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Your browser blocks pop-ups? Big deal. Now that the main aim of technology companies like Google and Microsoft (both of which just spent billions to buy ad networks) is to get you to look at ads, you're still stuck watching banners that flash and jiggle, messages that suggest something terrible has gone wrong with your machine, overcaffeinated video with obnoxious audio, and animated announcements that plop down over the very material you're trying to read.

Of course, that's in part because you won't pay full freight for stuff you do need--like news. When I wrote more than two decades ago in another magazine with PC in its name that "the main reason for the low cost of most American software--newspapers, magazines, television, radio--is that it's subsidized by advertising," what paid for that statement was the ad next to it.

In that column from an era when software was wildly pricey, I wondered, "Would you use a free Dow Jones analysis package that popped a broker's spiel onto your screen every time you started it up? Would you be willing to have your bank waive its online service charge in exchange for making you watch a couple of dog food commercials?"

"Well, yes," I confidently answered myself back then. "You just might. Someday you might turn on your Tramielovision and tell it, 'Take a letter.' In a dulcet voice, the machine would reply, 'I'll be glad to. But, you know, dictation always seems to go better with a nice cup of Mountain Grown coffee...'"

Okay, I got that part wrong. So far. But I added, "And then you would activate your special third-party 'fast-forward' software, zap the commercial, and get down to your work."

Fast-forward, indeed. Today, ad delivery and ad blocking are an endless cat-and-mouse game. ReplayTV and TiVo have helped consumers zip past TV commercials, but they also begot a profusion of product placements in TV programs and "unskippable" ads in online and on-demand versions of shows.

On the Web, pop-up ads quickly became so oppressive that today you can't even give away a browser that doesn't block them. So advertisers have moved on to new, less easily blocked formats that are every bit as annoying--and improved ad-blocking software has mercifully cropped up to fight back.

I've been spending the past few weeks surfing with the help of a Firefox add-on called Adblock Plus, and the Internet has suddenly become a quieter, more civilized, less commercial place. ABP has dozens of geeky customization options, but the simplest way to use it is to subscribe to a couple of lists that have pretty much figured out what you don't want. The combo of EasyList & EasyElement does a wonderful job of nuking ads and reformatting the rest of the Web page to eliminate the resulting holes.

Eliminating most of the blinky, flashy distractions pays big dividends in how quickly you can navigate Web pages and how rarely they'll bug you. The software isn't perfect--for example, it can shut you out of sites such as Salon.com that insist on your sitting through an ad before proceeding. But you can turn it off temporarily with two clicks on the browser toolbar.

Of course, if everybody used Adblock Plus, publishers (including PC World) would be out of business--until somebody figured out the next escalation. But you know what? If ads annoy you enough to make you install this kind of software, I don't think you're the sort of person the advertisers want to reach anyway.

Contributing Editor Stephen Manes was cohost of PC World's Digital Duo on public TV.