Re: Hah!
The trouble is the functionality is all for the benefit of the advertisers, not the users.
I enjoyed the irony of the article, but I don't think this comment is strictly true - or at least it's more nuanced than you paint it. Whilst the functionality is initially for the benefit of the advertisers, they in turn benefit the ad-brokers, who in turn benefit the content creators, who in turn benefit the users by providing websites.
I know this is an unpopular thing to point out, but advertising finances a large chunk of the internet (including El Reg) and until someone comes up with a better (and fraud-resistant) way for micropayments to propagate from content users to content providers, ads are probably here to stay.