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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Internet 92

MMBK writes "Our friends at JESS3 have unveiled The Ex-Blocker. It's a Firefox and Chrome plugin that erases all name and likeness of your ex from the Internet, even if they become a meme, or the president. You'll no longer have to threaten to delete your Facebook account or concoct an elaborate e-hoax to assuage the reality-shattering complications that are born from break-ups. Simply construct an Internet that omits bad vibes all together."
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Internet

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  • first (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @09:20AM (#32886122)

    First post (not including those by my exes)

  • next version will be able to replace the name with some nice insults...
    • As well as an option to only filter out reports of their successes; failures are allowed through.

      .
    • by kimago ( 620628 )
      No the next version will be to replace it with your own content. "Evil Ex just fell into a combine and used to fertilize your pumpkins in Farmville!" (Prehistoric Internet community The Well had the "bozofilter" for blocking annoyances, and "Bozo2" for overwriting them with humorous replacement content. They really were pioneering in alot of ways.)
  • by HopefulIntern ( 1759406 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @09:26AM (#32886204)
    I don't wanna erase her. I just wanna stalk her more thoroughly. Is it open source? Can I just place a '!' somewhere and reverse the effect?
    • by ascari ( 1400977 )

      place a '!' somewhere and reverse the effect?

      Wonder how long will it be before somebody does precisely that to FaceBook's new panic button?

      • by T7g ( 725446 )
        About seven years ago while I was dating my ex (whom left me for my other ex and did not include me in the fun) I made a similar program that worked as an AIM proxy- it would pass all messages except those that contained regex matched data. So whenever my ex tried to send a message like "Are you coming over?" to my then current girlfriend in an attempt to work her lesbian magic, the proxy would just drop the packet. I never actually used it on them, but I thought the proof of concept was funny enough. I
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shikaisi ( 1816846 )
      If this is configurable, there are truly a myriad applications. Right-wing Republican? ... just erase Obama from your world. Dutch football fan? ... pretend Spain never existed. Global warming denialist? ... evidence not a problem. Custom-made paradise beckons. The marketing possibilities are endless.
      • by JanneM ( 7445 )

        "The marketing possibilities are endless."

        As are the anti-marketing possibilities.

        Don't like Coca-Cola or Pepsi? Gone. Apple's turtlenecky hipness is getting cloying? Never hear of them or their fanboys again.

        And of course, if you're one of the less morally scrupulous companies out there (as in, pretty much all of them), it could be very tempting to have a botnet provider silently install a filter that removes any trace of your competition on a few million computers out there.

      • Right-wing Republican? ... just erase Obama from your world.

        That seems to pretty much be the opposite of what a conservative or a libertarian wants. After all, they observe the realities of the world and deal with them while the progressives like to implement their own idealistic policies, regardless of the consequences.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by hoggoth ( 414195 )

          He didn't say conservative or libertarian. He said right-wing Republican. The nut jobs currently running (ruining?) the Republican party don't have much in common with conservatives from, say the Barry Goldwater era.

          The current Republican party is purchasing votes from an extremist religion while demonizing a different extremist religion.
          All very similar to the current Democratic party who is purchasing votes from the poor, disenfranchised minorities and immigrants.

          No matter which party wins, guess who ends

          • by bsDaemon ( 87307 )

            "Extremeism in defense of liberty is no vice" -- Barry Goldwater. Even Nixon was too ashamed to be associated with Goldwater. And for all the under-handed stupidity that Nixon engaged in, he did open up trade with China and get us out of Vietnam where as LBJ just wanted to keep escalating the war. On the other hand, Goldwater was the one who said "you don't have to be straight to shoot straight".

            JFK was all about pushing the best and brightest to succeed for the good of the nation, but little brother Ted

            • by hoggoth ( 414195 )

              I'm on board.
              Next presidential election I am writing in "the undead corpse of Andrew Jackson."

            • No Child Left Behind . . . is perhaps one of the stupidest pieces of legislation ever conceived

              What makes you say that? I had some teacher friends who were complaining about it, and they said it was unfair to rate a teacher's performance by the performance of their students on a standardized test. And they complained that the testing was not a fair reflection of the quality of education received. I'm sorry, but when you make your living literally determining students futures by judging their performance

              • by bsDaemon ( 87307 )

                I just think resources should be distributed in such a way as that the students who are going to make better use of them get first dibs. AP and Honors classes should get first crack and shouldn't have to have their time wasted by putting remedial kids in their classes to suck up the teacher's time and attention.

                • It sounds like you object to it because of it's name (because you want to leave some children behind) rather than it's content. The bill holds schools accountable for the performance of their students, with the goal being removing federal funding from failing schools (so that it can be given to schools that achieve results). It isn't a mandate specifically for the performance of individual students (though it's name implies that).
                  • by bsDaemon ( 87307 )

                    There is a difference between wanting to leave some children behind and wanting to just call a spade a spade. Some kids don't care. Some kids aren't able to "get it." Not everyone is created equal. Perhaps morally equal, but not mathematically equivalent. I dunno, frankly I'd just as soon stay out of it. My mother's a high school teacher (undergrad from an ivy in Romance languages with a concentration in French and Italian; masters in Spanish; teaches Spanish 4 and 5, with the AP classes) so most of w

                    • I'm starting to get a better understanding of our disagreement. NCLB does not actually make any effort to leave no children behind. The entire bill is designed solely to shut down failing schools by eliminating funding.

                      You really shouldn't listen to a teacher about it (apologies if she is your mother), because that would be like listening to a police officer's opinion of internal affairs. No one believes they should be held accountable for their performance, because they know that a lot of it is out of t

          • Q:

            guess who ends up paying the bill for these purchases?

            A: YOU!! ah where would we be wid out da white man

    • Indeed.

      $foo = " = $NameOfEx";
      $foo =~ s/=/!=/;

      Nope, I can't write Perl and just copied this from an instructional website. What of it?
    • by gfilion ( 80497 )
      I once wanted to write a perl script that would go to my ex's facebook profile and email me when something was posted or she commented something. But I was too lazy to write the darn script so I decided to meet new people...
    • Well, it IS in fact an “automated religion”. Or in other words: An automated distortion of reality, twisted to repress something you can’t stand. Your own little North Korea / China. Your own little schizophrenia.

      True to the popular motto to never ever face your fears, but always run away from them, ’till the end on time, no matter what the costs (in freedom) may be.

      Face it, everything your ex loved will still remember you of her. You can not run away from it all, and still live a no

  • What if your ex-girlfriend's name is JESS3?

    • by vlm ( 69642 )

      I thought you wrote "Jesus" at first glance. Nice.

      Yeah, my girlfriend's name is, uh .. "world cup" yeah I never want to see any of that waste of time again.

  • This must be a cheaper solution than what they doing now!
  • reminds me that a lot of people are living in fantasies completely cut off from reality.

  • that gives worms to ex-girlfriends.
    • The plugin is called a knife, and you'll have to wait a bit for the worms to appear... Not speaking of personal experience, of course.
      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by zish ( 174783 )
        Knife would take too long to learn how to do correctly. Remember, the goal is only worms. Poking a hole in the security layer only invites other forms of malware to intrude. The plugin needs to make use of an already available connector or API (Aperture Pervasion Interface).
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Culture20 ( 968837 )

      that gives worms to ex-girlfriends.

      Make sure you think about all possible meanings of that sentence before you make your genie-wish.

      • by zish ( 174783 )
        I did.
        I stand by my aspirations (by all definitions. You can look 'em up in your Funk and Wagnalls.).
    • I am a braincandy lover too!
  • Can we have options to block annoying public figures without having to type in all their names? Like an "every guest who was ever on fox news" button would be nice for me.

  • And for Slashdot, the internet looked the same...

  • Software company JESS3 announces service providing lists of available women for sale. Using the blocklists provided by their Ex-Blocker software, they have amassed lists of recently single women and are making them available to you for a low, low price!
    • Obviously this is for *women*, not men, otherwise why would they mention the possibility of an ex getting elected!?!?

      Plus, moving on...? That's not how we roll.

  • That's great, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LSD-OBS ( 183415 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @10:19AM (#32886880)

    won't somebody please write a plugin that strips all that horrific fucking waste of space we all know as "Urchin" from all URLs? I want something thorough. It must strip all that "&utm_source=xxx&utm_campaign=xxx" etc off every link rendered in the html, and off every URL pasted into the browser, and everything copied into the clipboard. It's not that I fundamentally hate being tracked (well, I do, but...), it's just that when you have a URL consisting of 200 chars, 150 of which are Urchin tracking bullshit, you know YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. The necessary information could easily be stored in a single GUID, with a bit of forethought.

    In case you're wondering, yes, Urchin and I were an item until she ate my last Rolo, punched my mom and ran away with my siamese twin sibling.

    • It's not a browser plug-in but otherwise, Privoxy [privoxy.org] is your friend. Quoting from their home page:
      "Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. It has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks."
      Enjoy.

  • Hey, kdawson: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 )
    PLONK! [wikipedia.org]
  • Facial recognition? I suppose they could tune it with old photos and count false positives as positives.
  • If only it could be /kickandban. Take that bitch, no more internet for you.
  • by pinkushun ( 1467193 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @11:22AM (#32887986) Journal

    While preaching anti-censorship at the same time. Think about it. The best you can do about ex'es is to forget they exist. Mental programming is much more effective than a browser plugin :P

    • You're a hypocrite if you think this is cool while preaching anti-censorship at the same time.

      Completely wrong. If you defend personal liberty, you defend the right to censor yourself. The problem is forcing that on to others.

      In fact, that's what anti-internet censorship people say: if you don't want to see porn or whatever, instal a filter on your PC - don't try to filter everyone. This is exactly the same thing.

      I wouldn't do it, but it's not hypocrisy in any way.

    • by jdgeorge ( 18767 )

      Censorship, as people object to it, is when someone else prevents you from seeing something they don't want you to see.
      This browser tool, by contrast, allows YOU to choose things you don't want to see on the Internet.

      So no, this is not hypocrisy. It's only censorship in the sense that choosing not to look at something is censoring your vision.

      • by JSBiff ( 87824 )

        "Censorship, as people object to it, is when someone else prevents you from seeing something they don't want you to see."

        Or, more generally, when someone else (C) prevents or alters communication between two other people (or groups of people, etc).

        If the government stops you from making a political speech, that's censorship.

        If I choose not to spend time listening to you, that's not censorship.

        You have a right to speak, but there's no right to be heard.

    • I can choose to censor myself, as well as filter what I bring in.

      Censorship becomes a problem when others try to forcefully censor me, or filter what I bring in.

      I see no hypocrisy.

    • Everyone makes very good points about it not being hypocrisy, perhaps in some cases this might not be true.

      Example: I can prevent myself from seeing bestial porn, because it goes against my moral values;

      While: blocking updates from my ex, who describes her latest cooking expedition, and causes no objective moral dilemma, just proves that I'm a childish ignorant fool who doesn't want to deal with reality.

      Censorship is preventative if it occurs *before* the said expression is made public, and punitive *after*

  • I don't get it.. how is this better than just breaking their ankles and keeping them tied up on a bed? They can't get elected if they can't run. (Get it?) Plus they'll probably fall in love with you all over again while you nurse them back to health. Win-win.

  • That's cool and all, but what I really want is a way to block certain sites and content from search results and "delink" them from pages. For Google it would be a maintained list of -site: switches, and for general sites it would be the removal of the anchor tag when targeting a site in the same list of sites. Probably a Grease Monkey script would be the easiest route, but I'm better at making Slashdot comments than I am at making scripts, so here I am.

  • We just need a universal cookie that's sent to all websites. It would say something like:

    The current user has had all memories of <ex's name> removed from their memory.

    Please do not mention this person.

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

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