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Distastful Advertising Continues: "Gatoring"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the do-i-taste-arsenic-in-the-water dept.

iforgotmyfirstlogon sent us a link to an article on CNet about Gatoring, a fabulous new advertising technique where advertising buy key words and pop up windows over competitors. The kicker is that this is a byproduct of a commonly installed activex plugin. And its only gonna get worse.

4 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. The GPL cannot work! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    In a real econmic downturn, the "open source" model will fail. Sure, it might be nice for young colledge kids without a family or more importantly without shareholders who respect them to make software source code "available for all", or to have CVS commit priviledge on the port of XXX to architecture ZZZ.

    But I can say from long experience at the the software engineering level and a couple (recent) years mangerial that the idea is asinine. I now manage software development and sales for a cororation with products in use all over the *real* world, and it is obvious that the open source model in no way affects the flow of money in the world economy. It *must* fail.

    The *only* reason a company might choose open source: as a firesale when a vapour-ware dot.com plummets -- out of some perverse desire to be remembered for longer than the bankruptcy cases take to end -- they might license something GPL. No other reasons are valid.

    People say, "What about IBM?" and "What about RedHat?". Grow up and smell the ashes of your dead naivete! IBM does not sell software to any indutry that matters. Granted, If you are using AIX on some bloated hardware you have an investment that some bean counter might be convinced is worth keeping. Not for long!. IBM is trying to find a way *OUT* that looks PC. So they hold a hands with some open source initiative for a while. Just wait and see, IBM won't not be your rallying cry at the end of this year.

    I wont even waste my time with RedHat. People who know anything about the econmics of this real world we live in dont either.

  2. Re:how long will it be... by Big+Brass+Balls · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...before someone decides to "Gator" /. with everyone's favourite picture troll?

    --
    Do I play Hockey?
    What you say!!
  3. Re:It's illegal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's not illegal it's fair use. While you are a corporate loving leftist who thinks freedom to do what you want is bad and corporations should all be exactly the same under heavy government regulation. MOVE TO FRANCE YOU SOCIALIST!!!

  4. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    *BSD is dying