I don't use an ad blocker. I found that they're more hassle than they're worth.
EDIT: In response to the "why don't you?" my answer is that I've found that it messes up layout on many sites, and it fucks up my experience on certain video-heavy sites, including ESPN.com and MLB.com. The other answer is that I have a large number of friends who still sell words for money, and I consider it stealing to turn off ads. (Yes, I am the guy who once wrote a blog post who called people who sold words for money fucking morons.)
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I installed Ad-Block on Firefox almost two years ago. I don't even realize I have it until I go on somebody else's computer. It's literally never said a word to me; it just quietly blocks ads on any site I visit.
In several years of using it, Adblock Plus with EasyList has never once blocked something I wanted to see, and has let through very nearly zero ads. The web is just painful to use without it. Of course I whitelist most sites I visit regularly, as long as they behave.
edit: Missed my sibling post, which says basically the same thing as me. I guess we adblock users are fairly single-minded. But seriously, after using things like host files and privoxy, ABP is very nearly magic.
The only time Adblock Plus blocked something I wanted to see is when I was working for an advertising company and testing ads -- wondering why I didn't see any of them. Heh.
Not wanting to turn this into a lengthy debate over ad-blockers, but I tend to leave it switched on by default and make an exception for sites I visit regularly, value the content of and which don't go nuts with adverts. I find them fairly useful sometimes and even bought things advertised on these sites in the past.
I use it for technical rather than aesthetic reasons much of the time - a line was crossed when Flash ads started autoplaying videos. Suddenly, a significant proportion of my fairly meagre CPU was being used to show me film trailers or mobile phone adverts rather than for my own uses.
Interesting to know one can do that, but how long until this becomes unreliable? Suddenly your website is displaying an AFF text advertisement when they figure this out.
Geo-location is not super expensive if you really need to rely on it... (I use maxmind.com personally).
Rob wanted geolocation without actually having to pay for it
Rather than abusing the resources of a company which you have no intentions of doing business with (even one which is fairly odious), you could go with one of the free solutions for this.
Here's a GPL geolocation database for you. If you're capable of tying your shoelaces in web development, the rest should be academic.
P.S. I largely like the free software movement. One of the core components of it is that we are not thieves. I sort of bristle when I see folks confusing the two. For my fellow shoestring budget developers here, when you see a submission offering something for free-as-in-beer, could you please do a quick sanity check "Does this submission advocate getting free stuff by stealing it?" and, if the answer is yes, NOT upvote it?
I think the author just meant to explain the nifty javascript trick and as a warning to developers who might consider data transfered by a javascript include to be safe. At least I hope he (Rob) is not actually using this method on a real site.
edit: confirming my suspicions, this just popped up on the site: "This is a security example, guys. At least I hope nobody’s using this in the real world."
Someone didn't read the about page. Michelle's a she.
Apart from that, while there are much better options available now, for a period the adult companies were sinking huge portions of their budgets into keeping that geolocation cutting edge.
Getting as close as possible to a person's actual location is going to make ads like these much more convincing after all.
While using this is obviously pointless - (there are much easier ways to get an IP geolocation), the method (override document.write), and the security warning are interesting.
Interesting.. It seems AFF (or this script) either doesn't support spaces in suburb names - or has something else going wrong. It picked up the first word of my suburb, but not the "Hills" at the end.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 67.4 ms ] threadYes. Is there anyone who doesn't block pornographic ads?
EDIT: In response to the "why don't you?" my answer is that I've found that it messes up layout on many sites, and it fucks up my experience on certain video-heavy sites, including ESPN.com and MLB.com. The other answer is that I have a large number of friends who still sell words for money, and I consider it stealing to turn off ads. (Yes, I am the guy who once wrote a blog post who called people who sold words for money fucking morons.)
edit: Missed my sibling post, which says basically the same thing as me. I guess we adblock users are fairly single-minded. But seriously, after using things like host files and privoxy, ABP is very nearly magic.
I use it for technical rather than aesthetic reasons much of the time - a line was crossed when Flash ads started autoplaying videos. Suddenly, a significant proportion of my fairly meagre CPU was being used to show me film trailers or mobile phone adverts rather than for my own uses.
Geo-location is not super expensive if you really need to rely on it... (I use maxmind.com personally).
EDIT: agree with patio11 too, don't be a dick
Rather than abusing the resources of a company which you have no intentions of doing business with (even one which is fairly odious), you could go with one of the free solutions for this.
Here's a GPL geolocation database for you. If you're capable of tying your shoelaces in web development, the rest should be academic.
http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity
P.S. I largely like the free software movement. One of the core components of it is that we are not thieves. I sort of bristle when I see folks confusing the two. For my fellow shoestring budget developers here, when you see a submission offering something for free-as-in-beer, could you please do a quick sanity check "Does this submission advocate getting free stuff by stealing it?" and, if the answer is yes, NOT upvote it?
edit: confirming my suspicions, this just popped up on the site: "This is a security example, guys. At least I hope nobody’s using this in the real world."
Apart from that, while there are much better options available now, for a period the adult companies were sinking huge portions of their budgets into keeping that geolocation cutting edge.
Getting as close as possible to a person's actual location is going to make ads like these much more convincing after all.
Thanks for pointing that out. I ignorantly assumed the author was male. I edited my post.
> Apart from that, while there are much better options available now...
interesting, I didn't realize that. I guess it's another example of adult entertainment pushing technology forward.
http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/LICENSE.t...
Which is a good suggestion. Especially so since it seems to be the exact database that AFF is using...
http://labs.mudynamics.com/2009/04/03/geoip-tracking-with-go...
Official Docs here: http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocati...
http://j.maxmind.com/app/geoip.js
Not to mention at my house I use satellite internet, so any geolocation service thinks I'm 10 states away from where I really am.