Prince of Pop-ups 543
Ric writes "From the article lead paragraph: 'If you hate pop-up ads, you might blame Brian Shuster. A long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, Shuster recently received a patent for the ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it. And that's just the beginning - Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.'"
I can hear Don Kings Voice (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding. This is one patent holding that I will only object to from the sidelines, and not try to disprove. :-)
Great.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the mass population HATES this idea and in fact people have gone so far to block this technology with software.
This should get intresting...
Popups are similar to telemarketers. Often, the consumer is not intrested in the product. People who disliked this technology came up with devices to block telemarketers and now there is a legislative "do not call" list. It would be pretty hard to have a "do not popup" list. Unless the ISPs stepped in and placed ALL their users and perhaps had to pay a fee to keep the pop ups away.
just my 2 cents worth...
I think he'll find... (Score:5, Insightful)
including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off
I think he'll find that everything can be turned off.
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great.. (Score:4, Insightful)
People throw around phrases like "vote with your wallet" but seldom practice what they preach. Don't like a certain method of advertising? Don't visit those sites.
Same as if (for example) Nickelodeon started running ads for cigarettes and beer during "The Wiggles". Stop watching nickelodeon.
But everyone sits through it, not wanting to be inconvenienced by their principles, and waits for some sort of law to make it alright.
And now we have a billion zillion conflicting laws restricting what we can or cannot do. Bah.
Re:Hooray! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because a fact used to be a fact, doesn't mean it always will be.
This is getting rediculous (Score:1, Insightful)
Think of it as patenting a commercial. Completely absurd.
Re:As good of place as any (Score:4, Insightful)
Good, right?
No, that means they come up with some other really annoying way of forcing you to look at ads.
Re:Excellent!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why?
If a site is going to bombard me with popup ads, or God Forbid audio, then I leave. I haven't found a site yet that is worth the hassle. You won't let me download your stuff unless I use popups? Fine. I will do neither.
Sites can spam me all they want with ads and flashing banners and sound and spyware. I simply won't visit the site again.
I have a problem with this... (Score:4, Insightful)
While it's a clever sort of revenge, it's not very practical. You don't send mail to a person, you send it to a building. If the person gets 'snail mail spammed,' all they have to do is move. The building remains 'spammed' for the next tenant, and the next...
Nope, don't like it, don't like it one bit...
Re:As good of place as any (Score:4, Insightful)
I would imagine this is similar to TV manufacturers not including commercial-blocking features with their TV sets by default. Sure, you can buy equipment to do this, but you have to specifically take that course of action yourself. Commercials, while annoying, are healthy for the TV business, and TV manufacturers cannot destroy this industry without hurting themselves. The feature can exist, but it cannot be included by default.
Microsoft, as the de-facto standard of web browsers, needs to think carefully before swiping out entire features altogether. After all, "window.open" is technically part of the javascript spec, and there are some (though not many
Re:Anyone have this guy's address? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rocket to the face then? That should about cover it.
Re:Hooray! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have a problem with this... (Score:3, Insightful)
In many situations, this is non-trivial. If I am an apartment-dwelling college student, then, sure, moving is no big deal. If I just bought my new $2.5M mansion built off my spam profits, then, for me, moving isn't quite so easy. Same goes for businesses with lots of employees.
Disable javascript. Disable Java. Problem solved. (Score:3, Insightful)
If he wants to force feed me ads - then he better damn well PAY me. And protect himself while walking around in public.
Given that it is your computer, why are you letting him execute hostile code on your computer? I mean, if you're using Explorer (for example) and your security level is set such that pop-up ads are able to execute, aren't you basically allowing pop-up ads?
Now, rational folks will avoid using Explorer because of that annoying dialog box that informs you that "an active-x control on this page could not be loaded" when you turn scripting off, but the same case holds for Netscape. Pop-ups exploit features that you have turned on. Turn them off, and pop-ups cease to work.
I've browsed for years with javascript turned off, and the only time I'm bombarded with crap (the LA Times is a good example of intrusive advertising) is when I temporarily enable JS to do some banking, and forget to turn it off. In IE, I just set the default to have active scripting off for all sites, and add a few "trusted" sites so scripting is enabled selectively for just those sites.
Think about it. Why do certain sites insist on forcing you to use javascript to browse their sites (ie, latimes.com). To make sure you can experience the full "benefit" of their pop-up/pop-under ads. Solution? Boycott these sites.