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No Pop-up Blocking in Netscape 7.0
jsled writes "C|Net /News.com article details how the forthcoming Netscape 7.0 will not include the nifty pop-up blocking sported in Mozilla, as AOL depends on pop-up ads for annoy^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing to their "valued" customers. The MozillaZine story and comments have a couple of extra, interesting points of detail: how to easily restore the functionality and how some sites get around the popup blocking."
Update: 08/15 12:45 GMT by J : In related news, Doug Isenberg asks over on GigaLaw:
Are Pop-Up Ads Illegal? The news publishers who say "yes" say that turning off graphics in your web browser should be illegal too.
they're talking about POP-UP ads, not banners
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
is there any real internet business model from the standpoint of a website that offers a service but not cult membership?
------
[insert funny
Five comments and its /.'ed!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
ads on the top of the page are one thing but, when a page pops up 5 ads and when you close your browswer it pops up yet more. That needs to stop no matter how it happens.
(Original) http://ufaq.org/files/adblocker.xpi
Pleas post mirrors in this thread.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It was discussed here on Slashdot in comments about Netscape 7 over two and a half months ago.
See it here!
It's nice that News.com can get the story... 2.5 months late.
Then stop visiting the site. Don't be a hypocrite and whine about how evil and annoying ads are, then continue viewing the content a site offers while blocking the ads. That's theft of service.
We live in a capitalist system. You can show your disgust with pop-up ads by refusing to visit sites that utilize them, and if enough people share your concerns, the policy will be changed. Vote with your dollars and the tools at your disposal, but don't whine about a site's form of supporting itself on one hand while visiting it anyway.
It's not mentioned in the article, but Mozilla's hostname-based image blocking is gone from Netscape as well.
I noticed this along time ago in the Netscape 7 rc1....
keanmarine.com
That's theft of service.
Just like not watching the ads on tv are "theft of television."
Has anyone noticed that since AOL bought Netscape, all of the releases have been major versions (6.0, 7.0) as with the AOL software, which is now also at version 7.0 (after 6.0, 5.0, 4.0, etc.)?
Install Mozilla.
Geeks are intelligent. And intelligent people aren't swayed by ads. They hate ads.
Do you want to get sued by Toho, man?!
1.)Theres an easy fix
2.)If mozilla has it...go use mozilla, I dont see how that takes a rocket scientist
http://techaholic.net/adblocker.xpi
for those of you who have not heard this already. Don't like it? USE SOMETHING ELSE. Netscape can do whatever it wants with its software. Mind you, they might do something else if people quit using the software. So perhaps, instead of compaining that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, like it seems to do three times a day on slashdot, seek alternatives. Thank you.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
you're not preventing the ads on TV from being presented, you're just not watching them.
For those of you who use M$ Internal Exploder, Pop-Down is a nifty program. Relatively small memory footprint, a quick download, freeware. I use it on my computer-illiterate mom's p-120, and it works a whole lot better & faster than a lot of other programs that have to match the title bar with a database. This thing, although crude, lets you limit the number of windows. You also have to hold down CTRL when you want a new window to be formed. Worth a try, I use it.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Then stop visiting the site. Don't be a hypocrite and whine about how evil and annoying ads are, then continue viewing the content a site offers while blocking the ads.
A site has to be pretty damned good, and unique for me to put up with annoying popups. If there is any other option, I'll take it. These sites need to know that their potential customers will simply leave if the ads pester them too much.
Arguably, yes. Those ads help pay for the programs you enjoy. The only reason TV ads are worth anything at all is that enough people will actually sit there and watch them, instead of changing the channel, to make them worthwhile. This is also why ad-skipping in PVRs is, justifiably, being attacked. If you know anything about the TV industry, you know that ads are essential to any channel's survival, except for taxpayer-funded public access, where the money is extorted from you.
Here's a real-world example of the importance of ads, and the lengths to which an admin will go to ensure that revenue stream. If you try to evade a site's revenue stream while still trying to use that site, don't be surprised if the admin justifiably takes action against you.
Being a web developer, this causes me to primarly develop with Mozilla, and then leave the other browser testing to the QA cycle. Ultimately this causes sites I develop to be "optomized for Mozilla", which in turn may cause more users to use Mozilla.
So although currently the percentage of the userbase using Mozilla is low, I would guess that the percentage of web developers is much higher - meaning we are at the begining of a growth cycle.
-CySurflex
my dads web site..
Actually, disabling "open unrequested windows" also turns off the javascr!pt:window.open in href tags as well as the windows that open in body onLoad events. I'd prefer it if I could just turn off the onLoad windows and still get the popups i specifically request. If I felt like putting on my C++ hipboots and wading into Mozilla source, hell, I'd change this myself.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Disabling JavaScript is the best solution.
Ask yourself, what has JavaScript done to improve the web browsing experience? Sure rollovers are cute, but is it worth pop up ads and page trapping and filling your screen with full-size windows to a dozen pr0n sites?
I wish browser makers would focus more on implementing useful things like CSS2. Browsers are for viewing content, not doing tricks.
Just enter this line in the prefs.js file:
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
Fight the Man!
Mozilla Power!
How to disable unrequested (pop-up/behind) windows:
.txt to the filename (adblocker.xpi.txt). Before saving the file, remove .txt from the filename and save the file to disk. Then in Netscape 7 click File | Open to install.
Add this line to your user.js or prefs.js:
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
OR
Download the adblocker.xpi file.
http://techaholic.net/adblocker.xpi
When you download the adblocker.xpi file in Netscape 7, it will add
In Netscape 7 click Edit | Preferences | Advanced - Scripts & Windows to unselect or select the Open unrequested windows.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Every time another window opens, another instance of the browser has to be launched which can result in an overload of resources to the machine.
This link is purely an educational tool, it will continually launch popups until your machine
comes to a halt. Unless you're good with kill or task manager don't click it. A reboot and your machine will be fine.
I think by law, ads should be rendered on the same page as the article and not in a popup or popunder window.
Sites like slash should have a "Yellow Pages" of ads. I'd go browse a bunch of banners if they were presented like my yellow pages if I needed a service.
Hmm, maybe we should ask Stallman if popups can be considered spam.
I like and use Mozilla, but do not use the popup blocking. If a site needs the revenue of popups and I don't value the site enough to tolerate them, I won't go there.
:)
What I worry about is that if too many people block popup, the sites will turn around and block that browser (i.e. Mozilla or modified Netscape 7.0).
Of course, you could always hack Mozilla to pretend to be IE...
Bottom line: Sites need revenue and will fight to get it. Think twice before blocking ads at a site you like.
Imagine that being wildly successful in your career meant that you failed 95% of the time. A baseball player getting called out 19 out of every 20 trips to the plate. Yet, in the world of direct (snail) mail, that's considered a successful campaign. So, if you mailed out 1,000,000 letters to 950,000 who threw it away, you'd think you were a direct marketing stud.
Online advertising is even worse, yet rather than realizing that people are probably not interested in your product (they would have clicked the banner ad), you figure you'll pop up extra windows. It's like reading a magazine and throwing out the first 8 magazine subscription cards but then seeing the 9th and saying "hmm, if they're willing to go through that much effort maybe I should subscribe."
And the best part is that people who figure out new surface area to plaster with ads consider themselves to be "creative." Bullsh-t. You are a hack. You'd be more creative if you were in a boy band or producing a reality TV show...
Bill Hicks said it best, "If you're in marketing, kill yourself."
Despite what you may be thinking, marketing people are not insects. Technically, they are arachnids.
Opera's had pop-up blocking for a while- and easily accessible too, for sites with legit popups. Just press F12, and click refuse pop up windows. I can understand AOL Time Warner's hesitation to include this feature in Netscape 7, but it sure comes in handy for porn sites. :P
slashdot!=valid HTML
So I can't fast-forward to skip their presentation? I'm paying for bandwidth to download ads, so I should have the right to not download them and thus save myself money.
Opera
www.opera.com
HTTP error codes, as specified in RFC 2616:
[insert witty comment here]
What do broadcast stations pay for the airwaves? NOTHING. Sure, they provide a few "public services" in exchange for the airwaves, but they get that piece of the spectrum for free. The fact they can make money from a resource the government decided to give them at little cost sickens me. And then there's cable, I pay for the stations and more ads! AHHH!
Not free
I use a program called Proxomitron. It is a proxy that sits on your own machine and basically filters webpages for pop-ups, javascript, ads, etc. there is no way around this method of blocking and it works great. The only site that gives mee problems is http://www.mail.com. What they have done is made it do that to navigate the site, you have to enable javascript. For sites like that, a simple window killer works fine.
The thing that websites need to understand is that most of the web is "open-source". I don't mean that you can take whatever you want, but what I mean is that most of the website's code can be viewed. Those sites that use obnoxious java, flash, etc. types of stuff to close source their sites require a third party program (at least with the Sun Java client under windows I use) to be viewed. What do I do? I just disable that stuff, if I can't navigate the site, then I won't go there. The point of the open-source is that if my browser is going to do anything, I have the ultimate control since the code is run from my machine. To hell with pop-ups, pop-unders, javascript, flash, shockwave, etc. etc. etc.
Sorry, your contract with your ISP isn't a contract with the sites you visit. You view the sites, in exchange for letting ads appear on a small part of your screen. It's that simple. Don't like it? Don't visit those sites.
You might have the technical capability to avoid ads, but that doesn't make it ethical.
Get Proxomitron.
It uses regular expressions to allow you to convert anything in HTML (including the HTML headers) to anything you want.
It'll block pop-ups, pop-unders, javascript, cookies, java, or whatever you can write a regex for.
If you're worried that not viewing site X's pop-ups is theft of service, you can not forego using Proxomitron on those sites, either entirely, or on a regex-by-regex basis.
You can bypass filtering just by adding string (like "bypass..") in front of the URL, or automate this with a Bookmark/Favorite set to a simple javascript.
And it makes browsing SO much more enjoyable. It's the difference between night and day, not having annoying, flashing, in-your-face ads.
And it's fast (even with DSL connection speeds) and it's free (as in beer, but hey, they author also licenses it to adsubtract).
Get Proxomitron and take back the web.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
So, if I want to block images to something like GoatSe, that would be wrong and not right? It's my computer, if I don't want to see something then I am not outside my rights to block them?
I didn't realize there was any sort of contract with sites that I visit that I must download everything they want me to in exchage for visiting a page on their site. There is no guarantee that I have images on, or javascript on, or flash installed.
Are lynx users unethical? They don't download images, and they don't have to deal with pop-ups.
If they're able to run a better browser, and run a simple browser expressly to avoid ads (and thus deny many sites they visit revenue), then yes, they're unethical. You may not like it, but think about it rationally instead of emotionally reacting to the idea that what may seem to you a harmless action in fact causes harm.
A site has every right to block you if you actively avoid its revenue stream, and can require you to activate certain options for this purpose. Administrators and owners have that right, if they wish to exercise you. You have the choice to not visit such a site. I remind you again, you live in a free, capitalist society, where you can send a message by denying to patronize businesses and sites whose policies you disagree with. Getting the content without allowing the site to do what it must to earn a small pittance is, at the very least, unethical.
If you try to evade a site's revenue stream while still trying to use that site, don't be surprised if the admin justifiably takes action against you.
Ok. And if a site goes to such trouble to shove ads down my throat, don't be suprised when I stop using it.
Let's be honest. Nearly anyone will tolerate a few ads for a quality site. Proxy filters like Proxomitron are popular because sites have gone overboard -- way overboard -- with ads.
(Even mainstream sites, like washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com, although I didn't realize until I browsed from work without a proxy filter.
I have a completely different, and better browsing experience than do most, because I use a proxy filter.)
What get more clicks-throughs? Try more compelling and fewer ads.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
So they have the right to block us, but we can't block them, or parts of them?
This is one of the reasons that I am not extremely happy with the dual-licensed nature of programs such as Mozilla and OpenOffice. Sure, such power in open-source packages can truly be a godsend to all of us, but the fact is that such a licensing scheme protects contributors barely more than a BSD-style license would. If either of these projects (most notably OpenOffice) becomes so popular that its owner could make a good profit by being able to close the code and sell it for a high price, by turning it into, in efffect, just another Microsoft Office, then they are free to at any time fork the code from the open-source project and continue in-house development, only releasing closed versions and extracting a fee from users. In this case the open-source version of the program would have to choose between playing eternal catch-up with the commercial version or evolving into something entirely different and entirely incompatible.
I also firmly believe that this model discourages contributors, mostly for the lack of protection mentioned above. I would certainly be happy to contribute my work to a GPL project; if a company wants to close some of the code that I have written, however, or link it with closed code, then I would require a fee from that company. It is as simple as that.
This brings me to my point: No, we wouldn't have either of theses projects without either Sun or AOL, but such a licensing mechanism allows companies such as these to close and commercially use contributed code that many potential contributors would prefer be GPLed for their own gain, rather than the benefit of their users - such is this action by AOL which is the subject of our discussion.
Want popup blocking? Use mozilla, dont use netscape. Simple enough isn't it?
A few months ago however, I tried out Opera. After using it a bit I discovered the "Disable Pop Ups" option and there was no way I'd go back to IE then. Even now when I have to switch for some compatibility issue (not often, only the really small web sites seem to have IE dependant features), I'm amazed at how annoying all the pop ups immediately become.
This is one of the best things that Open Source can do to convert users. Provide features that consumers (like me) truly want and the big boys won't give them.
HBO seems to do just fine wihtout ads. That's a pay channel with good content worth paying for with no "extortion" involved.
And most sites don't ask you to agree to view their ads to support their revenue stream, they just thrust them upon you.
Ok. And if a site goes to such trouble to shove ads down my throat, don't be suprised when I stop using it.
You have that right, and that's something I've said several times.
You don't have the right to experience the content while avoiding the small cost on your screen real estate so the site can pay its own costs. Many users are trying to do exactly this through the use of ad-blocking software. I think AOL is completely within their rights, and is acting ethically, with this decision.
Mozilla is pretty much perfect compared to IE so Netscape has a strong platform to build on. The sad thing is that it really rocks and is fast on Windows 95 without a browser and is slower and not_so-fast on any machine running IE 5 and up.
Heres hoping for a way to remove IE completely. Then again i dont use Windows but i want the windows users to be happy too.
HTTP/1.1 400
The cable company has the right to cut you off if you don't pay your bills, in order to help with their costs.
Similarly, if you wish to view and use a site, the site has the right to ask for a small payment in screen real estate, your attention, or even money to help offset their own costs. If you try to get around that using blocking tools, you're effectively stealing the content. You may not like this idea, but you must admit it has logic behind it.
If you don't like a site's favoured form of payment, you can stop visiting it.
My personal vote: Netscape 7.6. Mozilla will live long and prosper but I believe Netscape will not. There may be some(many) tuned (business, embedded, etc.) versions of Mozilla available under different names in future, but Netscape - at the moment does not seem to have much extra to offer. Or if it does, could someone say it out loud? What do you vote? :)
HBO seems to do just fine wihtout ads. That's a pay channel with good content worth paying for with no "extortion" involved.
If HBO can get by, fine. Many TV stations and websites can't; should they be forced to all go subscription-only? I think not.
And most sites don't ask you to agree to view their ads to support their revenue stream, they just thrust them upon you.
Funny, I'm not aware of a TV station that asks whether you'd like to view ads before you can view the content.
Just another example of the coolness that is Mozilla: Bannerblind.
It removes graphics / objects from web pages that match pre-determined sizes. Very cool!
Thought you might be interested. Note the very professional attitude the antiadblocker fellow keeps during his part of the discussion. Also note that I never admitted to blocking ads but his tone certainly acts as if I had. I was going to continue the argument but I tired of it. Maybe a couple hundred slashdotters would like to pick up where I left off? ;-) In order to keep it as short as possible I'll just copy and paste the email with the embedded replies etc. I'm sure you can figure it out:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Gardner"
To: webmaster@AntiAdBlocker.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 11:16 PM
Subject: Ad blockers
> Hmmm. I wonder what makes you think that anyone who blocks ads would be
> even the slightest bit interested in buying something from a banner ad
> that they saw on a website.
> I guess it's a good thing your customers can't think this in depth.
From: "AntiAdBlocker" webmaster@antiadblocker.com
To: "Jonathan Gardner"
Subject: Re: Ad blockers
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 00:52:06 -0400
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
A scumbag like yourself probably doesn't understand this, but billions of
dollars of products are purchased on the internet. MANY people click and
buy products, just not scumbag leeches like yourself that think you're owed
something. Also, most websites are paid when you view the ads, not if you
click or buy something. If you had an ounce of gray matter you would
understand how all the websites you visit are funded. AntiAdBlocker allows
the internet to keep running even with scumbags like yourself surfing the
web and stealing from webmasters. Shame on you.
AntiAdBlocker
From: "AntiAdBlocker" webmaster@antiadblocker.com
To: "Jonathan Gardner"
Subject: Re: Ad blockers
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 10:40:56 -0400
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
> I can tell from your tone that you are a very professional outfit,
> nevertheless you did not answer my question so I will take issue with your
> assumptions. I have no doubt that many things are bought over the
> internet. I do it myself.
> But just as with the real world, when I want something I go and get it. I
> NEVER purchase anything from an unsolicited phonecall.
> I NEVER purchase something from an unsolicited email.
> I NEVER purchase anything just because I see it on an ugly billboard that
> mars the beauty of the natural land nor do I buy things I see on an
> obtrusive banner ad.
Hogwash. Internet ads are like TV commercials. You watch the TV channel
for free and as a condition, they have commercials. It's not unsolicited
like a telemarketer. It's an agreement that you watch TV or the internet at
a reduced cost if you view the ads. So first of all, internet advertising
is not in the same league as junk mail, spam or telemarketers.
Secondly, don't lie to yourself. Do you purchase ANYTHING that you've seen
on a TV ad? I'm sure you have so don't even lie. That's the same kind of
ad as the internet. The ads offset the cost of the program and delivery.
Third, you must be foolish if you think that no one clicks on an ad and buys
something. If they didn't, advertisers wouldn't buy anymore ads, would they
Mr. smart ass? Also, a lot of internet advertising is branding, just like
TV commercials. Most TV commercials don't directly sell something. They
just brand a product. Like beer or car commercials. There's tons of beer
and car commercials but not once have I even seen a beer or car commercial
that gives a number to call to order beer or a car. That's because their
branding the product. Many internet ads are the same, just branding.
Marketing 101, but obviously, you don't have a clue and even worse you think
you know what you're talking about.
> These banner ads cost internet users time and bandwidth just to download
> them to display them and as the ads get bigger the problem gets worse.
The same could be argued about TV commercials. It costs time and bandwidth
to view TV commercials, but guess what? Those are the terms of watching TV
or the internet for free or at a reduced cost. If a TV show has too many
ads, you turn the channel. If an internet site has too many ads, you turn
the channel. The notion that YOU are being inconvenienced for getting
something for FREE is stupid. The fact is that you pay probably a flat
amount per month for your internet connection, just like cable TV. And just
like TV, the costs to view the internet are so low because of advertising.
Think how much cable TV would cost if there were no ads. I can tell you
already, about $10-$15 per channel per month instead of $30 for 50 channels.
The same goes with the internet. Ads pay for most of the internet. So your
$15-$30 internet connection per month would cost hundreds of dollars if you
had to pay for every site you visited. I don't think you understand, or can
grasp the fact that if all internet ads were banned tomorrow, either the
internet would fold or you would be paying several times more for your
internet connection.
Internet ads have become more bold because of people like yourself blocking
ads and thinking that sites shouldn't have ads. I don't think you
understand that sites don't run off a $10/month server. Most medium-sized
sites need a dedicated server which costs hundreds a month. And bandwidth
is about $300/Mbps (about 30 times the home cable rate). I have a single
site that costs me $2100/month for the server and the bandwidth. And the
only way to pay for that is with ads. If everyone blocked ads, the site,
and every other medium to large site on the internet would close and the
internet would suck. But you probably only care about yourself and don't
comprehend the big picture.
> There are many users out there that actually have to pay per the minute
> and each ad is costing them real money.
So what? It's your CHOICE to view a site. The ad wasn't sent to you. You
came to view it! And you're forgetting that those sites you're viewing also
have to pay for you to leech from them. Is that fair? Maybe you pay by the
minute, but you're not paying the web sites you visit. And if you're
blocking ads, you're stealing from the webmaster.
> Point remains though, that people who block ads weren't going to buy
> anything from them anyway.
That is about the most stupid thing I've ever heard and scumbags like
yourself always use it. I can spot a idiot scumbag like yourself a thousand
miles away when you use that statement. Listen to me now and understand me
later. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU BUY IT OR NOT, WEBMASTERS ARE PAID IF YOU
VIEW THE AD, NOT IF YOU CLICK ON IT OR BUY IT!!!! Let that soak into that
piece of crap you call a brain. Do you understand yet? Ads are paid by
impression and are designed for branding for the most part. The fact that
you click on them or not doesn't make a difference. It's that you VIEW
them. And if you block ads, you're stealing bandwidth from webmasters.
> They're just sick of having to pay in time and/or
> money to be forced to see someone's garish snakeoil logo.
99% of internet users don't pay by the minute. And even if you're too
stupid to get a flat-fee internet connection, you have the same option as
you have with the TV, change the channel if you don't like the program or
the ads. Stealing from the webmaster can't be justified just because you're
too stupid to have a flat-fee internet connection.
> Shame on YOU for perpetuating the ugliness of the web.
Shame on YOU for stealing from webmasters. I can't wait till AntiAdBlocker
is on every site on the web so scumbags like yourself no longer get a free
ride and can't steal from webmasters.
AntiAdBlocker
If they want to try and block me, let them. If not, it's their own fault.
A great many websites do not function without it. In particular, forms no longer work. Many website also use those small (60x60 pixels or so) click-thru popups to provide instant help. Links in some website depend on javascript, which means that browsing around certain website becomes impossible with javascript disabled. And constant re-enabling/disabling makes it a pain in the ass to do. Summary - IE sucks the big one for pop-ups. You have to get a third party program, and from what I have seen, they aren't great either. So when I go to sites I suspect are going to bombard me with that stuff, I open up Moz. [But I generally stick to IE for the much, much faster instantiation time]
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I do. Mozilla's popup blocking is a tool at my disposal. I don't whine about those ads because I don't see them. The site is entitled to try and use them as a revenue stream, just as TV stations are entitled to air ads, but that doesn't mean I am obligated to do what they're hoping I will. If it were that simple then the Underpants Gnome could come up with a profitable plan.
1) Desire revenue.
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
Whining that your business plan doesn't work because people aren't acting like good little corporate sheep isn't any better than what you're complaining about. If people are willing to go to considerable lengths to avoid an entire class of advertising then it's time to wake up and look for alternatives. Harangueing people to suffer through advertising they actively despise because "it's the right thing to do" isn't likely to result in additional sales for the advertisers anyway.
People watch television ads because they actually have content. Most may be lame, but a few are interesting and funny.
Imagine if television were like popups. T'Pol is wearing her underwear in decontamination while Tripp is rubbing blue gel all over her. Suddenly a robotic arm pops out of the top of your television waving a big neon sign saying to buy something. You hit the button on your remote to kill it, but by then the scene has switched to Hoshi in an overcoat. Aaargh! I don't want to see Hoshi, I want to see T'Pol covered in blue gel!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
www.meaya.com
(I'm not afiliated or anything, it just seems to work 99% of the time)
I do. Mozilla's popup blocking is a tool at my disposal. I don't whine about those ads because I don't see them. The site is entitled to try and use them as a revenue stream, just as TV stations are entitled to air ads, but that doesn't mean I am obligated to do what they're hoping I will.
Actually, websites are even more entitled to ask you to view ads than television stations, because web ads are often paid on a per-view basis. Thus, blocking an ad is directly denying the site you visit needed revenue, while still viewing the content they spend good money to let you see.
Ethically, you should let the ad through, or not view the site. You have that second option, after all; no one's forcing you to visit sites.
I think that:
500 Internal Server Error
Should have been...
500 server fucked up due to slashdotting
I caught you in your fib! I clicked your link to the screenshot and the link for the free demo DVD didn't work. 8-{ Boy was I bummed out about that.
./ was a carefully crafted screenshot you made with the gump or something.
That must be proof that your accusation about M$ advertising on
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
its not official yet
Relying on ads doesn't mean being allowed to annoy users.
When I see fairly placed ads, if the product is interesting to me I consider buying it, but if a site slows down my search for information with those useless popups or gigantic flashing images, I promptly block the images - whatever the product is - and often refuse to browse the site again.
The point is: if we don't fight unfair advertising we are going to increase its use.
Please, help the economy by buying advertised products, but also help keeping clean the net by refusing to buy unfairly advertised ones.
I had a similar dialogue with a "Bulk E-mail Promotion Company" a while back, pretty much on the same lines.
... and so on. Eventually I stopped getting mails.
---
> Please unsubscribe me from your list. I don't like spam.
Why do you say that?
> Well, because it's inconvenient for me.
Is it because it's inconvenient for you that you came to me?
> Yes. I would like to unsubscribe from your mailing list.
What makes you believe you might want to unsubscribe?
> Because I know I want to unsubscribe.
Does it bother you that you know you want to unsubscribe?
> No, what bothers me is spam.
Earlier you said it's inconvenient for you?
> Yes, of course it's inconvenient. Do you like spam?
I don't understand.
> Do you appreciate getting spam in your mailbox?
You mentioned that you would like to unsubscribe?
> Yes, please unsubscribe me from your list.
Is it because of your life that you are going through all this?
> Listen friend, my life is none of your damn business. No more spam, end of discussion.
I would appreciate it if you would watch your tongue!
> ME watch MY tongue? But you send me mails called "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS 2-4 INCHES GUARANTEED!"
When did you first know that I send you mails called enlarge my penis 2 4 inches guaranteed?
---
The project started out closed source, and forked into an open version. If you want to start from scratch or on a project or pick up a less unemcumbered project (not to say there aren't good free browsers, actually typing this from Konqueror) in order to prevent closed forks, that's fine. But still keep in mind that it's an closed to open to closed fork, rather than just the typical open to closed stuff that happens with BSDed stuff. Netscape provided a significant initial codebase, it's not like they just took an originally totally open project, added some cool feature, and then started selling it. For that initial code base, and all the work involved, I do not see it as so bad to be able to add additional features ontop of open ones and keep the new features closed (whether or not they actually do this, I don't know, but I'd have no problem with it regardless).
Whoa! Here I thought I was a net stud but then I discover the "204 No Content" return value. I never saw that one before. That's funny especially because there are many pages of contentless garbage on the internet.
"Ethically, you should let the ad through, or not view the site"
But the only way you can tell if the site has an ad or not is to load the page. So once the page is loaded, it's too late to make a decision, it's already done.
The only way around this is to have the browser load the HTML, parse it and say "there's an ad on this site, do you wish to view the page?" But since the HTML has already been grabbed, you might as well view it anyways, right?
See, the problem is I am looking for information on the Internet. Most of what I'm looking for can be summed up in a 20KB or smaller document. But Nooooo, these web admins just HAVE to put another 500KB of images on the page and then complain that their traffic costs them an arm and a leg.
No sympathy here.
Of course the link to the free Demo DVD didn't work. I took the page, and saved it as a JPG. Unfortately saving a page as a JPEG causes hyperlinks not to work. For proof that Microsoft sponsors Slashdot click here
If instead they want to make unwarranted assumptions about the kind of browser I'm using and/or my Web browsing habits, that's their lookout. I feel no ethical dilemma at all; I am not stealing anything, because at no point did I make any agreement to accept popups. Had I done so and then reneged on my agreement, that would be a different story.
I get a scad of unsolicited advertising in my Sunday newspaper, too. I usually throw it away without looking at it. No doubt the newspaper would be more expensive if it wasn't there, but that doesn't mean I feel ethically obliged to wade through it so that their business model is justified. A presumption on their part does not constitute an obligation on mine.
On the other hand, I wouldn't even attept to disable the banner advertising on my Opera browser, because there I did agree to it - it was my choice to accept the ad-sponsored version, and I consider it a fair exchange.
Also just noticed that all those big ads have been pulled from Slashdot. So they marked it as flamebait and pull the ads, so no more people will see the truth.
Dude you are so right.
by going to this site, you can see proof that Microsoft is really sponsoring Slashdot. Then they pull all their ads, for fear that other people would see the truth. What kind of conspiracy is afoot here. Mark me as flaimbait, the truth cannot be suppressed ( -1 : flaimbait )
Why the fuck is this modded +2 insightful? Another example of why Slashdot has taken a bottle of retard pills. Nice 'mod' system fuckheads.
So NS7 is 471?
Expectation Failed?
The saving/renaming shouldn't be necessary. Try a plugin on Mozdev with software install enabled. The site probably needs an update
- It presents me with a contract informing me that I must read the ads to visit the site.
- I willingly sign that contract.
- Reasonable steps are taken to enforce the intention that I may not visit the site without signing that contract, e.g. login information.
Otherwise, the site has as much legal standing as a man sitting in his unwalled unfenced house putting a sign outside it saying "YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LOOK AT MY HOUSE! LOOKING AT MY HOUSE IS THEFT!"Whether it costs the site owner more for me to "look at" his house is irrelevant. If he doesn't want me to look at it, he can build a wall, like the physical house owner, or in this case implement a much cheaper authentication method.
And if this stops anyone reading the site, well, sucks to be a .bomb. The Right To Profit is not part of the Constitution.
Their technology sucks but it's our fault ads won't show everywhere. Internet isn't perfect but it's our fault because we won't pretend it to be perfect.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Sorry dude, didn't mean to tax your brain too much with my joke. Check my user number and figure that a number that low means I have been around long enough to know that gump isn't a clone of the gimp and a screenshot dosen't have hyperlinks.
Go home folks, nothing to see here...
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I got this message attempting to access ufaq.org:
Please be patient and try again in a few seconds.
The web site you are trying to access is experiencing an extremely high volume of traffic.
#httptype ufaq.org
Microsoft IIS 5.0
HOWTO restore functionality to ufaq.org:
Delete Windows.
Install Linux.
Install Apache.
Save 200$ and pass GO!
I may get flamed out of existence for this, but so be it.
Everyone here sounds like popups are the work of the devil and should be banned from the Internet. Someone needs to put things into perspective here.
I operate a Web site where popunders and banner ads are the main source of revenue for the site. The free service I offer people who go to my site is run on over 16 different servers. What pays for these servers to be online? The money from advertising. Let's face it - you don't get jack for banner ads these days. Personally i get 8 cents CPM on banners. That's nothing. Where do you look to? Alternative types of ads that do pay.
So how can I pay my bills that total nearly $3,000 a month for this "free" service (and make a profit in the end)? Popunders. This is what advertisers are willing to pay for these days. Am I a sinner that should be crusified for supporting this ad format?
The fact is, many of the sites you visit today on the Internet are ad supported. Many are just scraping by, and this is one of their main sources of revenue. Your using popup killer deprives these sites of revenue that they should be getting for you visiting their sites.
If someone puts some content out on the Internet for you to read, and puts a popunder on the page, you allowing the popunder to load is your payment for reading the information on the page. YES it is stealing from that Web site to not have their ad load. They are offering something for you, but you have to be willing to give a little something back - be that 1 second of your time to close a new window, or a few seconds where you actually consider the ad.
Nothing is free. You have to pay somehow, and on the Internet you pay with your eyes.
I see one of the other posts here claiming that popunders basically "hijacking" their browser. Some Web sites may try to lock you into popup hell where you close one window, more come up in an endless loop. Of course that is wrong, I'm not supporting that. What I do support is all the Webmasters out there who are trying to get by where their source of revenue is legitamit popup/under advertising. Just because a new window is created, that's not hijacking, come on, get real.
Like I said, just my opinion on the matter, probably be flamed like never before. Someone has to be the 'bad' guy.
I use a home-brewed HTML- and image-rewriting proxy to zap most ads, and Mozilla takes care of the pop-ups. Sometimes the proxy gets it wrong and doesn't zap an ad, or zaps something that isn't an ad.
If I experience a problem with some site - either because my anti-ad / privacy measures have rendered the site unusable, or maybe because there's some ad I'm seeing that I *really* want to get rid of - then sometimes I'll spend a few minutes tweaking cookies / javascript / the proxy to fix the problem.
However, the bottom line is: if the site doesn't work for me, no big deal, I'll go elsewhere. So long, suckers. If you wanted my traffic, you shouldn't have used ads/cookies/javascript in that way.
Yeah, expecting popup blocking in Netscape now is like expecting a Coke machine not to have a coin slot.
I (and many others) will block "unrequested windows" as a SOP, and go one step beyond: add a line to dump anyone's IP address and hostname into the hosts file like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 media1.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media2.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media3.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media4.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media5.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media6.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 media7.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1 www.burstnet.com
Get the idea? Another excellent way is going through the cookies and pulling anyone with "ad" or "fast" in their name.
I may be bad with names, but I'll never forget your IP address
astalavista . box . sk
The net is filled with ads, what did you expect from AOL? Of course netscape won't feature something that works against what their owners see as their business. Netscape didn't start mozilla for the sake of freedom or removal of annoyance, they did it because they want to own the only browser on the market, and be able to push whatever they want into it. They are not battling IE for your sake after all.
I think there is a better chance that Konqi will get and keep features such as this, and it is not a big piece of bloat either.
Can't a guy be sarcastic ;)
But look at it this way .. the sites are using popups to generate revenue, which they use to pay their bandwidth bills, right?
So by not loading the popups we're saving them money - not stealing.
Pop-up ads are one of the reasons why I choose not to use mainstream browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape (aside from liking proper CSS1 support like Konqueror has). I like the way Konqueror and Mozilla give you the option of filtering them out. People have pointed out that it is easy to modify Netscape 7 to do this filtering too, so there is nothing to moan about (apart from the XPI links going to servers running IIS that are falling over under the demand for this file). Recent Mozillas are small and fast (relatively) and give you all the nice features. It's your choice.
Follow me
I'm not a die hard open source fanatic by any means. I use Windows 2000 most of the time, and I only occasionally boot to my Linux partition to play.
A few months ago however, I tried out Opera.
opera != open source ... ;)
Unless they just changed to make me look foolish
Opera may be neat and all, but it ain't OS.
Yes, but they tend to be specialised services that you wouldn't necessarily hear about unless you were targeted by their advertising campaigns.
Beneath the hype fuelled, misinterpreted and poorly understood Internet world that many and the media believe, there are some real companies, quietly making real money (and lots of it) with brand new concepts enabled by the Internet.
I work for one, and it makes us laugh when people and the media talk about the Internet having no viable business models.
Load of tosh.
There is plenty of money to made. It's just not for "Mr 25 Trillion Hits for 1 dollar".
PHB
The real problem lies in that some sites are just IMPOSSIBLE to browse without having some kind of a popup killer, i mean those that give you 5 popups, that when you kill give you 5 more, and even if you clicked through to them you'd only get MORE popups, as it seems popup advertisers are trying to get people to their popup sites, by, you guessed it, POPUPS.
that isn't so bad when you consider the 'i wont die peacefully' popunders. is having a popup every minute really gonna make you think anything else than 'AARRGGHH F*******K THIS'?
imho 2 popups is too much, i could stand one popup per day per site.
it's just the thing that most annoying popups aren't even put there by pro's(they would figure out that 5 per page is pretty darn annoying), but by a$$ webmasters that think they'll get more viewers maybe that way, or maybe the art is in having too much popups that anyone would come, thus limiting the bandwith usage..
the most annoying ad i saw the other day, that spawned from banner, i guess it had dhtml or something, that spawned a bigger 300x300 banner RIGHT ON TOP OF THE SITE's NAVIGATION BAR, like, wtf?
bottom line of this rant? most popups just try to make you watch more popups, because the insanity closing model of getting money per 'actual' view.. thus making them extremely annoying and useless. i can bare with traditional banners, they don't interfere with my browsing, and sometimes have something intresting too. but i've seen 1 bit of too many MINI CAMERA FITS EVERYWHERE ads..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Those of you complaining that popups fund your site, come on. You know that someone blocking popups is not going to buy anything through them. So you're upset that you can't lie to an advertiser and claim that sending me a big gif or swf is a good deal.
Your inability to figure out a good advertising model is not my problem. I obviously don't want products or services advertised by popups; how could I make it more clear than by trying to block them? At least spammers trying to go through filters might be trying to get through ISP or corporate filters. I can kinda understand that, even if I don't like it. But trying to defeat popup blocking, I don't get it.
If popups are disabled, the download won't start, and you'll get a fairly polite message stating you ought not to block the advertisement.
I'm not sure I'd use this blocker-blocker on my own site, since it's bound to annoy the shit out of some people. But it does kind of work.
The whole thing kind of reminds me of that hitchhiking device in HHGttG, you know, the one that was perpetually being improved by half the galaxy's engineers while the other half attempted to block it?
Yes, but what about animated gifs? Just about all of them (>99%) turn out to be ads. Can they be turned off?
Yes. I'm a bad person who 'steals' from Webmasters by not showing their pop-ups.
Otherwise known as someone whose browser doesn't support them. Say what you like about banner ads, at least they still show on my machine as well.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
on a TV ad?"
Did I read that correctly? This has to be my favorite part of the whole email. With reasoning like that, it's amazing he can hold ANY job, let alone represent a company as its webmaster.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Very pretty, I could use it as a screen saver. It opened a few windows with animations, then they disappeared and I got http://www.absurd.org/a.html
This is the third URL of this kind I try and none of them managed to even noticeably slow my Duron 850/768MB down. Memory usage didn't even go higher than 170MB.
Netscape 7.0 will not include the nifty pop-up blocking sported in Mozilla, as AOL depends on pop-up ads for annoy^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing to their "valued" customers.
AOL's "valued" customers are already paying $23.95/month for shitty dial-up access. And they're still forced to sit through pop-ups. I don't see any value there whatsoever.
There's a bit of JS you can link to which makes it work.
Alternatively you can use absolute positioning and hide the fixed from IE using one of the many tricks/selectors it doesn't support (assuming this is compatible with your use of fixed).
Or you can do what the W3C do and ignore it. Nice how IE6 SP1 *still* doesn't fix this.
I just tried 7.0 PR1 on my Linux box. Man does it suck. Not only does the mouse wheel not work but it has no support for themes and doesn't really handle some CSS right.
Wow... how Mozilla and Netscape are related is beyond me at this point.
Also the Radio@Netscape sucks too. I tried to find a realplayer plugin for linux. If you goto real.com and follow the download link it keeps trying to send you an EXE without even asking.
Man... the ad blocking removal aside, Netscape just plain sucks otherwise.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Would someone please splain me why pop-ups are better than banner ads?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
If it wasn't for taxpayer-funded programs, then why would we pay taxes?
This toolbar is fantastic and works fine for me in Netscape 7p.1. The best thing is that you can allow popups with one click when they are part of a site.
...but when will we see some sort of blocking feature to remove that lame ^H^H^H^H joke? That's what i want to see :)
thelocust[dot]org
Fools! Don't you realize that denying pop-up ads is stealing web-based content, just the same way that skipping TV commercials is stealing television programs?
I'm not sure how sarcastic I'm being, here, when you get right down to it. It's clear that if advertising is supposed to make possibile all the free content we're used to, then the ability to block all ads is something of an issue. (Is it actually advertising that keeps web sites going? Or is it pixies? I've never figured it out.)
What I am sure of is that people shouldn't be prevented from blocking ads if they want to. If that causes a problem for advertisers, so be it. And certainly, people not viewing the ads aren't in any sense "thieves" -- you put ads out there hoping that people will view them, but you can't force people to view them. (Well, you can try, if you can afford the politicians.)
Like everyone keeps saying around here: things may change. For example, if ads no longer seem to be working (because, f'r instance, nobody ever sees them anyone), the nature of free content on the Web may alter. If this inconveniences either the viewers of that content, or the advertisers, well, tough.
I conclude with a quote from Heinlein, which should be sent to all relevant parties, once a day:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute nor common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." --Robert Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
...annoy^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing...
Why must the geeks beat this stupid joke into the ground? Say what you're going to say and be done with it.
We must find a way of stopping the /. "effect".
I am tired of trying to follow the links in articles, just to found it down.
Some guy yesterday sugested to make a cache of the external links in articles. Just 1 or 2 days is enough.
Cmon slashcoders, is this too difficult for you? Or you actually "like" to DOS fellow sites to death?
I know this is old hat, but I've got a nice database going already, and the registry file for MS DNS server is effortlessly importable. Check out www.machineroom.org/dns to see it.
it's been reported at http://kairosnews.org/modules.php?op=modload&name= News&file=article&sid=495&mode=nested&order=0&thol d=0 and http://boingboing.net/2002_06_01_archive.html#8520 3771
you see, that the thing....
Look at most small town newspapers... they live with just their regular ad's and no inserts.. and they are massively cheaper than a medium sized town's paper.. Why?
no overpaid reporters, no editors that are getting 6 figures (nor should ANY editor get 6 figures) no overpaid photographers with 30,000.00 cameras. Yet they still report the same news (API wire, everyone get's the same thing!) and the local events are covered with the same level and grace (or non grace as many reporters are getting into)
so don't buy their bullshit that they HAVE to attack you with more advertising... they don't. They can keep their ad space at a higher rate instead of whoring it out like they do to keep customers that whine as bad as or worse than they do.
Media is completely a scam, a bunch of whiners whining that they aren't rich yet....dont listen to them, ignore them...
I've been using Mozilla for quite some time now and I love the feature that disables pop-ups. However, pop-up adds are not the only thing that annoy me as a web surfer. The second most annoying thing is trying to contact some server that belongs to "doubleclick.net" and get a response from that server. Because the servers have to handle too much load, the connection is really slow and that takes all the pleasure out of browsing. I found a couple of ways to battle with it, first is to put the server's name into my /etc/hosts file and redirect it to 127.0.0.1, the second is to configure my firewall not to accept any connections from those servers. I would like Mozilla developers to make an option that allows a user to block traffic to and from unwanted servers/networks like doubleclick. Thanks,
Well what if your browser doesn't _do_ popups or graphics?
No, no, I'm not saying I'm so l33t and I use lynx as my primary browser-not at all. I typically use galeon or mozilla, but often times I'm working on one of the many servers that is Xless and lynx or wget is the quickest way to find and nab something off the net. It keeps the bandwidth down, and efficiency up-illegal?
I think not.
Sigs pose an operational security risk and help the baddies aggregate data. I guess commenting does too, oops.
In case if you're wondering how to stop double click from tracking your answers, here is an answer from a site. I copied the material here:
/etc or /etc/bind directory. If you have trouble finding it, use this command:
find / -name named.conf
/usr/sbin/named
Then just do a
kill -HUP 7907
Use whatever process ID your named has, not "7907". You're done. Clear your browser cache and rejoice.
/etc/hosts or firewalls.
Theory: If you tell your name server that it is in charge of the domain "doubleclick.net" then it will happily answer all requests for "Where's doubleclick.net" with the smug answer, "I know everything there is to know about doubleclick.net, and I can tell you with complete confidence that there is No Such Place." If browsers can't find doubleclick.net, then doubleclick.net can't track those users.
Because many users typically use each name server, this is not only one of the the fastest ad blocking techniques known to freedom-loving humanity, it's also the technique that protects the most users per minute spent on it. Step 1. Log in to the name server as root.
Step 2. Find your named.conf file. It may be in the
Step 3. Open the named.conf file for editing in your favorite text editor. Locate the "localhost" zone. It should look something like this: zone "localhost" { type master; file "/etc/bind/db.local"; }; It doesn't matter if the filename on the line beginning with "file" is different. Make a copy of the localhost zone elsewhere in the file. Change the copy to read "doubleclick.net" instead of "localhost". zone "doubleclick.net" { type master; file "/etc/bind/db.local"; }; Save the file and exit the text editor. If you mess up the file, exit without saving and do step 3 again.
Step 4. Find out the process id of named with the command ps ax | grep named Let's say you get something like this: 7907 ? S 0:03
This is an easier way than using
Of course Netscape, an AOL property, is not going allow users to turn off the pop-ups. It is central to the AOL busniess model: throw a lot of pop-ups with a little content behind them. That would be like Time Warner allowing TV watchers to diable the commericals.
Why would anyone expect any different?
How sleepless is the egg, knowing that which throws the stone forsees the bone.
Removing the popup-disable feature just took away the main motivation to use something other than IE. Everyone I mention Mozilla to looks at me with glassy-eyed apathy until I mention the 2 winning features of Mozilla: disable popup ads, and tabbed browsing.
By removing this feature, they are killing themselves; the "average user" will not be interested.
Bye bye, Netscape.
The more shitty TV stations that go out of business, the better off we will be. Fuck em.
Why aren't people just switching to Mozilla instead of Netscape? One reason I think is the problem with plugins. Why is it so hard to get Mozilla to recognize plugins? I've installed the Real plugin 10 times and can't get Mozilla to recognize it. Fix that problem and I'll get my mom to use it. Until then, she's stuck with an incomplete version in NS6/7.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
"is there any real internet business model from the standpoint of a website that offers a service but not cult membership?"
The bigger question is that if the Internet isn't a profitable place for business (other than to provide access to it), WHY should everyone else have to change to make it so?
Why does the Internet have to be made "safe" for business, when clearly the public rejects that which they want to change to make it safe?
Corporatism != Free Market
If you look at whois entries for www.antiadblocker.com, www.arcadeathome.com, and not to mention the sites referenced on AntiAdBlocker's front page-
Registrant:
Gecko Technologies
1788 Quarry View
Columbus, OH 43204
US
888-800-8000
Domain Name: ANTIADBLOCKER.COM
Adminstrative Contact:
Technologies, Gecko gecko@buckeye-express.com
1788 Quarry View
Columbus, OH 43204
US
888-800-8000
Technical Contact:
Technologies, Gecko gecko@buckeye-express.com
1788 Quarry View
Columbus, OH 43204
US
888-800-8000
Registrant:
ArcadeAtHome
1788 Quarry View
Columbus, OH 43204
US
Domain Name: ARCADEATHOME.COM
Administrative Contact:
AtHome, Arcade webmaster@arcadeathome.com
1788 Quarry View
Columbus, OH 43204
US
888-800-8000
Technical Contact:
AtHome, Arcade webmaster@arcadeathome.com
1788 Quarry View
Columbus, OH 43204
US
888-800-8000
The other 3 sites on www.antiadblocker.com's front page are also owned by the same person...No suprise they use his product, eh?
Your friend and mine, Tim Eckel...Anyone remember the eFront debacle from last year? This guy deserves NO sympathy from anyone as far as i'm concerned.
From the article on GigaLaw:
[Web users who disable graphics]are committing copyright infringement because they are interfering with Web publishers' exclusive right to control how their pages are displayed.
Whoa! What right to control how their pages are displayed? As somone has worked for years on the web, the one truism that I've leared is that I can't control how something is going to be displayed. I can make suggestions, but that's about it.
Anyone know if this is a real "right" or if it's just someone blowing hot air?
GenericJoe
- Using Lynx should be illegal? What if there were a graphics-add-on for lynx that I chose not to download and install? Would that be illegal?
- I committed copyright infringement when I skipped pages of nature description in LOTR?
- I should be arrested for walking through a shopping mall without looking at the shops' displays? What if I help up my hand to shield the displays from my view?
This is so silly.bla
I wonder if there will be a registry key in the windows version that can be modified. They are taking out the check-box in the UI, but its more than likely that they might leave a registry key for it still intact. If so, its better than nothing.
I object to annoying advertising as well, and it's the wrong turn to take. People will not click on or regard banner ads in principle, even if the ad in itself is interesting. ("Yeah, I know they're good, but they are using banner ads, so they suck.")
Education is the key, people must be made aware of the real prices (without ads). Perhaps Slashdot could publish their finances. :-)
Home Page
Mary Bingham, of Springfield, was arrested today for criminal copyright violations. Several shoppers at the PiggyMax grocery store witnessed Bingham, a 42 year old mother of two children attending Spingfield High School, flip past an advertisement in Curve magazine.
"She [Bingham] was standing at the magazine stand just reading the magazine [Curve]. When all the sudden, she flipped right past a page featuring an advertisement," said Marv Winklman, a sales representative for a local cable operator. "It was horrible. I witnessed the suffering of Curve magazine... I remember turning to others standing next to her in shock. I had no words. My god, the advertisement was just flipped by. I hope she rots in prison!" Mary Bingham and her attorney refused to comment on this story.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
That article was fascinating.
Basically, it seems to me as though from a marketing perspective, they want to force us to not ignore ads. A "good ad" is one that cannot be ignored.
They are missing the point of marketing entirely. A "good ad" is one we don't ignore because we don't want to ignore it, but because we're forced to not ignore it. That's always been a basic maxim of marketing; you're selling the product, and alienating your viewers does not serve that purpose.
Seen this way, pop-up (and popover) ads become nothing more than the last refuge of the talentless hack who can't make a decent advertisement to save his life, so he instead forces people to view it.
The anatomy of an effective ad on the Net right now is changing. Google has the right idea with its AdWords. A good ad doesn't take a lot of bandwidth and isn't intrusive, but still manages to intrigue the user. They're integrated well into the page, so they still manage to Look Good. That's the type of ad I would check out. Text-based ads also have the advantage that even though they take almost no time to download over even the slowest modems, they cannot be blocked because they're part of the page, rather than a separate entity. You might theoretically be able to hack around your user CSS file, but thhat would be the only way, and even then you wouldn't save any bandwidth.
Here's an example of an a text-based ad system that works. Open-Source, too; nice bonus.
Second, if you want to see how to have ads on a web site without pissing everyone off check out kuro5hin. No popups and no images in the ads. They are easily spotted yet don't distract the reader from the rest of the page. At the choice of the advertiser you can even discuss the ad. Simple ad creation lets people quickly design and submit their copy (no waiting for someone to create an image). IMO it's advertising that is very acceptable.
Banner ads are a bad idea; popups much, much worse. Let's admit to our mistake and stop using them.
Advertising on the net is annoying but a necessary evil. But at the current rate banner/popup ads will be all you can see in you web browser. Something has to change.
pherris
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Popup Stopper by Panicware works well for me. Of course I'm running Windows on a PC, so if you're not, it won't help much. However, I have yet to have it not block a popup. It doesn't block the javascript - it prevents another browser from opening.
Consider a web application that controls multiple windows. Unless one considers a single window apps to be inherently superior to apps that allow multiple windows, there are good reasons for pop-ups.
As an example, my bank uses a pop-up window for its find the closest branch functionality. The layout is IMO superior to what would be achieved using frames or rewriting the document.
This is one fine troll. What with the follow-up posts and all, you've really out done yourself. This is very good work for an AC troll.
That is why unices have something called SIGKILL. To use it, just type "killall -9 ", replacing with your browser (opera, mozilla, etc).
If you're at your computer you're strapped down to the chair with your eyelids held open with clamps. Your PC starts up and immediately opens a 'browser'. You don't surf the net, it surfs itself -- the startup page pops up ads which in turn pop up their own ads, etc. God forbid you should watch TV, with only one channel and no remote control. The average show is an hour long, 45 minutes being commercials, 5 minutes being the show's beginning and end credits, the rest of the show is nothing but the actors walking around in environments featuring dozens of product placements. Can't wait.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
"The news publishers who say "yes" say that turning off graphics in your web browser should be illegal too."
Presumably then, using a text-only browser like Lynx would be automatically illegal.
When you code for w3c standards, you still wind up spending most of your time in one browser hitting refresh to see how the code turns out. There are dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of little microdifferences, and the browser you spend most of your time in will reflect the finalized design.
(this isn't a good thing, or a bad thing, just an observation)
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
i once had a conversation with a microsoft employee explaining to him that my preference of browsers is changing. All due to a key feature deny unrequested pop up windows.....
All i have to say if this feature is removed all hope is lost.
Find it at:
http://www.panicware.com/product_companion.htmlI haven't seen a popup window in 6 months :)
Everyone here sounds like popups are the work of the devil and should be banned from the Internet. Someone needs to put things into perspective here.
So how can I pay my bills that total nearly $3,000 a month for this "free" service (and make a profit in the end)? Popunders. This is what advertisers are willing to pay for these days. Am I a sinner that should be crusified for supporting this ad format?
Let me get this right. You sell your soul to the devil, and then complain that those that have religion are raining hellfire down on you?
You seem to forget that the web is and always has been a user-controlled medium. Web browsers don't have to be 800x600 or 640x480, hell I can make mine 1000x20 if I want to. If I want to change my local DNS so that ads.losercompany.com resolves to 127.0.0.1 instead of your ad-generating box, that's your problem, not mine. And the moment you start spouting obvious bull$#!+ like
YES it is stealing from that Web site to not have their ad load
is the point where I just sit back and point and laugh at you. It is the height of arrogance to proclaim that I'm somehow stealing from you because I didn't do something you asked me to. You can generate all the bits in the world you want, but as soon as they come across the net into my computer, they're mine to do with inside my computer however I want. Your rights end where my computer begins. If that means that you can't make as much money as you thought you were going to be able to, then guess what: try again, loser. No one has the right to make money.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
The news publishers who say "yes" say that turning off graphics in your web browser should be illegal too.
I hate to be one of those who pick on the Slashdot "editors" for their commentary, but I've got to jump in here. Can someone quote me the line from the GigaLaw article which states that the people suing Gator claim that browsing without graphics turned on is illegal?
If you're going to make a comment, please point to a reference. Nowhere could I find that mentioned. If you're just going to make shit up that you think is right, just shut up.
Personally I think advertisers should give up on the graphics and go back to basics: Kuro5hin textads are unobtrusive but actually quite effective (I read them a lot more than fashy graphics or popups - and the 'haiku' opportunities are endless). The web isn't like a broadcast medium, it's driven by the user, not the broadcaster; ad agencies need to re-think their approach.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Well, we're all very impressed by your low user number. Back then you had to take Taco up the butt several times to get an ID.
Perhaps better example would be a calendar web page that creates a popup when visited on days with scheduled tasks marked as urgent. Or a GUI popup about a security violation for scanning software. I can think of many situation were unsolicited pop-up would be beneficial to many different types of users.
Just get one of the *numerous* add-in products for IE that work way better (in my personal experience) than the ones built-in to Opera and Mozilla.
See this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38010&cid=4074 998 My favorite one is Panicware.com's Popup Stopper.
I did so, and surfed to nytimes.com, and immediately got a pop-up.
I have to say that I agree with most other people here, pop up ads are the most annoying part of the current internet (except possibly pop unders!) I have never, and will never buy anything as a result of seeing one, infact, it puts me off the brand. The only advertising I approve of are the sponsored links on google, more often than not they are interesting, and they are the only ads I will click on.
Come on you webmasters out there, come up with something like sponsored links, I like my free internet!
One of the reasons I am soon to be leaving my bank, as they have piled on fees on top of fees for the last time. Every time I've had a credit union account, I've been very happy with the service and fee schedule; my only issue was the limited ATM availability. (Because federal banking laws prohibit credit unions from growing too large) This experience with a large commercial bank, however, has just made me feel used.
This is however seriously off-topic, and no longer relevant to internet ad revenue.
No one is FORCING you to make a living on the internet. There is no overseer of jobs that has deemed you a "webmaster", requiring you to make a living only on the internet through a website.
What if, before you could read a magazine article, you were forced to peel a sticker off of the content. A big sticker advertising the X-10 camera. Would that annoy you? What if you were driving down the highway or a residential street and you had to stop every 10-50 feet and wait for a large set of double doors to open before you could continue on your journey? A large set of doors that are telling you that your penis is too small, or heck even just telling you that the new Ford BigLargeHuge SUV gets good gas milage? Would that annoy you. How about a large ad that blocked 20-50% of the TV screen and in order to get rid of it you had to press a button on your remote, then during the next scene in the show the ad came back and you had to click again to get rid of it?
I think that, with the exception of the "information wants to be free" zelots, most people do not mind advertising done in content in the usual print manner e.g. either the content flows around the ad or the ads are in the margin of the pages. Salon.com has this, I've even played with the Absolut ads they display there from time to time. I stopped visiting ANY of the gamespy.com network of websites soley due to their use of the Flash ads that blocked the content and made a lot of noise (while I was at work no less!:)) I noticed that Maxim, FHM, and Stuff magazine are becoming even more homogenous in their content, sure they had the same type of articles ("How to score", "Some guy got hurt", etc...) but now they are even starting to have the SAME articles with even MORE advertisements. Well, there goes my subscription to all 3 of them.
What people object to is being forced to close a window, or click through an ad before getting to the content they came to the site to read (although I personally find those not too intrusive, more like turning the page in a magazine). We object to having cookies sent to us and having our online viewing habits tracked and having spam sent to us as a result. Sure I have to watch commercials on TV during the shows, but the network isn't tracking what I personally watch and correlating it with what I buy. Yeah, the magazines I read have ads in them, but they don't block the content.
Online advertising has done more to hurt the advertising industry than it has to help it. It has shown consumers the worst in marketers and advertisers.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
Ok; could you tell us what your company does do, or at least give us a link to your company's site?
We may not be interested in the service your company offers but I would at least be interested in knowing what that service is.
the internet to keep running even with scumbags like yourself surfing the
web and stealing from webmasters. Shame on you.
It's not stealing just because you say so. There has to be a law against it for it to be stealing. I happen to think that people who use popup ads are stealing from me the time it takes to get rid of those ads.
Hogwash. Internet ads are like TV commercials. You watch the TV channelfor free and as a condition, they have commercials. It's not unsolicited
like a telemarketer. It's an agreement that you watch TV or the internet at
a reduced cost if you view the ads.
I've signed no such agreement, therefore I either flip channels during commercials, or put the TV on mute and do something else. If it's allright for them to turn my TV Volume up 2 decibals when a commercial comes on, it's allright for me to not watch them :)
The notion that YOU are being inconvenienced for gettingsomething for FREE is stupid.
Actually, I'm not inconvenienced because I just block the ads silly :)
Internet ads have become more bold because of people like yourself blockingads and thinking that sites shouldn't have ads.
As a person "like that" I have to say that I don't think sites *shouldn't have* ads at all, they shouldn't have ads that are moving animations in the middle of a paragraph I'm trying to read. It's annoying to try to read something when there is a big block of blinking, whizzing advertising space trying to get your attention.
Shame on YOU for stealing from webmasters. I can't wait till AntiAdBlockeris on every site on the web so scumbags like yourself no longer get a free
ride and can't steal from webmasters.
Hmmm, well I hope that people have to deal directly with YOU because then I can rest assured that nobody will buy AntiAdBlocker (from the looks of your extremely unprofessional attitude :)
Terence Ross of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the news publishers' attorney, ... thinks Internet users who configure their browsers to disable graphics (a common tactic to boost the speed of Web surfing) are committing copyright infringement because they are interfering with Web publishers' exclusive right to control how their pages are displayed.
That's funny, I don't remember signing anything giving web publishers that right. I think everyone has forgotten that "web pages" were originally WYSIWYW, not WYSIWYG (what you want, vs. what you get), and everything else is just hinting.
If this is their attitude, why not just do everything (plus ads) in Flash? They'll make sure we see everything they want us to see, just like Cable TV. That'll teach us "leechers"
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Any business that can provide a service people are willing to pay more for than it costs the business to provide can make money. Whether they provide this service in person, through the mail, over the phone, or over the web makes no difference.
/do/ business, but they are /not/ a business in and of themselves.
A website isn't a business. A website is better compared to things like a companies telephones, catalog, brochures, signage, etc. These are things you need to
Anyone who thinks a shiny website with no solid business behind it can make money should be regarded as the likely future recipient of a darwin award.
Why would anyone want to use a shitty popup blocker like the one found in Opera
to restore functionality ... Install Mozilla.
Yes, but if you uninstall NS7 and install Mozilla, you lose Netscape Instant Messenger. (That is, until you discover the AIM Express applet.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
I just went to some of his "example" sites. I have Pop-UpStopper installed and running. I visited using IE 5.5 (if anything would show popups, this would be it). While banner ads still show (as they should--I have nothing blocking them because they dont bother me), every popup the pages spawned was killed, instantly.
Some product this guy is marketing...
There's a really simple, effective, un-bypassable way to block popups in the Mac versions of IE.
Turn off scripting.
Don't disable Java, ActiveX(don't ask, I've never actually seen ActiveX do anything on the Mac...), or anything else, but in one of the panes in the preference box, you'll find an option called "Disable scripting." Use it. It doesn't affect Java, rollovers, onMouseOver/onMouseOut's, or any of the other basic script functions, but it will keep popups from appearing(as long as they aren't HTML popups, like "target=_blank", but in those cases, you have to click for it).
Who would've thought that M$ would have this feature in their browser? It's been there since at least IE 4.5, which is when I found it. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent option in IE for Windows, AFAIK. You'll have to get a 3rd party utility for that.
This is how I do it:
I use Opera, which allows you to accept or block popups on the fly. It also allows you to enable/disable javascript on the fly...
Add a nice hosts file and you're set.
Witold
www.witold.org
witold.org
The ads still come across the wire, much as blocked spam at the client side does..
So it still slows things down, and when you get pay per bandwidth schemes.. it erodes your monthly allocation of 'base' bandwidth.
The crap should be banned totally.. all of it. until they pay ME for using MY bandwidth and comptuting resources.. It aint free..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Last time I checked, one had the right to choose what content that one views or doesn't view. Killing images is like hitting fast-forward through the previews in a movie, or taking just the sports section out of your local newspaper. It's not damaging the original source, just selecting a specific portion of your original copy. 1000000+ lawyer jokes and counting... sometimes the cases themselves are jokes... --quote-- the news publishers' attorney, even told me that he thinks Internet users who configure their browsers to disable graphics (a common tactic to boost the speed of Web surfing) are committing copyright infringement because they are interfering with Web publishers' exclusive right to control how their pages are displayed. --end-quote--
nytimes.com uses sneaky methods to get around Mozilla's pop-up blocking. In fact, the incompleteness of Mozilla's pop-up blocking is one reason Netscape 7.0 does not include it. The more people that use weak pop-up blocking, the weaker it becomes, because advertisers take time to study and exploit the weaknesses.
The shareholder is always right.
ahhh hes not such a bad guy! he sounds so much better if you just imagine his voice as Hans and Frans!
"Listen to me now and understand me later."
Really, porn has been the only true 'web business model' i've seen that works. Other things that work are mail order...but those businesses can exist without the internet, and in most cases their sites are just easier ways to order than on the phone (the company existed fine before the Internet became popular).
What's the regex corresponding to Mozilla's "Only allow web sites to open windows in response to a click?"
The shareholder is always right.
The GigaLaw article does not suggest that pop-up ads might be illegal, but only that using another party's content for the purposes of targetting ads (as Gator is doing) might be illegal.
If I run a webpage, I have every right to launch as many pop-up ads from it as I want ('course, if I'm smart, that number will be = 1...).
Since I'm not a real life web developer, I'm curious - is a reasonable course of action to push candidate fodder web pages through something like the W3 validator and have things work more of the time?
I'd really like to know, cause I'm a happy Mozilla user in a rising sea of IE 6 users. Hence, I'm advocating W3 standards rather than standards defined as "whatever the dominant application does".
But it would be some encouragement if compliance to the W3 standards (say HTML 4.01) would be sufficient to have web pages render properly in a maximal subset of browsers.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This isn't about the business, it's about the consumer.
I think one of the things you might consider looking at is that your attitude is very similar to that of other companies who blame their poor business models on the behaviour of their customers.
Let me explain.
You claim that web surfers are stealing from you when they deny your ads. You seem to agree that ads are OK because surfers decided to view the website, that was their CHOICE.
However, like with any other business, nobody is forcing you into your line of work. Stay with me here. Nobody made you put up company.com, and nobody makes you pay your bandwidth fees. You choose to exist. You can't gripe about customers ripping you off: you decided to do business, and if the customer doesn't peruse your ads, that's not his fault.
One common misconception about Internet businesses is that they have to use ads to stay afloat. Well, no. In any other typical market, the price of convenience of offering a product online would be added to the cost of the product. If Joe Public wanted to drive around town to buy a high quality DVD player, he could. Or, he could spend 1/16 the time, look it up online, buy it and have it shipped to his house. He pays extra for the convenience of shipping, and he should pay extra for the product being available on the website.
Stay with me...
This is no different than any other normal market. The cokes in a Serv-A-Bar in a condo in Pango Pango are $12 for a reason -- convenience. There isn't a device which displays an add for 10 seconds before letting you buy a coke for $8.
Of course, I'd rather stare at an add for 10 second as opposed to pay $4 more. BUT, that's my choice.
What this all comes down to is the fact that you *should* try and advertise to make products cheaper. Ads, typically, are a tiny nuisance, and if you can spread that out to everyone, even folks who don't buy, to drive down costs, fine -- that is commonplace in our world. That's why we have ads up on the windows of the local Quicky-Mart, even if you only use the restroom or drive through the parking lot.
What this does NOT give you is the right to complain when users deny you your ads. This is called "consumer choice." If the consumer doesn't like something and he has an option to change it, he will out of self interest. If the customer doesn't want your ads, drop them and raise your prices. Businesses are here to satisfy the consumer, not the other way around. Claiming that your business will die because customers are stealing is rediculous. You tried a scheme to lower prices, it didn't work.
This is capitalism. Bad business models aren't protected by default.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I use WebWasher. It has a lot of fairly decent features. One of the things I love about Mozilla is that its popup blocking appears to be fairly robust + you can toggle whether or not you use proxies (i.e. Webwasher) with a single click.
So now I use WebWasher for advertising blocking + privacy enhancement and use Mozilla to do the pop up blocking. If I need popups for a site or Webwasher munges some legit javascript, I can usually fix with a click and a reload.
Evolution: love it or leave it
If turning of web graphics in browsers is copyright infringement, then by the same token, people who only listen to the television rather than actually watch the thing would also be infringing on copyright, as are people who get up to go to the bathroom during commercials.
Guh! Terrance Ross, get a friggen clue! And while you're at it, get yourself an enema... it might help that retentive problem you seem to have
I apologize for the rant, but I really needed to vent on that issue.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Someone should implement something that, when a banner ad or pop-up is encountered, starts a thread and downloads the content, but does NOT display it to the user in the browser. It just happens invisibly in the background.
You could take it one step further and have it "click through" in another thread. This way, the web sites get their ad revenue AND we don't have to look at annoying ads. The only one who suffers is the person providing the ad.
What do you think?
Plus, matching your web browser skin to your winamp skin to your wall paper is sweet. kacp
To write a haiku - all you need is the correct - number of syli...
They would either:
1.) Design their page just the way they want it (ads and all), then take a screenshot of it and upload the imegemapped-JPG as their website. Kinda hard to block parts of a JPG
2.) The main page does nothing but open a pop-up window and display a message in the main window that says "To continue, please follow the link in the pop-up."
And now I forsee myself getting flamed about "Why are you helping THEM?" Why? Because I think forcing their viewers to view advertisements will ultmately end up with them shooting themselves in the foot and forcing themselves off the web entirely. I'm willing to bet that their sites get X number of visitors mostly because a great many of them have the option of turning off advertisements in one way or another. Deny them that right, force them to decide between advertisements and no access, and they will ultimately choose the "no access" option every time.
Choose an alternative and make sure they know why you chose not to use them.
Konq still can block them.. Moz.. and im sure others..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
hint: To get rid of ad, put the browser in full screen mode with f11. f11 will toggle out of full screen mode.
glennop
Gator claims that higher click-through rates are due to better targeted adds. Perhaps. IMHO, I suspect that perhaps it is due to Gator software being self selected by the gulible. Regardless of the root cause, it still might be a good deal for advertisers; in fact it might be a big advantage. Further, it results in fewer pop-ups for me....
--- I would prefer a prehensile tail....
End-user customers don't like pop-up ads, but corporate customers are paying for said pop-up ads. The will of the customer who spends the most money wins, right? In this case it's more like "the customer who spends any money wins." When you use Netscape (or any other free browser) you get exactly what you've paid for.
Why not a compromise? Offer Netscape 7.0 for download as it currently is, but offer it for sale on CD with the anti-popup feature. Rigorously advertise it as such. Let the end-users decide with their wallets how much they don't like pop-up ads. Heck, bump the price of the CD up to $15 or $20. The paying customer gets a browser with all the features they want, AOL/TW gets money in CD sales that they would have lost from the lack of pop-up ads, and the ad owners still have access to all the people who don't believe in paying for a browser.
Of course, I know exactly what kind of responses I'm going to get from the Slashdot crowd. "Browsers want to be free! I shouldn't have to pay for a feature that I can get elsewhere for free!" To you I have one thing to say: You're only perpetuating the current business model. Like it or not hosting costs money. I'm not in support of the loonies that say end-users must be forced to view advertising, but it will always be in those sites' best interests to use anti-ad-blocking software because the advertisers are their only paying customers. The "website subscription" model works because the end-user suddenly becomes a paying customer and immediately has more say to how the site owner should conduct business.
AOL/TW makes a great deal of their money from advertisers and pretty much $0 from their browsers. We have no right to bitch and moan about what AOL/TW does with their browser because our opinion is worth exactly what we paid for it. I for one would like to at least be given the option of being a real paying customer and having my say in how one of the major browsers on the internet today gets developed.
Do you need the line number as well? Maybe a screenshot of the paragraph?
[goes off, does search] May be referring to one of these:
l /isenberg- 2002-08-all.html
- all/wood-2001 -10-all.html
Are Pop-Up Advertisements on the Web Illegal?
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2002-al
The Future of Online Advertising and Ad-Blocking
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2001
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
One point that I feel needs to be made is that AOL users getting baraged with ads when the first sign on are not seeing HTML based ads.
The AOL host, as the call it, uses a markup language called "rainman"(makes you wonder if Steve Jobs is a People's Court fan) and not HTML
Also, from what I've seen, AOL's other properties such as netscape.com and spinner.com don't make use of popup ads. Instead using in-page side bar ads and the like.
I just want to say that popups make me infurious. However I actually don't mind (within reason of course) actual ads on webpages. Like /. and many other use, whether on the left or top it is just banners on the page to me. more importantly, I don't ever click on popups and close them manually or with blockers so fast I don't have time to even try. This means they are useless to me, while with a banner I will click if it is interesting. This is only if I can make it optionally spawn another window. I find it highly annoying when some stupid flash page or banner forces me to leave the current page I am using. That makes me not follow the link, plain and simple. I also do not like it when it FORCES me to open up another window, as I may actually want to follow it on the same browser instance. I think generally that is referred to as the power of CHOICE. What really cheeses me off is when my popup blocker can't determine what is a spam because the domain is actually the domain of the website I am visiting.
I have tried other ad blockers, not all of them, but a few of them and I think Guidescope is still the best. It doesn't block pop-ups, but it does block the content and the cookies.
It's nice because it is "community based" in that when you find an ad that it doesn't block, you click a checkbox and it will then block the ad for you, and everyone else. It also has point and click cookie management.
You can also review which sites have asked for cookies and ads in the last 15 minutes and choose which ones will be allowed.
This is the fruits of the JunkBuster proxy. I don't know if they are still developing GuideScope, but it still works very well.
Visit GuideScope to get it.
On Windows at least, it occupies less RAM than most other blockers. It also seems to be more accurate.
They are releasing the source to it once it hits v1.0.
It has versions for a few different systems.
TTFN
Gregg
Does that make my 500kb /etc/hosts file illegal?
Food for thought. nah, drop the thought - just eat it. -Bob
"Failure of Windows operating systems is extremely rare. If it happens, it is usually due to operating system file c
Last time I checked, this company also makes a tidy profit.
The benefits can be seen in less obvious ways, too: MMPORGs seem to be making money for at least one company I can think of. Not to mention the impact had on software companies, who can now release beta software on a human-scale cycle, and trivially manage patching and upgrades for all their customers via the Internet.
I think the rule of thumb is that companies who use the Internet in support of (or as an extension of) a well-established business with a proven model are doing quite well, thank you very much.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The article asserts that the best way to block pop-ups in Mozilla/Netscape is to enable the option in the Preferences, or manually add this line to your prefs.js:user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);However, as has been pointed out, this only disables popups in the onload="" tag, and is simple for sites to work around.
The BEST way to TOTALLY BLOCK unrequested popups in Mozilla/Netscape is to add a line like this to your prefs.js:user_pref("dom.disable_open_click_delay", 1000); where 1000 is a number in milliseconds. Any window.open which takes place more than this delay aftera mouseclick will NEVER be processed. This type of blocking is pretty much impossible to get around; I haven't seen an unrequested popup in forever and a day. And requested ones work fine because they are in response to a mouse click. I really can't see how any sites can get around this block, short of using a window.setTimeout to try opening the window over and over again until it succeeds.
We all thought it was a joke back then. But HEY! Here we are being told that once again we the users are pirates. We're roaming the once free now pay-to-play internet stealing content by simply viewing a publicly available page.
What's next? Disabling the "mute" button on my remote control during commercial breaks? After all, if I watch the show but turn down the sound during commercials I must be "stealing content".
What a load of crap!
A bit late in this thread, but it suddenly occurred to me: Exactly how hyprocritical is the /. community (aside from the standard hypocrosies abundant here) to hope for and encourage an idea like making a specific arrangement of [HTML] code illegal?
Wow, you sure got screwed. All I had to do to get an id on ./ was fill in a couple of dialog boxes and it was finished. Sorry to hear about your great misfortune though.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I've never gotten a popup on nytimes.com with mozilla. I'm following the current releases and always have popup blocking enabled. Maybe they're just particular to the "netscape" releases?
.-.--
In a related news, a news publisher's attorney has declared his intend to persecute a number of readers based on their copyright infringement for interfering with the publisher's exclusive right to control how their news is presented and viewed. These people include:
- colour blind people.
- people reading the papers while drunk or on crack.
- people who ditched the useless Sports section without looking at the advertisements.
and more pending further investigations...
Guess what? If the standard is ignored, it doesn't reflect reality. Your point is circular. You've made no argument for ignoring standards; you've simply argued that certain companies ignore them now. And they shouldn't. It may be a sneaky way to short-term control of a market, but in the longer term it promotes chaos, which does not help anyone.
Don't act like the W3C is some sort of fascist or socialist bureaucracy. Membership is open to anyone who wants in. The agenda of the w3c is created by its members. If you have a problem with the standards, join the organization and participate in the democratic process. Standards are not being defended by anyone here as an a priori good; the point is that an external standards organization is an excellent means to a specific end -- cross platform interoperability -- in such a way that various agenda might be represented, rather than simply the agenda of MSFT shareholders.
The more I think about it the more I think they could make a serious dent in IE's user base with this idea...
Netscape World Headquarters
P. O. Box 7050
Mountain View, CA 94039-7050
Dear Netscape:
I recently purchased a copy of your Netscape 6.2 browser on CD and until today was looking forward to purchasing Netscape 7.0 as soon as it was released. I enjoy being able to use a widely-supported browser that is both independet from and agnostic to my operating system, and was eagerly awaiting the time Netscape would include the rest of the features I enjoy from Mozilla 1.0.
I say "until today" because I just learned that Netscape 7.0 will not be including one of the features of Mozilla 1.0 that I was looking forward to, the option to turn off unrequested windows that effectively kills pop-up advertising on the web. Because of that I do not forsee myself using anything but Mozilla as my web browser of choice for the forseeable future.
I realize that your parent company, AOL/Time-Warner, earns a great deal of income from business customers who purchase such pop-up advertising from them. I also realize that, since Netscape is now distributed free of charge, the opinion of the end-users who paid no money is insignifigant compared to the opinion of the business customers that have paid a great deal of money. However I as an end-user seriously dislike the idea of having my software hijacked by a remote website.
I would like to offer a compromise.
I want to use a web browser that is both supported by the vast majority of plug-in writers and allows me to avoid pop-up advertising. In fact, I would pay money for such a web browser. I doubt I am alone in this opinion as the ability to disable pop-up windows has been one of the driving features of the so-called "niche" browsers available today (such as Mozilla). In fact I can think of many Microsoft Internet Explorer users who would rather use such a browser.
Why not offer Netscape 7.0 in two versions? Make your intended version of Netscape 7.0 available as a free download, but allow those of us who would rather the end-user have a greater say in browser development to pay for a "deluxe" version on CD, which would include the ability to disable pop-up ads as well as any other new features you can think up. Perhaps include some other perks with the bundled software (Composer with a JavaScript editor? Shiney new Winamp-branded MP3 encoder? "Deluxe Only" Netscape radio stations?) Rigorously advertise it as option. $20.00 US to $25.00 seems like a reasonable price for such a product. On the one hand, users such as myself will finally have the browser we've been waiting for since the development of the openWindow JavaScript command. On the other hand the price of the deluxe version will offset any lost revenue from your advertisers. And you would be able to appease any misgivings from your advertisers by pointing out that the majority of Netscape users would still be using the free "basic" version with manditory pop-ups.
I'm not advocating releasing Netscape 7.0 as "shareware" or "crippleware." Those who aren't interested in paying money for a web browser should still have access to Netscape 7.0 as it now stands, something they have come to expect in a free web browser. But by the same token those of us who are interested in paying money for such features should be given access to them.
I hope that your executives can see the value in my suggested compromise before the scheduled release of Netscape 7.0.
P. S. I realize the idea of a Winamp-branded MP3 encoder would probably give the executives at AOL/Time-Warner nightmares, but look at it this way: Users with access to an MP3 player but no immediate knowledge of "ripping CDs" are more likely to turn to file-sharing networks to find MP3 files to play than their own CD libraries.
Bugzilla gets lots of reports of pop-ups on nytimes.com, so it's not Netscape-specific.
The shareholder is always right.
I've been using it for since 1.0 and love it.
Free, doesn't require you to change browsers, only takes a little amount of time to train it, automatically removes references within links, etc... overall, I can't say enough for it.
Download Cookiecop2
works with IE and netscape. I only find an extremely small amount of sites that it doesn't work with. it's awesome.... I show it to everyone I know...
If you are annoyed by web pages forcing links to open in a new window when you click them, Mozilla (and Netscape) has another preference you can use:
user_pref("browser.block.target_new_window", true);
Remember that Mozilla/Netscape needs to be completely closed (including quicklaunch) when you edit prefs.js, otherwise your changes will be overridden.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.