When I was a kid and learning basic manners, there were certain things taught that separated good from bad.<p>And you know, advertising methods are starting to look a lot like pure <i>rudeness</i> to me.<p>It wouldn’t be socially acceptable to walk up to somebody sitting on a park bench and just start randomly bothering them.  It wouldn’t be socially acceptable to just start dumping signs all over someone’s front porch and gluing them to the windows of the house.  Why, then, aren’t companies downright <i>ashamed</i> (and publicly shamed) when they create a product that feels the need to periodically pop messages in front of the user’s face that are by definition completely unnecessary to the function of the product?<p>Build a product; make it nice; make it functional; and make it show things to the user only when necessary.  Anything else is mere distraction, and frankly taints the product’s perceived value.<p>We are spiraling down into a cesspool of “free” products that tax users with a thousand needles every day.<p>We used to know how to pay $40 for software, or even $10, and demand better.  We need to return to that.