This is a follow-up to the article I'm a Thief!
Late in December 2001, in another Usenet thread on aggravating pop-up advertisements, Bill recommended a way to defeat ads by blocking requests to well-known advertising sites: add entries to your hosts file associating each site's name with IP address 127.0.0.1 (the local loopback address) (see Usenet message <VSvX7.6326$5c4.747571@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>).
The scheme is comparatively impractical and has undesirable side effects:
It doesn't prevent pop-up windows, it merely causes the windows to remain empty--sometimes.
It may have curious effects if there's an HTTP server running on the local host.
Nevertheless, it's notable that Bill's attitude has changed.
Then again, Bill has been known to switch sides numerous times for the sake of perpetuating an argument, and sure enough, it was just a few hours later that he did just that, lecturing us all on the need for Web advertising and the patriotic virtue of willingly downloading ads (see Usenet message <OmLX7.857$%C1.123660@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>). This in spite of his claim that he blocks ads himself. Go figure.
For a collection of more practical solutions to the problem of Web advertising, see this list of resources.