Friday, October 01, 2004

Firefox extensions, part one: adblock

As I mentioned on the Mozilla part of my website, I am starting an - almost - daily post series on Firefox extensions. I already mentioned the impressive international language support, without the need to download language packs, in a prior post. I had thought about writing about tabbed browsing next, but that is being fairly well covered in any number of articles online just now, so I decided to mention my three absolutely "must have" extensions first.

No 1 of those is Adblock. In combination with Firefox' excellent in built pop up stopper it has made my life as ad-free as I would have believe it impossible to be until I got it. It can be installed directly from the Mozilla Update page as well as the adblock details. Simply clicking the install link will bring up the extension manager - more about that soon - which after a 3 second delay - to prevent the reflexive hitting of the "yes" button - all to install the extension (or allow to cancel installation at any time).

As with any newly installed extension, it becomes available after Firefox is restarted, then it shows in the lower right corner of the status bar. Clicking it will bring up a pop up window listing all blockable items in the currently view page while a red dotted line frame will highlight any item selected from that list makes it easy for the viewer to see what part of the page he is dealing with. To remove any item from view, just clicking okay adds it to the ban list. (To remove any mistakenly added item from the list go to Navigation Bar > Tools > Extensions > Adblock > options to select that item and remove it from the list.) Additonally, bans can also be set by right clicking inside the webpage, and chosing "adblock image" from the right click menu.

Best of all, bans can not only be set for individual pictures, but for scripts, iframes and even complete urls as well, by using * as a wildcard in the ban url. And life has further been made easier by some kind souls who have already precompiled blocking lists such as the one below (I have to admit I forgot where I got it, if anyone who reads this knows, please add a comment to let me know, so I can give that person credit - also, if you know of additional list, please equally post a comment.) All you need to do it copy it as it is, then safe as adblock.txt file and import through the same Navigation Bar > Tools > Extensions > Adblock > options process.

Below the list for anyone who'd like to use it:
[Adblock]
*.ad-*
*.ad.*
*/ad.*
*/ad/*
*/adbot.*
*/adc_*
*/adclient.*
*/adcouncil/*
*/adframe.*
*/adgifs/*
*/adgraph/*
*/adimages/*
*/adinfo*
*/adlog.*
*/adlog/*
*/adrotator.*
*.ads-*
*.ads.*
*/ads.*
*/ads/*
*/advert*
*/adview.*
*/housead/*
*/liveads/*
*/phpads/*
*/softad/*
*/sponsor/*
*/sponsors/*
*/tj_bs
*/tracker/*
*_ad_*
*_borders/*
*_superad*
*a.p.f.qz.*
*a.r.tv.*
*a.tribalfusion.*
*-ad.cgi*
*ad_type*
*adbot*
*adclick*
*adclix*
*adclub*
*adcycle*
*adflight*
*ad-flow*
*adimage*
*adknowledge*
*adlink*
*admaximize*
*admex*
*admonitor*
*adpulse*
*adrunner*
*ads/*
*adserv*
*adsoftware*
*adswap*
*af.lygo.*/*
*aureate*
*avenuea*
*banner*
*bilbo.counted.*
*bluestreak.*
*burstmedia*
*burstnet*
*clickxchange*
*counter*.bravenet.*
*doubleclick*
*focalink*
*hitbox*
*hitexchange*
*hitlist*
*hitsites*
*houseads_*
*i.imdb*
*i.us.rmi.yahoo.*
*imaginemedia*
*linkads*
*linkexchange*
*linkshare*
*linksynergy*
*media.fastclick*
*paycounter*
*radiate*
*realtracker.*
*secure.webconnect*
*servedby.advertising.*
*spinbox.versiontracker.*
*spylog*
*thecounter*
*trafic.ro/*
*us.a1.yimg.*
*us.f.yahoofs.*
*valueclick*
*view.atdmt*
*adtomi.*
*.linkbuddies.*
*.qksrv.*
*x.mycity.*
*z.about.*
*zdmcirc*


Thursday, September 30, 2004

Where the Bush family money comes from

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
The Bush Family Fortune
More on the Bush-Nazi connection

The site that stores the documents:

Bush Family Fortune

It also encourages to download the files, but is not very good at supporting that.

Not that all that is much news for those who have been checking up on the current first political family. At least good old Joe Kennedy got his by doing something more fun (even if still illegal, in those days) by bootlegging . . .

Freedom of expression

seems to be ending in the land of the free these days, when it's critical of the administration:

Operation American Repression?

An Army officer in Iraq who wrote a highly critical article on the administration's conduct of the war is being investigated for disloyalty -- if charged and convicted, he could get 20 years . . .

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

No more language packs!

Okay, some people probably have noticed this long before me, but I was just browsing the "recently updated blogs" page here on blogger when it suddenly hit me that I was seeing blogs titles in Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Hebrew, Spanish and Swedish and some other languages I was not immediately able to indentify display correctly - without having to download a single language pack for them to do so, as I would have if I'd been using IE instead of Firefox. Funnily, I hadn't really thought about that until now when that kind of unbuilt language management capability is a major achievement. It's certainly one of the things I'll be pointing out as another great feature from now on.

I guess that also explains why blogger itself recommends Firefox as the browser to use with their service - nice of them, too.

East - West

I had an interesting conversation with Souris coming back after having been AFK for a bit, about Germany:

Souris: . . . and ended up watching a piece on a German news show we get here
Souris: Well, since my last comment, anyway
Panthere: Oh, what news program?
Souris: I forget the name of the show. Das W...?
Souris: The initials are DW :P
Panthere: Deutsche Welle is the sender.
Souris: It was a piece on what you and another friend: were talking about the other day, how Germany is still divided
Souris: That's the one
Panthere: Hm, you don't know if there is a transcript of that available anywhere, do you?
Souris: No, but I can tell you what you wish to know
Panthere: Please.
Souris: It was just a short piece, ~5 minutes or so, and I came in after it had started. The central topic was, of course, how the west is paying for the east's reconstruction
Panthere: Which is true.
Souris: It briefly interviewed a few patrons at an Eastern sports club, I think, complaining about being out of work. Which led them to believe that it was the west's fault (not enough funds, you know the mind set)
Panthere: Well, they came from a culture where they weren't very free, but relatively secure, which they aren't anymore at all.
Souris: Shortly afterwards, it mentioned how the west isn't doing so great, either, due to business being offered subsidies to set up in poorer regions (such as anywheresville, east Germany).
Panthere: And West Germans resent that naturally, plus having to pay higher taxes and such.
Souris: A brief focus was made on Dresden, which is apparently being made into a showcase for the east. There's a lot of companies setting up there and it's doing better than some western areas (mention was made to some valley area, twice, but I didn't catch the name)
Souris: And yes, the resentment was touched upon, again with the sports club. They mentioned how they didn't feel welcome in the west when visiting away games
Souris: One of the patrons said quite openly that everyone would be better off with the wall back. You won't hear that viewpoint in western coverage :P
Souris: Western world, in that case
Panthere: Oh yes, you hear it from West Germans, too.
Souris: *nods* It must be mutual. I don't know how western Germany can put up with their situation... East Germany and the EU...
Panthere: And it's true, most West Germans aren't very welcoming to Easterners; they feel they're slackers who live of them.
Souris: Anyway, apart from a general overview of the problems resulting from the fall of the wall, they also had a sensible man give the reason for it
Panthere: Well, the rise of extremist parties in the last election is an indicator that people get fed up, I think.
Souris: That is, that Western Germany had 4+ decades to rebuild from the war, and Eastern Germany can't possibly expect the same standards after a mere quarter of that time
Souris: Hmm... That would be a good explanation for it, Miss
Souris: So, the news piece was very brief, but enlightening nonetheless
Panthere: I can explain what the cause for it all is, in one short sentence: That idiot former chancellor Kohl's ego mania.
Souris: Oh?
Panthere: Now shall I elaborate in more detail?
Souris: I'll need a few more sentences, yes :)
Panthere: What is/was basically the biggest mistake is that the decision for re-unification wasn't based on economical and social evaluation of the situation, but on political egotism: the not very intelligent "Birne" (so called based on his body-shape, though unlike a pear very wobbly :P) wanted to go down in history as the "Re-unification Chancellor."
Panthere: The person who had, after 45 years, "made Germany into one country again."
Souris: Ohhh... :(
Souris: Well, he'll go down in history, all right, if not how he schemed...
Panthere: But even at that time, economists and sociologists and a whole other bunch of assorted scientists were warning that a hasty reunification would backfire, as it has obviously done.
Souris: Far from being one country, it looks to me like Germany is going to need another 3 decades, at least, to make much progress
Panthere: The smart way - and most proposed way then, by non-politically allied thinkers - to have done that would have been through a long term plan, which would have allow a loose political association, while the economic systems of both parts would only gradually merge.
Panthere: That would have East German companies allowed to temporarily take advantage of lower standards for example in regards to environmental laws, and it would have allowed them to *slowly* switch from an all human workforce to the Western level of automatization.
Panthere: The latter leading not only to huge layoffs but to even bigger dept, if they could afford to go on operating at all and didn't have to close down for good.
Souris: Hmm... It sounds like that would've caused a great deal of unrest in the east, anyway?
Panthere: It would also have allowed subsidized housing to continue as it was in the East, and guaranteed kinder garden places, for example (which I think they West should copy - women were in several ways better of in East Germany than West Germany, where some rights were concerned.)
Panthere: It caused a great deal of dissatisfaction everywhere.
Souris: True...
Panthere: Naturally, there wasn't any great market for East German goods in the West, but it had a large part of the Eastern market - East Germany was the economical engine of the former Eastblock as much as West Germany was for Western Europe, only the economical level was different -
Panthere: and in a slower approach Western exports to the East (all of it, not just East Germany) could have been limited to support East German production for the adjustment period.
Panthere: Naturally, there is a great more stuff concerned than I can all list now, but there were viable suggestions on how to lower the reunification pain by spreading it out over time. But since 20 years from then Kohl wouldn't have been Chancellor anymore, he trashed them all.
Panthere: Again a case of millions suffering for one man's egotism.

Shanghai'ed . . .

Is a little bit how I feel - well, kind of since a nautically inclined friend whom I have been trying to convince to switch to Firefox suggested jokingly that he'd use it if I'd make him a theme to go with it . . . he'd do it, too, if I'd. The only question left is, do I take him up on it and make the theme . . . ?

Riverbend - or: Thinking about people you don't know

The thought occured to me while I was updating my links - regular readers (Are there any? Leave a hello if so, would you? I've changed commenting settings so that can be done now.) may have noticed that from just two links on the left is has grown to a longer list - that the world wide web has changed a lot of things, among others, information flow - for better, in my opinion, with greater freedom of information - but also how we think of people:

I don't know anybody personally in Iraq, or even anyone from there, to the best of my knowledge, but I have been concerned most of the summer that Riverbend has rarely blogged and wondered if she was okay. I'd never venture to bother her personally through email she can probably do without, but, maybe because I am a woman myself, I have been wondering how her life had changed . . .

In any case, it's good to see she's back, and I hope she'll be writing more again.

Journalism?

Having watched the behaviour of the US press in the last few years, I find it astonishing that Ridge even finds it necessary to hold such "directive events" - I thought mainstream US journalists, editors, publishers and so on already had given up independent opinion in favour of parroting government propaganda, er, information.

Had the same thing happened anywhere else, I bet US offical would be screaming about attempts to unduely influence the free - whatever that means in the days of homeland (in)security - press.

Technorati = Ignorati

It's unbelievable, but technorati.com has now for 5 days managed NOT to send me the directions for a password reset . . .

Themes Status Update

In a short follow up on the last post, bugzilla - which is what is used to update UMO with at the moment - has been notified of the theme additions and changes, and hopefully in a few days they will appear on there as well.

A brief comment on the Geek Paws Grey theme: to be perfectly geeky, the small icons option should be used. To active that, right click anywhere in the navigation bar, then choose customize and at the bottom of the window coming up, choose "small icons."

Happy geeking. ;)

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Sometimes things take a while . . .

. . . but I have finally managed to upload all the colour variations of the paw theme that have been accumulating on my HD to the Mozilla Firefox part of my website. I think I caught all little inconsistencies that were lurking here and there, but if you find one, please feel free to post here and let me know.

Oh, and I was nice to all the geeks that were complaining on the Mozilla Update site and made a paw there especially for them - it should be used with the "small icons" option. A preview of it, though with the large icon option, is
here. Enjoy. ;)

Sunday, September 26, 2004

More Firefox ;)

That is, I made some colour variations of my FireCat cat paws Firefox theme. They need a few spots of finetuning still, but should be up at my website by the middle of the week, and hopefully available at the Mozilla Update site soon after.

After that, I am planning on making a Firefox theming tutorial, since there seem to be quite a number of people who'd like to try to make their own themes if they only knew how to go about it . . .