Looking to obtain a prepaid debit card? Read customer reviews about Green Dot Corporation regarding services provided, customer service and more. Advertisement Over the past few months, I’ve been contacted by a good number of readers who have had problems downloading our guides, or why they can’t see the login buttons or comments not loading; and in 99% of cases, it’s because they’re running one these plugins – AdBlock, NoScript, or Ghostery – which I shall hereby refer to as the “trifecta of evil”. AdBlock Matt has already written an extensive article on why, but I want to throw my own opinion in here too. For those of you who don’t know, AdBlock silently removes all advertising and social buttons. The thing is – those ads pay my salary, as well as the other full time editors, professionals writers, and dedicated server costs that make MakeUseOf what it is. We believe strongly in a free content model – whereby we provide free, high quality, full content to you with no restrictions – in exchange for showing you advertising. Apologies if you think my definition of free is defective, but you’re arguing over semantics and kind of missing the point. What makes me angry about the AdBlock plugin is that the author – while happy to destroy our revenue stream – is also profiteering from the very same free content model by asking for PayPal donations when the plugin is installed. Talk about hypocrisy. I understand that some adverts can be annoying – and we do try to remove any that auto-play a video or make noise on page load as soon as we identify them (contrary to popular belief, site owners do not choose the ads that get displayed, but we can kill them off if we find inappropriate or annoying ones, and we have requested that no such video ads be displayed as a general rule) – but the free content model is entirely what keeps the online world afloat. If you want online content to all be premium priced then go right ahead and continue using Adblock. Ultimately you need to remember that if everyone cheated the system like AdBlock users do, the Internet would only exist behind paywalls. NoScript In days gone by, Javascript was the bane of the Internet, along with flashing GIF’s. Blocking Javascript used to make sense from both a safety standpoint (most browser vulnerabilities came through Javascript), and a usability perspective (Javascript was initially only used for silly effects and annoying tricks and popups). But the Internet has very much moved on and evolved from those early days. Browsers aren’t as vulnerable as they used to be. ![]() Moreover, Javascript is an integral component of modern HTML5 standards, and jQuery – the most popular Javascript framework – has pushed forward web interfaces far, far beyond pages full of images, links and tables. The modern Internet must have Javascript. So when you use NoScript, you’re breaking the Internet. Not only do you drag webpages 10 years into the past, but you prevent essential modern page components from loading – hit counters and such – which again, hurts our bottom line by not giving us an accurate picture of who visits our page; as well as obviously blocking ads. From a user perspective, you’re going to find a whole host of features that don’t work as expected. Installing windows 7 on xps 13 9350. In an ideal world, websites would be able to degrade all of their advanced functionality to users without Javascript with some kind of no-JS alternative. In the real world, we’re limited in what we can do by working hours and budgets – and really, why should we support you if you’re not willing to support us by displaying ads? Ghostery I hadn’t heard of this until recently, but Ghostery appears to be the ultimate do-not-track plugin.
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