JavaScript Content Delivery Networks and NoScript

I use, love, and highly recommend NoScript. NoScript is a powerful way to shut down/bypass a lot of the shit that happens when surfing the ‘Net. The average page a person visits contains a mass of shit designed to collect information, proffer all kinds of useless garbage, and shove crap in your face. Using an ad-blocking addon like AdBlock Plus is essential, and so is a privacy blocker like DoNotTrackMe from abine.com.

Not only does NoScript block garbage you don’t want to see, it also of course will make the Internet feel like it used to be. Pages load faster. Pages are more fun to read. Sites are more fun to visit because they load faster and don’t contain gobs of useless shit you don’t want to see anyway. Remember how cool the Internet was when it was actually about data primarily in the form of text intended for people to read? I know, it now seems like a long-lost, faraway dream… But that world can be invoked again with most of its former splendor! (And I love the fact that there may be legions of advertisers, data-miners, and other forms of Internet parasites sitting in their cubicles now having apoplectic fits reading this 🙂

It starts by blocking everything, and then you add exceptions for things you want. So, for example, for this site alaya.net it will initially block scripts. But because this site is good you can trust it and add a permanent exception for it.

Other sites which you can easily add exceptions for are ones like Wikipedia.org (and its related sites like wikimedia.org). You can probably safely add exceptions for sites like your banks as well since they aren’t in the business of trying to inundate you with crap.

When you have NoScript installed and start visiting sites like online news sites, you will immediately see how much shit there is. If you want to be able to view content on a major site like bbc.com for news, you will have to add it. There may be related sites like bbcimg.com which need to be added as well for all the content to be accessible. Which gets me to the core of this post:

There are special sites called JavaScript Content Delivery Networks (CDN’s) which may need to be added. The major one is googleapis.com and there may be a few others (mentioned in the link). Another one I found is script-index.googlecode.com. Basically, today a lot of websites use freely available JavaScript code that is hosted on sites like googleapis.com. This is not an ad site or a social network site, just a site that contains some code that the web page utilizes for its functionality.

If you are having trouble getting a video to load on a site and not sure which site to temporarily or permanently allow, look for one that has “cdn” in its name as it may be a content delivery network for providing the video. Another well-known CDN I know of is called akamai.

When you start using NoScript it may be initially frustrating because most sites will seem broken. But I encourage you to be patient, keep using it, and add permanent exceptions judiciously when needed. There are a lot of obvious sites like facebook.com which can remain permanently blocked. Others which are questionable can be temporarily allowed and then later disallowed or permanently allowed if necessary.

Philosophical Considerations

This post would not be complete without a further consideration of the philosophical implications behind all of this. We humans are finding ourselves living in worlds where we are inundated with information and increasingly it seems we are defined as much if not more by what we don’t accept or take in as much as by what we do. This extends far beyond the realms of mere discretion or preference. Blocking or avoiding things is not just a matter of taste but is essential for our well-being, for our integrity, for our health. Blocking malware on personal information appliances is one obvious case of this. But the more subtle cases involve things which could amount to spiritual or psychological poisons.

There is a further realm of consideration that goes beyond this, into what are the implications of living, for example, in a society in which, even though one may actively protect oneself, one is exposed to others who are poisoned and sick. For its not just a matter of what one personally chooses to select or avoid. One has no choice but to live in a world and interact with others, many or most of whom may not have made similar choices.

Another area of consideration which has monumental human rights implications is that there are active interests in preventing selection. In order for there to be selection, filtering, decision, and choice it must be possible, somehow, to distinguish. Yet there are actual attacks against the ability distinguish. This sort of scrambling or jamming occurs deliberately in order to control populations in an almost satanic manner.

And a final area of consideration that flows from all this – and the one that in fact I find the most intense and worthwhile – is what this all means for the human soul in terms of spiritual evolution, particularly in context with the teachings of Buddha and esoteric Buddhist psychology and ontology. For the choices that we make are not just for the moment. They are dispositions of our beings, of our souls, which have long-term implications for our evolution and for the shape of the worlds we create or allow to be created.

In other words, even if there is scrambling and jamming preventing clear recognition of the implications and significances of selection, choice, filtering, and decision, still the effects of such dispositions manifest karmically over time. Even though we are in a time of turmoil, eventually the dust will settle and the karmic dispositions of souls on Earth will become clearer. It may not seem like a major thing in the present moment to make certain decisions or choices with one’s life, yet such decisions may underlie everything in the future.