviting comment - and mockery is fair comment and free speech. If one puts oneself in the coconut-shy, then one should be unsurprised if people throw balls at oneself.

  • 4. If someone would seem to take it upon themselves to be the arbiter of free speech in the apparently mistaken belief (QED) that free speech is whatever they decide it is, and then advised me to censor my speech accordingly, regardless, then have I got news for them. The most polite way I can put this just now, and without wishing to offend the reader's finer sensibilities, is in the words of Rhett Butler: "Quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

I think you seem to have started off with a couple of wrong premises, so your comments might kind of gone downhill from thereon.
For example, where you write:
"We are trying to get to the root of the problem – but not just through research. We are also working to develop products, features and engagement supporting a great user experience and commercial sustainability."

This is very nearly completely correct!
:tellme:

From experience (see the spoiler), I would suggest that you may have just been suckered.
Spoiler
At one point in my "career" I spent 4 years as a product manager and senior marketing consultant with a large computer company called EDS, where, because I had studied Marketing 101 and was interested in the subject, they gave me 6 months training in the theory and application of something called the Holden VBM Methodology (VBM = Value-Based Marketing), and then let me loose to guide the development of marketing strategy for two of their business units in the Asia-Pacific region - Finance & Banking, and Healthcare. F&B was pretty straightforward, so I trained up a promising junior to deal with that, which released me to focus on Healthcare, which was a relatively new and complex market that EDS was entering.

One of the things I had to do was develop a marketing communications plan, which detailed things like the purpose, medium, audience and feedback collection that we needed for all the communications messages that we needed to put out to develop the market in a planned direction. A fairly complex task. Part of that involved the Healthcare services group feeding me with material for things like press releases and brochures, and I led the team that sorted through all this material and decided on the plan and delivery of marketing communications. We systematically filtered out any redundancy, clichés, buzzwords and other BS, because our target audiences (which included cabinet ministers, the Minister of Public Health, surgeons, hospital CEOs, doctors and nurses) were relatively very sophisticated and would see right through it and that would then devalue the currency of the messaging (what we had to say), in their eyes.
Furthermore, they would not have appreciated being spoken at as though they were gullible idiots. You actually only get one shot at doing this right the first time. Once devalued, restoring the perceived value of our messaging would have been like climbing a vertical sheet of smooth steel greased with butter - i.e., impossible. So we did lots of dry run testing on sample and guinea-pig audience members.

The end result was that we had a Healthcare communications lexicon, and our messaging spoke only of substantive facts - e.g., defined deliverables, quantified, achievable tangible cost-benefits - and did not confuse benefits with features, and used no meaningless value-judgements, clichés/buzzwords/BS.
So the lexicon expressly excluded terms such as, for example,  Agile, better, great, good, bad, best practice, global best practice, thought leadership, white space, excited (and variants), zero-sum, bottom line, responsible (used "accountable" instead), engagement, problem (unless very specific), user experience, sustainable (and variants), opportunity, investment, etc. (and lots more besides).


I say this because because the lexicon (see spoiler) that we used excluded several of the terms used in that sentence that you state is "...very nearly completely correct!". In my view, it is in fact far from being a satisfactorily cohesive statement.

Let's analyse it a bit:
  • "We are trying to get to the root of the problem..." - yet the problem is apparently undefined/unspecified, so good luck with finding the root. This would seem to be BS.
    Is the problem the "...users who choose to block content as a way to control their Web experience" or the debate about them "... and the commercial interests who monetize that content." How can a debate be a problem? Simple. Remove the debate then. Maybe the idiots blocking their content need to be made to see the light of day?

  • "– but not just through research." Eh? So it's not going to be a fully scientific approach with theory matched with observations. That could make for a novel approach. This would seem to be BS.

  • "We are also working to develop products, features and engagement supporting a great user experience and commercial sustainability." What on earth does that mean? "We're going to suck some ideas out of our thumbs and see if anything that tuns up can be helpful?" But oh! Those cliché alerts: "engagement", "great", "user experience", "commercial sustainability". The only one I could suggest a real meaning for is the last one, possibly relating to either revenue, or profit, or both, but it's not clear whether that would be referring to Mozilla revenue/profit or the advertisers, or some other entity. And this would not be any purely accidental string of words, it would seem to have been very deliberate and purposeful.
    Somebody would seem to have gone to great pains to make this BS up in such a way as to be as inoffensive as possible whilst ameliorating the truth of whatever they could actually be intending to mean under the surface. It's called "softening the approach" where there's some bad news about to be (possibly reluctantly) delivered.
    This would seem to be BS and/or deliberate and purposeful obfuscation.
    ____________________________

Now I could be wrong, of course, but if I had thought that the post warranted more serious discussion by me, then rest assured that I would not have mocked it. I couldn't not mock it, given that it was such a gobsmacking LOL moment for me when I read it. Brought tears to me eyes. Absolutely classic.

But I did post it because I thought it might be worth reading or even discussing by others in the forum. So by all means do discuss it, and aim some valid comments at me if you see fit, but please @TaoPhoenix, don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs in the process.

IainB

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #27 on: October 09, 2015, 02:16 PM »
Having done some more thinking and pondering upon what seems likely to be the real causal problem that Mozilla don't seem able to define, I recalled this comment I posted in another thread on the DC Forum. Reading that, the problem seems to be revenue/profit, or more precisely the existing de facto business model that advertisers are connected to by an umbilical cord:
Quite coincidentally, I saw this in my bazqux fee-reader this morning. Looks like a pretty accurate analysis of some of the main problems/issues: Ad Blockers and the Nuisance at the Heart of the Modern Web - The New York Times
...
_______________________

The article at the link would seem to be based on what is arguably a not unreasonable assumption that the existing de facto business models used by ISPs and advertisers will likely continue and/or be reinforced by anticipated potential changes in a pricing regime, and that the ISPs would intend to plan for that because it will be easy "money for nothing" (i.e., they will not have not added any value/service).
However, the art of the possible might have already thwarted such possible plans, by demonstrating that there are alternative business models and pricing regimes that could come into play. This point struck home to me when I posted the comment LINE - the txt chat/audiocall/videocall friend contacts VoIP you always needed?

If you read the Wikipedia info - Line (application) - Wikipeda - you will see that LINE was created as an emergency response to replace a crippled telecommunications infrastructure after the Japanese earthquakes and tsunami in 2011. As such, there would have been little or no thought given to making revenue from it at the time. However, by offering it as a free service to the public, and then getting it subsidised by advertising revenue and with an emphasis on the needs of the user as a user, it has a business model that would seem to be quite different to the de facto business model of other "social networks" where the user is a tool whose demographic data is intentionally collected, copyrighted and then sold as such (monetised).
LINE would seem to be a disruptive technology and a potential existential threat to the business models of the market status quo.
========================

So, it occurred to me that Mozilla might be so locked in to, or might have so bought in to the existing de facto business model and to such an extent that they are unable (or are not allowed) to see or to take advantage of anything else. If that were the case, then Mozilla might literally be "unable to think outside the box". The LINE case study could perhaps point the way to a more relevant and adaptable business model for Mozilla's future.

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #28 on: October 09, 2015, 09:52 PM »
Well lain, remind me to hedge my bets if you are ever opposite me in a debate competition!

But then we might be on to a fantastic discussion with you on the other side.

Crucial to my point: If they actually used the *English words as a guide* and not some of any of eleven ways to "not do what they said".

That is all too often what happens. Then your comments kick in full power.

But "what does that even mean"? ... If they DID IT, it means lots of cool things.

The prob is we don't trust them to "do what they say". That's the real problem. The statement, when read in cold hard English, almost works. It's the "Let's ditch it" factor we don't like.

Well Tuned Language. Besides it comes off slick (which it is), it weakens even further progress by the Mock factor.

If they *actually* wanted to make "products blah blah", I am DYING to see that Ad Dropdown bar. But they won't. So mock all you want, just slightly change the vector of the mocking.

« Last Edit: October 09, 2015, 10:06 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #29 on: October 09, 2015, 10:06 PM »
RIP Grandma.

But if we *slowly* analyze the remarks *word by word* they almost make sense ... word by word and not as "biz speak to be ignored".

It's a strange case of "if we take every word to be literal" it almost works.

We're involved on several layers of Meta-Guessing, but AS IS, the "words almost work".

Let's make up a product. Firefox Blaze edition. Screams on Video, recaptures bad mem allocations on the fly every hour, frees up 200k per hour, 22% faster on other stuff, checks for FF clones, warns about mem overloads, or something.

If they actually DID that, then every line of the blog falls into line. "By the way, you're running two FF clones, two copies of Plugin, and random other stuff, so that might be why your sys is struggling."

That's research. But it would take a brand new product to do it, and then that data stays LOCAL to that project and doesn't get sold to 44 other groups. (Where our distrust half comes from).



IainB

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Re: User mocks Firefox
« Reply #30 on: October 10, 2015, 08:15 AM »
^^ Yes, "if they actually did that" it could be great, however, judging by past performance I'd be non too sanguine. I mean, how many times do they have to be allowed to defecate in one's browser before one says "Hang on a minute!"?
For all we know, that BS post could be Mozilla softening us up with a polite advance warning that they are about to defecate all over us Big Time, and by the way there's nothing we can do about it.

As I'm typing this I look at the sodding compulsory Read Later (Pocket) dropdown button which is taking up useful space in the URL bar. I've subscribed to RIL/Pocket for years, but most of the time it's a disabled overhead because I don't need the thing ON all the time. Now I can't switch this compulsory thing OFF.

I know, I know. I should just shut up and accept it, because Mozilla knows best what is for the greater good, or something. They love me - I know that because Danielle Dixon-Fire tells me they love me, because I am central to their being, or something - I'm one of their cherished suckers Users.
Yeah, right.

f0dder

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #31 on: October 13, 2015, 07:36 AM »
As I'm typing this I look at the sodding compulsory Read Later (Pocket) dropdown button which is taking up useful space in the URL bar. I've subscribed to RIL/Pocket for years, but most of the time it's a disabled overhead because I don't need the thing ON all the time. Now I can't switch this compulsory thing OFF.
Right-click, "Remove from toolbar", done.

I do wish that Mozilla would stop pushing stuff like that and the chat thingy on us, though. Built-in PDF reader and "Reader View"? Sure, pretty useful. 3rd-party services? Offer via (optional) addons.
- carpe noctem

IainB

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #32 on: October 13, 2015, 09:09 AM »
As I'm typing this I look at the sodding compulsory Read Later (Pocket) dropdown button which is taking up useful space in the URL bar. I've subscribed to RIL/Pocket for years, but most of the time it's a disabled overhead because I don't need the thing ON all the time. Now I can't switch this compulsory thing OFF.
Right-click, "Remove from toolbar", done.
I do wish that Mozilla would stop pushing stuff like that and the chat thingy on us, though. Built-in PDF reader and "Reader View"? Sure, pretty useful. 3rd-party services? Offer via (optional) addons.
_____________________
You say "Right-click, "Remove from toolbar", done.", but no, I already tried that. The menu item Remove from toolbar is greyed-out, and if you switch to "Cusomise, it's still greyed-out. I also tried a hack to disable it in about:config, but it doesn't seem to have worked. That sucker is persistent as all heck, and made deliberately so in the code, by Mozilla.
Oooh! That's odd! I wonder what we might be able to infer from that?    :tellme:

f0dder

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #33 on: October 13, 2015, 09:28 AM »
That sucker is persistent as all heck, and made deliberately so in the code, by Mozilla.
Got a source code reference that backs up this claim? :)

Oooh! That's odd! I wonder what we might be able to infer from that?    :tellme:
That something is weird with your browser? Works fine here, both on Windows and OSX.

EDIT: Since I needed to test stuff in IE9 and had to whip up a clean Modern.IE VM for that, I installed a fully fresh and add-on free Firefox just for the heck of it  - and both Pocket and Hello could be removed from the toolbar by right-clicking. Of course the stuff is still installed, which I'd prefer it not to be, but it's gone from the toolbar.
- carpe noctem
« Last Edit: October 13, 2015, 10:00 AM by f0dder »

J-Mac

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Re: Ad Industry Attacks Firefox
« Reply #34 on: October 13, 2015, 12:26 PM »
Try  http://www.howtogeek...pocket-from-firefox/ for instructions.

Also there is an add-on called "Disable Hello, Pocket & Reader+" that I've seen people post works well.  https://addons.mozil...ocket-reader/?src=ss

Jim