New release of Proximitron
Proximitron 4.2 was released 3/17. It's a proxy web server that runs locally, sitting between the Web and your browser, and offers you a hell of a lot more control than your browser's settings alone do, making for faster, more secure, and more fun websurfing. And, yes, that can include blocking ads (though its abilities go far beyond that.)
Unethical? Short-sighted and stabbing websites dependent on ad revenue in the back? Maybe. I prefer to consider it practical motivation for websites and advertisers to work together to deliver ads in such a way that browsing the web doesn't suck. If requesting and viewing the ads didn't make a page take so much longer to load, interfere with reading the page because of a garish flashing ad next to a narrow text column, and compromise my privacy through the advertisers' cookies, I wouldn't be motivated to block them.
And it's got the coolest registration requirement I've ever heard of: it's ShonenWare. You can consider yourself registered if you buy a Shonen Knife album.
Updated 8/18/2002: This is consistently my most popular entry ever — it's #2 on Google for 'Proximitron.' Which is a typo. And the link above is dead. You want Proxomitron.
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Posted by Anonymous on May 9 2002 10:31
Very cynical, but will try too many friends claim its ok..
Posted by Undertaker on May 12 2002 04:12
ok? proxy is a lifesaver. just "out of the box", it blocks unwanted pop up boxes yet allows ones initiated by the user. just place it in your startup menu, configure IE with the help file provided and you're set to browse without anything getting in your face anymore. this should be a built in feature of ANY operating system.
Posted by Kayin on May 23 2002 18:28
I installed Proximitron 4.2 on my XP Pro machine and started getting error messages when trying to access sites I previously had no problems with. Reading the Proximitron help section, I saw where the author(s) touted that the program made no changes in .ini files nor the registry. Not so! First off, the program failed to write an uninstall file for itself. After using the Windows Add/Remove Program feature to remove Proximitron, I no longer had ANY access to the 'net. I reinstalled Proximitron and deleted its folder and contents since the help section said ALL Proximitron files were in the folder. Still no 'net - just a loopback to 127.0.0.1 regardless of which website I attempted to access. Finally, after using Regedit to manually reset the values that Proximitron had written to .ini files (really!), I was able to recover. The moral is - don't believe everything you hear or read even if it's from the software's author.
Posted by John on August 18 2002 19:19
Proximatron is the best popup killer by far, and it works in conjunction with any other popup killers you might use, making it indispensable.
Posted by Ten98 on August 20 2002 19:04
Er John, Proxomitron didn't change those values - *you* did when you set up IE's proxy settings to use it. Proxomitron doesn't make any changes itself.
Also you could of reset IE without touching the registry by just going back into the proxy setup and undoing your changes. This is even mentioned in the program's FAQ.
Posted by Fronk on October 3 2002 17:55
uh...to the guy who uninstalled t and lost access to the net.
Thats because you reconfigued your browser to run thru port 8080,u remember?....and u checked the use proxy option.
All u had to do was go back and change that back to default.....dunno what u were doing editing your reg but nevermind.........
Posted by metla on December 4 2002 17:07
Is there a mirror of Proxomitron out there?
Posted by Mark on June 3 2003 20:55