Slashdot Mirror
FTC Shuts Down 'Pop-Up Trapping' Sites
Masem writes: "The FTC today ordered the shutdown of 5,500 sites owned by John Zuccarini, all of them the so-called 'typo' sites that common mis-entered URLs for popular sites (such as Annakurnikova.com); when the user visits these sites, their back button behavior in most popular browsers is modified as to open multiple pop-ups featuring ads for adult entertainment and gambling sites when pressed, and uses other technology to basically 'trap' the browser until the entire application has to be closed. While some sites are still operating, the FTC is going to take this matter to court, which may decide exactly how much control a web site can take over the end browser using JavaScript and ActiveX. CNet has the full story." Le Marteau contributes a link to the same story at the Washington Post.
I can know go back to browsing porn at work without the fear of getting caught.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
'nuf said
What about all the Porn sites that do this... I sure could use the FCC's help there :)
Well, it is a start I guess...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
What gets me is not that someone registered those names and cybersquatted (I'm all for that), but that this kind of annoyance (popup Spam) is actually clicked through and these Casinos, fake/genuine Viagra, etc. sites make any money at all.
Are you the one clicking on them?
Blah blah blah... "IE sucks cuz I can turn off popups in Moz..."
Finally, a practical use for the FCC...Thank God. This is one of the few times where a little government intervention wouldn't hurt.
Try explaining to your boss why the firewall detected all these adult site alerts when all you were trying to do was look for Dana Bourgouis guitars...
Or your wife/girlfriend for that matter.
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
And I thought X-10 was bad!
This type of advertising only frustrates users and creates animosity between advertiser and potential customer. This is an obvious and sometimes extreme nuisance, having to shut down your broweser at times!
Alienating your audience is not a good business practice.
I like fire ants. They are very spicy!
This was the federal trade commission, not the Federal Communication Commission.
I was curious when they became involved with net traffic.
As much as I hate popups like that, government regulation of such is even worse. Also, what can they do about overseas sites? Are they going to try and put it under the same controls as overseas TV broadcasts?
The proper way to fix this is to fix the browsers so they don't allow this to happen.
FCC, stay the hell out of the net.
Hey, give the guy a break, he's trying. He closes down most of his sites, but whenever he hits the "back" button they all start up again. Those damn javascript-based admin tools...
Hope this will include the "Neverending popup", where you point to a site that popups a copy of itself, which popups a copy of itself, which popups a copy of itself...
I think the troll link "comp-u-geek.com" (DON'T GO THERE!) does that...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
what about all the non-typo sites that exist? Well, how about using the no-popup feature of mozilla/netscape 6.x and dump the ie browser!
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
er, I mean Zuccarini.
.. no scratch that, there's a night and day difference between registering typo sites and displaying a pile of non-porn ads, and registering those sites and trapping the user in a net where they can't get out and displaying pornography to them for the sole intent of making a buck. especially when said users could be children or people who find pornography offensive.
But seriously. There's a fine line between
I've seen a few sites who grab a typo site and just use it to promote their own (not indecent) site, but also provide a link on their site to the site that "you might have wanted" instead. I think that's fair enough, no big harm there, but to intentionally trap people. Wow. I never thought I'd be praising government intervention on the internet...
If God gave us curiosity
One thing that surprised me is that this slime ball has been sued for this before and lost 57 cases tied to 200 domain names and been fined $800,000 to $1,000,000. And he's still doing it. The only reason he would still be doing this is if it is profitable, above and beyond court costs and fines.
Who is falling for all this and patronizing the sites that trap you like this?
Even though I'm sure we all had good intentions (if not complete thoughlessness) when all these cool features were added to JavaScript. But really, isn't it time that this gets fixed at the Browser end? I cannot think of *any* good reason for browsers to allow JavaScript to modify how buttons like Back and Close opperate without confirmation by the user. (it would also be trivial to apply a reasonable limit, like say 3, to pop-up windows). Microsoft and Netscape should both be *really* embarrassed that this issue is being addressed by the governent and potential legislation before they've even had a chance to suggest ways of fixing the situation.
This is a client-side browser issue. If we had a competative browser market, someone might find it useful to "innovate" a feature into the browser to disable popups, or cue up the popups and let the user decide whether to let them fire.
Was it Konquerer that put a similar feature into their browser? If so, big huge kudos to them.
Regardless, I don't see Microsoft champing at the bit to reduce end-user annoyance over this, and I'm surprised, because I can't imagine how the IE team can browse the web without getting fed up with that crap and saying "fsck (or maybe chkdsk) it! I'm going to "innovate" a way to stop this!".
- StaticLimit
this shouldnt' fall under the jurisdiction of the fcc?
I thought the FCC was there to regulate certain things... like radio, and television (as it's broadcast, and involves many public concessions to work, right-of-way, etc).
How can they dicatate what a website can do? Sheesh.
Wheres he hosting all these sites?
Where is he buying his domains from?
What OS is he using?
Sounds like alot of work for popup sites, he must be making damn good money after lawsuits.
Bitching aside, this decision is a Good Thing. It forces people who deliberately break something to think again. This might not be terribly popular, but who cares. This decision will do more to stop terrorism on the Internet than all the marketroid sponsored carp ever will. It will genuinely have a positive impact on how the Internet is seen and used. And that may be the best thing that has happened in a VERY long time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Namely, You are connecting to THEIR machine.
Mail server administrators block spam because they are using their resources, why can't these people claim the same? After all, you're using THEIR resources, shouldnt they have the right to send any data on a connection that YOU initiated? (Though I realize you might not have intentionally made that connection; they can be sneaky, but the point remains.)
I just don't like regulation, If it's bad and wrong, it's the clients job to work with the received data. But noone's blaming Microsoft, Netscape, Mozilla, or Konq (and you really can't blame the last 2, they're implementing things to take care of this junk).
Target a solution, rather than the cause and punishment.
That's just my view.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
I wonder if this would be considered as terrorism in Ashcroft's proposed law?
So people use scripting for imaginative ways that nobody had expected. Then people start complaining. Hello!!!! New and unexpected uses are what scripting are all about. To be programmable means that things will be asked that you hadn't anticipated. (Otherwise, there is no need to program them.) Therefore you have to expect abuses when you introduce such a technology. Scripting engines do not belong in browsers, mail clients, news clients, and so on. It was plain irresponsibility for Microsoft, Netscape, and the others to do this to their products. Years ago I saw the coming security nightmare that we live in today. It arose from the "browser wars" between IE and Netscape. This functionality wasn't about making websites better, it was about trying to have a gimmick feature that the other didn't have. This gold-plating not only lead to shoddy implementations, but bloated browsers, bloated websites, and immeasureable amounts of wasted bandwidth.
Now that Netscape is dead, the problems unfortunately remain. Browsers shouldn't have scripting embedded in them, period. If you like scripting, then you have to expect and put up with this crap. There's no way to legislate people to stop doing things like this.
The only way to stop them is to disable scripting on your browser. The more flexibility a program has, the less secure it is. Scripting adds almost no value to websites, and is now just a tool of marketers, used more against you than for you. They track you with it. They take over your web experience with it. They keep tabs on what you're doing... and sometimes even take over your machine when flaws are discovered and exploited. I have serious problems with other people running their code on my machine, and therefore disable all scripting.
Consequantly, I don't every seem to have any problems with pop-up windows, pop-under windows, "trapped" browsers, infinite-loop "back" buttons, etc.
Turn off scripting. Encourage websites to stop using it. The web is full of more than enough bloated crap already. While you're at it, get rid of flash, and all the rest of the plugins.
My aunt is furious about when her 6 year old child accidently does a typo and porn sites pop up everywhere. Perhaps if this stops, it will lessen the demand for filtering software. Filtering software, IMHO, is very bad; definately the worse of two evils. At least shutting down a web site could possibly have a court process attached to it...
I find it pretty amazing that some people, after having their browser assaulted with annoying pop-ups, go on to actually buy things from these merchants. I guess spammers and phone salesman make money too, but I find this equally strange. I would hope this sort of thing would fix itself through consumer pressure.
-Dave
This is a great thing. The FTC protects people from fraud and other illegal business practices. That is what they are doing in this instance. The FCC regulates the airwaves, television, and so forth.
The government isn't "getting involved in the internet" in any new creative way. They are just protecting consumers (us) from fraudulent illegal business practices
Next time get the FCC FTC thing correct before you post, it completely changes the context of the article.
I can get a warning when I enter or leave an ssl session if I want it.
I can get a warning when I accept cookies if I want it.
I can even get a warning when I submit a form if I want it.
All of these are fairly trivial run-of-the-mill type web actions, but something as annoying & intrusive as creating pop-ups and altering my browsers history list cannot be disabled. When oh when are we going to see the ability to disable pop-ups & other intrusive/obnoxious script actions like this?
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
looking for a bug in some Javascript (we maintain
our own web browser), and after delving down
through the deliberately obfuscated javascript
code, it became obvious what it was trying to do:
it went through all links in the document, attaching
a javascript "front-end" to each link that did an http GET request
informing the remote site what had been clicked on,
before actually following the link. the technique
used seemed fairly dodgy (the request was purporting
to be for a non-displayed image), but it's interesting
to see what a fairly reputable site is prepared
to do in order to get as much information off you as possible (without your knowledge).
how reasonable is that? i don't like it, but is that sort
of subterfuge the kind of thing we'd like to stop too?
[PS. apologies if this appears twice - it looked like
had rejected the previous ones; and then the whole
server seemed to crash: what was going on there then?]
more wasted seconds, don't mind me
Edith Keeler Must Die
Don't think it's available for anything other than OS X, but Omniweb has great javascript control. There is actually a setting to not execute a pop-up window unless it is from within the domain of the website you are at. Very slick, haven't seen an X-10 ad in a long time. Plus it has some sweet cookie handling options, like accept but don't save. (This may be old news on other browsers, but I've been stuck with IE for a long time.)
Only downside is I can't do my banking with it, but other than that it's the perfect browser for me.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
I noticed in the article that the guy had 'at least 63' trademark infringement lawsuits filed against him last year, 53 of which he lost.
:->
Maybe if he's lucky Canter & Siegel will represent him.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
My bad as much as theirs.
Having the FTC do this is an entirely different matter.... it makes much more sense.
I wonder if I can sue a website operator for changing my homepage without my knowledge while visiting the operators site?
This topic should clarify a lot of the hypocrisy among the /. crowd; What's *your* opinion on this issue? And how does that opinion compare to, say, what you would feel about the court shutting down your anti-Microsoft site?
Got Rhinos?
In an ironic twist of fate, when Zuccarini attempted to take down his 5500 sites, 72,296 new sites were instantly spawned. When he tried to remove those, 9,375,012 more were created. The FTC suggests he reinstall brain 1.0
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
For me this is wonderful news.
Since there are some days when I can't even spell my own name correctly this will help me out a lot. I know you've been there too. Too much alcohol, not enough sleep, and the caffine is taking its sweet time to kick in.
Now if they'd only come out with spell-check for the location bar in my browser I'd be set!
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Namely, You are connecting to THEIR machine.
Mail server administrators block spam because they are using their resources, why can't these people claim the same? After all, you're using THEIR resources, shouldnt they have the right to send any data on a connection that YOU initiated?
No.
If I open cnn.com, I know what to expect when I get there, news. If my little sister tries to open up Britney Spears' webpage for info on Britney Spears, and lands in this guy's javascript porn-ad trap, not only is it a federal crime (she's 8 years old), but my little sister did not initiate the connection expecting the deluge of porn advertisements.
By the same token, Microsoft doesn't have the right to wipe my linux partition every time I visit their update site to patch winME.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
A spam message wastes some of my bandwidth and a few seconds of my time. A "hydra" pop-up ad wastes some of my bandwidth and more than a few seconds of my time. The fact that I posted my e-mail address on my web site does not give you permission to use my resources to market to me. Clicking a link at a TGP (list of porn galleries) must imply a little more consent, because I obviously put up with banner ads, but I don't see why it should imply any more consent than "you may display things in this browser window". Not "you may open new browser windows or otherwise make it difficult for me to leave your site".
We deal with spam by first by black-holing rogue networks, then through government regulation, and perhaps occasionally through international pressure. Why are we skipping straight to government regulation for pop-up ads, rather than trying the black-hole approach first?
The shareholder is always right.
It's difficult to draw the distinction without getting into questions of intent, and that's dangerous territory. In short, be careful what you ask for when talking about typo sites.
It's good to see that the FTC isn't totally out to lunch under the Bush administration. Usually, the FTC takes wimpy actions like asking somebody to cease and desist what they're doing. This is an unusually aggressive response.
How much control should a web site have over the user's browser? As much as the user gives it, of course! Now, even in brain-dead browsers like IE there are zones, where you can simply say "If i don't know this domain, don't give it full control." The default of giving away user control is admittedly unfortunate... but it is the user, by choosing the software, that is giving the site, explicitly, this freedom.
Yes, explicitly. I have installed a piece of software which has no purpose other than to let a web site control my browser... and now controlling my browser is illegal? Huh? If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't have installed the software...
I've had this sig for three days.
He's made $800,000 - $1,000,000 from these sites, which the FTC would like to take away. It does not say he's been fined for that much. Also, he lost 53 of the cases not 57, it doesn't say if he was fined beyond losing the domain names. Check your facts!
you can do endtask from ctrl alt delete, but its a pain in the ass, as you still have to kill individual windows.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
When you backclick or close, the next site(s) will attempt to pop up, but no further code will be loaded and hence the hell will eventually end.
I always click "work offline" before trying to exit or back out of any of these questionable sites now BEFORE the cascading crap starts...
Okay - I'll probally get flammed for this. But if you are using Internet Explorer you can start up IE with the -new command and have each browser open in a seperate process. That way, your main browser won't lock up or be forced to 'end task' if your popup windows get out of control.
OmniWeb for OSX solves this with a checkbox labeled:
"Allow Pop-Up Windows Only When Link is Clicked On" (or something similar)
Which means, it'll only pop up a window if and only if you click on something deliberately.
Nice. Very, very nice.
I've only been using Mozilla for a week or so, but I'm impressed, and imagine this is not a problem. Featurs such as right click, "block this image" to kill add.doubleclick.whatnot are very cool. It looks good and works great. Java is back on and I don't fear it will be able to replace system files. Blocking images is tricky, but I've been seeing fewer adverts and more real content. Bassed on that, I imagine the fix is already in and this is an M$ specific problem.
That makes the implications worse. Does this mean that anything that makes MSIE do unexpected things can be shut down by the Feds? As M$ careens further and further into it's own little propriatory world, who's to say they won't put up yet more "standards" that make innocent sites look bad to M$ users, who then pull their hair out and curse the site. Is this an old pattern emerging again?!
I've heard that M$'s crappy software was powerful, but this is too much.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The implicit contract between web-user and web-server operator is that the latter takes control of the browser for the purpose of showing the former something that he or she may conceivably want to see. Ignoring this contract is an abuse. What is wrong in a government agency tracking and prosecuting abuse?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
The only detail I'm curious to know about this whole thing is... why the fsck did Netscrape and Mafiasoft put these alleged "features" into their defective browsers in the first place?! A back button should do what it says, namely, go BACK, not open 6.02x10^28 pr0n windows!
Shameless plug: I just use Opera. It costs money, which I gladly paid, because it actually WORKS unlike the previously mentioned excuses for browsers! Version 5.12 is great, as nearly all sites work the same as on the defective browsers--this includes online banking and bill-paying that didn't previously work with version 4.
And even if you don't use Opera... Friends don't let friends use Mafiasoft products!
I've heard that some people pay to be abused, humiliated and embarassed. What better way to get all of that than to have your six year old daughter open one of these sites in front of your wife who never thought well of that internet thingy?
It's a joke. I hate spam, porn and this Zuchinni loser.
Still, for reasons posted above, I worry about this shutdown. Should the govenment shutdown web sites that simply take advantage of a crummy browser on a single crappy OS, and thus give official government protection to those products?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
iCab has given users amazing control over JS for ages (and of course from the GUI. If you don't want a web site to:
access the referer
open new windows
move windows
touch the toolbar
write in the status line
create cookies
ask for cookies
access history
etc
You can prevent them from doing it with the click of a button. You can apply the settings to all web pages and choose sites where the filters won't be applied.
You can even decide what type of Javascript will be executed by turning on/off:
JavaScript 1.0
JavaScript 1.1
JavaScript 1.2
JavaScript 1.3
JavaScript 1.4
JavaScript 1.5
JScript
among many, many other things
It must be one of the most configurable browsers out there.
For general browsing it's extremely fast, small and flexible and cannot be beat at saving web archives. One word of warning though. It feels like a finished browser but is still in Preview. Make sure you don't have any duplicated Text encoders on your system.
For OS X iCab is still being primed. OmniWeb however, will give you enough control over popups.
The defendents argument might be taken from the same precedent which allows "freedom of speech" to include the invasiveness of phone solicitation, granted the phone solicitation doesn't automatically cause your phone to ring over and over until you listen to the message all the way through (a la Homer's Happy Dude scam in the Simpsons), but constitutionally, where does is the line drawn between the right of someone to make a sales pitch to someone who breaks into your house and harrangues you until feign death?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Use Alt-F4 instead. I remember it always works faster than popups pop up.
If X10 wants their ads to get out there, maybe those of us with some spare time on our systems hands can devote it to a script that constantly downloads their advertisements. With enough people doing it, their bandwidth costs may finally outstrip their sales enough that they have to pull the web ads.
Not a DoS or anything. Just pulling the ads repeatedly to drive up their bandwidth. Maybe we can take them from 14th place to first for a bit without giving them a dime to cover it.
People should be annoyed by popup trojan links and traps until they download AdShield for IE or use a browser like Konqueror that stops this crap out of the box. Microsoft should have added this to IE 6 but they are a bunch of lazy monopolistic twits. Netscape should have too but they are circling the bowl so I'll cut them some slack. I E is better because it lets you make the menus toolbar, and address bar go on one line at the top and lets you use more screen for viewing the page.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For those who still endure the drudgery of Winblows at work or home, go to www.panicware.com and get the Pop-Up Stopper. Works great, non-intrusive, can be disabled with a quick double-click on the tray icon.
-- United States Supreme Court, Rowan vs. U.S. Post Office, 1970
how to invest, a novice's guide
Now that Netscape is dead, the problems unfortunately remain. Browsers shouldn't have scripting embedded in them, period. If you like scripting, then you have to expect and put up with this crap. There's no way to legislate people to stop doing things like this.
...
No, there is a way to legislate this. We programmers just don't want to admit that the language is wrong, that we may be forced, due to unintended consequences, to amend the Javascript code.
And this is something the FCC or FTC could require be fixed, just as they can change the standards for HDTV (FCC due to communications standards, FTC due to trade implications).
The only way to stop them is to disable scripting on your browser. The more flexibility a program has, the less secure it is. Scripting adds almost no value to websites, and is now just a tool of marketers, used more against you than for you. They track you with it. They take over your web experience with it. They keep tabs on what you're doing... and sometimes even take over your machine when flaws are discovered and exploited. I have serious problems with other people running their code on my machine, and therefore disable all scripting.
Consequantly, I don't every seem to have any problems with pop-up windows, pop-under windows, "trapped" browsers, infinite-loop "back" buttons, etc.
Turn off scripting. Encourage websites to stop using it. The web is full of more than enough bloated crap already. While you're at it, get rid of flash, and all the rest of the plugins.
I do this too, but yahoo, slashdot, and cNet all try to pop up Javascript - it's boring clicking "No" each time, but a lot better knowing they can't run the code on my PC. And I don't get to choose which browser I use at work, or the default settings
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I can't say this is good. Noone likes those popup ads that lock you in, and do other unethical things. However, I dont think it's good for the government, or anyone, to say it's illegal/disallowed.
Like killing people, blowing up things, or taking your PC from your home while you're at school?
Namely, You are connecting to THEIR machine.
Mail server administrators block spam because they are using their resources, why can't these people claim the same? After all, you're using THEIR resources, shouldnt they have the right to send any data on a connection that YOU initiated? (Though I realize you might not have intentionally made that connection; they can be sneaky, but the point remains.)
I just don't like regulation, If it's bad and wrong, it's the clients job to work with the received data. But noone's blaming Microsoft, Netscape, Mozilla, or Konq (and you really can't blame the last 2, they're implementing things to take care of this junk).
Target a solution, rather than the cause and punishment.
Wrong. Some people send spam with http get requests to request an image, then use the request to track who responded and what server it was. I did not consent to this.
Basically, it comes down to privacy. I have the right to shoot intruders in my home with a gun. I should be able to do the same to the CEO and execs of the spam firms that use such tricks.
After all, it's home invasion, no?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
This is gonna really hurt the FreeBSD counts on next months Netcraft report.
Netcraft page for CWIE LLC
There should be no need for user-visible options for this sort of preference: the browser should be secure against such annoyances by default.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
They don't like what a piece of code does, so they ban it.
I can't believe people are supporting moves to dictate what you are or are not allowed to express in a piece of code.
This functionality is, i'm sure, in the W3C standard for Javascript, so criminilizing this is pretty stupid.
Now, if your browser is engineered so poorly that it allows you no control over this behaviour - i.e. a site author is free to mess up your web browsing experience, shouldn't you ask the manufacturer of that browser to do something about it?
Don't restrict this guy from publishing anything he wants to on the web. The control over whether to view that content should be in the user's hands.
I know that M$ etc. would love to turn the web into a heavily regulated, TV-like environment where most content is approved and published by a few mega-corps, with government regulations on what is or is not acceptable, but that idea makes me sick to the stomach.
i mean, how hard would it be to have a preference setting for 'ask me before allowing javascript to open a new window'? Give the user a choice, don't make it a crime to write this type of application (for which there are many perfectly legitimate uses)
Making rules for what types of applications you may or may not publish on the web is surely a free speech issue.
'Sorry, window.open() is now a federal crime.' doesn't cut it with me.
The problem is with the tools that web browsers expose to site developers. The site developers should be free to put any tags they like up on the web.
This is why web browsers are free to ignore markup they do not support.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
POPUP KILLER, sadly afaik win32 only but it works wonders on those annoying pop ups and pop unders
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Now I wish the feds would do something to stop the pop up adds that interupt my TV shows every 10 minutes. I hate those.
Because a bunch of morons thought that the web had to look like television, they put ActiveX, VBScript, Javascript, Flash and other crap into browsers and plug-ins. This, not surprisingly, lead to many vulnerabilities like the one exploited here. (Who is the genius that decided that the "Back" button should be able to be redefined by any website that the user viewed?) If the web simply displayed pictures and text, we would not have this idiotic problem. Lest you laugh, that's what books and newspapers have done for centuries and they still seem mighty useful and popular.
We have seen this overcomplexity lead to many problems. Look at Microsoft Outlook: some group of idiots decided that displaying text, or even pictures, was not enough. So they added Visual BASIC scripting to it. And HTML that you can't turn off. Suddenly any nitwit could create an e-mail Trojan horse that emailed itself to every person in the address book. Or Outlook could display some web site in the preview window, play annoying music, or provide confirmation to a spammer that you received and saw his message.
It's time that we started demanding robust, secure applications even if it means that web sites won't be able to display animated, dancing piglets.
Okay, let's say that the moderation system exists solely to improve the browsing experience of those who do so at +1 or higher. What then is the point of reducing the karma of innocent victims of a site bug?
If someone makes what would have been an up-moderated comment if it had landed in the story the commenter submitted the comment to, then suposedly this is a person one would want in the pool of potential moderators.
What if this one down-modding is the only one they get, and the only reason they aren't given mod points? Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Anyways, the point is:
Don't blame the patent office. Blame the courts or blame the applicant, where appropriate.
Don't even necessarily blame the "system". Realize that ALL systems have problems, the question is whether our system itself is relatively optimal. I believe that if you take a few steps back, you'll see that the system, the way it is today, is well thought out and makes a lot of sense. [FYI, it works too!]
Think about it: Do you really want or think it makes sense to put all the hurdles up front? Consider how costly it is to decipher the various claims, prior art, research, and so on. It's simply unrealistic. Do you really want to give some gov't bureaucrat that kind of power if you're an inventor? Do you want to give up your ability to argue your case OR, alternatively, allow potential problems to resolve themselves.
If every IE window is a separate process (and I have that option selected), why is it when I'm trying to do something useful like find information on a particular 2 cycle engine carburetor or an older Compaq monitor vertical scan circuit or whatever, and I've got several pages that I want to see open, if one causes IE to choke, it closes everything?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
An important technical point: it sounds like the Back button was not actually reprogrammed to perform a different action. Rather, an onUnLoad event handler was specified in the BODY tag to execute a bit of JavaScript code when the window was closed. There are legitimate uses for this that are not annoying, although offhand I can't think of any (probably cleaning up things that were previously set, perhaps on a site that is designed to use multiple small windows for some special purpose).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Registering typos is a smart, good thing (regradless of what you think =) but "trapping" is just plain WRONG.
I am pleassed to see this type of thing, assuming it actually gets implemented with some knowledge and thought.
Imagine surfing pr0n without holding your fingers poised over Alt-F4!
Oh, and to they guy who (anon) responded to my sig about being dyslexic as "we used to call you idiots who couldn't spell", I think we used to call folks like your mom "Dumb bitches who couldn't afford abortions"
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
One of his sites, per the cnet story, was cartoonnetwork.com.
It doesn't take a genius to figure that a substantial percentage of the visitors to this site will be children. To deliberately expose children to porn is criminal.
I strongly oppose the "but its for the children" tack as justification for shutting things down, but when you blatantly target them like this, you've wandered into extremely dangerous territory.
Personally, I don't allow activex, java, etc to run, except on sites I explicitly trust, but the vast majority of people either aren't aware or aren't technically savvy enough to do these things. There's a reason AOL is the number 1 isp. (I know I'm preaching to the choir)
Anyway, this idiot is no better than a spammer, and deserves the same treatment.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
The guy is setting out to deceive the unwary. Do you have a civil right to deceive people? Of course people decieve people all the time, and some forms of deceit are considered legal (and, equally, some illegal). But there's a big difference between being legal and being a civil right. What it seems to me this is fundamentally about is the right to lie, and as far as I'm concerned that is not a civil right.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Female Prison Rape in NY
It is NOT the code that is banned, it is a particular use of the code that is banned.
This is how DeCSS should have been handled, the code itself should be legal, but using it to make unauthorized copies of DVD's should be illegal.
Using DeCSS to play DVD's or to make copies under "fair use" should be legal, of course.
(sorry for shouting)
The real problem is that Netscape and to a lesser degree Microsoft have been bending over backwards to give full control of the presentation to the content provider, against the original idea of HTML to let the content provider describe the content, and leave the presentation to the user, or the software acting on his behalf.
Such traps are just the absurd symptoms of how control of the users machine have been taken away from the user, and given to the content provider. The real way to combat this is to tranfer control back to the user, and demand content based markup over presentation based markup.
I'm guessing you're running Windows IE.
remember, IE is a part of Windows?
thus, when IE dies, so does Windows. :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
The fact that there are closed source (so to speak) filtering solutions doesn't mean that all filters are bad. False alarms I can live with, him typing in "www.whitehouse.com" and staring at a picture of a woman sucking on a dick is not something I can live with. There's a reason why my wife and I lock the bedroom door when we're uh, 'doing it', there's a reason I don't let him have a subscription to Playboy, there's a reason he doesn't go to bars with me.
There's all kinds of injustices done to children every day. Overexuberant filtering software is pretty far down the list of things we need to address. As I said, when he gets close to being a teenager, we'll talk, but that's 10 years away and no one has the ability to forsee what the 'net experience will be like at that point, anyway. In the meanwhile, he'll get access to disney.com and nickjr.com and that's just about it. (And, of course, here I'll get the flames about how bad Disney-fication is to kids. Actually, my son is really into Scooby-Doo at the moment. I didn't get into it until I was in my early teens. Does that mean he's a child prodigy?)
regulation does work. For example, the streets are not covered with litter and dog poo, and none of my neighbors remodel their appartment during the night. Of course, there are failures and problems, because as you said, the world isn't perfect.
There is no such contract. You speak of a illusion, a ghost, if you will.
An implicit contract exists in every human transaction, and becomes legally binding whenever the courts say so. Of course, judges can and do err. To prevent such "imperfection" your seem to want to to ban human judgement.
Code is speech
Yes, and code also does stuff. That is why it is the business of the courts to decide which speech is protected and in what circumstances. Your all or nothing attitude doesn't fly and never will.
Period. End of story
No, the story just begins, the story of making distinctions and bringing human intelligence to bear on life.
Sooner or later that FTC will shut down a site a majority of people doesnt think is "abusive"
And then someone will appeal the decision and the courts will decide whether the rights of the minority have been somehow inapropriately curtailed. And if the court will judge wrongly, you and me can demonstrate in Washington until we get politicians to appoint smarter judges.
And in the end, it still isn't perfect. Because nothing is, not even the technological shiboleth.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
remember, IE is a part of Windows?
:)
thus, when IE dies, so does Windows.
WHAT are you talking about? If you're on windows 9x then having iexplore.exe go wacky doesn't effect the rest of the processes, just kill all the internet explorer windows. If you're on windows 2000/Xp/NT just kill the root iexplore.exe process and all IE windows will go poof.
what you said makes no sense.
If God gave us curiosity
If every IE window is a separate process
Umm, no, you're confusing explorer windows with internet explorer windows. There is no option to "open every internet explorer window in it's own process". And I don't know why you'd want the "open every explorer window in it's own process" anyways.
Thus you can just kill the root iexplore.exe process and all of the ie windows under that process (i.e. spawned from that site) will die with them. You *cannot* open a new iexplore.exe process from within internet explorer.
If God gave us curiosity
One of his sites, per the cnet story, was cartoonnetwork.com.
I think the cnet story was trying to say he owned a misspelling of cartoonnetwork.com. It took me a few seconds to figure out what that sentence was trying to say, as well. That doesn't change the fact that many of his hits were from children, but it does mean that he didn't get hits from 60% of the people trying to find the cartoon network's web site.
Here's the sentence: "Zuccarini registered many misspellings of popular sites, such as Cartoonnetwork.com, the FTC said, in a bid to draw traffic from sloppy typists."
The shareholder is always right.
Of course we are talking about MS here, so when they say separate process who knows if that means what it would to anybody talking about any other OS. (I mean, what the bleep is a "friendly" URL or error message?)
I've had the problem happen both with windows launched by right-clicking and clicking "Open in new window" and with windows launched by calling iexplore.exe via the Start button menu.
Usually it just murders all the IE windows but not anything else, although if I get trapped in hydra-headed pop-up hell, that'll sometimes lock up the whole machine and require a cold boot.
I do hope that there is a special circle of eternal torment for whoever thought it was a smart idea to give the file manager and the browser the same name.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
what?!
"Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Launch browser windows in a separate process"
I don't have that option. I do have that under explorer as tools, folder options, view, advanced settings, launch folder windows in a seperate process.
(I mean, what the bleep is a "friendly" URL or error message?)
right click, choose "what is this?", and it will explain it to you.
I've had the problem happen both with windows launched by right-clicking and clicking "Open in new window" and with windows launched by calling iexplore.exe via the Start button menu.
right-click and "open in new window" opens in the same process, running another iexplore.exe creates a new process.
if a window goes berserk or crashes or you kill the process, it will only kill all of the windows that were launched from that process... your other iexplore windows will be fine and unharmed.
and unless you're using windows 9x then you can't kill the system by having popup hell with iexplore windows.
I do hope that there is a special circle of eternal torment for whoever thought it was a smart idea to give the file manager and the browser the same name
Huh?
"Internet Explorer" and "Explorer" is not that small of a difference, and what does it matter? They're two seperate names. I don't understand your beef.
If God gave us curiosity
A little late on the reply, but at one point, I read he has 15 misspellings of cartoon network.
I have a couple of friends who are former surfwatch employees, and they were familiar with a many of the porn sites. These sites were absolutely opposed to children visiting them. They do not want kids traffic, as they don't generate revenue, and they do generate parental and political problems.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2