Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Drag the mouse to frame what you want to keep, and press Ctrl+Y. I
| don't deny that finding that it's Ctrl+Y can be troublesome, but it's
| an operation I do often so i remember it.
|
| Me too, but it's also there under the Edit menu.

I think that's a good reminder of a golden rule with
MS: Windows provides a GUI way to do nearly anything.
That's why it's "Windows".
It also provides a keyboard way to do nearly anything.
That's partly left over from the DOS days and partly an
issue of accessibility. It also comes in handy when
there's a problem with the mouse.

So if you can do it with keyboard you can almost
certainly find a menu (and a context menu) that does
the same thing. And if it's on the menu then it's very
likely available via keyboard. Unfortunately, the latter
is not self-explanatory.

Keyboard is usually not practical except for people
who always use keyboard, but the option is almost
always there.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"Java Jive" wrote

| Thanks for that. The question now is, why didn't I spot that for
| myself? My recollection is that previously I found a dialog that asked
| me to key in the dimensions I wanted to crop to, but I can't find *that*
| now!
|

Maybe you're remembering the resize tool window?
That's got a lot of options. But if you had auto-crop
you'd need to know which area to crop. I think of that
because I wrote such a program, for people who want
to crop to a particular ratio, like 5x7. It gives them 6
choices: start at any corner, or center it, or mount the
image on a backing of a chosen color. But there would
normally be no "default" crop region after you enter
something like 500x700 pixels.

IrfanView also has a different sort of auto-crop: remove borders. IIRR,
you can vary the amount of variation within the border that counts as a
border. Useful if someone's uploaded a scan of something smaller than
their scanner's full scanning area, or if you want to removing the
border on old prints (I tend to keep it as it's historical).

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." - unknown

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| Drag the mouse to frame what you want to keep, and press Ctrl+Y. I
| don't deny that finding that it's Ctrl+Y can be troublesome, but it's
| an operation I do often so i remember it.
|
| Me too, but it's also there under the Edit menu.

I think that's a good reminder of a golden rule with
MS: Windows provides a GUI way to do nearly anything.
That's why it's "Windows".

Agreed.

It also provides a keyboard way to do nearly anything.

That's a lot more variable - depends on the individual software author.

That's partly left over from the DOS days and partly an
issue of accessibility. It also comes in handy when

I doubt there are anywhere near as many prosecutions for inaccessibility
as there should be (web pages being the worst offenders of course).

there's a problem with the mouse.

Indeed.

So if you can do it with keyboard you can almost
certainly find a menu (and a context menu) that does
the same thing. And if it's on the menu then it's very
likely available via keyboard. Unfortunately, the latter
is not self-explanatory.

No, at least it often isn't; a lot of the things I use in IrfanView,
such as crop (ctrl-Y) and colo[u]r tweak (shift-G) aren't. Presumably,
because you soon run out of the obvious ones - he does use R for rotate
right, L for left, F for fit window toggle ...

Keyboard is usually not practical except for people
who always use keyboard, but the option is almost
always there.

Hmm. Not sure I'd agree there. Maybe you'd class me as "always use
keyboard", but ... for example, in IV, I'd use the mouse (or touchpad)
to select an area, then Ctrl-Y rather than the Edit menu to crop to it.


--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." - unknown

In message , Wolf K
writes:
On 2019-03-06 09:47, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
[...]
IrfanView also has a different sort of auto-crop: remove borders.
IIRR, you can vary the amount of variation within the border that
counts as a border. Useful if someone's uploaded a scan of something
smaller than their scanner's full scanning area, or if you want to
removing the border on old prints (I tend to keep it as it's historical).


I can adjust the scanned area in Preview mode on my Canon 9000 % Mark
II. AFAIK, all current flatbeds have this feature.

Yes, I know and agree. (Several even do it automatically.) But not
everybody knows how to use it, so you occasionally come across a
post/upload where someone hasn't done it. Or, where for some "artistic"
reason an image has a border, that you don't want.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." - unknown

"Mayayana" on Mon, 4 Mar 2019 14:19:38 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"Ken Blake" wrote


In general, how many applications you have open hardly matters. Much
more important is what applications they are, and especially whether
they are doing something at the moment.


Not necessarily. Pale Moon is using 150 MB RAM here just to
sit there. Firefox is similar. And they're the older versions that
don't run each instance in a separate process. If you have
40 tabs open, doing nothing, in recent vintage Firefox, you'll
still have each one loading independent instances of at least
some parts of the program.

On the other hand, visual Studio 6 (VB) loaded with a
large project loaded is using 1/8th as much RAM. Even
with the additional load of the entire MSDN help system it's
using about 1/5 of what FF takes to sit there. And I
still have more than 2/3 of my 3+ GB free.

I suspect many of the people who complain about RAM
are running bloated browsers with loads of tabs open,
in which they're logged into various sites like Google
or Facebook, and allowing videos to load in pages they're
not even looking at. Most people also don't block auto-refresh.
So things like news sites are reloading the whole thing
every few minutes.
Tabs have arguably been a disaster in that sense, making
it easy for people to keep a multitude of webpages open at
once, for no reason, at a time when webpages have become
amazingly bloated. A few years ago 100 KB was too big to load.
Now a single page that loads 20 MB is not unusual. That's
bigger than most software programs.

I use multiple tabs for one thing - mostly. Reading the comics. I
find it "simpler" to just "open all in tabs" for six comics. I can
start reading "right away" and the others can finish loading.

--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"Mayayana" on Mon, 4 Mar 2019 09:54:44 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:

| The same reason you probably
| have 5 rusty old fans in your attic. Hopefully you don't
| buy a toboggan that you need to store.
|
| My hobby is buying stuff at garage sales, fixing it up nice and storing
| it in the attic.
| We probably wouldn't get along...

We might. At least I'd know who to ask if I
needed to replace a broken bakelite handle on a
1950 toaster.

But that's getting to be a difficult hobby. Everything
is made disposable these days. I hate to throw
out toaster ovens and DVD players, but it's more
expensive to fix them, if it's even possible. We talk
about global warming but more things are disposable
than ever before, there's more unnecessary packaging
than ever before, and the economy depends on it
more than ever before.

And the packaging needs tools to get into. Doesn't matter, charge
for the cell phone, salad greens, bag o' chips/nuts/cookies. I've
carried a knife for years, in part because of this.

--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| Tabs have arguably been a disaster in that sense, making
| it easy for people to keep a multitude of webpages open at
| once, for no reason, at a time when webpages have become
| amazingly bloated. A few years ago 100 KB was too big to load.
| Now a single page that loads 20 MB is not unusual. That's
| bigger than most software programs.
|
| I use multiple tabs for one thing - mostly. Reading the comics. I
| find it "simpler" to just "open all in tabs" for six comics. I can
| start reading "right away" and the others can finish loading.
|

It's easy enough to check how much load that is. I was
thinking more of the kind of people who complain on the
mozilla newsgroup about crashes and overuse of RAM. Then
it turns out they have 100+ tabs open. And they don't know
to block auto-refresh. And they don't know to block Flash
or script or ads. So there's not only the load of all those
pages -- which no software should be expected to handle --
but there's also the load of operations running in those
loaded pages. They might have a newspaper front page loading
every few minutes for the whole day, despite never actually
looking at it.

The real problem is just plain old slovenliness.
But it's an easy habit for people to get into when they can
just keep adding tabs without it getting in the way of
browsing. And it's not realistic to expect the majority of
people to block the various memory-hungry scams and
nonsense that typically happen by default. I've seen
pages on friends' computers running 6+ news videos on
a page, without asking.

On 3/7/2019 6:19 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| Tabs have arguably been a disaster in that sense, making
| it easy for people to keep a multitude of webpages open at
| once, for no reason, at a time when webpages have become
| amazingly bloated. A few years ago 100 KB was too big to load.
| Now a single page that loads 20 MB is not unusual. That's
| bigger than most software programs.
|
| I use multiple tabs for one thing - mostly. Reading the comics. I
| find it "simpler" to just "open all in tabs" for six comics. I can
| start reading "right away" and the others can finish loading.
|

It's easy enough to check how much load that is. I was
thinking more of the kind of people who complain on the
mozilla newsgroup about crashes and overuse of RAM. Then
it turns out they have 100+ tabs open. And they don't know
to block auto-refresh. And they don't know to block Flash
or script or ads. So there's not only the load of all those
pages -- which no software should be expected to handle --
but there's also the load of operations running in those
loaded pages. They might have a newspaper front page loading
every few minutes for the whole day, despite never actually
looking at it.

The real problem is just plain old slovenliness.
But it's an easy habit for people to get into when they can
just keep adding tabs without it getting in the way of
browsing. And it's not realistic to expect the majority of
people to block the various memory-hungry scams and
nonsense that typically happen by default. I've seen
pages on friends' computers running 6+ news videos on
a page, without asking.


That's certainly a factor, but I wouldn't put all the blame
on stupid users.
More and more websites detect ad blockers and refuse content
unless you disable them.

You can get your panties in a twist, close the page and go
look elsewhere for content. Or you can just turn off the blocker
and get on with life.

It doesn't take 100 tabs to cripple a system.
I was messing around with desktop sharing on my local network.
The remote defaulted
to EDGE browser. Took only a few tabs to use up all the free 2GB of RAM.
Disk activity was 100%, I assume managing paging in and out.
System responsiveness was near zero.

Providing content costs money. Content suppliers use every opportunity
to get revenue 'cause users won't pay directly for it.

Anyhoo...
If you have a way to make the content provider think you're not using
an ad blocker, I'm interested.

"Mike"

| That's certainly a factor, but I wouldn't put all the blame
| on stupid users.

Stupid is your word, not mine. It's not easy to
configure a browser. It is easy to not open 100
browser windows, but tabs makes it easy not to
notice.

| More and more websites detect ad blockers and refuse content
| unless you disable them.
|

I haven't seen that yet. Their guards require javascript.

I haven't seen an ad to speak of in decades. And I've
never run an adblocker. I just use a modest HOSTS file
with about 300 entries. Many of those are not even
for ads, but for privacy. If anyone puts an ad on their
site I'll see it. I've never blocked ads. If they want to let
google/doubleclick load a spyware iframe then, no,
that's not going to happen. Since virtually all ads are
3rd-party spyware, I don't see them.

But that's really a minor issue. The issue is the combination
of multi-pronged sloppiness and ignorance: Opening 100 tabs.
Not blocking auto refresh. Not blocking Flash. Not curtailing
script. Not closing windows for things like Facebook or gmail.
And finally, assuming it's Mozilla's fault when that mess crashes.

All I'm saying is that it takes some effort to be at your
RAM limit with 3 GB, unless you're doing something like
editing video. There's no need to ever get close to needing
so much RAM. And too many browser tabs seems to be one
of the biggest culprits. You just said that yourself, above.
You said you need more RAM because browsers are hungry.
And you said you need 64-bit because browsers are not
happy enough with 3-4 GB. But I often run both FF and PM
at the same time and never have issues. You don't need to
block all ads. Just close tabs when you're done with them.

| It doesn't take 100 tabs to cripple a system.
| I was messing around with desktop sharing on my local network.
| The remote defaulted
| to EDGE browser. Took only a few tabs to use up all the free 2GB of RAM.
| Disk activity was 100%, I assume managing paging in and out.
| System responsiveness was near zero.
|

I mentioned 100 because that was typical in the mozilla
newsgroup. It sounds like your case is altogether different.
Win10 32-bit? Why only 2 GB RAM? Why would you use
Edge in the first place? And if disk activity is constant,
while RAM is at its limit, you obviously have something else
going on besides "only a few" browser windows. There's
no reason for disk activity in your description. And a few
websites can't be using 2 GB RAM.

| Providing content costs money. Content suppliers use every opportunity
| to get revenue 'cause users won't pay directly for it.
|
| Anyhoo...
| If you have a way to make the content provider think you're not using
| an ad blocker, I'm interested.

As I said above, I don't use an ad blocker. Only a
HOSTS file. And I limit javascript to what's absolutely
necessary. Most pages load almost instantly. The
function to detect ad blockers is, itself, more script.
So they can't check for an adblocker if they can't
run script. How does an adblocker actually work?
I don't know. I would guess it monitors whether you
load specific images. But it can't do that until you load
the page, and even then it would require script. As you
probably know, when you visit a site the browser makes
a GET call for the link, such as index.html. It then loads
that and code/links in the page tell the browser to load
other stuff. At that point it's usually all going to be
running on your computer. You allowed the browser
to download loads of script and images and the script
itself is controlling what you see. The page, without
CSS or script, cannot be blocked by the website or
by anything on your end. If you see something like
a panel pop up to block the page, that's not the
website doing that. It has to be script on your end,
dynamically changing CSS or downloading an image.

They can't do anything until you've loaded
that first page. So I'm guessing the ad-blocker
blockers are probably depending on some kind of script
feedback that tells them, "OK, the Doubleclick code just
ran successfully. This visitor is OK." And if the page
script doesn't get the feedback then the script in the
page messes with you by doing something like scripting
CSS to put a big opaque panel in front of the page
text that says,
"Pretty please. We are suffering because you blocked
script. You are a criminal and a mean person. Please
let Google, along with everyone and his brother, spy
on you and show you Viagra ads so that we can feed
our kids tonight." And you think, "Whoa! Isn't that clever!
They blocked me!" But it's all done with script running
in the browser on your end.

Script has become a very big problem. Not only in terms
of security, which has always been a problem. But now
it's also a big problem for privacy, bloat, and the general
trend toward "push" webpages. That's the dream of many
commercial sites. They want you to accept a dynamic
broadcast rather than download a static webpage. Script
is making that possible. The result, on the rare
occasions I actually see it, is stunning to me. How do
people tolerate all that stuff jumping, sliding around,
popping up, etc?

Recently I had occasion to use reddit for the first time.
When I log in I have to allow the script from their domains.
I block all other script. I haven't seen any ads. The site
works fine. I haven't seen any warnings about accepting ads.
I don't know if it would be different if I had an adblocker.

Some sites have tried blocking anyone without script
enabled. Forbes.com did that for awhile. Even the text on
the page was embedded in script. So essentially you couldn't
see their site without allowing them to run a software
program on your computer. So I dropped going to Forbes.
Recently I noticed their site works again. Not very well.
Their page design is a mess. But for some reason they
stopped requiring script. In any case, I can easily live
without Forbes.com. For me it was just a 3rd-string news
site that I went to occasionally.

Many people say it's not realistic to block script. If
you're a gmailing Facebookie and Amazoniac then I'd
agree. Some things just don't work without script. For
me it's mostly not a problem. If it was I'd still use NoScript.

As I said, I don't block ads and never did, except way
back in the 90s. If a site needs to show ads to pay their
way I'm not stopping them. But that's not what they're doing.
Instead they sign up with Google and let Google's spyware
take over their website. Then Google sends them their cut.
They have no right to send me to Google when I visit their
domain. I have no sympathy whatsoever. Let them go
out of business.

On 3/7/2019 10:38 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Mike"

| That's certainly a factor, but I wouldn't put all the blame
| on stupid users.

Stupid is your word, not mine. It's not easy to
configure a browser. It is easy to not open 100
browser windows, but tabs makes it easy not to
notice.

| More and more websites detect ad blockers and refuse content
| unless you disable them.
|

I haven't seen that yet. Their guards require javascript.

I haven't seen an ad to speak of in decades. And I've
never run an adblocker. I just use a modest HOSTS file
with about 300 entries. Many of those are not even
for ads, but for privacy. If anyone puts an ad on their
site I'll see it. I've never blocked ads. If they want to let
google/doubleclick load a spyware iframe then, no,
that's not going to happen. Since virtually all ads are
3rd-party spyware, I don't see them.

But that's really a minor issue. The issue is the combination
of multi-pronged sloppiness and ignorance: Opening 100 tabs.
Not blocking auto refresh. Not blocking Flash. Not curtailing
script. Not closing windows for things like Facebook or gmail.
And finally, assuming it's Mozilla's fault when that mess crashes.

All I'm saying is that it takes some effort to be at your
RAM limit with 3 GB, unless you're doing something like
editing video. There's no need to ever get close to needing
so much RAM. And too many browser tabs seems to be one
of the biggest culprits. You just said that yourself, above.
You said you need more RAM because browsers are hungry.
And you said you need 64-bit because browsers are not
happy enough with 3-4 GB. But I often run both FF and PM
at the same time and never have issues. You don't need to
block all ads. Just close tabs when you're done with them.

| It doesn't take 100 tabs to cripple a system.
| I was messing around with desktop sharing on my local network.
| The remote defaulted
| to EDGE browser. Took only a few tabs to use up all the free 2GB of RAM.
| Disk activity was 100%, I assume managing paging in and out.
| System responsiveness was near zero.
|

I mentioned 100 because that was typical in the mozilla
newsgroup. It sounds like your case is altogether different.
Win10 32-bit? Why only 2 GB RAM? Why would you use
Edge in the first place? And if disk activity is constant,
while RAM is at its limit, you obviously have something else
going on besides "only a few" browser windows. There's
no reason for disk activity in your description. And a few
websites can't be using 2 GB RAM.
It's dangerous to assume that you have control over anything.
This was a remote desktop experiment to a system that had only EDGE
installed at that point. The hardware was maxed out at 4GB. This was
a 64-bit install, but nowhere to add more ram.
Task manager said that EDGE had 1.7GB of RAM tied up and 86% of the CPU.
Closing tabs
freed up RAM and made the system more responsive.

| Providing content costs money. Content suppliers use every opportunity
| to get revenue 'cause users won't pay directly for it.
|
| Anyhoo...
| If you have a way to make the content provider think you're not using
| an ad blocker, I'm interested.

As I said above, I don't use an ad blocker. Only a
HOSTS file. And I limit javascript to what's absolutely
necessary. Most pages load almost instantly. The
function to detect ad blockers is, itself, more script.
So they can't check for an adblocker if they can't
run script.

I expect that's true, but they can prohibit access if you don't
allow java.

How does an adblocker actually work?
I don't know. I would guess it monitors whether you
load specific images. But it can't do that until you load
the page, and even then it would require script. As you
probably know, when you visit a site the browser makes
a GET call for the link, such as index.html. It then loads
that and code/links in the page tell the browser to load
other stuff. At that point it's usually all going to be
running on your computer. You allowed the browser
to download loads of script and images and the script
itself is controlling what you see. The page, without
CSS or script, cannot be blocked by the website or
by anything on your end. If you see something like
a panel pop up to block the page, that's not the
website doing that. It has to be script on your end,
dynamically changing CSS or downloading an image.

They can't do anything until you've loaded
that first page. So I'm guessing the ad-blocker
blockers are probably depending on some kind of script
feedback that tells them, "OK, the Doubleclick code just
ran successfully. This visitor is OK." And if the page
script doesn't get the feedback then the script in the
page messes with you by doing something like scripting
CSS to put a big opaque panel in front of the page
text that says,
"Pretty please. We are suffering because you blocked
script. You are a criminal and a mean person. Please
let Google, along with everyone and his brother, spy
on you and show you Viagra ads so that we can feed
our kids tonight." And you think, "Whoa! Isn't that clever!
They blocked me!" But it's all done with script running
in the browser on your end.
I don't understand the distinction. It's their script.
Doesn't matter where it executes if it denies access.
At that point, if the site looks like it's legit, it's
easier to allow ads and get on with life.
If not, it's more googling for that elusive answer to your
problem.

Script has become a very big problem. Not only in terms
of security, which has always been a problem. But now
it's also a big problem for privacy, bloat, and the general
trend toward "push" webpages. That's the dream of many
commercial sites. They want you to accept a dynamic
broadcast rather than download a static webpage. Script
is making that possible. The result, on the rare
occasions I actually see it, is stunning to me. How do
people tolerate all that stuff jumping, sliding around,
popping up, etc?

Opera does a decent job of blocking a lot of that.

Recently I had occasion to use reddit for the first time.
When I log in I have to allow the script from their domains.
I block all other script. I haven't seen any ads. The site
works fine. I haven't seen any warnings about accepting ads.
I don't know if it would be different if I had an adblocker.

Some sites have tried blocking anyone without script
enabled. Forbes.com did that for awhile. Even the text on
the page was embedded in script. So essentially you couldn't
see their site without allowing them to run a software
program on your computer. So I dropped going to Forbes.

That works great until you actually want to read what they offer.

Recently I noticed their site works again. Not very well.
Their page design is a mess. But for some reason they
stopped requiring script. In any case, I can easily live
without Forbes.com. For me it was just a 3rd-string news
site that I went to occasionally.

Many people say it's not realistic to block script. If
you're a gmailing Facebookie and Amazoniac then I'd
agree. Some things just don't work without script. For
me it's mostly not a problem. If it was I'd still use NoScript.

As I said, I don't block ads and never did, except way
back in the 90s. If a site needs to show ads to pay their
way I'm not stopping them. But that's not what they're doing.
Instead they sign up with Google and let Google's spyware
take over their website. Then Google sends them their cut.
They have no right to send me to Google when I visit their
domain. I have no sympathy whatsoever. Let them go
out of business.

"Mayayana" on Thu, 7 Mar 2019 09:19:13 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:

The real problem is just plain old slovenliness.
But it's an easy habit for people to get into when they can
just keep adding tabs without it getting in the way of
browsing. And it's not realistic to expect the majority of
people to block the various memory-hungry scams and
nonsense that typically happen by default. I've seen
pages on friends' computers running 6+ news videos on
a page, without asking.

That I don't like either.

But I was going to comment on my bookmarks file, which is about to
exceed human comprehension. Or maybe it has.

I do know I went and 'walked' through a bunch of shopping related
bookmarks, and several had just "gone away". As in, the company when
bankrupt back in ought-eight, and inventory was sold to another
company.

What I hate are the companies which I know have moved, moved then
closed, closed moved and closed again, and Yelp still has reviews
to recommend the company Oh, I just looked. (It's not there
anymore.

I'm cranky, been trying to find replacement wheels for a Rollator
(four wheel walkers). Search on "replacement Rollator wheels"; it
recommends Les Schwab (major tire franchise). Yeah, right. Find 6"
wheels, at Home Depot. Search again using their search terms "Walker
6 in. Replacement Wheels", but change the 6 for an 8. Not sure how
"Adult Tall Aluminum Push Button Crutches" fits in there.

Arrgh.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"Mike" wrote

| As I said above, I don't use an ad blocker. Only a
| HOSTS file. And I limit javascript to what's absolutely
| necessary. Most pages load almost instantly. The
| function to detect ad blockers is, itself, more script.
| So they can't check for an adblocker if they can't
| run script.
|
| I expect that's true, but they can prohibit access if you don't
| allow java.
|

I assume you meant to say javascript and not java.

They can't prohibit access. Your browser calls the
server and says, "Please give me index.html". They can
refuse to give you a page based on browser headers.
They could, for instance, refuse pages to Firefox. Or
they could refuse pages to people who live in China.
But at that point there's no script. The script will be
called only because it's linked from the webpage, or
is part of the webpage. So you have to get the page
in order to run the script. That's always the first step.
So, no, they can't prohibit access on that basis. Their
only choice is to comply or refuse your request for
index.html, based on the header sent by the browser,
or based on your IP address.

You download index.html. The browser reads it and
uses the HTML/CSS to display the text content. If you
allow script it will run the local script, if any, in that file.
It also reads the URLs of other files intended to make
up the webpage:
script, CSS, images, web beacons, etc. At that point
you can use a HOSTS file, a browser extension, or
various browser settings to control which
of those other files gets retrieved and loaded. In
mozilla browsers you can block all 3rd-party files if you
want to. You can also block script. You can block
Doubleclick. All of those choices will affect the resulting
webpage. (Blind people usually block all images, for
example.) Only then can script do anything, and only
if you enable it.

In other words, there's no such thing as a webpage, per
se. And there's no such thing as "them" doing something.
Anything running on their end can't affect you. There are
only various files that the browser downloads and works
with to create a webpage display.


| But it's all done with script running
| in the browser on your end.

| I don't understand the distinction. It's their script.
| Doesn't matter where it executes if it denies access.

That distinction is the heart of the story. It helps to
understand how it all actually works. That's why I
detailed the process above. Script is not something
they can just send down the pipe. Using script to
produce a "push" webpage allows them to make you
think that they're controlling the page. Just as Google's
shennanigans on youtube allow them to make you
think you're streaming a video that's being broadcast.
But there is no such thing. Nothing can happen on
their end except deciding which files you get when
you ask for them. It can all only happen on your
computer. And it all happens only via downloaded files.
There's no script going through the wires. There's no
video signal. No digital sound bytestream. Just files,
processed by the browser.

So their javascript can't deny you access to the
webpage. It can only control the webpage after
you load it, if you enable script.

So what some sites do now is to do something
like use CSS to put a semi-transparent black panel
over the page, which is then removed by script.
(That obstacle can also be bypassed if one disables
CSS.) That is, the page is broken by default and
script is used to fix it.

An ad-blocker blocker would have to be able to use
script in the page in order to know that you haven't
loaded the ads. Again, without script it could only
work like the CSS trick, by ruining the webpage by
default and then fixing it with script. The website knows
nothing at that point. If your browser doesn't download
the doubleclick ad they can only know that by parsing
the server records of both the website and doubleclick,
to see if someone from the same IP address downloaded
files from both servers at the same time.

** You are never "at a website". You only call servers
and download files.**

It's sort of like AI that way. It seems intelligent because
it's programmed to respond to various inputs. But there's
no actual intelligence there. And there's no possibility of
volition on their end. At most there's just script in the
webpage, written to respond to your actions. The kicker is
that so many people allow script... so many have no idea
what it even is... that most of the sleaze depends on the
assumption that the script will run.

| At that point, if the site looks like it's legit, it's
| easier to allow ads and get on with life.
| If not, it's more googling for that elusive answer to your
| problem.

Suit yourself. You asked how I do it. You don't
have to do the same. You don't even have to believe
me. Most people don't because that would require
effort. And like you, they just want what they want.
They don't want to have to think about it. Gimme.

(It really is that bad. The vast majority of people
who come to my site, looking for software, download
it and are gone within 6-10 seconds. People can't
be bothered to pay attention. It's just blind
consumption. The speed and limitless choice of the
Internet seems to do that to people.)

One reason I block this stuff is simply because webpages
are unreadable when things are jumping around. Another
reason is because it's a matter of principle to not allow
their sleazy tactics to work. If people didn't stand for
things like Google spying then Google wouldn't be able
to do it. But most people take your approach. They're
too lazy to bother. They just want what they want. So
they let Google run their life and they let Facebook run
their social life and they let Amazon become a monstrous
retail monopoly. Because not doing so requires paying
attention at a level above animal impulse.

| Some sites have tried blocking anyone without script
| enabled. Forbes.com did that for awhile. Even the text on
| the page was embedded in script. So essentially you couldn't
| see their site without allowing them to run a software
| program on your computer. So I dropped going to Forbes.
|
| That works great until you actually want to read what they offer.
|

Yes. There are tradeoffs. Like I said, online civility is
not really feasible for Googlite Facebookies and
Amazoniacs. On the other hand, if you're one of those
then you don't care, anyway. You're a mesmerized
consumer at the trough. With the sites I go to there's
not much trouble. Most of them work fine without script,
tracking, ads, iframes, etc. A few require that I disable
CSS. But I often do that anyway. With so many pages
optimized for phones, the text is often more readable
without CSS.

One thing I've been noticing more and more is that
pages change a lot. I'm amazed at how often big
commercial sites completely revamp their pages. It's
nuts. One month wired.com works. The next month it
doesn't. The third month is works better than ever....
Constantly reworking. But on a typical morning I
visit slashdot, BBC news, sometimes the Boston Globe.
Occasionally WashPo and/or NPR. Less often I
visit Atlantic Monthly, Alternet, and a few others.
And I visit a few smaller sites that most people
wouldn't have heard of. In general they all work
somewhere between very well and usable. And there
are lots of sites I visit ocasionally. Most work fine.

One that I was at recently is cornucopia.org. They
do a beautiful job and they offer in depth reports
about health issues with food. A recent report rated
dairy products. Their site is very complex yet also
very clear and completely functional without script.
They're an example of someone who's doing something
useful and knows what they're doing.

My bigger complaint is the poor quality of most
content. Even the BBC is frivolous with their website,
listing things like top 5 videos and top 10 stories. They
want clicks more than they want to be real journalists.
Who needs Facebook fake news when the BBC has
cats using toilets?

One of the very few sites I've missed lately is
archive.org. For some reason they've now designed
their site to be completely broken without script.
Saaaadddd, as Trump would say. It worked just fine
not long ago. Now it's a monstrosity of bloated
jquery crap and Google spyware.

"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| What I hate are the companies which I know have moved, moved then
| closed, closed moved and closed again, and Yelp still has reviews
| to recommend the company Oh, I just looked. (It's not there
| anymore.
|

Yes. Odd, isn't it? I was looking up auto parts stores
the other day and they had a correct listing for a brand
new Advanced store, but they also list another store
that's been gone for over a decade. Apparently they don't
actively manage their listings but rather just accept
them from companies. What I used to do well with a
Yellow Pages is still all but impossible online.

pyotr filipivich wrote:


That I don't like either.

But I was going to comment on my bookmarks file, which is about to
exceed human comprehension. Or maybe it has.

I do know I went and 'walked' through a bunch of shopping related
bookmarks, and several had just "gone away". As in, the company when
bankrupt back in ought-eight, and inventory was sold to another
company.

What I hate are the companies which I know have moved, moved then
closed, closed moved and closed again, and Yelp still has reviews
to recommend the company Oh, I just looked. (It's not there
anymore.

I'm cranky, been trying to find replacement wheels for a Rollator
(four wheel walkers). Search on "replacement Rollator wheels"; it
recommends Les Schwab (major tire franchise). Yeah, right. Find 6"
wheels, at Home Depot. Search again using their search terms "Walker
6 in. Replacement Wheels", but change the 6 for an 8. Not sure how
"Adult Tall Aluminum Push Button Crutches" fits in there.

Arrgh.

rollator replacement wheels

https://www.amazon.ca/GGGarden-150x3.../dp/B07K4ZJ1HN

Description
2Pcs Replacement Parts 6" Front Rear Wheel
for Cardinal Rollator Walker C46 $37 for 2wheels

Search results can vary by time of day.
It may require up to 24 hours to succeed at this.

Paul

"Mayayana" wrote

|So you have to get the page
| in order to run the script. That's always the first step.
| So, no, they can't prohibit access on that basis. Their
| only choice is to comply or refuse your request for
| index.html, based on the header sent by the browser,
| or based on your IP address.
|
Here's a good example of what I was talking about:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...rotocols-in-wi

Microsoft, for awhile now, have been blocking
access to their support webpages unless script
is enabled. I load the page and just see a white
panel. In the center, in big letters, it says
"Javascript is disabled".
Then it tells me to please fix that and reload
the page.

So how do they do that? They can't run script
before the page has loaded. They used to use a
quick META refresh. But then I could just stop the
page load. And anyway, a redirect or refresh is
messy. It means serving twice as many webpages.

What they do now is becoming typical. The page
itself is just menus and a big sign saying, "Please
enable javascript". Actually, the menus and such are
not visible unless script is enabled. They're set to not
display by default. In other words, the page has been
deliberately, completely broken. Then if script is enabled,
the script fixes the page. There's a link to load jquery
from Akamai, which seems to also serve as a tracking
beacon. (The link is ridiculously long.) In fact, they're
loading well over 1 MB of script. Perhaps more.

Then if you scroll down to the bottom of the source
code you can see that actually the whole webpage is
there. But they've embedded it in javascript, just to be
difficult and force you to let them take over your
browser. Because once you allow script, not only
can the page script control the page but it can also
call home for more script. Or the script can load more
script and files from ad companies, trackers, etc. In
this case it also appears to load some sort of "Awasa"
chat app.

It's a good example of what I'm talking about because
if I reformat and edit the code in the page that I
received -- the one that just says, "**** you. Enable
javascript" -- then I can get the actual page that I'd
see with javascript. They've gone to great lengths to
break their own webpage, burying the content in layers
of convoluted, obfuscated javascript, because it's the
only way they can "block" you from getting the page
with script disabled. (Some pages are even worse, with
some of the page text itself further obfuscated as strings
of Base64 or as byte values, such as using u/0061; for
the letter "a".)

It's an interesting irony, demonstrating just how
difficult it is for javascript to be "needed" in a webpage.
It's needed for spying and dynamic ads. And once in
awhile, if the page script does something like calculations,
then it's needed for that. In general, it's entirely avoidable.

Microsoft's support pages don't do anything special.
They're mostly just text documents. So they had to put
a lot of effort into making them require javascript. That's
what people are stooping to these days in order to spy.