jerhewet

> There's no need to write cookies to track you if you're the only one running your particular configuration.

Doesn't this methodology fall over the next (and subsequent) time your addins are updated? I average eight addins in Firefox, and most of them are updated at least once a month, so I'd think my "fingerprint" would change every other week.

> The first are the cogs.

Would appreciate it if people around here (and elsewhere) would stop acting like the word "cogs" is universally recognized, like "ram" or "dos". I have no clue what "cogs" is / are, and the search engines aren't helping to make me any wiser (or at least informed).

[raises hand]

I've read it cover-to-cover, twice -- the original edition, and the 2nd edition. Brilliant stuff.

Very nice! Off to spend some money!

First and foremost I want a dead-tree version of the magazine. Call me old-fashioned (and old, for that matter), but I like paper. I've tried the Nook and the Kindle, but they're just not my cuppa.

Second, I want real technology news. I don't want to read anything about smartphones, or cameras, or tablets, or gaming / gaming consoles (my favorite magazine, Maximum PC, does waste too much space on gaming for my tastes), or MP3 players.

Bottom line is that I don't want to be "entertained" by any magazine or podcast. I want to learn something.

EDIT (belated): Always in the market for tech magazine and tech podcast recommendations if anyone has some!

Maximum PC. Hands down the absolute best computer tech magazine on the market. Also highly recommend "This Week In Computer Hardware" (http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-computer-hardware) for a tech-related podcast.

I've stopped listening to "Buzz Out Loud" because of its wall-to-wall smartphone coverage. And I'm about to give up on "This Week In Tech" (along with four or five other podcasts) for the same reason.

And, if I might be so bold:

Technology != Consumer-Oriented Devices

Edit (before the downvotes hammer this comment into oblivion): The subject here is "tech journalism". I don't consider puff pieces about smartphones, MP3 players, your cell carrier, or anything else related to consumer-grade products to be "tech journalism".

I've pretty much stopped listening to "tech podcasts" and subscribing to "tech magazines" because of this problem. They're not delivering anything even vaguely related to technology any more. They're telling me about the latest iPhone or iPad press release, or how some cell carrier is doing something that I really could care less about. Just like I don't care about the latest digital camera, or the latest MP3 player.

Try adding a semicolon in your source files immediately after your includes:

#include "stdio.h" #include "system.h"

;

int StartOfYourCPPCode() {

There's a long-standing bug with pre-compiled headers and code regeneration that (apparently) Microsoft has never fixed. There were (still are?) so many obscure issues with PCH that I just disabled it altogether.

> the test automation tools into Visual Studio were terrible

It went from "just plain bad" in VS2008 to "horribly awful" in VS2010. So awful that someone at MS named the process that manages the unit testing "QTAgent", so that when your machine slowed to a crawl and you opened the Task Manager to see what was wrong you'd see "QT" and conclude it was a background update issue with Apple QuickTime.

Thanks for both of those links -- and for scaring the crap out of me when I clicked the second one and got to the bottom of the page.

"1 - 15 of 534"

Five hundred and thirty-four purchases. Like having a cattle prod jammed into the back of my head.

Nice blogpost regarding BEAST on IIS servers:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaushal/archive/2011/10/03/taming-th...

MaxCDN (subsidiary of NetDNA). They're faster, the support tools are substantially better (invalidation on Cloudfront is the very definition of "suck"), the uptime is better, and the cost is a LOT lower.

Their support for .Net isn't very good, so it took me a while to get things working for their REST services. Overall a much better product with much better support.

Upvote from me. It's a sad day when Kiddiescript is somehow magically elevated to the status of a real programming language.

Serious question, here. How difficult would it be for anti-SOPA corporations and supporters to block congressional IP addresses?

Assumption (possibly incorrect) on my part that it would be fairly easy to identify blocks and ranges of congressional IP addresses, and that it would be legal to block them in the first place.

Original link has gone to link heaven. Alternative is http://ompldr.org/vYmV5bQ

Interesting points. Possibly a strong correlation to where you're located vs. the original poster?

Use Classic Shell (recommended elsewhere in the comments). Returns the Start Menu button to usability, breaks out the Control Panel into an alphabetical list, etc., etc.

It's neither. It's history repeating itself.

> and is fast becoming the dominant communication platform of the future.

Facebrick is only a necessity for attention whores, stalkers, pedophiles, and the insecure. Social networking is a fad, people. Just like pet rocks. Get over yourselves.

Downvote all you like. Don't care. Those with two brain cells to rub together will look back in five to ten years and try to remember why they thought Fartbook -- and the whole damned "social networking" phenominon -- was such a big deal.

For those that aren't old enough to remember how many times we've been through this cycle, do the research on MySpace, AOL... hell, the list is endless. Google "predecessors to Facebook", learn something about what's gone before, and for Christ's sake, get a life.

My suspicion as well. I was talking to my boss yesterday about the results of this poll, and he had no idea there were addons for blocking advertising.

And, being the contrarian he is, he didn't install one after I told him how to find them on the intertubes. Go figure. :-)

You should have chosen an unbiased source to prove your point.

http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab

"The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States."

Aside from anecdotal evidence (your returns of 15:1) I haven't found any long-term studies done by independent researchers that prove internet advertising is any more effective than other forms of advertising, if it's effective at all. The only real accomplishment internet advertisers can lay claim to is training the general population to never even glance at the left / right / top / bottom navs on a page.

In general, the poll results and comments in another recent thread on HN on ad blockers (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3324709) seem to support my theories about how ineffective internet advertising is. I'd be interested in seeing some untainted long-term research on this subject.

> I still find unbelievable they can make that much money just with ads

I do as well, and wish there were more research available on internet advertising. I'm sure a few companies at the top of the pyramid make money, but everyone else (IMNSHO) is taking money out of their left pocket and putting it into their right pocket (A buys ads on B, B buys ads on C, [...] Z buys ads on A; in the end, a zero-sum game).

I'm sure we'll be shouted down, but you're not alone in your opinion.

Link is broken (server taking too long to respond). Any alternatives to this URL?

Excellent! Haven't browsed all the links yet, but I didn't see any examples for injecting anything except trackers. Templates for some of the more common scripts like AddThis, and a few advertising examples, would be nice. Not that it's any harder, but some diversity would certainly help your cause.

Let me know if you'd like a few of my more devious snippets to add to your project, like overloading document.write (surprising how many of those damned advertising scripts still use document.write instead of div injection! :-\).

Write some JS to delay loading the adverts until after all of the other content on your page(s) has been loaded and displayed. JQuery (especially) makes it easy to delay this kind of stuff and do the <div> injections well after your page is visible in the client browser.

I coded one two (three?) years ago for a contract, and it worked like a charm. Used it for tracking pixels, Google tracking, and a bunch of other stuff.

Surprised this kind of snippet isn't readily available on the intertubes.

If you've been in the industry long enough (in my case, since 1975) you realized a long time ago that Esther Dyson doesn't have even the vaguest of clues when it comes to the computer industry. The smart bet is to do the exact opposite of whatever she predicts.

The Ghostery plus RequestPolicy addins. Don't leave home without 'em.

Using Ghostery, and didn't know about RequestPolicy. Upvote for the tip!

> totally kills the value of the Awesome Bar

I disable the (air quote) Awesome (end air quote) Bar every time I do a fresh install of Firefox.

I hate this damned feature with a passion (thank you, but I already know how to type, so get the hell out of my way!), and if the product doesn't have a switch to turn this damned feature off I'll find a competing product that does. Note that so many people loathed this feature that Mozilla added an option to turn the damned thing off.

And yes, I always do my Google searches by launching a bookmark that has their damned look-ahead feature disabled as well.

> Missing poll option:

Missing poll option: I've never been a member of Facebook, and will never be a member of Facebook or any other "social networking" site.

FTFY.