Is ProBoards putting me on?

[sumgai]

Gang,

As a matter of curiosity, I checked the link just below this message form. You know, the one that says "Click Here To Make This Board Ad-Free". It took me to a screen that says, in essence, that by sending $7 to ProBoards, I can make the next 50,000 page views (of this forum) free of ads. Now I don't know about anyone else here, but I already don't see any ads. Does anyone see them?

Which leads me to conclude.... either RH (or someone) is buying our freedom, or else my ad-busting filters are working properly. ;D My point is, if RH is ponying up, then we should be helping him. But if he's not, and the rest of you are getting ads, then please respond to that effect, and I'll share my 'secrets'.

But personally, I'd just as soon see the forums stay up and running. That means the ProBoards needs to make a living, and that means that if some of us kick in a few shekels, there should be merry-making and mayhem for a long time to come. (But don't ask Rune about making Mary! )

What's everyone think about this?


sumgai

[pollyshero]

On my machine the ads are right above your smilin' (face?). Unobtrusive and inoffensive, but there just the same. Neat thing about them is that they're tied in to keywords in the posts - so the ads I see are all ads about ADS! "Free classified ads", and "Classified ads work" and whatever. In the "Broken Neck" forum, the ads are for medical and chiropractic services, etc. They're just below the toolbar at the top of the page.

[sumgai]

PH,

Hey, that sounds like it might be funny on occasion. But I'm not turning off my filters! ;D

Thanks for that. But I'm still willing to kick in and support the Forums and RH. RH, are you up for this, or should I just shut up with all this?


sumgai

[Ripper]

I see a few links at the top of the page...nothing major though.

Id gladly kick in some cash!

[RandomHero]

Haha, I wish! If I were buying freedom, I'd never be letting you guys hear the end of it. XD

I'm too broke for that, and frankly, there's nothing that Guitarnuts needs to do really as a forum, to require the extra special features and ad-freeness. Proboards will continue to provide us this space as long as there's traffic on it, because they're being paid by Google and other advertisers to do so. (As opposed to being paid by us.)

So... what is it you're doing, exactly, Sumgai? XD

[dunkelfalke]

no ads. firefox with adblock+ and filterset.g

[UnklMickey]

i find the ads totally acceptable!

they don't take too much space.

i've actually gone to some of the sites. sometimes i've found vendors or information there that is helpful.

there seems to be some sort of word or phrase matching that assigns ads to the particular page.

sometimes that has hilarious results!

like what happened in the quacks like a strat thread:

guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=coffee&thread=1123282363&post=1141188103

unklmickey said:

YOU TALK ABOUT TARGETED ADVERTISING!

this was what the top of the page looked like when viewed it.





now that's funny right there. i don't care who you are, that's funny.

so, believe it or not, i'd actually miss the ads!

but, i have a twisted sense of humor, so i don't know if anyone else would.



just my three cents.



unk

[Runewalker]

"Delicasy of Despair"

reminds me of how I feel after a 3 hour wire up that fails.

RW-Z version

[sumgai]

unk,

Well, you gotta admit, you had help there. I mean, it doesn't matter where quacking ducks show up, they're always funny! But yeah, the targeting mechanism can be a riot. One time I saw a screenshot where a forum was discussing Jesus, and someone had posted that he'd framed a picture of Him in a plastic liner. The ad on the same page literally shouted out: Get Your All-New Plastic Dildo Here!

I wonder how long that lasted! ;D


sumgai

[sumgai]

RH,

OK, I can let well enough alone, consider the idea dropped.

As for kicking sand in Firefox's face with ad removal tools, get ahold of The Proxomiton, found here. Select the top-most exe or zip file - the others are there for archiving purposes. They work, but why use old tech?

Proxo installs nothing in any folder outside of it's own, and makes no entries into the Registry. Simply run it at startup, it takes only 2K of memory until it is called into action. Deleting it from it's folder is all that's needed to 'uninstall' it. You do have to configure it, and your browser, before it is ready for use. There are ample instructions included, but sometimes they don't make sense, so for help, go back to the Proxo Forums, sign up, and post a request.

I personally guarantee that no one there will spam you, or treat you like a child, or act immaturely. The place has been around longer than this forum by years, even though it is being run by a Canadian kid still in high school!!! Like this board also, you can peruse the place first without signing up, you just can't post.

I'd make you all guess who I am over there, but on that Board, I am second-in-command, so I'll act like it, and tell you up front that I am Oddysey. But that's the last time today that I'll act in a responsible manner - I may be growing old, but I refuse to grow up! ;D

Good luck!


sumgai

p.s. I did forget one thing - I'll be more than happy to get you up and running, and to share filter sets above and beyond what you may find on that forum. There are also other sources of filters sprinkled around the innerweb, so you should be comfortable knowing that you're not alone.

[sumgai]

RH,

Seems to me I should expand a bit on the idea of using The Proxomitron.

This is NOT ad-busting software. It can do that, but that's not what it was designed for. The real story is, this is a proxy server that sits on your computer, and reads every last byte of code that comes in from the 'net. It then sends it all on to the browser. (Any browser, it doesn't care which one you use.) But wait, what's it for, if it's just gonna send it all on to the next place in line?

Well, it does do some things to the data, that's true. What it does is compare strings of bytes to rules that you have established. (These are the filters that I've mentioned.) If a string matches a rule, then the results of that rule are applied to the string, then sent along down the line.

For example, I have set one filter to look for strings that include the word "ad" in the URL of the incoming page. In fact, with wild cards, the URL can say "ad", "adverting", "advertisement", whatever that starts with the two letters "a" and "d", and the rule will be applied. In my case, I tell The Proxomitron to kill the connection - I don't want anything that the host of that URL might be trying to foist off on me, so I just kill the connection. Presto! - no ads from that site, ever! ;D

That's just a simple case.... watch this: Are you tired of black background websites that use purple text? (I sure as hlll am!) One of my Proxo rules examines color codes in the HTML, and if it finds "... bgcolor="000000", the rule tosses that out, and instead sends out to the browser the following text string: "... bgcolor="FFFFFF". Now every page that was black is white, to my eyes. This is a simple example, and incomplete at best. What about lighter text, that will suddenly disappear with that white background, so I'll need to take care of it. Conditional filtering is the crowning glory here.... White text is converted to black only if the background was black in the first place, otherwise it is left alone. (White against medium blue is not so bad.)

Begin to see some possibilites here? Style sheets can be changed, javascript can be changed, mime types can be made to render differently, all sorts of stuff is possible. Hlll, I don't even need to wait for something to modify, I can insert whole new code, right off the bat. Here's an example..... You've all seen pages that disable right-click functionality, right? I set up a rule that injects a command at the top of each page, and that command disables the ability to kill right-clicking! I can right-click all day long, regardless of what the site's author wants - his wishes are totally ignored. <evil grin>

The list goes on. But the underlying point is, I said at the beginning that this is not ad-busting software. Instead, it is a program that modifies the content of a webpage before it ever gets to the browser. That's it in a nutshell, it observes and modifies as dictated by the rules/filters. I get on my screen what I want to see, not what some moron wants me to see. Easy concept to grasp, no?

If there's interest, I'll start another thread, but probably the best thing to do is to just let you all go over to the Proxo Forums and poke around. There are full filter sets there for the taking (free!), as well as many one-off filters for special cases. It's like a candy store that wants kids to come in!!

As they say in the commercials, "Try it, you'll like it!"


sumgai

[dunkelfalke]

used to have that illuminati proxomitron. hated it after a while.

[bam]

well, for me, nothing beats Firefox + Adblock + Scriptblocker.

[dunkelfalke]

try adblock+, it is a fork of adblock with lots of bugfixing, so it is much more stable

[bam]

thanks. actually i never try the + version mainly because my version (.5 b3) never had any trouble .