Slashdot Mirror
Browser Becomes Billboard
MikeKD writes "Citing a desire to 'enhance the user experience', United Virtualities is 'preparing to introduce a product [called Ooqa Ooqa] that will allow advertisers to automatically change the appearance of Web browsers, usurping some of the functions built into popular browsers...', according to an MSNBC article--and all this supposedly without downloading any additional software. UV says a lot of sweet things about being able to turn it off and allowing the web sites to customize the degree of intrusion (from reverting to normal form when leaving to retaining the rebrand even after leaving), but does anyone think advertisers will restrain themselves? Not I." Friends don't let friends use browsers susceptible to this.
Thank you Mr. Gates, may I have another?
What it does is bad enough, but what it's called is even worse. I think some of these dot com companies might do a little better if they didn't spend all the VC money on crack for the marketing department.. :)
-s
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
So what AOLIM has been doing for two years is now... news?
Silly MSNBC.
There is to much spam out there as it is.
As I am sure the Mozilla team will write a specific patch to disable this slimeware the second it is reported happening on a mozilla install.
Konq would do the same I'm sure...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
wouldn't this be similar to say you're watching friends and while you're watching someone enters your house and paints your television pink, puts a sign on top of your tv that says buy tampax, and replaces your remote with a tampax branded remote?
-
Why would people choose to use these browsers.. 3rd party browsers that are halfway decent like kmeleon have a hardtime getting users, who is going to choose to start using a browser that turns their webbrowsing experience into a clusterfuck of advertising.
If this new thing doesn't have built in p2p mp3 stealing or something, there will be no incentive for people to use it over IE.
Is this going to affect my Bonzi Buddy??!!
came from msnbc... hmmm im kinda afraid because they would most likely put a little bit better of a spin on this so i would like to see some other article and what someone ELSE thinks of this...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
You have got to be kidding me! This is insane. As if banner ads that take up half the page were not bad enough, if this company is going to take over my entire browser, that is just unacceptable. All we can hope for is the ability to turn that insanity off...
As for the name.. ooqa ooqa? wtf is that?
-ryan... if it is made optional.
...
Some people enjoy the experience of the internet and this may be one of the things for them. How else can you explain Flash's popularity
Seriously, the key here is the ability to turn it off if you don't want it. They've already built-in the functionality for limiting it to certain websites. As mentioned, weather.com is thinking about it. Personally, it'd be cool if they threw is some weather tools on the toolbar like standard conversions, rain=snow measurements, etc.
You have to admit it beats the heck out of a car driving across your screen
I cant for the life of me imagine what kind of twisted legal logic allows some idiotic capitalist to have a program in my computer that changes everything he wants about my browser, and can still condemn the common burglar that comes through an open window and turns my house upside down, looking for something valuable.
Bloody incoherent, if you ask me. The state of the modern world disgusts me to the hilt.
Man.. If MS lets this into IE, it will be death of the last good browser.
(note, I'm as anti-microsoft as the next guy, but there really isn't a better browser than IE w/Google toolbar...)
I get plenty annoyed by the banner ads on slashdot, I don't need to visit some cheap and nasty site and having it changing my browser appearance to get me to try to remember to avoid it the future. Thank Bob (and possibly CowBoyNeal) for Mozilla...
Because I don't want them to spam me or intrude my privacy without my consent.
thelikesofwhich.com
The closest I have seen to what they are talking about is changing the colour of the scroll bar, they claim it will work without downloading anything does anybody here have an idea?
Next up: advertisers create web browsing software that reformats your HD and fills it up with ads. Talk about taking your message directly to the consumer!
I just __CAN'T__ wait to see the latest pr0n ads..
Wonder what we'll be clicking on to close the windows?
Gives a whole new meaning to 'pop-ups'.
this sounds like a really enchanting way to 'enhance the user experience.' I didn't know that viral marketing schemes were the ideal projection of usability.
maybe the next thing they'll be working on is a keyboard that grabs the money right out of our pockets...
The browser's look, as with the rest of my computer's appearance, is sacred and should be treated as such. Do whatever you want IN the webpage... I'll even accept a pop-up or two. But do not ever ever ever mess with how my browser looks.
It's mine...don't touch!
-Matt
or circle browser ... or browser that looks like a ship... or a sheep...
Weather.com, right? Epilepsy-inducing annoying ads Weather.com? Cars driving across the webpage honking at me Weather.com?
Yeah, they have really good judgment as far as intrusive advertising goes.
Was anybody else totally not surprised to hear that Weather.com is looking to be an early adopter for this "technology"?
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
My first thought is "why would anyone use this browser and subject themselves to this"?
But then, I remember the comet cursor scandal*. I'm sure they will package this into a really neat sounding program that will do everything you need, plus other things that you don't know about.
* For those that don't remember, Comet Cursor was this cursor customization that you could download and make your cursor look like anything you want, even an animated something. Pretty neat, except that the software transmitted all your mouse movements and click to their company, so they know where you clicked (becasue it was a browser plug-in) and where you went. The product was wildly popular for a while. I guess some will do anything for a little bit of snazzy-ness.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Since they are a beta tester it might be good to send them feedback...
Weather.com
The problems they will experience is people who do not use the most popular browsers.
Now I now ie has some fishy abilities to let people mess it up (or enhance it), so ie would be a pretty easy target. Allowing plugins to automatically be installed was a bad idea, I do not know how many people have had me remove viruses from their computer that were really just garbage like comet cursor, gohip, nad that gator thing. Why is my computer so slow. Why does the internet not go where I tell it to. All because they clicked yes by mistake during a popup storm.
The question comes in, are they going after mozilla/netscape6, and opera. If so I do not think these browsers will be as inviting as ie. If they find bugs to hijack mozilla, you can bet that it will be fixed in a hurry.
Maybe if they block all the non complient browsers...
If this all this advertisement invasion this keeps up it will make linux the better browsing platfrom (the plugins are windows only, unless codweavers for some reason decieds to support them). Heck right now people are amazed when they see me go to sites and get what I wanted, instead of all sorts of ads.
Popups that abused javascript to run "full-screen", changing the size of my browser window without my permission caused me to disable javascript altogether.
Then, I stopped visiting certain websites when the "browser takeover" intensified with the use of "shoshkles"(sp?) - which obscured the very content I visited the web page to read, in order to hock their annoying, unwanted product. The analogy here is opening a newspaper, and starting to read an article on a local election, when suddenly an ad from the other page crawls and sets itself over that article.
Now, the same company that brought *that* annoyance now decides that the very interface of my browser isn't mine to control. Who needs that "Home" button? Not you! No - you go ahead and have this "BUY!" button instead. "Back" button? Nonono...you need another "BUY!" button!. What? You're not pressing them? Well, maybe you need some more incentive...let's replace the Reload button with a button that looks *just like* your old one, but actually goes to the same place our "BUY!" button takes you!
Hopefully Opera will stay clear of this, otherwise I may have to stop browsing altogether when I'm forced to use the Windows partition of my comp.
How long until a new worm uses this to quietly replace all the buttons and fields in a users browser with identical-looking ones that don't work as advertized?
How does this work? I'm fairly sure that even IE won't let you write to the hard drive (which, IIRC, is required to change the look/feel of IE. There's special file naming convention in the IE folder under Program Files). Aside from that, wouldn't it take at least an ActiveX plugin? I seriously doubt this is possible for informed users who don't install every little unsigned octect stream that comes across their internet connection.
"Without download"... yeah, its probably just a stupid trick where they pop open a new window without toolbars (like spam), and then just display the "browser". The "browser" is really just another web page in disguise. Dirty trick, and boy, what an "enhanced user experience" that will be!
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Great. Look forward to that!
Assuming this isn't some leftover April Fools gag, I guess this company is legit. But an irritating idea does not a business plan make.
A browser that morphs to display ads? Now I know the Internet is riddled with clueless users, but come on. Nobody is going to put up with this. Microsoft would probably sue "United Virtualities" to the moon if this thing morphed IE (and Big Bill didn't get a cut.) And even if Microsoft didn't, what person would put up with a browser that could be hijacked if there were alternatives available?
Unless United Virtualities has a sure-fire way of morphing every browser out there, and they have a legal team better and more evil than Rambus' legal staff, then their company is doomed. I'll be checking fuckedcompany.com for them. I don't think I'll need to wait long, either.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
will you marry me?
United Virtualities calls the product "Ooqa Ooqa," the nickname of one of the cofounder's daughters. The firm's signature product is the "shoshkeles," named after another daughter of a co-founder.
Hello! What planet is this cofounder-dude from? I heard his dog is called "Melissa" and his goldfish is called "Mary-Anne".
As reported previously here, United Virtualities is the same company that came up with those horrible "Shoshkeles" ads!! If you've never seen them, they are ads that run, animated, all over the page, with full sound. Ack!
It's times like this that I'm glad I don't use anything besides Mozilla; I'll never see any of these types of things. Companies like these need to be stopped, before we are even more overrun with ads than we already are.
It's inappropriate to criticize the advertisers for doing stuff like this though. That would be like criticizing bacteria for causing illness. It's just the nature of advertisers in an "ecosystem" that if they have an opportunity to do something that obnoxious, they'll do it. The problem is in browsers that give too much control to the web site being browsed, and the real culprit is in Redmond.
Note, at least, that code downloads like Yahoo Companion require you to grant permission before the software can install itself. That isn't so great (people grant permission way too easily) but it's better than nothing. I don't know quite how much IE will let sites customize the navbar without a download, though. Sigh.
nothing an intelligent proxy couldn't fix...
---- -
|o| Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters - Galeon
|---- -
| Do you like toolbar polls? [Yes] [No] [Maybe] [CowboyNeal]
|---- -
|
Let's see, if I don't like the "feature", I don't have to have the "feature".
Contribute to Konqueror. Eliminate Annoyance.
The open source browsers have thus far been pretty immune to the obnoxiousness suffered by windows users. I was helping my room mate with a computer problem the other day and was subjected to the hideous "Real Download Manager." Someone needs to suffer for that atrocity, let me tell you...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How long until slashdot does this. Although they'd probably at least give us options of how stupid they make our browser look. Like maybe a poll:
How do you want your browser to look this week?
1: Linux themed
2: Flashing slashot (looks like vegas strip club)
3: Cowboyneal
*shudder*
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
What's next? Software that burns ads permanently into your CRT...without the inconvenience of having to install any special program?
Actually what they are working towards is to turn the desktop computer into a Desktop Advertising Device, all protected by Digital Rights Management so you can never avoid the Ads.
To get any work done, you have to sit through long blocks of ads.
And viewing the ads will be mandatory.
Ultimately this will be a form of economic slavery neatly package as something neat and fashionable. Imagine being a borg as a fashion statement, or something to do to tick out the 'rentals
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The obvious solution to this issue (at least for legit sites) is to simply boycott any sites that use this technology. Boycott and email the site to let them know exactly why you're boycotting. If weather.com's hit count goes from 11.6 million to 2.4 million in a month after they unleash this "technology", then you better believe that they'll yank that thing so fast that you'll be able to hear the "wooosh". Enough people do this and enough sites react, and this abomination will go back to the rat hole from whence it came.
That said, I unfortunately can't see enough people doing this to make a difference. I hope that people will stand up and make a difference, but that typically is rare. We do have a voice, we just have to be willing to use it.
despite their poor command of the english language, the creators of Zero Wing can now be considered prophets....
....
In A.D. 2002
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
UV: How are you gentlemen !!
UV: All your browser are belong to us.
UV: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
UV: You have no chance to survive make your time.
UV: HA HA HA HA
Captain: Take off every 'zilla' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zilla'.
Captain: For great justice.
1. I pay for my computer and all its parts.
2. I pay for my electricity [or I would if I wasn't living at home].
3. I pay for my net access.
Why exactly would I even bother putting up with ads on my computer? I mean sure, put an ad on your website, but inside my browser?
Or did I read it wrong?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
followed by...
Users don't have to download any software to set the process in motion.
Something's missing here... I haven't programmed for years, but seems to me you need something a leeeetle more intrusive than HTML or Java to change the UI. And IE may be full of security holes, but do you really think MicroBorg would make it that easy to play around with their UI?
Though I know I and a large portion of this audience would have a fit, I imagine a good number of the general browsing public in many circumstances would find such gimmicks endearing and may not be put off by their use. The problem is that I don't know if the general population of users would see the implied threat by making such auto-redesigning of their user interface: not all designers are benevolent.
It could display "utilitarian" tools in the browser toolbar, such as a currency exchange-rate calculator on a financial Web site, Entel said I think it is fair to compare this example of breaking the user interface to other nefarious schemes such as designing borderless pop-up browser windows with what appear to alert dialogs that people by their previous experience will choose to click, thereby redirecting their browser to a site that they most likely had no intention of visiting. In this case, re-designing a UI beyond easy repair for most end users, replete with click dialogs to any number of undesired "features" like a link bar full of cheap drugs and bargain toner.
If you interrupt the consumer for no good reason, it's not effective advertising, Iaffaldano said. The majority of the advertising I receive interrupts what I am doing and is not effective. Why would this "enhancement" be applied differently?
My reading of the article indicated that customizations would carry from site to site, with no indication of it being an opt-in feature, though at that point in the article their was not clarification as to what browser to which they refer. It would be a strong step forward for browser writers to make such customization completely at the will of the end user and by default, turned off.
...as maybe many others are.
One part of the article mentions "a demo version of a Weather.com-themed browser prepared by United Virtualities", which seems to imply that it is a modified version of a current web browser. This is really nothing new (aside from being able to service ads), when I ran my small ISP in town we modified Netscape Comm. 4 to have our logo in place of the 'N'. This would require the user to download and install a new web browser.
However, there seem to be underpinnings in the article that make it seem like this could affect your current browser you are using. One bad scenario would be that it installs with another (freeware) program...much like the spyware in Kazaa, et al. The worse scenario would be that it could tap into the gui of your current browser just by visiting a web page. Then you would have no real control. This sounds like taking advantage of one of the many bugs^H^H^H^H features that IE has.
And then this statement: "Web surfers will always have a clear option to turn off Ooqa Ooqa and go back to their regular browsers, said Ivan Entel, the firm's chief of staff. In fact, they'll have the option never to be exposed to the technology again on certain Web sites." Go back to my regular browser?? What is meant by that? Does this mean uninstalling/re-installing? Very vague terminology sends scary signals up my spine.
Does anyone know more about this definitively so as to clear up the vagueness?
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
Sure, W3C creates the standards. The Web Standards Project evangalizes them. Mozilla provides a cross-platform alternative that follows them. But with their browser-morphing and overlaying ads, United Virtualities has created technologies that will drive users to Mozilla in droves if they show up in Netscape or Microsoft products. It'll probably increase demand for Junkbuster too.
Thanks to rabid marketdroids and United Virtualities. Who knew.
I don't understand how trojans can be viruses, and illegal, but spyware and modifying my browser (in ways which I obviously did not agree to, and probably don't want) are legal.
How is this not unauthorized access of a computer system?
Those Flash-based Saturn ads with the Suburban Assault Vehicle chasing the lizard were offensive enough (making me wonder why I still allow Flash), but is nothing sacred? I'm sorry if I'm limiting their "artistic vision", but I really have to call these sorts of practices into question. My browser window is just that--a window into the Web--and their influence should stop there.
-J
Watch some late late late night TV and you might catch an old skit on brush or vaccuum cleaner salespeople with a foot in the door and a spiel spewing from their mouths. Many people, including my parents, see an intrusive sales person as the Monty Python Troop there to amuse the kitty. For the rest of us there's the chance for FS/OS to get it's footprint on the iron of more disgruntled users. Somewhere the ghost of PT Barnum is whooping it up... there are many, many more than just one born every minute. And, hey, I personally can't wait until it goes subliminal. Oh yea baby it's coming, it's coming.
cheersheuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Free, only runs Javascript when you specifically click on a link (no pop-ups or pop-unders), filters out those big ads (like the ones on /.), fa-diddily-ast, and only for OS X.
I wish I could share with you how great it is. Go buy a Mac and get Omniweb and find out for yourself.
The same company that brought you the aweful and awefully-named Shoshkele (those were the Flash ads that obscured the content of the page that they were on) has rolled out another aweful and awefully-named advertising technology. And weather.com has spearheaded the deployment of both godaweful technologies...
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
When they have a product that will let me view a web page without downloading anything then maybe I'll be interested...
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
With the flash killer activated in proxomitron I simply get
[flash]
for their home page. Looks like it's impossible to know anything about the company without subjecting yourself to their product.
All this says to users is "BAN OUR SITE, DONT COME BACK TO US":
Where is there good advertising in that?
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Is someones clock at slashdot still stuck on april 1st, damnit save this fud for 2003.
Thank god for lynx!
Goes to show you how many "tech" companies just don't get it. I wish these guys were public so I could short the hell out of them. Who is going to download this crap? Advertisers will jump on this, of course, then after a few months realize that its not working and pull out and hopefull send these shmucks at United Crapola to the sidewalk where they should live, unable to find a jub due to their stupdity.
Without downloading anything, all they can do is open a toolbar/menuless window and fill it with a lame implementation of the regular browser but with their buttons. It would look stoopid and would be instantly dismissed by anyone with any sense.
But to actually change the browser behaviour requires some form of download. That either means a plugin or exe for NS 4.x, a control or exe for IE or chrome for Mozilla/NS 6.x. There is no other way.
And fortunately most people will be smarter than to install shit like this. May it be consigned to the lower levels of hell where it belongs with all other advertising spyware.
no one has stopped to think that this can be done on ANY browser. you take a web page. it then opens up the real site inside of a popup with all the navigation buttons gone, and makes it's own that function using javascript like javascript:history(-1) for the back button, and so on... it would work on ie, netscape, mozilla, konq, opera, etc... only lynx is safe remember, the oompa oompa people never said how it works. it could be something this simple.
So? Is consumption now compulsory?
I earn a shit-load of money. But I spend very little of it, cos frankly, I have pretty much everything I need. I don't believe I'm doing anything anti-social by my actions.
don't know about you, but lately my browser is already a billboard every time i check /.
Come on, all these nifty programs that MS produces with their scripting and activeX controls would not be possible if it were not for the likes of AMD, Intel, and nVidia.
It's inappropriate to criticize Microsoft for doing stuff like this though. That would be like criticizing bacteria for causing illness. It's just the nature of software companies in an "ecosystem" that if they have an opportunity to do something that obnoxious, they'll do it. The problem is in hardware that gives too much power to the OS being used, and the real culprit is Intel.
Read the subject line!
NotSlash : We scoop Slashdot!Friends don't let friends use browsers susceptible to this.
This from a site which requires the user to allow tracking information to be stored on the user's hard drive in order to use most of the features.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
companies which irritate me with their advertising lose my business, and i have a long memory.
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
Add the domain where the ads are coming from to /etc/hosts and point it to 127.0.0.1
This works for most flavours of windows too, but the location of hosts varies (in Win2000 it is c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc)
Good for blocking most ads (even the slashdot ones when they come from doubleclick)
This circumvention method is probably now illegal in the USA, but I don't lve there so bite me!
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
It's times like this that I'm glad I don't use anything besides Mozilla
...?
Are you absolutely certain? The article says: "automatically change the appearance of Web browsers, usurping some of the functions built into popular browsers designed by Microsoft Corp. and Netscape Communications, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc."
and: "Netscape already lets people customize its browsers. Its client-customization kit lets Internet-service providers and others insert their logos to replace the Netscape logo in the browser toolbar, or insert specific bookmarks."
Of course, from all that I know about Mozilla there's no way a website is going to be just allowed to install and switch to a different theme (though who knows what sort of extra 'features' might be added in Netscape releases...), and even if there was it'd be fixed nearly instantaniously in Mozilla, but Netscape/Mozilla definitely does seem like a target for this product.
What I'm mostly interested in right now however is seeing some screenshots of for example those weather.com tests on various browsers... Anyone out there reading this who just happens to be a beta-tester / in the know /
Some names are just too stupid to be believed.
If linux was called GNU/Ooqa Ooqa instead of GNU/linux I would never have used it.
Honest. It truly leaves me speechless how mindless brand names are getting. Ooqa bloody Ooqa? WTF?
Did some marketing drone actually get paid for belching this one up?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
As reported previously here [slashdot.org], United Virtualities is the same company that came up with those horrible "Shoshkeles" ads!! If you've never seen them, they are ads that run, animated, all over the page, with full sound. Ack!
This sounds like more marketing hype from United Virtualities. If you look at "shoshkeles" and what they actually do, you will see that they like the older "eyeblasters" contain a lot of code that obscures what they really are doing. They simply put a flash animation in a layer, make it transparent and position it with CSS. Flash does the hard work! It's 3 lines of code on IE instead of the steaming heap their scripts turn out.
And ad executives like this? They think people want flying soft drink cans to cover their morning newspaper? Of course they're not human so what did you expect???
Just think about this.. if some small company like this tries some BHO or ActiveX component to make revenue the bastardly way, you can be rest assured that Microsoft will put an end to this in an Internet Exploer patch or whateva. Don't worry about this. This company will be bankrupt, sorry, and downright pathetic in at least a month or so.
sounds like more spyware...
time to give Ad-Aware another run through...
to use OS X and iCab and OmniWeb... best OS, best browsers.
NOT susceptible to this nonsense, period.
...try going to the National Weather Service instead, at least, if you're looking for U.S. weather information. No annoying pop-up BS!
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
If they're that desperate, I'll take some money to stick some Post-It(tm) notes on my monitor which have advertisements on them. Hey, I'll see them for hours every day, that should be worth something.
If you read the article, you'll find out that Ooqa Ooqa and another of United Virtualities' products are named after the daughters of executives...
All we have to do, then, is prevent these people from breeding and there won't be any more abominations like this.
It'd probably be a good idea to pre-emptively knock off any still-living decendents of UV executives while we're at it...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Would you rather /. logged your IP address? Oh great, imagine what lameass little trolling skript kiddies will do with THAT list once they break in and steal it. I think a number in your browser's database is harmless. QYFB!
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
If any of my browsers succumb to Ooqa Ooqa, I'll have the owner of that site prosecuted under the PATRIOT act.
Either the scumbag who tries to pull off these kinds of things goes to jail for terroristic computer hacking or the PATRIOT act gets struck down. Either way, I win.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
With all the other restrictions they (try to) impose, how could modifying IE without installing software possibly be permitted by the EULA? Why would Microsoft or Netscape want this if they are not getting a cut, when they are the advertising medium.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
This is "Overstepping the bounds" in more than one sense.
.sigs don't count.)
When I open a web page, I am generally agreeing to let a web designer do whatever he or she wants with the space between the <HTML> and </HTML> tags. Not my destop, not the frame, just the page.
If I don't have the option of turning this off, I will change browsers and not patronize sites that use this technique.
Why is it that every blank space has to become an advertising marquee?
Cheers
Jim in Tokyo
(Of course,
-- My Weblog.
To get more customers your going to annoy the hell out of them by altering thier browser.
/etc/hosts
humm..
cat >
127.0.0.1 www.unitedvirtualities.com
Weather.com has a link to Tell them what you think. So go there, and tell them that if they use this new ooki yucki whatever they wanna call it crap, that you'll never visit their website again.
Chief Revenue Officer? I guess with as many crappy, gaudy ads as that website runs, they need a chief officer in charge of it....
Replace the operating system with advertising! Yes users really want that. If they don't Microsoft could introduce the option to advertise on BSODs! Nobody will get angry because of the advertising! They are angry anyway because Windows crashed. This crash was brought to you by
To contrast, Slashdot is very good about disclosing corporate relationships when reporting something, even though this audience is practically guaranteed to already know what they are telling us. ("Really, you mean OSDN owns slashdot?!?! I thought that the OSDN banner up there was decorative. Wow, I'm glad you mentioned this.")
BTW, I thought this was funny:
So don't read it, because we aren't publishing it....a web site that has a fancy looking shockwave (or whatever) animation is a front for a scam? Or is it just true sometimes
-- SIGFPE
[humor] /. olympic rifle team will now move into place and commence operation Oh-eh-oh-ha-ha-bing-bang-walla-walla-bing-bang.
[ /humor]
With their biography page we now have a list of people whom need to be shot first.
The
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
If some "hacker" put something like this up on his Web site he'd likely soon find himself if Federal prison. So who'll be the first to file a "cybercrime" complaint against these jerks?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Get your paws off my browser, you damned dirty marketeer!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
See what happens when you make funny noises during sex? You get an awful nickname and then someone names a bad piece of tech after you.
Poor girl.
( ! )
Someone once said, "Programmers are often so fascinated by the fact that they can that they often don't think about whether they should.
If I find a site that does this, I will not use their product. I will email the web admin and inform them why, and I will feel a little better hoping that my little bit may cause them to stop using this technology because it costs them more money than it makes.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I will set up a beowolf cluster that will use links to browse your site....
The opposite is what's needed in an ever increasing advertising dominated world.
But to be realistic, if a reasonable standard for advertising ever comes out, it should be supported, but until then the only thing to so is resist the attempted takeover.
into the product... allowing the end-user to pick and choose which websites get to modify the browser, or force the changes off when the website doesn't want to. Reminds me of that dialog box that has a 'Always trust content from..." option but no 'Never trust content/Ignore content from' box
Oh come on. As it is I can't stand those #%^&* pop-under ads. Versiontracker.com has gotten real bad lately with those to the extent that Netscape 4.79 under Windows goes berserk and consumes 100% CPU to no purpose. I really hate sites that are slow to load because the ads are all put up first and take forever to appear.
And now they want to hijack the last remaining part of my eyeballs and brain...
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
...a fresh new ad for goatse.cx on the front page of their site? Why not just post that goatse flash thing with hanson singing up there too.
With enough $$$ I'm sure the US legal dudes could be pursuaded that we were within the bounds of the law to put one there, not to mention "just doing our job".
If this shit starts selling, I'm out. I'm going back to lynx. Naw, fuck the web, I'm going back to jerkin with two hands and buyin pr0n rags.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
From the site:
"(Use this for 1-click access to your local forecast)"
ROFL
;)
Just kidding... couldn't resist.
"There is no Death. Only a change of worlds."
What's with "Ooqa Ooqa?" Are the cofounders' daughters monkeys (banging on keyboards) or do the cofounders just have severe speech impediments?
Browsers that support this feature can display an icon which is stored on the web server (favicon.ico). I'm not sure if it's a 16x16 pixel bitmap or if it's 32x32 that gets scaled by the browser.
-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
As long as AdAware (www.lavasoftusa.com) is aware of it, I have no problem with anyone bundling it into something I download. That'll just make sure it doesn't stay on my system for long. Hopefully the *nix world is spared this crap.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Hmm... so after reading this story, I'm not certain whether this is meant to be a user-installed software package, a trojan, or a remote exploit of a vulnerability in IE and Netscape.
If the former, what benefit does it claim to give the user in exchange for the obvious annoyance?
If the second, how much damage will it do to the system in the process of installation in order to make it difficult to remove, and will this damage be actionable? (I'm mentally comparing it to the story about the Celine Dion CD above...)
If the latter, how complex a firewall filter will it take to splatter this? (Since it goes along the HTML channel obviously this is much more sophisticated than packet filtering...)
I first saw this story posted over at SiliconValley.com on April 1.
Are we sure it's not an April Fool's joke that caught out the guys at MSNBC???
The biggest mistake we as a species have made in the past 100 years was to allow advertising to become an industry in and of itself. There was a time when businesses did their own advertising, designed to inform the consumer of their new products and the superiority of those products over the competitor. Now, that function has been farmed off to other companies, who, due to the nature of capitalism, have to compete to get the most advertising business. That competition has fostered ever more intrusive advertising, from 30 second spots on tv to giant billboards to the various annoyances we're seeing now on the internet. I forsee that in ten years or less, an ad agency will replace mega-retailer Walmart as the largest company in the world.
This trend will continue, with ads becoming more and more ubiquitious. A few sci-fi writers have drawn this same conclusion, such as Neal Stephenson, who envisioned 3-D billboards that "attack" pedestrians, or another writer, whose name escapes me at the moment (it might have been Greg Egan), who posited that nano-robots could be used to "hack" the brain and perpetually display ads in a person's visual field. I can envision some enterprising young advertiser inventing eyeglasses that display ads. Poor, nearsighted people would put up with the ads in exchange for clear vision (if slightly obscured).
Sadly, there's not much we can do. Look at how well we've curtailed Microsoft. They had it wrong in Fight Club. The insurance companies and financial institutions aren't the enemies. It's the ad agencies. Maybe the same solution might work.
Konq would do the same I'm sure...
Thanks to the sh!tty practices of many advertisers and web designers, I'm just itching to get my new system together, running Linux, et al.
In the recent (or not so recent in some cases) past, here are things that piss me off and motivate me away from closed source (alleged) systems:
Page refresh/redirects, trapping etc. I will disable this first, if it's not an option I'll make it one and contribute. Most hated and abused feature of any page.
Bloat. (*cought* Tom's *cough* Hardware *cough*) Pages are getting bigger and bigger and on a 56K modem I just close the window at some point, their insistance upon saying it all in one page failed. Dunno what to do if anything, probably just maintain a list of anti-bookmarks (i.e. warn me if I'm heading toward one of these wastes of time) Maybe even notify what's being fed in from where and disable on the fly.
Javascript Bloat. Yeah, it's not just a little, it's pages absolutely loaded with it, but I need it on for some pages, so being able to enable/disable per browser window would be nice. Some people write it so badly it crashes on a regular basis or brings up an empty page in Netscape and IE
Pop-up/unders. These will not happen, period. I'm fed up with mopping this fecal matter off my desktop.
Flash On/Off, like other features, too much is a bad thing, but some people just don't get the clue.
Malformed html. Man. If you cruise eBay, you see this a lot. People buy some piece of crap auction authoring tool and it mangles the page. I usually email people about this, but they're 99% of the time clueless about what to do. (i.e. point it out to the hack who sold it to you and get some cust support)
For all the bitching and whining I hear about Slashdot, it's about the least offensive site I visit all day. I hope it stays that way.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://www.OffByOne.com
its a pretty basic browser but everything appears besides java and all the flashy plugins. if its html it appears. Its a shame that they haven't got secure connections supported, or else you culd do everything with it.
...should know about this. They will probably want to update their product to block any such alterations.
Darned if I'm going to let some fruitball marketdroid decide how MY browser window is going to look!
Greedy yotzes...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Are you new to the internet?
If you close your eyes and listen you can already here the first few bars of Hooked on a feeling by BJ Thomas
Just download content but dump it to /dev/null
We were right about the CueCat, perhaps you should trust us this time.
Is it just me, or does that page not display in Moz 9.8? Anyone else try it?
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Amazing. I go to the United Virtualities site, with Javascript disabled, and nothing at all shows up. No images to load, no alt tagged markers, nothing.
And I though San Diego's PBS website was worthless without images - this one's worthless, period.
They say there's a sucker born every minute. Well, this also applies to advertisers! A lot of them will jump at stuff like this, without any proof that it actually works. Does it? I've never seen any evidence, and believe me I've looked. No one has ever shown me that popups, intrusive Javascript, or breaking the back button actually brings in customers. This is no different.
Please Mozilla, please hit 1.0 soon, pretty pretty please...
"Think Inside the Box" Tm
Help fight continental drift.
...and every time that I open a window I see on the title bar: "Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by Comcast" and a retarded little "C" in the corner. If that's not a billboard, I don't want to see what they're going to do next. Are they going to put Pepto-Bismol Skins on my toolbar?
Fortunately, I'm using Mozilla now, which I trust has options to shut this insanity off.
Sheesh.....
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Omniweb: Used it in the past and found it too slow, although its rendering is gorgeous. I loved the sophisticated control mechanisms it offered for ads, cookies, etc.
I heard that the most recent release was very fast so I downloaded it and tried it today.
It screams!
I certainly beats Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
And the content controls have only improved further. It is without peer.
The topic of this discussion thread concerns me not, at least on my Mac OS X machine.
--Richard
As a proud proxomitron user, I gladly laugh off all of these "new HORRIBLE advertising" stories, as they will not afect me in the least. If it sends code to my browser, the proxomitron can remove it, end of story. So, how are those new slashdot ads going, guys? I haven't managed to catch one of those yet...
I recall no more than 3 years ago doing a Google search for some research data I need for a paper. I clicked on a promising link and was BAM nailed with one of those porn sites that opened like 20 popups, which each spawned their own popups. Some of these popups would spawn even more when you closed them. Others with fancy javascripts would avoid you getting your mouse near the close button. Now, that said, I can see this sort of abuse return if they are able to customize your browser. Which we all know Microsoft will enable by default.
This product is targeted towards marketing people.
It is also named by marketing people.
That should explain a lot.
by the way the least they could do is follow basic rules of english language and put a u after the q.
Guess they are too cutting edge for that.
New York's Computer Crime statute says:
It does require the computer owner to somehow notify the intruder that unauthorized access is prohibited. But one type of notification allowed is:
So print out a big sign and tape it to the side of your monitor. Meanwhile, Wyoming has this to say:
Sounds like this technique, if it really exists, violates both laws.
basicly this is how it works:
-you visit a site
-your browser automaticaly changes
you dont have to do anything or download anything.
Sux doesnt it.
Wasn't this the whole point of Mozilla's XUL?
Perhaps the most amusing thing about this company is that my ad filter, webwasher, decided that United Virtualities' ENTIRE website is an ad and wouldn't let me see it at all! LOL Pretty funny.
I've never bought anything by clicking on a banner, partially because I have an ad filter (working beautifully I assume). I've probably clicked on a few banners (browsing at school and what not) but these have mainly consisted of the some of the neat stuff they have.
Now, tampons, lose weight by april 28th and x10 kits is a short list of stuff I will never buy, and certainly not click banners advertising.
I have no gunshot wound that needs plugging, I am not overweight partially because I don't use a remote to turn on a bloody light that is ten feet away.
I'm also a college student, which, by definition means I'm broke, and when I do have money it goes to food, skool, girlfriend, hardware or beer, probably in that order, although it may vary, especially on fridays.
Can advertisers eventually get to the realization that I am not going to buy a product that is completely and utterly useless to me? Why are advertisers constantly wasting bandwidth? I probably wouldn't mind ads that are at least generated sorta based on my interests. hint hint.
Same thing with spam, although I really enjoyed reading the nigerian money laundering one.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
The internet is not a broadcast media. It really isn't. That's why we have web sites and search engines.
Okay search technology sucks. Its stupid (but not as stupid as what passes for a "clever"ad,) and needs some hard work to do what a five year-old can do in an instant, use some common sense.
Improve the search engines so that when I'm searching for Chinese food restaurants I don't get sites from everywhere from Nanking to Tierra del Fuego when I live in one small town. That a worth while expenditure of time, money and energy.
This attempt to coopt my browser on my machne is a violation of my right as a consumer NOT to have to be subjected to an invasion of my environment by some idiot who's trying so fucking hard to flog whatever shit he's pimping that he doesn't realize that I would immediately boycot ANY company stupid enough to use it.
We got rid of billboards all over the highwqays. I haven't got a phone call from a telemarketer in months. The volume of junk mail is way down (except from idiots trying to extend credit cards to a currently unemployed man.) The numbers of crap flyers that smother the newspaper is down a bit over here. We are slowly getting rid of Spam by putting that scum in jail.
Advertising is NOT the best way to get a message across. It just makes me pissed off and really conterproductive when I REFUSE ON GP to buy something, regardless of its intrinsic qualities, because the people marketing it are annoying my ass off.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The problem is when they step out of the box you gave them. If you want to load their page in a frame, it should show up and not throw a tempertantrum.
Look, I hate the intrusive, large ads, but fine. I choose to view a site our not, they are welcome to do whatever they want within the window.
However, do NOT try to disable my backbutton with screwy redirects that mess up my history (do a server-side 301 or 302 if you need to bounce me around, it's not my problem that you suck).
Do not do pop-ups, I gave you a window, use it. If you want more space, ask me to click on something. Pop unders, that's abusive. You don't get to hide ads for me, that's outrageous. Exit-pops are worse. If I hit back, go to another url, or close my browser, you're done. You have no right to harass me.
It's really a shame that MS and Netscape never really worked to make Javascript respect the user, but then, Microsoft has never shown any respect for their customers. Look at the recent Looksmart thing, the thread on webmasterworld shows what their puppet Looksmart is doing to screw over webmasters that paid $300 in good faith for a service that the two of them are rendering worthless.
Alex
Except of course it can't be quite that simple. I'm pretty sure that there's no builtin usurpBrowser method in JavaScript, and this supposedly works in both IE and Netscape/Moz. Even if one browser did have a nonstandard feature or hole that allowed this, there is simply no way to change the toolbar in IE and Mozilla via HTML/JavaScript. So in order to actually change your browser's interface, a site has to get you to run some code. It's possible that by "no downloading" the low-on-details article means that you wouldn't have to download and run an executable; the software could be installed via ActiveX (IE) or signed Java (Moz), both of which require the user to at least click Yes.
It's also possible -- and this is what I suspect -- that this doesn't actually change your browser but instead pops up a toolbarless window and fakes a toolbar with some gifs. This isn't entirely new; interface-lookalike elements have been common in banners for a while (I've seen quite a few fake-dialog-box popups). Annoying, certainly, and not likely to endear me to the company using it, but it shouldn't be any harder to get rid of (or filter!) than a standard, already-pretty-annoying popup.
Oh, and the "friends don't let friends use browsers susceptible to this" in the writeup: even more stupid and reactionary than usual! We have no idea what technology it is that makes browsers susceptible to this; no doubt michael just noticed "IE" in the article and brought out the "attack! attack!" reflex. In any case, the article says that Mozilla is just as "susceptible" as IE... apparently friends don't let friends use either of the browsers that make up ~90% of slashdot's traffic.
Touch my browser and die.
:), but changing my browser? No way in hell.
Its bad enough I put up with popups (well, heh, I dont even really do that anymore, NoAds takes care of that
Brielle
I think a lot of companies think it is; that's why the ex-SSSCA is rewritten to have something to do with the whole thing about broadband content yada yada yada. In any case a lot of people want to jam consumption down your throat; if you don't believe me, give me one good reason why you need the latest and greatest Pentium 4 or Athlon. Hint: if it doesn't involve gaming, Fortran, or video production, you don't.
/Brian
Baaaa... Baaaa... Baaaa...
If a web site makes unauthorized modifications to my browser I will join the class action suit against them. Right after I complain to the state's attourney general
webwasher and proxomitron do a good job of cleaning the marketing carbuncles off of a lot of sites. W/O webwasher, the onion would crash my browser.
---
For your protection, a copy of this message is being sent via RFC 1149.
seriously with all the "computer geniuses" here on this site I'm surprised that you haven't figured this one out yet.
.dll? file associated with ie looks or something along those lines, which would enable them to do this without a download or install of any type
I'm sure all they are doing is installing code onto these companies websites and using it to send data to certain variables in a
One word: WebWasher
Mozilla can do that too:
http://uabar.mozdev.org/
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
Unlike IE, Mozilla doesn't look for /favicon.ico automatically. Only if the site refers to it with a <link rel="icon" href="my-icon.ico"/>.
Also unlike IE, Mozilla also supports PNG, JPEG and GIF for site icons.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
What is the point of targetting adverts at people who are not going to spend money?
Is anyone else getting sick and tired of the word 'experience'? It's become as useless a term as 'product' anymore because of the attitude the marketroids have of their target (with a bulls-eye) audience.
I also found it quietly ironic that in an article about companies screwing with your browser to 'enhance' usability (blech!), if you look at the site with OPERA (my browser of choice), the entire first paragraph of the article is obstructed by an ad for the MSN Titanium VISA card.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
1. Hackers break into a popular web site.
2. Use this technology change the Home button on future visitor's browsers to point to a web page that installs a virus on the visitor's machine.
Of course, since all popular web sites are secure this could never happen. :-(
The spyware piece of Comet Cursor is installed whenever you install Real Player, at least with IE and Windows. Search your registry for "comet cursor" before and after installing Real Player. Apparently whatever it does to windows allows the full version of Comet Cursor to install itself without prompting later. Comet Cursor IS spyware I have watched a packet sniff of this POS trying to "phone home".
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Note to webmasters: Ooga Ooga, like a couple of other advertising tools that originated among certain adult sites, should be rejected outright for the simple reason that it actually reaches into the viewer's computer and mucks about with its settings without their consent. Legally questionable, at best.
Note to Opera: kudos for making available a browser with enough controls (i.e. forcing all popups to the back, overriding document color settings, only loading cached graphics, etc.) to allow users to mitigate the annoyance factor posed by many current advertising tools. That being said, I add my voice to those recommending that you ensure that your browser remains totally immune to Ooga Ooga and other such intrusions.
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
And I blockquote:
Maybe they have some meaning (in a foreign language?) that I don't understand, but if not (yes, I know this is off-topic), these guys should have their child-rearing licenses revoked.
At least they didn't have boys. I can see it now...
Co-Founder 1: "Hey, I'd like you to meet my son... Quasimodo come out of the bell tower and meet the nice man!"
Co-Founder 2: "That's great. I'd love to meet him. He should come over and play with Renfield some time."
Sheesh!
Please stop SCREWING with my browser!
I have downloaded weatherbug as it's the only free (as in beer) alternative to other programs for displaying weather info in the task bar. I't was great. They even started to rebrand the program for those of us who decided not to pay for the pro version. I get everything the proversion has except skinnning. The pro version let's you set your own skin. I don't need that. Not in a weather program. Right now the ad is for CI Hosting. Sometimes its for Nextel. I accept it because don't feel like giving them money. I wil accept the ads the same way as I accept the ads on slashdot. The bad thing they started doing though is when you press the x button to close the program back to the tray, it will open a pop-up ad. That I could live without, but at least it's only one ad. Now if my browser changed totally when I browsed a certain page? No way...uh-no. Leave my browser alone!
Gorkman
Wait a minute. There's a huge difference here. If I sign up with an ISP, it is not unreasonable to be given a browser to use that is branded by the ISP. However, if I surf to an ISP's site, they have no business changing my browser in any way.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
While we're on the topic, I might as well point out what I stumbled across over at fazed.net.
When I followed the link I came to a web page that said this:
NEW YORK, April 2 - Beware, Web surfers. Soon not even that dull, gray toolbar at the top of your Internet browser will be safe from advertisers.
Before I could even scroll down an ad popped up over it.
Try checking out Opera. It is MUCH better than IE.
I get the feeling this company has not seen Web marketers in the wild. There is no limit to what a failing dot.bomb will do to maintain its last few eyeballs. Have a look at the existing technologies (for example, IE with default settings) - a sleazy portal-potty can already hijack your homepage or add sites to your bookmarks. This is with *default* settings, which can even allow sites to install arbitrary code on your system.
How does a reasonable technology maker expect marketers to exercise restraint in the face of newer, more powerful, browser takeover technology?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Thanks to the Configurable Security Policies in Mozilla:
t s/ConfigPolicy.html
The gist of configuring security policies is described here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/componen
The bottom of the page has examples that you can use for your 'default' security policy. You can customize them to any security policy you configure in just a few minutes.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
We are gonna have to read every obscure warning and proviso in the EULAs to avoid having our computers taken over by the software we install. Even then it will still happen.
One day, when genetic engineering really gets into high gear, diseased perverts such as that won't be allowed to be born.
Surely this counts as "to impair the operation of the computer" if it changes the appearance of the browser window?
I know I'm going to be slammed for this, but there is only one way the continual escalation of ad annoyance will stop: when people start paying for content. It doesn't help if you stop using a site if the site won't continue to exist under its current business model. And people refuse to pay for content, so that leaves, mostly, ads. And ads are less useful the more you see them, so the sites have to keep making them more annoying. Will micropayments eventually fix this? Maybe. But not if every site offering content eventually collapses. Maybe the web should be composed entirely of sites selling something offline and people willing to pay to share their content with the world. If that's the case, continue to skip from site to site, pushing up the bandwidth charges of the new free alternative until it turns into the old alternative with too many ads. Or you can keep ignoring ads until it makes you too annoyed to keep reading. At that point, you can subscribe.
Ads seem to be the only workable way to provide free content. If someone has a better business model, I'd love to hear it.
This sig is not the Zahir. Lucky for you.
Btw, if you read the article, you will notice that both IE (ayeeee!) and netscape are customizable. The customizable functions are what the bastards are utilizing.
Uhh, no, weather.com is using the Sheckles, or whatever that bozo's daughter is named, program that makes cars and stuff run over the whole page's content. It uses ActiveX and Flash, two things I'll never, ever, freaking ever put on my computers. The new "product" will have a very hard time writing over my init files if my browser runs as "nobody" and only I can write to my preference files. Nice what reading an article and understanding what user accounts is all about, eh?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.