Anyone else getting this ridiculous banner ad at the top of the SD page?
yes, I want my prize. Since straightdope promised it, I will sue Straightdope for if I don’t get it.
Its the question of syndicated content … is it always ethical to say “its not my fault, we just put syndicated content up”.
Did straightdope descend to the level of a scammer, or is straightdope liable to give us the prize promised by the big writing. (ignore the fine print… "Prize will be awarded to you only if you spend $20 billion at scammers-r-us.com , and sign over your soul to us . " )
Has anyone been using the internet for more than five minutes and not run across a similar ad a hundred times? It amazes me that there are still enough people clicking on it to be worth running.
What concerns me more is that I was reading a thread in GQ on which that ad appeared. I ignored it, of course, and suddenly a new tab appeared in my browser telling me I needed to download an update to a plugin.
(In case anyone does not know, NEVER click on an unexpected link that tells you that you need to update or download something.)
This seems more appropriate for ATMB than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Ha ha ha. Since threatening legal action against the board is grounds for instant banning, I’m going to suggest you find something funnier to joke about.
There are ads here?
turns off AdBlock
There are ads here!
turns on AdBlock
The time has come for me to start getting seriously upset about ads.
I’ve mentioned many many times that I run my browser with JavaScript disabled, and it improves my web experience by a factor of a hundred thousand, including eliminating MOST ads on most sites and ALL and here. I’ve even mentioned that from time to time I consider (hang onto your seats for this one) PAYING to join here.
Now my ancient Linux mochine is dying, and I’m trying to use my equally-ancient XP machines. Seriously, this NOT a fun experience, and I may find it more pleasant to just give up ALL recreational web usage, and limit my on-line experience to important e-mail and bill paying.
How do I disable JavaScript in IE or in newer versions of FuckedUpFox? I’ve always gone to Tools->Options->Content tab or Edit->Preferences->Content and there’s a check-box to enable/disable JavaScript (in my ancient FF). Now, with newer FF, that check-box isn’t there. And I can’t find a similar option in IE either.
How do I disable JavaScript now? My further presence on this or nearly any other web site depends on it. I don’t have the patience any more to spend the waning years of my life farting around trying to find configuration options anew every week.
I don’t mind ads when they are just ads, but when they start being scareware then I hate the Dope just a bit for allowing such shitty ads. Latest one is one that claims that by browser is out of date and would I be so kind as to click here to update it.
When the ads get intrusive or make me suspect they they will install malware, the SDMB should take notice. It’s not a great way to treat guests.
Yes, Mozilla really has made it a pain in the ass now. Here’s the info you need:
Regarding FuckedUpFox, short of running the add-on NoScript or the add-on PrefBar, the only way to turn JavaScript (as opposed to Java) is by going into about:config and finding the control to nullify it, which I don’t recommend.
I use the PrefBar add-on (a narrow strip across the top) because it allows instant access to a bunch of controls, including turning cookies on and off, Flash on and off, JavaScript on and off, increasing and decreasing the font size, popups on and off, site referrers on and off (mine’s always off) and a ton of other controls of your choice.
That link, BTW, goes to the official Mozilla add-on site.
For Firefox users, download/install these extensions:
[ul]
[li]Adblock Plus[/li][li] DoNotTrackMe: Online Privacy Protection[/li][li] NoScript Security Suite[/li][/ul]
All are free. All are easy to use.
Thank you, sweepkick, Kenm, Duckster for all those suggestions. No time (nor inclination) to deal with it any more tonight, but I guess I need to take a closer look at all those suggestions sometime in the Very Near Future. I think I’ll bookmark this thread.
Still, it all seems like such a PITA when, back in the day, a single simple checkbox would do it for me. (Yes, I understand that NoScript allows me to selectively block JavaScript per web site, and this sounds like I might even like it once I learn to use it.)
I’m feeling seriously cranky right now over this, happening all at once in conjunction with other related and unrelated stuff right now. This all comes up because my old Linux mochine is dying, and I’m cranky enough about that. And this XP mochine I’m using now is driving me batshit crazy just by how slow it is (all 25 kilobytes of memory of it, if even that, it seems). That makes it bad enough just to load plain-old plain-text, let alone an additional gig of ads.
Anyone know where I can get a good working version of Lynx?
ETA: Jeez, it’s painful, just opening a page or posting a post, just watching how much sh|te gets downloaded. Just watching that status bar at the bottom of the screen! There must be a good several kilobytes just of those messages alone flashing by, showing me every URL it’s loading!
While you’re all being so helpful with those suggestions for things I could try, lemme throw another idea into the fire:
Is there any known way I can build a list of URL’s that I simply want my browser to NOT load? Do AdBlock or any of those others allow that?
The old version of FireFox I’ve been using allows something of the sort, but only for images. I can right-click on any image, and one of the menu options is: Don’t load images from <the URL this image came from>. Click on that, and you never see another image from the same URL. I love that option!!!
A slightly newer version of FF has removed that option from the right-click menu, although it’s still available through the Tools or Preferences or Options or whatever menu, if you dig down far enough. It takes a lot more clicks that way.
I’d love to have a similar option for URL’s in general, and not just for images.
And let me mention that I’m aware of that trick of filling your hosts file with
192.168.0.1
lines for sites you don’t want to see. I had a lot of those set up too, which I need to move over too.
ETA: Funny thing though: Trying to get to a site that’s aliased to 192.168.0.1 is supposed to not produce anything, there being no server there. Turns out, I actually DO have apache running on my Linux box, so everywhere that happens I get a nicely formatted message saying that the URL can’t be found. But at least that’s just a minimal plain-text message and not a gig of images or worse.
<smug> That would be a big NO! thanks to a generous gift of a membership. No ad viewing, yay! </smug>
That would be tedious in the extreme. Adblock does it automatically and you can add any links you want to it.
Blocking add-ons I run in Firefox are Adblock Plus, Adblock Plus Popup Addon, AVG Do Not Track, BetterPrivacy (gets rid of Flash’s supercookies that Adobe plants in the operating system, not the browser), Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus (fights text ads), Ghostery (blocks tracking cookies), Remove Google Tracking, and Self Destructing Cookies (kills a site’s cookies when leaving the site).
The Self Destruction Cookies add-on may be a bit much if you prefer to keep “helpful” cookies from various sites, but I don’t and won’t.
The only good cookie after leaving a site is a zapped cookie.
I’ve yet to come across a site that requires a previously planted cookie, including the banking site I use.
Does it slow the browser down to have so many add-ons running?
The browsers I’ve been using all have an option to delete all cookies (and cache and other stuff) upon exit. Do newer browsers still have that option? It is useful? Redundant?
I have ALWAYS been in the habit of running the Clear History function when leaving a web site. Does this simply automate that process? Agreed, I NEVER keep cookies around. If they are edible (and in particular of the chocolate chip variety), they are eaten. Otherwise, they are filth to be incinerated.
What I typically see here is that banking sites require a bit more rigamarole to log into them if there aren’t any relevant cookies around. For example, every time I log into some of my bank sites, I have to answer some security questions or look at that stupid little picture and confirm that it’s the right one or something like that. If it can recognize me from a pre-existing cookie, I think the log-in process gets a little more streamlined. Fuck it. I’ll go ahead and answer a few more questions rather than keep cookies.
Okay, another silly little trick that seems simple enough, that I am suddenly finding myself getting some practice with.
When opening a Dope page, wait a few seconds (I’m just starting to get the hang of it) and press the ESC key. Voila! All the good stuff of the page without some or all of the ads!
It appears that the basic page is downloaded first (but not displayed on screen) then all the cruft, then it’s all rendered and shown. If you press ESC at just the right time, then you just get the basic page. Having done this for several threads now, it seems rather easy to get it right. There seems to be a large window of time in which to press ESC to get this result.
i’m getting ads for lipstick from taobao which is an online shopping site in hk.
doesn’t bother me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Senegoid http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/images/buttons/viewpost.gif
Does it slow the browser down to have so many add-ons running?
If it does, I haven’t noticed it. I have 11 more add-ons running than I mentioned above.
Firefox isn’t as fast as Safari, probably because I’m running a Mac, not because of the Firefox add-ons I use. But Safari’s less than half- a-second faster speed isn’t enough to make a practical difference, and the control I have with Firefox makes Safari look like a clay tablet.
Quote:
The browsers I've been using all have an option to delete all cookies (and cache and other stuff) upon exit. Do newer browsers still have that option? It is useful? Redundant?
Firefox will do all that, but one of its add-ons, Menu Editor, allows me to move any of the menu items anywhere else, in the following case to a right click.
An add-on with the unlikely name of Sanitisminau, modifies Firefox’s Clear All History control, allowing me to clear form and search history, cookies, cache, active logins, offline web-site data (stuff other than cookies planted by sites), site preferences, and NoSquint’s site history but not the type size to use on a site (NoSquint is another add-on I damn well need that will blow up type sizes site by site — another reason I won’t use Safari). Again, thanks to Menu Editor, I clear all these with a single right click, mostly between sites. I’ve used Menu Editor for so many years I don’t know where the original place for all that is.
Not that I need to clear the cache (though I keep the functions checked off in the Sanitisminau add-on) because I keep Firefox’s cache turned off anyway (as I do with Safari). It makes no measurable difference to the browsers’ speed, whether Firefox or Safari.
Quote:
For example, every time I log into some of my bank sites, I have to answer some security questions or look at that stupid little picture and confirm that it's the right one or something like that.
I have to sign in with a nickname, a password and a security question. Thankfully, my bank doesn’t use anything else.
Quote:
Fuck it. I'll go ahead and answer a few more questions rather than keep cookies.
Absolutely.
^^^ Whether it’s a bug in Firefox or because of all the add-ons I run, the type box showed up empty after previewing. (It did this once before). I tried to edit the quotes, but I lost the edit window.
When I hit the back button to get to the original type box, not the one with preview, I discovered I had been logged off. So I logged in and copied the post from the preview, with the results you see above.