Use this script on Windows machines to fetch a cookie from x10.com that disables the annoying popup ads for 30 days. It's embarrassingly simple but does the job. You have to fetch a new cookie every 30 days so make this a Scheduled Task in Windows to run once a month. Make sure you have the script run as your user ID so the cookie goes to the right place.

Update: Well, they lied. Even though this successfully fetches the cookie, I still get the annoying pop-ups from time to time. It seems to happen less frequently but of course that's subjective so I'm not sure. Rotten scoundrels!

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32::OLE;

#URL to get the cookie
my $x10_url = 
    'http://www.x10.com/home/optout.cgi?DAY=30&PAGE=http://www.x10.com
+/x10ads1.htm';

#gimme an IE
my $ie = Win32::OLE->new('InternetExplorer.Application') 
    or die "Error getting IE instance: " . Win32::OLE->LastError();

#gimme a cookie, not sure about error checking on this
$ie->Navigate($x10_url);

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Fetch a cookie to disable X10 popup ads
by Mr. Muskrat (Canon) on Sep 10, 2002 at 19:39 UTC

    ++
    I had forgotten about the magic cookie.

    I've modified your script slightly RhetTbull. I hope that you don't mind. ;)

    #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32::OLE;

# URL to get the cookie
my $x10_url = 
'http://www.x10.com/home/optout.cgi?DAY=30&PAGE=http://www.x10.com/x10
+ads1.htm';

# Start IE
my $ie = Win32::OLE->new('InternetExplorer.Application') 
    or die "Error getting IE instance: " . Win32::OLE->LastError();

# Show me IE, otherwise I won't know if it worked
$ie->{Visible} = 1;

# Navigate to the URL
$ie->Navigate($x10_url);

# sleep until the page is loaded
do {
    sleep(1);
} until ($ie->{ReadyState} == 4);
$ie->quit;

    [download]

    Anyone care to do it with LWP?

[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks Mr. Muskrat -- I certainly don't mind! I was playing with this after I posted and wondered why sometimes it got the cookie and sometimes it didn't. I didn't realize that Navigate() might return before the page was loaded.
[reply]
Re: Fetch a cookie to disable X10 popup ads
by warthurton (Sexton) on Sep 26, 2002 at 21:41 UTC
    I wish I could do the same with casino-on-net.
[reply]

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