On the commuter train the other day I suddenly realised that I was seeing three rather prim middle-aged middle-class people reading novels, and that all three were genre fiction.
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Douglas Adams 1980. (science fiction)
- The Man in the High Castle. Philip K. Dick 1962. (alternate history)
- Människohamn. John Ajvide Lindqvist 2008. (contemporary fantasy)
It feels like my geek ghetto has been turned inside out and encompasses the entire universe except its own original tiny volume.
About the creationist text ads that show up in the rightmost column. I find them highly embarrassing, I did not choose them, I do not endorse them, but I can't remove them myself.
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firefox. adblock. problem solved.
(well, except for the ads hosted by seed/sB itself. but those usually only hawk seed's own goods, and certainly don't push creationism. i can live with those --- if i couldn't, i could hack up an adblock filter to get rid of 'em.)
I'm middle-aged and middle-class (though not prim), and I read genre fiction all the time (fantasy, science fiction, European crime fiction).
I am undeniably a geek, however. ;-)
I do believe it has become socially acceptable to be a geek in the noughties, after the success of computers, the blockbuster movies and the fact that the internet has shown us all that we are not isolated weirdos but part of a huge community. We have come out of the closet brandishing our flashlights and our fantasy novels. We will no longer sit at the back of the bus!
N.N., you mean Adblock kills google ads? I use Firefox's built-in filter for the static banners and Flashblock for the flash.
Owl, I answer to the same description.
Ãsa, the back of the bus is a good place for a geek cuddle.
adblock plus can kill whatever ads you tell it to kill. i forget if its killing google ads is something it does out of the box, or a filter i added on myself (hey, this is a geekdom thread, right? a little pattern matching is barely even eggheaded) but i haven't seen a google ad in years, now.
...ok, checking my adblock preferences, it seems blocking google is default with the EasyList filter subscription, which is what most users use for a baseline. it's a pretty good starting point, i haven't needed to add very much to it, and i'm very picky about seeing no ads.
i use adblock plus for static stuff and NoScript for active content (including flash and javascript). adblock is quite easy to set up. noscript takes a bit more tweaking, since it comes with a default policy of "deny everything, the user can enable exceptions for what they want to allow", but is still well worth using.