..what if everybody..? ..what if everybody not only used Firefox as a browser – but also combined it with Wladimir Palant’s free advertisement blocking plug-in ‘Adblock Plus’ (www.adblockplus.org)..? ..would there just be less ugly blinking ads on my screen and your monitor and on his and her and their internet browsing experience..? ..or would there be also less motivation for publishers to publish useful information online..? ..would there be less crap online..? ..fewer weblogs..? ..less growth..?
To sum it up: has ‘Adblock Plus’ the potential to bring the Empires of E-Marketing down to their financial knees..? ..might this the end of the free world wide web as we know it..?

At this point I’d like to freely quote from H.P.Baxter’s Scooter’s current hit single:
“The Question is: What is the Question?!”
..or in my words: “The problem is: What is the Problem?!”
Well.. Currently there seems to be a lot of discussion going on about moneteasing äh- monetization – or actually about the possible future problems of making money online by publishing ‘free’ content – which seems to be one of the sole reasons people publish things on the web anyways. Some people seem to be so bitter about this ‘problem’ that they started blocking Firefox – hoping to make Adsense-blocking visitors understand that advertisement is needed to cover the costs of free content.. Others seem to switch to in my opinion even worse/ more ‘evil’ advertisement techniques such as text-ads – text-links that are shown in the middle of a text – leaving the visitors of a website with no choice of ignoring or even blocking the ad since it ‘camouflages’ perfectly well..

Hm. I must say I am puzzled – but I’m sure we will sooner or later hear and read more about this subject – if not all weblogs went bankrupt too soon..:]

..happy browsing! t..

ps1: personally I honestly love ads..:] ..seriously! ..not only because I use them as a publisher to earn some server cost covering Euro-Dollars – but also as a visitor/user because I’m always curious about other people’s content relevant ads, their appearance.. – ..and yes: I do think that some people are going too far with their monetization techniques – and those ‘über-motivated’ might actually probably be partly the reason why nowadays people seem to prefer Adblock to Adsense. monetizers

ps2: conclusion: Adblock vs. Adsense 1:0

ps3: related articles (not ads!)

•  “Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?” (New York Times)

the title of this post might be a little bit misleading – but it just fits so well to the following little story.. Here we go: About one year a go my most beloved five years old Powerbook broke down – went insane in the main frame – had enough of all the pitty and denied all orders.

What happened..? The motherboard got ‘tired’ or ‘ill’ or actually it just broke. The screen froze in front of my eyes – and after trying a restart it just didn’t start up anymore. That was that.

Of course I was just in the middle of something – so I just had to get a new working station right away – and that’s how I got my new ‘SurfBoard’ I’m sitting at right now: a 15″ MacBook Pro, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo Processor, 1GB Ram etc..

With this new device new problems arose right away: first it was ‘just’ software related problems.. – ..I thought:

My good old software packet ‘Macromedia Studio MX’ was also working partly on the new MacBook, only the most crucial little application ‘Dreamweaver MX’ did not want to cooperate.. – ..and without ‘Dreamweaver’ I can’t really do my daily business..! So I bought ‘Macromedia Studio 8’ right away, about 48 hours after I got my MacBook Pro..

Then everything seemed to work well – I was of course wondering about these daily crashes and the screen freezing every now and then, sometimes even generating ‘nice’ little patterns that strongly reminded me of Knitted Pullovers made in Sweden.. I blamed it on the software – and that the software wasn’t probably capable yet to run on such a fine device like my MacBoo Pro. I blamed it on the Operating System – and updated it. I blamed iTunes, Skype – and kept updating whatever I could update – and just hoped, that one fine day I would have all programs running crash free – and that this would also make the crashes and the freezes and the Swedish Pullover Patterns go away..

Then one day I downloaded ‘Second Life’. From different sources I knew that ‘Second Life’ should just run fine on my machine – but no matter what I tried – ‘Second Life’ froze latest after five minutes – every try fo ‘fly’ ended in a system crash. After even putting up a blank user account with only ‘Second Life’ on it (which also didn’t help) I quit blaming the software – it had to be a hardware problem.

So I packed my MacBook Pro and some ‘nice’ screen shots of crashes and went down the long road to the official Berlin Apple Macintosh repair and assembling shop in Kreuzberg (the company is called Card-Service). First I had some difficulties explaining my problems to the technicians. Of course my MacBook Pro would not want to crash or freeze just like that in front of some technicians.. Trying the F9-Exposé-function ‘helped’: it froze/crashed right away..

About two weeks later I went there again to pick my precious device up and take it home. The motherboard had been exchanged – a free of charge case of a guarantee. Hurray! Finally my MacBook Pro continued to run for more than 24h – no more freezes, no more crashes, no more Swedish Knitwear Patterns..:] ..and finally and for the first time I had the feeling that this one year old but ‘brand new’ device was actually faster and more reliable than my previous ‘good old’ Powerbook..!!

A few days later I ‘just’ wanted to upload some picture I took with my beloved NOKIA 6600 via BlueTooth. But what was that: no BlueTooth hardware found..?! Back to Kreuzberg I went – another case of a guarantee – another four days later I had my ‘PowerBoard’ back.

Back home I was a bit sceptic – even though BlueTooth and MotherBoard seemed to work well. I had to catch up with some work – and so I thought ‘first things first’ and began to write some bills. And that the moment I felt something strange going on underneith my fingertips: the plus key [+] and some other keys started behaving strangely.. – ..so i paid a third visit to that Macintosh workshop – I was alredy greeted with one eye brow up and a skewed smile, cheering comments and sceptic questions – quickly a new keyboard was ordered and less then 48 hours later assembled..

Now more then two weeks passed – no other strangenesses occured – and I am quite optimistic that I won’t see again the Kreuzberg workshop staff so soon.. I knock on wood, cross my fingers and just hope hope hope that my ‘good new’ portable computer runs at leas as bravely and reliable as it should..:] It’s been a long way – but on that way I did neither loose my faith nor my ‘religion’: I still believe in Apple Macintosh Computers and I am happy to (finally) have one: MacBook Pro!

Greetz, t..

So – I didn’t see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″ yet, but I saw “The Day After Tomorrow”. And with both movies I connect some great hope: that the U.S. of America Mr.George Double-U and his friends will come back to a state that could be called ‘normal’, stop that self-destructive paranoia, sign the Kyoto Protocol!
And, please, kids, don’t believe -everything- that somebody with pockets full of money and a mind full of …interests… tells you!

-thanks- !

And now for the picture of this post: Berlin is full of shit – literally! – dogs’ shit. So some people invented different ways of making the shit obvious, so that other won’t step into it… which is nice :)

well…

this is my favourite WELTZEITUHR. It only shows the current time of cities, that are on the same time-zone as Berlin :)
I have no clue who actually did this modification – but i love it.

More about this matter will be posted soon…
Have a nice weekend! t_;_,_,___ _ _ _

1) This picture is actually some months old already. It’s a hand made screenshot of a wurst-cast-szenario:: a damaged Rammstein :) which is not only a german band name but also what i call these small black extra memory sticks that you may plug in to your favourite machine to make it remember a bit better what it was just doing… a RAM-brick.
After plugging in another 512MB, my t-board did not even remember who it was (and if:: how many?!¿)
So:: be careful if you want to do something _good_ to your favourite machine…

2) The other reason for this posting is that i wanted to spread the well of having a small script keeping selected domains from hijacking graphics, stealing bandwidth, funking up you logs’n’stats, misbehaving.

Here it comes::

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer “^http://cybertowns.kom” zucker
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer “^http://www.cybertowns.kom” zucker
Deny from env=zucker

besides all these news about war-preparations, oil on coasts, rising taxes, UB40 on the radio – and all these small- and large-scale Wurst-Case-Szenarios there also seems to be some glittering sparkles at the horizont: The GEMA for example just turned 100 (congratz!) and took the chance to underline the importance of the private-use-copy :) that we all love so much these days.

wow.

Thank you, Grand-Madame de la Musique-Business, have another nice 100 years, and please dont forget the self-made Ministars, the original artists and all the brave kids in their basements, garages and fox-holes, cursing, rehearsing, rockin and rollin…

Makes me wonder about the propagana of the music-industry, that already made even some close friends of mine think that the private-use-copy was already illegal. Bullshit :) comrades! Of cause you may still not steal music – but that`s a different game.
You may instead visit friends with your MiniDisco-Recorder or the Powerbook of your choice and have a coffee-session, just like it was in the good old times of compact tapes (you still have yours somewhere in some box?)

And besides this, i can only recommend you to let somebody repair your favourite broken device! YES! FINALLY! DO IT! Just go to go to your local electronics-dealer and ask him for a special offer for a maintenance session for your favourite broken device! Happiness might be guaranteed!
– And if you have a picture of your favourite broken device then please dont hesitate to send it to me :) and i’ll post it in a brand new BokenDevices-Section or so
> mail AT till in tallin DOT net
!!!schönkedan!!!

greetinx, t_;_,_,___ _ _ _