Slashdot Mirror

However, as one reader points out:

The problem that I see is that under this model, those who contribute to slashdot the most, and make the site what it is, are forced to pay the most.'

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Where...? All I see is whitespace.

It's called "annoying your customers into buying your product." See, the madder they make you, and the more obnoxious they are, the more you, the stupid consumer, will pay them! Welcome to the new economy. Of course, all I see is this: SQUISH.

J U N K B U S T E R

Just say NO to StinkGeek banners and future in-line 200x200 pixel "Do YOU have reliable [foo]?... You NEED SourceForge(TM) Enterprise 2002.. Order today."-esque ads.


FUCK SLASHDOT

Bam!

All I see is this. Hah!

Nice whitespace on this page!

JUNKBUSTER

Just say NO to annoying StinkGeek banners and future in-story 200x200 pixel "Do YOU have RELIABLE [foo]... then YOU NEED SourceForge(TM) 2002"-esque ads...

FUCK SLASHDOT

J U N K B U S T E R

# To block an entire site, simply include its domain name:
# ad.manipumedia.net
# patentlyoffensive.com

# With no hostname, a pathname blocks regardless of the domain name:
# /images/banners/mindless/
# /bandwidth-hogs/

# Provided pattern matching option was used in the Makefile (now the default)
# you can use patterns such as
# the /*.* allows matches anywhere in the URL
# /*.*banner
# /*.*/DespisedProductName.*.gif
# you can put * in the domain part only, not the path.
# ad*.*.*
# For more details see http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/ijbfaq.html#regex

# The ~ character in column one stops blocking if a previous pattern matched.
# The last match wins, so these exceptions are usually placed at the end.
# ~mycompany.com
#


images.slashdot.org/banner/
fmads.osdn.com/bann er/
oostendorp.org/everything/
www.aardvarkarchi e.com/images/adverts/
ssads.osdn.com/banner/

JUNK BUSTA

Down with Slashdot!!!

Who the fuck would pay for slashshit when there's JUNK MOTHAFUCKIN' BUSTA !

The Internet JUNKBUSTER Proxy (http://internet.junkbuster.com) intercepted the request for ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N815.slashdot/B941456;sz=46 8x60;ord=[timestamp]? because the URL matches the following pattern in the blockfile: doubleclick.net

BRING IT ON, YOU BUNCH OF WANKERS!!

I'm not saying this to be a party pooper, because I probably will pay /. some, not because I want the damn ads gone, but because I like /. and I don't want it to sink with the VA boat. If I just wanted the ads gone, well, I have that already.

Well, I'm happy to have filtered out everything doubleclick related with the help of junkbuster for the last few years.

And even the ones that DO surf with graphics on know to use Junkbuster. I dont even see a rectangle.

http://internet.junkbuster.com/

It's GPLed.

Is that all $5 is going to buy? No banner ads?

If so, I can't imagine there will be many takers. Plenty of people use proxies like junkbuster to get rid of the banner images already for free.

To encourage people to pay, subscribers need to get a better /. not a less bad one /.

Microsoft's response to the issue, mentioned above, lets it slip that Windows Media Player tries to connect to windowsmedia.com:

When consumers first insert a new DVD (this does not apply to subsequent insertions), Windows Media Player goes up to Windowsmedia.com (WMC) and gets the chapter information....

When the player contacts WMC, it sends a cookie that includes no personal identifying information. This allows WMC to personalize the radio tuner and measure--in general terms--how many users are connecting to it.

So it appears that completely disabling cookies is not the only way to stop Windows Media Player from phoning home. You could also add windowsmedia.com to your HOSTS file or to ad-blocking software like Internet Junkbuster.

And the answer to this (User-Agent string analysis) is junkbuster or some other anonymizing proxy that strips out useragent info or sets it to a specific value.

Thats why I love my JunkBuster proxy. All outgoing browser connections get labelled as MSIE/5.5, and I even add a bogus From line for the hell of it.

echo "goatse.cx" >> sblock.ini

Today's JunkBuster tip.

It's like some kind of Steven Wright joke: "I tried surf to adcritic.com with Junkbuster turned on. Junkbuster got so confused it took me to the doubleclick page..."

John

What ads?

For Yahoo!, I use the Internet Junkbuster Proxy. It runs on both Windows and *nix, and should be able to work with any browser. It is able to block banner ads, flash animations, etc. Note however that it does not support for disabling JavaScript popups or anything like that, but for what I do, it is sufficent.

What are these banner ads you speak of? I do not believe I have ever seen one.

Don't like ads and banners and pop-ups and pop-unders, etc? Take a look at things like WebWasher and Junkbuster. It can certainly keep the sighted among us from ripping our eyes out in frustration as the whole interface hangs waiting to load that pop-up. No doubt that will help those who do not have the benefit of sight from getting to the core of what they seek on the WWW.

For those that already use junkbuster you can easily spoof your User Agent in there so you don't have to muck around with every browser that you might want to try using.

Everyone knows bandwidth is not free. We should all realise that someone has to create the content that we consume.

Now, I am not sure whether a subscription scheme is a good idea or not, but surely most people will not have a problem with bigger ads, since most of us either ignore them, or run one or other of the filtering proxies such as Junkbuster or WebWasher. Let's just hope andover.net don't find a way around that :-)

1. Subscribers can get an @slashdot.org email address or web page with no dynamic content.
   
2. Subscribers get better comment filtering functionality (e.g. I want to only see posts that have been moderated up even if it's from 0 to +1).
   
3. Subscribers automatically get the +1 posting bonus without having to get up to 25 karma.
   
4. Subscribers can get alerts if people respond to their posts.
   
5. Subscribers can see what the new comments have been made to a story since the last time they read it (kuro5hin has this functionality)
   
6. Only subscribers can customize their front page.
   
7. Only subscribers can post comments.
   
8. Only subscribers can submit stories.
   

The article says quite plainly that they do not know how much it going to be. There's your answer.

With regards to the larger ads finding their way into our happy lives, I have to say that I'm gravely disappointed. If Slashdot's viewership is growing as the article says, shouldn't that mean more views and click-throughs? Doesn't it make Slashdot a higher-profile site, capable of charging more money for each view and click-through?

I have no problem with a single ad at the top of the page. But I do worry that the Slashdot crew are underestimating the number of viewers that may use increasing ads as a perfectly good excuse to start using ad-filtering proxies like Junkbuster, (a GPL proxy available as source for *nix, or binaries for Win32 platforms).

Yes, but he blocked /^wget/ which will match them all. I believe you can change your user-agent string in wget however; most Linux browsers allow you to do this (Lynx, Links, Mozilla, etc.). Or just pass your requests through a proxy like JunkBuster, which can strip out and/or change headers like the User-Agent. You can run JB on your own machine.

I guess he thinks wget is a bot because it can be made to recursively download a whole website, following all anchor tags like a bot even though it is being controlled by a human.

That could be overcome easily by a browser that downloads the objects but does not bother to display them. Send the request for the banner, and then route the returned data to the bitbucket.

I run the JunkBuster proxy now; this could probably be an easily added feature.

Some, in other words, accept the content pursuant to the terms under which it was offered. Other go farther, and actually give and contribute to society. Many, many helped during the crises, and continue to help.

I'm stealing, I'm stealing. Try and stop me.

Also, I give away all the information I generate for free. The government pays for you to have it. Unfortunately, we don't have an equivalent of the BBC, so I have to use the one from Britain. Is that stealing too? I didn't pay anything to see it. There aren't ads.

try a product like JunkBuster, or GuideScope

both are easy to use, and should take care of those pesky ads. why whine, when you don't even have to see them?

Will someone come up with a program that removes ads altogether?

Well, look at the ad on the top of this page.

What ad?

People use what works

People use Junkbuster because it works.

More colours and alpha channel support is useless if the person needs to create an animated gif.

MNG is supported in 6.0 browsers. Besides, if you really need to show animation, you'll use SWF or SVG+SMIL.

After getting sick of some popup ads, I was pointed at The Internet Junkbuster , which, as the name implies, gets rid of the junk. Completely. I haven't seen an ad since I installed it. It's free, it's GPL'd, it does the job, and it's easy to install. What more could you ask for?

--

It's free, completely open-source, and works great. I highly recommend trying it out if you are sick of downloading advertisements you will never click on.

For the goatse.cx paranoid, the URL is http://www.junkbuster.com.

All I see is conspicuous blank areas on the page. Get the modified version of Internet Junkbuster for free.

it's hard to find a mainstream site which at some point doesn't use Java-based ads.

Ads are an annoyance, not a feature (and there a so few java(script) applets that are actually useful (name 3), that this should definitely be considered a feature.

Gaz, happily surfing without ads, java or javascript since 1997 (posted with Netscape 3). Missing nothing that appeals to anyone over 12.

we develop ads in what I consider to be a user-friendly manner

I take it that this means using a maximum of 256 bytes of my dialup connection. Ooh, noooo you are pumping 10 seconds worth of animated GIF down my bandwith :-((

we use cookies to identify whether or not you have already seen the ad

And those cookies are not designed so that you can get info on my surfing patterns. Yeaahh riiiiight

We do produce campaigns with popup ads

There is one of the few reasons I see for reintroducing capital punishment...

No thank you. Until the day banner ads use little bandwith and offer lots of privacy protection Junkbuster will sit on my HTTP pipe.

Interesting to note that Kuro5hin.org has started a "pay for no ads" version of their site. I doubt it is going to be very succesfull though: most people don't really mind banner ads that much.

...and those of us who are sufficiently annoyed by banner ads to do something about it have already taken measures to block them anyway

Sadly, the iCab folks have said they're not interested in porting to GNU/Linux. Among the GNU/Linux browsers, my favorite by far is Konqueror. Like iCab on the Macintosh, Konq is small, fast, and customizable. However, it still lags a bit behind in the way of filtering. Site-specific, function-specific JavaScript filtering would be an excellent addition to what's already easily the best browser in the Free world.

You can use a filtering proxy, like Junkbuster. Unfortunately, I find that Junkbuster slows down my connections too much, and doesn't forward error messages correctly, so it's not 100% transparent.

My favorite solution is to use /etc/hosts to list all the known ad servers and direct them to 127.0.0.1. I then run a webserver on my local box with the not-found error set to redirect to a transparent image. (I use IP aliasing on the loopback device for sites that use direct IP numbers for their ad servers.) This works for most sites, though some (like slashdot) serve ads off the same server that serves regular images.

Using the /etc/hosts method, I occasionally look through my cookies file and find indications of sites that need to be added. It's not perfect, but I'm satisfied with it.

Browser-based solutions are a good idea. I would love to block images that match certain dimensions (1x1) or have a URL that matches some regexp (/ads/).

Of course, the issue here is pop-up ads, which should be blocked by having browsers reject requests to open new windows that aren't in response to a mouse click.

I use Junkbuster for all my filtering needs. I've got a long list of stuff that gets killed automatically including lots and lots of webbugs. It's easy to maintain - all I do is occasionally look through my cache and plonk anything I don't like. An added benefit, at least back when I was dialing up, was the increased page load speed because I didn't have to wait for banners and counter gifs and so forth.

A biggy thats bitten me .. if you setup a proxy - I've just set the http proxy to be "localhost | 8000".

Suddenly attempting to open a URL, (eg. Click on Home, or use the "Search the Web" option), I get a popup box:

Nothing I choose seems to allow me to actually open the page within Mozilla..

I know this isn't the place to submit bugs, so I'll file an bug report - but its frustrating, cos it stops me from using Junkbuster

Banner ads are perfectly fine as an advertising medium. The problem is that most of the dot-Bombs buying them don't know how to advertise.

Advertise on sites whose user profile doesn't match their market audience.

Measure their ads using immediate "click through" measurements, instead of building brand equity.

Mismatch the pitches. Often the dullest banners hide the best deals, while the most eye-grabbing ones lead nowhere.

Think advertising can make up for a company that provides inferior customer-value.

If full-page advertisements become the norm, then junkbuster and other such advertising deletion programs will become the norm too.

If you want to see net based advertising work well, you need look no further than ThinkGeek, which targets its ads directly at.. well people like us.

---

The Internet Junkbuster has built-in support for adding custom HTTP headers to requests, as well as stripping off HTTP headers that your browser adds without your consent. Using IJB as a transparent proxy for your LAN will ensure that all browsers behave this way.

Guidescope is a blocking proxy similar to Junkbuster. In fact Junkbuster recommends Guidescope in preference to their own product. It has a web interface for changing your ad and cookie blocking settings.

Guidescope uses a central database. This lets you benefit from other users' blocking choices, but then your web activity goes into another database. Hopefully they manage it better than Doubleclick does theirs. They say they reshuffle the userids frequently.

It runs on both Linux and Windows, but it isn't open source yet. They say they'll open it 8 months after the 1.0 release.