Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Analyzing huge piles of code · 2009-02-10 23:37 by Wladimir Palant
Back in August, at the Firefox Summit, I promised Giorgio Maone to properly analyze NoScript. Trust me, better that than the alternative. And it is not that I forgot. I tried, really. Problem is, Giorgio isn’t a big friend of modularization. Most of NoScript code is contained in two files, one being 2000 and the other whooping 8000 lines long, all of its 500 features nicely intertwined. He isn’t a big fan of documentation either, keeping code comments to a minimum as to prevent code bloat. Finally, he isn’t a big fan of consistency and made sure that each feature is triggered only under its very unique conditions. In short, the code is a mess.
Now it got me as well · 2009-01-15 23:24 by Wladimir Palant
Giorgio knew very well of course that I was only waiting for a chance to tag him, so he tagged me first. Argh… Whatever, here are the rules:
And who comes to visit your web site? · 2008-08-07 01:49 by Wladimir Palant
I often see people complaining that the page impressions on their site don’t match their ad impressions. Apparently, a large percentage of their visitors (you see numbers like 50% mentioned) don’t see their ads. And it is easy enough to find the guilty party — ad blocking software. The enemy is found, the world makes sense again, and the energy can be spent on solving the “issue”.
Only that something doesn’t make sense: judging by numbers of active daily users, no more than 5% of Firefox users have Adblock Plus installed. And I doubt that other ad blockers have a significantly larger user base.
Reconfiguring CheckPoint VPN-1 to allow FTPS connections · 2008-07-13 17:05 by Wladimir Palant
I recently tried using FTPS (SSL-encrypted FTP) and noticed that it didn’t work, immediately after “AUTH TLS” command the connection was disconnected. That happened independently of the server I tried to connect to and the server wasn’t aware of any disconnect. I am posting the solution here since more people might be affected by this.
Worst service ever · 2008-06-08 19:51 by Wladimir Palant
I came back from Ekaterinburg today, second time that I’ve been to Russia in the last 15 years. And while I have lots of impressions that I might share later — my experience with Lufthansa service caused even stronger impressions, so these come first.
Thing is, Lufthansa’s main airport is Frankfurt and I live in Cologne which is one hour distance by train. For people like me, Lufthansa offers a service called AIRail where the train from Cologne to Frankfurt is declared a Lufthansa “flight” and I can book both the train and the actual flight together.
What software update isn't · 2008-03-23 22:11 by Wladimir Palant
Having read John Lilly’s post on Apple’s software update I think I’ll stay away from Apple’s software in future. Commenters confirm that iTunes offering Safari as a “software update” is not an exception, it rather has been a company policy to push unrelated products in software updates — e.g. QuickTime updates offer you to install iTunes as well. And I agree, this is very, very wrong. I expect software update to keep my computer safe and up-to-date, not sneak some crap onto it I don’t need. I am already extremely annoyed by Windows Update nagging me about Microsoft’s malware removal tool each month even if I don’t have it installed. Now Apple is doing the same thing, and I don’t think it is funny.
Vulnerability or feature? · 2008-02-06 15:50 by Wladimir Palant
pdp over at GNUCITIZEN claims to have found a vulnerability in some common OpenID libraries. And I really tried hard to understand what he means and how it is related to the title of the article. In the end, I got the impression that he simply explains in a lengthy way that anybody could run an OpenID server and use it to log into OpenID-enabled services without having to register. Now isn’t this the whole purpose of OpenID?
Spam, Spam, Spam, lovely Spam · 2007-11-28 03:08 by Wladimir Palant
Today’s spammers always find interesting questions to ask:
Are you currently accepting advertising on your website adblockplus.org?
Get WebRunner 0.5 while it is hot! · 2007-07-11 12:00 by Wladimir Palant
I have been using WebRunner for a few weeks now, and it is pretty useful. It allows me to use some web applications independently from my browser — which makes sense, since these web applications have a user interface of their own and don’t require the full power of the browser. The web applications then appear in my taskbar with the correct icon instead of cluttering the browser with tabs. In addition, this allows the web applications to run constantly, even if I frequently restart my browser (which happens sometimes). And finally, I no longer need to be logged in at Google in my browser, one site less allowed to set permanent cookies.
Yet another round of extension recommendations · 2007-04-16 10:04 by Wladimir Palant
ComputerWorld managed to generate quite a lot of buzz with its list of must-have extensions and extensions to avoid. But, as many commenters noticed, the extensions listed appear pretty random. The first list contains a number of extensions that are based on good ideas but either didn’t manage to implement these ideas properly or are simply useless to most Firefox users. On the other hand, some extensions that these users would really consider absolute “must-have” like Adblock Plus are simply missing which undermines the credibility of this article.