Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 October 4

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October 4

Word for...

Resolved

What's the word for a patch that includes fixes from all previous patches. For some reason "rollback" came to mind, but that term doesn't make sense in this context. Specifically, I'm looking for a term for a patch version which is the final release prior to the software no longer being supported (which includes latest fixes plus all previous fixes). —Thanks, ~E, aka:71.20.250.51 (talk) 04:00, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

A single package that contains all previous patches could be called a cumulative update. These don't have to precede end-of-life: around here, we package new changes into cumulative updates and incremental updates so users can download exactly and only the bits they need - even if we will continue support for a long time. Nimur (talk) 06:38, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Rollup may be the word you were looking for. I don't know whether anyone other than Microsoft uses that term. I've also heard "cumulative patch". -- BenRG (talk) 06:37, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

That must be where I got confused. I'll go with "cumulative". —Thanks again, ~E, aka:71.20.250.51 (talk) 15:33, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Adblock plus vs Adblock

I'm sure this has been asked before but although I did a search of the archives (for example I found this) I couldn't find an answer to these simple questions:

1. Which do you prefer/use/recommend Adblock or Adblock plus?
2. What happens if you install both Adblock and Ablock plus?

Thanks Contact Basemetal here 06:32, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

(1) This is a reference desk, so we don't offer opinions, but you might find this link useful. (2) It's generally not a good idea to run two apps that are both trying to perform the same function at the same time. What actually happens will depend on many factors, such as what browser you are using.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:30, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

You really need to specify a browser. Chrome and Firefox, at least, have vastly different extension models, and the Chrome and Firefox versions of these extensions probably have little in common except the branding. But I suppose you meant Chrome since that seems to account for the vast majority of AdBlock's users.

I couldn't find any recent comparisons of AdBlock and Adblock Plus's time or memory footprint. Older comparisons are probably meaningless since Chrome used to have no support for content blocking, so ad blockers had to rely on slow or inexact hacks that are now apparently unnecessary. I also didn't find any recent comparisons of their ad-blocking prowess, just some anecdotal comments. I suspect they're similar.

Adblock Plus seems to have a community development model while AdBlock is developed by one guy, if that matters to you. They're both GPLed free software.

Adblock Plus has an "allow acceptable ads" feature. In principle I'm strongly in favor of this since it exerts a selective pressure toward non-stupid ads, while other ad blockers simply act to destroy that whole revenue model while providing nothing to replace it. However there have been accusations that Adblock Plus developers are taking what amounts to protection money from major ad networks in exchange for whitelisting. The page I linked above (which I encourage you to read) says "no one can buy their way onto the whitelist", but that's not precisely a denial that they've accepted money. In short it's a complicated situation and I'm not sure what to think.

If installing them both works at all (which it may well), you would end up with the combined memory footprint and slowdown of both, with little or no increase in ads blocked. I don't think it would be worth it. -- BenRG (talk) 19:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both for your answers. Actually I'm using it with Firefox right now as I'm not using Chrome at all these days but your comments are still valuable as I might go back to Chrome at some point. @Shantavira: of course it is a good thing in principle to stick to facts and to avoid pointless exchanges about opinions that are bound to get nowhere because I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that, say, either chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream is better in some objective way. However there are opinions and there are opinions. When an opinion can be logically and factually argued as in this case I think it's probably better not to ignore off hand requests for opinions. But that's just my opinion :) Contact Basemetal here 19:43, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

AdBlock for Firefox currently has less than 10,000 users, while ABP for Firefox has more than 20,000,000, so I think ABP is a better choice unless you want to alpha/beta test AdBlock. -- BenRG (talk) 06:19, 6 October 2014 (UTC)