Ask Slashdot: Are AdBlock's Days Numbered?

An anonymous reader writes "This article discusses the ethics and the mechanics of ad-blocking software. Toward the end, it goes into some of the tech that's been built to circumvent ad blockers. Quoting: 'PageFair offers a free JavaScript program that, when inserted into a Web page, monitors ad blocking activity. CEO Sean Blanchfield says he developed the monitoring tool after he noticed a problem on his own multiplayer gaming site. PageFair collects statistics on ad blocking activity, identifies which users are blocking ads and can display an appeal to users to add the publisher's website to their ad-blocking tool's personal whitelist. But Blanchfield acknowledges that the user appeal approach hasn't been very effective. ClarityRay takes a more active role. Like PageFair, it provides a tool that lets publishers monitor blocking activity to show them that they have a problem — and then sells them a remedy. ClarityRay offers a service that CEO Ido Yablonka says fools ad blockers into allowing ads through. "Ad blockers try to make a distinction between content elements and advertorial elements. We make that distinction impossible," he says.' Is this arms race winnable? By which side?"

Comments

NoScript

[dos1]

Beat that, suckers.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

...and suddenly the pages stop working altogether. It is trivial to make a page that is empty and use JavaScript to load the contents of the page. If these guys resort to AdBlock-detectors, why do you think they would allow NoScript to circumvent that?

Re:NoScript

[buddyglass]

And when a site doesn't work correctly with javascript disabled?

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it's a bad site not worth your time.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, they'll just wrap the content in JavaScript. Wanna use NoScript? Fine, then you don't get to access the content.

Re:NoScript

[Xicor]

the problem is that we are seeing an increase in sites that will pop up with a separate page and wont let you see ANY content until you stop using an adblocker. luckily those are mostly used on bad sites, but if they ever become popular it will be a problem.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I have to agree. The internet doesn't work on my computer unless I let it. If their website doesn't work once I allow all the content... Well then I'm moving on. There's barely a website out there so unique that I can't get the content somewhere else.

Re:NoScript

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

JavaScript performance on mobile is terrible - like 10x slower than desktop. If you make your website dependent on javascript, prepare to lose a lot of mobile customers who won't have the patience to wait it out.

Re:NoScript

[epyT-R]

Perhaps not, but it doesn't solve the systemic problems that javascript and/or scriptable browsers create for the majority of people who don't run blockers.

Re:NoScript

[iggymanz]

but there are ad filters that start to do the load but don't display. I'm betting the geek developer will always win against marketing droids

Re:NoScript

[tomtomtom]

If a human can view the content and work out where the ads are, so (ultimately) can a computer - the obvious fix for now is that Greasemonkey can be used to sort those out.

I'd also add though, this may well be heavily counter-productive for many sites. There is very little truly unique content out there in reality - and as a consequence it is worth far less to the marginal user than the site owners often think it is. Some of the sites which lose viewers because of this may simply say "good riddance" as those users are a net drain on resources - but that's a dangerous path to take as those people are, I would imagine, more likely to be either influential opinion-formers (who drive much more traffic to the site who won't block ads), or providing user-generated content which has value in itself.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine with me.
I'll just use a different website.

Re:NoScript

[Stolpskott]

Bah, they'll just wrap the content in JavaScript. Wanna use NoScript? Fine, then you don't get to access the content.

If you take the view that the purpose of the website is to promote the company, and the purpose of the Ad is to, err, advertise (either the company, one of their services, or an affiliate), then the Adblock arms race will probably be ultimately won by that company's competitors:

1. Company puts up an ad-laden web site to try and sell/promote their goods/services, and convert viewers into customers.
2. Viewers of the web site use Adblock to cut out the ads.
3. Company uses tech to make ads indistinguishable from content (using scripts, for example).
4. Viewers of the web site start using NoScript or similar tools.
5. Company's web site is no longer viewable to potential customers, so the site viewers are not not converted into customers.
6. Company loses potential customers to competitors.
7. (Competitors) Profit!!!!

ok, it does not always work out that way, but the fundamental truth is that a company exists to make money for the shareholders of said company. They do that by adding value to goods and services that they provide to customers. Nobody is forced to buy from a specific company (exclusive supply contracts or biased tender processes aside), so it is entirely voluntary for a customer to put their money with a particular company.
While a customer may need or think they need a particular item, in a market where there are several potential sources or variants of that item, an individual company needs the customer more than the customer needs that particular company (because the customer can go elsewhere for that item).

Remember business people... "The customer is always right."

Re:NoScript

[Ken_g6]

Beat that, suckers.

TigerDirect does. And I hate them for it. (Example link to a TV.)

Re:NoScript

[ne0n]

It's likewise trivial to avoid shitty sites that go far out of their way to degrade the user experience, and thanks to the internet's intrinsic nature there's nothing unique on an ad-monger's site that can't be found elsewhere. NoScript helps to build that list of shitty sites. Let the parasites starve FFS.

Re:NoScript

[Penguinisto]

Bah, they'll just wrap the content in JavaScript. Wanna use NoScript? Fine, then you don't get to access the content.

Works for me.

No, really, it does - for the websites that I absolutely have to access no matter what, I've already whitelisted them. For everything else, I couldn't care less.

So far, those sites which spew the most adverts (minus the blockers) are the ones I really don't give a damn about.

If I connect, no problem, and I will determine how much of my attention that I give to their ads by whitelisting (if the site is IMHO worthy enough to go back to more than a couple of times, I whitelist them and help them out a bit, unless the ads are uber-intrusive.)

If I don't connect, no problem, I'll go somewhere else and likely not even bother revisiting except by accident.

Re:NoScript

[Penguinisto]

They could just make basic site navigation use javascript, click this button to load foo page.

I've seen those - I usually just leave at that point.

More often than not, the site owner needs you there more than you need to be at the site.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Would the site be aa bad site because it use AdBlock-detection, because it uses ads or because of the content? (If it was the last, what the heck were you visiting the site for in the first place!) I wouldn't be surprised if many major sites using ads soon would say "no js, no ads, no views" and cut you off. They would likely be just as happy to get rid of you as you like to stand alone in a corner with a smug face. I would hate to see this scenario happen, still I see this to be a real possibility.

I also hate tracking, obtrusive ads, malware etc. But claiming that NoScript is the solution to everything is like saying that the web should turn back the clock 20 years. I bet you liked Lycos and Infoseek over AltaVista back in the days too... that is when someone forced you to use Mosaic instead of Gopher.

Re:NoScript

[clodney]

If you take the view that the purpose of the website is to promote the company, and the purpose of the Ad is to, err, advertise (either the company, one of their services, or an affiliate), then the Adblock arms race will probably be ultimately won by that company's competitors:

That is fine for a site that exists to sell products or a service, and indeed in many of those cases you will find no or very limited ad presence.

The problem comes about when the site exists to sell advertising, with the content on the site being the hook to get people to the site to see the ads. This is the model for most every news site, even news for nerds. Paywalls have not gone over well in the market, and everybody wants content to be free, but the reality is that these sites have to pay the bills somehow.

Re:NoScript

[jeffmflanagan]

>ok, it does not always work out that way

But I think it does mostly work out that way. People who put up websites generally want people to use them, and the people browsing websites have a vast number of things they could do instead of using a particular website. Making it harder for people to view your content is just going to cause you to be forgotten.

Re:NoScript

[khasim]

And when a site doesn't work correctly with javascript disabled?

Then YOU get to ask YOURSELF whether YOU want to take the risk of running THEIR scripts on YOUR system in order to read/watch THEIR content.

Individual preferences will, of course, vary. But I've found that the sites that run scripts usually don't have much content worth my time.

As for ads ... if they weren't so abused in the first place (pop-ups, pop-unders, flashing, auto-run-sound, slowing-down-the-entire-page, redirect-on-close, etc) then there wouldn't be such a large movement to block them.

Ads today are not as much about selling a product as tracking where you go and what you click on. The products advertised bear no relationship to the site I've visited.

Re:NoScript

[Penguinisto]

Beat that, suckers.

TigerDirect does. And I hate them for it. (Example link to a TV.)

Chrome + AdBlockPlus + DoNotTrackMe = no outside advertisements.

Not sure what you're referring to...

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Just hit Escape (on Firefox) a zillion times as soon as the first page loads. Prevents it from flipping to the "you must enable javascript" page.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx 4TW!!

Re:NoScript

[johanw]

More subtle than Noscript: Ghostery.

Re:NoScript

[hairyfeet]

What I want to know is this....are the website operators going to take responsibility and pay for the damages the malware carried in their precious ads cause? No? Then please DIAF you greedy little self centered shits, your "business model" is a blight upon the planet and needs to die!

Do you guys have ANY idea what happens when you take the average Windows PC and block 100% of the ads? Or block them on an *Android phone or tablet? Honestly you might as well not even have AV as its never gonna get anything to attack, infections drop right of the map. Leave their precious POS business model intact? Say hello to a PC that has more nasties than a Bangkok Whore on Sunday morning after shore leave as infected ads are the #1 source for zero days, drive bys, and social engineering and these greedy little piggies want the profits but they want to take ZERO responsibility for the messes their profits make.

So sincerely, from the bottom of my heart...go fuck yourselves website owners. Do you guys have any idea how fucking TRIVIAL it is to make ads that waltz right pass the ad blockers? 1.- Make ads first party (so they have to actually wake the fuck up and see what they are shoveling), 2.- Make them text or basic images like JPG or GIF (but then they couldn't hijack your speakers and blow your ears off, what fun is that?) and NO FLASH ADS because flash zero days are one of the biggest attack vectors out there (but then they couldn't get "teh big bux" for having the most annoying Goatse of ads spewed on their pages)

So do what old Hairy does, when a site "appeals to turn off your blocker" I head straight to their forums and ask them right out "Are you gonna take financial responsibility when one of your ads infects one of my customers?" and then point out how trivial it is to bypass the blockers with non-threatening content. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that those pieces of malware they "just keep getting somehow" are coming from assholes like in TFA and spreading the word is required to bring this to a head. They are making profits from a risky business, they should have to assume the downsides as well as the profits and clean up their own messes.

*.-The Googleits can piss and moan like the Cult of Jobs how "But but but...those don't count!" but from my seat at the shop the #1 source of Android malware? Social engineering, tricking the user into installing that .APK from an unknown source and taking control of the system...where are they seeing the social engineering instructions that take them to the website and show them how to bypass the appstore? The same place Windows users are getting social engineering, through ads.

Re:NoScript

[Threni]

Why do so many mobile sites popup a dialog which is mostly off the right of the screen, and where, when you zoom in to try and find where they've hidden the non-standard, non-intuitive 'close' icon, it moves further offscreen? How am I supposed to remove the popup (which is covering a lot of the content, and making the screen dark to 'highlight' its importance)? 2014 - it's hard to deal with small screens? How? How is it hard? How did you get a job writing websites when they're so fucking sucky?

Re:NoScript

[MightyYar]

but the reality is that these sites have to pay the bills somehow.

And yet, here we are almost 20 years into the web and stuff is still largely free.

Personally, I think ad blockers must not be much of a problem or sites would be serving up the ads from their own domain. Right now they are trivial to block - most ads can be killed with a simple hosts file.

Re:NoScript

[jedidiah]

You're the one living in some sort of out of touch fantasy.

I care about security and safety. Also as a side effect, I get often get better performance. I don't care about "sticking it to the man". I am just trying to prevent the man from infecting me when he tries to "stick it in me".

The crap on some pages is just beyond belief. A pile of crud turning a 2014 broadband connection into a 1994 dialup connection.

Re:NoScript

[MightyYar]

The hilarious thing about many of those sites is that the "block" is just a layer in front of the actual content. Firefox's built-in "inspect element" is usually enough to remove it and get to the content.

Re:NoScript

[HermMunster]

That's not the only way it is accomplished.

AND......

A program will never outwit a human, EVER.

Re:NoScript

[Monoman]

FF + NoScript + Adblock Plus + Ghostery + Flashblock = I can see the page just fine with no annoying content.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is host file guy when you need him?

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Some of the sites which lose viewers because of this may simply say "good riddance" as those users are a net drain on resources -

I'm quite sure that's how they'll see it.

but that's a dangerous path to take as those people are, I would imagine, more likely to be either influential opinion-formers

A lot of geeks like to think they're influential opinion-formers. Most of them are far less influential than they imagine, and the guys running web sites know this for a fact because they have actual statistics from exactly the kinds ad-blocker-aware tools we're discussing here.

Re:NoScript

[The MAZZTer]

You enable javascript for the website, but not from the ad server.

Re:NoScript

[tepples]

Until you find that all the different web sites don't have the information you're looking for, or cite the same source that has the scriptwall, or have paywalls, or got taken down on a copyright infringement claim.

Re:NoScript

[Kvasio]

What bullshit. It's fucking 2014. If you want to roam the web in your happy Mosaic-1.0-land then go ahead.

I use gopher, you insensitive clod!

Re:NoScript

[0p7imu5_P2im3]

"Amen! Preach on ma' brotha'!"

Seriously, though. That is exactly why I installed an ad-blocker. I specifically allow sites I visit in order to live up to that philosophy, but I have yet to see a single site since 1999 that hosts 100% of its own advertising. I actually enjoy seeing in house ads for exactly this reason, even if the site reviews the product it is advertising, because it shows that they give a care about their users/readers.

Re:NoScript

[BradleyUffner]

Your example doesn't seem to be a good example for me.
http://i.imgur.com/zOa7Hwm.png

Chrome + SafeScript

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Remember business people... "The customer is always right."

That is probably the most often quoted falsehood in all of business.

Customers are frequently wrong, and sometimes their actions are outright hostile.

Up to a certain point, it can be beneficial to overlook that in order to maintain good relations. The long term benefits may be worth taking a short term hit.

Beyond that point, the correct response is to dump that customer as quickly and cheaply as you can manage. Ideally, you at least do it with no hard feelings, but sometimes even telling them bluntly to shove it is justified.

Re:NoScript

[pepty]

Hide My Adblocker extension for Chrome.

Re:NoScript

[Larry_Dillon]

Not to mention the viruses and malware that have been served up by some advertising networks, which has appeared on major sites. I noticed that TFA didn't mention that adblockers can protect users from malware.

Re:NoScript

[wiredlogic]

And when a site doesn't work correctly with javascript disabled?

You selectively allow a few key domains to see if it will start working. If that doesn't work or there are dozens of cross-site scripts then move on to a saner website.

Re:NoScript

[BasilBrush]

A lot of geeks like to think they're influential opinion-formers. Most of them are far less influential than they imagine

Indeed. Look how (un)successful geeks have been in getting people not to use Facebook for example.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

For awhile I thought we would be safer if the sites served ads from their own domains. I've changed that opinion. I don't think that would get rid of the large ad aggregators at all - as the sites themselves don't want to spend their time (and money) on shilling for advertisers. What will happen is that they will create a process that copies a batch of "today's ads" from the ad company to the local server. It will then serve them from that domain. They will still be infected crap. And instead of living in one place, they will be all over the place and take quite some time to remove from the web (they will infect people longer). It would also mean they would have to institute redirection (click on the ad hosted by the content provider and get a redirect through the advertising company's domain so that they can at least hope it wasn't a bot and they should pay for the click. All in all that won't solve it.

Re:NoScript

[Zumbs]

Most sites work pretty well without javascript. And if it is important, you can just enable it.

Re:NoScript

[chromas]

1.- Make ads first party, 2.- Make them text or basic images

Yeah but that removes most of the incentive to block ads so—wait a minute.

Re:NoScript

[BasilBrush]

Then YOU get to ask YOURSELF whether YOU want to take the risk of running THEIR scripts on YOUR system in order to read/watch THEIR content.

Of course Javascript is limited to accessing THEIR content. Anything else on YOUR system is out of reach of Javascript.

But I've found that the sites that run scripts usually don't have much content worth my time.

Then you aren't using much in the way of Web 2.0 sites. Most of the interactive web-sites since Google Maps are unavailable to you. Hope you like the 1990s.

I'm all for blocking ads. But disabling Javascript altogether is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Re:NoScript

[Cruciform]

Too bad that's too big to print on a tee shirt. Good rant.

There are sites I would happily support by whitelisting them in adblock, but I've seen their ad companies send infectious shit and other problematic ads down the pipe. And when it happens they block it and apologize, but that doesn't prevent anything from happening first.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

It's likewise trivial to avoid shitty sites that go far out of their way to degrade the user experience

And yet here you are!

Re:NoScript

[Albanach]

And therein lies the problem. There's always a way to block ads.

The expense of an arms race would be much better used by establishing a decent micropayments system with an open api that allows multiple providers. How much better would it be if when visiting a web site you got a single popup saying click to proceed with adverts, or click to pay a fraction of a cent per page viewed. If your content is good, people will pay to view it, and will come back for more.

Much better to create an incentive to create great content than to waste everyone's time on a pointless arms race.

Re:NoScript

[vakuona]

People who don't see your ads will not click on them, and they will not generate money for you. Therefore, losing them does not hurt the bottom line. This isn't TV, where you can't distinguish between those who use ad breaks as loo time and those who will sit in front of their TV and watch every ad, and where companies are happy to pay for exposure to all viewers. This is the internet, where you are depending on a browser to display the ad. If the customer has configured their browser not ti display ads, then they can't make you any money, and advertisers won't pay for the page views of those customers. So losing people with ad block does hurt the company's bottom line at all.

Re:NoScript

[vakuona]

Replying to my own post here.

Last sentence should be "So losing people with ad block doesn't hurt the company's bottom line at all."

Re:NoScript

[taustin]

A web page that is blank with JavaScript turned off is equally devoid of content with it turned on, even if you can technically see words and pictures.

If you want me to look at (and ignore) your ads, make them less offensive, and do some testing to ensure they don't make the page literally unreadable.

Re:NoScript

[Billly Gates]

Then it's a bad site not worth your time.

Then why are you on Slashdot? It is not worth your time right? You said it yourself. Infact, name one website and I MEAN 1 website that has no javascript? Name one please?

Yeah lets get rid of text too while we are it! Lets make the web complete unpractical and useless for what people use it for? After all I am sure people would agree to give up gmail, facebook, google maps, and would love to have a boring set of text files that do not do anything all on your principal.

  Seriously this is the age of Web 3.0 and going back to web 1.0 means you are not part of the web but more of a text viewer. ... I can picture the replies right now saying YES THAT WHAT THE WEB WAS MEANT TO BE a Hypertext text viewer only! Keep bloat out yada yada.

But in 2014 we have email, Slashdot, and sites that process logic and require dynamic page generation and logic which javascript is used. It is not a simple hypertext viewer and you are clueless to say anything else otherwise as appear a luddite.

Re:NoScript

[Luckyo]

And soon enough, no site will be. And you'll finally get out in the sun, proud that you kicked that nasty internet habit!

Seriously though. People visit pages not to make themselves feel good but to get information. If informative page or site decides to screw you over, you're the one boned. Not the site.

Re:NoScript

[Frosty Piss]

I don't have a problem with JavaScript, AdBlock, or NoScript... I surf with Lynx. It's all I need.

Re:NoScript

[SigmundFloyd]

I'm not the person you were replying to, but I - for one - would be more than happy to give up everything that came after the 90s, if I could go back to that decade.

Re:NoScript

[causality]

If you use a modern and updated browser, scripts don't pose a "risk" as you state. Still the original question remains: How can you use a scripted site with scripts disabled?

By selectively enabling just the scripts that facilitate the content you want to see and keeping all the rest disabled. Which is exactly what NoScript is designed to do.

Did you put even a moment's thought into this prior to posting a comment? It does not appear like you did.

Re:NoScript

[causality]

Then YOU get to ask YOURSELF whether YOU want to take the risk of running THEIR scripts on YOUR system in order to read/watch THEIR content.

Of course Javascript is limited to accessing THEIR content. Anything else on YOUR system is out of reach of Javascript.

But I've found that the sites that run scripts usually don't have much content worth my time.

Then you aren't using much in the way of Web 2.0 sites. Most of the interactive web-sites since Google Maps are unavailable to you. Hope you like the 1990s.

I'm all for blocking ads. But disabling Javascript altogether is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The point of NoScript is not do disable Javascript alltogether. The standard browser settings include a checkbox to disable Javascript entirely for all sites. That isn't what the add-on NoScript is for. NoScript is there to selectively disable the scripts that you decide are unnecessary.

I wish people who actively choose to comment on a thing would take a moment to acquire the most basic familiarity with that thing. It would lead to far fewer redundant posts and far fewer posters who are convinced they've pointed out the "obvious flaw" that no one else was smart enough to ever think of...

Re:NoScript

[swilver]

Slashdot works with Javascript disabled.

Your turn.

Re:NoScript

[causality]

Then, I will fetch a fucking _book_, find the information by myself, and share it online, as everyone has been doing since the dawn of internet. Shit, it's true that using the internet makes people less inteligent.

Not necessarily. That's more true for users who think the Internet (I assume you mean the Web) is for passive consumption of corporate-owned one-to-many content, like television. Other users appreciate that it's a two-way many-to-many communications medium and take a much more proactive stance on how it should be used. If anything, those users are sharpening their skills and their ability to think and reason. They tend also to realize that their systems retrieve only the information they are configured to retrieve, not someone else's idea of "programming" content, hence the selective downloading based on desirability that ad-blockers help to achieve.

Re:NoScript

[causality]

Remember business people... "The customer is always right."

That is probably the most often quoted falsehood in all of business.

Customers are frequently wrong, and sometimes their actions are outright hostile.

Up to a certain point, it can be beneficial to overlook that in order to maintain good relations. The long term benefits may be worth taking a short term hit.

Beyond that point, the correct response is to dump that customer as quickly and cheaply as you can manage. Ideally, you at least do it with no hard feelings, but sometimes even telling them bluntly to shove it is justified.

Unreasonable people often think that a little authority, such as "I'm the customer!" will make them magically become reasonable without ever going through the effort of evaluating their ideas and rejecting the ones that make no sense

Anyone who has ever been young and worked an entry-level job that involved customer service knows this. I sincerely believe businesses are encouraging stupidity by ever accommodating such people. If no one did so, no business would feel a need to do so in order to remain competitive. One could almost argue it's a form of tragedy of the commons (inasmuch as a given marketplace is "common" to all participants), in that Business A knows it better tolerate such stupidity because the competition would.

Re:NoScript

[TubeSteak]

But in 2014 we have email, Slashdot, and sites that process logic and require dynamic page generation and logic which javascript is used. It is not a simple hypertext viewer and you are clueless to say anything else otherwise as appear a luddite.

/. works just fine for me with javascript disabled.
That's what Classic Mode is for. I even prefer it.

If disliking highly dynamic websites makes me a luddite, then I will proudly bear that distinction.

P.S. E-Mail doesn't need javascript. It never did and it never will.

Re:NoScript

[fnj]

Seriously this is the age of Web 3.0 and going back to web 1.0 means you are not part of the web but more of a text viewer. ... I can picture the replies right now saying YES THAT WHAT THE WEB WAS MEANT TO BE a Hypertext text viewer only! Keep bloat out yada yada.

Horse shit. You don't need script running on my PC to embed images in an HTML page. Who is the idiot?

Re:NoScript

[tftp]

How much better would it be if when visiting a web site you got a single popup saying click to proceed with adverts, or click to pay a fraction of a cent per page viewed.

Do not underestimate the challenge of taking the third route.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

infected ads are the #1 source for zero days, drive bys, and social engineering

Make them text or basic images like JPG or GIF (but then they couldn't hijack your speakers and blow your ears off, what fun is that?) and NO FLASH ADS because flash zero days are one of the biggest attack vectors out there

This!!

I don't block ads because of some desire to screw website operators out of revenue, or because I think I'm somehow entitled to get everything for nothing - I block them because many of them (especially the flash ones!) are intrusive, disruptive, annoying, and vectors for malware infestation, and because I don't care for having my every activity tracked by Big Data ad networks.

If a website uses unobtrusive, relevant, self-hosted, static ads, I have no issue whatsoever with displaying them (and even - shock horror - clicking on them when they advertise something that interests me). In the absence of that though, fuck 'em.

Re:NoScript

[knarf]

The mere fact that many sites host executable content does not mean you need to execute that content. Calling people 'luddites' and 'clueless' when they recognize this is... rather clueless.

Most sites hosting executable content work partly without that content. Some things might not look like they would had that executable content been given free reign, but so what? Some sites overlay the static page with warnings about the lack of functionality when you block their executable content. Right-mouse-button-click on 'Remove this object' and voila... the site works fine. For those sites which really, really insist on having their scripts run there is always CTRL-w.

Re:NoScript

[jythie]

Not anymore. Firefox for instance removed the ability to disable javascript through a simple checkbox.

Re:NoScript

[Mister Transistor]

I absolutely hate that shit, you go to a site and it renders, then goes dark because some fucking scrip takes over and tries to force some card on me or some shit. Fuck them. Big time. I see that shit, I'm outta there. Period.

Re:NoScript

[icebike]

...and suddenly the pages stop working altogether. It is trivial to make a page that is empty and use JavaScript to load the contents of the page. If these guys resort to AdBlock-detectors, why do you think they would allow NoScript to circumvent that?

Do we care?
After all if they spend all this time trying to defeat Adblock and No-script they probably don't really have much to offer anyway.
If they just tone down the amount of ads people would go to these lengths to get rid of them.

Re:NoScript

[dos1]

Then how is it on topic if the answer was about pages requiring you to use JS to work at all?

Re:NoScript

[UltraZelda64]

No. Lynx/Links/w3m. Beat *THAT*, bitches.

Re:NoScript

[Dan541]

These day webdesigners are so crap at their jobs that many sites can't even load text without javascript enabled.

Re:NoScript

[Dan541]

It is trivial to make a page that is empty and use JavaScript to load the contents of the page.

Many site already do this because every kid with a laptops calls himself a designer. Hence the quality of code is in rapid decline.

Re:NoScript

[Jane Q. Public]

"...and suddenly the pages stop working altogether. It is trivial to make a page that is empty and use JavaScript to load the contents of the page. If these guys resort to AdBlock-detectors, why do you think they would allow NoScript to circumvent that?"

Aaaaaaaannnnnnnddddd... guess what? I don't need that page!

The more they do shit like that, the more people (including me) will be pissed off.

I do not owe them a living. I look at what I want to look at, including ads. Shoving them in my face will not make sales.

Re:NoScript

[Mister Transistor]

I wish people who actively choose to comment on a thing would take a moment to acquire the most basic familiarity with that thing.

You MUST be new here...

Re:NoScript

[Mister Transistor]

Eventually, enough of those "leeches" are going to say "Fuck you and your obnoxious content" when they can get it at a dozen other sites, and you go out of business. Well done, sir!

Re:NoScript

[Dan541]

It's especially fun when you're reading text on you phone only to have the page taken away by a Java dialogue box that you can't always close.

Re:NoScript

[Mister Transistor]

Yeah! I miss him.

From what I read back in the day, he's probably a quivering puddle of jello having his paranoid delusions of being persecuted by trolls take over his psyche completely.

But like the Goatse guy, I do miss him...

Re:NoScript

[Dan541]

Infact, name one website and I MEAN 1 website that has no javascript? Name one please?

TheRapistCentre.com it may only be one page but it is still classed as a website.

Re:NoScript

[Ol Olsoc]

Then it's a bad site not worth your time.

Then why are you on Slashdot? It is not worth your time right? You said it yourself. Infact, name one website and I MEAN 1 website that has no javascript? Name one please?

Yeah lets get rid of text too while we are it! Lets make the web complete unpractical and useless for what people use it for? After all I am sure people would agree to give up gmail, facebook, google maps, and would love to have a boring set of text files that do not do anything all on your principal.

Umm, welcome to the future citizen. Did you know that there are these amazing little programs that will let scripts run that you choose to run? And not others that you don't? It's just like magic. They don't work on Netscape 1.1 though.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

The suckiest sites do stop working. At which point I praise noscript, and choose a better source.

If you consume a lot of vapid commercial crap, I can imagine they will be able to force you to view the ads. They control their speech, their content.

Re:NoScript

[Mister Transistor]

It does make me feel a bit safer. It tells me the web site publisher cares enough to manage the ad content, and to me at least that strikes me as having less of a chance for someone to slip a turd in the punchbowl. The ads were probably reviewed and/or vetted by the site that's carrying them, and even might be, *gasp* relevant! Most of the ads I see carried by the hosting site are not obnoxious and since they are even almost (usually) relevant, I rarely need to block them.

Which is good, because it does make the ads a bit harder to block since they come from the same domain as the main web content. At least I know if I do get some kind of malware, etc. the origin is better known and the blame can be cast in the right direction.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

It almost always comes down to a static layout element where it shouldn't have been, or "tricks" to try control the layout beyond what CSS provides. Sites that just follow the standards and make their site look nice within the toolset provided... just work. Even some google service logins manage to screw this up these days; and they used to be model citizens at this! These days they can doing login popups and menus and rollovers and all that with pure CSS

Re:NoScript

[i.r.id10t]

I telnet to port 80, issue GET requests, and parse the HTML/CSS myself.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

The only good news is they aren't using table page layout

Re:NoScript

[Ol Olsoc]

Until you find that all the different web sites don't have the information you're looking for, or cite the same source that has the scriptwall, or have paywalls, or got taken down on a copyright infringement claim.

You're just going to keep up the "until's" until everyone gives up aren't you?

See, the problem is that a lot of us don't know just how bad the internet has become for a lot of people until for some reason we have the script blockers and hostscripts turned off for some reason. The commercial interests combined with the bad guys are making an unholy mess of the internetz, and it is going to become almost unusable. For some of us, it's just about there already. Okay, sounds like a shot in the arm to the old school. Paper books, libraries, all manner of things that despite not being as good as the internet once promised, have become compareble to what the internet has become.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

You're probably going to need to upgrade to links because a lot of sites are using CSS menus now

Re:NoScript

[tepples]

I would suggest also to reword the information in a way it does not infringe anyone's copyright

Even rewording didn't save Xio Software from getting sued by The Tetris Company.

Re:NoScript

[Frosty Piss]

You're probably going to need to upgrade to links because a lot of sites are using CSS menus now

Nonsense. I'm also a masochist.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

And this same line of reasoning is what keeps Linux off the desktop.

Linux is already on my desktop, and I don't imagine any way your reasoning will remove it.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

Better chase him off the lawn before he taints the grits

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

Because a lot opinion-sharpers in social circles have a lower than average tolerance for BS.

If ads are the site's actual business... by definition you don't have any business to do there. If they're a newspaper, they need to be important more than they need the ad impressions from each visitor. And if they manage to sell you a subscription, at that point most people like them enough to whitelist them.

Re:NoScript

[Aighearach]

KILL the ads! Just KILL them! KILL THEM ALL!!!!!1!!!! *pew* *pew* *pew*

Re: NoScript

[TimMD909]

CTRL-W? You and your emacs commands. Like another person said, real men use telnet (port 443 I assume).

Re:NoScript

[Tom]

but the reality is that these sites have to pay the bills somehow.

"somehow" being the keyword here.

We live in a free world, and one of its beauties is that you do not have a right to have your business model succeed.

Advertisement sucks, everyone agrees on that. People avoid it wherever they can.

Re:NoScript

[waferbuster]

About 5 years ago when NoScript was relatively small and unknown, I donated some money to the author. He sent me a very nice thank you reply. Honestly, Adblock and Noscript work so well, that it's a shock when I see sites on other peoples computers. Of course, I always turn off the "limited advertising allowed" checkbox in Adblock settings.

There are a few sites that I care enough about (liliputing.com for example) to whitelist them. I don't click on their ads, but their advertising is subdued enough to avoid being obnoxious.

Re:NoScript

[EdIII]

Don't be to hard on us. While I don't do a tremendous amount of front end work, I do listen to the developers and understand that it's not that easy at all.

You want near perfect rendering on all screen sizes, all devices, and all browsers. Dude. Seriously. Just ask NASA to set you up with your own private Moon Base and Death Star Laser.

It would work 10000000000000x better if it was a native program instead. That costs money. So the only thing I can do as a developer is use a fucking shitty retarded document markup language that instructs that fucking shitty retarded browser to download external code to be run client side on fucking shitty retarded client side code libraries and frame works.

THEN... THEN...

I need to somehow automagically figure out what device you are using, the screen sizes, interface capabilities, etc. and CUSTOMIZE my style sheets (one more nail in the fucktard coffin) just for your device.

And.... it all needs to work with whatever frameworks I have seamlessly. No. It really is a bitch and a half to make a website that dynamically renders and sizes itself to screens. The tech is JUST NOT THERE for me to do it cost effectively at all.

Personally, I would just say fuck it all. Give you a single page when it detects a mobile browser saying mobile browsing is not supported by anything other than our app.

Then I would write that SOB in something like PhoneGap and make it native. Give you what you REALLY want, which is an interface designed for your device.

Mobile web development is HARD and EXPENSIVE and I seriously question the wisdom of even expending the resources on it when everybody and their mother wants a mobile app anyways.

Re:NoScript

[Anubis IV]

In Chrome or Safari, right click > Inspect Element > press Delete (repeat for parent elements until you get the one you want)

As soon as I see it go gray, I immediately start deleting stuff. I don't even bother to see what it says. You can actually access a lot of supposedly restricted content that way too, since they've simply hidden the content behind the grayed out element.

Re:NoScript

[EdIII]

Maybe so, but blocking all javascript by default just results in a poor browsing experience devoid of any real capabilities.

The vast majority of CRM platforms and internal web sites use it as well. So obviously your business system allows javascript otherwise you would never get any work done with SAAS vendors.

Stuff I would want to do with my own landing pages is impossible without it. I absolutely need the ability to perform AJAX calls and modify the DOM without reloading the page. There is some truly interesting and beautiful websites that simply cannot make do with just HTML and a style sheet.

Download DoNotTrackMe, Ghostery, Ad Blocker, and a comprehensive hosts file list for blocking at the system level. You'll find that you are still pretty safe, not downloading objectionable content, and enjoying a better web experience.

Re:NoScript

[LihTox]

NoScript lets you selectively enable scripts from different domains. And that's the thing: it would be very easy for a website to bypass adblockers, if it simply hosted its own ads under its own domain. It's when websites rely on ad networks for ads and scripts and the like that makes ad-blocking feasible.

Re:NoScript

[silas_moeckel]

Please for the love of think of the children. Modern web sites html/css are so ugly and convoluted your eye may bleed as a side effect.

Re:NoScript

[DJ Particle]

And even ads supplied by Yahoo and Google aren't immune. Those are the two most reputable ad suppliers, and both have been known to occasionally shove out malware-laden ads. Until I can get a 100% guarantee against ad-based malware, AdBlock+ stays running.

Re:NoScript

[radarskiy]

My favorite are site that actually do render without JavaScript and show it to you for a second... but then do a refresh to a "your browser lacks JavaScript" page when a script fails to block the refresh.

Re:NoScript

[cas2000]

you're making things too hard for yourself.

the correct way to render a page is however the user wants it rendered at that moment in time. this may vary based on the device they're using, the time of day, how tired their eyes are, arbitrary whim, and thousands of other factors - almost none of which can be anticipated or predicted by you.

amongst other things, that means web sites should emit just plain xhtml with simple css and don't do any fucking with the DOM with javascript. if the client's renderer is broken, then it's their problem, not yours. don't try to fix it or work around it with js or stupid hacks - it's just fucking broken and will never get fixed as long as people like you keep making work-arounds.

and nobody ever wants a mobile app. no user does, anyway. it's arsehole companies and marketing vermin who want users to be running their own special purpose spyware app rather than just visit a web site.

Re:NoScript

[DragonTHC]

We shouldn't have to use it.

There's a change coming on the Internet. Pageviews are a useless metric. Clicks are done for.

True value lays in the userbase. User capital is the new currency. And not selling to advertisers. The single carefully formed tweet, pin, or *sigh* FB wall post can be worth thousands to the right company. What kind of users follow you? Who wants a crack at those users.

I haven't seen an intrusive ad in almost a decade. They are dead. They are a complete waste of money. Banners are done.

The stuff I block with adblock shouldn't be seen for a reason. I block it for a reason. It's already the third tier Internet. It's one step above Nigerian prince email.

Re:NoScript

[Darinbob]

Ya, if ads start getting through adblock, then I'd just block the site altogether.

Re:NoScript

[Darinbob]

But we don't need to see those pages. Just block them completely if they won't play fair with customers.

Re:NoScript

[cas2000]

yep.

and one of the other reasons i run noscript and adblock is because I want my computer to idle at 0% CPU usage when i'm not using it, rather than with all six cores of my AMD 1090T running at 100% (which is what happens whenever i browse without noscript and adblock, e.g. in a different browser like midori or epiphany that doesn't have them installed - i use them to browse sites that require javascript because i don't want to whitelist youtube or google or other huge sites in my main browser).

Re:NoScript

[Darinbob]

No it doesn't. It just blocks the sites that use javascript too extensively. You don't need to use those sites. You don't even need to use the internet. If they want to act like jerks then we don't have to play with them.

It's not just about ads or tracking, but the computer and browser run tremendously faster when you block the ads and tracking scripts. I bought a computer to use it, not to allow it to become the advertisement industry's bitch.

Re:NoScript

[Billly Gates]

Hairy

You are aware Commodo Dragon still loads the ads but only not displays them due to the limits on the Chrome api? Just something I figured you would want to know.

I switched back to Firefox for this reason with adblock. I heard Comodo has a secure version of Firefox still for your customers if you are interested?

Re:NoScript

[Darinbob]

Eventually they'll have a javascript module that will say "your CPU appears to be idle which means you aren't watching our ads, please remain where you are until the police arrive."

Re:NoScript

[Darinbob]

Ya, I selectively enable scripts for sites I care about; not all the scripts of course, I want anything "analytic" being used, but enough to lose the images and click some buttons is enough.

Re:NoScript

[AlabamaCajun]

Could not have said it better Bro'tha! I whitelist where I trust it like here but opt out when I start seeing movies and shit running while I am reading. It would be of little use to see ads anyway as I don't buy stuff through that model. When I want stuff I go looking for it.

Re:NoScript

[cas2000]

No, really, it does - for the websites that I absolutely have to access no matter what, I've already whitelisted them. For everything else, I couldn't care less.

yep, me too.

sites that insist on having javascript enabled before displaying any useful information or having functional navigation just guarantee that I won't bother returning...the close tab button is ever-present. I'll never get to find out if the site is one that i'd end up really liking. and i'm fine with that. more than fine.

it may be that i'm missing out on the greatest web site in the world, but i just don't give a fuck because a) my time is valuable, b) my privacy and security are also valuable, and c) there are millions of other web sites out there that aren't as annoying or demanding.

Re:NoScript

[Firethorn]

So do what old Hairy does, when a site "appeals to turn off your blocker" I head straight to their forums and ask them right out "Are you gonna take financial responsibility when one of your ads infects one of my customers?" and then point out how trivial it is to bypass the blockers with non-threatening content. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that those pieces of malware they "just keep getting somehow" are coming from assholes like in TFA and spreading the word is required to bring this to a head. They are making profits from a risky business, they should have to assume the downsides as well as the profits and clean up their own messes.

You make good points. Hell, I even have adblock set to 'let certain non-obtrusive ads through'. You want your ads to be let through? Fine. Follow Adblock's rules and they'll be let through. Otherwise I'm protecting my computer. I install adblock because of the malware, speaker hijacking*, screen-grabbing, etc...

*Autoplay video ads? Extra-special block! I'm trying NOT to annoy my roommates.

Re:NoScript

[EdIII]

Things are already hard enough.

You want to tilt at windmills regarding the DOM and javascript. You can't do the operations people want today with plain xhtml and style sheets. Not to mention, I would need to do device detection to decide on WHAT style sheet to deliver.

You're idea is to deliver what amounts to a PDF and absolve yourself of all responsibility for the rendering. Great. Unrealistic, but great.

Don't group me with those "people". I'm not making stupid hacks and I'm just as tired as you are about all the bullshit just to get something done. Javascript is the only way to do it, and you are conflating the problems of style sheets and rending with JS. No, not always. In fact, not even that often if you are doing JS correctly.

I'm not interested in making JS do everything on the page. A simple event to change the background color to create a menu is not something that should ever break the rendering of the page. By the same token, an AJAX call tied to a click event is not going to break the rendering either. It can even HELP. You don't have to download an entirely new page. Just modify the DOM with the result that came back.

The mobile app is the only sane response I have at the moment to the nightmare that is trying to get CSS rendering correctly on mobile devices, as well as every other freaking device they buy.

I don't want them visiting my website with a mobile browser since the chances of bullshit problems with rendering or malware is just too damn high.

A mobile app solves all the problems you speak about. I can finally, and reliably, control the user experience on their device.

You're right about the marketing vermin, but I'm NOT a marketing vermin. I just want users to be able to perform those operations they want without dealing with the hell that is mobile web browsing.

Be honest. Do you really want mobile web browsing when it sucks, the programs themselves are not standard, and the user experience is so different?

Having a native app written to do exactly what you want would always seem to be the preferred method. At least with the case of PhoneGap I get an IOS and Android App with one single platform.

I think that's easier than coding a separate mobile site for the platform. ....

AND... if you are really so damn good that you can do all of what you are saying with just a document and a style sheet.. then teach us master. Show us the way through the valley of darkness to the fields of wheat and honey.

Cuz I'm tired. I just want shit that works man.

Re:NoScript

[EdIII]

Says the AC.

It's not just about screen size and resolution. If that were true we would not have any problems rendering exactly the same between Firefox, IE, and Chrome right?

But we do right? Who's the fucking idiot?

No matter the screen resolution? Are you fucking retarded?

The same site layout and style you use on a widescreen tablet is NOT going to fly on a tiny ass little smart phone screen. Unless you want everything to SCALE down, which would be stupid.

Mobile design really does require a significant departure from how your entire site is laid out and used. If you want a fucking example look at Fandango. They DON'T look anywhere near the same.

Your idea that you could code some sort of style sheet that could render on both is hilarious.

Since you are already creating entirely different style sheets and use cases for a mobile platform, why do the work TWICE?

Just stop. Look at yourself and the money and resources you are expending. Face Palm. HARD.

Write the god damn mobile app and just be done with it.

Re:NoScript

[vlueboy]

...and suddenly the pages stop working altogether. It is trivial to make a page that is empty and use JavaScript to load the contents of the page. If these guys resort to AdBlock-detectors, why do you think they would allow NoScript to circumvent that?

The web stopped working long ago because HyperText was not intended to use dynamic modules and plugins (flash, vrml, quicktime, realplayer --we've been dancing around presentation pretty badly because apparently only academia likes text and static jpgs). When you come from google to visit a forum to grab info or files, it may want you to register, or says the thread is 404-long-gone. Worse yet, the web has also added paywalls, interstitial ads, captchas and download counters.
Here's a recent example: Do you like fanfics? Go to http://icybrian.com/ and click on "Fanfic Library" on the left.
Go, I'll wait...
.
.
.
Thanks, PHP and Mysql!
Look at the site edit dates. That content is probably lost forever unless archive.org and simple url slugs were slurped. None of this is sign of a "healthy web".

Dynamic content introduces slowdowns and more points of failures. It is barely progress --to get back to the topic at hand, it was precisely javascript that brought us slowly to this point...
Noscript is just forcibly removing the veil that AJAX donned on every one of us under the gospel of web 2.0. Any public content that cannot reliably slurped for posterity without masquerading and running extra code, does not deserve to be there temporarily either.

Re:NoScript

[vlueboy]

Works for me.

No, really, it does - for the websites that I absolutely have to access no matter what, I've already whitelisted them. For everything else, I couldn't care less.

One of the only problems is when you have to lend someone your seat. Don't get me wrong --I use NoScript and maintain my lists on-demand too, and page loads are awesome with JS off by default... but here are some examples of what this does to others:

I can't hear the music on this streaming site!
My flash games aren't showing!
I can't see xyz button on the page, or clicking does nothing!
I can't see the videos on Youtube! your PC is broken!
FB is broken!

You can do "temporarily allow" for a few domains that day, but every new site they visit will probably not be in our geeky pre-processed list, requiring you to step in to fiddle with their mouse several times. AND they'll open you up to cookies that will remain long after you deny all the JS.

Re:NoScript

[Your.Master]

There's a huge mass of geeks that were right onboard with facebook. I strongly suspect that far even after pulling out the "neutral" majority, more geeks were for Facebook than against. Geeks are social creatures too, 80s movies notwithstanding.

Re:NoScript

[crossmr]

No you didn't.

That's a great story, but it's complete and utter bullshit.
Most people would not just flea from some indie developer because an image in their game was suddenly not working. The communities of indie developers are in fact quite understanding.

As far as revenue goes, if you lost hundreds of dollars in revenue from a quarter of your users fleeing overnight. it would mean that you were in fact regularly making a serious chunk of change moving you out of indie status, to the point where you should be showing a lot more competence or be able to afford someone who has some.

Troubleshooting 101 is to run the app with all add-ons turned off in the browser. It shouldn't have taken you more than 30 minutes to find the problem.

You may have had an issue, but this story is sensationalized garbage, all from an AC no less..

Re:NoScript

[dkf]

A lot of geeks like to think they're influential opinion-formers. Most of them are far less influential than they imagine

Indeed. Look how (un)successful geeks have been in getting people not to use Facebook for example.

That was just due to misunderstanding the target market. They just needed to point to teens that their mothers would be joining soon and would insist on friending them.

Re:NoScript

[allypally]

You make lots of good points.

My computer is, among other things, a gateway to my valuable data. I'd be mad to consider running untrusted code on it.

Now, if the ads come as signed and certified and verified and have insurance for any damage they cause -- well, then I might take the risk.

But random code freshly downloaded? No way.

Re: NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your layouts are too complex for their own good and should not be on the Internet? You are making it just too difficult.

Make scaleable layouts. Look at some bootstrap themes for inspiration.

I know a lot of people who use the mobile layouts on their desktop browsers or even tablets because it is clutter free and faster than the awful shit-infested main layout. Something to think about.

Re:NoScript

[Sudline]

I wonder why so many stay on a site with annoying ads rather than click on the back button. That is annoying for the (annoying) webmaster at many levels.

Re:NoScript

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't do the operations people DO NOT F*?&£ING want today with plain xhtml and style sheets.

FTFY

Re: NoScript

[Anne Thwacks]

Mod Parent UP

Re:NoScript

[javajeff]

NoScript users like myself are prepared to only allow certain scripts when going to a new site.

Re:NoScript

[Tom]

The fact that some people hate gravity and try to have it outlawed doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exist, you know?

Re:NoScript

[maxwell demon]

Also, I'm willing to make the following contract with any advertiser:

The advertiser agrees to provably not track me in any way, to use no advertising containing sound, no advertising which hides content, and no animation that lasts for longer than a few seconds, use no Flash or other Browser plugins, not to eat up considerable processor time (and, in case of mobile devices, battery charge), their advertisement never eating up more than ten kilobytes of memory or bandwidth per web page (actually the memory requirement could be relaxed, but not the bandwidth requirement), not to put their advertisements in the middle of the text, and most importantly, to properly make sure that their ad inserts do not contain any malware (the latter having a penalty for non-compliance of ten million dollars, to make sure it is really taken seriously), and in return I agree to not intentionally block their advertisements, provided they give me a way to reliably do so without enabling other ads as well.

I don't have problems with advertising in principle. I do have problems with advertising that

* tracks me
* actively annoys me (not that I'd ever buy anything from annoying ads anyway, mind you)
* eats my resources
* threatens my security

Re:NoScript

[maxwell demon]

Two words: Surrogate script.

Re:NoScript

[maxwell demon]

It would give the site owner an incentive to check the ads, because as soon as it is loaded on their own servers, malware on it does not only threaten the users, it also threatens their own site.

Re:NoScript

[GNious]

This is where I usually close the tab and don't bother visit the site.

Re:NoScript

[couchslug]

Works for me.

Re:NoScript

[chefren]

Bye bye Page Rank if you go that way..

Re:NoScript

[Cederic]

-an ironic comment posted on a website

..that allows you to subscribe, as a way of funding the site without seeing ads, and even allows some non-subscribers to turn off ads.

The irony is that he's ranting about poor business models on a site that doesn't have that specific problem.

Re:NoScript

[Cederic]

There's a massive difference between rendering correctly and readably, and looking good.

The mass market rejected the usable in favour of the pretty, and we all have to suffer as a result. Make your site render properly on small devices and people will bitch that it isn't the same as the desktop version, it's the wrong colour, the fucking bunnies stopped hopping along the bottom of the screen.

No, you're the fucking idiot for failing to realise just how fucking complex and what a serious pain in the arse this shit is.

Re:NoScript

[Chelloveck]

JavaScript performance on mobile is terrible - like 10x slower than desktop. If you make your website dependent on javascript, prepare to lose a lot of mobile customers who won't have the patience to wait it out.

Why would providers care? Most of them have mobile versions of their sites which are already severely crippled, and they go out of their way to make them that way. You'd think that would be enough to drive people away, but it doesn't. What's a little page load time on top of it?

Re:NoScript

[Seumas]

I'm okay with this.

As it is, if I'm on mobile and go to a site where it pops up a giant ad trying to get me to install their app or subscribe to something, I don't even close the ad and continue on to the content. I just back away from the site and never go back there again. Hell, I don't even frequent sites that force me to use facebook or google to leave a comment.

The internet has some odd billion websites. The internet was delightful before there were 47 ads on every page. I'm okay self-imposing the same existence, again, if sites adblock-block.

Oh, and why do I find it necessary to adblock? I won't bother explaining my numerous issues with it. I'll just leave a number here that I looked at in adblock a few seconds ago. It says that it has blocked just over 498,000 ads. That's just on this one browser. On one machine. In 90 days. That doesn't count my other machines, laptops, ipad, or any other devices.

498,000 ads. That's 700 ads per hour, eight hours per day, every day, for 90 days. On top of all the real-world ads on television, on radio, in podcasts, in magazines, newspapers, billboards, sides of buildings. I can't do much about ads in those contexts, but they're also not being forced at me to the sum of 700 per fucking hour, like web ads, either.

Re:NoScript

[Seumas]

Slashdot gives many users the option to opt-out of ads. I've had that for years. I guess it is based on history or comment history or karma or something.

Re:NoScript

[gelfling]

Yes and no. After years of struggling with NoScript I've discovered that the widget actually bogs down the system more than the scripts it's blocking, and second, javascript is going to kill the internet. The average website has 4 or 5 LAYERS of javascript and runs something like 2 or 3 dozen scripts. But the effort of Noscript to block them can be pretty incredible.

The only real remedy is a human one - ignore all the ads and garbage and as a matter of course never buy anything from an advertiser.

Re:NoScript

[causality]

Not anymore. Firefox for instance removed the ability to disable javascript through a simple checkbox.

Heh you're right, they certainly did. I hadn't noticed because I've been using NoScript for so long.

Re:NoScript

[ceoyoyo]

So what you're saying is that if you make something on the cheap it looks and works like it was made on the cheap?

Re:NoScript

[hairyfeet]

You want a t-shirt sized soundbyte? Old Hairy can do that.. "Quit shoveling malware and I'll quit blocking!" because that is all it ends up coming down to, their "business model" is a blight that shovels misery and cost BILLIONS in clean up costs every year just so Larry the lazy fuck website owner can just rent out a chunk of his pages...ask me how much I give a fuck about Larry and his "business model".

Adblocking started because 1.- Malware infected ads were a serious problem, and 2.- All those calls to third parties were not only a risk but sucked a shitload of bandwidth and wasted a ton of time...NEITHER OF THESE HAS CHANGED so neither will my installing adblock as a SOP on customer's PCs. As I pointed out its beyond trivial to bypass adblocks, simply don't shovel third party malware, if they refuse to do that because its more profitable to risk my customer's security then why in the fuck should I care about them?

Re:NoScript

[ceoyoyo]

What do you mean? Slashdot doesn't have ads. Just that little checkbox that says thank you next to it. What's that for anyway?

Re:NoScript

[MightyYar]

I don't think I agree with your thesis that educated people are less persuaded by advertising. Different kinds of adverts, sure, but not immune. Critical thinking probably helps in product selection for practical things, but educated people buy just as much (if not more!) frivolous stuff.

Re:NoScript

[MightyYar]

Yes, those are particularly annoying - and removing the event is more trouble than simply deleting the interfering DIV.

Re:NoScript

[MightyYar]

s/event/refresh/

Re:NoScript

[iamgnat]

If informative page or site decides to screw you over, you're the one boned. Not the site.

Very little information on the web that the average person would access (e.g. not something really obscure) is only going to be found on one site. There are other places to get the same information. More specifically, most of the worst offenders of javascript and ad garbage are just blogs regurgitating information from more reputable sites. So you as the user are not getting boned at all by moving on to better places.

If enough people get fed up with a sites practices (formatting, 1 paragraph per page click throughs, javascript crap, ads, etc..) then either the site will resolve the problems that keep people away or they will disappear into the cruft of the internet like so many crappy sites before them.

The real problem is that "we" want everything on the internet to be free to "us", but it costs someone time and resources to put it there. The paywall model failed a long time ago for average sites (yes there are still some around, but not nearly like it was in the late 90s) and ads are what sprung up to try to fill the revenue void. The site owners have every bit as much of a right to want to recover their costs (and hopefully make a bit of a profit) for their work as anyone else does for the work they do. How long do you think the company you work for would keep going if none of it's customers paid for it's product/services?

Re:NoScript

[buddyglass]

"Not worth your time" is inherently subjective. Maybe I like using Gmail? Or Netflix? Etc. You're essentially advocating that users opt-out of all modern websites. Maybe you find that restriction acceptable; I don't.

Re:NoScript

[buddyglass]

I don't run NoScript. I've never. Ever. Been infected by some drive-by exploit that running NoScript would have prevented. If you run it because you want sites to load faster that's one thing. At least it makes sense. Running NoScript for security reasons is, IMO, unreasonable.

Re:NoScript

[Mashdar]

I like NoScript + RequestPolicy.

RequestPolicy is pretty handy for blocking access to outside servers -- untrusted images on a forum, adds hosted on third party servers, etc.

RequestPolicy does require frequent interaction to enable access to style sheets, etc, but I like it. It even lets you whitelist from X to Y, or from all sites to Y.

Re:NoScript

[Mashdar]

GP wants the exact opposite of a PDF. He is advocating for flexible design, not a rigid set of layouts. Trying to create a rigid page structure is exactly what causes problems. Stop micro-managing everything and start making your page simple. You talk about "what people want". I assume you mean what clients want, because consumers don't care about frilly menus. They want a fast loading website with buttons where buttons always go and content in stardard format. The people paying for the website think all of the bling is good, and it is your duty as the expert to try to explain why simple is better. Some clients will not listen, but that's their loss when their page only works on IE9 on 1600x900 screens.

Re:NoScript

[Luckyo]

Huge amount of pages are specialist pages that talk about certain topic in depth that you will not find anywhere else. At least no easily.

Now if your main interests are mainstream news and entertainment, sure, you can find that for free anywhere.

Walk off that particular road, and you'll find internet full of interesting information, that is often not mirrored anywhere.

Re:NoScript

[ceoyoyo]

It seems to me very odd that anybody would want to force ads on people who specifically block them. I'm not going to buy anything from your sucky ad that you managed to manipulate past my blocker. Just give up and thank me for not wasting your bandwidth.

Re:NoScript

[ceoyoyo]

Ha ha ha. Most humans can be outwitted by Word 1.0.

Re:NoScript

[ceoyoyo]

It's not a falsehood. It's just got a typo (I don't know whether it was in the original quote. The correct version should be:

"The customers are always right."

If a significant number of your customers are telling you something, listen, or die.

Re:NoScript

[mebrahim]

No need to do heavy stuff in JavaScript. Just put the whole page under a visibile cover and remove the cover using JavaScript on page load event. >:)

Re:NoScript

[semi-extrinsic]

Customers are frequently wrong, and sometimes their actions are outright hostile.

Quite. I find this page to be a fun insight into the world of stupid customers.

Re:NoScript

[hairyfeet]

Are Linux users? After all they are even more trivial to infect than Windows and Android, so beloved and claimed by the Linux community hit the 1 million infected mark last year, a full 9 years earlier than it took Windows to reach the same number BTW, so are they gonna pay or bugger off? Excuse me "go write a Bash script" would be the more apropos line.

Don't mistake security by obscurity for actual security as they are VERY different. The *BSDs with the constant code audits and insane amount of hoops required to put anything in mainline? That is REAL security, whereas with Linux...well let me put it THIS way, you have over 700 projects in your average distro which 1.- they never talk to each other, 2.- they are each "doing their own thing" without regard to what the others are doing, and 3.- they have ZERO care for anybody's project but their own, so if Torvalds futzes with the kernel and breaks the wireless subsystem? Too bad so sad.

The only reason Linux lasted as long as it did was less than 1% on the desktop. and don't waste your breath trotting out the "Linux runs on servers" TMRepo meme, as servers are stripped to the bone, running an OS that may as well be embedded for how little it has, and are managed by guys that spent many years studying to learn how to run servers securely. you give those same Linux admins a Windows server and they'll be just as secure, you can even have a headless server with only what you require installed thanks to WinServer Core.

So before you throw stones next time you might want to look at the glass house you are living in bud.

Re:NoScript

[Luckyo]

Actually a lot of them do. I've seen everything from simply making content vanish unless ads are loaded to even sillier tricks, like making every page link to adfly which would then contain a link to the actual content and every time you'd visit the site, first time it would force you to hit adfly.

Re:NoScript

[BasilBrush]

The teens I know just say no to friending their mothers, and continue to use facebook.

Re:NoScript

[BasilBrush]

I know what NoScript is.

The "NoScript" subject header was inherited from dome way back up the thread. The person I responded to was rejecting the benefits of Javascript altogether, as well as implying a compromise in security that isn't there.

Re:NoScript

[ThatsMyNick]

Remember business people... "The customer is always right."

This policy has always only been applied in high-end retail. It is not worth satisfying every customer unless you are providing a premium service, and the customer is paying for the premium of being always right.

The phrase caught on everywhere else, but has never been really true.

Re: NoScript

[Anubis IV]

I was actually thinking of sites that ask you to be a paying member before they'll reveal the answer to the technical question you're searching for (most of which have finally been obsolesced by Stack Overflow), or else stores or news sites that insist you register before they let you look at the thing you were just linked to from Google. Porn just isn't something I've ever been interested in (nope, I'm actually not kidding or lying), but if my advice works for you in your quest for porn, go forth and prosper.

Re:NoScript

[Threni]

> You want near perfect rendering on all screen sizes, all devices, and all browsers. Dude. Seriously.

Chrome on Android? That's edge case, yeah? 2014? It's 2014. Test your app on Android. The problem I'm talking about will occur on any device, any screen size, any version of Android.

> Mobile web development is HARD and EXPENSIVE and I seriously question the wisdom of even expending
> the resources on it when everybody and their mother wants a mobile app anyways.

No. People do *not* want to have to install some shitty sucky app to visit your newspaper/shop/etc. It has to work on the webpage. I'm not even going to try and close that shitty dialog to work around how poor your* website coding is; I'm certainly not going to expend the effort to examine how poor your app design/coding/testing skills are.

*Not yours specifically; i'm sure you test your stuff on the stock browser of the most popular mobile platform in the world.

Re:NoScript

[samwichse]

How's that new Slashdot beta coming, Dice?

Re:NoScript

[hairyfeet]

Yes I am but more importantly the code is never ran and since I use Comodo Secure DNS in the browser any malware is stripped server side.

If you are using Firefox you are at risk and here is why....to this very day Mozilla refuses to support Low Rights Mode, a tech that came out with Vista more than SEVEN YEARS AGO!!! If you ask them why they'll give some bullshit excuse about Linux but 1.- What Torvalds does or doesn't do should not affect other platforms, otherwise nobody will advance until all 3 have the same tech and 2.- the same tech used in Low Rights Mode would be trivial to use in AppArmor or SELinux, thus making Linux safer too.

So yes I know about ICeDragon but sadly it uses the Gecko engine and until Gecko is multithreaded, so a single bad tab don't take down the browser and more importantly Gecko supports low rights mode I simply cannot recommend anything based on Mozilla code. It would be nice if Chrome blocked server side but given the choice of that or not having low rights mode the choice is clear and the fact that my customers haven't seen a single infection since switching (compared to my FF using customers that were hit by the Yahoo Porn Bug I wrote about in my journal) the results speak for themselves.

Re:NoScript

[vakuona]

No one has a right to have their business model succeed, but neither does anyone have a right to get content free without either paying for it or putting up with ads

Re:NoScript

[hawk]

I don't block ads.

I block things that blink or move, making text hard to read; things that try to track me; and things that make my browser sit idle.

I first starting doing this with junkbuster on a 486 when two pages (on my large for the time 17" screen) loaded so many blinky things that it brought the system to a crawl.

I'm fine with ads. I'm not ok with distractions, spying, or delays.

hawk

Re:NoScript

[cheater512]

More trivial to infect? Bullshit.

You linked to a article about how to create a trojan horse that requires user interaction to work. BSD is not immune to user stupidity either.
It also gets no elevated privileges at all so it is trapped in the user's account only. Oh and it only works with Gnome or KDE and you have to guess the exact right DE for it to work. Oh and KDE and Gnome on BSD are also affected.

Wtf are you smoking? There is no exploit there at all.
Security by obscurity? Huh?

Re:NoScript

[Kvasio]

real men emulate modem noise straight to the phone receiver

Re:NoScript

[Wolfrider]

> Honestly you might as well not even have AV as its never gonna get anything to attack, infections drop right of the map

--Tell that to the FORM virus I got off an infected floppy back in the day, when I didn't even have a modem. :P Honestly, you can still get infections from PDF files, CDs, USB drives... any kind of shared media still needs to be scanned. Nice hyperbole tho ;-)

Re:NoScript

[twocows]

The delicious irony is when I add the blocking layer to my personal adblocking rules.

Re:NoScript

[ComputersKai]

Just get rid of Adobe Flash. How much longer will you think that people will still use Flash for things besides advertisements? Even Youtube has HTML5 now.

Re:NoScript

[Loki_666]

That's ok, because with every change, Facebook is doing an excellent job of driving people away all by itself.

The site just gets worse and worse. I only really keep my FB account because its convenient to keep in touch with family, but really, it wouldn't hurt me to switch back to using email or skype or some other method.

Re:NoScript

[BasilBrush]

You're right that the changes are often user hostile.

And yet I can't say that I've noticed any reduction in people or postings. About once a year one of my friends will declare they are leaving FB. But that's far outweighed by new people joining.

Re:NoScript

[Loki_666]

Yeah... its super weird.

HOSTS file

[schwit1]

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt
http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?showintro=0;hostformat=hosts
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Re:HOSTS file

[buddyglass]

And if the ads are served from the site you actually need to interact with? At file paths that aren't easily distinguishable from the site's non-advertisement content?

Re:HOSTS file

[Penguinisto]

Damnit - do NOT invoke that bastard!

Re:HOSTS file

[Dwedit]

But in practice, they're not. Ads are distinguishable from the content, and that's why Adblock works.

Re:HOSTS file

[0123456]

And if the ads are served from the site you actually need to interact with?

I'm generally fine with ads served from the site I actually go to. It's third-party ads I refuse to download, for all the obvious malware reasons. Hence, any time I run into a new third-party ad site, it gets blocked in my hosts file.

Re:HOSTS file

[Yaur]

This is really only true because not very people run ad blockers, if there were there would be tons of money in getting around them and plenty of engineers willing to spend their time getting around them. Its not really even a very hard problem, there just isn't any money in solving it.

Re:HOSTS file

[0123456]

Why do you think people running ad blockers would magically start buying from ads if only the web site could manage to force them on people who don't want them?

Re:HOSTS file

[oe1kenobi]

Then the site is probably all ads anyway and can just be completely avoided. In an entire internet of sites I'm sure we won't miss that one.

Re:HOSTS file

[0123456]

Like I said, the magic brand theory of advertising. Now the internet has clearly proven that most ads don't work, advertisers need any old crap to try to convince the companies paying their wages that they do.

Are companies really stupid enough to still believe that?

This is why everyone makes annoying and hopefully memorable advertisements to the point where you sometimes don't even know what product is being advertised.

And you, yourself, demonstrate why it's nonsense.

Re:HOSTS file

[couchslug]

"Who are you and what have you done with APK?"

127.0.0.1 APK

Re:HOSTS file

[buddyglass]

They're not...right now. But remember: we're talking about an arms race. Treating a black list of host names as black holes may work right now, but its pretty easy to imagine how it could be defeated if the practice became widespread.

Re:HOSTS file

[buddyglass]

The "entire internet of sites" comment neglects the fact that certain cites are disproportionately more useful (on a highly subjective level) than others. If there's a community site centered around some obscure game I play and its literally the only site of its kind on the internet? There's no replacement. I can't take solace in the fact that there's "a whole internet" of other sites I can visit; I don't want to visit those sites, I want to visit a particular site that happens to be annoyingly riddled with ads.

Re:HOSTS file

[allo]

nope. The ad companies WANT to serve from their own domain, so they can track you. If the ads are served from the site you're visiting, the cookies only valid for this site.

Re:HOSTS file

[cgimusic]

Isn't that the point of the whole post? Is it that unlikely that sites would start using a file on their own server as a proxy to load ads via?

Prior art

[Hatta]

Slashdot already makes distinction between content elements and advertorial elements impossible.

Re:Prior art

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

OK. LOLs on that one.

Re:Prior art

[93 Escort Wagon]

Since when does Slashdot include content elements?

Re:Prior art

[Penguinisto]

Slashdot already makes distinction between content elements and advertorial elements impossible.

True, but you do bring up a good point... those of us who have been on the site in, like forever, get a neat little checkbox to disable ads.

Re:Prior art

[Aighearach]

Slashdot already makes distinction between content elements and advertorial elements impossible.

The solution is obvious, don't risk reading the summary, just skip straight to the comments.

Different Servers Make It Possible

[ScottCooperDotNet]

"Ad blockers try to make a distinction between content elements and advertorial elements. We make that distinction impossible,"

So long as you're hosting your ads off-site, or even on a local (ad.example.com) server, we'll be able to block them.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[beelsebob]

Not necessarily, the software could easily enough generate images hosted on the company's CDN, of random sizes. Then about the only way to detect the ads would be to compare the image against a giant database of adverts, which would be hugely inefficient.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[Anonymous Coward]

I've little interest in websites were it's impossible to tell the content from the ads, so I'm not worried.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[MrEricSir]

So long as you're hosting your ads off-site, or even on a local (ad.example.com) server, we'll be able to block them.

SHHHH! Don't tell them how to fix this!!

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[mythosaz]

Sure, but they're not.

Next time reading Slashdot, you'll see a post right between mine and the Anonmous Coward above me that looks like user generated content, but is an auto-inserted ad, inline, served from the same place that served up my and AC's post.

You see this all the time on message forums, where every nth post is an ad.

It's possible to filter them out now, but they're getting smarter.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[beelsebob]

Okay then, what's your magical way of determining which arbitrarily sized image from the same CDN is content, and which one's an advert?

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[beelsebob]

Those images are going to be shown on a HTML page, and probably going to involve some sort of script to pick an image or insert it into the page.

Why is that? If they're going out of their way to make it hard to detect that these are adverts, then of course no such script will exist.

You can block this 2 ways: 1) block the script so it never gets that far, 2) remove the page element where the ad is displayed.

And how do you identify that the script or the page element is the one you want to block?

Attempting to scramble the file names will not help you, I'll just remove all the ".ad" CSS class elements from the page, done.

And when they then proceed to use the same CSS class as they use for other content on the page, how will that work?

Now, you can try to scramble the HTML on the server

It doesn't need to be scrambled, it only needs to be rendered in the exact same way as legitimate content on the page, and come from the exact same source as legitimate content on the page.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[wonkey_monkey]

So long as you're hosting your ads off-site

So maybe they're not doing that.

or even on a local (ad.example.com) server

So maybe they're not doing that either.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[thegarbz]

Can you explain this to me in more detail?

I was under the impression that an off-site image is an off-site image. If a picture comes from ad.example.com and the scripped faked it to appear like it was coming from contentiwanttoread.com wouldn't you still be able to detect this based on IP address unless the service offering up adverts exists within the same network of the service offering the content?

Couldn't we detect this by watching for routing tricks and spoofing?

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[girlintraining]

So long as you're hosting your ads off-site, or even on a local (ad.example.com) server, we'll be able to block them.

Obscured Javascript using document.write() will save us! -_-

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[radarskiy]

Easy: If a site is all randomly sized images, then NONE of it is content.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[zippthorne]

And if they host them on-site, that removes a big portion of my objection - slow ad servers are one of the things that have been making the web frustrating for me for a long time.

Dear web site owners: if your ad server doesn't care as much about serving the ads (which they directly make money off of) in a timely manner as you do about serving the actual content (which you only indirectly make money off of via the ads), you should really think about what that means for you and your business.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[dkf]

"Ad blockers try to make a distinction between content elements and advertorial elements. We make that distinction impossible,"

So long as you're hosting your ads off-site, or even on a local (ad.example.com) server, we'll be able to block them.

There are ways around that (e.g., integrated proxies) but they make things much more expensive for the people hosting the desirable content as that's usually as close to a shoestring operation as possible (and has to be, given the low rate of return on having ads in a site). If the advertisers want around blockers in ways that are hard to prevent mechanically, it's going to raise the amount that they have to pay a lot. That'll make a lot of the low-rent crapvertising completely uneconomic.

I think I might be OK with this. For now.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[Splab]

It doesn't need to be scrambled, it only needs to be rendered in the exact same way as legitimate content on the page, and come from the exact same source as legitimate content on the page.

And that sir is the crux of the matter. I don't block ads because I don't want to see them, I block them because content providers are too fucking lazy to make sure the ads aren't malware, to make sure the ads are loading in proper time.

If you host your ads yourself, they won't be blocked.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[ceoyoyo]

Not really. You can make scale-invariant hashes. There aren't that many ads out there.

The only way you can make an ad that can't be easily blocked is to make it nearly indistinguishable from content. There are two ways to do that: poorly and well. If you do it poorly, you'll just piss everybody off. Doing it well requires a lot of effort, something web advertisers are not known for.

Re:Different Servers Make It Possible

[ceoyoyo]

In the worst possible case you'd have a program that lets you click images to label them as an ad, then stores a descriptor for them and never shows a matching image again. Realistically, I bet you can recognize ads, especially the most obnoxious ones, the same way you can recognize them on TV. They're less sparse. TV ads are famous for not being "louder" for a particular definition of loudness, but they have more audio power. Visual ads are similar - they're made to be eye catching, bright, with lots of things in them.

Challenge Accepted!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Anyone know of one these ad-blocker-blocked websites? I'd like to see what it looks like in the face of adblock plus + noscript + requestpolicy.

Re:Challenge Accepted!

[johanw]

bit.ly will sometimes react funny on AdBlock or Ghostery.

Re:Challenge Accepted!

[vsny]

Anyone know of one these ad-blocker-blocked websites? I'd like to see what it looks like in the face of adblock plus + noscript + requestpolicy.

If you look up the Hide My AdBlocker extension from chrome it lists about 15 of these sites. I tried one and I couldn't get through the second page.

Re:That's cute

[Joviex]

Exactly. Fuck Ads. Find another way to monetize. Especially you shitty sites that are doing nothing more than regurgitating articles disguised as something else for search engines. For the legit sites, sucks. Use your damn brain and iterate away from in my face ads for shit I am never going to click on and buy. Thanks.

Stop infecting me..

[Dynamoo]

Dear advertising networks,

Stop trying to infect me with malware and perhaps I'll stop blocking you from my browser.

Re:Stop infecting me..

[NJRoadfan]

One big reason why I run an ad-blocker is this. They would need to remove the ability to run ANY code and/or the ability to call any plug-ins before I would re-enable ads.

Re:Stop infecting me..

[alzoron]

This is my biggest my biggest issue with most of the ads on the internet. When it comes to sites that are proactive and actually have an approval process for ads and wrap them up in their own delivery system to avoid spreading malware to their customers, I let the ads through. Sites that take a reactive stance towards possible malware (or no action at all) and basically just spew whatever crap the third party advertiser gave them unfiltered get blocked.

The way I see it is if you don't care whether or not you're spreading malware you don't deserve ad revenue. Hell, you don't deserve any business from me at all.

Re:Stop infecting me..

[TheRaven64]

Right. I don't block ads, but I do block certain kinds of content, including Flash. This has a side effect of blocking a lot of ads, but I still see ads that are plain text or images.

Re:Stop infecting me..

[Billly Gates]

Good luck with this as Google and IE still load the malware. Just do not show you it.

Firefox is the only browser that will protect you with adblock sadly. Just figured slashdotters should know this as you get the performance of all the scripts loading and doing god knows what, you just do not see it.

Re:Stop infecting me..

[DJ Particle]

"When it comes to sites that are proactive and actually have an approval process for ads and wrap them up in their own delivery system to avoid spreading malware to their customers, I let the ads through."

Even then, there's no 100% guarantee. Yahoo Ads just last week had an issue with malware-laden ads.

SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[lesincompetent]

Me and my hosts file are enough to win this war.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Posessing a weaponized hosts file makes you a terrist. Guantonamo for you.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[vux984]

All they have to do to defeat hosts is proxy/cache the ads through the site you want to see rather than having you connect directly to the ad networks.

And so it begins....

[MatthiasF]

The Advertisers vs Ad-block arms race.

Because, let's face it... once the ad-block guys figure out how the advertisers are figuring out they are being blocked, they'll block it another way and then another way... until one side builds an a-bomb so big that the world is afraid the Internet will split in two if detonated.

That was a metaphor; no one nuke the advertisers, please. Or at least give me a few days notice so I can get to a safe distance.

Re:And so it begins....

[putzin]

until one side builds an a-bomb so big that the world is afraid the Internet will split in two if detonated.

Yes, it's called legislation. Apple. Google, and the other multi-billion dollar ad servers will eventually go to congress to try to find a legislative way to make sure you watch advertisements if everyone stops viewing ads via whatever means. Just convince some idiot Senator who thinks the internet is made of tubes that advertisement and java blockers threaten security and the American way. I would argue this is a long shot, but not incomprehensible. There is a lot of money involved, and those who own the largest share of that money train would scorch the earth to keep it.

This is just free market economics at work. If ad blockers work well enough, most likely, creative people will find a new way to advertise. Then we find a new way to ignore the new ads. Rinse, repeat. Or, you can vote with your wallets. Just don't visit the sites with horrific advertising setups. Visit the sites that handle it gracefully. Very few people would complain about Google or Bing advertising. Just saying.

Re:And so it begins....

[Mashdar]

Blocking ads is stealing! (C)

Own your own adds

[Sir_Sri]

If you want an add to appear on your page take ownership of it. Host it as an image file on your own website that you control and you are responsible for.

Anything else, we intend to find ways to block it, because we have learned the hard way that you cannot trust advertisers to not infect your system with malware (not always intentionally, but lets face it, that's a big source of failure).

Re:Own your own adds

[gbjbaanb]

thing is, the advertisers will never do that - simply because their business model relies on tracking impressions and so forth. Hence they have to serve the ads on their own web platforms.

This is the main reason I block ads - the page I'm viewing usually hangs while its contacting the ad (he, one of the many ad) platforms to return some cookie-harvesting ad monster with all kinds of analytics processed on the back end.

Get rid of that and they have nothing to offer, and as long as there is any comms to the ad serving site, even if its just analytics, they can be blocked.

I think its stupid, as it only gives me ads for shit I no longer want, and no ads targetted for typical users of the site I'm viewing (I recall Webhostingtalk having an ad policy where they directly sold ads on their site, and the images were hosted on their site - they attracted advertisers by giving out the profile and quantity of users who came to their site, I assume that's considered obsolete nowadays, but I thought it was the moist effective way of doing it).

Re:Own your own adds

[istartedi]

This. We may find that the current online advertising model is like the Soviet revolution. If the hosting site and the ad scripts start working in concert, it might be like a crackdown by hardliners. Unlike a totalitarian regime, migration from your site is usually not that difficult. You'll lose the users. Maybe then commercial sites will realize that they have to go back to something more like the old print media model. You couldn't just blindly turn over newspaper pages to 3rd parties. Advertisers had to trust things like circulation figures and demographics. It was a far less sophisticated analytic. Publishers will have to be trustworthy enough for advertisers to trust *publisher* analytics. If the New York Times really wanted to be innovative, they are the kind of company that could do this. That, along with getting rid of user registration would really shake up the industry. I think it'd be a clear winner as long as the publisher didn't do the same kind of scripted nasties that ad networks currently do.

Wouldn't you love to be able to browse a high quality site, knowing that the ads aren't going to ass-rape your system? Aside from that, wouldn't it be nice to look at page archives 30 years from now and see period ads. You can look at magazines from 100 years ago and get insights into the culture, and develop an appreciation for the history of strong brands like Coca Cola, or oddities like patent medicines with radium in them. Future historians will look at the last 20 years as if the tape of our commercial activities had been erased.

Re:Own your own adds

[Metabolife]

The second you put your add on your website, we'll subtract it.

Re:Own your own adds

[girlintraining]

Future historians will look at the last 20 years as if the tape of our commercial activities had been erased.

Perhaps they'll just write that it was a time when capitalism had gone completely crazy -- a time when 99.9% of e-mails were spam, where over 1/3rd of television was advertising, where half of the content of a website was advertisement, where thousands of tons of printed advertisements were moved from mailboxes to dumpsters, and where retailers invaded our privacy with in-store tracking tools and built robots to determine our sex, race, and likely socioeconomic status in realtime, and then displayed different ads in storefronts... ... And finally society said enough, and clubbed the cameras down from their poles and destroyed them, they put ad blocking on TVs and the internet, they demanded privacy from Congress, and after decades of culture being absorbed and destroyed by excessive marketing, not unlike some fat ogre eating everything in sight... finally, by god... they slew Goliath.

zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[Anonymous Coward]

I own my computer. I've been convincing every of my friends and family members to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward internet advertizing, partly as it's a huge security risk as seen in all recent stories about malware delivered with ads, and partly to opt out of "big data" collector activities.

Advertizers don't get it. My computer runs what I want it to, not what THEY want it to. They may make polite requests to display things, or to run things, which I can either say yes or no to.

The internet existed for decades before advertizers discovered it, and it'll be just fine - better even! - after they depart. Maybe we'll go back to its roots of crowdsourced content, rather than "big corporate content".

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[__aaeihw9960]

So all of those websites that you currently access for free then. They were around back in the early days of the internet? All of the free content you consume, it was available, too? All of the people who are currently connected, they've always been on-line then?

Like it or not, now that the entire world is connected, someone has to pay. Please note that I'm not saying I agree with the ad model we currently have, I'm just saying that your view is incredibly short-sighted and immature.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[0123456]

The Internet was much better before it was infested with a bazillion sites which only exist to bring in advertising revenue.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[putzin]

The Internet was much better before it was infested with a bazillion sites which only exist to bring in advertising revenue.

Yes, hamster dance was the pinnacle of the internet revolution.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[HiThere]

Actually, most of the sites I visit WERE around before the advertisers got thick. True, I used Alta-Vista rather than Google, but Google existed. I'm not really convinced that Javascript was a good idea, even though now most sites can barely be used without it. That doesn't mean they need it. It means they were redesigned to take advantage of the "new hot way to deliver web content". I'm not impressed. And I'm so unimpressed by Flash that I refuse to install it.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[Thomas Miconi]

I started using the Web before search engines became popular.

I'm not going back.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[afgam28]

So then let's try to bring that back, rather than flying under the radar with adblockers that trick adservers into thinking that they're working. Even if the advertisers are serving malware, two wrongs don't make a right.

I think the ethics of ad blocking is similar to software copyright infringement; it undermines the business model of the company that is offering content. For this reason I don't run an ad blocker.

If you're against proprietary software licenses you shouldn't go and install an unlicensed copy of Windows, you should go download a Linux distribution. Just by using Linux you make yourself counted and you help create a sustainable ecosystem of free software. If no one was willing to pirate Windows, a lot more people would be using Linux on the desktop today.

Similarly if you're against the ad model you should go seek out and contribute to sites that aren't built on an advertising business model (e.g. Wikipedia).

The argument that ad networks serving malware justifies using an ad blocker is to me a bit like saying "Target can't secure their customers' credit cards, so I'm ethically justified in using fake credit cards there".

Disclaimer: I work for and own shares in a company that makes most of its money from advertising revenue.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[martin-boundary]

Like it or not, now that the entire world is connected, someone has to pay.

No. No. No.

Repeat after me: The world doesn't owe any website operators a living.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[martin-boundary]

advertisers have as much right to use the internet as you

They certainly do. They can use firefox, chrome, safari, or even lynx if they so choose, to browse any part of the web they like.

They have ZERO right to use MY web browser to push their wares in front of my eyeballs.

Re:zero tolerance and who owns my computer

[ceoyoyo]

Let's see. Slashdot was here. It was more of a hobby run by people who were interested in Slashdot itself than by a big company looking for profit.

There are a couple of blogs I follow that were. They weren't called "blogs" then, but rather personal web pages where people wrote things because they were interested in them.

There were lots of other personal web sites that had interesting things that you'd search for and find, read, then leave forever. Same as the previous.

The rest of the stuff I use the Internet for might not have been around in the early days, but it tends to be services I pay for (e-mail, Flickr), or Facebook. I'd happily pay a bit for a Facebook type service without the scumminess.

When I can no longer block ads

[Anonymous Coward]

I will no longer surf the internet. The same way I no longer watch TV.
I am bored with it now anyway.
It might just have been a very long fad with me.

Re:That's cute

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I gots this Trace Buster BUSTER. See, when the mother-fucker tries to bust your trace with a trace buster. This mother-fucker is gonna bust the mother-fucking trace buster that's bustin' your...uh...trace!

Is it really that hard to ignore the ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I haven't used adblock in a decade. If the ads annoy you that much then you probably shouldn't be going to that site.

Re:Is it really that hard to ignore the ads?

[epyT-R]

Flash ads that play sound really loudly and/or move across the screen don't annoy you? How about the current trend of pop over javascript windows that wait 10 seconds or so for you to start reading, and then fade the page as they pop up, forcing you to click them closed? Those are fucking aggravating, and a lot of sites do that now. The passive 'just don't visit that site' tactic doesn't actually solve the problem. There has to be a way to push back. ad blockers allow this.

Annoying

[afgun]

If so many ads weren't obnoxious flash or javascript and simply a hyperlinked picture/text, then I wouldn't feel compelled to block them. But these so-called ads are largely intrusive and annoying and make the web browsing experience suck. Just like email and spam that have tracking linked images in them that I choose to automatically round file instead of at least checking out the content. Make the experience pleasant and controllable by me and I'll play along; otherwise, I take control with tools like adblock.

You sign all worthy contents using PGP

[marienf]

.. and NG adblockers (or browsers, full stop?) allow the contents according to the user's Web Of Trust ..
Chances are.. any ads that *do* get through.. will be very appropriate and welcome ..

-f

Dangerous

[JamesA]

Sorry but when an errant ad can serve malware (see Yahoo) it's just not worth taking a chance.

Web site operators have the attitude that their revenue stream is more important than the integrity of their visitors computer.

AdBlock + NoScript is antivirus for the web.

Re:Dangerous

[putzin]

Web site operators have the attitude that their revenue stream is more important than the integrity of their visitors computer.

In other news, major corporations consider their revenue streams more important than anyones integrity. The NSA considers the ignoring the rights of Americans more important than constitutional integrity. Al Queda considers the rights of dead virgins to have sex with homely bearded unshowered men living in caves strapped to bombs more important than the dude sitting having coffee and a donut's rights or integrity.

Simple solution

[Goose In Orbit]

Host your own ads - make them unobtrusive - people will still see them AND the content.

Being lazy and outsourcing it to others... you get what you deserve.

Re:Simple solution

[Scott Tracy]

Unfortunately for many big sites hosting it themselves is *not* an option. Where I used to work we had to use DoubleClick, the advertisers demanded it: (a) because they were all familiar with the tools, and more importantly (b) they wanted an independent third-party reporting on views/clicks. I would have loved to have eliminated the $250K a year we were paying DoubleClick, but Sales stopped me cold.

Re:Simple solution

[HiThere]

You don't get it. We don't trust you to verify the integrity of the software you are trying to force on us. I don't really care that you would prefer to have delivered it yourself, I care that it's malware. And I don't want it.

If your site requires that I have malware installed on my computer to use it, then your site, and the company attached to it, can just drop dead.

Re:Simple solution

[maxwell demon]

Where I used to work we had to use DoubleClick, the advertisers demanded it

Then you could have looked for other advertisers. If enough people had done that, doubleclick would be history.

Re:Simple solution

[Goose In Orbit]

Fair point - I'm guessing though that the content in question fell foul of some ancient size-based rule from the early banner ad days?

If the ads win, I drop the site

[RichMan]

The people that are using ad-blockers are stating "I am annoyed by adds". These people seem to think it is a good idea to show the people that have flagged themselves as getting annoyed by ads more ads. That seems really really dumb.

These people should be careful what they wish for. There are many, many sites out there for people to browse on. Annoy a "customer" to much and it is very easy for them to go elsewhere.

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you consider yourself a "customer" if you are not paying to be on the site through viewing ads? Isn't that more of a parasite than a customer?

What other way would you prefer to help fund the site's content?

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[Fwipp]

You could probably argue the following:

A) Ad-blockers are likely to be tech-savvy users.
B) Tech-savvy users tend to share interesting articles they find.
C) Some of the people they share to will not be ad-blockers.

The weakest link of that argument is probably B. If you take it out, you're left with "maybe the ad-blockers will link your site to 'normal' users," which, while likely partially true, doesn't sound very compelling.

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[Kjella]

The people that are using ad-blockers are stating "I am annoyed by adds"

First of all, you're assuming the person who did that didn't just get a quick fix because someone said somebody about AdBlock or their tech-savvy kid or classmate or coworker did. I mean, who *likes* TV commercials? Raise your hand. Also, you're ignoring the fact that impressionable people often avoid it as a self-defense, if they get smooth talked by a salesmen they cave so they avoid them. Am I the only one that's ever had a "(%#&% ad, circumventing my blocker.. but that is a damn good offer" love-hate moment?

Not with SPAM, that's just an annoyance... but web ads, there are actually companies out there with products I want, it's just something about the amount. It's like finding your mailbox doesn't just have one flyer, it has flyers stuffed to the top so it's a five minute sort job just to clear it out. Like the urban legend about the manager throwing away half the resume pile saying "we don't need unlucky people", if you throw away 80% of the ads the rest aren't so annoying.

People lie about willingness to pay, they claim they don't want ads but when it comes down to it, they don't want to pay what an ad free service costs. And the advertisers, well they'd rather show an ad to a person who sees ten ads/day rather than hundred ads/day. Sadly despite what /. wants to believe they do have all sorts of incentives to break through ad blockers, the ones who really, really hate ads well they weren't going to bring in any revenue anyway.

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[joe_frisch]

I wonder what the statistics are for sales made through ads that people are actively trying to avoid. I know that if I don't want to see the ad, I very likely don't want to buy the product. If the ad forces itself in my face anyway, I'll remember that company with a strong negative reaction and not buy their product in the future.

Its so mystifying. Google and other services have a huge amount of data on me. I spend a lot of money on internet purchases. Why do they do such a terrible job of showing me ads for products that I actually want. Sometimes they do the exact opposite: right after I spent a week in Las Vegas I started getting adds for Las Vegas hotels - WTF - do they really think I'm going back a week later? Why don't they show me the ads a year later when I might actually want them, now I've just mentally black-listed a couple of hotels that I might have otherwise used.

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[tftp]

Why do you consider yourself a "customer" if you are not paying to be on the site through viewing ads? Isn't that more of a parasite than a customer?

How do you classify a visitor to Slashdot who, from time to time, posts comments but does not view ads?

Or, in other words, what Slashdot would be if nobody, or hardly anyone (see Technocrat.net and Kuro5hin.org) posts comments - insightful or not?

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[zippthorne]

He put it in quotes. That's exactly the kind of customer he is to a site paid for by advertising.

Now here's an interesting datum. Slashdot has a checkbox to disable the advertising. The advertising, however, is sufficiently unobtrusive that many of those of us who have that box are leaving it unchecked....

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[antdude]

What are adds? :P

Re:If the ads win, I drop the site

[ceoyoyo]

Find a new business model. There was a time, before the ads got thick, when many websites had a donation button. You could click it and toss the author a few bucks. It was difficult then, before PayPal. Now it's trivial.

Also, a great many web sites used to be put up to advertise (in a good way) the business that put them up (restaurants putting up a page with their menus, location and hours, for example). When I go to those I'm interested in patronizing the business belonging to the site. Other sites were made by people or groups who were just interested in sharing with the world. Hobbyists, various organizations, whatever. They don't need payment.

Now, everybody tosses some ads on their site just because you might as well try and make a buck.

Undetectable adblockers are the future

[ickleberry]

Maybe the current crop of adblockers don't download the ads and can be monitored using JavaShit but eventually one will be created that downloads the ads but simply leaves that section of the screen blank. These days most ads are recognised by URL and that URL is usually hosted on a different server to the site itself. Future adblockers could use a thunderbird anti-spam type algorithm to visually recognise ads and match them with a database of things that people reported as ads

The race is winnable alright. Even if the end result would be the demise of "free sites" who get rich off the ads or the more recent trends of sites not getting very rich of the ads but hoping for acquisition by some supermassive company who will plaster the said site with ads until all users leave.

Re:Undetectable adblockers are the future

[Desler]

Downloading the ads defeats the major reasons of using an adblocker which is to reduce data use and to prevent malware ads being downloaded.

Re:Undetectable adblockers are the future

[pepty]

So to get the site to display correctly without having to deal with malware and privacy breaches the browser has to:

1. Run in a sandbox where all of the downloaded content can run riot (and be allowed to report back to the website/adware/malware sites so that the content you actually want can finally be sent).

2. Block display of all the ads you just downloaded - except the ones you need to click to access part of the site

3. Destroy cookies a few minutes as soon as you don't need them to view the site

4. Scramble the user agent string often enough to block tracking through browser footprinting

5. Rotate through some proxies to keep them from associating you with an IP address.

It's enough to make me give up ceiling cat.

Re:Undetectable adblockers are the future

[cbhacking]

Detection scripts can easily query the DOM to check if the ad is being displayed. In fact, there are already scripts that do this, for different reasons. Besides, one of the core advantages of ad-blocking is the ability to avoid waiting for the damn ad host's servers to send you their trash.

seriously, the ethics of adblocking?

[davydagger]

I am sure its because ad-blocking software is reporting your every move and building a psychological profile on you, that eventually finds its way into the hands of the government, a government, potentially many governments, terrorists, or whoever manages to hack whoever has the list that day.

what ethical issues are there with ad-blocking software that outweigh the ethical issues behind current advertising?

Re:seriously, the ethics of adblocking?

[tftp]

Why would a government / terrorist want to have a list of 100 million Internet users who are tech-savvy, paranoid, and hate being manipulated? You would be better off dealing with users who are not on that list.

Re:That's cute

[master5o1]

Wouldn't it be trivial to use the ad blocker to block the ad block detection script?

ElementHiderHelper

[SirMasterboy]

I use the element hider extension a lot to manually hide the advertisement divs on the websites that I visit.

So website designers are going to have to randomize the div IDs or something so that next time I revisit the page the advertisement elements aren't hidden anymore.

Re:ElementHiderHelper

[FatLittleMonkey]

I use element hider to manually get rid of elements within the site that aren't ads. Pop-up boxes (WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER), slide-out or slide-over elements (LIKED THIS? YOU'LL FUCKING LOVE THESE), follow-me side-bars that jitter and spasm when I scroll, pretty much all floating banners, any blinking/scrolling sidebar widgets (LOOK AT OUR FUCKING TWITTER FEED), and pop-hover social media button (PLEASE SHARE THIS, SHARE IT, WHY AREN'T YOU FUCKING SHARING IT.)

Eventually I get the article, the actual thing I'm there for, and I read that article. Oh how I read that article.

AdBlock vs Not Visiting the Site

[DanielRavenNest]

AdBlock and similar tools might be defeated, but nothing can defeat me not visiting the site again if the ads are too annoying. I'll put up with some tasteful ads, but too many annoyances and I just will block the site entirely.

Re:AdBlock vs Not Visiting the Site

[NJRoadfan]

Once upon a time, Google used to only serve up text based ads. They weren't annoying and didn't try to infect machines with malware.

Re:AdBlock vs Not Visiting the Site

[SigmundFloyd]

Once upon a time, Google used to only serve up text based ads. They weren't annoying and didn't try to infect machines with malware.

Yep. And we blocked them all the same.

rethink the ads you're serving

[rlwhite]

If I see banner ads or anything else obnoxious, and I can't keep them blocked and still use the site, I'll find what I want elsewhere.

I'm ok with the text-based ads Google is known for, and I'll even click on them when they're relevant to what I'm looking for... because they're not obnoxious! They aim to be helpful!

I'm a parasite.

[Anonymous Coward]

I never buy anything unless I genuinely need/want it. It really is the truth. If I want/need it, I will pay whatever the price is at the moment. If it happens to be on sale, that's nice. If not, that has no relevance whatsoever. If I don't want/need it, I will not even consider buying it, for any price. That's just how I am.

Here's a radical idea...

[jheath314]

If people are blocking your ads, it's probably because they're not interested in seeing the god damn ads. Sneaking past the ad blocker won't result in me going "gee, you got me, I'll be good and click on your ad now." More likely it will piss me off to the point where I stop visiting your site.

Stupid marketers and their "arms race" mentality was what resulted in people developing and using adblock and noscript in the first place. "What do you mean people still aren't clicking on our ads? It's got a dancing monkey with a flashing background and it occupies half the browser window! Fine, we'll make it play music too, and pop up fifty windows... maybe THEN they'll realize the error of their ways and click on it."

Re:Here's a radical idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes marketers are "stupid" , however , dont tell them , they are sponsoring huge amounts of the contents we see!
dont be even more retarded and block their "stupid" advertisement.

its like you guys dont like free stuff!

Re:Here's a radical idea...

[Nemyst]

Yeah, it's really simple guys: the best anti-adblock is making ads that people actually want to see. At worst, if you can't do that, at least don't make them obnoxious, intrusive, or any other such thing. Also, making good content and making people want to support you is a good way of getting them to turn off adblock.

This is a technical "solution" to a non-technical problem. It will never work.

Re:Here's a radical idea...

[Your.Master]

I think a huge part of the problem is that the inertia inertia is to putting up an adblock at all, but once you do, now you have to convince those people to unblock your site.

So every time one person who gets fed up with their search results autoplaying audio ads and searching in vain for that one tab that's being annoying, even if it's not your ad that's the problem, you get punished.

Given that others are already doing it, why wouldn't you? People who don't install adblock obviously won't (unless you're the straw that breaks the camel's back), and people that will already have. The likelihood of somebody manually enabling ads on your site is quite low (not zero, but low).*

It's kind of like the prisoner's dilemma, and being an annoying git with your ads is like defecting.

* An individual site that a person returns to has a decent chance, eg. a webcomic site or a fairly famous site like slashdot, but a site that gets most of its traffic from news aggregators probably does not.

Haha! Suckers-- I'm using Mosiac!

[sandbagger]

Text view is the only thing that renders, mind you.

In single column. I scroll a lot.

Re:Haha! Suckers-- I'm using Mosiac!

[verbatim_verbose]

It's Mosaic... hence no built-in spell-checker. Go figure.

You can't win, Darth Blanchfield

[CuteSteveJobs]

Sorry Blanchfield, but Adblock can fetch the ads and then simply not show them.

And Yablonka, Adbock can simply block *all* images since most are superfluous anyway and only allow through those it really trusts.

Sorry to break it to you the both of you Blanchfield and Yablonka, but no plan survives its first encounter with the enemy.

Re:You can't win, Darth Blanchfield

[CuteSteveJobs]

Also Adware vendors buy Chrome Extensions to send ad- and malware-filled updates http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/malware-vendors-buy-chrome-extensions-to-send-adware-filled-updates/

Unsolicited audio

[Anonymous Coward]

And no goddamn auto-playing sounds either.

Re:Unsolicited audio

[lq_x_pl]

Yes Yes Yes!
Nothing summons my HOSTS file like noisy advertisements.

Not realy about winnable

[Booz]

I don't think it is a question about winnable.
It is more about how many ads that sites can force on to the users before they start loosing users and in turn money.
If sites circumvent ad blocking and force ads to the users then i think the users are more likely to stop visiting that site and instead pick another one.

So it is probably more about choice

Adblock is also a safety measure.

[DittoBox]

AdBlock is something I've started installing for friends and family more as a way to block malware, than as a way to block ads outright. Poisoned ads (malvertising) account for a lot of malware installs. Just Google for iTunes or Firefox and the top ad results are malware infected installers.

Besides the incredible annoyance of ads in the slow downs they cause, they're also a dangerous pathway to malware and viruses. Common methods like embedding an iframe into a page that loads a script that targets a browser exploit to install something nasty (drive-by downloads), oneclick exploits, baiting users to download things, etc.

Ad networks—at least the slimy ones—don't care because they're getting paid.

Re:No-Script

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about Facebook? If it doesn't work without noscript, don't bother with it. Not like AOLv2.0 is a desirable site to visit anyway.

On no longer using Ad Block

[onyxruby]

I'll consider abandoning Ad Block when a decade after ads are no longer the leading cause of malware. Until then I consider it a security requirement along with noscript.

Re:I don't know what all the fuss is about

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a tool, and I say that as someone who worked for DoubleClick for 4 years...

Where is my cut?

[Herkum01]

I notice that some try to appeal to the User's better nature to let the Ads on through. I wonder if perhaps, I don't know, PAYING the user to accept Ads should be part of the solution. Nothing like money to drive viewership!

Re:Where is my cut?

[cbhacking]

Your "cut" is the content on the site...

Not saying I have anything against ad-blocking; I do it myself. But your argument is either deliberately obtuse or simply stupid. The ads aren't there because the site owner thought "hey, an ad would look good here"; they're there because it costs money to serve the rest of what's on the page, and ads are how they re-coup that cost.

"Ethics" of ad-blocking?

[CanHasDIY]

This article discusses the ethics and the mechanics of ad-blocking software

Ethics of blocking advertisements?

Gimme a fucking break.

Re:"Ethics" of ad-blocking?

[strikethree]

Ethics of blocking advertisements?

Gimme a fucking break.

I agree, but there is an ethical discussion to be had.

What the advertisers and websites see is that you and I are blocking their revenue stream.

What I see is that I get to decide what runs on my computer and scripts from unethical actors are a definite no-no for my computer.

The reason I agree with you about the, "gimme a fucking break.", is that the two ethical concerns never really meet. The revenue model is broken. It kind of works now because of Microsoft and ignorance so the advertisers will keep trying to force scripts down our throats. It is, nevertheless, a broken revenue model.

Not a single penny

[kheldan]

I've never spent a single penny on anything that was advertised through a webpage that threw an ad up at me. Just try bypassing that!

Re:Not a single penny

[0123456]

I've never spent a single penny on anything that was advertised through a webpage that threw an ad up at me. Just try bypassing that!

This is what I really don't get. I don't want ads, I won't buy anything from ads, I've never bought anything from an ad. So why are advertisers wasting money trying to push ads to me, when they could spend it pushing ads to people who might buy something from them?

Or are companies just so dumb that they still pay per ad served, and not per ad clicked?

Re:Not a single penny

[0123456]

Ah, yes, the magic brand theory of advertising. 'Yes, I know the Internet proves that only a handful of idiots ever react to ads, but... look, Chewbacca!'.

Re:Not a single penny

[HiThere]

They used to do that with jingles on the radio. I still remember several of them, because they used catchy tunes. Don't think I've ever bought anything because of one, though. But...
"Use Ajax,
The foaming clenser,
Wash the dirt
Right down the drain, boo-ba-do-(something or other)."
It's been at least a decade since I've bough any, probably longer, because I have no idea whether it is any good or not. I may never have bought any. Does remembering the jingle do them any good?

Re:Not a single penny

[kheldan]

I can't speak for anyone else, but once upon a time I used to repair arcade games, in a working arcade, and you either learn to tune everything around you out (except the kids that try to steal the pinballs from the pinball machine you're working on, and that try to steal your tools, that is) or you go completely bonkers. I'd have to say than less than 5% of any brand I've had shoved in my face has made it into my long-term memory, so memo to advertisers: It's really not working.

Or maybe charge?

[kwerle]

Instead of asking folks who have gone to the effort of putting in an adblocker to turn it off, maybe ask them for as much as the ad folks pay per eyeball?

It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[rduke15]

It may not be obvious to the /. crowd, but nobody uses ad blockers. Of the people I know, I am the only one who does.

If a website goes to the trouble of preventing ad blockers for such a tiny demographic, chances are high that I'm not interested in their "content" anyway (if there is any).

Re:It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[Cramer]

Actually, quite a lot of people do, but like everything on the internet, it depends on the site and specifics of the group of people it attracts. Game portals will have a very hit adblock rate, while the my little pony forum users... not so much.

Re:It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[nukenerd]

If a website goes to the trouble of preventing ad blockers for such a tiny demographic, chances are high that I'm not interested in their "content" anyway

You are understating it. Chances are (actually certainty is) that I will be thoroughly pissed off by the "content" and it becomes the very last stuff that I would buy. Why can't the marketing droids realise this?

It's like a 50 page paperback road atlas I have, the cheap type. Like all atlases it has a small scale overview map for you to identify what page number you need to look at for the area of interest. Where should that overview map be? - on the back cover of course. But they sold the back cover to a well-known pressure-washer company for an advert. Instead the overview map is inside at about Page 6 after further adverts. Every time I use the atlas, and have to fumble through the inside pages to find the overview map, having instinctively glanced at the back cover first, I feel angry at the pressure washer company. I bought a pressure washer last year and deliberately avoided them because of it.

Re:It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[geniice]

The problem is the websites that are mostly read by that tiny demographic.

Re:It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[richlv]

i know a couple more people blocking ads, but that's just because they are also more into it :)

as for ads, i only block them manually and i only block them if they annoy me enough. that includes js popups, too annoying images etc.
i haven't blocked google text ads, but i think i blocked their image ads because they were too distracting from actual content on some site. so it's simple - make your ads non-annoying and maybe even interesting, and more people will see them. make them larger, brighter and more inyourface - and you will drive people to block that crap.

Re:It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It may not be obvious to the /. crowd, but nobody uses ad blockers. Of the people I know, I am the only one who does.

So wait, you are telling us that the collective wisdom here is wrong because of your personal anecdotes?

Adblock is the #1 downloaded extension to firefox. 18 million users which is 3x times the #2 most popular extension.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/?sort=users

Re:It doesn't matter and won't affect me

[Uberbah]

18 million users which is 3x times the #2 most popular extension.

Except:

1) 18 million installs != 18 million users.
2) Drop in the bucket of the overall internet using population

What's missing from the discussion

[barakn]

I'd warrant (but don't have the statistics to back me up) that the typical ad-block user would be less prone to click on ads if forced to see them than a typical surfer. I don't see why these crybaby advertisers are so desperate to reach a market that would have low click-through rates. The advertisers win by not needing the extra bandwidth necessary to serve up ads to people that wouldn't click on them anyways.

Re:What's missing from the discussion

[doesnothingwell]

The advertisers win by not needing the extra bandwidth necessary to serve up ads to people that wouldn't click on them anyways.

There is no one that doesn't need their ads, they just don't know it. Its religious nutball logic at its best. Your own ads are always yummy delicious double good. Reality is ignored so that the (greedy prick) doesn't see his real image in the mirror. Every decision makers worst downfall is believing their own press releases. Advertisers have downed their own koolaid and the brain damage is usually permanent.

Re:What's missing from the discussion

[Tom]

I don't see why these crybaby advertisers are so desperate to reach a market that would have low click-through rates.

Because they don't think like you and I.

All advertisers are spammers, to some degree. Not necessarily in what they do, but in how they think. They know that with large enough numbers, they will find someone who is dumb or interested enough.

So what if it costs more? It's not like the ad people would pay that.

Re:What's missing from the discussion

[strikethree]

I'd warrant (but don't have the statistics to back me up) that the typical ad-block user would be less prone to click on ads if forced to see them than a typical surfer.

The click is golden, but what they REALLY want is to ensure that you are aware of whatever they are advertising. That way, when you next think about such a thing, their product/service/whatever is now an option in your mind. Does it guarantee a sale? No. Does it create more sales than total ignorance of their product/service/whatever? You betcha.

I wonder what effect the bad taste of the popup/ad/whatever has on sales though... hm.

Re:That's cute

[mythosaz]

Thank you! A million internets to you.

I only use adblock on obtrusive sites

[Renozuken]

Sites that I frequently visit are disabled, maybe they shouldn't be trying to sneak in ads and try to make them seamless and not as sketchy.

The wrong question is being asked....

[Bomarc]

Several times, in several different ways I found the question asked ... is it ethical to block ad's. My response: You are asking the wrong question: Is it ethical to track me without my permission? Is it ethical in inject mal-ware into my system? Is it ethical to not allow me access to information you claim is about me? Is it ethical to make money on my actions -- without a reward for me?

Stop messing with MY system, and I'll stop messing with your ad's.

Re:The wrong question is being asked....

[Trentula]

Do you consider it unethical if people recognize you and tailor their conversation with you to your shared interests?

Re:The wrong question is being asked....

[tftp]

Do you consider it unethical if people recognize you and tailor their conversation with you to your shared interests?

I'm sure *you* would consider it unethical if a complete stranger stops you in the street, addresses you by your real name, and tries to sell you a gift for a GF that you met only yesterday.

Re:The wrong question is being asked....

[Tom]

What a bullshit question.

Is it ethical to change how MY computer displays stuff to me? Of course it is. If you don't like it, nobody forces you to deliver content to my computer.

Adblockers are fair, good, justified and everything else, because spam. If we didn't block ads, if you had to watch every ad someone wanted you to watch, you would spend your entire day watching ads, and as soon as someone finds a way to inject content into dreams, your entire night, too.

It's not even about malware and tracking and all that other shit that comes on top of it. It is about MY attention being MINE to do with as I please, and the we-own-you attitude of advertisers who think that it's ok to force their crap on everyone, everywhere at every time.

Frankly, IMHO adblockers are a temporary solution. The real solution needs to be making advertisement illegal outside small, well-defined areas.

"Please don't adblock us"

[Sechr Nibw]

Any site that I use more than once a week, I add to the AdBlock whitelist. However! If I get an annoying ad on that site, it goes back to the blacklist, for at least a month or two. Basically, until the guilt starts creeping in that I'm using their service without paying for it. If you want to remain on the whitelist, and get my page impressions, then don't use shady advertisers that use self-expanding ads, auto-play ads, and especially flashing or noisy ads.

Re:"Please don't adblock us"

[bugnuts]

If you don't buy, you're not paying for it. If you never click on ads (like me), you're not only getting served content you don't want, but it's taking you longer to load pages and so forth.

There's no guilt in it if you would otherwise never click and never buy. While I love (e.g. fark), I have never clicked one of their ads ever unless by accident. Being served ads is not somehow paying for anything, unless money actually comes out of your pocket.

Re:"Please don't adblock us"

[Morgon]

> Being served ads is not somehow paying for anything

Willing to undo all my moderation actions to wholeheartedly disagree with you.

I once ran a website/service that catered to a gaming crowd. Among other things, it allowed them to compare their progress in games to their friends, people in their own country, and the userbase at large. People of all ages, genders, and gameplay styles used it, and shared it. Over time, it got fairly popular (a little over 5 million total users), and more hardware (and some consulting for other scaling issues) was needed.

Advertising absolutely paid for that. CPM is still alive and well.

When advertising revenues started to slip, due to increased ad-block and general issues within the US economy, and things started coming out of my own pocket again, I held donation drives to try to make up the difference. I quickly learned that while some people are generous and are willing to throw a few bucks to a service they enjoy, the overwhelming majority are not. Casual and curious drive-by users make up a good portion of any website - the compounding effects of a worldwide audience are what incur costs.

I think the biggest issue in these types of discussions are that people focus on one specific aspect: Malware, ad-bait websites that only republish content and have no original thoughts. The web is much, much bigger than that, and not everyone is backed by "soulless" corporations. I was a single guy with an idea that just happened to organically grow popular and be useful to a decent number of users. But in today's society, the general population doesn't generally pay money for something that isn't directly tangible - which is fine, that's why advertisements were supposed to be the middle ground.

Have they been abused? Of course. I vividly remember the 'Punch the Monkey' stuff.
But are they intrinsically evil? I don't think so. And while I absolutely agree that we need to fight back against insecure ad services and terrible ads, wholly eliminating them without thought does much more damage to the Internet at large.

I'd love to hear ideas for a middle ground. I don't often see those in these types of discussions.

Popups can die

[__aaacoe2998]

The first time I mouse over something and it pops up an image or animation is the last time I visit that page. Noscript + Adblock haven't failed me in a long time. When they do, I'll have to resort to other means (blacklists).

Well, in Firefox

[50000BTU_barbecue]

I press ctrl shift K and look around, then I can disable javascript in that tab if I want. What ever happened to the "disable java" option in the options menu?

Re:Well, in Firefox

[winphreak]

Shameless plug: I use the QuickJava addon, since it lets you tolerate JS/Java/Flash/SL/Cookies/Images/Ani GIFs/CSS per page. I only use it for a few, but it's easier than hunting down the options menu.

They get added to my Hosts file

[fast turtle]

I use noscript in a deny all by default config with only a dozen sites even white listed. Any website that figures out how to get around noscript gets added to my hosts file as a malware site and I never visit again.

As someone else at the top pointed out, any site that refuses to load due to needing javascript gets looked at temporarily then blocked and forgoten about as it's usefulness is questionable. Sorry but I don't run scripts by default due to the many pop-ups/unders I've suffered in the past and I don't run IE for the same fucking reason.

Mine.

[jafac]

My network connection.
My computer. My CPU. My RAM.
My video card.
My monitor.
My electricity.

I fucking paid for every cent of it.

So stay the fuck off my lawn.

Re:Mine.

[Red_Chaos1]

Except you're on *their* site which costs *them* money to run. As much as I hate ads too, I have to admit the reality of the situation. As long as we have money and everything has a cost, nothing will be "free" completely.

So yes, you paid for all of your equipment. But you haven't paid anything to view the content if you block ads. Why do you have absolute right to view it without some kind of compensation to the owner for their costs?

Re:Mine.

[tftp]

So yes, you paid for all of your equipment. But you haven't paid anything to view the content if you block ads. Why do you have absolute right to view it without some kind of compensation to the owner for their costs?

Ad revenue is minimally moral because it uses you as a product, not as a human who makes decisions. Why does the site owner have a right to treat the visitor as a fuel for his profit-generating machine?

If the site cannot be free (such as being ran as a service to the Internet) then it should charge money for visits - and die shortly after. As many people said above, the Internet would be only better off that way. A discussion site like Slashdot is not expensive to run, and it can be all done by volunteers. Would you volunteer to review submissions to your group's car talk site for one day in a month? You don't need to pay $100K to a professional editor who can't even spell.

Re:Mine.

[Morgon]

You're making a lot of bold assumptions here.

> fuel for his profit-generating machine
Can we just step back and first agree that not every website on the internet is a full-fledged business hell-bent on removing your privacy and liberties for the quickest dollar? Because if we can do that, we can toss this sentence right out. And that's a win for everyone. :)

> If the site cannot be free, then it should charge money and die shortly after. [...] the internet would be only better off that way.
Why? Do you not derive any entertainment from the internet in any form? Since you first claim that any site that charges money would die in short order, I can only assume you don't compensate anyone for accessing or interacting with someone's web presence. So in your 'none-or-the-other' ecosystem, any website with an appreciable, growing fanbase should put an "Oops, got too popular" closing message once they outgrow a free or nominally-priced host that this essential charity is no longer financially feasible?

> A discussion site like Slashdot is not expensive to run
Perhaps we should more accurately define "expensive", but I would imagine bandwidth costs alone for site ranked among the top ~1600 (Alexa approximation) would be fairly sizable. Then you have hardware: servers, memory, networking equipment.
Since ./ is part 'corporate-cog', I'd agree "expensive" changes a bit in this particular discussion, but not every website on the internet is a) backed by corporate money, or b) intent on becoming such.

I just don't see the point of the internet being EITHER smalltime blog or large entity selling a tangible product. In your post, you've outlined that there is no room for being in the middle... which is pretty much where all the most awesome stuff comes from. How do they get to exist?

Re:Mine.

[tftp]

Can we just step back and first agree that not every website on the internet is a full-fledged business hell-bent on removing your privacy and liberties for the quickest dollar?

Yes, sure, we can. I have a Web site. I don't attack people's privacy. And I don't have ads on the Web site. It's free for all. But if someone inserts ad scripts into his Web site, he sells his visitors to the ad companies. He has no control over what exactly they serve. It could be viruses. It could be obscene ads. It could be political ads (but I repeat myself.) It could be a message from Greenpeace, or from Japanese whalers.

Why? Do you not derive any entertainment from the internet in any form?

One can derive entertainment from things that are free. One can make things free that aren't too hard to provide. Some collectors of paintings offer them for public viewing, even though it's their money that paid for the paintings. People knew how to share even before they formed a language.

I can only assume you don't compensate anyone for accessing or interacting with someone's web presence

There are a few services that I find useful and worth of paying for. Others have more choice - some gaming networks, some movie streaming services, some Internet radios... but I have no use of them. I do pay for ARRL, but it includes more than just access to the Web site. I do pay for eQSL.cc. I would generally pay for a useful (to me) service.

So in your 'none-or-the-other' ecosystem, any website with an appreciable, growing fanbase should put an "Oops, got too popular" closing message once they outgrow a free or nominally-priced host that this essential charity is no longer financially feasible?

Demand subscription. If 100,000 fans are indeed in love with the Web site they will pay $1 per year to run a few servers at Amazon. If they do not pay, they get no service. Those rules are very simple and easy to understand, as opposed to the current "free" service that comes with light years of attached strings, and then with endless bitching that some users cut those strings off.

Perhaps we should more accurately define "expensive", but I would imagine bandwidth costs alone for site ranked among the top ~1600 (Alexa approximation) would be fairly sizable. Then you have hardware: servers, memory, networking equipment.

Will that cost $100,000 per year in hardware and rent and bandwidth? Rackspace has these prices: $150/mo pays for 500GB of bandwidth per month. Let's say we have the same 100,000 users who refresh the site ten times per day. So we need 1 million accesses per day. Each access is 10 kB, so we need 10 GB per day, or 300 GB per month. This is still included in the $150 deal. But if you need more (say, all your users are doing 100 page loads per day!) you can buy bandwidth for 18 cents per GB. Since you collected $100K per year, that would be $8300 per month - this will buy you 46 TB per month. Wouldn't that be somewhat sufficient, even as we assume that all 100,000 registered users connect every single day, and not once in a while as it usually happens?

In your post, you've outlined that there is no room for being in the middle... which is pretty much where all the most awesome stuff comes from. How do they get to exist?

They can exist in any way they want, as long as they don't sell privacy of their visitors to pay their bills. How would you like a bar where some trivial service is free, but they take a copy of your ID and publish it for any ID thief to see? It's like arguing that purse cutters at the market square must be allowed to cut purses - how else can they sustain their small business? But, of course, not every revenue stream is legal, or ethical.

Re:Mine.

[Morgon]

> I have a Web site. I don't attack people's privacy. And I don't have ads on the Web site.
That's cool. It's good that you have a small enough website that you have the ability to pay your costs out of pocket. It doesn't seem to be the site linked on your user account, though, since I see ads. :)

But imagine the site you run becomes even more popular than it is... you get incredible word-of-mouth reach from people who just love what you're providing, your database (assuming your site is more than a simple blog) starts cracking under the weight of all the connections and the queries that your users demand to run your site as expected. What do you do?
If you say "charge $1/month", I'll get to that in a sec. If you have another solution, I'm curious.

> Some collectors of paintings offer them for public viewing
That's a bit different than operating a service. You only have three things in play: The cost of the art to the collector, who wants to (and is free to) show them to visitors, in a specified venue (which may provide free 'hosting' (or they may not.. I don't know the art world), with a finite amount of 'bandwidth'). But hanging a picture on a wall in someone's museum is a helluva lot different than what's needed to adequately provide any more-than-trivial service.

> Demand subscription. If 100,000 fans are indeed in love with the Web site they will pay $1 per year to run a few servers at Amazon.
Firstly: No, they won't. In my personal example, when ad revenues started to fall, I held donation drives to try to cover the remainder, month-to-month. You will always have good-hearted people who have no trouble throwing a couple of bucks your way, but by and large it's not an option to many. There's a very similar parallel if you think about $1 music tracks (which is sort of a bad argument since the music industry is still making money hand over fist - but it's also a much larger/different userbase).

Secondly, not all services are in a position to demand subscription. In my particular case - and this is where we come off the pre-scripted path of the average discussion - my service was based on data from Xbox Live. Still a valid site, very heavily used even by Microsoft employee themselves, but I was bound by a user agreement that I could not paywall my services. Advertisements were fine, and there wasn't anything stopping me from exchanging cash for an ad-free experience, but bum deal or not - a direct "pay or no service" was not an option.

You may think this classifies my site as "not viable to exist", which of course it doesn't now, but it did for 6 years due to advertising revenue - and with 5 million total users, I was doing *something* right, even if I may have been doing other business-related things wrong. But as I said initially, I wasn't intending on being a "soulless corporation", I just wanted to maintain and grow a service to meet the (at-times) overwhelming demand.

My point with this story is simply to say that not every site is equal, and even in this response, you seem to be pigeon-holing what kind of websites use advertising.

> Rackspace has these prices...
AWS and Azure are probably somewhat competitive (enough for discussion, at least), and you know the biggest gotchas about these services? The details.

Sure, you've done all kinds of math for bandwidth in your example (which is grossly under-bid; just this isolated comment thread is 19k gzipped for the HTML alone. Chrome tells me the front page HTML is ~45k), but what about compute cycles to parse data and render the comment threads? What about the data passing to/from a separately-instanced database (some providers do count that as bandwidth)?

You're also only counting 100,000 registered users, yet there are UIDs way beyond that (tens of millions? billion by now? Dunno). Sure, a good portion of them probably don't visit daily (and there's probably a sizable chunk that haven't connected in years), but without hard numbers, I'd still venture that the major

Re:Mine.

[tftp]

It doesn't seem to be the site linked on your user account, though, since I see ads. :)

The linked site is a large online library. No, it's not my site :-) I won't publish the URL to my site.

Firstly: No, they won't.

This means that the site closes down. The value of the service was not worth the bother of paying. Note that I provided an example of eQSL.cc - this site is not free if you are more than a chance visitor. And it is not $1 per year either - it's something like $30 per year. Still, I pay - the service is worth it. Sorry that your site was not as successful; you had only fair weather fans, not those who were willing to help you out in return. I never heard of your Web site, but that's probably because I don't have an Xbox.

You may think this classifies my site as "not viable to exist", which of course it doesn't now, but it did for 6 years due to advertising revenue - and with 5 million total users, I was doing *something* right

What you did right is you spread bird food on a square mile and observed lots of birds flocking to free dinner. There is no business model in this activity. Once the food is gone, the birds take off and go elsewhere. Do not expect silent gratitude, you can't pay with it for the hosting.

But as I said initially, I wasn't intending on being a "soulless corporation", I just wanted to maintain and grow a service to meet the (at-times) overwhelming demand.

See my example with birds again. The demand for food among birds is strong. What does that mean, business-wise? IMO, you would be better off if you positioned yourself not as a free source of $something, and not as a soulless corporation, but as a fair dealer. People can listen to good reasons. Your audience would be smaller, but it would be a healthy audience - one that knows very well what it pays and what it gets for their money. Well, in your case you are saying that paywall was not an option. But generally it would have worked.

That's actually what I do. I offer a piece of software on my Web site, for money. And I offer a bunch of projects for free, under GPL. No hidden catches. What you see is what you get.

Sure, you've done all kinds of math for bandwidth in your example (which is grossly under-bid; just this isolated comment thread is 19k gzipped for the HTML alone. Chrome tells me the front page HTML is ~45k), but what about compute cycles to parse data and render the comment threads?

Perhaps that was the driving force behind Slashdot switching to minimum display, with Javascript controls allowing you to see more on demand. But note that audience and pageviews are related. They also pre-render the front page and serve a static image. There are ways to optimize. But once you get to some serious bandwidth you move to a different world - I do not suggest running eBay on a single Celeron box over home-grade DSL. The cost of bandwidth also gets lower as you buy it in bulk. A well connected datacenter will be happy to assist here.

Well hold on, what exactly are you outlining here in terms of 'privacy' and the sale of such? Perhaps I'm wrong, but while it's common knowledge that ad companies know you visited Site A, and Site B, I would imagine the vast majority of the major ad platforms have no way of identifying the true identify of 'tftp' - where you live (beyond IP geolocation), your name, identify of loved ones.

If ad networks know what sites I visit, there is a way to correlate activities there, even if they are done under different logins. With enough statistics the links become pretty well formed, and you then know that a certain $user spends 20% of his time on Slashdot, 30% of his time on CNN, and 40% of his time on The Huffington Post. You know what pages he visits there, and for how long. You may notice new comments, left by unknown users $foo and $bar, that match those visits. The rule of thumb is to keep

Re:Mine.

[Morgon]

> The value of the service was not worth the bother of paying
Or the majority of the userbase grew up in a world where they generally don't directly pay for things online. (again - movies, music, software. Those in their late teens/early 20s, especially in the US, have a much different mentality about things online than the people that typically operate amateur radio, who I would imagine are mostly older)
Besides, I'm sure a portion of these folks probably didn't have a way to pay online even if they wanted to.

> I offer a piece of software on my Web site, for money
Okay, you're selling a product (or a series of products) that directly fund the operation of the website. That's great, but not everyone is doing that, and not everyone should have to. Your use-case is different, it doesn't make someone else's service less valid than yours.

> What does that mean, business-wise?
> There is no business model in this activity
Why are we talking about businesses? This is my biggest frustration with these types of conversations - half the people want to "go back to the internet before corporate interest", and the other half say "You need a business model that sustains itself without ads". My favorite are the posts who essentially say both things in the same thread.
Why do I need a 'business model' to create an online service? I made something for fun, and it got popular. I shouldn't need an MBA, or consult with one, to continue operating it. Where is the middle ground where a service can grow without needing to be a business?

I see you don't find any value in such things, and in the end that's okay, as maybe you've never come across one operating in this way that you've enjoyed. I think there's room for the advertising model to help fund ideas and provide entertainment without having to fork over a credit card (which will always be shunned by a great many people, especially those who don't have one).

But it seems we won't change each other's minds. I just hope somewhere down the line, some service will come along that will help save the ad model by increasing the trust from users enough to disable ad blocking.

Re:Just like mail spam

[0123456]

Simple SPAM is easy to deal with, properly engineered SPAM passes through the best filters.

Can't be much of it, then, because I haven't seen a spam mail in my inbox in years.

Download but don't display

[Larry_Dillon]

I want to find a way to have something, perhaps Squid, download the ads on sites I like but not actually display them.

Re:Download but don't display

[PPH]

That still consumes some bandwidth. Not as much as loading the ad, running its embedded script and hogging even more bandwidth/resources.

Flashblock is my middle ground

[tepples]

Make them text or basic images like JPG or GIF (but then they couldn't hijack your speakers and blow your ears off, what fun is that?) and NO FLASH ADS because flash zero days are one of the biggest attack vectors out there

I agree, as does the featured article: "In addition, users who dislike the distraction of Flash-based advertising can install browser add-ons that just block Flash content, such as Flashblock for Firefox and Chrome." Flashblock for Firefox is the middle ground that I've been choosing for years. And before that became available, I had a practice of hosts-blocking any ad server that served SWF on a site. Slashdot was surprisingly one of the first sites I saw that showed an SWF ad for Splunk log analysis software, and whatever server was serving it was the first to get 0.0.0.0'd in my hosts file.

(but then they couldn't get "teh big bux" for having the most annoying Goatse of ads spewed on their pages)

Yeah, the article quotes the VP of some web advertising consulting firm who whines that static ads have an unviably low CPM. Boo hoo.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[Cramer]

They ALL have low CPM. And the more obnoxious and intrusive the ad, the more you're pushing people to ad blockers. (or simply abandoning your site) With the ever increasing greed from ISPs in the form of bandwidth limits and heavy overage fees, **I** don't want to be paying the per-byte costs of completely USELESS content. Go use the internet over dialup for just an hour and tell me how much you like all the bull**** ads, or the overabundance of enormous javascript libraries.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[Anonymous Coward]

I sometimes turn off adblocking and find that I turn it back on within a few minutes. The primary reason is that the latency gets ridiculous and the ads themselves aren't particularly kind to my resources either.

I don't personally mind ads, but the fact that they're also resource hogs, security risks and sometimes engage in fraudulent activities doesn't really instill any interest in my allowing them on my machine.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[EdIII]

I don't have a problem with javascript, as I do make stuff with it. Done right, you don't have as much impact on the bandwidth as you think. If you have megs of javascript libraries being referenced from external CDN's, you're doing it wrong.

It's going to go down that road anyways till the end. Web browsers have ceased being about document markup and rendering, which is how it started, to running external code in complicated sand boxes. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.

The issue is being able to trust that javascript, which is really about trusting the sandboxes to not allow malicious code to be run. Tracking is a problem of course, but that is mitigated by blocking software that stops those specific scripts and domains from working. Once a Big Data company like that gets big enough, they'll just get shut down by the blockers, which is a very good thing. It protects our privacy as well as our computers.

If you don't want javascript and external code libraries you're only other option is to have a single universal API developed that ALL browsers adhere strictly to. Blocking tracking software is simple as a permissions setting at that point to not listen to any tracking tags or events set up in the page. AJAX type events would need to be classified accordingly and secured. An event going toward a different domain than the page? Blocked by permissions. Image not from the domain? Don't even download it based on permissions. CDN's should be registered in the browser as an alternative for any file that needs to be downloaded for a "page".

Above all, that API should have plentiful RBL's that outright disable all external calls. We want accountability? How about within an hour of malware being downloaded those RBL's are proactive like some email services and browsers start blocking that particular site or CDN automatically? That would make propagation of malware a real bitch in production. Not to mention if you are a big outfit and that happens people will start getting fired till it's fixed. I've been in a major company that got their email shut down by Cisco IronPort (Over half the vendors they dealt with were rejecting mail). Some yahoo in the data center thought it would be cool to run his own little server which got hacked and delivered out 9 tons of spam that shut down corporate email for 4 days till IronPort finally cleared it up.

Can you even imagine what would happen if one of those RBL systems blocked Yahoo by default a week or two ago? Shit storm indeed, but a needed one.

We don't have any of that.

What we *do* have is a clusterfuck of technology that developed from an interesting idea to effectively share a word processing screen at universities that is fundamentally toxic to us. We spend billions cleaning it, defending it, and developing it, etc.

It just needs to be scrapped and start over.

So no, blocking javascript is not the answer either. Unless you want to be left behind with non-working pages because people like me are getting really tired of needing to expend those resources for graceful failure. We don't have the time or the money to do that anymore (not in this economy) and javascript and JQuery (along with the other JS frameworks) are here to stay. So many of the "shiny" features out there only work in an event based framework where I can modify the DOM without reloading the entire page.

The whole mess is just terrible and we keep refactoring code to old email and document markup systems without addressing the underlying issues at all.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[Cramer]

The root issue is people are stupid and lazy. If your 250k of JS actually does things, that's one thing. When you include (an uncompressed) version of JQuery to use one tiny function (that you don't JQuery to actually do), or worse don't use any part of it, you're wasting everyone's time and bandwidth.

Every time I research how to do something in a browser, every. single. fucking. time. The top 90 out of 100 answers is to load some enormous bloated framework widget toolkit and kitchen sink replicator. for what has, in every case so far, boiled down to 1-2k of formatted, human readable JS. Apparently, I'm the only motherf***er in the universe that cares if his web page is 3k vs 300k, in 1 file vs. dozens.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[cas2000]

What we *do* have is a clusterfuck of technology that developed from an interesting idea to effectively share a word processing screen at universities that is fundamentally toxic to us.

no. the toxicity comes from the advertising and the insistence on javascript (and flash and java etc applets).

just displaying documents is harmless. it's the fact that web-dev fuckers (and worse, "designers") want to run arbitrary code on millions of computers belonging to other people that is the source of the harm.

So many of the "shiny" features out there only work in an event based framework where I can modify the DOM without reloading the entire page.

you're making the mistake of assuming those "shiny" features are essential. they're not. in fact, more often than not, they're a PITA and end up being a reason not to return to the site.

if a web site or even just a web page doesn't work without javascript, then it is broken. js can be useful to *optionally* enhance a page, but the page should work (i.e. display the important information and navigation controls) without javascript.

BTW:

CDN's should be registered in the browser as an alternative for any file that needs to be downloaded for a "page".

so CDNs become a back door for malware because they're all whitelisted/trusted. what's the point of managing permissions for a site if that site can just bypass restrictions by uploading their scripts and malware to a popular CDN?

doing that would also allow CDNs to spy on users as they browse from site to site, linking accounts and IDs and activities - same as ad networks now (which is yet another reason to run adblock).

if ads were just static graphics without any animation and without spyware/tracking and without javascript then most people wouldn't give a shit about ads and wouldn't bother blocking them (it was animated GIFs that motivated me to write my first ad blocker in the mid 90s...the text and static GIFs that were common before then didn't annoy me enough to be worth the bother of eliminating)

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[EdIII]

There is an argument that a small site with low visitor counts can get away with a 1 meg download that is cached afterwards anyways. That being said, I think anyone that claims they are anything greater than a novice must use scaleable web design practices. Meaning, that you have to justify every single 1k of data being returned by the web server.

The problem you reference are what I call the web hobbyists. Web developers are plagued with the hobbyists to the extent that people by default think they are fucking morons.

I'm being nice, but there are so many people out there selling their development services that don't even understand PHP or JS and can only follow instructions on some page to get a Wordpress plugin to work. These are the people operating at such a high level of abstraction that they have no idea how a web browser actually works at all. I'm no expert and even I understand headers and the general theory behind rendering and running client side code.

Trial and error by shoving JS on a page and hoping for the best is quite normal unfortunately.

I actually had somebody give me a page back that they had worked on, (which looked very good), and required some JS to dynamically do something (don't remember). They literally copied and pasted the JS from some blog page and gave it to me as a finished product. Never bothered changing the ID, let alone creating a class, and let the code run trying to attach events to non-existing page elements. The library was not even included.

That person probably represents the norm for the armchair web hobbyist that would be unemployed if it was not for Wordpress.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[Cramer]

By that definition, there are zero "web developers" on Earth. I don't want to count the number of over-paid "developers" who's answer is use X toolkit, while completely ignoring the size of the thing or the fact that they're using 0.2% of it, and the size of the datasets they load (and go out of their way to never allow to be cached) are too huge, and almost entirely static. I've dealt with this crap for many, many, many years; so I default to "idiot" whenever web programming is on the table.

(There may be good web devs out there, but I've never met one or seen their code.)

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[EdIII]

no. the toxicity comes from the advertising and the insistence on javascript (and flash and java etc applets).

just displaying documents is harmless. it's the fact that web-dev fuckers (and worse, "designers") want to run arbitrary code on millions of computers belonging to other people that is the source of the harm.

Noooo, the toxicity comes from using a platform that was designed only to publish static documents with a simple markup language to do rather complicated dynamic operations requiring the browser to act more like an operating system managing objects, making additional requests based on client side activity, etc.

This what YOU WANT. You can't tell me you don't want those features without also telling me that you want to be Amish.

Running arbitrary code is exactly what is required to satisfy web browsing needs of people today.

you're making the mistake of assuming those "shiny" features are essential. they're not. in fact, more often than not, they're a PITA and end up being a reason not to return to the site.

if a web site or even just a web page doesn't work without javascript, then it is broken. js can be useful to *optionally* enhance a page, but the page should work (i.e. display the important information and navigation controls) without javascript.

They're absolutely essential, and done right, not even close to being a pain in the ass. If you have a "form" on a page and want to be able to work with it, without having the entire page reload, your ONLY option is JS. There are NO OTHER OPTIONS.

I'm flabbergasted that you even think for one moment that a site not working without javascript is broken. With respect, you're the one broken.

You simply cannot do 99% of what people expect in a "Web 2.0" experience with working with the DOM locally, and that absolutely requires JS. Unless... you really want JAVA and FLASH?

There is no such thing as "optional" enhancements anymore. Responding to events and using a JS framework greatly accelerates development times and actually allows for rendering on different browsers to be largely the same.

My pages are written far easier and are less cluttered with a simple class having a click event that runs an AJAX call to get your more information about that object.

You're wishing to go back to a pure static page environment, or worse, a dynamic one where to do the SIMPLEST activity requires a GET or POST to a separate page requiring server side code to operate, create a dynamic page just for you, and then return it.

Really? All of that work, those server resources, just because you didn't want one little AJAX call running on the page submitting your post?

Hardly seems reasonable.

Then let's not forget. With your idea, no major web development would have ever been done period. The only way to do anything again would be native code, thereby shutting out quite a bit of valuable innovation in the markets by startups that could have never afforded the resources for large coding shops that could keep track of code for multiple platforms.

Having experienced native code companies and SAAS companies... please don't relegate the rest of us to that hell. The native code companies are cratering because they can't begin to hope to keep up with the SAAS companies using open source frameworks and rapid cross platform development to push out fixes and features in weeks instead of 3 years.

As for that CDN observation, I never said it was perfect. Only that if you wanted web browsers to operate the way they do now with no 3rd party client side library and frameworks you would need to provide all of those capabilities straight in the browser. Registering a CDN in the browser as servicing a particular domain at least allows the browser the ability to filer those requests and choose whether to do it at all. Site coding is easier because the browser understands to redirect the requests for those files to the registered CDN instead

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[EdIII]

I'd like to say that I'm one of them, but I really stick to back end development, automated BI, databases, sysadmin, etc. The stuff that I do front ends for I approach the same way as the back end. Scaleability and Security. The first part solves most of the bandwidth and processing waste you see, and the latter is just the only sane way to approach anything now.

I wouldn't put a huge library only to use a small part of it. My first attempt I downloaded JQuery right away, and then, actually used it. Meaning, that all of the dialog boxes, button creation, animations, effects, whatever were pure JQuery code. Use their site theme roller and actually stick to it, and you will have a nice clean working site with minimal code.

It's funny you mention caching :)

Since I was using AJAX to get XML documents that I was using to populate rows on reports I created my own caching mechanism that would store the results in the DOM body itself with a TTL. If you went back to do the search again with the same parameters it literally just read it from the DOM body, looked at the TTL, and just put up the loading animation while doing nothing. Those executives could keep clicking the damn button all they wanted. As long as they didn't close the browser and stop the session I was caching all of my own XML response docs myself.

While I know that my stuff wasn't as secure as other professionals could do it, I know that it wasn't terrible either. All input was validated and sanitized, and I did best practices for XSS/CSRF.

Starting out as a programmer the only way you could see web browsers in the beginning was like the special ed classes had leaked out and were running amuck in the industry.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[AmiMoJo]

Your browser shouldn't be downloading 300k every time, it should download the external JS frameworks once. That's why they are usually linked from an external CDN rather than hosted on the site using them.

It's still performance and memory overhead, but on the other hand at least we have better compatibility through well debugged frameworks instead of every random site doing its own half-broken only-works-in-ie6 thing.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[ceoyoyo]

You're not.

I don't suppose you've found some good, self-contained JS widgets have you? It makes me sad when I'm looking for something, find a beautiful widget, and have to hit next because it requires JQuery.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[tepples]

If you have megs of javascript libraries being referenced from external CDN's, you're doing it wrong.

How else is one supposed to "polyfill" (emulate using an equivalent script) modern browsers' behavior in Internet Explorer pre-10? Windows XP users who lack permission to install a third-party browser are stuck on IE 8 for the next three months (or 18 months in the case of Windows Server 2003), and Windows Vista users who lack permission to install a third-party browser are stuck on IE 9.

Image not from the domain? Don't even download it based on permissions.

And watch your permissions make eBay, Amazon, Google, your bank, your government, and other widely used or essential web applications useless.

CDN's should be registered in the browser as an alternative for any file that needs to be downloaded for a "page".

How much would browser makers charge for this registration?

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[iMadeGhostzilla]

I clicked on a youtube video the other day whose title seemed interesting and I was greeted with 30 second advertisement first (was playing it on Chrome where I didn't have adblock). It was then when I figured I don't actually need to watch this video and closed the entire tab a few seconds into the ad. So the unavoidable ad was a blessing in disguise.

As far as I'm concerned, bring it on. More ads will prevent me from wasting time on content I don't need, and for the content I do, I'll accept that enduring the ad is necessary. But I'll open the page in FF with NoScript first.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[Reziac]

Nope, I'm totally with you. I lived on dialup and low-speed fixed wireless for too damn long.

Looked at vBulletin? if it's default updated, it evidently leaves all the previous crap intact, so what should be a 30k page grows by that much with every update. I've seen it generate pages over 400k, all but 30k of that being cruft. Site operator has to fix it by hand, and my observation is that few know the problem exists.

Re:Flashblock is my middle ground

[EdIII]

I had not considered "polyfills". However, if they are critical to site operation then you would have no choice but to load them on the pages that need it. I'm not saying there should be a hard 250k limit or anything, just that for normal operations you should aggressively try to limit the size.

Personally, I like to inject scripts on demand. When I would need one of those polyfill libraries I could inject the script before hand. If the user never performs an operation requiring it, it does not get loaded.

I never claim to be a front-end expert at all. In the last 2 years though I've been forced to step up and start creating more and more of the front end infrastructure due to costs (which is terrible; I'm overworked). For what I needed the minimum JQuery library has been giving me everything I need and I inject the chart and graph JS when I need it on specific pages.

How do images not from the domain (or registered CDN) failing to load make essential web applications useless? That sounds like hotlinking of images which I've always understood to be a dickhead move on the part of web designers.

That also comes back to the javascript because I cannot understand putting all of your JS on CDN's that you are not paying for. Worse, I see developers all the time hotlinking scripts from other blogs and developers. If you pay for the CDN, then use it as you see fit. If it's something your not paying for, then don't be a dickhead. Common courtesy from my point of view.

In some cases I can understand that hotlinking may be required to offer a service, or normalize images and scripts amongst all of the services clients. However, the vast majority of this activity is highly undesirable from the user's point of view. I use DoNotTrackMe and Ghostery precisely for that reason.

I'm not interested in facilitating the mass violations of privacy for marketers. They can DIAF repeatedly. I really believe that the content or script should be delivered from the domain, or CDN's that they are paying for. Other CDN's are too risky and don't offer the minimum level of reliability that I expect.

Keeping strictly to this requirement would seem to solve a lot of problems. The site owners and designers would be forced to host and review the content they are pushing out. No more pushing the blame out to a 3rd party company, and create accountability to help the users.

If they really want that beacon or tracking technology then download the script to your own servers or CDN's. While I know that many designers would just cron the damn thing to sync it, it does still create accountability.

As for the registering of the CDN, I think you misunderstood me. The site itself would register a CDN as part of the domain through instructions in the XHTML. I believe this would simplify work flow and allow you to swap out a CDN without touching a single line of code in the rest of the site.

You could register several different objects with the browser itself. Off the top of my head you could register CDN's, external widgets, beacons, trackers, etc. Even better, you could register known external objects that are community approved. Meaning, your XHTML does not have to reference the exact Google Analytics script, but to a common reference point that allows Google to normalize that code to whatever they want. No cost for registration. If it's well used enough the community itself can add it to the list of common objects to make life easier for all designers.

Having that can allow the community to manage RBL's for objectionable content. Not to mention with a single preference click you could disable all beacons and trackers. Privacy laws could be amended to state that bypassing the user preferences in the browser is illegal. Wasn't Google guilty of that anyways with something? There are really very few exceptions to disabling trackers. Netflix loading the FB Connect code to facilitate certain features is an example. Netflix could tell it was blocked and pop-up a dialog box informing that certain

Re: Flashblock is my middle ground

[a4r6]

just throwing this out there... javascipt that has been uglified/minified with r.js actually excludes code that isnt ever called. I can use 3MB worth of javascript libraries and if I only use one tiny function from each, the resulting r.js optimized file is like 10k. this is something that mostly clueless web devs can do successfully, (and do, at their high paying jobs they arent qualified for)

Browser gaming

[tepples]

Good luck running, say, any browser-based video game without Flash or JavaScript, and good luck running non-browser-based video games that aren't made for your computer's operating system. Or do you claim that all browser-based video games are inherently not worth my time?

Re:Browser gaming

[tepples]

Until you start having to "Don't block" pretty much every site you visit that isn't A. paywalled or B. run by a charity.

Re:Browser gaming

[tepples]

Good luck running Mac-exclusive games or iOS games on your Windows PC. They exist.

Slashdot

[lq_x_pl]

Asked me nicely to display ads.
/. was whitelisted.
/. will remain whitelisted until one of their adds follows me around the screen or plays some annoying sound.

I understand that site content has to be paid for somehow, and so long as the ads that back it up don't

1. Irritate me
2. Infect my workstation with malware

I have no problem letting the ads through. There are less than 10 sites whitelisted in adblocker. Everyone gets ghostery'd.

Copyright is your "exclusive supply contract"

[tepples]

Nobody is forced to buy from a specific company (exclusive supply contracts or biased tender processes aside)

Copyright is similar in effect to an "exclusive supply contract". If the article you're interested is on a scriptwalled site, and no other article is authorized to carry the article, too bad.

Annoy Me and You Lose

[pubwvj]

There is a simple solution to web sites that annoy me with too much advertising, blocking my adblockers, forcing scripting, plugins etc...

I just stop going there.

No customers and they lose big time. There are alternatives to virtually everything. If advertisers make themselves too annoying they'll go extinct.

Why?

[defaria]

I never understand this. It's obvious to anybody with 2 IQ points to rub together that somebody who employees adblocking software IS NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR FUCKING PRODUCTS. How, then, by going around his blocks and stuffing this shit in front of his eyes do you believe that suddenly he will be unable to resist your ad. He will resist your ad and will only get even more pissed about your company. Is this really a wise thing for you to do?!?

Re:Why?

[nulldaemon]

to be fair though I think they probably don't want us installing an adblocker on our parents/childrens/friends browsers. While you may not be vulnerable you've probably helped out people who are.

Sites that use Facebook to login

[tepples]

Who cares about Facebook?

People who want to use websites that require Facebook login. It is impossible to post on Answers.com or The Huffington Post without having a Facebook account that is "verified" (tied to the unique number of a phone capable of sending and receiving SMS messages). Spotify used to be the same way.

Re:Sites that use Facebook to login

[reub2000]

Can't post on HuffingtonPost? Sounds like a great reason not to use facebook.

Slashvertisements

[tepples]

You're referring to the policy in place since the second quarter of 2002, correct?

Product placement

[tepples]

Then you wouldn't be interested in sites like Netflix that let subscribers stream movies like The Wizard, which is a 90-minute ad for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

You own your computer

[bugnuts]

You do own your computer, but zero tolerance is stupid. You have a choice to click or not. Content providers have a right to display on your computer when YOU request their site. If it's a malware site, it gets blacklisted by multiple entities and browsers. Since you're on slashdot, zero tolerance by an anonymous coward means you're getting fed ads. If you're not getting ads, you installed some software to prevent that, and that activity means you tolerated it more than zero. If you truly believe in zero tolerance, gtfo slashdot and nearly every other popular website out there including google search, youtube, yahoo, etc.

I will state that if a website uses anti-adblock software that bypasses my blocking in any way, I immediately close the page. I do not need their service enough that I will suffer their bullshit. This, in contrast to "zero tolerance" is my balking rate to annoying manipulation and my curiosity never gets the best of me. If I'm reading an article, and 15 seconds later an opaque ad comes up, I close the page and blacklist the site. Some sites even bypass noscript or make it unreadable without javascript, and noscript comes with its own set of problems making many web pages unusable (even with "temporarily allow all on this page") due to xss protection among other things.

You have that choice of what to browse, and content providers have a choice of how to market. Forcing ads onto people unwilling to view ads is a very low percentage market, therefore there is no reason to pretend there's some sort of arms race. There isn't.

The overall point is that spending money to market to people who not only don't want your ads, but will actively blacklist your entire website if it's too obnoxious (*cough*upworthy*cough*) means marketing money poorly spent. If adblock software is intentionally rendered ineffective, those websites will get far fewer visitors. They will lose money.

Re:You own your computer

[0123456]

Content providers have a right to display on your computer when YOU request their site.

Ad sites request that I display their ads. I don't. They have no right to anything on MY computer.

I'm always stunned when I have to use a computer which doesn't have ad-blocking enabled, because I can't see how anyone could use a Web that's so slow and ad-infested. Some of them take fifteen to twenty seconds load a page because they're sitting there at 'Waiting for www.stupidads.com' until the ad server finally responds.

Re:You own your computer

[tftp]

Content providers have a right to display on your computer when YOU request their site.

In other news, newspaper publishers have a right to demand that you read every article in their newspaper that you came across.

Re:You own your computer

[RandomUsername99]

Poor analogy... they do have the right to display every ad on every page that you access.

Re:You own your computer

[tftp]

[in a newspaper] ... I have the right to take a knife and cut these ads out, or paint them over. I can even hire a person, or a robot, to do that for me. Isn't that what adblockers are doing?

Re:You own your computer

[Yer Mom]

Since you're on slashdot, zero tolerance by an anonymous coward means you're getting fed ads.

Unless you're logged in with the "Disable ads" box checked and you also checked the "Post anonymously" box, of course :)

As for content providers having the right to display on my computer when I request their site: when I go to example.com, I'm requesting content from example.com. If that page has an include from doubleclick.net, I'm not the one requesting doubleclick.net — example.com is. They have no right to agree to that on my behalf, and I'm quite happy to take whatever action is necessary to enforce that.

Your last two paragraphs get to the point of the whole matter, of course: somebody who's deliberately blocking ads is not going to sit there and view them rather than look at a blank page — they're going to go somewhere else.

Perhaps if a large number of sites start requiring ads we'll see something like the piracy scene, where someone downloads the page with ads, copies the actual content out of it, and republishes that somewhere on the darker side of the net.

CNAME under the publisher's domain

[tepples]

thing is, the advertisers will never do that - simply because their business model relies on tracking impressions and so forth. Hence they have to serve the ads on their own web platforms.

Then each publisher (operator of a web site that includes ads) could make a subdomain that is a CNAME (DNS-based alias) pointing at the ad server. In this way, the ad server will share the same public suffix as the rest of the publisher's site. So how will your browser be able to tell it from a subdomain that's actually operated by the publisher?

Re:CNAME under the publisher's domain

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Yes, of course its trivial to block. Many already does that.

The name of the domain makes it easy to just block all content from just that domain.
Doesnt matter if they call it ad.name.com or partners.name.com or media.name.com or whatever.name.com

If its all ads from one of the "legit" subdomains, its easy to block just that domain.

If that is hidden behind a URL scheme with www.name.com/ads/ (or /media/ /partners /whatever/ ) its easy to block.

If ads is added bya specific script file that all webpages include - just block that script file.

Blocking ads speed up the browsing. If you never intend to buy from internet-ads anyway and instead
always use consumer compare sites for selecting which product to buy - who needs ads anyway ?

Re:CNAME under the publisher's domain

[tepples]

If its all ads from one of the "legit" subdomains, its easy to block just that domain.

Provided that the publisher forgets to rotate the "ad server" and "essential resources" subdomains daily.

If ads is added bya specific script file that all webpages include - just block that script file.

Unless the script file includes essential resources for decrypting the text of the page itself.

If you never intend to buy from internet-ads anyway and instead always use consumer compare sites for selecting which product to buy - who needs ads anyway ?

Then I guess ads are for discovering "consumer compare sites" in the first place.

Betteridge's law of headlines

[riskkeyesq]

No, its days are not numbered. Thank you.

Re:No-Script

[ackthpt]

Who cares about Facebook? If it doesn't work without noscript, don't bother with it. Not like AOLv2.0 is a desirable site to visit anyway.

You miss the point entirely.

The use of Adblock is for the masses, not the elitist few who chose to turn their noses up at Farcebook. Who wants to advertise to the few? Any social site you wish to visit is crammed with script and when something like Farcebook employs advertising the way they do it becomes more pervasive. Rather than blast you with a few ads, which they can do, they blast you with 20 or 30 ads, which they can also do. Next thing you see is this behavior at your favorite sites and no way to stop it except to disengage, which few people really intend to do.

Travel requirements; transitivity of trust

[tepples]

So how would a small-time publisher (such as an individual with a blog) who doesn't fly much get his key signed by someone who lives out of his home town? That's the problem I've always had with the concept of a web of trust: while each city can become strongly connected, the few people who travel often act as bottlenecks in the trust graph. In addition, I have some doubts about the transitivity of trust. Just because you verify someone's identity doesn't necessarily mean you trust him or her to verify other people's identity.

In a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see if I get this straight:
The company proposes tools that affect users that took steps to change their browsing experience of your website.
The apparent goal is to get the browsing experience of these users back in line with the intended browsing experience.

Is that correct?
Did none of them consider that
a. these users are actually aware of their browsing experience, and so will notice changes,
b. these users are actually active, and so will not hesitate to take steps if improves their browsing experience,
c. that a subset of these users (that will notice (a) that you're blocking their adblocker, and (b) thwarting their steps), will migrate elsewhere?

Weird.

Anyway, another aspect of this that I never understood: users that select themselves that they don't want to see any ads sounds like a dream for the advertisers. No need to spend any money on reaching that one.
The only argument I can currently come up with against this, is the "but we will convince you anyway" argument.
Is that it? Is that the ultimate reason adblockers are evil? Because they prevent advertising companies from the chance to change the minds of those who have no interest in ads?

Guess I'll have to go old school then

[al0ha]

And revive my list of advertising hosts to point to 127.0.0.1 in my local hosts file.

Pixelserv

[samuel.progin]

My router at home runs pixelserv, blocking creepy domain to leak anything on my LAN. It needs a little bit of work to setup and tune, but does a great job.

Re:That's cute

[Cley Faye]

And even if it become really hard, you have to be pretty confident about the appeal of your website.
I can understand why they want their ads to go through, but if some webmaster take aggressive action to force the hand of the user, there's a little side effect called "not going to this site anymore" that might hurt them somehow.

To creators and sellers of advertisments.

[Avantare]

I've been using adblock+ and NoScript for quite a few years now. The reason is all the ANNOYING ADS!!! Stuff it. Ads are the biggest reason I QUIT watching TV. If I want something that's what Google, eBay, etc are for. Thank you, I'll find it myself. And now there's this reason as well. A co-worker asked which browser I used at home. Firefox I replied. How many add-ons? About 30. Your favorite? Adblock+ and NoScript. You know sites make money with ads. I know. Why use them then? When the advertisers start paying a portion of my Internet bill for them using my bandwidth I'll quit using AdBlock+ and NoScript. Nuff said. PS. AT&T... FUCK YOU.

Re:NoScript...take no prisoners

[CrowdedBrainzzzsand9]

I'm imagining a TakeNoPrisonersScript that pounds each ad with clicks, say, a dozen times. Eventually, clicks will no longer mean anything to the advertisers.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Re:I don't know what all the fuss is about

[number17]

How does a 10 second ad for a Chevy ruin your life?

I've been using adblockers for years. What you are saying is all that is out there is a 10 second Chevy ad? Why such a fuss to circumvent adblockers for a 10 second ad?

I suspect there is more that you aren't telling me about.

Dnsmasq and pixelserv.

[gallondr00nk]

Your move, bitches.

It's amusing that advertisers are talking of ethics, as if they're some sort of moral guardian. Remember, these people want to sell you things. They don't give a shit whether you can afford it, or whether it might harm you, or whether it causes damage or loss somewhere down the line. Going back to Edward Bernays, advertisers have used psychology to essentially manipulate the customer into buying their goods.

Look at the lengths that advertising platforms have gone to in order to make their ads relevant. Facebook, Google and the like have all gone to extraordinary lengths to maximise their ad revenues, often to the detriment of user privacy. Mining emails and messages for keywords to use in advertising isn't ethical in my opinion. Nor is tracking me with third party cookies, or with Google's new adID system.

I'm not saying they're all that bad, or even that I object to minimal, low overhead text based advertising. If an advertising agency was launched that only served simple text ads without incessant tracking I would unblock them quite readily. I understand that sites need revenue. However, suggesting I have an ethical obligation to expose myself to such an unethical industry in exchange for content doesn't wash with me.

Introduce advertising with a better ethical compass, and I will respond in kind by viewing it. Until then, the adblockers stay.

Re:Dnsmasq and pixelserv.

[bussdriver]

thank you.

Oh goodie.

[BLToday]

I don't mind ads if they're non-intrusive. Slashdot gives me the option to not have ads, but I let them through anyway. Gizmodo and Yahoo (mobile) have painfully annoying ads. I block them when possible. But in Yahoo (mobile) when I can't block I just go somewhere else. Has anyone look at the recent Google search result page? Fill with so much advertising. I've done a lot more of my searches over at DuckDuckGo. I don't mind a little banner ad or side ads, but don't try to take over my screen or play sound.

Re:Totally illegal

[pepty]

How much of the web content viewed in Sweden is hosted in Sweden?

i wouldn't run ad blocking add-ons

[Some_Llama]

i wouldn't run ad blocking add-ons if sites didn't purposely using flashing, brightly colored, mentally aggravating ads that are meant to be as conspicuous as possible.

Look i don't like ads, commercials, billboards, the constant bombardment of corporate marketing pushers trying to influence my every thought and decision and i try to avoid them as much as possible, but i understand the need to funding for sites that run on ad revenue, and i don't mind seeing ads here and there and supporting sites through those ads, but i'm not going to have them shoved down my throat or successfully get my attention through aggravation, it starts with me just blocking them because they are so overtly annoying and disrespectful of the reason im there (to read an article or find information about a subject) and ends with me never visiting their site again...

Mixing Content with Promotions Ticks Me Off

[srobert]

Whenever I'm reading through a story and realize that I'm being marketed to, it just makes me so angry. Whenever that happens I try to take the edge off it by relaxing with the smooth flavor of a Chesterfield cigarette. Mmm. Smooooooth.

The script is not the blocker

[blitzd]

Advertisers need to realize that *I* am the ad blocker, not the script I installed. The script just makes it *easier* to manage.

Turning ads on, and right back off again

[edremy]

FARK has a tool like this that puts up a little banner asking you to either subscribe or turn off Adblock. I decided to actually give it a try one day. Within less than 30 minutes, my background music was stomped on by a very loud, unskippable, unpauseable video ad.

Adblock went right back on.

I don't mind ads. I understand this stuff isn't free and I'm willing to put up with them provided they aren't going to scream in my ear. But the ad makers don't seem to be willing to adjust their side of the equation.

Re:Turning ads on, and right back off again

[bytesex]

That's why, next to adblock, you also need flashblock. Autoplay of flash is not only of the devil esthetically, flash itself is a major vector of infections.

Surely.......

[Sketchly]

the question isn't 'how to block advertising'? Shouldn't it be "Why does anyone bother with advertising?" (obviously malware-loaded ads are a diiferent issue). How many people actually take notice of an intrusive ad on a website? Personally, I'd be far less likely to use a company or service that intruded, unasked, into my 'web experience'.

Completely pointless...

[daq man]

I have yet to see an ad for anything that made me think "Ooh, I need to buy that" or "Ooh, I need to watch that TV show, read that book, watch that play, listen to that music etc etc.". Most of the ads I see are either for things I can't afford, like flashy cars, things I don't want, things of dubious value (loan sharks), or the old standby "Local Mom finds way to make a fortune, cure cancer, grow huge breasts and whiten teeth using this one simple trick". It's a waste of time and offensive. Now you could argue that should allow the advertising just to support the poor impoverished website owner. The problem with that is that it is supporting the whole "advertising funded paradigm that I find wasteful and offensive. Sadly, I'm having a problem thinking of what the answer may be (lets face it if I could I would make my fortune) we don't want a pay-per-view web but we also don't want the advertisers peering into our souls to tailor ads to what interests us.

Adblock is....

[Chompjil]

Weird now a days, so host files work great for me IMHO

I can't wait...

[sgage]

... until my Adblock Plus no longer works. Because I can not stand intrusive advertising when I'm trying to read something. So I will have to quit wasting enormous gobs of time on the Web. I quit TV 15 years ago because of abusive advertising (mostly). If adblockers get nullified, I will seriously curtail my web browsing.

Regulation

[jythie]

This is actually a good example of where regulation probably would have helped. To skim the game theory element of this, there was an arms race among advertisers for increasingly intrusive ads, with any firm that did not participate seeing its revenue vanish because its competitors would. No one could depend on voluntary industry regulation since any company breaking ranks would make out like bandits and all the companies playing nice suffer. Thus you had the classic race to the bottom since the reward structure punished otherwise.

Regulators did not step in, industry regulation was broken, so consumers found a way to deal with the problem, but it was a way that hurt the whole advertising ecosystem.In a very real way, industry fighting against the idea of an external entity keeping everyone in check doomed us all.

Re:Too...many...ads...

[Rob the Bold]

“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.” - Rod Sterling

Perhaps it is. But OTOH, Rod Serling and his staff were able to make a virtue of the vice of commercial advertisementbreaks in their selection of delimitations between acts to good effect. Remember, limitations in form can be an excellent artistic inspiration. Viz sonnet form for some examples of constraints as inspiration.

I'm Wolfkin, and I whitelist

[thewolfkin]

If a site had non-annoying ads I whitelist. Especially if it's site i want to support. Sometimes I see those "Please unblock us" and I usually do. anyone willing to ask is willing to police their ads. That said I'm not above taking them off the list if something changes. Heck sometimes if I'm feeling generous I'll open an ad in a new incognito page. Just for kicks. After all I'm not giving money to websites. I might as well throw them a quarter or whatever. Some sites "pay me" after all with contests and such that I've won pretty regularly on.

huh?

[Ol Olsoc]

Would this company, who buys into a service to force their ads onto my computer, actually think that there is any way in hell that I would buy anything from them?

Welcome to the hostfile mutha'

The thing they refuse to get is that many of us, myself included, don't mind seeing a few ads. But multiple ads with motion, or one of my real pet peeves, like an almost full page floating around abomination from teh likes of Yahoo, are just too much. And with pushing ads from unknown outfits, that often carry malware, sorry, your webpage isn't all that necessary for me to view.

A month or so ago, I did some experiments, turned off all the scripts with no script. Went to a few sites - I forget which right now, but it was something like the New York times. Of course the page didn't load correctly. So I turned off all the scripts. Still didn't show up. Ther ewere more scripts that wanted run. Did this many 5 times before the site showed. There were 20 plus something scripts running, almost all of them tracking scripts. One fonting script.

Between forcing ads on us, and tracking scripts, all I have ot say is no thanks - I need to see your site less than you need me to see it.

Welcome to my hostile, NYT. And other sites that insist on being a pain in the backside.

Re:I don't know what all the fuss is about

[Rob the Bold]

I've never used an adblocker - Suppose I could, but can't be bothered. I know ads drive the Slashdot crowd batshit bananas crazy, but f*ck, get over it. How does a 10 second ad for a Chevy ruin your life? I just tune them out...

Oh, my. That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think? It doesn't ruin my life. Are you projecting something on me, perhaps?

What it does ruin is that particular web browsing experience. Not for me. I certainly don't want to imply I'm being selfish, here. Oh, no. No, it ruins it for the advertiser. See, when I get hit with something jarring and unexpected, I simply close the whole thing: experience, ads, Chevy, promised content, and all. It's not personal -- I'm certainly not trying to upset you, oh my, no -- I just don't want to exert the effort at refocusing after watching some un-skippable video.

So, you see, it's me, not you. It's my aversion to switch focus. Nothing personal. Really, honestly, I don't mean to hurt your feelings. Okay?

You should continue doing what you like. You certainly don't need my approval or anyone else's. As a Slashdotter, I'm sorry if the Slashdot crowd implies that you are wasting your time. That is not our intention. Your time is your own to do with as you wish. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Data overages and malware

[tepples]

How does a 10 second ad for a Chevy ruin your life?

By incurring data overages. Web page: 0.1 MB. Web page with video advertisement: 1 MB or much more. This tends to add up when a satellite or cellular ISP gives each subscriber only 5000 MB per month. And as others have mentioned, malware authors like to install their crap through Flash Player vulnerabilities.

Server-side Rendering

[beaverdownunder]

This is why the push by major ad companies like Google for ubiquitous broadband.

Once average speeds hit an acceptable point (probably no more than a year or two off), all 'static' content (ie non-video) will be rendered on the server, merged with advertising content, and then sent out to the user as a solid block, probably an imagemap with hotspot data, a second 'reactive' image and some javascript so it all gels and has feedback.

Whole web pages could (and will, I'm sure) be rendered this way. Just leave spaces for the browser to insert widgets and video and you're done.

Of course, more sophisticated ways of detecting and blanking out ads in the image data will probably be developed, but it will make the ad-removal process much more difficult. On the bright side, ads delivered this way will be exclusively still images (unless animated PNG catches on), which are at least less annoying than animated ads or video clips.

Maybe the average adblock user will find this 'balance' acceptable, and see no need to block still image advertising when it appears in this fashion?

Re:Server-side Rendering

[petermgreen]

Once average speeds hit an acceptable point (probably no more than a year or two off),

The thing is what matters is not so much the average speed as the speed of the slowest user you don't want to lose. In particular it's worth considering that

1: People often don't buy the fastest connection available to them
2: The people who are stuck on the slowest connections right now are also often the people with the least hope for a better connection in the future. A handful of communities have taken matters into their own hands but it remains to be seen if this will become a wider trend.

Once average speeds hit an acceptable point (probably no more than a year or two off), all 'static' content (ie non-video) will be rendered on the server, merged with advertising content, and then sent out to the user as a solid block, probably an imagemap with hotspot data, a second 'reactive' image and some javascript so it all gels and has feedback.

Some sites may try it but I would expect the degredation in user experiance and the additional server costs to make it a net loss for site operators. Have you noticed that most websites still use third party ad-servers despite the fact that doing so makes it much easier to block ads? This suggests to me that as much as website operators talk about evading ad-blockers it isn't a top priority for them.

It is a war.

[mtthwbrnd]

Advertising is cool. Adblock is cool. Adblock-blocker is cool. But then they will just make the Adblock-blocker-blocker.

The best advertising is embedded advertising - like when Dexter always sits behind a Mac. It is probably less easy to block too.

Just ask ars...

[PianoMan8]

Just ask ArsTechnica how it worked out for them when they tried to pull that crap and then got beligerant towards their longtime readers when they called them on it.

I would, but haven't read their site since.

Solution: [Relatively] unobtrusive advertising

[DpEpsilon]

The reasons I use ad-block are 1. because sites like the Pirate Bay have pornographic ads all over them, which is really unpleasant, and 2. Some sites have ridiculous ads everywhere that produce sound, animate, make things annoying to read when you see random words with two underlines and slow down your browser. If everybody used simple sidebar and banner ads without the typical annoyances they sometimes harbour, I don't think there would be a need for ad-blocking and it's likely advertising would become more effective and therefore, worth a lot more.

How about a MAD agreement:

[frankenpc510]

1) No auto playing/downloading videos 2) Guaranteed maximum byte payload for adverts 3) Guaranteed no malware 4) Crowd down-voting capabilities to target poorly performing/mis-behaving ads There has to be a happy middle ground. I really don't care if ads and marketing links are tastefully deployed on a site. It's the massive performance hit and the malware that annoys me enough to deploy countermeasures.

Enjoy your paywall

[tepples]

Fuck Ads. Find another way to monetize.

Enjoy paying $9.95 for a 30-day pass to each web site. NYT and WSJ already headed this way when the ads weren't paying enough.

Java vs. JavaScript

[tepples]

What ever happened to the "disable java" option in the options menu?

Java is disabled by default because Oracle neglected to clean up security holes in its VM. Firefox 23 hid the "Disable JavaScript" option because it would cause excessive support costs when people "Disable JavaScript" and end up discovering that all their add-on applications have stopped working.

It's fun to violate Deee-M-C-A

[tepples]

Not if the ad blocker detection script returns the key for decrypting the text of the page. Working around that would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in Slashdot's home country.

Internet plus ads is unusable

[Vlijmen Fileer]

I got an eye opener a few months ago when I improved a new Windows laptop by installing Firefox. In the few seconds that the system (with Firefox) was without AdBlock, I got totally shocked as to how horrendously and utterly unusable most of web pages I frequent were with ads not removed.
If I had to choose between using these pages with ads, or using them not at all, I would simply choose the latter and go on for a site that actually does behave.
The same will hold here; pages that succesfully sidestep AdBlock, the most important thing on the web after Firefox, I will simply add to the blacklist.

Contract?

[cpm99352]

From the FA: "Viewing ads is part of the deal if users want content to be free, says Freitas. The use of ad blocking software breaks that implicit contract."

I love this argument. I recall a high-profile libertarian making the same argument (after which I stopped going to his site). Contract? Tell you what - put your site behind a password-protected page and I'd agree about the contract. But if your site is publicly accessible there is no contract and you know it.

Re:Article submitter here... apk

[mrbcs]

^^^^^ EXACTLY!!!

I've been using a hosts file for years. Best thing I ever did.

Works across the system and not just a browser. Awesome. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

My capacity for advertising has been exceeded

[LookIntoTheFuture]

I have lived in the US for 39 years and I have to say that I have seen and heard enough ads for several lifetimes. I'm full. I cannot take any more. Services like Netflix, Pandora (paid with money) and SomaFM (No ads and free, but I donate anyway) are freaking AWESOME to people like me. Paying for a service by viewing or hearing advertising ruins the experience for me.

Re:My capacity for advertising has been exceeded

[Z00L00K]

I agree - ad blocking is not about denying the income for web sites, it's a survival strategy.

Add to it that for older people they have a very hard time to distinguish between what is an ad and what is the real content, they are easily tricked into shit sites.

As for adblockers - if a site doesn't work without the ads, then that site isn't really worth a visit. If all sites starts to do this then the adblockers needs to be upgraded - possibly to fake that ads are viewed, but that they actually are just downloaded without being played/displayed.

I'm just waiting for the ability to do regexp filtering on cookies too.

Please stop targetting browsers/devices

[knorthern knight]

> I need to somehow automagically figure out what device you are using,
> the screen sizes, interface capabilities, etc. and CUSTOMIZE
> my style sheets (one more nail in the fucktard coffin) just for your device.

Dear web-developer... PLEASE stop strying to customize for what you think my browser+device combo is. You are a pain in the ass. I use 3 different browsers at times, all on Linux...

1) Firefox under linux. When I go to live365.com internet radio, with the native user agent, part of the player selection menu is missing, and I can't play music, When I fake the user agent as Firefox on Windows, it works properly.

2) When I go to various sites with Opera, on my desktop, they seem to think it's "Opera Mobile", and I get the crappy mobile site. Mobile sites are such a bleeping joke that XKCD laughs at them... http://xkcd.com/1174/ http://xkcd.com/869/ I have to lie about the user agent to get the desktop version web page.

3) Ditto for uzbl, which is a webkit-based desktop browser. Some web sites see "webkit" and think it's a mobile browser.

Dear web developers... if I *WANTED* to go to "m.bad.example.com" I'd go there. If I ask for "bad.example.com", without the "m", please respect my wishes.

Hint for web developers... you can get away with one web site for mobile and desktop. Smartphones no longer have 240x160 pixel displays. Retina screens can have resolutions equivalant to regular desktops. And smartphones have this ability called pinch-and-zoom. A couple of rules to follow...
1) Allow resizing, so that pinch-and-zoom works.
2) Avoid Schlockwave Trash, and you'll be viewable vy iphone/ipad users

Wow, pagefair you are so innovative!

[YoungManKlaus]

I know sites that do this literally since ages, simply by putting a simple message below the ad -> if the user blocks the ad he sees the appeal message. No javascript required.

What about open source adblockers?

[thexfile]

Adblock Edge and other open source blockers. Do they get thrown under the bus?

The answer is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Stop making ads so annoying, loud, dangerous to computers.
2. People won't use adblocking software.

I am morally opposed to using adblock software, but I use it anyways. Mainly because while watching TV shows online, they play the same commercial about 25 times during the course of an episode, and at approximately 15x the volume of the show, even managing to circumvent my system volume, AND they come last with shit spyware/adware/viruses that I don't have time to deal with.

If advertisers and the content companies would fix the problems with online advertising, I would gladly accept it, but I'm not watching 2 hours of ads for a half hour show at 10x the volume while my super-computer grinds to a half from the bullshit packaged with them. I want you to make money, I want to be a part of that, I want content on the internet to be profitable. But I sure as hell won't deal with the horrible ad policies and strategies thrust at us presently. I like to know what products are out there, especially as they relate to my interests. I want to be informed about new products and services I haven't heard of or didn't know existed.

Nonetheless, these dumbasses will just escalate this arms race because obnoxious, repetitive, evil, disgusting ads are apparently all that matters. They are so annoying that when I have to watch them, I make a point to avoid the products, because it pisses me off so much. They are so obsessed with finding a way to get more gold out of the goose that lays the golden eggs they are close to slitting its throat and losing it all. If your content is ruined by poor, shitty ads, the fact simply that people will start ignoring your content. Rely on less invasive and safer ad services or find other ways to monetize.

That isn't even getting into the new idea of these ISP usage limits, if you stream tv shows and 1/3rd of the time is ads, you are killing 1/3rd of your data cap with fucking advertisements. That is totally unacceptable, like paying for cable and having to watch ads. You get either subscription OR ads, NEVER both. Not by me anyways. If I can't watch your show without having cable, I either won't watch it, or if it is one of my favorite series I will pirate it. Either let me watch it with basic, minimally invasive non-repeating ads, purchase it for less than 5 bucks an episode somewhere online, or it will be pirated because nobody is dealing with your bullshit.

use noscript only allow the server

[aepervius]

And any other ad server get disabled scripts. Picture do not get loaded either if you block major ad network (adblock, host file etc...).

The ONLY workaround is putting *all* ads as being served by teh website you contact. Good luck with that.

Betteridges Law of Headlines ...

[allo]

... finally proven wrong?

Re:That's cute

[Lord Flipper]

Thank you!

Old IE

[tepples]

I'd bet most of these widgets require jQuery primarily because jQuery makes old IE less painful to deal with. It should become easier to deal with after mid-April when extended support for Windows XP ends. At that point, every supported Windows OS will have IE 9 or later either installed or available through Windows Update. And once support ends for Windows XP, web developers can presume it insecure. This means it will become unwise for a web site to let the user of IE on XP do anything requiring any level of security, such as paying with a card or even entering his password.

Re:Old IE

[bipbop]

It's been pushed out to mid-July 2015, though XP will presumably survive even that . . .

Separation of documents and applications

[tepples]

I too believe the expectations of the vast majority demand AJAX. However, I feel like arguing the opposing view of the vocal minority as an exercise to strengthen the argument.

If you have a "form" on a page and want to be able to work with it, without having the entire page reload, your ONLY option is JS. There are NO OTHER OPTIONS.

Of course there's another option: having the entire document reload, and redefining "entire document" to make it less painful. Make the form a separate document so that reloading the form doesn't reload everything else. This is how Slashdot's comment submission form worked before D2 was introduced, and how it still works if you open "Reply to This" in a new window, and how it still works in (say) stock phpBB. And people who prefer not to run non-free JavaScript (or any JavaScript at all) on their computers can still use it. And if static documents aren't interactive enough, implement a native application. For example, instead of a web-based forum like Slash or phpBB, put up an NNTP server to which any NNTP client can connect.

You simply cannot do 99% of what people expect in a "Web 2.0" experience

People who dislike JavaScript don't want a "Web 2.0" experience. They want a separation of applications and documents. They want HTML to be documents and EXE to be applications.

You're wishing to go back to a pure static page environment, or worse, a dynamic one where to do the SIMPLEST activity requires a GET or POST to a separate page requiring server side code to operate, create a dynamic page just for you, and then return it.

This is how Slashdot operated before D2, and there are apparently a lot of people who prefer how Slashdot operated before D2.

The only way to do anything again would be native code, thereby shutting out quite a bit of valuable innovation in the markets by startups that could have never afforded the resources for large coding shops that could keep track of code for multiple platforms.

A coding shop is supposed to first release a Windows application that has been tested in both Windows and Wine, and then use the money it earned by selling copies of the Windows version to hire developers to make a version for OS X. Or the other way around, if it's a Mac shop. Keeping the application logic (the "model") and presentation (the "view") separate makes it easier to maintain versions for both Windows/Linux and OS X. Or expose a network protocol that third-party native clients can use, such as NNTP or some REST-based API like Twitter and Amazon and eBay use.

The native code companies are cratering because they can't begin to hope to keep up with the SAAS companies using open source frameworks and rapid cross platform development to push out fixes and features in weeks instead of 3 years.

So why can't native code companies come up with frameworks to make native code development just as efficient?

Registering a CDN in the browser as servicing a particular domain

Who would be the authority for such registration?

Why would I host my own scripts AND pay the CDN?

Because historically, several CDNs have offered services only for static files, such as CSS, JavaScript, images, and video, not for dynamically generated HTML documents.

Re:Separation of documents and applications

[EdIII]

Interesting. Thanks for playing devil's advocate. I did find it funny you felt it necessary to link to explanation of it.

I guess the art of debate is becoming a lost art...

God please bring Bill back and take them

[cloud.pt]

As Bill Hicks would put it: "If you work in advertising, kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fuckin soul."
Despite backing up Bill's statement to it's fullest extent, I would like to take the chance to introduce some alternatively valid, tiny criticism to all this action being taken by advertisers, advertiser-backed companies and "advertisement enforcers":

TAKE THE FUCKIN HINT - If we use ad blockers, it's because we'd rather have your page fully messed up, your online game unplayable, your newspaper news unreadable, to abiding to deal with the consumerism-centered policies that brainwash us to pay for things we do not need. You want to make money out of the publicly available resource which the internet is since its creation? Provide me a better service by not using ads in the first place and I will be sure to drop some money on your premium services. And by premium I don't mean the ones without ads, I mean the ones where you actually had to work for, unlike whatever web-app reinventing the wheel you developed last Thursday and put ads on linked to your PayPal account.

Carrot and stick for Do Not Track

[tepples]

failing to load make essential web applications useless? That sounds like hotlinking of images which I've always understood to be a dickhead move on the part of web designers.

Some web sites tolerate or even encourage hotlinking for specific images, especially images that the web designer reserves the right to update (such as the "right now on eBay" logo used by eBay API clients). Remember the old image-based hit counters from the GeoCities era?

As for the registering of the CDN, I think you misunderstood me. The site itself would register a CDN as part of the domain through instructions in the XHTML.

That sort of "registering" a particular CDN for a particular URL would be little different from just hotlinking.

I believe this would simplify work flow and allow you to swap out a CDN without touching a single line of code in the rest of the site.

I'm starting to understand what you mean if these CDN registration rules look like, say, HTTPS Everywhere rewrite rules.

Even better, you could register known external objects that are community approved.

Approved by what community?

Meaning, your XHTML does not have to reference the exact Google Analytics script, but to a common reference point that allows Google to normalize that code to whatever they want.

That can already be done with the existing URI framework by placing the reference point as a path within a hostname under google.com.

Privacy laws could be amended to state that bypassing the user preferences in the browser is illegal. Wasn't Google guilty of that anyways with something?

Google got in trouble for adding a P3P privacy policy header that essentially amounted to "Our privacy policy is too complex to express as a machine-readable policy using P3P syntax; see [some URL] for a human-readable policy." What should Google have added instead? Or should Google have thrown up an alert to the effect "Your browser's privacy policy interpreter is too old; this and this feature will be disabled unless you install Google Chrome"?

Netflix could tell it was blocked and pop-up a dialog box informing that certain features will now be missing AND list them.

Any other site could likewise social engineer users into turning on tracking by arbitrarily disabling features until the user enables the tracking.

If the user base sends out a message loud and clear that says, "Don't Track Me", I don't see why they get to continue violating privacy.

Web sites could implement DNT but use both carrot and stick to social engineer the user into turning off DNT. The carrot: "We know you're tired of seeing advertisements that aren't relevant to your interests. For example, single men probably don't want to be subjected to ads for feminine hygiene products. To make sure you see the most relevant offers, please disable Do Not Track in your web browser." The stick would be to arbitrarily disable features: "Some features of $sitename require a subscription or an invitation code. To get your invitation code sooner, please disable Do Not Track in your web browser."

No

[Dusty]

Betteridge law of headlines applies:-

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the general concept is much older. The observation has also been called "Davis' law" or just the "journalistic principle".

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Empty page

[krischik]

I think the plan is to display an empty page to anyone who uses ad-blocker. Watch our ads or watch nothing at all. Could come. Will come.

I'll do you 9 sources better

[Anonymous Coward]

Automated: APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit:

http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74

(Details of hosts' benefits enumerated in link)

Summary:

---

A. ) Hosts do more than AdBlock ("souled-out" 2 Google/Crippled by default) + Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse", or Request Policy -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4127345&cid=44701775

B. ) Hosts add reliability vs. downed or redirected DNS + secure vs. known malicious domains too -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3985079&cid=44310431 w/ less added "moving parts" complexity + room 4 breakdown,

C. ) Hosts files yield more speed (blocks ads & hardcodes fav sites - faster than remote DNS), security (vs. malicious domains serving mal-content + block spam/phish), reliability (vs. downed or Kaminsky redirect vulnerable DNS, 99% = unpatched vs. it & worst @ ISP level + weak vs FastFlux + DynDNS botnets), & anonymity (vs. dns request logs + DNSBL's).

---

* Addons = more complexity & room for breakdown + slowup browsers in message passing (use a few concurrently & see) - Addons slowdown SLOWER usermode browsers layering on MORE: I work w/ what you have in kernelmode, via hosts (A tightly integrated PART of the IP stack itself)

Adblock's dead per the article (article submitter here)!

Hosts do more w/ less (1 file) @ a faster level (ring 0) vs redundant browser addons (slowing up slower ring 3 browsers) via filtering 4 the IP stack (coded in C, loads w/ OS, & 1st net resolver queried w\ 45++ yrs.of optimization)

APK

P.S.=> Hosts work where adblock will fail when ClarityRay's implemented on a larger scale (only a matter of time when pageviews & $ are the motivators here for sites) & hosts do MORE 4 YOU in speed, security, reliability + anonymity - no questions asked...

...apk

Paid alternative

[gshegosh]

I'd love an online service that I'd charge occasionally with some money and when I go to a site that pays its bills via ads, it is paid from my account that $0,001 and all the ads are hidden.
Since no one seems to want my money enough to come up with a solution like that -- I keep using AdBlock. I won't buy anything because of those ugly ads, anyway.

Yay!

[Mister Transistor]

Yay! I've been APK'ed!!

Thanks, glad to see you're not dead. ;)

Re:RE

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you weren't an ac I would have spent the 5 minutes it woiuld take to dig up the article posted to slashdot in the last 6 months benchmarking javascript on mobile that showed just how abysmal performance really is there.

Good luck with that

[Captain_Chaos]

So I indicate to you, by using AdBlock, that I hate advertising and do not wish to see any (from which you could deduce that showing me advertisements would be useless at best and counterproductive at worst), yet you choose to force ads down my throat anyway? Well fuck you then.