Slashdot Mirror
End Run Around Pop-up Blockers
An anonymous reader writes "The pop-up arms race continues, cnet has this article on how advertisers are responding to pop-up blockers." Can't wait for a full page of javascripted user-initiated pop-ups.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I have not had one popup since I fully switched to FireFox (around 6 months ago).
There is also a FireFox extension that blocks those annoying Flash popunder ads.
If the code is on the page, The Proxomitron can kill it. I haven't seen a pop-up that has been able to get past it yet, and even if one did, I could just make a new filter to kill all pop-ups of that sort.
It also blocks other ads, background midis, flash animations, and all sorts of other annoyances in addition to adding functionality to other sites if you're clever enough to write some nice regular expressions and HTML code.
Wonderful little program.
If a user has specifically installed software in order not to see popups, why do advertisers think they will be inclined to click them if they do somehow get through?
It's aiming at the wrong targets - how many Firefox users will click a X10 camera ad just because it evaded their filter? I'd say alot more will simply take the address and add it to their hosts file pointing at 127.0.0.1 to stop the popup from returning. It's like putting MS ads on Slashdot - how many users will click compared to all those that chuckle at MS's wasted money on putting the ad there.
And this is good for advertising how?
If you are using a pop-up blocker, then you clearly ARE NOT going to appreciate the advertising and the money spent to bring it to you is completely worthless.
Another inane act from marketers.
Yet another reason to abandon IE in favor of alternative browsers.
Firefox is better, of course, but then you have all of the Firefox spyware to deal with.
If there is one thing that will make me leap from my chair and purchase your product it is annoying me with a popup. I'll be doubly interested if you specifically try to circumvent my implicit wish not to be disturbed by your adverts. Oh yes, you'll be sure to make me a customer for life.
This post sponsored by the Sarcasm for Life initiative
They already block the majority of these new types of pop-ups in their newest releases, and I believe they're finishing support for the last few not blocked. As for the new "CSS Popups" it's pretty easy to block those via usercontent.css. They generally use some css id, which is easy to add a "display: none" to.
I see more and more people getting fed up with IE these days and switching to Firefox (they seem to like it better than Mozilla since the UI is closer to IE).
What's a popup? Between Safari on my Mac and Mozilla on Win/Linux, I can't remember the last time that I saw a non-user initiated popup.
Any workarounds the ad companies have found must be for the way the google toolbar works, not any of the above programs and their methodologies for blocking popups.
Since I don't use IE and that toolbar at all, I don't care!
So let's get this straight- one "photographer from the UK" installed Google popup blocker, and then it stopped working(probably, if anything, because her machine got infected with spyware/adware). What about Mozilla's blocking functionality? Opera? Safari? Oops, that'd be asking too much of our dear news.com.com.com.com.com reporter(and folks- remember why they use "news.com.com"; so their tracking cookies work across all their sites).
I use Safari's popup blocking setting and it works fantastically. All of the time. Since the day I started using Safari- ie, the day it was publicly beta'd.
What I really want, however, is a "turn off flash" quick menu item, same for animated gifs; Opera had that, and it was great. Disabling all plugins actually works pretty well too, and kills off many rather annoying ads.
Please help metamoderate.
...pop-ups are dying. More and more people are blocking pop-ups altogether. If it doesn't work right without them, your site is "broken". Less and less legitimate sites use pop-ups. It'll be many more still when IE finally gets it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Silence! Google can do no evil.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Click here to see some sneakier popup methods. Some even get around firefox popup blocking, although I'm certain that once they become popular, the army of mozilla hackers will find a way to block them.
But I use Links!
It is probably time to apply spam-blocking techniques to popup ads.
The article talks about how Javascript mouseover commands are being used to launch popup windows in a "user-prompted" fashion, thereby defeating Google's and other vendors' popup blockers that rely on detecting non-requested popups.
So, what is needed is a browser plugin that communicates with a central server. As a user of this plugin, when I encounter a popup ad or a Flash ad, I simply close it manually with ctrl-click or something similar, and the plugin reports the Javascript command that originally launched the ad to the server. Whenever any Web page tries to spawn a new window, the plugin checks with the server to see if the page and Javascript line in question is trying to spawn an ad. A plurality of "yes" votes -- ctrl-clicks from users like me who visited the page earlier -- would cause the plugin to suppress the unwanted window or Flash feature.
You would need a voting system to prevent abuse of the system by people reporting legitimately-requeted popups. Dynamically-composed pages would be another problem, but perhaps the domain-specific nature of ads would be sufficient to detect unwanted popups. (Even simple rules like "Never close windows spawned by mbnanetaccess.com; always close windows spawned by forbes.com" would be a big step ahead of the current state of the art in popup-blocking).
Haven't seen one of those in... well, since I installed Mozilla. Are those really a problem for people?
Heh heh heh. [/smirk]
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
The ad's cost X per click for the twit paying for them. The rate is based on the amount of legitimate click throughs for the site.
How hard would it be to create a browser plugin that will hide the ads, but still 'click' on them? If the the number of such plugins in use became prevalent enough, then the advertisers would be charged more money, since their accounts show more click throughs. But since these are false positives, the increase in sales associated with those click throughs would not materialize.
Once this hits a critical mass, all such ads will become useless, nothing more then costly traffic that drains dramatically more revenue then it creates.
You wont get rats to stop trying to eat your food by hiding it. They just look harder for it because they know its still there. But if you can poison the food, they will die painfully.
END COMMUNICATION
Why does anyone leave Javascript on? Its main feature is the ability to have pop-ups thrown at you, and its other features are about as useless and annoying.
But people insist on requiring it to use their buttons on their sites sometimes, so instead of putting so much effort into detecting when a pop-up is coming, I'd much prefer it if there was an easy way to turn scripting on or off. Like a tiny toolbar with two little radio buttons.
Anybody know off the top of their heads if that's do-able without waiting for Microsoft to do it?
That knife cuts both ways. You'll keep developing new ways to serve adds, and we'll keep blocking them.
I do think, however, that there are more people who dislike popups than who benefit from their continuing as a viable marketing option.
Advantage: Us.
Or does the whole pop-up/spam phenemenon remind anyone else, at least in it's probable lifespan, as just another tech fad? It's becoming a large issue because of its annoyance value, but as many people are saying, it's dying out...almost all major browsers have or will soon have (IE in SP 2 I believe) blockers, which will adapt just as quickly as the people creating the ads in the first place--and mail most mail servers and programs already handle spam (for the most part) extremely well, and will only get better at what they do.
If you're in the field of creating all this glut, I'd suggest a career change; not simply because I think you should rot in all 7 layers of hell for making computer harder on my mother than it already was, but because you'll soon be out of a job.
I know nothing
I have google toolbar that blocks popups, but some things still get through. I suspect that they might have a deal to let some ads through?
Click for offensive t-sh
Contrary to popular belief, these ADs are not targeted at the ./ community, or anyone in general who can figure out the workings of computers. These ADs are targeted at Joe Normal who had his techie buddy build him a computer.
Every built a computer for someone with Windows on it? Did you put Adaware, or a pop-up blocker on it? Do you think the person you built it for knows what these things do, or even that they are there at all? Those are the people these ADs are targeted at, as those people actually might click on an AD and buy something as opposed to all of us who just update our AD blocking program of choice.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
... is the Vodka advert at the top of slashdot. For whatever reason, the cursor on my screen keeps flickering whenever it plays. Although the simplest solution (next to running an adblocker) is to scroll the window down a bit.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
People keep adding nifty new features to browsers without thinking through the security implications. Any unwanted behavior is a security issue.
The best solution is a browser that has built in popup support, not a lame IE hack of some kind. The worst solution is popup signitures which tend to change over time as companies try to break popup blockers which rely on signitures.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
...with Safari both at home and at work/school. I quite honestly forgot that popups exist.
I agree...I can even block iframe ads and images with wildcards.
Plus with FlashBlock, it gives me the option to not run a flash, etc.
It's amazing.
Add that to IP and domain name based blocking I do on my router, I can block most intrusive ad servers that try to take over the system.
Well, this is good to see, but I can't help but think that there is some marketing angle for MS behind it. Bumfuzzling. But then again, why would they offer pop-up blocking, but be so adamant against tabbed browsing? One is imitative of a supposed rival (Google not Mozilla/Safari/Firefox) so why not the other? I hate to ape /. canon, but tabbed browsing is the shiznit.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Anybody know off the top of their heads if that's do-able without waiting for Microsoft to do it?
Opera has various settings in the quick-preferences window. Press "F12" and deselect the JavaScript-box (or set the preferences for popup blocking there).
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
I develop a contextual/live feed advertising system (yes flame me if you wish) and we have one guy who attends IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) events here in the UK, so I get to hear about all the "latest and greatest" advertising formats.
/.ers don't have too much to worry about.
In response to the adblocking technology several new ad formats are being approved for general usage and they all suck.Basically the new ad formats are much much bigger than the current sizes. I can't remember what sizes they were but I was crying when I was told. (bad luck 800x600 users)
Other "great" news from the cutting edge of advertising is that more full movie streaming ads will become popular (obviously with advertisers not with users)
And worst of all what are currently blockable popup ads will be replaced with Flash overlays that fly around screen.
Apparently the IAB did an expensive study in the states into what normal users thought of all these new ad formats (pop-ups, pop-unders, flash overlays, dhtml etc,) And the result was that most users call all annoying ads "pop-ups" and they really hate them. Well duh, I'm not sure what the point of *that* study was for.
On the plus side I remember hearing that IAB guidlines will recommend all flash overlays have a close button.
So in general the whole state of affairs depresses me ALOT. I don't think the IAB/advertisers have even got Avalon on their radar yet, but I imagine Avalon ads will enable a whole new generation of annoying ads.
For normal users this will all suck, but most of the ads probably won't work on a standard debian install so
The ad's cost X per click for the twit paying for them. The rate is based on the amount of legitimate click throughs for the site.
Not always.
Some ads are paid on a cost-per-clickthrough basis.
Other ads are paid on a per-display basis - a mass marketer like Coke isn't going to sell Coke online, but you still build the brand awareness.
Other ads are paid on a per-action basis - if a user clicks on the ad, goes to the site, and does some action (usually buy something from the advertiser), only then does the webhost get paid.
By using overlays & stylesheets you can float an ad on top of a regular web page.
And since mozilla is one of the few standards-complant browsers that allow you to do overlays properly, you can get these ads. If the DHTML serves the ad from the same site as the webhost, it is much, much harder to block.
Some of my web applications use pop-ups (never for ads, though). Not a single one of them gets blocked by the Google toolbar pop-up blocker. Since some of those pop-ups are necessary for running the app, I was glad to discover this. But I've always wondered why that is.
Popups are irritating because they, well, pop up, when you least expect it, where you least expect it, and have to spend time and nerves closing it. But when you use tabbed browsing and set new windows to open up as new tabs, this problem is gone. It is when I use a browser without tabs for some time and notice those ugly popups that I think - why don't I ever notice any popups? And this is because when an ad appears in some tab, I just click where the X that closes the tab usually is and get it over with.
Marketers are increasingly becoming for the internet what ticks are to a dog.
Around 1996 or so, a friend was lamenting the increasing commercialization of the Internet. I remember thinking that he was maybe overreacting a bit, and that the trend was maybe even a good thing since it didn't take away any of the other uses of the net, but just added to it. And at the time, it was in fact quite benign, and often even positive. But now, spammers and web marketers are abusing and undeniably damaging the medium. When users have to criple features to stem the deluge of marketing, those features are rendered unviable for desireable uses as well. It isn't benign at all anymore. The cancer of Internet commercialization is now malignant.
Mod parent -1 FREELOADER!
It's like putting MS ads on Slashdot - how many users will click compared to all those that chuckle at MS's wasted money on putting the ad there.
You seem to assume that all or even most slashdot readers are clueful about linux. But even the most casual glance at the comments, even the highly rated ones, should show you that many/most of the posters here are indeed regular Windows users. They might be more aware of some of the benefits of using Linux or other FLOSS but they haven't bought into the full package. Microsoft is wise to attempt to FUDify them before they actually make the switch to another OS.
501 Not Implemented
Safari and Camino block all these popups except the ones that happen when you click on a link. This kind is about the closest you can come to legitimate. So, I would say they passed. I would assume that Camino and Firefox use the same engine for this, as they're both based on Mozilla, but I could be wrong there.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
How long until the pop-up/under/in-your-face ad assholes are going to resort to this rhetoric?
The owls are not what they seem
yeah? i'll use my limited bandwidth, that i pay for by the GB, to hit these bastards where it might hurt depending on their unbeknownst to me payment scheme. whatever. i'll just continue blocking them and adding urls to my hosts file and to adblocker.
a slut did tulsa
You seem to have posted a link to Lynx, and not Links.
> because her machine got infected
Is this one of those dumb uses of "her" in an attempt to not offend people easily offended by the use of "his"? If so, "their" is a perfectly good gender-neutral word.
Or of course, since the person's name was given as "Paul Haigh", I expect "his" would have been a better choice.
In the main version of Mozilla there's an option for animated gifs; you can set them not to loop, loop once, or however many times the image wants to. For some idiotic reason they took the option out of the preferences panel for FireWhatever. You can still get at it through about:config; set image.animation_mode to "once" or "none." Done.
Bender: "What-ups?"
Fry: "Pop-ups!"
Bender: "Pop-whats?"
Fry: "Pop-ups!"
Bender: "What-whats?"
Mac. Mozilla. Scripts turned off. Flash not installed. Ctrl-click, 'Block images from this server' on annoying banners. End result: great internet experience. Maybe the other 99% of users will get this as well when IE finally supports pop-up blocking...
You must think in Russian.
Is there really any need for pop-ups in the first place? how many people here actually regularly use a site where pop-ups are not-only useful, but essential and there could have been no other way around the design? I only know of one use for them and thats for small message 'refresh' windows that check for messages etc and even that could be done plenty of other ways. Sure there are many sites that use them for other things but none of these are actually needed!? If i want something to open in a new window (tab) i shift-click it. I use operas pop-up blocker and if i ever hit a site that gets around that ill just turn off javascript. Web design has really gone down hill and theres some appauling stuff out there.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I get most angry when i visit a friend's home, and they complain about the incessant pop-ups. Usually, they have gotten adware on their computer.
The sad thing is, they're usually ignorant of how it happened. I remember, two weeks ago, my buddy was using my computer, and i told him "Use Firefox" and he was like "No, I like IE." I went to pick up a friend, and by the time i got back, there was already some Claria powered program installed on my computer. He swore up and down he didn't install anything, but it didnt matter, i had to run Ad-Aware and SpyBot (Search and Destroy) to get rid of all the crap that had got installed in less than an hour.
Now, when i fix my friends's computers, i put Firefox and Privoxy on their computers. They don't bitch to me anymore about pop-ups.
gum2me?
Firefox + adblock + hosts file + edexter = fast advert free browsing
"their" is a perfectly good gender-neutral word.
...when you are referring to more than one person
Translation for the simple minded:
Theoretically, there are more people who hate ads working on technology to stop ads than there are people who like ads working on technology to serve them.
People are the issue when it comes to developing technology.
The problem I've had with a few popup blockers is that they are not particularly intelligent. Some of them can't even tell the difference between a popup and when you create a new instance of your browser. Beating advertisers requires intelligent filtering at the HTTP stream level, and I've found that the Proxomitron is an excellent proxy that does this. Unfortunately, the writer burned out and it's no longer supported. As such, I've heard really good things about Provoxy, but I can't make a recommendation since I've never used it.
As far as Proxomitron goes, it makes my surfing much more pleasurable. Annoying Flash ads that pop up and make noise and block what you're reading? Gone. Pop-up mouse traps? I laugh in their face. Sidebar/banner ads? What are those? Sometimes, however, the Proxomitron DOES munge some sites due to its filtering, but all you have to do is double click its taskbar icon, punch the "Bypass" button, and reload your browser. A small price to pay compared to punching your monitor in because an ad just took over your browser.
For fighting spam, popups and malware in general, I find Cexx to be a good site. They have a decent list of anti spyware/adware apps, and lenghthy and informative analyses of the various spyware running around.
-R
I concur. I've been using links full time for about a year now. It is fantastic. Just try it out. Unfortunately, its javascript support is a bit limited, so some completely broken websites do not work properly, but mos do.
l inks/
Here is the correct link for links:
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And for one person as well, assuming you don't follow Latin grammar rules in English.
I'm surprised that they haven't figured this out.
This sig no verb.
I run Mozilla and still use Proximitron. It is free, flexible, stable and easily configurable using downloadable config files. I think it is superior than Mozilla's built-in functions (though I haven't played with them in a while) and it allows me to use IE on those #$#!% sites that I need to vistit but require IE.
Too bad the original author abandoned the project about a year ago - but there are still quite a few user support sites around.
a mass marketer like Coke isn't going to sell Coke online, but you still build the brand awareness.
In the context of pop up ads, I think the term you're looking for is "intense loathing". I'm already aware of Coke, but at present I'm not motivated to send them death threats.
Using /etc/hosts and the Adblock xpi within FireFox blocks everything I want. Even the IP addresses of all RIAA and MPAA domains ;-)
:-)
On Windows the hosts file is to be found in windows\system32\drivers\etc
The format of a hosts file looks like this
127.0.0.1 domainname
or
127.0.0.1 IP address
As 127.0.0.1 is localhost all requests to 'domainname' will be redirected to localhost. This works well on most operating systems.
A good example for a preconfigured hosts file can be found at http://remember.mine.nu
Don't forget to add the porn blocker hosts file which can be found within one of the listboxes on that site. My hosts file contains more than 88000 entries
As most trustworthy sites don't require Javascript and Java most users can deactivate it. Annoying Flash ads can be blocked with the Adblock XPI for Mozilla FireFox.
you might need to play in about:config but mine worked ok (win32 0.8)
Simple, Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Java & Java Script In the Java Script tab Select Smart for Open new windows, it really is smart!
Some of us are on Gentoo! How dare you suggest that every /.er runs standard debian?
I've installed pop-up blockers on all of the computers in our laboratory as well as the other labs on our floor. Thanks to an advertisement that managed to slip through, just last week I had a tech. come to me all paniced that there may be porn stored on her computer. She was very aware that her computer had a pop-up stopper.
I'm constantly amazed by how some of the same people who complain about pop-up and how no one ever pays attention to them, gunk up their computer by downloading pop-up suggested crap.
I find most of the pop-ups target computer illiterate individuals - "Your time may be wrong!", "Protect your computer NOW!!", "There may be porn stored on your computer!". You, my slashdotting friends, are not the target audience.
Besides, a lot of floaters only work on IE. I'm mostly safe w/ Sarafi or Mozilla.
AC comments get piped to
0.0.0.0 is EVERY interface it is not invalid including your webserver, always use a non-existing ip like 127.0.0.3 if you run a webserver
Advertisers have apparently gotten around Google's pop up blocker. It still catches many pop-ups but some sites (like GameDev.net) have pop ups that don't get blocked.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
These are the ads that will randomly make you view an advertisement whenever you click on a link. You get a full-page ad and have to click a link to get to the page you originally requested.
IGN.com is notorious for using it.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
-
Windows opened from scripting are treated as children of the parent window. When the parent window closes, so must the child window. When the parent window is moved to the back or minimized, the child windows must do the same. (You can still minimize or dismiss the child window, of course.)
-
Windows opened by scripting should retain some visual association with the parent window. They
should overlap it at least slightly, unless the
user moves the window.
-
Windows opened by scripting have a user-settable maximum size. Anything bigger than this comes up with scroll bars.
-
Flash animations must be closeable and blockable.
Flash, and all other "controls", should run in a jail, permitted to talk to the screen and the originating site only. There must be right-click menu options to kill any "control", whether it likes it or not.
-
All windows have close buttons.
-
No script can open more than one window per user click.
We need to keep control of the browser GUI in the user's hands, no matter what the site tries to do.Since annoyance is clearly a working marketting tool (why else would Gilbert Gotfried still be popular on commercials?) and SPAM shows no signs of being slowed and clearly, as the article shows, pop-ups are getting increasingly more aggressive, I have decided to create my own more effective marketting technique.
I plan to hire thousands of people to pass out hand-bills door-to-door. What? Not new? Oh yes it is... Studies show that prime-time for this activity is when people are home! So part of the plan is to knock on their doors during dinner time. Still not new? I'm not done... After they answer the door, he will push his way into your home and punch you in the face, change the channel on your TV to always come up to our commercials, change the speed dials on your phone while we are putting a bug in it so we know who you are calling, and then tape the handbill to your face with duct tape so you can't miss seeing it.
We think that will be enough to make people want to buy our stuff...
to host files and images to replace the pop-ups with my own images and files. Much useful than the file not found errors. I replace the 404 error HTML file with one I want to see on a local 127.0.0.1 web server.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I have read many posts on this thread saying we can end the problem just by disabling this or that in the browser.
Ya know what? we could increase fuel efficiency in cars greatly if we just disable the engine!
Get the point?
- There are lots of ligitamate and good uses for flash, javascript, java, css, and so on.
Would the ones that promote disabling features really want to go back to the crappy featureless, tool-less, mostly text internet that we had only 7 or 8 years ago?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Anyone seen this one before? If you put
<img src="telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl/">
in a page it'll pop up a telnet window in mozilla not explorer. Works on a lot of message boards too.
Ah yes, Firefox 1.0 will be sweet when it comes out. Much better than IE, even on its best day!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
2. Global and Other Specialized Address Blocks
0.0.0.0/8 - Addresses in this block refer to source hosts on "this"
network. Address 0.0.0.0/32 may be used as a source address for this
host on this network; other addresses within 0.0.0.0/8 may be used to
refer to specified hosts on this network [RFC1700, page 4].
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3330.html
enjoy
I've seen firefox fail to block pop-ups at the NYTimes and at Popular Science on more than one occasion. Maybe it DHTML. Dunno.
I don't use adblock, I maintain a hosts file with known ad servers so the stuff never loads in the first place.
Specifically:
- experts exchange. I never want to see you guys, I want links to the developer's website + mail archives (this one I block by having my own customized html form for google with the extra options)
- searching for a 'review' of any electronic product pops up screeds of reseller online catalogues, best price guides etc and never one fucking review. You have to add words which are likely to appear in a review, like 'sucks' and 'shiny' to find the real reviews.
- searching for bands gives the same shit - catalogue style interfaces purporting to tell me everything I wanted to know about the band, but in reality its one of a bazillion holding pages.
Can we install ad blockers on Google??!!
I use myie2 and I don't get any popups whatsoever. Also, it has a built in content ad blocker, so I don't see any ads on slashdot either.
since my squid proxy with adzap cleans the page out. I see a blank page with a click to continue link.
Do you know the feeling you get when people around you speak about something you don't know much about? Like a Linux user listening to a conversation between two Outlook Express users? Or a CS student listening to the problems of two marketing students?
:)
Well, that is the case with me and pop-up ads. Every time I see someone trying to solve this, I'm like "WTF?". Been using Opera 6.x since it was available, then Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox since it was quite stable. Only time is see a pop-up is when I have to launch IE for some non-standard page, which is now almost never with Firefox.
I have never ever in my life seen a pop-under or whatever you call it, is it because I use Firefox or because the pages I usually visit do not use them? Could sb post a URL to one? I am starting to be curious
No, Opera _has_ that, and it _is_ great.
Opera's always been ahead of everyone else. They had "open requested pop-up windows only" before others even had "refuse all pop-up windows".
AdBlock is wonderful!
Don't forget the "Overlay flash" feature that comes with AdBlock: Hit CTRL+SHIFT+F and both flash and java applets will be covered with a nice box.
It's great for those sites you chance visit to read an linked article, but don't want to bother with adding blocking filters, because you probably won't be back.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
AC comments get piped to
"But I use Links!"
That'll kill the porn industry for sure.
Note the highlighted bit. 0.0.0.0/32 (the address we commonly call 0.0.0.0) can be used as a SOURCE address. That's quite different from being used as a DESTINATION address, which is what the entries in the hosts file will be used for in this case.
You need to look at RFC 1700 page 4, which the bit of RFC 3330 you quoted refers to:0.0.0.0 is specifically invalid as a destination address by RFC 1700.
All I got was "PopupDummy! Test Page " What I do wrong?
This probably has something to do with the fact that a large percentage of pop ups use deceptive techniques to get someone to click on them unwittingly.
From 'System Needs to Update, click anywhere in this window to Update your system', to 'Your system is not secure, click anywhere in this window to secure your system', to "Error Xb3t10-2, click anywhere in this window to continue", to ads that simulate windows and have their own 'close' buttons that are just part of the ad graphics, (Even I have accidentally clicked on those a few times,) there are myriad different 'strategies' that advertiseers use to trick people into thinking that the pop up is not an ad, but an essential message from their computer machine that they should obey.
Meanwhile, people have learned that 'click to win' banner ads generally aren't worth their time, and so they have stopped clicking on them as often as they used to.
With the current batch of viruses growing larger and more dangerous, there will be more people that know they should be worried abotu viruses,
As to floaters and various flash ads, browser makers and macromedia need to take some responsibility and provide options to prevent that kind of crap. Going to a website and then having a floating ad with motion and sound that I cannot close, or an ad that floats over what I am trying to read, is quite irritating, and I will never purchase.
For some companies that I normally buy from, I have sent letters explaining that their intrusive ads have caused me to lower my expenditures on their products. Generally I get back a canned response that places the blame on the advertising firm that made the ad. Apparently advertising firms are privateers now, that companies give payment and blessing to, and then take no respoinsibility for.
web designers were put the desired content into a pop-up? Meaning that you would have to allow pop-ups to see it, leaving you vulnerable to all the other pop-ups. Is this being done yet? I know some sites require you to enable cookies to "enjoy" the full content, or to set preferences.
What?
The reason Pop-Up ads have higher click thru has nothing to them being more effective, it has to do with the number of people that end up accidentally clicking on the ad as it pops under their mouse.
Admit it, how many of you have accidentally clicked on a pop-up because it happened to appear under your mouse as you were trying to click on something else?
Mozilla has not failed me once. Not a single ad in nearly a year has come through. And, quite simply, its features, security, and ease of use crush anything else out there right now, imho.
When I was using IE, there were times I had to just turn off my computer because the pop-ups were popping up faster than I could close them, eating up all my resources in the process.
Oh, and it's never crashed on me either.
//i have as many lives as people i know.
If someone could just create an enable/disable button for cookies, javascript, and plugins, and put it on a toolbar that I don't have to make a half dozen clicks to get to, bother-free browsing would be so much easier.
While not strictly necessary, cookies make detecting popup-blocking software a lot easier. I never get these DHTML overlay ads, because I have cookies enabled only for a precious few sites. I still get the annoying gigantic flash animations in the middle of the screen, and it would be nice to be able to kill those with a single click.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
That being said, Firefox and a good Adblock ruleset eliminates nearly 100% of these annoying things.
Adblock
Remember back in the old days, when people did HTML by hand? If you used a button or java, you always put a link in case the nav thingy failed, or if people were surfing with images off, since they had a brand new 14.4 modem (I did-a screaming replacement for my 9600).
Now I hear from people, mostly on dialup, (which is still very common), that this site or that site is so slow they never want to go there again. Maybe advertisers should know this, and stop trying to cram crap down peoples throat.
I hate flash, and refuse to use or support it. If I go to a site that has flash only and won't provide an alternate (I never enabled flash in Moz), then I just go away.
-cp-
Online gaming company to pan for gold
If you get rid of the spyware, and use Google Popup blocker or XP SP2, you don't have any problems.
In my experience, 99% of the popups comefrom spyware that is installed on the computer. If the software (spyware) is causing popups, google or any other blocker won't do jack.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I know it's a nitpick, but "The Internet" is a lot bigger than just what you see in your browser. I agree that there are legitimate uses for javascript, css, and even flash. But all languages evolve. Just because a language goes from version 1 to version 2 doesn't mean it can only add bells and whistles, sometimes it's good to take away "features" which have proven themselves to be liabilities.
that the article didn't even mention alternative browsers. That's just sad.
//i have as many lives as people i know.
That's not a very good way to look at the numbers. A better way is to point out the April 2003 numbers as well, Then you get a much better idea of the trend:
2002: 1.8 percent
2003: 6.0 percent
2004: 6.4 percent
The article says that the ads have tripled since the rise of the pop-up blockers, and while that's true, it is also true that the vast majority of that growth came before mid-2003. In the year since then, ad growth has been almost stangnant -- exactly what you would expect to see as the ad whores gradually realize that people hate their guts enough to take steps to rid them from their lives.
No, to me those numbers tell me the opposite of the conclusion reached by the article author. To me those numbers say that pop-up blockers were not only effective, they were noticed by the ad companies and it caused a slowdown in pop-up ad trends. Of course, being the lowlifes that they are, they are now going to other method to force us to see what we have explicitly shown them we don't want to see. But that's par for the course for these leeches.
IMNAL (obviously), but let's say I have an old example of using DHTML for advertising.
Would it be possible for the original creator to patent this form of advertising to keep others from doing it?
example
What the advertisers assume is that the site that I am visiting has such an appeal to me, that I will put up with the pop-ups etc to be able to view it.
:-))
Bzzzt. Wrong!
If a site goes to that much trouble to circumvent my blockers, well, I just don't visit it anymore.
Problem solved! Well for me anyway
Oh yes, I alwyas use the feedbak/comments page to TELL the site operators that they have lost my eyeballs.
If enough people would just stop visiting these sites.....
There are alternatives on the Internet.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
i dont know about you guys, but what i do, is only have flash installed for IE. then whenever i see a page i want that uses flash in a non evil way (homestarrunner.com) then ill do "run -> iexplore" paste url and blam. this leaves mozilla as pure ad free browsing bliss, so your not always constantly fighting flash ads with adblock.
nce this hits a critical mass, all such ads will become useless, nothing more then costly traffic that drains dramatically more revenue then it creates.
I can tell that you are a programmer. How?? I hate to be a grammar queen but you are using "then" wrong. The word you are looking for is "than". This is about the most prevalent misuse of a word on the internet.
There are amazingly easy ways to get around today's popular popup blockers. for example: this page (will open google in a popup when you move the mouse anywhere on the page, but only once, this is not a JS bomb) will quite happily circumvent both the google toolbar, and mozilla's internal popup blocker. I was truly surprised to see my beloved mozilla was so prone to easy workarounds.
I'm surprised that advertizers have not been exploiting things like this sooner.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The only drawback is that those sneaky bastards at google dot com have come up with a way around Lynx's state-of-the-art ad-blocking systems by using text ads, and everyone's following suit (cough /. cough).
This reminds me, am I the only one out there who wishes DNS were never created? Not to mention the mouse?
Kind of makes you *want* banner ad's doesn't it? Popup and Popunder ad's are the most intrusive and pain-in-the-arse type of advertising ever devised. If the advertising industry needs an alternative then I suggest they revert back to banner and side-bar advertising, as a former webmaster I didn't much care for advertising but knew it was a necessery evil for bandwidth cost's sake...
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
So best of all, those of us who don't install Flash because we believe the WWW should be authored using open standards, will not be affected.
boakes.org
Yo I just wanna send a shout-out to all my niggaz browsin at -1/oldest first. Holla at'chya boy, first-post troll fans!
Isn't it better that as many folks as possible click on those ads so it costs M$ more money that ends up getting paid to slashdot? Maybe it doesn't work that way. Someone set me straight if it doesn't. On a commercial website that I run, we get paid to put up a banner (not for M$, admittedly) and then get paid an additional amount for each click-through.
It's immaterial to me since I subscribe to Slashdot and avoid the ads anyway. You subscribe, too, don't you?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
My adblocker blocked the article! That's how good my adblocker is. :-)
You are correct.
technically there is no gender-neutral, singular word, and it is correct to say "him/her" or similar.
Since this is a colloquialism, it's much more fun to use the invented Spivak Pronouns to refer to gender neutral subjects.
im in ur
What we have to remember is that it is the browser, not the site that has control over what the user sees. The web browser is what interprets the Javascript, and should always have the upperhand.
Eventually, advertising will get smarter and there will be "user" initiated popups via mouserover, or get focus, but I am confident that popup blocking especially in mozilla will improve to protect us from web marketers. I think the only popups should be on user click.
I have yet to see a popup on my mozilla/fire/bird/fox for either windows or bsd.
Several years ago I was excited about Flash usage in web sites. Now I think Flash is becoming something I won't want installed in the future.
if you don't want to fiddle with the config files too much, try JD5000's filter sets. they're some of the best you can get, as well as do a good job at anticipating the annoyances of the future.
ESPN and CNN were both listed in the list of top pop-up/under ad users, and I visit both of those sites many times each day, and I never see a pop-up from either of them. In fact, I almost never see a pop-up ad from anyone... unless I disable my blockers.
I use two blockers, one by accident. I downloaded Google's toolbar because it helps me find anything anywhere on the net in about three seconds, rather than navigating to the Google home page in an additional two seconds. Time is money!
The other blocker I use is Ad-Watch, included with LavaSoft's Ad-Aware if you get the Plus or Premium version. Any pop-ups that the Google toolbar doesn't catch are caught by Ad-Watch, and I almost never see any at all. (The only time I do see them is when Ad-Watch is temporarily disabled or when I'm doing so much that my CPU can't keep up with me.)
This leaves one breed of ads that still annoy me, and I'm not talking about static banner ads, because tend to stay out of my way. I'm talking about the dynamic or floating banner ads, which are horrible because they cover up the content of the site I'm trying to view either for a few seconds or sometimes for an indefinite amount of time (until I find the tiny "close" button). I actually think some of these are blocked on occasion, but I know that they're what I see most these days (especially on ESPN and IGN), and I'd really like to see them go. So if anyone has any clue how to get rid of them, feel free to clue me in!
If humans can make it, humans can break it. This goes for computers too.
IE will be provided with a popup blocker which is laughably easy to circumvent, and the blocker will have a gaping security hole that allows any website visited to contain code that gains local administrator privileges. A patch will be released, and 3 percent of users will install it. Of those, ten percent will have to uninstall it because it breaks something else. Shortly thereafter the public exploits will begin, and Overly Critical Guy will defend the product and berate its users. Again.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What *would* be great would be a little more consistency in which regexp formats were being used :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Regular Expressions are very simple, but there just aren't enough places to use them. We need to standardize upon a search implementation, so that *.* means the same thing in google as in your text editor's search function. There are two different subsets of regular expressions to learn if you use TheBat as your e-mail device and Crimson Editor as a notepad. They need to become as standard as C or C++ if they are to be widely accepted.
Regular expressions are powerful, but also unintuitive. They read like Perl, when they should read like BASIC. replace "foo" in files "*.html" with "bar". That would be a lot easier to learn.
The ______ Agenda
yeah? i'll use my limited bandwidth, that i pay for by the GB
Not every country has pay-per-GB as the status quo for residential Internet access. This means people in your country won't run FalsePositive, but people in other countries will.
"A clever tip I learned a while back about comsumer electronics. If it's got a fcc id number you can look it up on thier (fcc's) website to see who really makes it. They only isue one number per device no matter how many people change the plastic and re-sell it."
This is were a cell phone with web access and a camera can be handy when shopping.
Give these guys a call:
212-330-8202
They're telling me my low paying job is an insult to my intelligence.
I'd like to insult my intelligence by getting slashdotters to fill up their recorder.
They're asking for two valid numbers if anyone wants to get revenge on any other companies. Not only can we fill the recorder but we can send them on wild goose chases.
It doesn't pay to spam.
Along those lines, I would also suggest Privoxy. I have it set up on my home network for the family (on the family Linux-based file server) and run a local copy on my Windows workstation at work (when not disabling it and playing with the Adblock extension for Mozilla). Works like a charm.
For one thing, if it's a pop under, people don't know where to place their anger (i.e. who did the add), and will often take it as a legit add from a site they allow popups on.
.0000001% respose rate on 10 million popups since it's pretty cheap to do popups. Think of all those grandma's out there who've managed to get popup blockers installed without having a clue why thier installed. For a lot of people the computer's like TV, and if it's on TV, it must be true
More likely there're relying on the
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
As someone also mentioned in a reply on that article, I use a Squid proxy server on my FreeBSD firewall to block adsites. It may not be easier than installing some plugin, but it does reduce the work I'd have to do to block adsites on all the machines I use at home, whether I use Mozilla/Firefox/IE, and whether the ad is a banner, pop-up, flash, whatever. And it blocks the jump to msn.nl after I log out of Hotmail. *grin* $DEITY do I hate it when it does that...
I even installed one at work so I could browse with more comfort there.
home
I dunno, there's an awful lot of loose/lose going on. And stuff like "One of my cat's had it's tail choped of." So painful to read...
"Would of" happens a lot too, but not quite that much. and "opps"... I dunno, get these people some hooked on phonics tapes or something.
(and *I* am a programmer.)
You wont get rats to stop trying to eat your food by hiding it. They just look harder for it because they know its still there. But if you can poison the food, they will die painfully.
Not true for rats, at least, and (therefore, presumably) not true for advertising.
According to Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan, poisoning rats has the opposite effect on the overall rat population. When the rat population density lowers, female rats have larger litters, and become pregnant more often. So the rat population increases, and because rats learn very quickly, they stop eating poisoned bait. The rat population will always expand to the limits of the edible food supply. The only way to lower their population is to starve them off.
I suspect it's the same with advertisers, from spammers to popup senders. Killing an individual type of advertising just creates a vacancy in the public mindshare that will be filled by the latest form of branding.
Rats is an excellent read, and the similarities between rats and advertisers are really too many to enumerate.
If website designers designed with "trusted sites" in mind, and had all the graphic servers, SSL and credit card payment servers, etc named under a single domain, a user could just put their domain in "trusted sites" or whatever the equivelant in Mozilla is, turn off all the fluffy stuff for "everyone else," and surf comparably pop-up-free.
Most ads are served up on different domains, Take Slashdot for example, here. I have slashdot.org in Trusted Sites but the banners still run in the so-called Internet zone, where their scripting doesn't bother me.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Fuck 'em.
Discreet, well placed ads are fine, but if someone is going to try and annoy the shit out of me with ads, I hope their site dies from lack of revenue due to people ditching it.
The whole WWW experience has been going steadily downhill for a few years now, methinks its about time to go outside again :D
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Clueless, trendy, "We should have a website" type people love to put flash on the website's home page and force you to use it. My son's school district's home page uses a flash applet to navigate - you can't get anywhere on their site without using flash.
I haven't taken the time to figure it out, but they managed to make it so you can't get to any of their site (even with bookmarks) without going through their flash app.
I can't begin to express my contempt for that kind of website design. It automatically bars anyone not using monopolistic spying computer-clogging software, in other words, anyone who knows what the hell a computer is good for.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I've always thought that the best way to deal with websites that have advertisements (ANY ads) is to *click* on the ad links ...
Ok - before I get flamed, let me explain. The companies that are paying for ad space usually also pay a "per click" fee. Every time someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays the host site.
Some bright fool should write a web accelerator-type program that follows every link on the currently browsed site to at least one click deep. This should be done silently and in the background.
What it means is that clickthrough revenues for sites with ads would go through the roof, but no one would actually be reading and/or responding to the ads. The companies that are advertising would pay off like a slot machine and eventually go out of business because they would suddenly beleive that their internet advertising department is full of geniuses.
The central problem is that the advertisers are using the wrong metric to see if their ad was successful.
I'd buy the product for a $1.
Ravepunk
Might even need some structure.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Am I missing something?
I thought popups were only for IE users, because IE doesn't block popups, so IE users use third-party hacks, and participate in an arms race with the popup authors.
Admittedly I don't use IE, so I don't know much about the IE arms race. (I mean, I just turn off popups in my browser when I install it, and never look back..)
Or am I too naive, and missing something?
I am another computer user who diverts many of the ad server URLs to the 127.0.0.1 loopback address on my computer. I modified my host file to that. It is a simple change that works in both Linux and Windows and eliminates about half of the in-line advertisements. I get empty rectangles on the web pages where the advertisements would have been. It does not block popups but does block about half of the in-line advertisements. When pop-ups appear many of them are empty and download quickly so even that is an improvement. With a slow dial-up connection, the web pages load faster by not having to download as many advertisements.
I used the instructions that are found on the Mike Skallas Ad Blocking Hosts web page. The "Block Adverts" web page has what looks like an even more comprehensive host file but, I have not tried it. In Linux I had to clear the browser's cache before most of the advertisements would dissapear. If enough people modify their host files perhaps advertisers will use some other technique.
http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
http://remember.mine.nu/
Anybody who doesn't use Mozilla or an alternative browser is basically standing in a freezing rain shower when there's shelter freely available, (fully equipped with hot chocolate and quilted blankets in front of a nice warm fire place).
I sort of understand. . . It's sort of like giving a copy of Dune to somebody and telling them, "You have to read this!" --I know many otherwise smart people who just feel too overwhelmed by the idea of having to research and adopt a new piece of software. --So they just don't bother. They'll look at it some other day.
In any case, Mozilla is possibly the coolest thing to happen to the internet since the internet.
-FL
Kills all popups. Java is annoying anyway.
I use a modified host file in Linux and also a modified host file in Windows. It diverts attempts to contact advertiser URLs to my 127.0.0.1 loopback address and eliminates about half of the in-line advertisements from most webpages. Popups still occur but about half of the time they are empty. It is amusing to see the empty rectangle where the advertisements would have been in most of the popups. Diverting advertiser server URLs to my loopback address also means that less personal information is leaving my computer. Perhaps there might also be some minor security advantages for that reason.
I use Mike Skallas' Ad Blocking Hosts file. He has instructions for Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac. He frequently posts updated versions of his modified host file. The Block Adverts webpage has an even more comprehensive list but, I have not yet tried their version of the modified host file. They also provide instructions for Windows, Linux and Mac. Here are both of their websites:
http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
http://remember.mine.nu/
Of course when using Windows I regularly scan for spyware using both Ad-aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. I use both because each detects some items that the other does not.
Webbugs are another interesting problem although I am not sure how important they are. The link below has info on webbugs. Unfortunately Bugnosis web bug detector only works with Internet Explorer . What knowledgeable user that is really concerned about such things would use Internet Explorer as their main browser?
http://bugnosis.org/
Thank you for opting-in to our popup service.
Your requested level of service has been configured.
Thats hood idea, but you do not need to "browse" pages: use a "robot" to search for pop-ups, and then hit them. You can call it a "reverse dos" (not debial) attack: I dould gladly contribute my free bandwidth to it.
Kill all "marketers" using dos!
Agreed that Proxomitron is the best blocker ever. It sounds to me from your post that you aren't using one of the updated filter sets floating around.
Why not try JD5000's filter set (his latest alpha build rocks) at http://www.jd5000.net and you'll find that in the top left corner of a page resides a hidden proxomitron icon which reveals when moused over, giving you instant bypass for that page and many other options. That way you don't bypass proxomitron and forget to re-enable it afterwards.
Visceral Psyche Films
You must not spend much time on message boards. The most common misuse would have to be one of these two:
your-you'rethere-they're-their
Every time I see one of those, it makes me wonder if anyone paid any attention in English class.
Please don't humanize the morons around me. It makes me very uncomfortable.
Looks like Joe User is another market ripe for the Virus Promoters (sorry, AntiVirus companies). Sigh! Incidentally, don't you get sick of the "partner offers" and popups on some AV websites?
In the meantime, I make it my business to see a popup ad as a disincentive to deal with that company. Hell! Give me six more months of this and I'll be so grumpy I won't ever buy anything ever again.
/JEYou know this article is damn ironic because I use Proxomitron (www.proxomitron.info) and JD5000.net Filters for Proxomitron (www.jd5000.net), and when viewing this site using the latest Alpha filters from JD5000, I see this in the log. *Rolls eyes*
Match 716: Correct: Invalid Body and HTML {R}
Match 716: Mark: Page Start {R}
Match 716: Remove: Pre-HTML Scripts {R}
Match 716: Re-Insert: Pre-HTML Scripts {R}
Match 716: Insert: JS Control Variables {R}
Match 716: Inject: Proxomitron Helper Script - Start {R}
Match 716: Remove: Page Markers {R}
Match 716: Block: Off-Site Javascript {8}
Match 716: Correct: Invalid Body and HTML {R}
BlockList 716: in Ad-Comment-Pairs, line 137
Match 716: Remove: Ad Comment-Blocks {7.d}
Match 716: Remove: Webbugs {6.d.js}
BlockList 716: in Ad-Strings, line 3
BlockList 716: in Ad-Paths, line 72
Match 716: Convert: BASE16 to ASCII {7.d}
Match 716: Convert: Tracking Links to Normal Links {8.d.js}
Match 716: Fix: Tracking Links to Normal Links {4.d.js}
BlockList 717: in MIME-List, line 23
It may not have popups but the page was using offsite ad javascript, tracking links, and webbugs yet.
It was owned because I saw this. :D
[ onmouseover body stopped ] Think you're safe against popups? Think again. Move the mouse anywhere on the screen to open an unwanted google.com window.
That should say? You aren't safe unless you use Proxo+JD5000. Hehehe
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
GET THE JD5000.net Filters for Proxomitron (www.jd5000.net). It puts the original Proxomitron filters to shame!
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Given how many of the floater ads depend on DHTML, what the heck good is it, anyway? If I had an option in my browser to turn it off, other than a few more ads going away would I even notice afterwards that I had done so?
It annoys me too.
Every time I see this kind of thing (particularly the holding pages), I'll report them to Google. I've no idea how effective this is, but hopefully Google want to keep their site the search engine of choice and will listen.
You seem to assume that people keep using Windows just because they don't have enough knowledge about Linux (or BSD, or so on...). Personally, I use my home computer for playing games, checking the news, and going on eBay. The latter two can be accomplished just as easily on a Windows system as a Linux one... and there are so, so many more gaming options with Windows. I don't like it more, but it suits my purposes far, far better.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I use NoAds and a trick that seems to kill all popups 'on sight'.
Here is how I do it with Internet Explorer:
Find a 100% non-working URL. I used to use http://www.cyberpromo.com/ for this but now somebody made this (in)famous url work again...
DO NOT GO THERE! THEY WILL SEND YOU POPUPS AND ASK TO CHANGE YOUR START PAGE!
Get the URL to show up on a web page--write the page yourself if you have to and rightclick/open in a new window.
The window opens and the titlebar says (I believe by default) 'Microsoft Internet Explorer' and the page area is blank as the dead URL is 'loaded'.
Add this window to NoAds targets list. You (may) have to work fast before IE loads its 'site not found' page and it changes the window title bar.
The window disappears.
Your are DONE!
With NoAds running and enabled, anytime a popup window opens, it will be closed 'on sight' because of this trick.
However, there was one site I came across that was able to send popups to me. Apparently, they were able to change the titlebar of the popup window before handing it off to Windows/IE to open it up and thus get past NoAds. This might be how it's done as I am able to open up brand new IE instances/windows to Google (my start page) from scratch with NoAds enabled. Does anybody have actual JavaScript code to do that? I would like to see how they do that.
I didn't pay attention in English class. I was at best a C student in English, and it was my worst subject on the ACT college entrance exam. I still cringe when I see how much worse the average person online's English is than mine. Don't these people realize how stupid these obvious mistakes make them look?
Actually it's grammatically correct to say he/him/his for an unknown gender in every language descended from Latin. Only recently has it become non-PC to do so in English, so fuck grammar, right?
I can double that sentiment in an intimate way, but only if you string me along....
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Man, what a character you are, giving me all this static.
But I suppose it takes all types.
Not to cast the whole thing in a negative light, though - this stuff happens all over the union and the public seems to be OK with it, other than the terminal(ly) pun-phobic members.
C?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I will try to drink some super Java to view this in an objective light. It is a far reach to sort the pearls from the fluff when catching an array of rocks.
For shall we continue this, or break it off, unless you want to loop this conversation for a while?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
I use FireFox at home and at work until recently, and with Adblock I never saw a thing. Penny Arcade was the first place I saw with a floating flash banner, and the only site I continue to visit after such an incident, because it's never happened again. It just goes to show that sometimes it isn't even the site's fault that these asshat marketing drones can't come up with good advertising that isn't annoying.
I never had to worry about such things in the first place until my workplace declared Firefox to be the cause of computer problems and forbade it.
Emory: Uh..we're still..beta testing that.
Oglethorpe: What you're testing is me and my patience!
Personally, I favor Timothy Leary's pronouns: "sHe" and "hir". Yeah, it looks silly, but no worse than the rest of the English laguage. (Your link is down, so I can't comment on the Spivak Pronouns.)
0, I take exception to an interrupt at this step, unless you think we've come to a breakpoint. My supervisor doesn't find any fault with this either, though some of my co-workers don't think it stacks up very well. When push comes to pull, I mask their input anyway. They can crawl right back in their shells for all I care. I would even say those opinions are of very little import. No, I think you should assemble your puns, line them up, and link them together, make something punny out of them. As long as you don't lisp, of course.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I bow to your superior use of language elements :-))
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
I use this host file to just kill all network access to known add hosts:
http://accs-net.com/hosts/
It makes the add server resolve back to you, so unless you are running a web server you get connection refused, and if you are running a web server, a 404.
I like this because it doesn't waste my bandwidth as much (not tha tit ia lot to start with...)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I am an out of work Space Pirate, working for a corp that shanghais web pages would be a dream job for me. ;)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I use other things, like drawings my 5 year-old son drew with Tuxpaint. Easier on the eyes than most pop-up art. :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.