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Adbuster

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©1996-2017 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products

Disclaimer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have prepared to help you is right here.

This project outline is not like the artificial, tidy little problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer by profession, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavour.

Please do not email me about this project without reading the disclaimer above.

This is a browser plug-in that gets rid of ads from the pages you browse. It could also be implemented as a filter on TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), independent of the browser. That is a simpler environment, but makes interaction with the user more difficult. How does an adbuster recognise ads?
  1. You tell it which ads offend you by clicking on them. It remembers their URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) and suppresses loading in future.
  2. It loads suspect frames in the background without displaying them. If they contain nothing but an animated GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) or if they contain certain ad buzzwords, they are suppressed.
  3. Any time multiple frames pop up, The adbuster suppresses all but the last.
  4. Marked obnoxious ads can be collected from users of an adbuster, verified and added to a database.
  5. Sites known to dispense nothing but ads can be blacklisted in toto.
  6. Offsite graphics can be presumed to be ads, especially banner sized ones.
The generic name for this class of program is named in honour of the work done by Adbuster magazine. After I wrote this I discovered there is a commercial program along these lines already called Adbusters.org.
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