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Ad Block Plus Filter Maintainer "rick752" Dies At 56
A user on Reddit pointed out that Richard "rick752" Petnel, maintainer of one of the most popular filter lists for Ad Block Plus, has passed away at age 56. In an article last year Petnel described a bit of what he was up against in the ad world. "'I'm playing against some pretty big players,' he said, explaining his reluctance to step forward. 'I don't want to be harassed. . . . I don't want to be bribed. I started it because I was frustrated with getting my computer infected from ads -- malware and spyware and all that stuff,' he said. 'I kind of went overboard with it. But you have to admit, it's pretty amazing, right?'" Update 15:05 GMT by SM: updated to reflect Rick's status as maintainer of the most popular Ad Block Plus filter as opposed to Ad Block Plus itself.
does this mean no new updates?
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
I feel for his family. I use and really like adblock plus but that is trivial compared to what his lose means to his family and friends.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You might have annoyed advertisers, but that's fine with me, because advertisers used to annoy the shit out of me. Thanks to AdBlock Plus, I no longer have to be annoyed by adverts when I go online.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
That's a bit young to go, but at least he lived a full life. I wonder what the heck he died from "after a brief illness". Given it's a hospice, I can only imagine an aggressive cancer.
Didn't know the man, but I love the product. It's comforting to know he won't have to worry about ads any more.
http://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3366
Donations made to:
Community Hospice of Albany
445 New Karner Rd.
Albany, NY 12205
A close friend has recently died at a similar age and it's so strange to think of all the plans we make for after retirement, never contemplating we may never reach it...
First and foremost, condolences to the family.
Second, Rich, thanks for a powerful plugin that I'm sure has kept my blood pressure down a few notches. Whenever I use a browser that doesn't have adBlock installed I am aghast at the irritating clutter that is on most web pages.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Though it's sad that the maintainer of one of AdBlock Plus' block lists (the "EasyList") died he still wasn't the maintainer of AdBlock Plus itself.
That's still Wladimir Palant, as can be easily seen here.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
The battles of advertising & greed / annoying customers was always gonna go like this. They need to keep hitting targets, which means more eyeballs. They know that only a small percentage of eyeballs who see the advert actually convert to cash, so they need more eyeballs to be a bigger pool.
That means they are more in-your-face, more determined to ignore your option not to see them. This in turn leads to people like Rick taking a stand which leads to all of us AdBlockPlus users having a better surfing experience.
Advertisers have brought it upon themselves by being aggressively greedy. It's a numbers game which is backfiring to some extent as more people decide that enough is enough and they block all adverts. Unfortunately this greed by the super-corps has hindered the little guys who rely on adverts and use them subtly and responsibly as they are blocked too by users. Then.....since when has any CEO been ousted for considering the little guy? It's all "ME! ME! ME!".
Naw, ya gotta go classy. Discount caskets aren't classy. Now a Folger's coffee can and scattering the ashes when the wind is in your face.... that's classy ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If Google were smart they would capitalise on this by having a memorial, say turning off ads in GMail for a day. Sure, they would lose profit but the amount of good-will they would make would be priceless.
I'm interested in your thoughts. What about a completely ad-free town? Is there a small town somewhere that is willing to go completely ad-free (maybe there already is one)?
Maybe ad-free stretched of road (with anonymous sponsors)!!
Perhaps a huge billboard that is perpetually kept empty (or has only news/info on it).
Let's do something really good to commemorate this guy's vision.
*** Don't be dull.***
...some kind of Internet-equivalent of a statue built for him, and the creator(s) of the original AdBlock (of whose I can't even find the names :/).
Without this little extension, the Internet would be unusable for me, and many, many other people.
Any suggestions besides making AdBlock Plus a community project and maybe even integrate it into Firefox itself? (After all, I don't know a more important extension. If I would have to choose between having tabs and having ads blocked, I'd always choose the ad blocker.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
He made the world a little bit better for a whole lot of people, quietly and effectively. There's almost no higher purpose in life.
From that post:
It's with great sadness that have to announce the passing of a good friend and our EasyList author, Rick752. Rick had suffered a stroke on St Patrick' Day, and I was just informed that Rick had passed away last evening. During this short period, while hospitalized, Rick had his family very close by his side. There was some able communication and awareness between Rick and his family before his passing and although given this short period to "prepare" for the inevitable, this news (as with any of this type) is still quite shocking and difficult to accept.
I never knew you but as recently as Saturday I was bragging about your awesomeness.
I've been using adblock plus for years now, and I can count the times I needed to disable it or allow something through it because a item or site I wanted to use wasn't working.
Shadus
I read the article associated and all I heard from the content owners' side was "If you block our ads, we lose revenue!" It seems to me that if websites stopped using more and more intrusive ad techniques that people would be less likely to want to use ad-blockers. You already know your customers hate pop-ups, so the ads get blocked. Your answer is to use pop-unders instead, trying to circumvent the wishes of your target customer. You know they block half the ads on your site, so you double the ads and spread the content out over twice as many pages. Again, your customer has already told you what they want, but you insist that you know better.
Seriously, I'm getting tired of website owners and advertisers continuing to whine about how we won't let them bug us. If you want me to look at your ads, stop making them annoy me so much! Stop using blinking, flashing banners (too bad the BLINK tag didn't take you with it when that died), stop using javascript banners that are as likely to infect my computer as not. Stop trying to "bundle" your adware with anything I want to install.
If you make your ads play nice with me, I'll stop using ad-blocker software. I'll look at your ads and I might even buy something from them.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
If you liked the software, donate money to his family to help cover funeral costs, or donate money to the charity listed in his obituary, Community Hospice of Albany, as a last tribute to someone whose work you've enjoyed over the years.
Someone else will maintain adblock plus. It could even be you!
...Though it'd be deliciously ironic as a Googler's 20% project.
Of course, it never quite occurrs to them that the more obnoxious they get with their ads, the more people who will resort to blocking technologies.
Back when ads were just simple banner images without all the annoying pop-up, pop-under, flashing, and annoying sounds, I didn't really mind them. As they started adding those annoying features, I went out of my way to actively block them.
From that point on, just about ANY ad on a web page (except for the non-annoying google text ones) pretty much turns me off from the advertiser... if I could see them which I pretty much don't due to the aforementioned blocking.
By definition, anyone who is willingly blocking advertisements is probably among the vast majority of people who are NOT likely to click through anyway. If I were an advertiser, I'd be glad they were out of the pool. Of course, I'm pretty sure most web advertising providers charge by impression (cuz they'd go broke if they charged for actual results.
The real money in Internet advertising isn't in having your ad be successful, it's in providing services to those who THINK they're going to make money advertising their wares.
The Digital Sorceress
...and getting the ashes caught in your beard, no less.
60% of UK consumers are willing to browse with an ad-blocker in return for free videos, music and other content, a survey has revealed.
"This willingness to pretend to view adverts in exchange for free content is good news for sites wanting to lie to advertisers, and is perhaps a pointer in the ongoing debate over whether advertising or subscription is the right revenue model," said Tudor Aw at KPMG.
40% said they would pretend to accept popups, popunders, interstitials, Phorm, floating windows, Flash videos that start playing sound automatically, eye-gouging animations and 2o7.net cookies in exchange for free music. 16% said they would pay to avoid ads. The rest would continue to use BitTorrent or Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock.
People were more willing to pay on mobile phones, unless they had a modern phone with which they could steal someone's WiFi connection.
Google, the world's largest online advertising agency, said it was looking into tastefully-interspersed direct content advertising and brand placement, and added that you should PUNCH THE MONKEY TO WIN £20,000!!! If you know what's good for you.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I prefer Eli Stone, who used Chock Full O Nuts (which was symbolic.... and fitting).
So you click the big stop sign and then click "Disable on Hulu.com". You are seriously arguing that this is a problem?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Just install Ad Block Plus, after the Firefox restart associated with installing it, you'll get a popup asking you to choose a list. The default (which is EasyList, the one maintained by rick752) will do the job very well.
Sturgeon was an optimist.
What is the difference between Ad Block and Ad Block Plus?
Adblock Plus is faster, has more powerful filtering rules, and has a cleaner subscription mechanism. There is no reason to use the original Adblock any more. Go with ABP.
Do I need to get blacklists elsewhere or are they included in the above-mentioned extensions?
You do not need to manually download any blacklists. ABP supports subscribing to remote blacklists, which it will automatically update itself from. It will automatically suggest a few lists to subscribe to when you first install it.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Trying to play Devils advocate.
As a user of AdBlock plus myself, I do often wonder how many services that I perceive free have advert revenue behind them. Will we see these services disappear as usage of ad blocking tools continue when they cannot generate enough revenue?
You must make a distinction between the egotist and the egoist. The first boasts to his friends and holds their opinions of himself above his own. The second looks to himself for his inspiration and motivation. They both claim "pride", but the former is a false pride. You can expect the first to manipulate/lie to others when it is convenient to do so. The latter would not even conceive of it - not because of some commandment that must be followed, but simply because it would never come to mind.
Everybody who knows Rick doesn't view ads, and doesn't contribute to Google's income.
I'm a big fan of both this project and the Open Source movement in general, but this does show off one major flaw in the system. Just like the proverbial bus that is so widely feared and runs down IT folks everywhere, many projects are small and while there may be many contributors there is one main person whom without the project would fail. When that person meets that proverbial bus, in an instant a widely used and relied upon piece of software can become dead as well. That's a major problem.
If things were truly born of chaos like we seem to think, these things would have no impact... but there is still a major underlying structure and hierarchy to this "chaos" and it is quite fragile.
The biggest barrier is ego, quickly followed by celebrity. It is hard for the creator of some neat widget to give up total control and truly step back and just share the success with those who hopped onto "their" project after the fact, but that is what needs to happen. There should never be less than two individuals at every level of a serious project, and both need to be fully competent... but that is not the case, even in very large projects.
* Oh, and give up on bashing the people who are concerned about what this means as to updates/life of the project... none of us were his good friend and the question is not callous or insensitive.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
FTFA:
"Just imagine, they argue, what television programs would be available if there were no commercials to fund their production. "
-TV show funding comes from the corporations that provide the financial backing from a variety of sources, not just advertising. Plus, the advertising products through ads isn't the only way companies let people know about their products. I can go to several sites and look to see what's new and available. You can use many ways of finding out about products on the Internet at anytime. On TV, you can only watch either the program or the advertisements at any one time. You can change the channel, but you will be watching something other than what you wanted to watch in the first place.
Advertisers should take note: If someone creates a way to NOT look at ads, and the means of blocking the ads are being adopted by more and more users, then that is a *VERY* strong sign that people do not want to see the ads. If people are blocking the ads, then advertisers should understand that whether they show the ads or not, people are most likely NOT going to buy the product or service being advertised. Companies will save money by not wasting it on advertising products that are not going to be bought, and consumers will go to places where they can voluntarily look for a product or service on their own, without having an ad shoved in their face.
People are most likely going to buy things when they need or want them, and when they do, they'll go looking for them. When you walk up to someone and constantly try to sell them something that they weren't looking for in the first place (think TRADE SHOWS), you'll definitely piss them off to some degree and they probably won't but it. Ever get annoyed by people begging for a handout outside a business's doors? That's exactly what ad companies are doing, except advertising on the internet it the equivalent of following you throughout the store and continually giving you sales pitches the entire time you're there. Whiny kids are bad enough, but a salesman attached to your back like a remora is even worse.
Anyways, maybe less TV shows for people to watch would mean more people going outside and having some good, old-fashioned fun as a source of enjoyment.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
it really brought the room together...
...when I had my own shitty little website where I posted the shitty little stories I used to write: pay the hosting bill by working a day job. Again, the need to depend on advertising, subscriptions, donations, or a day job is not my concern. I don't run a website; I just use them. If I find your ads obnoxious, I will block them without apology.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
No, actually I was arguing the opposite, but managed to delete the "I've had to do this on one hand." part somehow while I was editing.
Shadus
You can just Tools->Options (or Edit->Preferences) and then Privacy tab->Cookies->Keep until I close Firefox. You can then use the exceptions button or even the "site info" dialog box to decide who gets to give you permanent cookies. No extension needed!
$ make available