New Online Ad Technology To Bypass Popup Blockers

RetroGeek writes "Falk eSolutions AG is claiming it can detect and defeat pop-up and pop-under ad blockers. The best quote is that when they detect an ad blocker they will 'replace a pop-up or pop-under ad with what are called "floating" ads, or ads that appear as transparent images over Web-site content.' As far as I am concerned they can place as many transparent images as they want. He probably meant translucent. It should be easy to defeat the detection, after all visit a web site, the pop-up blocker detects a Javascript command, then doesn't run it. Replace this with: the pop-up blocker detects the Javascript command, runs it, then places the result into a bit-bucket. Any Mozilla devs here?" WebGangsta adds "While this may ignite another round of online advertising purchasing, this news doesn't affect anybody who uses a customized HOSTS file to stop the majority of ads from appearing anyway."

Comments

Wake me up

[Anonymous Coward]

when you can block first posts

Re:Wake me up

[zurmikopa]

I was *this* close to changing my threshold and modding you down, then waking you up.

why

[mpost4]

do adervisters really think this will increase their sales. The user
using these popup blockers have said they don't want them, to try to
defeat them is only going to make many users hate you, and your product
I would see that if it is a legit company they just might see their sales
drop from the angry net users. For those who have not disabled javascript
this just might be the nail that gets them to disable it.

Re:why

[MoonBuggy]

It works for the same reason spam works. Ads are more expensive than spam, obviously, but still not too pricey alot of the time. They're almost certainly cheap enough that one purchase per hits is enough. All it takes to get rich without making anything good is to track down those stupid enough to buy your crap - the easiest way to hit alot of morons is to saturate the web, you'll piss off millions, but still hit thousands willing to give you money.

Re:why

[MojoRilla]

Unfortunately, they might start trying to use other technologies such as flash or java for their pop-up spam.

If the people who are working on this actually cared about offending people, they wouldn't be working in marketing.

Re:why

[slash-tard]

It must help or they wouldnt keep paying for them. Kinda like spam.

Yeah we would all prefer TV without commercials but we have them and they influence some people enough to make them worth buying. Its the same with web ads.

I personally dont block any ads except pop-ups, they dont bother me that much and I understand that sites need ads the generate revenue. If I was on dial-up though I would be blocking left and right.

Re:why

[MoonBuggy]

Should've said: ...one purchase per <insane number here> hits is enough...

re: why

[ed.han]

unfortunately, people apparently are buying stuff from spam, so it stands to reason people actually do buy stuff off pop ups/pop unders. so yes, they do think it's gonna increase their sales.

however, using this targets precisely the wrong segment of online users: the people who know enough to block them in the first place. anybody wanna give odds on how long before some overzealous kid DDOSes their site?

ed

Re:why

[abb3w]

do adervisters really think this will increase their sales.

For the large, reponsible companies-- brands 80% of the population of your home state would recognize-- of course not. But for Fly-By-Night-Porn.com and other tiny web companies which would otherwise get zero business, even a minimal response rate from those getting the ad can be well worthwhile, even if the other 99.999% of the people seeing the ad swear up and down they "will NEVER do business with those #$%^ing @#$%^&*s so long as they exist". And they can always change names if the original company name gets tarnished.

Re:why

[levik]

I think that this crop of blocker circumventors is not targeted at the users who said they don't want popups, but rather at people who installed a google/yahoo toolbar in their browser, and for whom popup disappearance is a side-effect.

The truth is, popup ads have about 10-20 times as high a clickthrough rate as regular banners do (even flash banners) - so the companies will keep paying for them. Where there is a will and a lot of money, there is a way.

If popups become ignored (as you propose, as opposed to being simply blocked) on a significantly large scale (doubt it will happen though), ad companies will not even attempt to show popups, but jump straight to DIV layer ads, so you're not really going to ever solve this problem permanently.

However, consider that Mozilla has had blocking for a couple of years now, and the ad industry didn't really do anything about it. It's not until Yahoo and Google (and soon MS) got in on the action that they started to get worried and started coming up with circumvention techniques. The truth is that Mozilla is currently not a big enough market for the companies to worry about. In fact, most current implementations of floating DIV ads leave mozilla users alone.

Don't expect this privilege to continue if our little underdog of a browser earns any significant market share.

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

It works for the same reason spam works.

Waitaminit.. spam works?

yeah, right (cue the 'if it didn't work people wouldn't do it' stupidity.)

OBSimpsonson quote:
"I have a rock that keeps tigers away"
"Really? How does it work?"
"It DOESN'T - it's just a rock! But, you don't see any tigers around, do you?
"I would like to buy your rock!"
"*sigh*"

Re:why

[xaqar]

I've always assumed that that amazingly higher rate of click throughs could be directly attributed to missed clicks on the close box, or one which pops up as someone is clicking.

Re: why

[scragz]

anybody wanna give odds on how long before some overzealous kid DDOSes their site?

You mean /.?

Re:why

[levik]

... For those who have not disabled javascript this just might be the nail that gets them to disable it.

As a webmaster, let me assure you that the percentage of the web audience who have disabled javascript (or in fact knows how to do so), is so insignificant that it's not worth talking about.

Again, it's not people who run mozilla or paid $29.99 for an IE blocker that this measure is targeting. These people hadly make up 10% of the web users... The reason ad companies are scrambling now to circumvent blockers is because the two largest toolbars now provide them, and soon so will the most popular web browser.

Re:why

[Le Marteau]

If the people who are working on this actually cared about offending people, they wouldn't be working in marketing.

True. A child does not exactly grow up dreaming about going into marketing - it kind of just happens to some of the weaker willed and morally challenged.

In order to go into marketing, one cannot be truly human. But it also goes to the fact that marketing is a career that one chooses once one has graduated college and realizes one has no other skills companies want.

Re:why

[GlassUser]

Number two reason I have flash blocked and no viewer installed on my system, right there. The number one reason is that it's not standard, so there's no need.

Re:why

[levik]

No, this is not the case at all. I'm not sure about you, but I never miss the close box on a window, and have a hard time seeing somebody miss it 5% of the time.

The fact that good reputable companies are still willing to pour money into these ads demonstrates that the ROI is good. Unfortunately for the entire industry, there are also BAD advertisers, ones who spawn dozens of windows, or take advantage of IE flaws to install spyware, etc. These bring down the whole industry.

Most sites using popups show one ad per visitor per day, and advertise legitimate products. Would you not agree to subject yourself to a measely daily popup so that your favorite site could remain free and operational?

Re:why

[alphaseven]

All it takes to get rich without making anything good is to track down those stupid enough to buy your crap - the easiest way to hit alot of morons is to saturate the web, you'll piss off millions, but still hit thousands willing to give you money.

Actually a lot of spammers are middlemen, they make money wether a product sells or not, they work as advertisers and get paid by the people selling the product. What they rely on is the percecption that "spam works", so people will hire them to do spam campaigns.

Spammers make profits without making a sale

Re:why

[Excen]

Which is precisely why we need to chlorinate the gene pool as quickly as possible.

Re:why

[Bodhidharma]

That explains it. The spams I've been getting lately are less and less legible. They can't possibly think they are doing marketing anymore. As far as I'm concerned, it's no better than harassment or vandalism.

Re:why

[s20451]

it kind of just happens to some of the weaker willed and morally challenged

marketing is a career that one chooses once one has graduated college and realizes one has no other skills companies want

I dislike these arguments of moral superiority, which lend greater importance to these issues than they truly warrant. You are being annoyed by pop-up ads, not seriously harmed. You are free to avoid any site that uses them.

I don't think it follows that needing a salary so that one can feed one's family is equivalent to being morally challenged. I'm not sure if you have children or not. But if you did, would it be moral of you to turn down a marketing job in a tough economy?

Re:why

[xaqar]

Those are good points. I still do believe that some of the clicks have to be misclicks though. I don't miss, you don't miss, but I've seen plenty of people who can't double click an icon...these are the type of people I'm talking about. Besides, as alternative browser users, we aren't the target for popups anyway.
Xaqar

Re:why

[stratjakt]

do adervisters really think this will increase their sales

Because it does. Advertising works.

Re:why

[beakerMeep]

Advertisers don't really know about pop up blockers - ad agencies and ad supported websites know but it's in THEIR best interest to serve up as many impressions as they can whether or not people actually buy anything. Some advertisers are wise to the web and would want to look at the correlation between an ad campaign and sales but the vast majority just think of it as magic computer stuff. And very often it's used for whats called a "branding" campaign rather that a "call to action" campaign. And to tell the truth when an advertiser subverts my pop-up blocker (about 1 in 100) I dont rembember that they are evil for very long if I even notice at all much less than "blacklisting" them for life as you would suggest. I would suspect many people have experiences like this as well and thus the branding exercise is a fruitfull one for the advertiser even if they did piss you off in the process.

I may be stereo typing a little hear but I think these reasons give a little insight as to why people do these types of things.

on a better note there are more companies going after targeted and quality impressions like google and looking at the domain you are connecting from (ie are you surfing the web from your office at a fortune 500?) and this is a good thing. but as someone who works for a very large ad supporeted website I can tell you that this isn't what we push because the impression counts are very low when you target that specifically.

Re:why

[BlowChunx]

two words: homestarrunner.com

okay, three words. No one word with a suffix...nevermind.

Re:why

[Le Marteau]

Marketing is an industry where the idea is to insinuate onesself where one is not wanted. An honest and upright man will not go where he is not wanted - marketers make a living at it.

There ARE immoral jobs. Marketing is one of them, albeit this side of manufacturing nerve gasses, but it is still not an occupation a good man should aspire to. Of course, if one has to feed his kids, etc, etc, but that is just goes to the old adage 'it is permissable to commite a lesser crime to prevent a greater crime'.

Re:why

[SirTalon42]

"In order to go into marketing, one cannot be truly human."

My brothers going into marketing... I think thats proof enough for your argument.

Re:why

[Anonym1ty]

I don't think it follows that needing a salary so that one can feed one's family is equivalent to being morally challenged. I'm not sure if you have children or not. But if you did, would it be moral of you to turn down a marketing job in a tough economy?

If you had morals, you would realize that the ends do not justify the means. Just because your children are hungry does not automatically give you carte blanch to set your moral aside. In fact doing so only proves you never had any morals to put aside.

Character means you find a way to feed your children without being immoral or unethical. Saying there is a tough economy and you had no choice just shows the quality of your character.

What a man does with his life is not nearly as important as how he does it.

Re:why

[pipingguy]

...paid $29.99 for an IE blocker...

Why pay for an IE popup blocker when you can use the free addons like Avantbrowser?

Re:why

[ckaminski]

No, I'd rather do what Salon.com does. Tease me with content, and if I want more, I pay for it by subjecting myself to ads on their behalf.

Salon got it right, IMHO. Going to a subscription model, keeping content available for everyone else, but still earning revenue to stay afloat without pissing off the universe with Popups.

Re:why

[ckaminski]

Um, what popup blocker are you using that allows 1 out of a 100 ads through? Because I've been using IE 5/6 with NoPopIE and the Google toolbar for well over two years now, and I've had ZERO subvert that wall of impenetrability. :-)

YMMV.

Re:why

[LiquidCoooled]

Because they saw an advert in a popup window....

Re:why

[ewhenn]

In order to go into marketing, one cannot be truly human.

Oh come on, this statement is RIDICULOUS. Say I develop a product, entirely new and innovative, I guess I shouldn't market it to sell it. Give me a break. Don't get me wrong, sometimes (ok, often) marketing is taken to an obscene level, but marketing in and of itself is NOT bad.

Re:why

[wobblie]

Probably because many admins are installing ad busting proxies in workplaces (it can conserve quite a lot of bandwidth and is a nice courtesy to the users).

So one ad busting proxy can protect thousands of people from ads all day ... who may otherwise click on them.

Re:why

[T-Ranger]

While true, the days of Pay Per Impression are long gone.

Once upon a time, PPI was the only way banners worked.

PPI is somewhat trivial to scam; have the image 50 times as a 1x1px image, tricking users to see it, etc etc etc.

Pay Per Click came next, and is still how "search engines" such as Oveture make money. But not used very much outside PPC search engines. Payments used to be noted with the search results, but I cant find any right now. "Casino" usually paid >$19.00 per click; usually was around 2-3c per click.

Most banner adds, these days, are Pay Per Lead, or Pay Per Sale. Cookies stay around for at least a couple of months, so the "proper" person is credited. half.com (part of eBay) was paying $5/per lead at one point.

Actual product providers (be it membership sites, or physcial goods) are notorious for not paying out for anything but PPL or PPS... The excuse being "bad ratios" Of course, they don't tell you what the required ratio is.

Anyone who has a PPI setup, and is honest about payments, would quickly go out of business.

Re: why

[Sylver Dragon]

however, using this targets precisely the wrong segment of online users: the people who know enough to block them in the first place.

I'm not so certain this is as true as it used to be. With things like the google bar having built in pop-up blocking, and people like myself getting others to switch to Mozilla/Firefox, I think pop-up blocking is getting to be a pretty common feature. Heck, even my girlfriend, who is only slightly more tech savvy than the average person has a pop-up blocker installed. Sure, the new type of pop-up (if it works as advertised) may be annoying and just piss people like you and me off to no end; but, it might start getting those people who are less informed to start impulse buying again. They won't see it as a new annoying technology, which gets around the pop-up blocker in their google/yahoo/whatever bar, they'll just see an ad and be affected by it, as per usual expectations.

anybody wanna give odds on how long before some overzealous kid DDOSes their site?

Not long, I'd wager. Though some days, I really wish some gun nuts would just DDOS the executives who pay the people to do this sort of thing. Ah well, probably shouldn't say that, the coporate masters of the US might come after me.

Re:why

[Le Marteau]

but marketing in and of itself is NOT bad.

It is, when the general idea is to force unwilling viewers to waste their cycles processing information that is intrusive, ugly, not wanted, generally tasteless, and offensive to ones intelligence. It's like having to see dog dirt everywhere you go. It sucks, and I challenge the idea that it is even necessary. The world is brutal enough without these moral reprobates smacking me in the cranium with their advertising two by four every time I turn around.

If your new product is so great, and fills a need, there will be no need to shove pictures of it in front of everybody's face against their will. People who like it will write about it and recommend it and read about it voluntarily.

It's like that with movies, to me. I seek out Ebert and Roeper's reviews, watch them, and go to see movies they recommend. Paramount or Fox does not have to force me to learn about their works - if they are good, I will learn about it, and without advertising. Same thing with the food I eat, the computer I use, the car I drive. I seek out information from knowledgable sources, learn what will fill my needs, and go out and consume. I don't need some suspender wearing, BMW-driving, latte sipping, golf club toating gekko FORCING me to become aware of his shit so he can afford to send Jeremy to Montessori and summer at the Vineyard.

Unwanted, intrusive advertising coarsens society, and makes people more cynical (just look at me ;). It is a disservice, unnecessary, a blight on society, and ugly. I cast general aspersions about it, and wave my naughty bits at the concept.

Re:why

[shione]

That, I would not mind. I have both java and shockwave flash disabled on my main browers (Firefox + Netscape) and only have it enabled on IE which my niece needs to use the Barbie and HelloKitty sites when she comes over. She doesn't surf anywhere else.

Re:why

[tomstdenis]

W.h.y. d.0.!!!y.0.u....T.H.1.n.k..t.h.3.y. @.r.e. t.r.y.i.n.g. t0 g3t t.h.r.o.u.g.h. y.0.u.r. s.p.4.m. f.1.1.t.3.r.z.???? ;-)

Re:why

[ajs318]

That's why computer keyboards {usually} have several different kinds of brackets: round (these ones), square [like this] and curly {my personal favourite}, plus more-than and less-than signs . (The idea being that you can nest them {like [in case you really need an example] this sort of thing} to reduce the potential for confusion).

Of course, to a programmer, it's common that () delimit function parameters, [] delimit array indexes, {} delimit blocks of statements to be executed together and <> as less-than and more-than, or file indirection operators. This method of thinking can sometimes lead to people becoming afraid to experiment a little.

Re:why

[Narchie Troll]

That's definitely number three for me. There's essentially no quality Flash material out there, and there's a lot of really horrible shit.

Re:why

[mausmalone]

I still have a hard time believing that this kind of extreme ad saturation actually boosts sales in any way at all. (Except for maybe the x cam, which was wholly unknown until the popunder scheme) I come to loathe advertisements that are intrusive, and to loathe the products they represent. I also don't understand why 5 ads every 2 minutes on TV is a lot... but 1 ad every page load is considered tiny on the web. I'll make this clear so that everybody understands:

There is no reason to have an ad on a page meant solely for navigation. It's like pasting ads on somebody's remote control as they watch TV.

Re:why

[Trejkaz]

Java wouldn't be quite so bad if you initiated a policy to only run signed applets whose certificates were also on a whitelist. Only idiots would accept the thing to run, and the rest of us wouldn't be affected.

Re:why

[DunbarTheInept]

You don't know which sites have popups until you visit them. So it is false to say that you are free to avoid any site that uses them (unless you meant avoiding all web sites altogether).

I'm a fan of directed advertising. I don't mind sites knowing my purchasing tastes if that means I don't get ads for pointless stuff I'd never buy. Ads for things I actually might like are much less annoying than wasting my time with ads that flood the market looking for those few people here and there that might be interested, of which I'm not one of them.

I think directed advertising would make consumers less annoyed (assuming it's based on accurate information and assuming you have the ability to ban categories you are not interested in), and make advertisers happier too because they know people might actually LOOK at their ad instead of immedieatly going, "oh, and ad - i'll click the 'X' button in the corner before I even look at it.

Re:why

[s20451]

You missed the point. I was using an extreme example to convey the idea that marketing is not necessarily immoral. I agree that certain kinds of marketing are immoral, such as high-pressure sales tactics with questionable returns. However, there are immoral possibilities associated with any job.

I simply don't believe that causing minor annoyances should be declared immoral. Immorality is a weighty word that should not be overused.

Re:why

[edrain]

To be fair (and this is the definition of devil's advocacy) not all marketing is intrusive. The posters you see when you walk into a movie theater are marketing devices placed there by the marketing departments of the relevant studios, and (MPAA gripes aside) I can't imagine a moral objection to that type of marketing. Again, I think intrusive vs. non-intrusive is the key.

Re:why

[beakerMeep]

well you question is not to the heart of what I was saying but if you must no i do have google on most of my computers and even had it on this one but it was an old version of the toolbar that didnt have the blocker and i had other software already doing blocking for me so i was lazy about updating google. :)

Re:why

[s20451]

Actually, I agree. It is arguably immoral to continue to pester someone once you have been implicitly asked to stop (by disabling popups). The point of the thread was that the entire profession of marketing is immoral, which is an overly broad position that I can't accept.

Re:why

[DunbarTheInept]

What you are describing is advertising - having a product, and then telling people about your product. Marketing is different. Marketting is more the other way around - deciding what product to make based on what you think people would want.

(I dislike Marketing more, not because it's a bad idea in principle, but because in practice it is populated by people with stagnant mindsets that keep making companies build products designed for yesterday's needs.)

Re:why

[DunbarTheInept]

Agreed. Although that happens more with popunders than popups - you try to click on the window to bring it to the front so you can kill it, and it turns out the entire surface area of the window was one gigantic hotspot, so you've now clicked on the link.

Re:why

[thegrassyknowl]

I have seen sites with inline images. If you "block images from this server" and reload the page more than once (the first will have the image blocked) you will end up with Java or Flash where the image used to be playing the same crappy ads. What you propose is already happening.

I presume there's some script on the server that detects an image was meant to be loaded and wasn't, so it switches to more expensive technologies that are less likely to be blocked.

It's really starting to get annoying. I have to keep 2 copies of my browser; one with Java and Flash for the (ever increasing number of) sites that use those, and one without to keep avoiding ads.

Re:why

[Ironica]

There is no reason to have an ad on a page meant solely for navigation. It's like pasting ads on somebody's remote control as they watch TV.

Oh, dude, that is an AWESOME idea! There's this whole space at the bottom of most remotes, where the heel of your hand usually goes, that is just blank except for the company logo. Put a little LCD screen down there, beam ads straight to it, and we'll make a fortune!

Seriously, there is nowhere they won't put ads these days. The bathroom, your credit card statement, the bucket your popcorn comes in at the movie... any space that people see has a price. Now DON'T GIVE THEM ANY NEW IDEAS.

Re:why

[Ironica]

Marketing is an industry where the idea is to insinuate onesself where one is not wanted. An honest and upright man will not go where he is not wanted - marketers make a living at it.

Marketing is an industry built to make you want things you didn't previously want. There are two types of things you don't want: things you know about and don't want, and things you don't know about yet but might or might not want. Marketing both brings products you did not know about to your attention and tries to convince you that you want them.

It can be done well or poorly. Probably 30-40% of the calls we get on our home phone are telemarketing of one kind or another (though we get substantially fewer since we opted out of long-distance service all together, so we don't have AT&T calling to try to sell us their local service and SBC calling to try to sell us their long-distance service in alternate weeks). There are telemarketers who call knowing that they're trying to sell you something and that you might already know you don't want it, and there are those who just don't know the difference. Lately, I've had pretty good success at ending calls quickly and painlessly by making it clear that I know about the product and don't want it. i.e. "Hi, my name is [name] and I'm calling from the Los Angeles Times--" "Hi. We don't want the paper. Not even just on Sundays. We get all our news from the internet. Save a tree." "Ok, thank you, have a good day."

If there were no marketing, you probably wouldn't own half the stuff you do. Marketing departments send demos of new products to places that publish the reviews you may read when deciding what to buy. They place ads in the Yellow Pages. There are a lot of methods of marketing that don't fall into the narrow definition you gave above... in fact, *most* marketing is non-intrusive; you just haven't noticed it. (By design.)

Now, I have wondered what the effect on our economy would be if there were no more advertising. Television would all be public or by subscription. All entertainment would be more expensive. On the other hand, many products would cost a lot less, because they currently have such huge advertising budgets. I truly wonder if a significant proportion of the wealth in our economy is *created* by the existence of advertising, and I speculate that some of our economic growth is dependent on innovations in advertising (hey, we can sell ads in public restrooms!)

But marketing is not inherently an unethical business. It's easy to do it that way, of course. But the same is true of freelance computer support, health care, legal assistance... almost any service.

Re:why

[Ironica]

It's like that with movies, to me. I seek out Ebert and Roeper's reviews, watch them, and go to see movies they recommend. Paramount or Fox does not have to force me to learn about their works - if they are good, I will learn about it, and without advertising. Same thing with the food I eat, the computer I use, the car I drive. I seek out information from knowledgable sources, learn what will fill my needs, and go out and consume. I don't need some suspender wearing, BMW-driving, latte sipping, golf club toating gekko FORCING me to become aware of his shit so he can afford to send Jeremy to Montessori and summer at the Vineyard.

Have you ever worked anywhere near a marketing department?

How did Ebert and Roper see that film? Marketing sent them screening passes. How did anyone find out that restaurant existed? Even if you just walked by and saw the sign over the door, that sign is an example of marketing, from the name they chose to the color of the lettering. The computer you use you probably chose based on reviews... Tom's Hardware and Anandtech don't *buy* all the machinery they write about. It gets sent to them by marketing. When you bought your car, you either talked to a salesperson -- part of marketing -- or you bought it on a website (yes, you can buy some cars online) -- also produced by the marketing department.

The *bad* marketing is the stuff you don't like. The *good* marketing is the stuff you don't even notice... but I challenge you to come up with a *single* product that you decided to buy without any marketing happening between the company's release and your decision. Somewhere along the line, if you got information about it, it almost certainly came through a marketing department.

Now I'll just end this here so you can go and try to wash that icky feeling off your hands ;-)

Re:why

[Ironica]

What you are describing is advertising - having a product, and then telling people about your product. Marketing is different. Marketting is more the other way around - deciding what product to make based on what you think people would want.

Advertising is one aspect of marketing. What you're talking about is market research. Marketing is generally the process of establishing a market for your product, whether by creating a desire through advertising or discovering a niche through research.

Frankly, I love market research. Any time someone wants to call me and survey me I always say yes. I even participate in focus groups a couple times a year. Why? Because it improves the chances that someone will make a product that *I* want.

I'm convinced it works... some years ago I got a call surveying about new technologies in credit cards. A couple years later, I found a brochure about Blue from American Express, and basically said "ooooo shiny I want!" (Well, the feature I liked the most is the ability to get a temporary number for use in a single online transaction. Sadly, I haven't gotten around to using that feature yet... but damn that card is pretty!)

Seriously, how many of you that decry the concept of market research *also* complain that companies aren't making the products you'd like to see?

Re:why

[Ironica]

Yeah we would all prefer TV without commercials but we have them and they influence some people enough to make them worth buying.

Well, I might not mind TV without commercials... I only watch one show, so it wouldn't cost me too much to keep up my habit. Most American TV addicts would go NUTS if they had to pay separately for their fix, though. It's so much more palatable when the charge is chopped up into itty-bitty pieces and embedded in every other frigging thing we buy.

Re:why

[XryanX]

"Seriously, there is nowhere they won't put ads these days. The bathroom, your credit card statement, the bucket your popcorn comes in at the movie... any space that people see has a price. Now DON'T GIVE THEM ANY NEW IDEAS."

Don't forget product placement in movies and television shows.

I always thought that was silly. I won't decide to drink Pepsi over Coke simply because I saw *insert TV character* drinking it.

Re:why

[GlassUser]

If the content is important, it can go into a standard format. Otherwise it's worthless.

Re:why

[tylernt]

If there were no marketing, you probably wouldn't own half the stuff you do.

...you say that like it's a bad thing.

Re:why

[marauder404]

Most banner adds, these days, are Pay Per Lead, or Pay Per Sale. Cookies stay around for at least a couple of months, so the "proper" person is credited. half.com (part of eBay) was paying $5/per lead at one point.

eBay is still paying $5/lead ... and that's the bottom of the scale. According to affiliates.ebay.com, they pay up to $16 per active registration. Obviously, there are a lot of people that do this professionally if one affiliate earned $1.3M in one month. You didn't think that all those eBay's ads were all over the Internet because they bought them all, did you?

Re:why

[DonGar]

What really pisses me off more are the people that think it's okay to spam me using a service that I'm PAYING FOR.

Well, actually, you mentioned credit card statements, and that is one example of something I consider wrong.

A more recent example is ATT sending me spam text messages to my phone. That's simply wrong on so, so many levels.

Re:why

[wmspringer]

What do you mean, no better than harassment? Spam IS harrasment!

Re:why

[Ironica]

...you say that like it's a bad thing.

Point well taken. I tend to think that American society (and most of Western society, but we're the worst) is way too caught up in consumerism. It's damaging on many levels.

But anyone who does own plenty of stuff and claims to disdain all marketing is blind to the effects marketing has on them... which is, IMO, even worse.

I can watch a commercial, and at the end, know whether the commercial had a positive, negative, or neutral effect on me. I'm aware of whether or not I am the target market, whether I consume products like the one being advertised, and whether I am more likely to buy them afterward. I'm also aware of *why* a particular commercial worked or didn't work... I can identify whether it taught me something I didn't know about the product, or if I identified with/despised the characters used in the commercial, or if it just made me feel good/bad about the company. (The worst commercials are the ones where, a few seconds later, I can't remember what they were advertising at all.)

I also know that pretty much all of the information I get about products comes in one way or another from either personal experience or a marketing department. Sometimes both, when someone gives out free samples.

People who aren't aware of the marketing they're not supposed to notice are, I think, far more susceptible to it.

Re:why

[DunbarTheInept]

Since my tastes differ from the average person, some company that does good market research would be even less likely to make a product I would want.

Re:why

[rlangis]

The truth is, popup ads have about 10-20 times as high a clickthrough rate as regular banners do (even flash banners) - so the companies will keep paying for them.

The reason for this is probably because of misrepresentation on the ad itself. Remember the 'Your computer is vulnerable' ads that mimiced Windows popup error messages? Putting a '[X]' in the upper-right-hand corner or a 'cancel' button somewhere in the ad will generate a clickthrough if some clueless luser hits the button thinking they're closing the window.

Lies, lies, and statistics. You're quoting a statistic that is probably 90% based on dishonesty on the part of the advertiser. The other 10% is fumble-fingers on the user side.

Re:why

[Nerull]

Ive watched someone click one of those for five minutes before they gave up..I even explained that it was just an ad, but they refused to stop clicking on it.

Re:why

[jred]

Pay Per Click came next, and is still how "search engines" such as Oveture make money. But not used very much outside PPC search engines.

Like google?

Re:why

[Rexdude]

I've used MyIE2-tabbed IE browser with popup and content filtering, and boy, does it work!
its freeware from www.myie2.com

Re:why

[Ironica]

Since my tastes differ from the average person, some company that does good market research would be even less likely to make a product I would want.

How do you know that your tastes differ from the average person? Have you done extensive market research? ;-)

Besides, ever hear of a niche market? Do you suppose the "average person" would get a credit card based on additional security features for online transactions? How about the "average person" and in-home air purifiers? I participated in a whole focus group about those once. Yet most people don't find them necessary at all.

Now, some people don't really want to participate in market research, and that's perfectly fine with me. I just find it sort of funny when the same people complain that no one's marketing stuff they want.

Re:why

[moxruby]

No, but the idea is to create an unconscious association between a sugary, carbonated beverage and Pepsi. Next time you feel like one, you'll be slightly more likely to reach for the Pepsi.

If coke stopped advertising, they're be bankrupt within a decade. They'd only last that long because they've been flogging lolly-water for the best part of a century.

Re:why

[ultranova]

No, relevancy vs. non-relevancy is the key. When I go to a movie theater, it is because I want to see movies. The movie posters list movies coming in near future, and as such inform me of the potentially interesting choices for my next visit, therefore performing a service for me. That's why they don't annoy me.

Of course, it's also a matter of taste and skill in composing the poster, vs. lack of either in composing most commercials.

Here in Finland, we had a few years ago a commercial which marketed fruit juice. It started with a scene from Caesar's palace in ancient Rome after an all-night orgy. A man was reaching for the fruit juice canister. Then, just before he could get it, another man grapped it, drank it all and threw the canister away. Then he looked at the first man and said: "Would you, too, my Brutus, had wanted this sparkling juice which blah blah blah ?" Then, laughing evilly, he turned and walked away. Next we see a table with the juice canister and a knife on it; a voice says "Fruit Juice - good enough to kill", a hand graps the knife, and the commercial ends.

The point is that if you can make your commercials actually fun and interesting to watch, they won't be considered intrusive anymore.

Re:why

[NetGyver]

Ah, but see, you "know" about the X-10 Cams. The more annoying the ad the better it is for the person selling the advertised goods. X-10 did a hell of a job getting their name out. Bad publicity is still publicity, and for small outfits selling on the net, vendors would pay a primium to get that kind of brand recognition.

if 1,000 people didn't know about your company and the product your selling, then those 1000 people WILL NOT EVER buy anything from you. Now if 1000 people see your annoying ads, you got 1000 people who know who you are and what you're selling. The chances of getting a sales boost vastly increases once people know that you exist and have something to offer.

Not everyone is as loathing of advertisements. They CAN be a good thing when done right. If we didn't have advertisements how would we hear about new products coming out? How would we know if a product existed if there was no press releases (a form of advertising) or TV/radio/net commercials?

Now don't get me wrong, I hate ads just as badly as most /.'s. All the tools that are available to remove ads and popups *IS* a good thing. There's way too much "noise" on the net as it is. There are a lot of advertisers who are abusing the medium to the point where getting online means gawking at irrelevant ads instead of actually doing something useful.

Right now advertisers have a hell of a stronghold on bogging people's systems down with spyware and ads. However, people *are* getting wise to this and are taking measures to keep things down to a dull roar. Once one side has the power, the other side steals it back for a while...human nature i guess.

It's all about balance. I know it's there, I see it when i swing past.

Re:why

[Bitsy Boffin]

Computer keyboards have exactly one set of brackets -- [ is an open bracket, ] is a close bracket.

The other character tuples you mention are not brackets;
( and ) are parentheses
{ and } are braces
is 'greater than'

only [ and ] are brackets.

There ends the lesson.

Re:why

[Bitsy Boffin]

(should have previewed, but slashcode should have been smart enough to not turn my unfortunate use of the < and > signs into tag markers when obviously they were not tags at all)

'<' is less than and '>' is greater than

Re:why

[Darkangael]

You should patent that idea so you can stop them doing it later on :P

Re:why

[DunbarTheInept]

I prefer Linux to Windows. That's proof right there that my tastes are different than the average person. I find pop music boring. I find most TV boring. When doing video games, I prefer a first-person to a third-person viewpoint. That's no longer what the market seems to want. I prefer turn-based strategy to realtime arcade^Wstrategy games, and again, that's no longer what the market seems to want. When it comes to roleplaying games, I'd rather do the tabletop pencil-and-paper variety than the video-game variety (a flesh and blood human is more able to deal with an unexpected solution to a problem than a computer program is, and so the player is more open to taking the story wherever he wants it to go in a tabletop game. Besides, there's the social aspect of gathering together with 6 to 8 friends and telling a story in concert.) All of these are not the way the majority goes.


I just find it sort of funny when the same people complain that no one's marketing stuff they want.

And I find it funny that you think you have enough information to detect that these are in fact the same people as each other.

Re:why

[DreamerFi]

If there were no marketing, you probably wouldn't own half the stuff you do.

And I fail to see why that would be a bad thing..actually, it would probably rid society of a lot of bad, crappy products, since sales would depend way more on both word-of-mouth, an on local expertise and knowing your customer personally.

Now, I have wondered what the effect on our economy would be if there were no more advertising.

Mankind has survived for many thousands of years without advertising. It's one of the things I feel we can still do without. Marketing, and the fact that a lot of crap and garbage is sold (as a side effect of marketing) is proably a huge drain on resources, and the only "plus" I can think of is that a lot of people have incomes because of it. I'd gladly increase social security benefits in exchange for a total removal of all marketing from society.

-John

Re:why

[FireFury03]

All it takes to get rich without making anything good is to track down those stupid enough to buy your crap.

Ah, but those stupid enough to buy the crap usually aren't sensible enough to use a browser that blocks popups. When will advertisers learn that if you make annoying adverts then people will take measures to remove them. If you make well targeted, non-intrusive or interesting ads then people might actually pay attention to them.

When I'm watching TV I usually skip through the breaks (I use MythTV) because they're so filled with ads specifically designed to be annoying. But if, before I hit skip, an un-annoying, funny ad comes on I'll probably not skip it.

Re:why

[ajs318]

Bollocks. They are all different kinds of brackets, if you can get your head around such a concept. () are commonly known as round brackets {or even just brackets}, [] are commonly known as square brackets, {} are curly brackets or posh brackets, and <> -- the less-than and more-than signs -- are sometimes called angle brackets or pointy brackets. I've also heard them referred to as 'mustang signs' {no idea why, I thought a mustang was a wild pony and don't see the connection}.

Re:why

[mks113]

I'll pass up my moderator points on this one.

If the goal of life is to die with as many toys as possible, then marketing is a good thing.

If we look at the world around us and decide that we want to make a positive difference in the world, then marketing is an incredible distraction that can easily turn us into selfish people.

There is nothing that keeps people from doing good quite like the desire for "Things".

Re:why

[slumped]

This is only true for affiliate-style programs (Commission Junction, Google Ads etc). It's certainly not true for the major deals with mainstream publishers (ie, anyone large enough to have dedicated ad sales people). Most deals are of an agreed cost for an agreed schedule of deliveries (and may even be of a fixed cost without any guarantees of performance at all, even of impressions, particularly for fixed-position non-rotated advertisements).

Clickthrough ratios and customer conversions are obviously taken into account when agreeing a price (and deciding whether to renew/advertise in the first place) but are rarely if ever a factor in the costs of the deal.

As for those kinds of scams - well, that's why agencies tend to refuse to advertise with anyone not running one of the standard ad delivery solutions (Doubleclick, Ad Tech, Open Adstream).

Re:why

[DMNT]

What they rely on is the percecption that "spam works", so people will hire them to do spam campaigns.

The spam works. Spammers get money by spamming people.

Why do people then buy spammers' "services"?
Have you ever seen a marketing section of a company? It's hard to measure how effective that is, and they can always tell that "our ad isn't about selling the product, it's about making our brand known." I guess Scott Adams has it right in his Dilbert-comic. There's no relation between marketing and real world.
"They even believe in market research." - Scott Adams

Re:why

[Vexar]

I'm waiting for someone to develop an ink printing system that works on commercial porcelain. In addition to the possibility of having truly lovely bathtubs with durable artwork, we could also see urinals plastered with ads, which I think is far more invasive than a pop-up ad. The downside would be a lot of "targetting" accidents from being distracted. I can just see the dial-a-lawyer ads:
"Pissed off at your former employer? Call Duey, Cheatum, and Howe, labor attorneys!"

Still, I rank pop-up ads in the same category as those framed ads above the urinals in a public restroom.

Re:why

[helpfulcorn]

I think that if a company stoop to such a level, that they must try to trick the software on my computer to get its advertisement to me, then obviously the company is full of a bunch of sly-weasels out to exploit people.... just like spammers.

Re:why

[Ironica]

Mankind has survived for many thousands of years without advertising. It's one of the things I feel we can still do without. Marketing, and the fact that a lot of crap and garbage is sold (as a side effect of marketing) is proably a huge drain on resources, and the only "plus" I can think of is that a lot of people have incomes because of it. I'd gladly increase social security benefits in exchange for a total removal of all marketing from society.

You missed something here. I asked about the effect on the economy, not on society. Sure, mankind has done without marketing for thousands of years... pretty much up until the Industrial Revolution. But if we suddenly got rid of the concept of paying someone a fee to allow you to use their medium to promote your product, I don't think you'd get an increase in social security benefits out of it. I think it would probably plunge us pretty well into economic chaos for quite a while until we reached a new equilibrium.

Currently, advertising revenue has a redistributive effect on the economy. It means we pay for things we don't "need" as much, like television entertainment, when we buy things we do "need," like groceries. If television was all subscription-based, it would be a much smaller industry. Better quality, maybe... once people got used to paying for it. But that's a lot of jobs that would just evaporate right there.

Re:why

[danila]

you're not really going to ever solve this problem permanently
Not exactly. You can write a filtering proxy (can be a plugin/addon for Mozilla) with online access to a database of filters that can be updated in real-time. So once a new ad format enters the Internet, some of the registered antiad power users will see it, write a filter, it will be automatically tested and distributed among the users.

Re:why

[NuclearDog]

Using Firefox:
Tools>Options
Web Features
Uncheck Java\Javascript right there. No more Java or Javascript ads.

For flash, install flashblock. It simply changes the browser so that you must click on a button before it will show the flash movie.

Re:why

[iNetRunner]

I have seen some flash popups by some car mfg. I can't remeber right now.. It was a borderless window or maybe just a centered layer in Mozilla.

Well, this only happened because I reinstalled Mozilla and forgot to install adblock. Haven't seen them since..

Re:why

[Anonym1ty]

You missed the point

No, you still miss the point. It doesn't matter if you use an extreme example or something "in the gray" the point is there is not gray if you have any morals.

What is so difficult about wrapping your head around the idea there is right and there is wrong? Causing annoyances for the sake of causing annoyances is unethical and immoral no matter how slight. Don't you see degree isn't the issue! You should see that the problem is with the entire concept.

Re:why

[devilspgd]

Well, actually, you mentioned credit card statements, and that is one example of something I consider wrong.

How do you pay your credit card bills?

There are options... Paying online might be convenient, but sending cheques and including whatever junk mail you have handy, will ultimately be more satisfying, plus it costs the company manpower to process your payments.

What if you have more ads then bills to mail? Well, send two cheques to each company instead of one, that way you can get rid of all the ads.

Or, just mail the ads without a cheque, stamp, or return address. Many companies automatically accept postage-due mail.

Re:why

[MochaMan]

What is so difficult about wrapping your head around the idea there is right and there is wrong?

I had no idead that Dubya read slashdot! Welcome, buddy! And let me give you a hint to keep you from making a bigger fool of yourself: there are shades of grey in this world, and there are many ethical models. I think you'd have a hard time making a case for morality when it comes to pop-up ads or telemarketing.

Re:why

[Anonym1ty]

there are many ethical models

You are an Idiot.

For a man to have ethics and morals, he must decide to have ethics and morals.... You can not adopt all models of ethics and morals and be an ethical and moral person. To do so is an oxymoron, just as you are a regular kind of moron. There are no shades of gray. Shades of gray are a cop-out for the ethically inept.

Cheap stabs about the ethics of the president do not help your argument, it only shows the depth of your depravity. People like you should think before you open your mouth.

Next time keep your mouth shut before you let all the stupid out.

Re:why

[WhiteDragon]

4 words: Flash click to view

Re:why

[qoa]

Yeah Maddox suggested this at one time. Using all the postage paid envelopes the credit card companies send you to send them junk mail ads you get in the mail.

Re:why

[trukfixer]

mustang signs- probably cause they look sorta like pointy horseshoes? I got to agree with you. In my work when I talk about brackets I generally mean [], curlies or braces = {} parens = ()... although I usually DO refer to the '' as angle brackets or tags (php function strip_tags() refers to them as tags also)

These guys missed the boat.

[Liselle]

One of the many things we learned about the advertising idiocy during the dotcom boom was that you can't just spew your message everywhere. Random, untargetted advertising is what gave us Spank the Monkey and Win $20 (someone feel free to bring up the Microsoft ad I'm looking at now, not touching that one with a 10-foot stick).

These people are trying to serve ads to people actively trying to block them. Oh yeah, that's brilliant.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[mboos]

someone feel free to bring up the Microsoft ad I'm looking at now, not touching that one with a 10-foot stick
You mean the "Get the Facts" propaganda?
I've been noticing that all over open source websites. It seems so wrong! The irony is that through these ads M$ is funding open source. Kind of like the Church of England trying to buy up all the copies of Tyndale's English Bible in order to burn them - the money he earned from it allowed him to bug bigger and better printing presses!

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[levik]

These people are trying to serve ads to people actively trying to block them. Oh yeah, that's brilliant.

Your sarcasm is misplaced. It is brilliant. Who is more likely to pay attention to your ad, someone who sees (and reflexively closes) 100s of them every day, or someone who hasn't seen an ad in such a format for a few months? What they're doing is tryin gto reach a market no longer being tapped.

(Of course I do not speak of the ethical implications of this)

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a way to secure revenue? I run a site that gets ~10k hits/day. That bandwidth isn't free so I have banners and pop-unders which just barely cover the costs of running the site. What alternative is there? Charge a fee and have 10% of the people pay it and 90% stop visiting? Even if I did that, there is no good way to accept micropayments now, so I'd just be making more money for paypal.

The choice is run the ads or don't run the site, and since I'm getting a decent amount of traffic most people seem to want the first option.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[ffsnjb]

I clicked a TreeLoot banner ad once ( I was bored with nothing to do). Because of that one click, I've had a free subscription to Playboy since 1999, I think it expires in 2006. Now that was some good advertising money well spent by someone... They gave away a product, and had to pay to give it away! hehe.

Will I pay to renew in a couple years? Hell no. Will I click another banner ad to do so for free? Oh yeah.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[Lord_Dweomer]

You don't think you could possibly find that link again and post it for us do you?

Just think, we could Slashdot the Playboy Mansion!

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[ckaminski]

Look at people like Salon, who've managed to survive without popups or popunders. If you have interesting content, people will subject themselves to an ad on your behalf every day. CNN could learn a thing or two from this with their video archives. For every 3 or 4 video archives, I have to subject myself to an ad. It's a tradeoff. But it's one that doesn't piss me off by creating popups.

Yahoo does it with yahoogroups, that seems to not be stopping people from using yahoogroups.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[bergeron76]

I think they're trying to target these ads at the general populous. There are a ton of naive people out there that might buy something from these fools. The fact that the Sysadmin of the company they work for deployed Mozilla with pop-up blocker is of ill-consequence. These "average" lusers aren't really actively blocking adds, someone set their browser up for them.

I do get your point and agree with it, however.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[budgenator]

I got news for you;
sourceforge.net, Top Downloads,
1. eMule, Operating System: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT/2000
2. BitTorrent, Operating System: Windows, POSIX
3. DC++, Operating System: Windows
4. Azureus - BitTorrent Client, Operating System: MacOS X, Windows, POSIX
5. CDex, Operating System: Windows
6. guliverkli, Operating System: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT/2000
7. VirtualDub, Operating System: Windows 95/98/2000
8. eMule Plus, Operating System: Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT/2000
9. ABC [Yet Another Bittorrent Client], Operating System: Windows NT/2000
10 VisualBoyAdvance, Operating System: BeOS, MacOS X, Windows, Linux

3/10 run on Linux, 10/10 run on windows, hell if I were Billy G, I'd not only advetise there, I'd encourage my people to work on some OSS for my operating system there.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[T-Ranger]

The cover price for a given magazine hardly cover the production and shipping costs of it. Magazines make money from advertisers. Advertisers only count subscribers when it comes to setting ad rates.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[Cruciform]

And subscriptions are cheaper because they sell your info. When I subscribed to Maxim I put an identifier in the address info. Not long after I started getting lots of crap in the mail, indicating that they had sold my name and address. I didn't bother renewing my subscription and they haven't seen another dime out of me since.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[ajs318]

It's fastclick which from what I've heard is one of the hardest to get into, and in my experience they do pay very well for the industry and are great to work with.

And they are also on my Squid Proxy Server's banned list -- along with doubleclick, tribalfusion and falkag. I'm not going to buy the product, so I'm f**ked if I'm going to waste bandwidth letting the advert get onto my screen.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[ajs318]

Don't forget that many GNU/Linux users do not download from SourceForge, but from their distribution's own servers or installation media, or from independent sites. Some distros have a lot of ready-made packages on their I.M.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[ajs318]

No -- I'm not stealing anything. It makes no difference whatsoever whether or not I download unwanted advertisements. In fact, if anything, I'm saving the advertising company bandwidth by not downloading anything from them.

Don't try to make me feel as though I'm doing anything wrong, because I'm not. I would never buy the product advertised anyway. If you want to call me a thief that's fine -- I can live quite comfortably with that kind of stealing on my conscience.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[steve's nose is blee]

I played the treeloot tree bingo game for an afternoon years ago, won some tree points and apparently bought a stuffed monkey from them. I forgot all about it until a few months later when the monkey arrived.

Now the monkey with boxing gloves and shorts and a treeloot logo sits atop my monitor and keeps me company when I post to slashdot.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[PReDiToR]

Hear hear!

Sorry to say it, but I even block OSDN ads. I don't want commercials flashing away at me or lurid colors (other than games.slashdot.org) messing up my reading.

In my defence I will say that I buy stuff from ThinkGeek. I don't need advertising to send me there, I found out for myself that the ThinkGeek "soothing green light" shirt I wear (and the Ducti wallet, the CHIMP mirror, the "no I will not fix your computer" shirt, the geek blanket and the rest) means I don't have to view 10,000 pointless ads. I pay my dues without the adverts.

If I ever find something on Cash and Carrion (The Register's version of ThinkGeek) worth buying, I will support The Register (.co.uk) by buying from it. Their commercials are the best I have seen. They disguise themselves as stories on the front page and you don't even realise you have seen an ad until you have read it. Brilliant.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[BillX]

You always could ask for voluntary donations. We've been doing it for a couple years now at cexx.org - since that time, reader support has covered all of the site's expenses, including hosting/bandwidth (around 40GBytes/month currently), domain renewal, etc. Granted, coming right out and asking for money can be humbling, but it doesn't involve anything popping up in the viewer's face (or worse, trying to auto-install "browser enhancements" and whatever else sites are using to offset their expenses these days).

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[wkitchen]

Ah the dot com boom days. Seems like every business plan involved giving stuff away. In 1999 my wife visited a web site that was giving away address labels in the hopes that people would like them enough to buy more in the future. She filled out the online form, and in a few days a shiny new roll of address labels appeared in the mail box exactly as promised.

And fine address labels they are. Their mistake was sending such a large roll. It's now 2004 and we're still using those same labels.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[wmspringer]

And that's if you're lucky.

I used to edit an online magazine that had a brief run as a print magazine. Even though we sold most of the copies, it didn't even come *close* to paying our printing costs; it was the advertisers that did that. When we stopped publishing it was because we didn't have enough advertisers.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[phiwum]

You would never buy the product anyway, but you are costing the web site money for bandwidth. By visiting the site, you are agreeing to pay them in the form of viewing the ad, even if you have no intent of buying the product.



What bollocks. I don't remember any such agreement, either implicit or explicit. There is nothing in the foundations of the World Wide Web which supports such an implicit contract. There is no "site use license" which suggests such an agreement.

This is just nonsense that advertisers and their supporters make up out of nothing. This isn't to say that one shouldn't support advertising or that ads are a bad thing. But one shouldn't support any particular practice by making up spurious contractual obligations (or any other plain and simple fictions).

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[ajs318]

As a website owner, I'm in a position to decide if you're stealing from me or not by not downloading your ads. You are not.

As a computer owner, I'm in a position to decide whether or not I wish to view advertisements. That's the bottom line. My computer, my choice. If I want to recompile my browser not to display any page with the colour orange on it, that's up to me. Nobody else. I am in control of what I see.

Are you trying to say that somebody will pay you a sum of money if I download an advert from their server from a link on your site, but you will get nothing if I don't download the advert? That sounds like an incredibly broken business model to me, and if that's really the way things are set up then it deserves to fail just for assuming people are so stupid.

When someone spends money on an advertisement, it is a gamble which may or may not pay off. If the advert "works" and they get more business than the advert cost them, they win; if the advert generates less revenue than it cost, they lose. You can't get mad just because your little advert didn't work on me. People who spend money on intrusive advertising are pricks, they make their money by misappropriating my bandwidth {which I paid for for my purposes} for their and, for that, I have no compunction towards them. I don't remember ever being obliged to prop up broken business models. (Hey, is that one of the reason why americans don't like the teaching of evolution in schools? Because the idea of "survival of the fittest" sits uncomfortably with them, and they would rather believe a theory, no matter how outlandish it may seem, which did not compel them to adapt or perish?)

The first rule of gambling is "never bet more than you could afford to lose". A corollary of that is that if someone made a bet, they can afford to lose the money. Suppose you bet on the outcome of a boxing match, and the boxer you were backing lost the fight. Has he stolen your money? Can you legitimately blame him for the fact that you ended up out of pocket? Or maybe the bookmaker is to blame?

Just stop acting like everyone owes you a favour.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[beeblebrox87]

It seems more likely that their business model was to get you to enter your address into a web form and then sell the address to junk-snailmail companies.

Re:These guys missed the boat.

[lewko]

It's now 2004 and we're still using those same labels.

And they're still selling your same address...

Is this really a problem?

[thebra]

Maybe what they are talking about is different, but there is already software to block floating ads. Just search google and software such as this and this claim to block in-your-face floating ads. I have never used these and probably wouldn't since they cost money and google is doing a fine job for me.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[r00t_ur_b0x]

Not to mention this one. Pretty cheap, too.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Carnildo]

I've been using the Proxomitron to block popup and javascript ads for 3+ years now, without updating the filters, and the only effect I've seen from the anti-ad-blocker techniques is fewer ads are showing up -- the javascript techniques now used to display regular banner ads are running right into the Proxomitron's anti-javascript filters. I wonder how many fewer ads I'll see as a result of this latest round of techniques.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[DrEldarion]

Yes! The Proxomitron is a wonderful piece of software, is free, and the most configurable (and therefore most flexible) pop-up blocker that exists.

The best part is that it's not only useful for pop-up blocking. It can kill any annoyance on webpages from background MIDIs to animated GIFs. It can ADD things to pages as well - I have it configured to add a sliding sidebar to any page on the forums I visit with links to each individual subforum.

It truly is a wonderful piece of software.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Sylver Dragon]

Try installing AdBlock for Mozilla. Its a great way to get rid of the rest of the advertising crap on the web. Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so, but then we each have to make those decisions on our own.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[dasmegabyte]

Wow...it's like battle of the vaporware!

Company A: We will display new ads! You cannot block them!
Company B: Oh yeah? Well, we will block them!
Company A: Oh snap? Well, we'll make a different kind you can't block!
Company B: Ha! We block those too!
Company A: Curses!

Re:Is this really a problem?

[AstroDrabb]

AdBlock is the best. You just enter a regex such as *.ads.* and any content from a site in that form will be blocked. I don't see how this company thinks they will work around this. For example, say that they start to overlay an image with some ad, you just block the server where that image is coming from and your done.

Another simple trick is that many ads are common sizes, so with Mozilla and Firefox, you can do this to block images of certain sizes.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

when you install Adblock you hold a gun to Taco's head and rob him.

you are a evil man.... I'm guessing that you kick Network executives' puppies, and steal candy from the babies of Radio Station owners...

you evil person! how dare you not enjoy your Ad content!

ok that might be over the top sarcasim.. but you saying "Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so..." is the same as giving credibility to the insane guy on the corner with the "the end is near" baner and spewing profamnity at everyone...

anyone that "questions the morality" of blocking or skipping advertising on your own property... I.E. your computer, is a nutbag that needs to be beaten severly with a clue-by-four.

Posting AC to hide from the Slashdot Advertising Gestapo

Re:Is this really a problem?

[pherris]

Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so ...

This is why I don't block Google ads; they're only text and don't overwhelm you as you read. As for everything else: blocked. Blame the clown who thought a 500k, 50 frame animated gif that only uses bright colors and takes over the entire screen was a good idea.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[SomeGuyFromCA]

> you just block the server where that image is coming from

Quite simple to defeat: they serve all their images, ads and content alike, from the same server.

Next?

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Sylver Dragon]

you are a evil man.... I'm guessing that you kick Network executives' puppies, and steal candy from the babies of Radio Station owners...

No, actually I steal network executives puppies, and kick Radio Station owner's babies. Puppies have redeeming qualities.

ok that might be over the top sarcasim.. but you saying "Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so..." is the same as giving credibility to the insane guy on the corner with the "the end is near" baner and spewing profamnity at everyone...

anyone that "questions the morality" of blocking or skipping advertising on your own property... I.E. your computer, is a nutbag that needs to be beaten severly with a clue-by-four.

Truth is, I don't block all ads, in fact slashdot is one of the few sites who's ads I don't block. Why, because they aren't the annoying flashing ads. Also, I like /. enough that I am willing to give them a few click-thrus to help support the site.
On the question of morality, I will admit that I see the other side's point, the ads are usually what support a site. Running a site isn't free, so if they want to try and recoup some of the costs by having ads, I don't mind so much. However, pop-ups/unders are an abusive form of advertisment, any site allowing such advertising on its site immediatly gets its ad content blocked. Also, those annoying banner ads that flash bright red and yellow are in the same category. Granted some sites, which have not shown any such ads, get caught by some of my filters. These I just consider colateral damage.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Sylver Dragon]

This is why I don't block Google ads; they're only text and don't overwhelm you as you read. As for everything else: blocked. Blame the clown who thought a 500k, 50 frame animated gif that only uses bright colors and takes over the entire screen was a good idea.

Same here, I see nothing wrong with text based ads on Google's site. Hosting isn't free, and using ad content is one way to recover some of those costs. However, the advertisers need to understand that there are limits to acceptable behavior. Pop-ups/unders are unacceptable, bright flashing banners are unacceptable, and large swf or animated gif's are unacceptable. Present your product, and a bit of information on it, then let me decide to pursue more information about it, don't try and ram it down my optic nerve. I think advertisers are going to have to learn this lesson eventually, the tools to block thier ads, entirely, exist. And, they are starting to gain main-stream usage. Eventually, either the advertisers are going to have to back off and allow people to have a plesant web experience, with some subtle ads; or, the advertisers are going to try to go so over the top that people resort to blocking every ad on the web. Right now, I am hoping for the former, but am preparing for the latter.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[AstroDrabb]

I take it you have never worked with regular expressions? You could create a regex that just blocks certain things from the server, such as gif, jpg, etc from a certain directory or with a certain name pattern. It would be pretty easy to work around these types of ads.

Re:Is this really a problem?

[Spunk]

I love it too. I just added *falkag* to AdBlock.

Re:Last Measure

[cshark]

No kidding.
I wonder if there's a way to block those annoying float ads. But that's a little more complicated than blocking popups. Might be a nice emerging market to get into...

This is too easy

[davmoo]

I have an easy way to defeat their technology.

Every time I see a pop-up that defeats my pop-up blocking, first I'll for damned sure never buy that product. In addition, I will never go to the hosting website again. And I'll make damned sure they know why.

There is no topic on the internet that can be served by only one site.

Re:This is too easy

[cshark]

Do you think hosting companies should start banning popups and intrusive ads the way they do with spam, by putting it in their TOS? It would make sense to me. That way, credible sites stop doing it.

Re:This is too easy

[1000101]

This is certainly what one would hope people would do. Unfortunately, you are in the very small minority. The vast majority of internet users will simply close the ad or just click on the next link. Your idea has merit, but most people won't take the time to email the host and complain.

Re:This is too easy

[Spudley]

That way, credible sites stop doing it.

Credible sites already don't do it.

Re:This is too easy

[flibuste]

I once whined against Liberation.fr which index page opens a NEW popup window each time you go there, and basically , the only answer I got from their webmaster was "you still can go to hell" (ok...it's not exactly that but it's accurate enough).

So really, reporting to the host that you won't read their web site or anything similar is useless.

That was the reason why I installed Firefox

Re:This is too easy

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I don't think most hosting companies will go for that. The sad truth is that most web companies have a no-spam rule in their TOS because they don't nned their network nailed by the heavy load that sending spam represents, and TO A LESSOR DEGREE don't want to have their IP blocks blacklisted. But I think that the chance is very slim that pop-ups are much of a blip at all to them, and they would not want to lose the hosting biz in what is a very tight market.

Re:This is too easy

[Carnildo]

Someone mod parent up! An un-obfusicated link to Tubgirl should be preserved for posterity!

Re:This is too easy

[paiute]

most people won't take the time to email the host and complain

why not a button that automatically sends an angry email to the ad sponsor's site?

on a related note, why not an automatic email to the webmaster of sites that are not mozilla compliant?

Re:This is too easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Weather Underground is your friend.

Re:This is too easy

[warkda rrior]

There is no topic on the internet that can be served by only one site.

I am not so sure about that, Microsoft has the only website that delivers easy-to-use, easy-to-attack software products.

Re:This is too easy

[DustMagnet]

Every time I see a pop-up that defeats my pop-up blocking, first I'll for damned sure never buy that product. In addition, I will never go to the hosting website again. And I'll make damned sure they know why.

I've done that, but more often I reconfigure my blocker. I use Proxomitron to block both ads and pop-ups. It uses regular expressions, so it only takes me a few minutes to come up with a new rule for the website. I don't mind simple ads, but animations drive me nuts.

Some websites don't work with Proxomitron, if they are ad free, I use the bypass feature. If they have ads, I follow your system.

Re:This is too easy

[budgenator]

so what you happens if you spoofed the http request to a port that's been tar-pitted on your machine?

Re:This is too easy

[slumped]

What makes you think the hosting website will care?

As somebody who reads their site without viewing their ads, you cost them money. Why would they want you as a reader?

Re:This is too easy

[danila]

Why should I care about weater underground? It's not where I spend most of my time.

The next wave...

[Anonymous Coward]

The next wave will be full fledged interrupt ads on most major sites. Already a couple high-profile companies are using them and more are sure to follow.

Advertising is and will kill the Internet. Out of the ashes will be born something new and better.

I just wish they'd hurry up and get done fucking everyone in the ass so we can start over fresh.

Fresh as a summers day.

Re:The next wave...

[Alyred]

Yeah, I'm waiting for one that reprograms the BIOS EEPROM with a flashing program to display thier adds when you boot up, in the logo space that most BIOS chips have now.

My only question is, will they bother to tell you before they reboot your machine so you see it? They already act as if they have a RIGHT to do whatever they want to your machine anyway...

Re:The next wave...

[shamino0]

Yeah, I'm waiting for one that reprograms the BIOS EEPROM with a flashing program to display thier adds when you boot up, in the logo space that most BIOS chips have now.

You're about five years too late for this kind of paranoia.

Re:The next wave...

[Alyred]

You're about five years too late for this kind of paranoia.

Eek, well, that's not exactly encouraging.

However, this has no bearing as to whether ADVERTISERS would stoop this low. The capability is there. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the world's NOT out to get you, after all. ;)

ho-hum

[illusion_2K]

They're likely talking about layers.. which is something that Adblock already deals with. (along with Flash, images and custom paths - i.e. block anything in the directory */ads/*).

Just another reason to use Firefox/Mozilla.

Re:ho-hum

[Anonymous Coward]

They're likely talking about layers.. which is something that Adblock already deals with.

For a moment I thought you were linking to some great new software that stopped lawyers ... now THAT'd be a great new product!

Re:ho-hum

[c_ollier]

Try this working link.

Re:ho-hum

[Talinom]

Thanks for the info. Since it appears to use regular expressions I should be able to dump my blockfile from Junkbuster into it and just go.

Does it allow you not block advertising from, say Slashdot? How about cookies. I only allow cookies from a few sites. All others go to the bit bucket.

What would be the differences between Adblock and Junkbuster?

On a side note, reading the HTML source of the page, or running netstat -a helps out a lot to find out where the advertising comes from.

Re:ho-hum

[HappyProle]

I've noticed lately that ESPN (which was unbrowsable until I installed the AdBlock extension) has started including flash advertisements that are integrated into their normal banners.

When you go to the ESPN's NBA home page, you get a McDonald's ad for a few seconds, then it reverts to the typical ESPN banner. This is a clever way of getting around things like AdBlock (whether that was the intent or not). Now I can either deal with the few seconds of advertising, or have a glaring white space on the page because I've blocked the entire flash element. Or not go there at all and finish my work...

Re:ho-hum

[Quattro Vezina]

Does it allow you not block advertising from, say Slashdot? How about cookies. I only allow cookies from a few sites.

AdBlock lets you block ads on a per-site basis. Basically, if I come across an ad that's not blocked, I'll right click->AdBlock, and then tweak the URL with *s to block all ads from that site. You can also click a button in your statusbar that'll pull up a list of all blockable elements on the page and give you the option to block each one.

AdBlock has nothing to do with cookies, but that's moot as Firefox has a built-in cookie manager.

Re:ho-hum

[Walkiry]

You mean like this?

Re:ho-hum

[boarder8925]

When you go to the ESPN's NBA home page, you get a McDonald's ad for a few seconds, then it reverts to the typical ESPN banner. This is a clever way of getting around things like AdBlock (whether that was the intent or not). Now I can either deal with the few seconds of advertising, or have a glaring white space on the page because I've blocked the entire flash element.

Or you can use Firefox and edit your userContent.css file.

Re:ho-hum

[gleepskip]

You forgot to tell Adblock to "Collapse Blocked Elements". It's located on the Adblock Preferences dialog on the Adblock Options menu. Check that option and no more whitespace...

Re:ho-hum

[wmspringer]

The funny thing is, when I read this post I read the quoted line first...and I thought it said lawyers also!

Re:ho-hum

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Or another reason to use squid and something like squirm or one of the other filters you can plug into squid. That way you not only get a caching proxy (more bandwidth spare for other stuff) you get ad blocking and can even do other tricks (I use it to rewrite the theme information for several phpBB2 forums that use gastly themes with no other options)

Sooner or later these morons will learn that any technology they try to set up, we can get around just as easily..

Re:ho-hum

[thebosz]

To add to my sibling, you can also not block Ads. In addition, you can choose to have your browser download the ad, but just not display it; thus making the server think you're looking at ads when you're not.

You should try it, it's pretty awesome.

Im curious as to..

[SCSi]

If you visit a webpage with numerous popups/popunders, will this software "stack" all of the popups on top of each other, thereby creating image chaos? Or will it just rotate the images?

Ran into one today

[Foxxz]

Ive been using google's toolbar. it does occasionally miss some popups, but i noticed a site that put a window look-alike in the middle of the page i was trying to veiw.

-foxxz

HOSTS link?

[TopShelf]

Color me ignorant, but what exactly does everythingisnt.com have to do with customized HOSTS files?

Re:HOSTS link?

[LostCluster]

If you place an ad server's domain name in your HOST file as 127.0.0.1... most ads served by their netwrok fail and you instead see a failed image icon.

Re:HOSTS link?

[TopShelf]

I understand that, but what I'm asking about is the link in the article up top...

Re:HOSTS link?

[Anonymous Coward]

look here- http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

Re:HOSTS link?

[maj1k]

i dunno, maybe that link on the side of the page that says:

Banner Ad Blocking

Re:HOSTS link?

[crimethinker]

The site has a very large hosts file that resolves many ad-serving hosts to 127.0.0.1, i.e. your local host. My browser displays a nice red X instead of a banner ad, and it just makes surfing the web so much easier. The list is updated regularly.

I'm not the maintainer, just a satisfied "customer."

-paul

Re:HOSTS link?

[cioxx]

blocking ads by domains through Hosts file is the dumbest thing one can do, especially when you're on Windows. It's a resource hog and doesn't accomplish half of what can be done with Privoxy or Proxomitron.

Don't touch the Hosts file.

Re:HOSTS link?

[csmacd]

http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html is better.

It is on the menu on the left side of the main page. Pretty good list, BTW!

Re:HOSTS link?

[MobyTurbo]

Color me ignorant, but what exactly does everythingisnt.com have to do with customized HOSTS files?

The (small lettered) link is on the left part of the page.

What surprised me is that Slashdot, on it's front page, advertized a host file that specifically blocks the ads on slashdot. (ads.osdn.com, etc.)

Re:HOSTS link?

[Anonymous Coward]

blocking ads by domains through Hosts file is the dumbest thing one can do, especially when you're on Windows. It's a resource hog

It's only a hog because of the "DNS client" service on win2k and winXP. If you disable the DNS client, everything goes back to normal. The DNS client service caches DNS requests to DNS servers. Win2k and winXP work fine without it.

Re:HOSTS link?

[Greedo]

Rather than messing with hosts, use a custom style sheet. I know Safari on OS X supports this. I'm guess most modern browsers do as well (maybe not MSIE).

Here's mine.

/*
* hides many ads by preventing display of images that are inside
* links when the link HREF contans certain substrings.
*/

A:link[HREF*="//ad."] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="//ads."] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="/ad"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="/A="] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="/click"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="?click"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="?banner"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="=click"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="/ar.atwo"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="spinbox."] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="transfer.go"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="adfarm"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="bluestreak"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="doubleclick"] IMG { display: none ! important }

/*
* disable ad iframes
*/

IFRAME[SRC*="ad."] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="ads."] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="/ad"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="/A="] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="/click"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="?click"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="?banner"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="=click"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="/ar.atwo"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="spinbox."] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="transfer.go"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="adfarm"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="bluestreak"] { display: none ! important }
IFRAME[SRC*="doubleclick"] { display: none ! important }

xIMG[usemap] { display: none ! important }

IMG[SRC*="bluestreak"] { display: none ! important }

/* turning some false positives back off */

A:link[HREF*="download."] IMG { display: inline ! important }
A:link[HREF*="click.mp3"] IMG { display: inline ! important }

/*
* For more examples see http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html
*/

Re:HOSTS link?

[metlin]

The thing is that a lot of people on Slashdot *like* the ads that come on, or are willing to be subscribers.

I contemplated blocking the ads initially, but after a while I noticed that the ads were of interest to me and I actually went and got stuff through the click-throughs.

And now, am a subscriber - but even so, I have a minimal amount of ads disabled simply because I like the ads, and they are useful to me.

The folks at Slashdot know this too, and the way they see it is that if they provided good, relevant and useful ads, customers will not mind. And besides, hell I like this place ;-)

Re:HOSTS link?

[blunte]

It's an opportunity to do some Bush-bashing, conveniently linked to you thru the front page of /.

Re:HOSTS link?

[ajs318]

It'll wake up any Apache server you're running, though, and that will slow your system down a bit while it goes looking for non-existent virtual host containers in httpd.conf, then writes to a logfile that it couldn't find the requested page.

Re:HOSTS link?

[sootman]

I have to disagree about it being the dumbest thing I can do. I've got a 4,000-line hosts file on all my OS X Macs and I never noticed the slightest blip in CPU usage or slowness in my browsing. And, my custom "Another blocked ad!" 404 page brings a smile to my face every time I see it in a page that uses inline frames to store ads.

Re:HOSTS link?

[Rushuru]

Nice and neat, but it doesn't stop your browser from actually downloading the image as the hosts file would.

Actually, it can. It depends what you put on your customized stylesheet.
Some people want to get a completely ad free web experience. Others, feel guilty about it, and don't want to get rid of the ads to show their support to the site, but want to make them less annoying.

iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ -moz-outline: medium dashed red; -moz-opacity: 10%; }
468x80 images and iframes are downloaded and displayed, but they are 90% translucent and are outlined by a big red dash.

iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ visibility: hidden !important; }
Banners & iframes are downloaded but not displayed.

iframe[width="468"][height="60"], a img[width="468"][height="60"]
{ display: none !important; }
Banners and iframes are neither downloaded nor displayed.

This site provides a sample antibanner stylesheet, as well as instructions on how to use it with opera, mozilla and others.

Re:HOSTS link?

[Blastercorps]

Where is the setting for this?

Re:HOSTS link?

[devbobo]

Did anyone else find it weird that he's a guy pushing the blocking of advertising, but a Google advertising window appears on his page.

And that no googlesyndication.com references appear in his HOST file.

Re:HOSTS link?

[yotto]

Settings
Control panel
(Administrative Tools) - Maybe
Services
Hilight "DNS Client"
Disable it.

Depending on your version of windows, you'll have to do different things to disable it, but they all involve somethign that says 'disabled' and clicking on it so it is selected. The options are 'Automatic' 'manual' and 'disabled'.

On my machine, running XP, I had to Double Dlick on it and select 'Disabled' from a drop box that was already set to 'Automatic'.

You also have to click on 'stop'.

It won't hurt anything. At the very worst, it will make it impossible to surf the net until you set it back to 'automatic' and click on 'start'.

Re:HOSTS link?

[aftk2]

You might want to check again. At least, in the browser I'm running, setting a custom stylesheet with everything on display: none will still download all of the content - it just won't display it.

Try it out. Change everything in your custom stylesheet to

body {display: none}

You'll get a blank page, but I bet the status bar will reflect that images and the page are being downloaded.

Customize your host file...

[LGagnon]

... or use the AdBlock extension with Mozilla Firefox. I find it to be more effective than the host file (since it can make more specific blocks).

Just like the old saying

[Anonymous Coward]

When you outlaw popup blocking blockers only outlaw popup blocking blockers will block popup blocking blockers.

Re:Just like the old saying

[thebra]

Mwahahahaha! Thanks for the laugh, mod parent up!

Re:Just like the old saying

[nathanh]

How many popups will a popup blocker block if a popup blocker could block popups?

Here's an example...

[slifox]

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/

Here's an example of this style of anti-popup-blocker advertisement. This site, which is very useful by the way, will not "work" if javascript is not enable or ads are not shown.

I haven't tested this in other browsers, but this system is pretty neat (awful?)... it changes itself so its hard to detect the functions and block them.

Re:Here's an example...

[ChronoWiz]

Doesn't get me, I use mozilla.

Re:Here's an example...

[gmuslera]

Nice opening message...

Opera 7.5 Detected

You have been brought to this page because you are using Opera 7.5. Unregistered Opera 7.5 typically makes use of Google AdSense ads that are targeted based on the content of the webpage, this is an unauthorized use of our copyrighted material.

Im not sure about how useful is their content, but very sure about how hateful are their policy.

Re:Here's an example...

[toriver]

Yeah, for instance, it "blocked" my Opera because they don't think that Opera or Google should be allowed to use a business model which uses ads based on a site's content... as if it in any way whatsoever affects their content.

It boggles the mind what lengths some people will go to in order to pacify their paranoia.

Re:Here's an example...

[Sporkinum]

Interesting.. Using Mozilla 1.6 and Adblock plugin. Doesn't say that when using Lynx.. wonder if you set ident string to lynx in mozilla if blocks would work?

Banner Blocking Detected

You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.

If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.
Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.

Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com
How to Disable Ad Blocking Software
There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.

* Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".
* ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.
* AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".
* WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".

Re:Here's an example...

[advocate_one]

It kills Konqueror but I'm working on getting Firefox to block them... yes... got them blocked now and that site is complaining...

Banner Blocking Detected

You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.

If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.

Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

Re:Here's an example...

[Spudley]

That sounds like a singularly pointless excersise, given that Opera can spoof as MSIE.

On the bright side, at least they know about Opera -- I'd rather see this than a page that hasn't been tested under anything other than MSIE and doesn't work properly, or even worse, a page that would work just fine, but tries to be clever and check your browser for compatibility before letting you in, but doesn't know about anything other than MSIE. Grrr.

Re:Here's an example...

[TheRealFixer]

I use The Proxomitron, and I get no popups on that site, and it doesn't redirect me to some anti-ad-blocker-complaining page, either. Strangely, though, it doesn't block the banner ads on the site, which Proxomitron is usually great about.

I absolutely love The Proxomitron. I have an Excite portal page, that started redirecting me towards a whine/moan screen because I was blocking certain JavaScripts. Easily solved: found the redirect tag in the source of the portal page, and added a rule in Proxomitron to replace it with HTML comments. Poof! No more annoying anti-popup-blocker redirect! Any time I come across a new ad method, I just have to track it down and add a new rule to remove it.

Re:Here's an example...

[Sgt York]

I thought so, too, but I just gave it a shot, spoofing as MSIE 6.0, and I got the same message.

Re:Here's an example...

[ydrol]

I like one of the adds displayed when I went there

"Protect computers from scumware, spyware, adware and hackers!

Malice hackers, spyware, scumware and adware invade privacy, crash computers, spew popup ads and worse. To stop these scourges we use and highly recommend PestPatrol and ZoneAlarm."

Re:Here's an example...

[Jeremy Erwin]

Safari seems to work, with "Block Pop-Up Windows" enabled.

Re:Here's an example...

[Thng]

From the page source:

// // To get past the following Opera blocking script, simply go to full screen mode [F11].
// Our goal is to stop Opera's Google rads, not Opera users.
// See: http://klbproductions.com/issues/opera.html
//

Well, they're not totally hateful as it seems. Not sure why they couldn't have just said this instead of the "nyah, go away opera user" they seemd to have.

Re:Here's an example...

[gnu-generation-one]

"Here's an example of this style of anti-popup-blocker advertisement"

Don't see anything abnormal there, just a normal page with no popups or anything.

Though they do have an advert (ironic if they are trying to force their way into protected computer systems): "Protect computers from scumware, spyware, adware and hackers!"

Oh yeah, and they have MSSmartTagsPreventParsing in their headers. Targeted advertising is too evil for you eh?

I'll try reloading the page in case it's random... Reload it a few times maybe... Sod it, let's just wget the site continously to see if it's a 1-in-100 chance of being served a different page... nope, still no adverts.

Re:Here's an example...

[kyoko21]

I went the site, and I caught their redirect because my javascript was turned on and also becuase my squid blocked out their crazy ads. However, once I disable javascript, everything works great.

I'm using squid for realtime url filtering.

Re:Here's an example...

[Sloppy]

Great example of something that can't ever really work. As you say, the page loads just fine without any ads, if you disable Javascript.

They use Javascript to detect the blocking.

Yes: a script on the client. Therefore, a script running in an environment that they have no control over, where functions can lie, and nobody will ever know. :-)

All this is going to do, is continue the arms race. So the next Mozilla will have a "block scripts from this server" menu option in addition to the block images option, or a "run scripts from this server in 'liar mode'" or something like that.

Re:Here's an example...

[Insanity]

Opera's user-agent string, when emulating IE, is "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.01 [en]"

The user-agent string seems to be a very bad hack. IE calls itself mozilla because it was forced to do so years ago, largely to keep stupidly-designed websites from automatically rejecting its connection attempts. But it still wanted to make itself known as IE, so it appended things in brackets that most stupidly-designed web sites didn't bother looking at.

Jump ahead a few years, and we have the same thing happening with Opera. It pretends to be IE (pretending to be mozilla), but adds its own signature after the end of the brackets, where modern stupidly-designed websites don't bother to look. My guess is that most scripts just stop parsing the user agent string once they hit the last bracket. The website referred to here looks at the whole thing because it's outright malicious and wants to "punish" opera users.

Re:Here's an example...

[mst76]

> I thought so, too, but I just gave it a shot, spoofing as MSIE 6.0, and I got the same message.

Probably because even if you set Opera to Identify as MSIE 6.0, your UserString still contains the word Opera.

Re:Here's an example...

[nija]

Cool. Here is what the source says regarding that...

NOTE: For those trying to decode the script below, keep in mind that while we force you to view our ads (to help pay operating expenses), we DO NOT make use of popups or popunders. We do also try to limit the size and number of traditional banner ads that we use.

Users may not like banner ads, but without advertising revenues to pay the cost of operating this site, this site would not exist.

Think of the ads as a no cost use fee to access this site. The alternative is paid subscriptions. We don't know about you, but we don't like the idea of having to pay money everytime we want to access some site like this one.

Taken with Mozilla 1.6

Re:Here's an example...

[cswiii]

Site worked for me; when I had javascript enabled, sure enough, it forwarded me to the "you are blocked page", but when I unchecked the js option in my Firefox toolbar, clicked on URL, it didn't/couldn't forward me, and I got to see the content just fine.

Re:Here's an example...

[Dachannien]

I got the "banners blocked" message too. So I shift-clicked Reload about thirty times and then left the site.

Re:Here's an example...

[ajs318]

It's a JavaScript redirector. Block images, turn off JavaScript and reload the site. Then save it {/var/www/html/ is as good a place as any}, and bookmark your local saved copy. The periodic table itself is rendered using CSS and doesn't need the images.

Re:Here's an example...

[Dr Reducto]

All it does is detect what browser you are using. I fired up the IE that comes with XP SP2 (which features pop-up blocking), and was not hassled. Just wait until everyone has popup blocking!

Re:Here's an example...

[HPNpilot]

To me this is just another "pay for content" site. I had come across it myself and simply moved on and found the information I was looking for on a free site.

If the majority of sites start doing things like this and wanting income from every little bit of IP then it will reduce the usefulness of the net for many people.

I use the net like I used to use libraries, but with all the garbage on the net lately (spam, popups, virii, worms, attacks, more and more pay sites, etc) I am finding myself going back to libraries. I find it relieving that I can go to a local library and read books without having to worry about the copyright police coming after me or having to deal with any of the other net problems. I have also noticed that the libraries are getting more and more crowded and a few people I spoke with told me that the net has whet their appetite for information but in the long run it is easier to use the library for any real work.

I'm all for appropriate compensation for authors and creators of content, but I think that many people have an overinflated idea of what their work is worth. With the current state of IP law, those people have the power to set whatever price they want and they have absolute power. The trouble is that all creative work is built on the shoulders of those who came before and due to this recent dramatic change in IP law these content "creators" are able to get a free ride from previous art yet the next creators are blocked from doing the same. Consider if you had to give every person who contributed to your computer and its software a royalty of a nickel. Doesn't sound like much? Guess what, you wouldn't be able to afford your system!

It is almost as if technology has a self-limiting feature and we are seeing the beginning of a massive slowdown in innovation.

Re:Here's an example...

[Alexander Hulpke]

Works in Safari with the built-in popup blocker. I get the real page, and still no popup.

Re:Here's an example...

[bm_luethke]

If anyone is actually interested in seeing the whole thing it is here, but be forewarned - since they seem to think copyright means they have ultimate legal control over which browser is used to access it you may be breaking thier made up law by viewing it.

The rest of thier stuff is interesting also:

"Blocking Opera users was not our first choice of action on this issue; however, we feel we have been left with no other options as Opera and/or Google have refused to provide any other mechanism to prevent Opera from displaying ads that are based on the content of our sites."

Look - Opera is doing something legal with our public information. We do not like it so we told them to stop, they didn't. Of the different choices we had we want you to believe that we *really* wanted to let you on here, but well, most people will believe any crap we say so we have no choice in the matter.

"Web Publishers like our selves provide content. Companies like Opera deliver that content. Each has to find a way to make a living. There are many publishers and there are many content delivery companies. As a company Opera is saying if they are to deliver a publisher's content, they are going to charge the publisher a "fee". That "fee" is that in exchange for delivering the content, Opera gets to place an ad in their toolbar that is content sensitive. If a publisher does not agree to these terms, their only option is to block Opera and prevent Opera users from accessing their content."

Ahh, this is like another type of "Theft". You charge us a fee, in that we don't owe you anything. In fact we don't even make less money than before. But, hey, if we said "Screw you!!" no one would like us. Thus we now have no choice but to block you because opera is charging us a fee to display our webpage.

"If Opera is going to "charge" web publishers a "fee" (by means of getting to use the content of the webpage to display targeted ads), then Opera has an obligation to their users to provide web publishers with a FOOLPROOF method of opting out of Opera's content targeted ads if publishers do not want their copyrighted materials used in such a fashion."

Ok, now that we have established that Opera is charging us money we do not want to pay them. Since we are being assesed money anyway, Opera now has an obligation to not force us to pay them. Why you ask? Because we can cause monkeys to fly out of our ass!!! No really, it is an obligation because we say so.

"if you have any questions or concerns about this issue, please contact Opera Software. Don't bother sending us a message objecting to our anti-Opera policy or to report a false positive the message will simply be ignored."

Don't call us - we don't really give a fuck. Opera has small user base so SCREW YOU GUYS!!! Opera sucks and you really should be running mocrosoft anyway since they do not charge us money to display our website and give you the freedom to innovate and choice in the market place. Plus we figure that if what microsoft says there is true, so can Opera charging us money leaving us no choice but to block you be true!

Re:Here's an example...

[Laebshade]

I'll be forthcoming. I don't like ads. I don't feel any moral wrongdoings when I block ads. These eyes are mine and I'll be damned if I'm going to be forced -- yes I said forced -- to look at ads that automagically pop up on my screen.

In truth, the only ads I don't block are google ads. Why is that? Text is very easy to read and easy on the eyes compared to those damned flashing, moving ads that are very popular.

Re:Here's an example...

[noidentity]

"...it changes itself so its hard to detect the functions and block them."

It just occurred to me that the code mutation techniques that some viruses use might find their way into online advertisement code. The code would be generated on-the-fly with various inactive bits inserted, tag values rearranged, equivalent variations, etc. Fortunately there's less room for hiding than for viruses.

Re:Here's an example...

[Sri Lumpa]

It's still unauthorised. It just happens that you don't need their authorisation anyway to do the Google ad bit legally.

So what they say is legally true, scary sounding and totally misleading.

Re:Here's an example...

[misleb]

Hmm, page looks fine to me using Galeon with pop-ups turned off.

-matthew

Re:Here's an example...

[jp10558]

Odly enough, this site, in Opera 7.23 seems to auto redirect to Opera's web site about the beta version that is out right now.

Re:Here's an example...

[STrinity]

It gets better. From Proxomitron's HTTP header log:

Match 509: Hide Browser's Identity from JS

What that means is that the site tried to use an invasive javascript to identify my browser. So even if an Opera user spoofs his user-agent string, the site can still detect it; and if he blocks the javascript, it won't grant him access.

Re:Here's an example...

[cgibbard]

One way to defeat their tactics is to use the Web Developer Extension for Firefox. Disable both JavaScript and Styles, and browse away. Don't bother to turn off privoxy, either :)

Re:Here's an example...

[jriskin]

Both examples loaded fine in Safari with images and javascript off.

Odd...

Re:Here's an example...

[Reziac]

Well, it works just fine in Netscape 3.04 with js and images disabled.

I did notice that the ad banner "holes" have ALT text that is sufficiently relevant and detailed to serve as a sort of text-ad. Myself, I find text ads perfectly acceptable and even useful, so this strikes me as a good approach. But as to forcing someone to enable popups to use a site -- well, if that's what it came to, I'd just leave such a site and never come back.

Re:Here's an example...

[Karellen]

Won't work if javascript is not enabled or ads are not shown?

Hmmm... Not sure what it's supposed to look like, but I can see a table of the elements and browse to information about them fine using links, which has no javascript or image support.

Re:Here's an example...

[McD]

I used Adblock under Mozilla to remove the banners, then Multizilla to disable both Javascript and Meta Redirects (to defeat the noscript tag redirect).

It's a bit of a pain, but it works just fine. Periodic table, no banners. Wheee.

Peace,
-McD

Re:Here's an example...

[whats_a_zip]

I agree, it's how it SHOULD be. I don't mind seeing advertisements, banners, ads that are embedded in the page. They need to make a buck, and that doesn't disrupt the flow of page viewing. What I really dislike are popups, and the floating ads that get in the way of the content and navigation. I use slimbrowser, so popups haven't been an issue for me for some time. And I'll upgrade/change browsers to keep up with the blocking blockers! :P

Re:Here's an example...

[danila]

I tried it in Opera. First time (AtGuard! and Proxomitron were also running) I didn't saw anything at all (just the background). Entering the User mode in Opera showed my the page with less formatting, but with the content intact (and some of the ads too).

Then I disabled filtering in both AtGuard! and Proxomitron and reloaded the page. This time they showed me the following message. One may argue that ads support the site and blah-blah-blah, but this is just retarded. I don't give a shit about hazardous materials information, but even if I did, this site doesn't exist for me at all. I won't even care to try writing a Proxomitron filter or just looking at the HTML code to understand how this works - this is retarded beyond belief and it even tops everything the Real retards have managed to bring us (or may be I will, I am too curious to pass the challenge).

In fact, after examining the code, they were very polite to leave the content intact for Opera. They just added an automatic redirect to a page with the following message (which was blocked the first time by an existing proxomitron script), but hided the page with visibility:hidden for BODY. I don't know how they detect the browser (I am not sure that's the User-Agent string), but frankly I don't care that much.

The message from the retards at environmentalchemistry.com:

Opera 7.5 Detected

You have been brought to this page because you are using Opera 7.5. Unregistered Opera 7.5 typically makes use of Google AdSense ads that are targeted based on the content of the webpage, this is an unauthorized use of our copyrighted material.

While a good faith effort is made to only target unregistered copies of Opera, due to the limitations of the detection routine, there are frequently false positives.

If your copy of Opera is registered, please maximize Opera, and turn off Opera's personal and navigational bars or go into full screen mode [F11]. This should allow you past the Opera redirect script and you should be able to access this site without further interuptions. Opera may also be causing a false positive if your page bar is set to wrap.
Why we block Opera

Web Publishers like us provide content. Companies like Opera Software deliver that content. Each has to find a way to make a living. There are many publishers and there are many content delivery companies (e.g. web browsers). In this case, Opera Software has decided that if they are to deliver our content, they are going to use our content to target their ads. We feel that this represents an unauthorized use of our intellectual property and a violation of our copyrights. This also represents a business arrangement that we do not want to be a part of.

Until which point in time Opera gives us a foolproof method to prevent the displaying of content targeted ads in the toolbar of Opera, we will use whatever measures we deem appropriate to make sure that Opera is unable to access our content whenever there is a potential it is displaying its ads.

Our Opera blocking routine cannot perfectly detect when Opera is displaying ads or not. At least, however, it provides a mechanism for Opera users to still be able to access our content under specific conditions (e.g. in full screen mode [F11]). The alternative available to us is to block all Opera users if we are to protect our content from unauthorized uses.

As some Opera users have ineloquently pointed out, you may disagree with our stance. We understand you may be offended and also recognize that there are other websites that provide some of the resources we provide on this site. We will not, however, change our policy in regards to the Opera web browser until Opera Software changes their stance in regards to their use of Google rads.

If you have any questions or concerns about this issue, please contact Opera Software.

Re:Here's an example...

[danila]

If only there was an online database with filters, that would be easy to use, submit filters to, and vote on them (in case some are malicious). As it is, every Proxomitron user has to block everything himself.

because

[s20451]

One successful tactic in sales is to be annoying. Almost everyone hates telemarketing, yet if nobody ever bought anything from a telemarketer, it would not be profitable and nobody would do it. Same with spam.

This is a problem with technologies that allow your ad to be delivered to millions of people cheaply. If even a tiny fraction of people respond, it won't matter that you annoyed the hell out of the other 99%.

Re:because

[gl4ss]

I don't know about your local situation, but around here telemarketing almost solely lives from the fact that they don't really end up paying hourly rate to the callers, instead they pay a provision from the sales they make. this provision system is usually built so that you need to make a certain minumum amount of sales before you start any money from the company to yourself.

the thing is designed to get people started, work for few weeks, a month at the most and some very rare sellers staying for longer than that(some people just have a good voice), and then to quit. so the usual caller is _supposed_(in their business plan) to make few sales and then to quit.

so in reality basically telemarketing isn't really profitable(for most of the persons involved in it), it's just driven through something that is in effect a scam to lure young, inexperienced, desperate stupid people to make phonecalls to people for few weeks without pay. Mainly because of this in my opinion telemarketing as such should be totally banned or at the minimum have a law that would state that you can't hire people to do it on provisional pay.

Re:because

[badasscat]

If even a tiny fraction of people respond, it won't matter that you annoyed the hell out of the other 99%.

But it should matter to the owner of the medium, because after all, ads can't exist without a medium to run on. Pissing off 99% of their users is not generally desirable for most web site owners, so I am not sure if this is going to fly. At the same time as pop-up blockers have become popular, site owners have realized they're actually hurting their own business by hosting them. No, not every site, and pop-ups do still exist (though as a Firefox user you can forgive me if I don't know this from experience), but there have been plenty of high-profile companies that have sworn them off recently. Even AOL's cutting back.

I think that's what's getting lost in all this. Advertisers are still at the mercy of the site owners, not the other way around (despite the bad economy... it only makes things worse to piss off your users). I doubt you'll ever see this technology used on a major commercial site; it'll probably be relegated to the internet red light district where most pop-ups seem to be served up these days to begin with.

Re:because

[Snaller]

Almost everyone hates telemarketing, yet if nobody ever bought anything from a telemarketer, it would not be profitable and nobody would do it.

Ah, to live in civilized Europe where it IS ILLEGAL to telemarket.

Re:because

[pete6677]

For all practical purposes, its illegal now in the US. If you sign up for the national do not call list, your telemarketing calls will virtually disappear. The fines for violations are stiff and some big company, I think it was Worldcom, was actually fined for calling people on the list. As for "charity" callers which are exempt, they must now display identification on caller ID, so its easy to not answer their calls. Telemarketing has, thank god, become mostly a thing of the past.

Re:because

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually don't stop to ponder the morality of telemarketing. I start out talking nicely and work myself into a truly obscene screaming rage. I find this very effective in getting the telemarketers to stay with me through the first few mild-mannered bursts of profanity so I can get in a few good ones before they quite realize I've turned on them. Then they disconnect with the truly awful abuse ringing in their ears.

That's their job, right? To allow me to really vent some steam at an actual person?

I wish I could figure out how to do this to the popup and popunder scum.

Re:because

[Mr2001]

so in reality basically telemarketing isn't really profitable(for most of the persons involved in it), it's just driven through something that is in effect a scam to lure young, inexperienced, desperate stupid people to make phonecalls to people for few weeks without pay.

I was a telemarketer for a few months, and we certainly got paid by the hour!

I don't doubt there are a handful of shady places that work the way you describe, but the fact is, telemarketing works often enough that it's profitable. If you make enough calls, you'll eventually reach someone who's interested in what you're selling.

It doesn't happen very often, which is why telemarketing is so stressful (it's hard to stay composed and confident if you've been turned down, hung up on, or threatened for 30 calls in a row), but it doesn't need to happen very often to turn a profit. With autodialers, you can make thousands of calls every hour, and there's no shortage of people to call.

Re:because

[gl4ss]

what pay did you get and was there a minimum performance level you needed to maintain or minumum time you needed to stay at the place?

at least around here you never seem to see any places that would employ on a real hourly wage and sold the usual crap(magazines).

thank god they don't bother trying to sell anything else than magazines through telemarketing here..

Re:because

[SacredNaCl]

AOL might have surrendered pop-up ads for the most part, but they have ads attached to every other thing, including scrolling text ads in their chatrooms. Even the "click here to talk to a support" has an ad on it so they can market to you while you get help.

Re:because

[Snaller]

Good for you :)

Re:because

[Reziac]

This is very true. I once went to a "job offer presentation" that proved to be a telemarketer. And I happened to sit where I could see the head honcho's desk, which happened to have the previous week's phone-monkey pay records lying open ... and I read quite well upsidedown, thank you..

ONE person made the promised "$700 a week".
ONE person made about $100 for the week.
All the rest (about 30) made $40 for the week.

Mind you, that was a 40 hour week.

I vaguely recall that some states require that commission work also pay a certain minimum hourly wage (at least until your commission hits a certain point), but it may not apply to telemarketing. Anyone know?

Re:because

[Mr2001]

$8.00 an hour, or $7.50 if we were late to work during the week. There was no official minimum performance, but people who were no good didn't stay long - I don't know if they were "asked" to leave, or if they just decided it wasn't for them. There was no minimum stay either.

We sold tickets to concerts that supposedly helped fund a firefighters' lobbying group - not really a charity, but we kinda made it sound like one.

Re:because

[cornjones]

not the original poster but i did this once. I was paid pretty well for a college job. i think it was around 10 bux an hour. I don't recall any success minumums but we had to basically stay on teh phone all day.

On a side note, that is the only job i have ever left hanging. One saturday I woke up and realized I just couldn't be that guy any longer. So I just turned over and went to sleep. They treated us like children so I had no feeling of responisiblity to them as I did to other jobs i have had.

we were calling for donations to a hospital. our script had us start out asking for 2 grand and work our way down. my two favorite calls:
1. one lady told me that if I paid for her divorce, she would donate the 2k
2. One guy said he wasn't interested. I asked why? Poor service (this was a hospital remember). Not for him but for his wife. Oh really, I say, what happened? Well, she died. I could understand him not really being interested in giving the hospital that killed his wife a donation so I quickly got off the phone. Apparently the bosses were listening in on that one and told me not to let them off so easily but to continue to press harder. In fact, I think that was the last shift I completed.

Re:because

[Derkec]

My impression was that if you work as an employee for somebody, they have to pay you at least minimum wage. For instance, some waiters and waitresses make half of minimum wage + tips, but if there aren't enough tips to bring their earnings to minimum wage, the employer has to cover the difference.

The only way I can imagine that its legal to employee somebody on the kind of scam described here is if they are actually hired as a contractor and not an employee. Still, if you are making the calls from the marketer's place of business and not your home phone, it would seem likely that this sort of relationship would be deemed bogus and that you were actually an employee with a crappy contract.

Re:because

[slickepott]

Illegal? Sweden still seems to be a part of Europe and we have telemarketing calls at least once a week, fully legal. We do have the NIX register though which is our "Do not call"-list. But apart from that it's very legal. (And boring, have been working with it)

Re:because

[The Conductor]

My impression was that if you work as an employee for somebody, they have to pay you at least minimum wage.

Until they hire cheap outsourced telelmarketers from India. Just wait for this [Apu voice], "Please vote for candidate X. He is good for America. I love America." [/Apu voice]

Re:because

[walterbyrd]

>>Pissing off 99% of their users is not generally desirable for most web site owners

You have to remember the type of thing most pop-up advertisers are selling, "natural male enhancement" that sort of thing. It really doesn't hurt to piss off the people aren't interested.

Re:because

[Snaller]

Noo, sweden is not part of Europe - don't be silly ;)

Re:because

[danila]

But the technology was not developed by webmasters, it was dreamed up by evil marketing execs and implemented by evil software engineers. Now that the marketing execs have the technology they only need to persuade the webmasters. Some of them, like those at Yahoo!, don't care about the comfort of their users, because they do provide a useful service (so users agree to be harrassed). Some are just plain retarded, like one graphic artist, who thought it would be a good idea to downsize the images of his works, add his initials in large translucent font (as large as the image) and post the images online. So you will see some place that would use such technology. I don't care much personally, because I block ads using URL-filtering and can also use Proxomitron to filter the HTML itself. What I am more worried about is the proliferation of ads in the meatspace. The only solution seems to be wearable computers with enhanced-reality displays. Steve Mann (if I am not mistaken) apparently already has the technology to block ads in the real world. There are videoclips with ads being replaced by personal reminders (like "you have new messages").

Re:because

[Reziac]

I'm not sure wages+tips and wages+commission are covered under the same laws -- likely varies by state.

"Independent contractor" doesn't eliminate "working onsite" -- if it did, there would be no movie extras, ALL of which are "independent contractors" working on the employer's site (I speak from 5 years of firsthand experience).

But I think you're right in that a lot of these sub-minimum pay schemes would not hold up well in the light of legal scrutiny, and the only reason they get away with it is because people desperate enough to take such jobs are unlikely to complain.

Re:because

[sjgm]

It's completely legal to telemarket in Europe. In the UK, we have had a Do Not Call list (the Telephone Preference Service) for quite some time.

It's only illegal for a telemarketer to call a number on the list.

Re:because

[Snaller]

I thought the UK was part of the US? ;)

Re:because

[devilspgd]

Around here we have a minimum wage which overrides these systems and requires the company to pay the minimum wage in all cases, regardless of sales compensation.

Re:because

[qoa]

That's why I have a cell phone instead of a home phone. It's illegal to telemarket to them. I had a creditor call me a couple of times looking for my brother, I pointed out that it was a cell phone the second time, and never got another call.

DMCA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue them under the DMCA claiming that they are bypassing a security feature that you installed to block ads?

Re:DMCA?

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, they'll sue you under the DMCA claiming that you are bypassing a security feature designed to protect the IP content in the ads.

Re:DMCA?

[sik0fewl]

We could sue eachother! That way everybody wins! And to think, people want to get rid of the DMCA.

Re:DMCA?

[phiwum]

Sue them under the DMCA claiming that they are bypassing a security feature that you installed to block ads?


The DMCA regulates encryption techniques intended to protect copyrighted content. I don't see how that applies to "security features" like ad-blockers.

Re:DMCA?

[buzter]

Quote from the DMCA found here

6. Security testing (section 1201(j)). This exception permits circumvention
of access control measures, and the development of technological
means for such circumvention, for the purpose of testing the security
of a computer, computer system or computer network, with the
authorization of its owner or operator.

Now that to me implies that circumventing the control measure represented by an ad-blocker, without the authorization of its owner, would violate the DMCA. That little snip is from page 6 of the pdf file.

Re:DMCA?

[phiwum]

"This exception permits circumvention
of access control measures..."

Now that to me implies that circumventing the control measure represented by an ad-blocker, without the authorization of its owner, would violate the DMCA.

I think you mis-read that entirely. The passage expresses a condition in which defeating copyright access control is allowable: namely, it is allowable when one is testing the security of blah, blah, blah, blah.

This passage does not say that defeating security features violates the DMCA. The DMCA is not about computer security per se, but about encryption (and other?) schemes for protecting copyrighted content. Specifically, defeating such schemes violates the DMCA (fair use rights be damned). Reacting to popup-blocking by presenting alternative delivery of ads is not in violation of the DMCA, regardless of how distasteful the practice is.

Re:DMCA?

[buzter]

Then there is always state law to use against them. Most every state has some set of cybercrime laws. Most of these sets of laws contain some form of "theft of computer services", "unauthorized access", or "computer tampering".

A listing of individual state cybercrime laws can be found here

The argument behind the charge being that by using an ad-blocker you are denying authorization to use computer resources and services. So, by bypassing the the blocker they are knowingly accessing a part of the computer that they are not authorized to access.

It seems that there are no federal laws that apply to issues like this. From all I read they only apply to "protected computers" and government computers. Where a "protected computer" is one in a financial institute. At least this was according to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I couldn't find anything else applicable. It's unfortunate really.

Re:DMCA?

[phiwum]

The argument behind the charge being that by using an ad-blocker you are denying authorization to use computer resources and services. So, by bypassing the the blocker they are knowingly accessing a part of the computer that they are not authorized to access.


Perhaps a bit more plausible than the DMCA claim (well, a lot more plausible). I don't know that it would stand up in a court of law, but it's less obviously just wrong.

Besides, what I know about courts of law is limited to a few misdemeanors.

When will they figure it out?

[RobertB-DC]

I've seen this already. Sliding windows across the text, with a "close" button that's the only thing I will ever click. When will these advertising bozos figure out that if I'm going to all that trouble to block their ads, then I'm not in their target market anyway?

Even the spammers are smart enough to figure that one out. I've received about a spam a month since I changed my domain registration email address from "domains@" to "domspam@". Before I changed over, I was receiving one or two dozen a day, even though most bounced when the account's purposely low quota filled up.

I guess popup blockers have become too easy to use. Now that my mother-in-law, queen of "click anything", can install it, the spamvertizers have to find another way to infiltrate her system.

I'm looking forward to a future release of Opera with "pop-in blocking" built in.

Handy ad fighting URLs

[xTK-421x]

Free Popup Blocker:
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://toolbar.google.com (If you use IE)

Replacement HOSTS file:
http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

Tiny HTTP Server to respond to all those HOSTS entries:
http://www.pyrenean.com/edexter.php

Flash Remover:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/ts/flash7 /uninstall_flash_player.exe (Uninstaller)
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ (for Mozilla)

Re:Handy ad fighting URLs

[Timothy Dang]

I don't even need a Flash Blocker. Since I don't have Admin rights on my computer at work, I can't get the Flash Plug-In to work with my makeshift install of Firefox. I'm glad that I was able to get Firefox to work at all without Admin rights to install it.

Re:Handy ad fighting URLs

[BinLadenMyHero]

I'm sorry to inform you that you can install the any plugin or extension in under your home directory.
Flashblock is great because it gives the option to watch the flash. Sometimes you want it, sometimes the content is in flash. It replaces the flash with a button, just click it and it loads the flash and plays it.
Adblock is also great because of the flexibility to tell it what to block.

Re:Handy ad fighting URLs

[FattMattP]

Replacement HOSTS file: http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

Also use this handy style sheet which will remove the empty, blocked images from the web page.

Re:Handy ad fighting URLs

[shamino0]

You may find this article I wrote to be of interest as well.

Re:Handy ad fighting URLs

[drooling-dog]

Why use Mozilla when you have Firefox and Thunderbird?

I could be (and probably am) wrong, but Firefox doesn't seem to allow the limiting of animations to one cycle. Or, at least there's nothing in the preferences GUI to interface to such a capability. I can't stand things flashing on my screen while I'm trying to read something else, and so this was a show-stopper for me.

By the way, to reversibly disable Flash under Linux, just move the flashplayer.xpt and libflashplayer.so files out of the plugins directory where Mozilla is installed. To enable it again, just move 'em back in there.

Re:Handy ad fighting URLs

[gusnz]

Here's another great but little known technique: the PAC file ad-blocker. Cross-browser, easy to install, and much more lightweight than a HOSTS file, plus it can match paths on servers like "/ads*/" rather than just server domains themselves.

Enjoy :).

My suggestion:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you encounter one of these ads, send feedback to the people who run the site. Play dumb and pretend your web browser choked on them. Say that you tried to look at their site, but this huge ad appeared covering the text and you couldn't read anything or make the ad go away, and tell them that you gave up and left and won't be coming back in future if they can't make their web site work.

Re:My suggestion:

[wasabii]

"You just wasted part of our day."

Exactly.

Re:My suggestion:

[Quattro Vezina]

I don't know about other websites, but we have dozens of OS/Browser configurations. We'd test your claim, and find out that we cannot reproduce the bug. You just wasted part of our day.

Oooh...fun.

First of all, he'd now have the satisfaction of knowing he just wasted part of your day sending you on a wild goose chase.

Second, I'd like to see just how comprehensive your OS/browser configuration list is. If I were doing this, I'd claim to be using something really esoteric, like Voyager on QNX or IBM WebExplorer on OS/2.

Re:My suggestion:

[bracher]

But you _were_ able to find the feedback form?!?

There are several ways to avoid ads

[sisukapalli1]

1) Intelligent popup blocking by mozilla (do not open any unrequested popups -- there is also enough customization).
2) "Block images from this server" -- blanket nuking.

These are the "extensions" to mozilla and firefox that are very powerful

3) Adblock -- block images based on a URL pattern. Very powerful and easy to specify what to block.
4) Flash block -- block flash elements (even something like flash click to view)
5) Nuke Anything -- if something comes up on your screen, you can remove it "after the fact". For example, if you want to read an interesting article on some celebrity with a stupid image, you can remove the image very easily using this.

At the end of the day, the end user should be able to see what he/she wants to read and view. If the sites persist in doing annoying things or refuse to serve some pages to people that have an advanced browser, I believe it is better to avoid those pages.

S

Re:There are several ways to avoid ads

[howlinmonkey]

At the end of the day, the end user should be able to see what he/she wants to read and view.

Pop-up ads are an annoyance, and I am grateful for the tools that allow me to kill them. However, I understand the need for content providers to make money, at least enough to cover costs, and maybe even make a little profit. The end user doesn't have any inherent or legal right to view content the way they want to. Whenever we use the resources of another, we pay a fee of some sort.

Ads have become the fee for resource utilization on the web. Readers do have the right to let content providers know they are unhappy about the ads, and stop patronizing those sites. Then, ads will die the death of the market, and new revenue streams will have to be built.

If content providers don't get money somehow, the content will disappear.

Re:There are several ways to avoid ads

[siloflow]

dont forget using a proxy server in conjunction with a redirector if you have multiple browsers and/or users and like the idea of just updating new regexps via cron.

Re:Prior art from phone company?

[bigjocker]

This should be moderated funny ... I believe the poster was trying to post in the previous article 'Microsoft Patents Timed Button Presses'

Hilarious indeed ... hehe

it's becoming more common

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a huge surprise the other day. I always browse with mozilla, and the only anti-ad extension I installed was Flash click-to-play. There are a couple of sites taht I've been frequently lately, and they had no ads or anything. So, I thought they were good netizens and even donated to one of them.

Then I was stuck in a lab with IE only. I went to these sites, and they had popups and those transparent ads that place themselves over the page. It was crazy how much advertising there was. I wish that I could take my money back.

Mozilla so far gets rid of 99% of these annoying ads without causing a problem. But the advertisers are bound to catch on soon. I can only hope that mozilla stays in the lead.

notepad

[Professor Cool Linux]

Of course you could do the less rich, IE only (what isn't?) Notepad Pop-Up

Re:notepad

[pknoll]

Lemme see... that's Reason #24 on my list of "Why I don't use IE."

Re:notepad

[Avian visitor]

This is not working if you have all the latest security fixes installed.

So what?

[sssmashy]

Forrester Research Inc. projected that in 2002, about 15 percent of consumers already used a pop-up blocker. Apprendi said Falk estimates that number at about 20 percent today.

So what's the big deal? Chances are, the 20% minority are the types who are the least receptive to advertising anyway. Even if you were to circumvent blocking technology and force them to watch the ads, they're unlikely to go out and buy the product. You're just making them even more annoyed, and less likely to spend their money.

Because of the pop-up blockers, those who view online ads are

Re:So what?

[Carnildo]

So what? The next service pack for Internet Explorer is about to come out, with popup blocking enabled by default, that's what.

All of a sudden, it's going to go from 20% to (potentially) 100%. Major change.

The amorality of direct marketing

[FunWithHeadlines]

Is there any other industry that tries to force itself upon a public that is explicity making it clear it wants no part of it? This is not a case of putting an ad in front of an audience composed of people who may or may not look favorably upon that ad, and who may or may not want the product. Instead they are trying to put an ad in front of the eyes of someone who has said, "I don't want to see this ad, I hate this form of advertising, and I look down on any company that employs this form of advertising, and I refuse to use their products."

Yet they do it anyway! Remarkably obtuse people. Of course, I know the reason for it. It's all about eyeballs and the more they can prove they are shoving their stuff in front of more eyeballs, the more money they get. That's why this is so amoral: They don't care how anyone reacts, or that that are despised, or that it causes business problems for the advertisers. They just want mo' money, and that's the end of their thought process.

Buh bye, new technology. It won't work. I will defeat it. I will refuse to view ads on the Web. Don't yammer at me with the tired old whine, "But how else are I gonna pay for my web siiiiiiite?" I dunno, Sparky, figure something else out. I will never allow advertising on my web site. It doesn't belong on the Web.

The Web is about people to people communiciation. Just because a bunch of greedheads decided to use it to make money doesn't subvert the purpose of the Web. As for the endless war against pop-ups: They lose. Every time.

Re:The amorality of direct marketing

[Mike Hawk]

I will never allow advertising on my web site. It doesn't belong on the Web.

Isn't providing a link under your username technically advertising? I mean, I never heard about your website before you advertised it right there. So, does it belong on the Web or not?

Re:The amorality of direct marketing

[FunWithHeadlines]

You know what? You're right. My statement was too dogmatic. There are mentions of companies that can be done in a non-offensive way, and then there is the offensive way. My anger is against pop-up ads in particular.

But thanks for pointing out the hypocrisy of my statement. It's a valid point.

Re:The amorality of direct marketing

[BillX]

Is there any other industry that tries to force itself upon a public that is explicity making it clear it wants no part of it?

Why, the Rape industry, of course.

Re:The amorality of direct marketing

[noidentity]

"Is there any other industry that tries to force itself upon a public that is explicity making it clear it wants no part of it?"

This possibility comes to mind: if ad blocking is installed by default, then many people might be using it without knowing it. This suggests that ad blocking software should be made so it's obvious that the user intentionally enabled it, so that ad companies will know that all use of ad blocking is intentional rather than just the default.

Re:The amorality of direct marketing

[wmspringer]

Just OOC, did you mean amoral or immoral?

Re:The amorality of direct marketing

[FunWithHeadlines]

I meant amoral, as in without morals. That is, they make their marketing decisions without taking into consideration various moral factors, merely financial ones.

transparent vs. translucent

[HTH NE1]

No, transparency includes all ranges from totally transparent to not entirely opaque. Translucency is more properly used when light but not details are carried through. A translucent floating image would scatter or effectively blur the content behind the image making it unreadable.

A tinted window is still transparent, but the windows in public restrooms are generally translucent.

Re:transparent vs. translucent

[RetroGeek]

I stand corrected....

Re:transparent vs. translucent

[efflux]

And I thought he was making reference to transparent as in: "Free from pretense or deceit"...or "open to scrutiny". Of course, translucent has this meaning as well.

I buy stuff from spam all the time...

[mrscott]

And, let me tell YOU... I'm hung like a horse and always ready to go.

Re:I buy stuff from spam all the time...

[eclectro]

And, let me tell YOU... I'm hung like a horse and always ready to go.

I bet that you got good looking breasts too.

Dilbert website

[Neil Blender]

To all who visit the dilbert website regularly, has anyone seen that floating ad that blocks the last panel of the strip? I have seen it about 5 times and I read the site daily. I use NS7.2 and have not seen a popup ad anywhere since I started using it. I assume this ad is some sort of CSS. This type of advertising is not pop up, but it is certainly annoying. What's to stop other websites from doing something similar? It might require more than pasting some banner code in your page, but still...

Re:Dilbert website

[forevermore]

I see the "window" occasionally, but not the ad that's supposed to be in it. Then again, I installed a custom userContent.css and I don't see most ads.

Re:Dilbert website

[ChristTrekker]

I read Dilbert online about once a week (catch up a week at a time) and have never had a problem like that. Using Opera 7.23.

Not awful...They have the right idea.

[JeanPaulBob]

This site, which is very useful by the way, will not "work" if javascript is not enable or ads are not shown.

Sounds to me like they're taking a good approach. They're not attempting to circumvent anyone's ad-blocking software--anyone who doesn't want to see their ads, doesn't have to.

But they're providing a valuable service, and they deserve to be compensated. If you don't want to pay for it by letting them display their banner ads, then you don't get to use their site.

Re:Not awful...They have the right idea.

[HTH NE1]

Fast enough with the Stop button and going to File:Edit Page in Mozilla gets the content without the redirection.

But they're providing a valuable service, and they deserve to be compensated. If you don't want to pay for it by letting them display their banner ads, then you don't get to use their site.

They get compensated by their advertisers, not me. I am not obligated to provide value to their advertisers.

That said, if my browser would let me choose what advertisements I'd let through, in my approved contexts (big ads in the middle of news stories for example to be pushed to the side for example), then I'd let them through. In the meantime, if an ad interferes with my enjoyment of the web, say by forcing the content of a page to exceed the horizontal bounds of my window, I'll employ whatever means necessary to maintain my browsing enjoyment.

And pretty soon those means are going to include recompilation of my browser to add site-specific HTML and CSS-rule suppression to get them to behave. I don't like having to have a stylesheet rule of div { border: 1px groove white; } just to stop Apple's website from positioning content off the left edge of the browser window where I cannot scroll to it.

Re:Not awful...They have the right idea.

[Snaller]

I've made no deal with them. If they use advertizers which hijack the screen and make the reading experience impossible, they've only got themselves to blame.

Re:Not awful...They have the right idea.

[JeanPaulBob]

Did you even look at the page? We're not even talking about pop-ups for this site, let alone the hyper-obnoxious floating-across-the-screen ads. They're just banner ads. No hijacking. Anyway, yes, you've made no deal with them. That's exactly the point! If you don't even want to see any banner ads, that's your choice. They don't want to show you their content if you block their banners. That's their choice. Seriously, there's no problem here.

Re:Not awful...They have the right idea.

[Snaller]

Anyway, yes, you've made no deal with them. That's exactly the point!

Yep, if i don't wanna see their adds i block them - my choice.

Uh Its Already out and annoying

[lordmage]

I see it on Blues News and other sites already. They pop up over the content.. and Mozilla et al will not get rid of them.

At least they have a quick Close button for now.

Re:Uh Its Already out and annoying

[kyoko21]

My Squid blocked out blues news ads.

Um, using hosts = bad...

[TyrranzzX]

Ever wonder why it takes your system 10 minutes to boot? Kuz your hosts file is hundreds of entries long, that's why. It's better to use Proxomitron;

http://www.proxomitron.info/

Custom filters, etc. Also, use spybot search and destroy's immunize option. It roxors.

Also, do note that any attempt to force advertising on users will ultamatly fail so long as the computer lives on as a free medium and those advertisements annoy people enough that they want to be rid of them.

Re:Um, using hosts = bad...

[taustin]

My hosts file is over 400k. I'm willing to wait for a low boot, because it's been three years since I've had anything more than cookies (and very few of those) picked up by Spybot or AdAware.

Re:Um, using hosts = bad...

[Abcd1234]

Or use a small DNS proxy, like dnsmasq. Simple, easy to configure, flexible... it's a useful tool in one's anti-popup arsenal.

Oblig Quote

[buzzcutbuddha]

"And I'll bust your TraceBuster with my TraceBuster-buster"...

Do you watch television?

[3770]

Are you influenced by commercials on the TV? Of course you are.

If you could choose, would you choose to have the commercials disabled? Of course you would.

With this reasoning advertisers can safely assume that even annoying ads pay off.

Re:Do you watch television?

[ncc74656]

Are you influenced by commercials on the TV?

What commercials? With my TiVo, I skip forward at 30-60x normal speed when they come up. MythTV is even better than that...hit a button and it (almost always) jumps straight to the other side of the interruption.

Re:Do you watch television?

[Romeozulu]

disgusting than any pornography

I feel sorry for you...

Re:Do you watch television?

[pjt33]

Are you influenced by commercials on the TV?

No. Even were I easily swayed by advertising, I have no need for dog food or nappies, I can't afford a new car, and the supermarket I use depends on the part of town I happen to be in rather than which of them I saw an advert for yesterday.

Re:Do you watch television?

[ckaminski]

Once upon a time, I was stuck on a plane ride from Georgia, I think. Atlanta. Anywho, I sat next to this marketing guy for a good three hours, and in between the mindnumbing explanation how our seat cushions would double as a floatie in the event of a water crash^Wlanding and our arrival over stinky Boston Harbor, he made the insightful comment that if an ad is bad enough that you remember it, then the ad has paid itself off, because mindshare, good or bad, is good. At least now, the product is known to you, whereas before, it might not have been.

Ergo, the 7up commercials.

Re:Do you watch television?

[ratsnapple tea]

Wow. You must be real proud of yourself. I would be too, if I were the kind of person to not only brag about avoiding TV, but also belittle anyone without the patience to spin silk for toilet paper.

Personally, truth be told, I find your comment pretty "infantilizing, shallow, banal, transparent and scripted."

Re:Do you watch television?

[Coyote]

It is so infantilizing, shallow, banal, transparent, and scripted.

You say that as if it were a bad thing.

Re:Do you watch television?

[Snaller]

Are you influenced by commercials on the TV? Of course you are.

Of course i am - i make sure never to buy anything for which i can remember a commercial.

Re:Do you watch television?

[Nasarius]

I wouldn't go quite that far. I make sure never to buy anything for which I can remember an annoying commercial. I wouldn't refuse to buy from, say, IBM just because they advertise on TV.

Re:Do you watch television?

[Jameth]

Actually, I don't watch television. However, I still watch commercials. I occasionally dig around online and download the latest commercials. The fact is, I often do want to know about products, and those commercials are some of the best programming around. Humorous ads are much funnier than sitcoms, although they are only on par with stand-up.

They spend tens of thousands of dollars on thirty-seconds of filming. If you rate it second-for-second, those ads are more expensive than any movies or television shows. And many of them are very good.

On the other hand, internet ads have no value. I have never seen an advertisement for something I wanted, and I have never seen an ad I was glad I had watched. TV commercials are sometimes good enough for discussion with friends. Internet ads are pure crap.

Re:Do you watch television?

[vorpal22]

And many of them are very good.

I'd love to know what television ads *you're* watching, because the whole reason I stopped spending time in front of the TV was because the ads were so unbearably stupid and insulting to my intelligence 95% of the time.

Re:Do you watch television?

[mpost4]

well I don't watch tv, I can not get broadcast stations here, not a rf friendly place, and I am to damn cheap to pay for cable. so no I don't watch tv.

Re:Do you watch television?

[AbbyNormal]

The problem with television ads and what the marketing industry is finding, is that the ads on TV are not hitting home to MY target audience. On the internet and magazines, this is a lot easier, because chances are the content you are reading is something you have experience/interest in. Therefore a targetted ad placed there, will most likely find its mark.

I would just like to see more ads that actually tell me something useful about a product and why I need it. My BS meter usually causes me to ignore most ads, even though some may be telling the truth.

Re:Do you watch television?

[ratsnapple tea]

It's the season finale of Scrubs tonight. Wanna come over and watch?

Nope, they can't block it

[Kphrak]

Privoxy can already block these with a couple judicious regexps, and it shouldn't be any trouble at all for Mozilla to block these as well. If you want to block floaters in advance of this tech being adopted by every unscrupulous marketeer in existence, try going to Kompas (Indonesian news site). They're filled with them, but a few rules should clean 'em up.

Marketroids have to learn that you catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar. At this point, nstead of being in any way interested in the product, the user just gets annoyed and tries to find a way to make the advertisement go away...or goes to a different site.

Like this is new?

[scifience]

There have been ways to circumvent pop-up and pop-under blockers for ages now. One sneaky method is to open the ad in an Internet Explorer "dialog" that floats on top of the web page instead of in a separate window. This technique baffles many blockers, including the one included in the Google toolbar.

There are many widely publicized methods on webmaster message boards. Some involve opening up a fake pop-up window first, and then rapidly opening a second, actual ad window. This fools some blockers, such as the Norton one.

Another tactic that is becoming more and more popular is using layer ads, which float over the browser window. Since this is not a new window, the blocker doesn't stop it. This is much like the spam game, where the spammers are constantly coming up with new methods of foiling filters, and the filter authors are trying to stop these new spam methods.

Re:Like this is new?

[Carnildo]

And here I am, using an unmodified three-year-old copy of the Proxomitron, watching all the antics with mild amusement. It's been three years since I last saw a popup, popunder, floating, or any sort of ad other than banner ads. I've even been seeing fewer banner ads, since the new techniques of showing them rely so heavily on javascript.

Proud of being a plague to humanity?

[Kiyooka]

"Over the years, various companies have claimed to have a way to sidestep their online ads from being blocked," InterMute CEO Ed English said in a statement. "History has shown [that our] AdSubtract has no problem keeping up with ever-changing online ad technologies."

He sounds quite pleased with what his company's doing, but in reality they're not "keeping up with technology" -- they're finding ever-sneakier ways to push ads into people's faces despite their explicit objection, and despite the fact that they take extra steps to be rid of them.

It's like he eats shit for a living and sports a shit-eating grin.

Re:Proud of being a plague to humanity?

[ajs318]

He's still getting fat off intrusive advertising, though.

Whoops, correction

[Anonymous Coward]

td > div#floatpop, td > div#closebox {
display: none !important;
}

Anyway, just add the "td > div#floatpop, td > div#closebox" in with the rest of the rules. I should probably submit it for inclusion in the next update.

This is a technical solution to a social problem

[stienman]

Chances re good they are simply checking the results of a pop-up call, and if the pop-up doesn't exist they create or display a layer (DHTML, CSS, whatever) over the content. Chances are it'll move to attract attention, and either close in a short period of time or allow you to click a link/button to close it.

That's fine by me. If I am annoyed I can simply close the browser window or tab that contains it and it will go away as well. Pop-up ads don't go away when the window that called them disappears, and that is the primary reason for using a pop up ad.

The problem with making a fix for this issue is that it's a simple arms race. The discussion was long and hard on bugzilla about how to overcome websites that simply diaplayed a message stating that if the pop-ups didn't work they weren't going to display the content.

The ultimate decision was to let it alone. People will walk away from those sites naturally - adding yet another layer of filtering, or one of many other solutions simply slows the browser and doesn't actually provide much return on investment for the average user.

In this case I will stop going to those sites that annoy me. Others will not, and it may be that layers will be the advertising choice. But advertisers have to decide whether they want an ad that is always on, but off to the side/top/bottom/whatever, or whether they want to bi in the face of the viewer for a moment while they search for the button to close the ad. There are pros and cons to each method, but I suspect that most people don't pay any more attention to the ad than is necessary to close it.

Content providers like Salon have the right idea, IMHO, they openly say they exist because of ads, and you can choose to view ads for free content for a day, or buy a subscription. They don't hide the content behind a moving ad, or make you jump through more than one ad.

It'll all even out over time through attrition.

-Adam

hosts file only works for hosts

[Hard_Code]

Some sites are starting to hardcode IP addresses, in which case the hosts file is useless.

Personally I think that there should be an generic framework for transforming any resource locator for all popular protocols.

Re:hosts file only works for hosts

[kyoko21]

I am using squid to block ads. I recently wrote this in response to someone about how I customized my squid to block different ads using the realtime url filtering through ACL. My original post is here.

My technique also blocks out hardcoded IP addresses. Or if I want, a block of hard coded IP addresses, too.

Re:hosts file only works for hosts

[kyoko21]

Funnny. I can't even reach/read falkag because I had already had them blocked in my adblock/squid system. LOL! Oh well!

Re:hosts file only works for hosts

[Hard_Code]

yeah, I tried squid once, but it's too much maintainence for me to run a whole seperate proxy server just to avoid ads

Re:hosts file only works for hosts

[fishbowl]

"Some sites are starting to hardcode IP addresses, in which case the hosts file is useless."

Static null routes are MUCH better than host records anyway.

Re:hosts file only works for hosts

[shamino0]

Personally I think that there should be an generic framework for transforming any resource locator for all popular protocols.

There is. It's called the proxy autoconfig file. Most of your better browsers these days support it. It's a quick piece of JavaScript that your browser shunts every URL through.

The intended purpose is to set up rules so that some URLs (presumably external ones) go through a proxy server and others (presumably internal ones) go directly to the destination. But you can also use it to block stuff. Simply direct some URLs (by domain name, address, or anything else you like) to a machine that isn't running a proxy server and let the rest go to where it normally goes.

Redirecting to 127.0.0.1 does an OK job. Redirecting to a machine running a web server (like Apache) is better. This way, those ad-requests get back "404 not found" errors, which doesn't upset the ad scripts. (Some scripts will cause the page rendering to hang if they fail to get a response from their request for the ad content, but a legitimate error from a server doesn't seem to bother them.)

I recently wrote this journal entry describing the technique. It works very well, although you do have to update the list of blocked domains/URLs as advertisers switch to new servers.

Re:hosts file only works for hosts

[Hard_Code]

Cool! I'll try that out. I currently use the hosts file to point to a local server (running on another machine which also serves my website), which I have designed to return "empty" content for the applicable requested file. E.g. if the ad requires a gif, a 1x1 transparent gif is returned, if a jpeg, then a 1x1 jpeg, etc. Of course, as I said, this only works for hosts not arbitrary URLs. I'll give PAC a shot.

Flash address is simple to block

[archonon]

It appears that flash that it's appearing in middle of the screen is loaded from http://c.as-eu.falkag.net/. Quite easy to remove annoyances with Adblock (Mozilla)

You bunch of whiners

[Nuclear Elephant]

Sit there and complain about it, but the reason you're able to do things like read news for free online, perform fast google searches, and even use some software without paying for it is because companies pay for these services with advertisements. Remove the advertisements and you can kiss all of this goodbye. I'm not saying we should support the more obnoxious approaches to advertising, but our demand for "free software" and "free services" requires that the people running them find a way to make a living. Obviously I'm not a supporter of spam, I'm talking about something entirely different here. We live in a material world and I am a material girl...or boy.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[gral]

I agree. Definately.

Content may be free, but the space to keep it and host it definately NOT. Ads keep the costs down on those sites.

Of course, Popup and Pop Under ads should be abolished. It interupts the flow of things.

Ads displaying wears around the content are fine though.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[Anonymous Coward]

ads dont have to be annoying,

really they dont.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[gnu-generation-one]

"Sit there and complain about it, but the reason you're able to do things like read news for free online, perform fast google searches, and even use some software without paying for it is because companies pay for these services with advertisements. Remove the advertisements and you can kiss all of this goodbye."

Go back to your nikes and your commercial television, Consumer. The rest of us will continue providing and using free content.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[akiaki007]

I agree with you, but there is a difference between the ads that are out there. I use the AdBlock extension with FireFox. It works great, and I have completely forgotten about ads on the internet. I can still perform fast Google searches and I have no interest in blocking their ads. Why? Because all of the ads that I have blocked are images; colourful, moving, flashy images. I have no problem with simple soft-colour text ads, a la Google, but I hate ads that are like the X11 camera ads.

When Advertisments start to deter a user from surfing the web, you know it's gone too far. yes, sometimes the ads are nice and you're actually looking for them, but generally, they're obnoxiours and rude. Salon, I think, has a good idea on how to handle things. I don't have time to really read much news online, so I don't subscrube to them. I do however go through their 1-ad view for a free-day-pass when there is 1 article that someone has sent me.

I will bitch and bitch and then bitch some more when I am bombarded with ads. I hate them when I pay 11$ to see a movie and I'm forced to see commercials, and I hate them when I pay money to go to a website (hey, access to the internet does cost money and image ads are a b/w hog).

Re:You bunch of whiners

[nathanh]

Sit there and complain about it, but the reason you're able to do things like read news for free online, perform fast google searches, and even use some software without paying for it is because companies pay for these services with advertisements. Remove the advertisements and you can kiss all of this goodbye. I'm not saying we should support the more obnoxious approaches to advertising, but our demand for "free software" and "free services" requires that the people running them find a way to make a living. Obviously I'm not a supporter of spam, I'm talking about something entirely different here. We live in a material world and I am a material girl...or boy.

I pay for my Internet connection. It's not free. The idea of paying for a service is not a problem here. And the "free" in "free software" refers to various freedoms, not the price. I've paid several $1000s over the years for "free" software.

But the popup advertising model is based on a "here, the content is free, now how do I make money?" mentality. It's stupid because they're starting on the backfoot. I've already got the content. They're crossing their fingers that I also click on the ad and generate some revenue. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

There are plenty of other solutions. Sites could work out a partnership with ISPs; if you provide content, you get paid by the ISP, funded by content "consumers" like myself. Or you could go like Salon; subscription model, or watch an ad in advance. I don't find either of Salon's solutions offensive (strangely enough).

You believe that the reason we're able to do things like "read news for free online" is because of advertising, and if we block all the advertising then the news goes away. Fine. I don't care. The web was much better back when it wasn't infested with spam, porn ads, and popup crap. I personally believe that companies will find other revenue, most likely pay-for-view or subscription models, and the content will not go away. But hey, we'll never know until we block all the ads and effect a change.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[Lost Race]

I hate them when I pay 11$ to see a movie and I'm forced to see commercials

Forced? When the commercials start, get up and walk out. Cool your heels in the lobby for 10 minutes, then go back in and watch the movie. (I generally boycott theaters that show commercials (movie previews excepted of course) but sometimes they're unavoidable.)

Re:You bunch of whiners

[Moraelin]

I don't think many people have anything against advertising as a whole. But, yes, being obnoxious and annoying to your potential buyers is what's the real problem here.

As I've said it before, in the early days of the web the sites would have maybe one banner on the main site, and that was it. No animations, no huge flash movies, no pop-ups and no pop-unders. And most definitely no trying to install spyware crap on your computer.

And noone wanted to block those. Heck, some of us even clicked on them. In fact, I'll say that if back then someone would have come and said that they made an ad blocker, most people would have just said "you're lame, and you have too much time on your hands."

But in the meantime things have changed. Sorry, no matter how I much want to turn it around in my haead, and to find an excuse, I can't find any valid excuse for today's sorry state.

Now I'm bombarded with a barrage of pop-up, pop-unders, 500k flash movies, and even downright redirects to some vendor's site, before I even see what the site has to offer. Do I even want that site's "free services"? No idea, I'll first have to close all these windows and say "no" to their generous offer to install a dialer on my computer.

And in the end, I'll be mean and say that 99% of those sites didn't offer anything I wanted anyway. The mentality seems to be that any retard who can't even string together coherent sentences, has a right to make an income with ads. Which I'll disaggree.

Doing fast Google searches is one thing, but you may notice how Google doesn't need lame pop-unders to stay in business. You may also notice how Google not only had a service to offer, but also a _business_ _model_ for it. (Yes, using that search engine to offer targetted relevant text ads.)

And that's one site that deserves to stay in business. That's what capitalism is about.

On the other hand, let's look at the sites that do need obnoxious ads to stay in business. Yes, the millions of whiny blogs, or "look ma, I too can copy news off slashdot" news sites. They seem to assume that just having a stupid web site makes them so invaluable, that they have a _right_ to annoy me for a buck. Sorry, no. It doesn't work that way.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[akiaki007]

(I generally boycott theaters that show commercials (movie previews excepted of course) but sometimes they're unavoidable.)

This is pretty much unavoidable in new york city, where i live. I also don't walk out because I don't really know how long they will be, and often they're mixed in with the movie previews, which i do enjoy. So I just deal with it. Though I have yelled out in the middle before asking to remove commericals...got a good laugh out of people near by.

Re:You bunch of whiners

[danila]

Not exactly. If ads were simply not allowed on the Internet (punishable by painful death), the Internet would find the way. News will be published by newspapers to compliment their paper versions, by reuters (delayed by 30 minutes) to promote their paid service, by the state, since the informed population is the key to democracy, by public organisations. Or we could just go to BBC and read the news there (they don't have ads).

Search would be provided on university servers, by the same PhDs that now work for Google. There is plenty of software, some of which is not just free, but Free as well. What software would we miss? Ad-supported Flash games that were written with one purpose only - to show more ads. Thanks, I will pass.

There is no compelling reason for ads to stay. It's just that they are a plague, a cancer that slowly corrupts every surface, every place. They are willing to pay everyone to display images for them and people are weak. There is no reason ads should be allowed to exist. When I become the ruler of the Earth, ad execs will be among the first at the wall. Alternatively, when wearable computers are perfected, I will use mine to block any and all adverts in the meatspace and will happily forget about them.

Opera rocks and blocks

[kcdoodle]

Just tried Opera on your link. Popups were blocked and the site worked fine.

Re:Opera rocks and blocks

[kcdoodle]

Oh, yeah. I have Opera set yo "Identify as IS6.0"

Re:Opera rocks and blocks

[danila]

It doesn't matter. You probably have something blocking the User-Agent string alltogether, a proxy, firewall or something.

I tried to access the site with Opera with the same setting (Identify as IE6.0). I was blocked. I asked AtGuard! to totally block the User-Agent string. It worked. Opera still leaves the word "Opera" in the User-Agent string even if you chose IE 6.0

Bypassing adblock's

[Gallowsgod]

Things like adblock are based on the ability not to load things that lie under some certain path's, for instance /ads/
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be pretty easy to bypass things like adblock?

Say you put all the ads in a folder called, lets say "e4FFyz3kk1j8r". Then every night you let a perl script rename the folder at random, and then change all the references in all the html's, php's or whatever's.
Sooner or later someone is bound to try it, so I think we should already now start thinking in new directions.

Re:Bypassing adblock's

[SydShamino]

The environmentalchemistry.com site linked above already does this - sort of. Go to the site, and try to block the image after the folder with the random numbers. Reload, and the same image appears in a different folder with another random name.

Of course, those are themselves located in a "links" subfolder, which can be adblocked entirely. Though once you do that, the site's content is gone for good.

Re:Bypassing adblock's

[guardian-ct]

This folder renaming is somewhat harder than just some static javascript/CSS hacking. It still won't work. Just block images on size, or on the fact that they are images. This'll break some sites, but any good adblocker program can be programmed to allow certain useful images through (if any).

Anyone wanting me to see their ads so much that they start adding randomness into all their links (if I can't work around it easily), will be summarily dismissed from my version of the Web.

HOSTS file hint

[Bombcar]

One thing I learned (before adblock fixed everything) is that you should make sure that you have a webserver running on 127.0.0.1 that returns a blank page when it can't find the page (the 404 page), as this allows blank whitespace in place of 404 not found errors. It also speeds up browsing, too.

Company's web site

[Kelz]

They are always talking about solutions, but aren't they the problem?

You're missing the point

[Kjella]

These people are trying to serve ads to people actively trying to block them. Oh yeah, that's brilliant.

...there's a whole lot of people setting up blockers (or have blockers put up for them, which won't be able to dodge these new ones) because they are the kind that get easily tempted. When they're calm and collected, they want to block ads. But if they see an ad, they simply MUST have it. It's amazing how many people you can catch that way.

Kjella

Re:You're missing the point

[gcaseye6677]

A fool and his (or her) money are soon parted. 'Nuff said.

Re:You're missing the point

[Arakonfap]

All of the people I've set up blockers for, and know that use blockers, wouldn't buy anything from a pop-up ad -because- it's annoying. Same goes for spam. They sure arn't the kind that are "easilly tempted", and use the pop-up blocker to stop them from being "tempted" to buy.

Some out there may be, but it's been my experience that most of them (myself especially included) arn't.

Re:You're missing the point

[BuckaBooBob]

Wont be able to dodge? Hosts files work pretty good... But thats Getting really redundant... Its not going to be much longer before this is how the new wave of pop-up blockers will work and there is no way around it... and with our current IP shortage its not easy to change your IP range at regular intervals... These annoy ads are near death... Its time for them to let them die... The nice thing about host files.. even Flash Ads are gone along with any would be replacement... But Host files aren't for everyone.

DailyStrips

[tjwhaynes]

To all who visit the dilbert website regularly, has anyone seen that floating ad that blocks the last panel of the strip? I have seen it about 5 times and I read the site daily.

No - but that's because all the comics I'm interested are harvested for me every morning by the dailystrips scripts run on a cron job on my machine and nicely organized and indexed ready for my reading later. In theory, anything at all published on the web is retrievable by some method, processable and automatically tidied up before you view it.

If advertising ever gets bad enough that the web pages aren't really usable or readable without some extra processing, there will be a market for advanced filtering of whatever HTML/XHTML/XML is being used to extract the useful stuff. If that is integrated into a browser, then you might even not notice the muck. Or you could just go back to links/lynx/w3m or whatever.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Flash popups

[phorm]

I seem to remember that mp3.com and some other sites used flash "floating" ads that worked just this way. They would pop up in the window, or fly across, or whatever. Some of them were actually kinda neat - until about the 50th time you saw the same one.

Re:Flash popups

[Jim_Maryland]

The Weather Channel has/had something similar to this too but I haven't seen it recently. Theirs was for a desktop weather application.

Hah, I use Links

[HermanZA]

It must be pretty damn hard to get pop adverts into a text browser...

Re:Hah, I use Links

[Rikus]

This may be funny, but it's also quite true!
I use ELinks as my web browser, and I think it's the best client I've ever used.
Of course, no image-based ads will be loaded, but there are tons of other neat features (tabbed browsing, smart bookmarks, excellent customizable keyboard control, etc.).
Even before I switched to lynx/links/elinks, I always made sure to disable Javascript, and I've never regretted it.

AdBlock

[johncheng]

Just to add to this. AdBlock can block based on a regular expression. So I block
http://*.doubleclick.net/*

Which means any javascript, ads, images, flash from doubleclick is blocked. If the 'floating transparent image' is served from doubleclick, it will not show up either :)

Or you can do something sophsitcated like blocking

http://www.somesite.com/ads/*

Which blocks everything under the 'ads' directory for that site but loads the rest of the site normally.

Re:AdBlock

[Prior Restraint]

Just to add to this. AdBlock can block based on a regular expression. So I block
http://*.doubleclick.net/*

I'm pretty sure that's not the regular expression you want. It'd be something more like:
http://.*\.doubleclick\.net/.*

Re:Here's an example...(Alternatives)

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

WebElements

As said before, there will always be alternatives that don't do such things. Boycott the ones who do.

Real solution

[Ra5pu7in]

The real solution goes beyond ad blocking software. It lies in a willingness to completely boycott any site willing to allow advertising of this style. When enough of your readership complains and walks away, and your hits drop astronomically, you definitely re-evaluate your policy (especially since your advertisers do too).

I say let those sites that want to cater to sheep serve up as much as they want and get paid by advertisers to ignore the desires of their readers. I will get my data from sites that listen to their readers over their advertisers. (Reminds me of www.techreport.com which once had an advertiser whose animated image seriously sucked system resources. Readers posted complaints and the advertiser was asked to revise the image. Win/Win because the readers got a simple unobtrusive ad, the site got the advertising cash flow, and the advertiser adjusted to something that actually appealed to those readers who might be interested).

Re:Real solution

[The_DOD_player]

Boycotting sites? Guess what? not happening, EVER!

I wish it was so, but there is no limit to what people will put up with when it comes to ads. The wast majority have long given up trying to control all that advertising. Just take a look; its everywhere, in the newpaper, on the TV, on the radio, posters at the road, on your childrens clothes, everywhere! If it was possible to put an end to intrusive ads, it would have happened a long time ago, but it just isnt so.

The marketing drones have endless potential for comming up with even more intrusive and annoying ads. Wait and see; the worst is still to come. Hell, when I come to think about it, one of the major phone companys here are offering cheap cellphone rates, IF you are prepared to be interrupted a couple of seconds every minute to hear an ad.

Re:Real solution

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Hell, when I come to think about it, one of the major phone companys here are offering cheap cellphone rates, IF you are prepared to be interrupted a couple of seconds every minute to hear an ad.

TDC (TeleDanmark back then) tried this a couple of years ago here in Denmark. Every couple of minutes, your call would be interrupted by a 10-second ad.

Put mildly, it was not very popular. Not even the free calls could make up for the ads.

No..

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

There are some Active X web components that will run on the mac, but you have to use IE. Even on windows, that is the only way to run Acitve X web stuff. Mozilla is immune on all platforms.

And in the first place its obviously not active x! so it could work on safari and mozilla.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

big hit

[cafebabe]

Whenever I hear about stuff like this, I always think of that really bad movie The Big Hit, starring Mark Wahlberg. There's a scene where one guy is trying to trace another guy's phone call and they have a conversation something like:

1 - Don't even try to trace this call. I have caller ID blocker.
2 - Oh yeah. I have caller ID blocker-blocker
1 - Well, I also have caller ID blocker-blocker-blocker
2 - And I have caller ID blocker-blocker-blocker-blocker!

So, I guess all we need now is a pop-up blocker-blocker-blocker....

Customized HOSTS file? C'mon

[stratjakt]

HOSTS was never meant to have 1000's of listings. I can't think of anything stupider than to sequentially search a huge text file for each outgoing tcp request.

Since you're all linux nerds, and swear up and down you use nothing but linux on the desktop, why would you even fuck with such a thing?

Throw your hosts into an ldap and install (and use) libnss_ldap.so. That'd be slightly more efficient since of course, you do have nscd running, right?

Or use something like privoxy, which works well, though I don't care for proxy servers. Mozilla's pop-up blocking works well too.

Gack, leave HOSTS alone. This is the 21st century for fuck sakes. Run a dns cache/server like pdnsd or BIND and block them out there.

Flamebait?

[FunWithHeadlines]

Well, I guess if you disagree with my POV you can think I was flaming, but I wasn't. I happen to think very strongly about this issue (see the About page on my web site), so I wrote in very strong terms.

A coward will try to make my argument disappear. A man will express his opposing view to my face.

DMCA against adblocking????

[Spellbinder]

how long will it take until there is a law which prohibits adblocking???

Semi-related Mozilla feature request

[swb]

Is there a way to get ...target=blank requests to open up in a NEW TAB instead of IN A WHOLE NEW WINDOW? Too many sites needlessly have a target =blank next to links, and drives me batty.

DMCA violation?

[dustwun]

I wonder when one of the pop-up blocker companies are going to start filing suit under the DMCA for circumvention of their blocker. It would be nice to see a REAL use of the DMCA for once instead of a big business scare tactic.

Wrong Semantics == Marketeering

[valmont]

Claims of "defeating" pop-up blockers are completely false allegations. It is just a fancy spin on the very simple fact that pop-up blockers, good ones at least, cannot be defeated, and advertisers have now opted for AN ALTERNATIVE form of advertisement, which is thru floating DHTML layers. The fact that they can detect the presence of some sort of pop-up blocking is irrelevant, this has always been possible in a few lines of code. Consider those floating ads as glorified, more interactive regular image or static flash banners, the key point is that they can only live within the current document, and GO AWAY as soon as either 1) the user clicks on the close button if they choose to be wise and provide one or 2) go to another site after having been annoyed by said ad.

This is nothing but a spin.

On the other hand, what was so powerful about pop-up and pop-unders is that they could spawn with or without the user's instant knowledge and keep spawning more of themselves, often defeating users' repeated attempts at closing them. Well-designed pop-up chains could keep the user clicking for minutes!

New Stratagy

[Number_1_Bigg$]

What would happen if everyone clicked on the ad, but didn't buy anything? Could that drive the company trying to sell stuff out of buisness by forcing them to pay incredible ammounts of money to the marketing company? Granted, we'd be left with only marketing companies, until the real companies realized that they aren't making money by advertizing like this online....

Just a thought

No effect on me...

[starsong]

I went to the site, clicked through a few pages, and started writing a comment about how I use Mozilla FireWhatever under SuSE, and that the silly tricks this webmaster uses don't affect me. Halfway through I went back to check on something, and noticed that the site actually DID have banner ads that Mozilla wasn't blocking. And when I blocked them, I got the "haha gotcha" message too.

The point is that I automatically ignore banner ads, as do a huge percentage of Internet users. It's even easier because Mozilla lets you turn off GIF animation, killing off the flashing crap. You can even choose which Flash things you want to see with the Flash Click to View plugin. If they want to enforce a no-block policy, that's their right. It just seems strange that they would invest so much effort in defending a semi-useless advertising technique. But hey, if someone's paying them for it, great. Like the site says, I don't want to pay money if I can pay with ad impressions. Especially if I don't notice them anyway.

Off topic, but there are some odd comments in the HTML source for their pages. Here's a quote:

We may not be happy with Opera software, but we also believe it wrong to hack someone elses software. If "window.opera" returns a true value and "Opera" is not part of the userAgent string reported by the browser, we know that Opera has be cracked.

Whaaa? I thought Opera gave you the option of changing the user agent through a GUI dialog. How is this "hacking?"

hmm firefox + adblock + flash click to view

[Tadghe]

Using the firefox + adblock + flash + proxomitron seems to work just fine with the sites I've been referred to so far

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/ only, ads are the textual google ads.
http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/ only ads again, are google text ads
http://www.kompas.com/ dear heaven look at all the flash that wants to play, (flash click to view stops them all).

any other examples to try ?

Re:Apple Hugger

[justMichael]

I didn't bother to look at the link, but it's a pretty safe guess that they are using CSS/Javascript to do this.

it's a pretty simple concept:

var ad = window.open(...);
window.setTimeout('checkAd()', 1500);

function checkAd() {
if (! ad) {
show a floating layer with an ad in it...
}
}

ive seen this before

[soimless]

a long time ago i think i was useing mozilla 1.3 alpha and i was going around lots odd forums and one led to another untill i got to a forum that had an ad that was large enoff to cover lots of the page but you could still see something like 10 words of the actual page. in smallsh print the ad said something like 'this page has found you use a pop up blocker or have disabled javascript plese disable your pop up blocker and enable javascript in order to take this ad away and to show the content below.' I think the ad was for some free computer thing that just gets your email and spams you to death

Nothing like

[Omega1045]

A politicalsite http://www.everythingisnt.com/ when I was just looking for some TECHNICAL help.

And what about the content?

[Dolda2000]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this prevent you from seeing the relevant content on the page? Who in their right mind would use a product that obscures that which you want the users to see?

Is this better?

[FunWithHeadlines]

How's this? :)

HOSTS file solution

[DaveCBio]

Would be nice to have one that worked the same way SPAM blockers do. When someone got an annoying ad they could just submit the IP to a central service that would then distribute to anyone that used it.

Re:posted this on fark already but...

[DaveCBio]

Yes, you are truly evil and I hope you get it back double.

Mothers in law

[robogun]

Since I always seem to be the guy they call when their computer stops working, and I can't seem to say no to friends and family, I have been forced to adopt a new policy after the wave of new-style spyware over the last month.

This because I spent 20 hours cleaning up spyware infested computers in one week. These new varieties run in god mode and cannot be removed with automated anti-spyware utilities & even windows reversion won't fix it.

I will no longer fix their computers unless the browser is switched to Mozilla 1.6. IE can remain on the computer but can only be used under supervision to access windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Mozilla is a drop-in replacement for IE and Outlook Express, and I feel it is stable and smooth enough for any of them to use.

I'll clean up their machine one last time & help them install Mozilla, but that's it. If it breaks again due to unsupervised use of IE or Outlook, I am not working on it, further than telling them to "run your recovery disks" or "take it back to Dell." I don't have enough time in my life to deal with it.

I did four such cleanup/Mozilla installs in the last week & they are all as happy as hell. To be honest, I think their having such easy access to free computer work from me has made them complacent in their browsing habits, but they are cleaning up their acts right now.

Re:posted this on fark already but...

[Fo0eY]

they're actually exit popups that are launched by that blank popup, so if you close that one before you close the main window they don't launch

mozilla won't let you open windows off screen so you can't hide that one like you can in IE

...oh well, our "target market" are IE users anyways ;)

Not anymore.

[Distortions]

A few national ISP like earthlink are shipping the client software with pop-up software..
More will follow. So there are people with pop-up blockers that didn't download and install them.

Do not worry

[Orion Blastar]

if you block their pop-up ads, their spyware/adware will surely get you later. No need to install their malware, it gets installed automatically.

JS IRNOR.M anyone? Really nasty malware I found on my system that NAV and others could not detect. It uses HTML and Javascript to install itself from a web page. Lookt2me was another one, the latest version could not be removed, it did pop-ups and destroyed my TCP/IP stack after I removed it. Forcing a reinstall of the OS.

You really want to get rid of pop-ups forever? Reformat the hard drive, install Linux and Mozilla/Firefox and avoid sites that require IE or Windows in order to work.

waitamnnut

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic is bullsh%t. (you can pretend it's 'sophistry' if the word offends you). Commercials on tv and spam on the 'net are two entirely different things.

Commercials on TV produce revenue as an offset for us to see shows essentially for free.

Spammers are NOT providing ANY any services to us in return for their spam. If we were receiving free connections or the cost of providing you with the cost of upgrading your connection to broadband over dialup, that would be different - and there are other types of services which put ads around your screen while you are connected. That's the choice of the person connecting. So those of us who have been on for ten, fifteen, twenty years are suddenly gaing what for this garbage? Nothing. Until they provide some type of service (e.g., tv shows) there can be no comparisons of tv ads and spam.

The parent claiming otherwise should be required to pay (ala FearFactor) for all of one Slashdot-day (all material in all forums) to be printed out hardcopy, shredded, and forced to be eaten with sour milk for breakfast - until it's gone. And anythings which comes up will still need to be reconsumed.

This type of confusion is exactly the type of garbage spammers and related bodies (e.g., DMA - Direct Marketing Association) want to instill so the issue of penalties appears to be harsh because they'll police themselves.

Interesting, technique, but not foolproof.

[Ayanami Rei]

It uses javascript to check the ads to make sure the size of the image is not too small (as replacement images often are) and the display properties are maintained (not set hidden with CSS).

It can't actually detect if an ad was replaced by a blank image by a proxy server, but it'll know if the ad is the wrong size.

Solution? More sophisticated ad blockers should attempt to match image size to a URL pattern by fetching it a few times and seeing what it gets back. Then it should autogenerate the replacement content with that size.

click throughs

[budgenator]

That's why there are diferent types of ads to be bought;
some are priced by impressions, so I might pay for 700K downloads of my ad image.
Some are priced by click-throughs so I might pay for a 100K clicks.
Some are paid by a commission on sales generated durring the visit after a click-through.

There is advantages to each as well as disadvantages no matter which side of the fence your on. Few people realy object to seeing well targeted, tastefull ads, almost everyone objects to tacky, intrusive shot-guns ads.

Wasted time

[mrshowtime]

Pop up ads are annoying as fuck, but what pisses me off more than anything else is that most ad servers are slow as fuck and a lot of websites are coded to load the ads FIRST, then the site. I paid for "ads free" version of mail.com, because their ads were so damn annoying, only to find that every time I log on, I have to wait 10 seconds from the fucking banner ad on the main page to load before I can login. Goto www.darkhorizons.com and see what I mean, wasted time.

Re:Wasted time

[corsec67]

Holy cow. I went to that site, and I am on a Full T1 here.
That site doesn't need to be on slashdot to be /.'d.

Solution to popups?

[localhost00]

Maybe just blocking them isn't the complete answer.

What if we slashdotted a site that relies on popups for income and have expenses based on their bandwidth? And also that we all slashdot the site without downloading ads? What if we do this every day?

Perhaps they will get huge bills for bandwidth? And no income from the ad companies?

Banner Blocking Manifesto

[Lord_Dweomer]

This is the banner blocking message I get when I use Opera. Interesting to note is the link to an Ask Slashdot article at the very bottom.

"Banner Blocking Detected You have been brought to this page because it was detected that your web browser, software on your computer or some other event is preventing some or all of our banner ads from being displayed on our pages correctly. If you are not using a utility to block banners, you may have been inadvertently brought here because a banner image did not load correctly. Please make sure you have enabled images and disable any ad blocking software then try again.

If you sincerely want a banner free experience on our site and are willing to help support our efforts directly, we do offer a paid subscription option. This option is especially useful for educators who would like to use our site in their classroom without the distractions banner ads create.

Banner Blocking Manifesto
We understand that you may find banner advertising annoying. This website, however, is not sponsored or produced by some faceless rich corporation or public entity. This site is the product of the hard labor of one individual and his family. Producing and delivering the content on this site is expensive. If we are to continue to make the resources on this website available to individuals like yourself free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

The relationship between the web content provider (in this case us) and the content consumer (you) must be a symbiotic relationship. If small web publishers like us are to continue to be able to provide access to useful information free of charge, we must get something in return. In this case it is the ability to display and earn revenue off of banner advertising.

Kenneth Barbalace
Creator of EnvironmentalChemistry.com

How to Disable Ad Blocking Software

There are scores programs and services on the market that offer banner ad blocking abilities. As such we will only focus on a few of the most common programs.

Symantec Norton Internet Security: If you are using Symantec's "Norton Internet Security" software, banner blocking may have been turned on without your knowledge. You can turn off ad blocking in Symantec NIS by opening Norton Internet Security. In the main window, double-click Ad Blocking and then uncheck "Ad Blocking".

ZoneAlarm Pro firewall: If you are using the firewall ZoneAlarm pro, you can turn off ad blocking under the tab "Privacy" and then slide the "Ad Blocking" control to the off position.

AdSubtract: If you ar using AdSubtract, right mouse click on the AdSubtract icon in your task tray (looks like an orange circle with a plus and minus sign) and select "Disable AdSubtract".

WebWasher: If you are using WebWasher, right mouse click on the WebWasher icon in your task tray (looks like a blue circle with a white "W" and then select "Deactivate standard filter".

Related Resources TechTV - Rage Against the Ad-Blocking Machines
"Ask SlashDot" article
Steal this Site"

Re:Banner Blocking Manifesto

[pete6677]

I mostly agree with the "Steal this site" article. Users will be unlikely to be offended by text and simple banner advertising. Using a little extra bandwidth to download a couple of GIFs and JPEGs is not too much of a price to pay for free web content. But when ads became overly intrusive, that's when I started using the ad blockers. I'm not about to let a bunch of ads pop up and swarm across the screen, with full video and sound, just so I can attempt to read read some lame sports article. If the advertising industry pisses off the public as much as the telemarketers did, they will suffer a similar fate (extinction).

Re:Banner Blocking Manifesto

[radja]

> free of charge, we must be allowed to use banner advertising as a means of paying the costs of maintaining this website.

no, free of charge does not mean I give you permission to force unwanted and useless content into my home. advertising being heard isn't a right. it's a privilege that can and will be revoked if taken too far. and it HAS gone too far.

Re:Banner Blocking Manifesto

[Lost Race]

What a fucking weenie that guy is.

For the last five years I've been paying $150/month (and up, as ISPs come and go) for a good fast connection for my game server, because I love the game and because I get as much out of it as I put into it. We have a nice little gaming community with my server at the center and I feel I've done my part to make a lot of people happy.

How much is he paying for his website? What does he get out of it? If it's such a big burden on him, giving nothing in return, then why the hell does he even bother? Webhosting is dirt-cheap now, and once the pages are written it hardly costs anything to serve them. This just smells like some nineties dot-com guy still trying to cash in big on teh Intarweb.

Re:Banner Blocking Manifesto

[Alioth]

The irony of this site is that there's an advert at the bottom right of the page for...ZoneAlarm ad blocker!

Re:Banner Blocking Manifesto

[danila]

Using a little extra traffic to upload the page to me is not too much of a price to pay for giving one more person a chance to read what you have written. It works both ways. I don't see most ads, because I block them. This represents such a tiny drain on their resources, that I don't understand why they decide to block ME. And I am not stealing, since I would not pay - I am too poor and I don't have a credit card - anyway.

Salon

[tgibbs]

I like Salon's approach. If you are not a member, you can get a day's membership by choosing to watch a brief commercial. A site could easily deal with pop-up blockers by presenting a screen inviting the user to request to see the ads. That would make it a requested screen, and the blocker would not trigger. If you don't want to do that, they are free to withhold their content.

On the other hand, I'm not going to futz with my pop-up blocker settings trying to get a site to work. If a site refuses to load, I just figure that it's a buggy site and I never go back.

Re:Rights

[howlinmonkey]

Ironically, your comment is posted on a public forum paid for with ad revenue. Point made.

easy to defeat

[hak1du]

They probably detect whether the ad's content was accessed by the user, either by tracking things on the web server or with JavaScript. If that becomes commonplace, ad-blockers will just download the content and then discard it.

Now, what would be a really nifty trick is if they manage to detect that lynx blocks pop-up ads and put a translucent ad on top of the lynx text.

Prevention is Better than Cure

[aking137]

Popups seem to have got themselves the same respect/FUD as computer viruses these days - hasn't anyone even on Slashdot stopped just for a minute to think about how they actually work?

It's very simple. Popups don't force their way into your computer; rather, your computer chooses to display them. This usually happens when your web browser downloads the source code for a web page, and that code contains a request that says: Please open a new browser window on the user's desktop. It's then up to the web browser to actually go ahead and display that popup.

They work in the same way as nearly all viruses: rather than force their way into a computer, your computer merely chooses to execute a set of instructions - although there are exceptions here, as some viruses exploit security holes to 'trick' their way in, which is why we employ other mechanisms such as using a firewall to block all incoming connection requests to make their job harder for them.

The real solution to popups is quite simple, and it's based on prevention is better than cure. Rather than allowing your computer choose to display a popup, and then putting effort into finding ways to "block" it, simply have your computer not open them in the first place.

Don't believe me? Fine - try a text based browser - something that doesn't even know about window systems, such as lynx, or links. Perhaps try running it on a system that doesn't even have a windowing system installed and just has one virtual console running. You should then find that most websites have a pretty hard time opening any popup windows on your 80x25 text-based screen!

Okay, fine, using text-based browsers isn't exactly an ideal solution to anyone, but it does prove the point that by far the most reliable way to "block" popups is to simply use a browser that has no knowledge of how to open anything other than it's main window on your system. Since there are already several Free Software / Open Source web browser implementations out there, there's nothing stopping anyone with plenty of time on their hands from going through and removing all such code.

I unfortunately don't have the time or the necessary C++ skills (most of them seem to be written in C++, rather than C) to do this, and so I find that using Mozilla 1.6 (or later) and selecting Edit - Preferences - Privacy & Security - Popup Windows and ticking the Block unrequested popup windows box is good enough. It's interesting to note that sometimes clicking on a link will cause a web page to open itself in a new window, but the advertisers don't seem to have managed to exploit this so far.

Customized HOSTS vs. "Blocked sites"

[mnemotronic]

this news doesn't affect anybody who uses a customized HOSTS file to stop the majority of ads from appearing anyway.

1. MSIE (heaven forbid!) can block a list of sites. I think the effect is the same (but I may be worng)
2. Tools
3. Internet Options...
4. Security tab
5. Restricted Sites
6. Sites...

I wish there was something similiar in Firefox! My employeer's virus scanner (McAfee) can restrict sites by IP address or URL.

A problem is that these days, some web sites (SlickDeals.net) are doing some things that causes valid pages to fail to load because of my "blocked sites". I usually get a "Cannot find server or DNS Error" because I've blocked various ad sites.

Technologies for no reason

[sploxx]

All technical details aside, I think the most interesting of this "ad-war" is that it leads to development of technologies blocking ads, new circumventions for this technologies by the ad-makers and so forth. But who benefits?

The browser companies (admitted, mozilla doesn't get much money by selling software, but opera etc. do) and the ad-technology-"inventors".

Where are the real products? Were is the benefit for the population as a whole? I have to see it yet. One of those cases where the free market went mad.

Not neccessarily true...

[Bl33d4merican]

Those X10 Camera pop-ups are annoying as hell...but my boss just purchased some for surveillance of his business. I hate to admit it, but they work great. I suppose that's evidence that if a product is really useful, people will still buy it no matter what the company's ad tactics are like.

Timothy, thanks for linking to my blog, but...

[gad_zuki!]

If its the ad-blocking hosts file you want, its here.

Except

[Snaller]

People (sellers) have gone on record as saying they never saw any business because of these methods, yet when they employed Googles addwords the could register a big change almost at once. Because Googles adds are mostly relevant and never annoying.

Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[stevek]

The big problem with this war is that there is so much collateral damage.

With each measure people take to block the popups and other types of advertisement, they also end up blocking content and applications that they need.

Once, people thought the browser will become the "application environment". The latest W3C inventions makes that more viable every day. But, now look what we've _removed_ from the environment:

1) Dialog Boxes: Gone. You can usually still use a javascript alert, but you can't prompt the user with a dialog box anymore, a primitive UI component.

2) Random things broken: "Adblock" css and stuff like that, which blocks images and iframes when the relative path to those things starts with "ad"? So, if slashdot's preferences were called "adjustments", that would get killed.

Sure, people can sometimes turn these things off, but more and more often, people are having these things installed without even knowing they're there (like millions will when XP SP 2 comes out).

This whole situation is rapidly making the web a much less hospitable environment for applications.

Re:Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[stevek]

Oops. I forgot to mention why I wrote this in the first place.

The original article suggested that the current behavior where browsers return an error from window.open should be changed so that the calling script can no longer determine that the new window was not created.

Not only would this theoretically stop the "popup" advertisers from knowing that you had blocked their advertisement, but it would also make it much more difficult for application developers to know.

So now, where the user experience for an application user might be getting a JavaScript alert asking them to enable popups for the application server, they'd just get silent failure.

Re:Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[Jeff DeMaagd]

For known apps, I know Mozilla allows you to specify sites that are exceptions. It might be an issue for a site that has applications AND pop-up ads though.

Re:Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[STrinity]

It takes about five seconds to copy a URL into Proxomitron and create an exception.

Re:Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[Moraelin]

Sorry, I don't see that as collateral damage caused by the blockers, but as collateral damage caused by the greedy fucks that threw pop-ups and pop-unders at us in the first place.

The problem is the mentality that "by Jove, I have a sacred _right_ to make a profit. No matter who or what gets killed in the process."

In the early days of the web you'd have one banner per site. A simple .gif image, no flash, no popups, no whatever. And guess what? Noone even thought of blocking those.

It went downhill from there because of greedy fucks on _both_ sites. Greedy fucks as site owners trying to shaft the ad providers, and greedy fucks as ad providers trying to shaft everyone else. People who thought they have a sacred right to make money, no matter what collateral damage they cause. People who treated the web like the 16'th century buccaneers treated the shipping lanes: not as a useful infrastructure for everyone, but as something to plunder and rape for your own benefit.

And again, I'm not blaming just the ad providers. The site owners are as guilty, if not more. The whole dot-com crap was _based_ on the idea that "ooh, look how much they pay per ad. Let's make a site with 20+ ads per page, and rake in the big dough." Guess what, Einstein? Those rates were not calculated for that.

The plan ammounted to no less than "let's cheat the ad provider out of some money we don't deserve, and then cheat the VCs out of even more money we don't deserve." But that's ok. Only a moron would think of morals, when lining one's pcokets is at stake, right?

And from there it's been a downwards spiral of death and destruction. A race to shaft each other. A race where the site owners became more and more desperate to get money for nothing, no matter how imoral the means, and where the ad providers became more and more obnoxious to actually sell something for those money.

They thought they had a _right_ to make a sale, even if they have to kill you for it. Pop-ups, pop-unders, 500k flash animations, etc. Nothing was too much, if it could make a buck.

And noone thought of the collateral damage they're causing to the internet or to the people using it. Well, now those people are just trying to defend themselves from this crap barrage. And it seems supremely hypocritical to now blame the collateral damage on them, instead of on the greedy fucks who made popup blockers needed in the first place.

Re:Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[stevek]

I agree that the bad actors here are the pop-up guys, not the people making tools to block them.

It doesn't make a difference whose fault it is, the result is the same. The browser is increasingly becoming less able to act as an application environment because of it.

Yes, as posters have commented, you can make exceptions. But since so many people are going to get these blockers installed without their knowledge, they won't know how to make these exceptions. And the whole process of needing to do so is a hassle.

Add to that ideas that people have posted here to make it impossible for a web application to even _know_ that the pop-up has not been displayed, and you get applications which silently fail.

It's not just pop-ups either; it's also tools which go and erase cookies suddenly, or tools which block certain regular expressions in images or IFrames, or the next generation of tools which will start blocking absolutely positioned elements (to stop "floating ads").

Each step that ends up being taken, makes applications harder and harder to maintain..

Re:Collateral damage from all these "blockers"

[Moraelin]

Well, to be honest, IMHO the browser should have never been used for half the stuff it's used today for.

From a programmer viewpoint, it's a throw back to the dumb terminals of the 70's. Only with more overhead, and without a permanent connection.

The stateless nature of HTTP meant that essentially if you needed state, you had to do your own buggy approximation of a stateful connection. (E.g., the various "HTTP session" implementation in various languages or frameworks.)

The problem however, is that I've yet to see a project which didn't have session-related problems. Ranging from mild usability problems (e.g., you lost all your data when your session timed out), to waste of resources (someone stored an object in the session, which in turn pointed to a whole 100 MB tree), to identity theft (e.g., when enabling one to revive an older session id), all the way to such catastrophes as having users marked "new product" and products marked "new user" when someone used two windows at the same time.

And a lot of other stuff was literally based on leaps of faith. Like having faith that the user will never open a link in a second window, in the catastrophe implementation mentioned above. Or having faith that when you've opened a second window for your dialog, the user won't do other stuff with the previous window in the meantime. Or various other versions of assuming that the user will always mindlessly stick to the exact workflow you had in mind.

Of course, you think that such problems could and will never happen to your project. Think again. They even appear in such high profile projects as IBM WebSphere's admin console.

So IMHO if spammers and ad provider idiots manage to finally kill the idea that HTTP is _the_ only medium for a program to run over, good riddance.

As always, easy to defeat

[Lord Kestrel]

Just disable Javascript and Java in Mozilla (plus activex and active scripting if using IE), and you won't EVER have a popup/popunder.

Not only do you not have to deal with stupid ads and crap that websites foist upon you, you're far safer, as most browser exploits require javascript or java to run.

For the occasional site that refuses to render without javascript, enable it if you want to view that site, and then disable it again.
Or if using Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox, use Shimoda Hiroshi's "Tabbrowser Extension", and create a custom tab for that site that has java/javascript enabled, and keep it disabled for everyone else.

The solution to ads.

[TheBoostedBrain]

There is a file:
c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS in windows /etc/host in linux

just add entries like this:
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net

For every ad site you see (maybe keep ads.osdn.com). This will change every ad for a Not Found message if you have Apache Server running (unless your machine is an ad site) or nothing if you don't have a web server.

Falk eSolutions

[Jafa]

Why is it that everytime I look at their name, I see Fake Solutions.

Actually that seems to be a pretty simple question.

J

Re:Falk eSolutions

[Loosewire]

just like Fluke Networks :-D
and another Something networks which sounded like Fradulent??

Re:Falk eSolutions

[The Master Control P]

My immediate thought was "F*** eSolutions" :)

X10

[dacarr]

If I remember correctly, while X10 has a really cool product, it was by doing annoying adverts that caused them to falter. So then, what is there to cause marketing types to believe that by circumventing what is for all intents a "do not spam" measure they will sell more of their clients' wares?

LMHOSTS

[Espectr0]

While this may ignite another round of online advertising purchasing, this news doesn't affect anybody who uses a customized HOSTS file to stop the majority of ads from appearing anyway.

Since mozilla displays its connection errors in modal windows instead of showing error placeholders like IE, i can't use a modified lmhosts.

Please vote for bug 28586 to get this fixed

Re:LMHOSTS

[pmsyyz]

You do know you can set browser.xul.error_pages.enabled to true, right?

Even better,

[Trejkaz]

Why not just have the browser automatically DOS any popup window and the site which popped it up? Then putting up the ads starts costing much more bandwidth and they start getting false statistics.

This functionality will be built into browsers too

[CatOne]

On the Mac, I have an app called "PithHelmet" which does ad blocking... I believe it keeps a database and uses a proxy server (though, I haven't really investigated, it works and it's easy ;-) I've used proximitron and other blockers, as well as host files which blocked sites before, but PithHelmet is more integrated and doesn't show broken links like less integrated stuff can.

Also, OmniWeb 5 has ad blocking (including banners) built in.

So the ad monkeys will get blocked before their site is even accessed. You can read an MSN ad on a single page!

I assume similar products are/will be available on Windows soon, too. This one's fairly easily to technically circumvent.

I don't watch TV ads. Seriously.

[CatOne]

TiVo, with 30 second skip. No idea why people would not have a PVR of some sort, in this day and age.

psssst.

[CatOne]

You can enable 30-second skip on TiVo... 4 to 10 "blips" and you're done.

Hit select-play-select-3-0-select

Hear 3 dings. Done. Index button is now +30. Oh and the one a couple buttons left of it is like -7 seconds... helps for when the thumb gets overzealous ;-)

Re:psssst.

[ncc74656]

You can enable 30-second skip on TiVo... 4 to 10 "blips" and you're done.

I've done that before, but I've found scanning forward is easier. MythTV does both 30-second skip and commercial detection/skipping, but it doesn't do the high-speed scanning forward/backward that TiVo does. On the occasions that it goes too far forward, it's a bit of a pain to get back to where you want to be (default skip-back is 5 seconds).

(That's my take on it, anyway...sounds more like a matter of personal preference than anything else.)

I have no problem with this.

[Doppler00]

I've already seen these kind of advertisements used on websites. They are not like pop-up ads at all. Here is the difference:

A popup ad requires you to first, close the window to see the web page, or for that matter ANYTHING that may have been underneath it on your desktop. These can also appear in such rapid succession that you have no access to your computer for several seconds as you frustratingly try to close them all.

However, a transparent pop-up embedded in the webpage itself is not as much of a problem. It is contained within the browser window, so there is a clear seperation between the website, and anything else on your computer's desktop.

If you don't like website's that use advertising that's fine. Avoid them, or find some Mozilla tool to block them. For most people however, this is much less obtrusive than standard IE popups.

another great hosts file

[sklib]

There's another great custom hosts file at someonewhocares.org/hosts. I use it everywhere, and it's wonderful.

Background images

[pyite69]

I saw a website that put up ads as background images... this "defeats" Mozilla's right click menu. Now it takes 30 seconds to view the source and bring up the ad in the foreground... painful.

Someone should sue the assholes

[Snaller]

Tsk tsk

Regular old pop ups still work on Mozilla?

[sublimespot]

Dont you have those pesky popups that appear when you close a window? The old infinate loop popup problem. This code will bypass the Mozilla Pop Up blocker and launch popups on exit (Tested on Mozilla 1.7b):

<SCRIPT language=Javascript>
<!-- BEGIN EXIT CODE
var shut2=true;
function exit2a() {
if (shut2)
props=window.open("http://site/popup.html ", 'poppage11', 'toolbars=0, scrollbars=1, location=0, statusbars=0, menubars=0, resizable=1, width=800, height=800');
}
-->
</SCRIPT>
</head>
<body onunload="exit2a()">

Get over yourself

[CalCudahy]

Wow, what a troll! And moderated at a 4 no less. Hey I ain't no huge fan of marketing but to make such a blanket statement is moronic.

I happen to work in a bio lab and actually like it when the sales reps come by. I need their stuff and they're constantly filling me in on their new products. The new RNAi stuff that these companies are coming up with make my life a hundred times easier. The sales reps are knowledgeable about them and don't feed me bull about what they can do, but give me the facts.

There are also tons of moral ad guys who do pro bono work for good causes. I know a marketing guy who does pro bono work for a local wild-life rehabilitation center. That's a pretty sweet deal for the non-profit conservancy.

So stop being so fucking ignorant and realize that not all marketers are out to dupe and harass people.

Re:Get over yourself

[0123456]

"I happen to work in a bio lab and actually like it when the sales reps come by. I need their stuff and they're constantly filling me in on their new products."

But that's sales, not marketing. Marketing is trying to persuade people to buy stuff they don't want, sales is trying to persuade people to buy the stuff they want from you, not your competitors.

There are very, very few cases where popup ads are being used for sales, rather than marketing crap that I have no interest in: people who waste my time trying to convince me to buy their crap that I don't want are just scum.

We don't want your damned ads!

[squall14716]

In Soviet Russia, pop-up ads block you!

Ok, ok, I'm sorry for that. Why can't advertisers find a way to give ads to people who want them and leave the rest of us the fuck alone. If I make a concious effort to BLOCK your pop-ups, BLOCK your spam, then why would I ever want to buy your product?

I do not try to block small banner ads like the one at the top of this page. I have no problem with those. It's pop-up/under ads, spam, and banner ads that make you scroll down to see jack shit that really piss me off. I mean, make your ads non-intrusive and I'm sure more people who actually need/want what you are offering will click that ad.

What are more annoying are pop-up ads advertising pop-up lockers that cost "only $500!". Wow, what a bargain, Firefox cam at this outrageous price of free. Meh, end rant.

Uninstall Flash

[msponer]

If you do not have Flash installed, you do not see any of these annoying floating or transparent ads.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/docum en ts/remove_player.htm

step up to the plate

[eudas]

alright, you first.

eudas

So, did they miss the big hint?

[BillX]

Do you think the marketers will ever realize why there are 300 different types of popup-blocking software, but no AdWord-blocking software?

Block This

[DoctorYes]

I visited their web site. Ooops - Flash, that's blocked. So are all the CGI scripts, oops. Oh, you can't tell if I block or not?

I'm one who:
Runs Guard-IE with agressive settings on. If I want to see a Flash or other scripted site I'll turn the protector off. Otherwise kiss my lily white ass.

Puts the real nasties like the site mentioned into my hosts file as pointing to 127.0.0.1

Hates web ads with a passion.

So there you have it.

Speaking of Moz Devs

[Laebshade]

Adblock is a extension for Mozilla/Firefox that can block images, javascript, and even flash, among others. Works great.

Privoxy seems to block the ads just fine

[hayne]

I use Privoxy (version 3.03 on OS X) and the content of that site appears just fine - and without the annoying ads. Only one small ad near the bottom seemed to escape the Privoxy filters.

Re:Last Measure

[SacredNaCl]

Example
Of Floating Graphic At Tiger Direct It's apparently a javascript function.

Galeon works

[Dalcius]

I'm using Galeon 1.3.14 -- no problems using that page for me (clicked on one of the elements and it loaded). No popups (javascript enabled, popup blocking disabled).

I did catch a "If you have javascript disabled..." something or other for a flash of a second, but page content replaced it.

Re:About that custom hosts file link

[izora]

no wonder you are anonymous.

Superior Hosts File!

[EdgeOfEpsilon]

There's a better hosts file (well, more servers) at remember.mine.nu I use it and with Mozilla popup blocking, it's great! It's updated frequently and contains over 1800 servers. I practically never see ads anymore. And of course, like all Hosts based adblocking, it's platform independent and speeds up your connection.

90% of the bullshit stops at my firewall

[pair-a-noyd]

1. install Smoothwall 2.0 (smothwall.org)
2. install adzapper into smoothwall (sourceforge)
3. activate squid proxy in smoothwall

No more ads. ALL systems plugged into you lan are now protected. I don't care what they are, javascript, flash, gif, jpg, whatever.

The very few that do sneak through are easily tweaked out in adzapper settings.
On top of that Konqueror takes are of the strays that may sneak through pretty well.

It's damn rare that I see an ad for anything on my lan... :)

Not fair

[Anglos]

Doesn't seem fair to people who use browsers that don't support javascript.

DMCA Invocation

[limekiller4]

Why not just invoke the DMCA? All the popup blocker would need to do is require some sort of challenge-response to allow a popup to occur. Circumvention of that blocker would then be a violation of the DMCA.

...profit?

Proxomitron

[Anonymous Coward]

It owns. It's a powerful proxy filter that can let you view webpages exactly how you want to. It's better than a prepackaged block all because you get to control exactly what it filters by writing the filters yourself. It's not limited to ads; there are filters to enhance browsing and others. Of course it isn't as easy to use as something like google toolbar.

Re:posted this on fark already but...

[valkraider]

Doesn't beat Safari.

HTML object

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.popupcheck.com/ Check the unblockable pop up.

i went there and...

[Sfing_ter]

i went there and found a javascript that launched a flash ad that would not go away. So if i uninstalled flash would it not be there? Maybe I will just not go to those sites that use this crap. Fuggem.

I Totally Agree

[Avenel]

I actually click on Google adds regularly... Why? Because they are unobtrusive. I wish the advertisers would figure this out.

Source Code Note

[superyooser]

NOTE: For those trying to decode the script below, keep in mind that while
we force you to view our ads (to help pay operating expenses), we
DO NOT make use of popups or popunders. We do also try to limit the size
and number of traditional banner ads that we use.

Users may not like banner ads, but without advertising revenues to
pay the cost of operating this site, this site would not exist.

Think of the ads as a no cost use fee to access this site. The alternative
is paid subscriptions. We don't know about you, but we don't like the idea
of having to pay money everytime we want to access some site like this one.

I didn't see the ad, nor did I get a "popup blocker detected" page. I'm using Mozilla 1.7 beta on Windows XP, JavaScript enabled, popups disabled.

Re:why-Mr Whipo.

[NetGyver]

What a wonderful idea! Would be a great medium to put my hemorrhoid topical cream and glass sandpaper ads on. To think that it was in front of my face..err under my ass the whole time. If you don't like it, wipe and flush.

Ads that actually *work* for you...now that's a concept.

Customised?

[radsoft]

a customized HOSTS file

Sure. But the origin of this and the easiest way to do it is with this little gem:

ftp://radsoft.net/pub/bloatbusters/silencer.zip

Dictionaries are cheap and abundant!

[vprice509]

"As far as I am concerned they can place as many transparent images as they want. He probably meant translucent." No, he probably meant "transparent", which means see-through, not invisible, as you seem to imply. A clear light bulb is TRANSPARENT. A frosted one would be TRANSLUCENT. Word.

<obvious>?

[trezor]

• I happen to work in a bio lab and actually like it when the sales reps come by.

Likes marketing? Evil, definetly. Biology? Then it must be evil biology!

Usefull insight

[trezor]

• he made the insightful comment that if an ad is bad enough that you remember it, then the ad has paid itself off

This explains a lot.

Re:Usefull insight

[bludstone]

Well, think about it.

How many people have said "God, I hate those Quiznos Commercials."

Mission accomplished.

FYI, Ive eaten at Quiznos once. It was gross. I dont reccomend it at all.

MSIE issue?

[trezor]

• In fact, most current implementations of floating DIV ads leave mozilla users alone.

I'm curious. Is this because of ad-blocking, or simply a result of broken MS-HTML?

/too lazy too google

DCMA + Circumvention

[BeCre8iv]

Surely this counts as an attempt to circumvent security features. Class action anyone.

Re:Morals != Ethics

[Rich0]

Morals - ethics - whatever... The only distinctions are made by people who charge a fortune so that you can take courses in ethics so that you can feel enlightened and advertise that you run an ethical tobacco company...

In the end it boils down to doing what is right all the time, and not just whatever you can get away with.

Sure, right and wrong are sometimes gray areas that mean different things to different people. However, most business decisions are made without virtually any regard to anything other than the bottom line, and what is good for the manager making the decision. And that, by any decent standard, is completely wrong.

Sure, people will argue whether A is wrong, or B is wrong, but most executives make decisions without even bothering to care whether it is right or wrong, and use the existance of some gray areas in ethics to justify not bothering to give the consequences of their actions a thought.

Ethics, morals, or whatever you want to call it... It all boils down to doing the right thing. Sure, we're not perfect, and nobody will ever be perfect, but when the only thought you have when making a decision is looking out for number one, that is just despicable...

In praise of 'Commercial Entertainment'

[iamcf13]

I'm thinking of a handfull of them now....

Ridley Scott's Apple '1984' commercial....

Wendy's 'Where's the Beef?' campaign with (the late) Clara Peller....

That Coca Cola commercial with football player Joe Green and the kid....

The Cheer detergent commercial series with the silent, glasses wearing guy and the classical music background soundtrack....

All four were ads but somehow the 'sales pitch' got lost in the 'artistry' of the commercial.

I don't mind watching commercials like these because they are entertaining most of all.

Nowadays, that aspect is lost on most commercials aired today. It's all about marketing--setting up a favorable environment to persuasively showcase the product in: desparate and phony as a three dollar bill.

And don't get me started about 'ad creep' and 'product placement'.

Well now, if the marketers entertain first and market second, more people may watch their commercials instead of skipping over them with their VCRs and PVRs....

Commercials that are not entertaining (or at least informative) are percieved as a waste of time and treated as such. The industry's only other alternative would be to ban the existence of 'commercial skip' and 'fast forward' buttons on VCRs and PVRs manufactured in the future....

Floating images - No worry

[Saggi]

As far as I know popup's are opening new windows. This is very annoying, as you can have tons of new windows (and even windows poping up as you close the old ones) coming up to mess up you desktop.

Now pop-up blockers stop this!

If you enter a site that puts ads on top of their content (like floating <div>'s or similar) I don't really mind. When I close the window to that site - goodbye ad!

So the annoying part of popups are gone.... Hopefully.

Nope.

[The Cydonian]

Tried it here (F11 + refresh) Doesn't work. No idea how they might

In any case, I'd REALLLLLY like to see them buy a Nokia 6600 or a Sony Ericsson P800 and try to browse their site.

Re:Nope.

[danila]

They use Javascript to find out the size of the window and your resolution. If these differ by less than 90 pixels, they assume you run in fullscreen. Apparently the script has a few glitches.

Use Lynx or OffByOne - problem solved.

[iamcf13]

Use Lynx or OffByOne - problem solved.

Lynx is a text-only web browser.

Off By One is a script-free web browser.

Both browsers are immune to popups--hence no need for a popup blocker for the two leading browsers or 'New Online Ad Technology To Bypass Popup Blockers'.

That reminds me

[JediTrainer]

My parents purchased a Vista phone from Bell Canada which had a fairly large fancy-shmancy screen on it. The idea was that you can use the thing as a phone/address book and also do other "neat" things with it.

Much to their surprise, the damned phone now displays ads (a new one every 10-15 seconds or so), 24/7 on this annoying, brightly-lit green LCD screen.

If I were them I would have tossed it by now. Or sued Bell.

My Reply

[tarsi210]

My reply to their webmaster:

I just thought I would give a bit of feedback on your banner blocking blocking (?) policy.

First, I think that if you cannot encourage subscriptions by members-only content or other benefits, perhaps you need to rethink the design of your site. There are many sites that I gladly pay a subscription to because the benefits offered to subscribed members is worth my time and the value is good.

Secondly, I believe that the issue here is trust. Websites have lost my trust as a user when it concerns advertising. Although you say your site does not use pop-over/pop-under ads or other more annoying forms thereof, there are sites that do. There are also sites where the advertising content is overdone or oppressive; hence, in addition to regular popup blockers I run a custom HOSTS file to block ad content. I am tired of being mentally violated by the Internet.

Thirdly, I find that ads are next to never effective when not properly directed. As an anonymous user to your site, you do not know about me or my preferences, my likes or dislikes, or my interests. Hence, your ads cannot be properly directed towards my interests. If websites would take more of an interest in directing their ad campaigns so that visitors would see things that they would possibly purchase, I believe the effectiveness would go up incredibly. Some sites do -- Amazon is a prime example of showing me things related to my interests. More sites could take that example.

Finally, I want you to know that I am not against online advertising. I think that it can be an effective way of generating revenue and, honestly, there are few ways of doing so if you are not selling actual products. However, your current ad processes will prevent me from visiting again as I cannot yet trust sites to deliver to me an experience that is worth my time when dealing with advertising.

Re:My Reply

[KLBProductions]

I'm the owner of the site in question and I did indeed receive Nathan's message earlier today. Before I get to the response I sent to Nathan, I would like to point out a few details.

First this site is not a big money maker for me. It is primarily a labor of love. I started the site as a hobby back in 1995 and took on a life of its own. Over time it has gotten more and more expensive to operate as it has become more popular. There have been many years where advertising revenues did not even come close to covering costs. I don't expect to ever get "rich" on this site, I just hope to earn enough to pay expenses and justify the time I spend researching new content for it.

Last fall I came to a realization, I had to bring costs under control and increase revenues in order to be able to continue to operate this site. After reading and tracking many threads in different forums about banner advertising and ad-blocking, I felt this was one area that I could both reduce my costs and increase revenues. As an experiment I developed countermeasures that would deny access to my site when people were using ad-blocking software I could not circumvent.

To my utter surprise, I immediately began to see an increase in advertising revenues and have seen no negative impact in my traffic levels. If my current revenue trends continue, I will be able to afford to shift the site to a dedicated server later this summer as will be necessary to handle my projected growth in traffic.

In regards to the comment about the "apparent" irony of my promoting ZoneAlarm while ZoneAlarm has ad blocking abilities. My reason for promoting it is that in my normal consulting life, I find way too many machines that have been compromised by hackers, malware and worms/viruses. By promoting security products like ZoneAlarm I am hoping to encourage at least a few people to take a more active roll in protecting their computers. BTW to date, I have never earned a commission off of that banner, even so I keep it because I want to raise awareness of the issue.

In regards to the following comment:
> no, free of charge does not mean I give you permission to force
> unwanted and useless content into my home. advertising being
> heard isn't a right. it's a privilege that can and will be revoked if
> taken too far. and it HAS gone too far.

I don't force anyone to visit my site and access my content, however, the terms of gaining free access to my site is to also accept my ads. If users block my ads, they are redirected to a AD-FREE page that explains this. Users are then free to either unblock my ads, pay a subscription fee to access my content ad-free or use someone else's site. The choice is up to the user.

=====
NOW ON TO THE REPLY I SENT TO NATHAN:
Thank you for writing us with your opinion in a polite and thoughtful manner. I will attempt to address some of your points below.

> First, I think that if you cannot encourage subscriptions by
> members-only content or other benefits, perhaps you need to rethink
> the design of your site. There are many sites that I gladly pay a
> subscription to because the benefits offered to subscribed members is
> worth my time and the value is good.

The ability to generate subscriptions has little to do with our use of banner ads. We feel that having two options to access our site allows users to choose what method works best for them. If they are willing to directly support our efforts, they can access our site banner ad free. If they are not willing to support our efforts directly then we expect them to support us indirectly by allowing our ads to run. We don't expect users to act upon our ads, we simply expect them to give us the opportunity to try and find ads that would interest them.

> Secondly, I believe that the issue here is trust. Websites have lost
> my trust as a user when it concerns advertising. Although you say
> your site does not use pop-over/pop-und

Ad Muncher

[Sparr0]

I give it a day after the introduction of these ads before there is an Ad Muncher (or Privoxy, for the linux folks, or Proxomitron for the weirdos) filter to block them. Anyone care to make a wager? Ad blocking adapts a hell of a lot faster than the ads themselves do.

Re:error pages

[pmsyyz]

Also, because of bug 157004 Use original URL in history and URL bar when an error page is generated

You need the Show Failed URL extension.

They should be sued under DMCA by popup-block

[Freeman-Jo]

Seriously, why not. Since most company outthere already abuse DMCA. It's circumventing the pop-up block technology

Dead

[lorcha]

Now that's what I call a dead Proxomitron!

Quiznos commercials

[AtariAmarok]

"How many people have said "God, I hate those Quiznos Commercials.""

Quiznos ad exec at meeting: "We can't license Jar Jar Binks. However, I think I can still come up with something to REALLY drive the customers away!"

Some Proximitron filters

[danila]

Here are a few simple filters to enjoy the site using anything, including Opera. First one unhides the body (useful on the first page), second one unhides the content (on all other pages), third one explicitly blocks one of their ad blocks, fourth one removes the name "Opera" from the User-Agent string when Opera tries to spoof it as MSIE. To hide the ads themselves, please use your favourite ad-blocker.

[Patterns]
Name = "Retards at EnvChem.com"
Active = TRUE
URL = "*environmentalchemistry.com*"
Bounds = "<style*</style>"
Limit = 1024
Match = "\1visibility:hidden\2"
Replace = "\1visibility:visible\2"

[Patterns]
Name = "Retards at EnvChem.com 4"
Active = TRUE
URL = "*environmentalchemistry.com*"
Bounds = "<style*</style>"
Limit = 1024
Match = "\1{display:none}\2"
Replace = "\1{display:inline}\2"

[Patterns]
Name = "Retards at EnvChem.com 2"
Active = TRUE
URL = "*environmentalchemistry.com*"
Bounds = "<TD*</td>"
Limit = 10000
Match = "*class="RightBottom"*"

[HTTP headers]
In = FALSE
Out = TRUE
Key = "User-Agent: IEONLY (out) "
Match = "*MSIE*Opera*"
Replace = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)"

Re:Works here

[danila]

You are just lucky. Not only you need to disable Javascript, but you also need to block User-Agent alltogether and you need Opera version that doesn't support CSS properly.

The content is hidden with display:none and is displayed using JavaScript. The server looks at User-Agent in the HTTP request and adds a redirect to pages served to Opera users.

BlackListing Spam / Popup Advertisers

[reeherj]

This is just an idea, and maybe it exists, I haen't really gone looking for it. But what about a web site that compiles a list of Pop-up adds, and the product they are advertising, possibly formulated from some of the Pop-up blockers. Then, along with that database, compile a list of the products competitors that do NOT employ pop-ups and spam advertising tactics. That way, before making an online purchase you can check and make sure that the company is "clean" in thier marketing practices?

(I would suggest building this into pop-up blocking software, to offer alterative sites, but I'm sure law suits would ensue)

Oh well, just some thought food.