John “Johnny Fireball” Gruber writes::
Note to The Mac Observer: those double-underline link advertisements suck.
Yes they do.
The simplest solution is to add this line to your /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 kona.kontera.com
Many other sites have sub-domains of the domain “intellitxt.com” such as “macnn.us.intellitxt.com” which can be added similarly:
127.0.0.1 kona.kontera.com
127.0.0.1 macnn.us.intellitxt.com
After you edit /etc/hosts (as root) you will need to restart lookupd. You can do this in Terminal.app:
kill -HUP `ps aux|\
grep “^root” |\
fgrep /usr/sbin/lookupd |\
awk ‘{print $2}’`
Note that you can put all of that on one line of you remove the \ after the | but I broke it up to prevent it from wrapping.
Also note: if you’re Terminal-phobic, just reboot.
“But… but if you don’t view our ads, you’re stealing! And our children will starve… Not to mention the puppies! Good lord, think of the puppies!!!!”
A gentle note to content providers: you have an absolute right to put ads on your site. I have in the past, and probably will again in the future, use AdSense. The problem arises when your ads become so distracting that they detract from your site.
First there were animated GIFs. Then people started using obnoxious animated GIFs for ads. This led web browsers to give people the ability to stop animated GIFs.
For example, Opera allows people to turn animated GIFs on and off via the Quick Preferences, which are accessible by pressing F12 in MSWindows or alt + F12 in Mac OS X.#
Next there came Flash. Then people started using obnoxious Flash ads. This led web browsers to give people the ability to stop Flash or all plugins.
For example, Opera allows people to turn plugins on and off via the Quick Preferences.
Then came pop-up and pop-under ads. This led browsers to give people the ability to stop unrequested pop-up ads.
For example, Opera allows people to turn popups on and off via the Quick Preferences.
Notice a trend?
Annoying ads + time = user dissatisfaction.
User dissatisfaction + time = browser technology to overcome it.
Content providers seem to misunderstand that annoying their readers is not acceptable. And so we have the godawful double-underlining ads, perhaps the worst so far because they distract from the actual reading of the text itself, the king of content on the precise sites which are using these ads.
Treat your readers with hostility, and they will seek out technological ways around their dissatisfaction. Thinking about trying to find a different method to push ads on your site? It may work… for a short time. You can keep playing cat & mouse with your readers. What will you gain from that? I see 4 options:
- Some will stay and not really care
- Some will stay but be annoyed
- Some will find a way around it.
- Some will just leave
Now there’s no way to tell what percentage will be in each of the 4 groups, but it looks to me like a 75% chance of a bad result.
Why not try to find another way, a less obtrusive way. Some folks like AdSense, although that certainly has the option now of being intrusive, with graphic ads, even video ads. Some folks like The Deck. I’m sure there are others.
The double-underlined ads are just the next iteration of annoyance-as-marketing-plan. Some day you will be as embarrassed about them as those who used the previous iterations. If that day hasn’t arrived yet, it should soon.
What about readers?
What if you’re not one of the content providers, what if you’re just someone who reads some of these sites? Well you can use the method I outlined above. It’s a little techie, for sure, but it has the advantage of working for all the browsers that you have installed.
If you use Opera, and there’s really no compelling reason why you aren’t, there is another option. On the same F12/alt+F12 menu there is another option that you ought to look at: “Edit Site Preferences…” You can solve 95% of the problems at 95% of the sites with one setting:
Go to Site Preferences, select the “Scripting” tab, and disable JavaScript.
This is no panacea. Some websites won’t work without JavaScript enabled. These are what we call “crappy websites.” But many sites use JavaScript for no other purpose than these various annoyances (JavaScript is responsible for the pop-up ads and some of the Flash ads which use JavaScript to load them). So it’s worth a try if you find a problem that you can’t otherwise fix.
The great thing about today’s Interweb is that when you find a problem, chances are that someone else has found it too, and chances are that they have tried to find a solution, and chances are that someone found a solution. It only takes one person to break the system and tell others.
Footnotes:
- For the curious, here’s what the Quick Preferences Panel looks like in Windows and Mac:
