On Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:54:20 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> A great deal of what's on fail blog isn't fail at all. But they have
>>> to keep up now, so ...
>>
>> More and more of it seems to be repeats lately, too.
> 
> I eventually stopped following one of the lolcat sites due to the
> extreme level of advertising, and the generally diminishing amusement
> value.

I've been getting tired of the video ads - 15-30 second ad, followed by 5 
second fail, repeated 3 times, more slowly each time, followed by 10 
second "Failblog" postscript.  Oh, and it's usually the same damned ad 
each time.

Jim

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> On 08/07/2011 08:55 AM, Warp wrote:
>> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> I eventually stopped following one of the lolcat sites due to the
>>> extreme level of advertising, and the generally diminishing amusement
>>> value.
>>
>> Just use AdBlock Plus. It's surprisingly effective (it can remove ads
>> even
>> from flash videos).
>
> By "extreme level of advertising", I mean "each page takes 45 seconds to
> load, and a further 30 seconds to finish layout".
>
> Still, perhaps AdBlock can fix it. I don't know, I've never used it.
> (Come to think of it, I don't even know where to obtain it. But that can
> be fixed...)
>
> The other reason was that the pictures steadily increased in volume, but
> the actually amusing ones became rarer and rarer...

AdBlock actualy prevent the ads from even starting to load.
It's realy a "Can't live without" addon.

I red reports about sites that suposedly took over a minute to load even 
on extreme speed broadband. Those sites only took seconds to load on my 
side. Peoples complained a LOT about the adds content of those sites, 
while I never was aware that there was even a single add...
There was also floods of complains about dozens of popups when entering 
and leaving the pages, popups that I never ever saw :)

Once, I received a link to a "trap" site. It contained a nifty java 
script looking like:
on_entry popup URL
on_entry popup URL
on_exit popup URL
on_exit popup URL

Where URL was the URL of the current page.

For me, it was a non-event.

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Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> I red reports about sites that suposedly took over a minute to load even 
> on extreme speed broadband. Those sites only took seconds to load on my 
> side. Peoples complained a LOT about the adds content of those sites, 
> while I never was aware that there was even a single add...
> There was also floods of complains about dozens of popups when entering 
> and leaving the pages, popups that I never ever saw :)

  It's also amusing to read comments on videos at certain video sites
complaining about the constantly appearing ads *during the video*. Ads
which I have never seen.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> I've been getting tired of the video ads - 15-30 second ad, followed by 5 
> second fail, repeated 3 times, more slowly each time, followed by 10 
> second "Failblog" postscript.  Oh, and it's usually the same damned ad 
> each time.

  Just install AdBlock Plus and you'll not even know that the ads exist.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:59:34 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> I've been getting tired of the video ads - 15-30 second ad, followed by
>> 5 second fail, repeated 3 times, more slowly each time, followed by 10
>> second "Failblog" postscript.  Oh, and it's usually the same damned ad
>> each time.
> 
>   Just install AdBlock Plus and you'll not even know that the ads exist.

I have AdBlock Plus installed (both on Firefox and on Google), and I get 
the ads.  Did you really think I hadn't installed it, especially after 
you'd already suggested it to Andy?

Am I really one you think who would complain about something if I hadn't 
taken steps to work around it?

Jim

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> AdBlock actualy prevent the ads from even starting to load.
> It's realy a "Can't live without" addon.

I've never installed this or any similar system under the assumption 
that it is almost guaranteed not to work.

Designing a mere algorithm which can determine, with 100% accuracy, the 
difference between vital content and useless advertising garbage looks 
almost intractably difficult. Thus, the result would almost certainly be 
a system which either fails to block the majority of ads, or blocks the 
majority of useful content. (Or possibly both, at the same time.)

In other news, I have yet to see a spam filter which actually filters 
out spam and nothing else. (Then again, I haven't searched extensively 
for one...)

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On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:00:48 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>> AdBlock actualy prevent the ads from even starting to load. It's realy
>> a "Can't live without" addon.
> 
> I've never installed this or any similar system under the assumption
> that it is almost guaranteed not to work.

Which, of course, is why it's one of the (if not THE) most popular plugin 
for Firefox.  Surely it's popular precisely because it doesn't work at 
all, right? ;)

> Designing a mere algorithm which can determine, with 100% accuracy, the
> difference between vital content and useless advertising garbage looks
> almost intractably difficult. Thus, the result would almost certainly be
> a system which either fails to block the majority of ads, or blocks the
> majority of useful content. (Or possibly both, at the same time.)

It doesn't need to do 100% filtering - it certainly does well enough, 
though.  But you've decided it's "intractably difficult" so it's not 
worth bothering with, even though it's very popular and lots of people 
have great success with it.

Which planet are you on again? ;)

> In other news, I have yet to see a spam filter which actually filters
> out spam and nothing else. (Then again, I haven't searched extensively
> for one...)

None of them make that claim.  But by and large, spam filters do a pretty 
decent job.  The one on Google Mail, for example, *rarely* traps 
something that's not spam (I check it regularly and pull things out that 
shouldn't be, it's about 1 every 2-3 weeks for me on average).  Does it 
get it wrong occasionally?  Sure.  But a quick scan of subject lines (and 
tags - oddly, sometimes it tags messages according to my tag rules but 
still traps them as spam) can easily pick out the mistakes it makes.

Jim

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> It doesn't need to do 100% filtering - it certainly does well enough,
> though.  But you've decided it's "intractably difficult" so it's not
> worth bothering with, even though it's very popular and lots of people
> have great success with it.
>
> Which planet are you on again? ;)

Ah yes, the argumentum ad populum. You realise that *millions* of people 
use Internet Explorer, right? So that *must* mean it's the best web 
browser. :-P

>> In other news, I have yet to see a spam filter which actually filters
>> out spam and nothing else. (Then again, I haven't searched extensively
>> for one...)
>
> None of them make that claim.

And now I must ask which planet *you* are on. This is /the definition/ 
of what a spam filter is. And, just like moisturising creams that are 
"guaranteed" to make you look 20 years younger, people make all sorts of 
completely unsubstantiated claims about spam filters.

> But by and large, spam filters do a pretty decent job.

By this I can only assume that you mean "the spam filters /which I have 
used/ do a pretty decent job". Because the spam filters that *I* have 
used all do a pitifully awful job.

For example, my ISP filters all my incoming email. After 5 years, it has 
/still/ failed to realise that anything containing the words "free meds" 
or "PayPal" is spam. And it has also failed to realise that anything 
containing the word "Haskell" is ham. This, after my repeatedly marking 
the spam and ham for its "learning algorithm". Unfortunately, this 
program's idea of "learning" is to blacklist or whitelist each 
individual sender, each time I press a button. How pathetic.

My employer used a system called "barracuda" I believe, and that was 
similarly hopeless. In fairness, the genuine email we receive has 
several fairly unusual characteristics. Even so, people really shouldn't 
be receiving emails with viral attachments, or links to exploit sites, 
or those fake "delivery failure notification" emails, or...

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On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:29:49 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>> It doesn't need to do 100% filtering - it certainly does well enough,
>> though.  But you've decided it's "intractably difficult" so it's not
>> worth bothering with, even though it's very popular and lots of people
>> have great success with it.
>>
>> Which planet are you on again? ;)
> 
> Ah yes, the argumentum ad populum. You realise that *millions* of people
> use Internet Explorer, right? So that *must* mean it's the best web
> browser. :-P

False equivalency, my friend.  IE is the default browser installed in 
Windows.  Many people use that by default.

Firefox does not ship with AdBlock Pro installed.  People download it, 
install it, and use it successfully.  I happen to be one of those people.

You, instead, have assumed "it can't possibly work" and so haven't even 
tried it.

Now, given the empirical evidence of having used it and having it work or 
the *assumption* that it isn't going to work so why bother....I think the 
empirical evidence is going to work.

>>> In other news, I have yet to see a spam filter which actually filters
>>> out spam and nothing else. (Then again, I haven't searched extensively
>>> for one...)
>>
>> None of them make that claim.
> 
> And now I must ask which planet *you* are on. This is /the definition/
> of what a spam filter is. And, just like moisturising creams that are
> "guaranteed" to make you look 20 years younger, people make all sorts of
> completely unsubstantiated claims about spam filters.

I'm on Earth.

Spam filters work to a significant extent.  Again, empirical evidence.  
100% isn't necessary to declare success or failure.

You're declaring failure because 1 message in "n" (for sufficiently large 
values of 'n') gets through.  Fact is, spam filters aren't supposed to 
block all spam.  They're supposed to reduce it, and for most people, they 
do the job properly.

>> But by and large, spam filters do a pretty decent job.
> 
> By this I can only assume that you mean "the spam filters /which I have
> used/ do a pretty decent job". Because the spam filters that *I* have
> used all do a pitifully awful job.

Fair enough point.

> For example, my ISP filters all my incoming email. After 5 years, it has
> /still/ failed to realise that anything containing the words "free meds"
> or "PayPal" is spam. And it has also failed to realise that anything
> containing the word "Haskell" is ham. This, after my repeatedly marking
> the spam and ham for its "learning algorithm". Unfortunately, this
> program's idea of "learning" is to blacklist or whitelist each
> individual sender, each time I press a button. How pathetic.
> 
> My employer used a system called "barracuda" I believe, and that was
> similarly hopeless. In fairness, the genuine email we receive has
> several fairly unusual characteristics. Even so, people really shouldn't
> be receiving emails with viral attachments, or links to exploit sites,
> or those fake "delivery failure notification" emails, or...

Have you tried something like Spamassassin?

And yes, you do work in an industry where the normal triggers for spam 
might actually be legitimate business communications - as you work in the 
pharma industry IIRC.

That doesn't mean spam filters are useless.

You'll note that I didn't say *all* spam filters were wonderful and 
flawless.  I said that spam filtering generally works well.

Jim

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> Firefox does not ship with AdBlock Pro installed.  People download it,
> install it, and use it successfully.  I happen to be one of those people.
>
> You, instead, have assumed "it can't possibly work" and so haven't even
> tried it.

Before we get too far into this, I would like to re-emphasize what I 
actually said:

I said I had never bothered trying such software under the /assumption/ 
that it won't work properly. I said that it looks intractably difficult. 
Then again, so does writing non-trivial software using something as 
primitive as C, and apparently people manage to do that.

In short, I would be surprised if ad-blocking technology can work. Not 
astonished, but definitely surprised.

> Spam filters work to a significant extent.  Again, empirical evidence.
> 100% isn't necessary to declare success or failure.
>
> You're declaring failure because 1 message in "n" (for sufficiently large
> values of 'n') gets through.  Fact is, spam filters aren't supposed to
> block all spam.  They're supposed to reduce it, and for most people, they
> do the job properly.

In my book, if I use a spam filter and still receive unacceptable 
quantities of spam, or have unacceptable quantities of genuine mail 
filtered, then the filter is "not working". I agree that 100% filtration 
would be almost impossible, but (for example) 3% filtration is useless.

> Have you tried something like Spamassassin?

Nope. If fact, I've never actually installed spam filtering technology 
myself. I've only had it forced upon me by whoever is operating the mail 
server.

> And yes, you do work in an industry where the normal triggers for spam
> might actually be legitimate business communications.

Quite. This has no bearing on the spam filter at home being similarly 
useless, however.

> That doesn't mean spam filters are useless.
>
> You'll note that I didn't say *all* spam filters were wonderful and
> flawless.  I said that spam filtering generally works well.

Even I didn't say that *all* spam filters are useless. I merely said 
that I've yet to see one that isn't. (I even qualified it by saying I 
haven't seen all that many.)

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