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Block Adverts Outside of the Browser
vm writes with word of a new project from the creators of AdBlock for Chrome, the popular
extension
mini-app
lifesaver
cheese grater
that blocks advertisements from showing up on web pages. The new tool in development, AdBlock Freedom, expands the ad-free experience to television,
magazines
newspapers
circulars
whatarethosethings
, and billboards. 'Here's how it works: when powered off, AdBlock Freedom functions as sunglasses. Slide a discreet switch on the frame, and AdBlock Freedom begins scanning your
view
area
mind
girlfriend
for objects that it recognizes as ads. Any detected ad gets a "smudge" overlay to blend it into its surroundings.' You can sign up now
for the beta test
OPTION BLOCKED
OPTION BLOCKED
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."
April First Post! There, now i never have to do this again.
Just employ your Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses and set for protection from Advertising. Works great.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We already have Word Lens, and wearable eyeglass-style displays. I have a friend who wants to try to explore the US using nothing but a compass and a sextant, but with the ubiquity of direction signs you don't actually need navigation equipment. He's hoping he can get Word Lens running on a wearable display so he can scramble all the street signs and have a whole new country to explore.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Et Tu?
Sticks and stones :)
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Great! I hate looking at all those snarky bumper stickers on cars and advertisements on container trucks while commuting to and from work.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I've been blocking ads external to the browser and independent of it for many years: they're called local HTTP filtering proxies. Proxomitron and privoxy are the two most well known.
I confess, though, that most of my ad- and element-blocking is now done with WYSIWYG and GUI goodness via the browser extensions AdBlock Plus and AdBlock Plus Element Hiding Helper; the latter duplicates - in seconds - most of the custom filters I once had to laboriously craft in Proxomitron. (Other people swear by the Remove It Permanently extension, but they seem to be functionally identical.) When it comes to prettying-up pages for archiving or printing, I use the Aardvark extension to temporarily yank out irrelevant page elements. There are just a few filters I still use in Proxomitron, ones whose effect I can't easily duplicate with any existing browser extensions. The amazing thing is that it still works after all these years, in spite of significant evolution, the death of its author, and no patches or updates whatsoever.
I can't imagine living in a world without being surrounded by advertisements and branding. I can't speak for the rest of the world, or even for the rest of the United States, but in the major metropolitan area I'm used to... these sorts of glasses would censor 95% of what's considered the city's culture. It makes me a little sick to my stomach to admit this, but the background noise of advertisments, logos, and product placements is part of what gives urban life an accelerated feel. Whether it be for a community event, an underground up-and-coming punk band performance, or the overly invasive coca-cola advertisement campaigns -- if it all just stopped, everything would feel a bit dull and muted.
Actually April Fool's jokes apply to the whole day.
It was just that schools like to limit the 'damage' to the morning.
At one time the year ended on March 31st. So when it first came in, people were sent on fool's errands on the 'first day' of the New Year. So people who had not accepted, or remembered, that April 1st was not the first day of the year were made fun of. Hence April Fool's jokes apply to the whole day.
There is a problem on the Internet, I got told off, because I had published an April Fool's joke on March 31st according to someone - but they failed to realize that some parts of the planet have different time zones, and I had posted it when it was Friday April 1st in New Zealand.
On a more serious note, have a look at:
http://nzopensource.blogspot.com/2011/04/windroid-announced.html
WARNING: Smilies omitted due to budget constraints...
Nobody has fun with Slashdot April Fools bullshit. April Fools is the lowest form of humor and Slashdot's take on it has consistently been the lowest form of *that* lowest form of humor, for . . . what . . . fourteen years, now? Do the comments on these idiotic failing attempts not make it clear that the majority of the Slashdot community simply writes the site off for the whole day?
And if YOU personally find this idiocy "fun", then you need to logout and go back to your Jeff Foxworthy tapes so you can laugh at his "redneck television on top of a broken television in the living room durr durr durr!" joke for the millionth time.
If you put some work into a practical joke and it is done well, that's awesome. Most people (especially slashdot) essentially say "pull my finger!" and make a fart noise and then say "that wasn't a real fart! that was my mouth making noise! HAHAHAH! APRIL FOOLS!". Really sad.
Advertisements that make sound without you clicking to activate it, pop-unders, and ads that move around the screen or animate enough to give regular people seizures are the kind of ads that should be blocked, not stationary ones like you see on legit sites. It takes away what's free and degrades the quality over time due to the cost of maintaining the site, staff, and others. It's no wonder that a lot of sites now have premium services because too many people block ads.
When sites violate their side of the social contract, people no longer respect their own side of the social contract. The first pop-up started the war, every "innovation" in advertising just reinforces the hatred.
There's an add-on-for-add-ons called, I think, HotPlug. It's a bit of code that developers can hide in their browser extensions that replace website ads with user-side cached ads. With the extensions' developers and HotPlug splitting revenue 50/50. The user has no control over HotPlug (other than making sure they don't downloading anything that has the fucking thing.) And obviously it steals revenue from websites (no honour amongst thieves.)
And yet no one sees the obvious. If you can serve ads from the user-side, and it's worth money, let the user have control (and revenue). Let us make money off our own viewing. Let us donate/subscribe to the websites we use. Let us block ads/product/companies we don't like. Instead of going to war against users and making ads more and more intrusive and objectionable, work with the user.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
This technology is nothing new- I had a set of the Peril Sensitive Sunglasses that came with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy video game. Those high-tech gadgets became opaque whenever you were in peril, so that you would avoid the urge to panic.
The editors most likely read comments, so why not counter-troll instead of feeding them? I'll start:
There is no way this system would work. I can see large-scale disasters caused by smudges being erroneously generated. No to mention that our current market is run by advertisements. Don't you think that of all ads were blocked, IP would be worthless? Then the US would slowly get poorer as our lack of foresight is clouded by individual gain. This kind of behaviour has to stop.
(note to all wise-asses, yes I know the "YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE TROLLED" method of trolling isn't effective, but I'm just getting the ball rolling)
Help fight spam
Now can I get my achievement?
You are both too late - the day is over, and anyway it is only funny in the morning.
alias dont_fucking_waste_my_time_option = 'sudo shutdown -h now'
Mostly harmless.