Topic awaiting preservation: Adblock filter list (Page 1 of 1)

To those of you who use the firefox exension Ablock, i have stumbled across a great filter list.

I have been using his for aout 2 to 3 weeks now and have come across very few (if any) ads on web pages.

Just thought i'd share,

Nolp

[edit] Damn, i'm tired [/edit]

(Edited by Nolp on 07-14-2005 13:38)

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Thanks for the link!

I'll try it out, I've used one of these lists before and I found that it removed too much, I ended up getting very deformed pages and my internet user experience wasn't as rich as it could have been. I'll let you know how I get on.

Cheers,

Well, after testing it on some of the most ad intensive pages, I say it works great!

Slightly off topic:

It worries me that ad blocking is becoming so prevalent. Some forms of it are great, like popup blocking. But as consumers get better at blocking fairly legitimate ads, companies will very likely turn to less legitimate methods of advertising - ones that can't be blocked, and thereby make our lives even more miserable. For instance, sentences inserted into articles which promote a product and make no sense in the context of the article. Corporations would like that idea because it's too difficult for the consumer to block. If it's the only way to get an advertisement across, I think we all know they'd do it without a second thought.

It would be wise of us - if we could all think as a group - to define what we feel is "legitimate" advertisement on a web page, and not block such ads. If we don't give the corporations any leeway, they'll fight this war with us and win.

Back to reality: Thankfully, it's not an issue until the average consumer starts getting ahold of these tricks.


 

Slime, I don't think it is a question of war, but one of adaption.

I believe there are enough of us that appreciate a very well done commercial/ad - the Transformer car commercial, for example. But being bombarded with badly done flash, and animated .gif webspots, pop-ups, and dynamic splashes in the middle of my screen do not encourage me in the least to buy a particular product - on the contrary, it motivates me more, to find a way to get rid of the downright irritating waste of my time.

It is like the competition between Anti-Spyware and Spyware.

Quite frankly, companies doing interent advertising need to re-think how they are done, and adapt to the new medium. Plastering a website with commercials is just plain silly, and isn't productive, IMHO.

Take a look at Bioware's website, for instance. They do some advertising for their own products there. The advertising is done artfully, and tastefully. They are also not thrown all over the screen, do not create pop-ups, do not cover the center of the screen, begging to be clicked, and actually fit quite nicely with the rest of the website.

Now, that is the type of advertising that I can live with. Pique my curiosity a bit, or show me something incredible, but please, please do not aggitate and irritate me.

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If we don't give the corporations any leeway, they'll fight this war with us and win.

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Too true. Want proof? Look at where DRM is heading: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24638

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Pique my curiosity a bit, or show me something incredible, but please, please do not agitate and irritate me

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Exactly!

However the Bioware site is probably not so good an example since it all seems to be their own product, which gives them complete editorial control over the ads. Most sites don't have that privledge and advertisers can be downright mean about issues of look and feel.

Meanwhile, the compromise I've reached is to block third-party images (sorry about not seeing your sigs here), image animation set for just once, and Flashblock. [Edit: forgot about no third-party cookies and clear all cookies at logout]

Adblock is great in concept, but it's also another thing to update. Running four PCs with five operating systems (just here at my home desk) I'm already spending more time updating stuff that I like. The PCs are becoming almost as high-maintenance as a (insert choice of: boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, lover, partner, significant other ... )



(Edited by brucew on 07-17-2005 15:43)

brucew: If you use OSX or Unix, you can use a central server to nfs export directories and have every bookmark, extention, etc. updated together.

My take on the whole thing is -- companies are becoming increasingly clever, but so are programmers. I have yet to see a form of DRM or advertisements that wasn't promptly (often within 24 hours) circumvented. I'm not too concerned if ad companies put ads in the text of web pages (why wouldn't they already? they have every right to do so), since if you don't like it, don't visit those web pages. Or if you must visit them, install some software to block or eliminate the ads. Nobody ever said that those websites need to be nice to you. Nobody ever said you should visit them. You go and do what you want.

For example, Google has ads -- they make tons off of them. Good for Google. I don't like ads, but I need to use Google. Solution? I have a Firefox extention that eliminates the ads. Good for me.

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If you use OSX or Unix, you can use a central server to nfs export directories and have every bookmark, extension, etc. updated together.

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Already do that, to an SMB share so the NT and XP boxes share the joy as well. It helps that those things are cross-platform.

I was thinking more in the larger view of OS updates and application updates. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like to run those things on an automated basis. That may change--I'm beginning to trust yum and a few repositories--but only at the desktop level.

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brucew said:

Already do that, to an SMB share so the NT and XP boxes share the joy as well. It helps that those things are cross-platform.

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Excellent!

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I was thinking more in the larger view of OS updates and applicationupdates. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like to run those things onan automated basis. That may change--I'm beginning to trust yum and afew repositories--but only at the desktop level.

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Well, for Unix, I've found nothing that works good enough for my tastes except pacman (Arch Linux) -- problem with that being, however, that when I last used Arch (about 6 months to a year ago) it's packages weren't very well maintained (broken things, etc). They're still a small distro, though -- as they continue to grow and mature, I'd like to see where that goes. I'm still getting used to this whole Debian thing, so maybe my opinion will change in a few months.

On Windows and Mac, I have yet to see a tool that can update across systems easier than doing it by hand... I mean, you can write scripts, but you'd have to do that on a per-program basis, since it's not consistant. Ah well.

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