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.
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!
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??!!
... 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.
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?
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'.
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)
If MS lets this into IE, it will be death of the last good browser.
How will that kill Opera? Or Mozilla, or Galeon, or Konq, or lynx, or...
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What does this have to do with me... Please let me know.
According to the article, IE and Netscape will be affected...
Boycott the people who have this type of crap on their sites.
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?
"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!
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.
---- -
|o| Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters - Galeon
|---- -
| Do you like toolbar polls? [Yes] [No] [Maybe] [CowboyNeal]
|---- -
|
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 about this:
(1) Websites need to pay for bandwidth.
(2) Advertisers are waiting for a sure-fire eyball lock-in.
(3) Websites will stop rendering for non-Ooqa-compliant browsers, in order to guarantee the lock-in the advertisers desire.
(4) Opera, Mozilla, Galeon, Konq, Lynx, &c. will no longer be able to get you anywhere interesting on the web.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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
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"
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.
(5) User with Opera, Mozilla, Galeon, Konq, Lynx, &c. can no longer buy products from websites featuring said "enhancement."
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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.
Not likely. Even if they tried to lock out these browsers, it's a simple matter to make them identify themselves as Netscape or IE. Konqueror already does this with a convenient menu selection. If the websites find a way to detect the ooqa crap isn't being loaded, I'm sure the Konq developers can find a way to fool them on this point too.
Konq already allows me to prevent pop-up and pop-under ads from showing up, and I haven't had any websites refuse to render because of that.
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."
And that is when the long awaited Gibsonian cyberpunk dystopia will really get started, so at least you'll have something to look forward to :)
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Thank god for lynx!
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.
You can set up something similar in IE...but the Google Toolbar is even better.
Ick...maybe it's OK if the browser is all you have running. Fire up a couple of SSH terminals, your favorite IDE, or whatever, and then try working in those while you have two or three webpages open. MDI is Pure Evil®...why do you think Microsoft has migrated its apps from MDI to SDI over the past few years?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Read the subject line!
NotSlash : We scoop Slashdot!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???
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!
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.
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....
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
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.
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? --
;)
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!
If you don't like cookies to be stored on your comptuer, turn them off.
Then I can't use most of the features of the site.
Would you rather /. logged your IP address?
I guarantee you they already do.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
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???
Yes, it is true we don't know for sure what browsers might be vulnerable, but be realistic. What mechanisms do these browsers have to enable such a hijacking? Or rather which browsers do have features that could enable such a hijacking? Which have features to make it easier to -disable- anything which could come even close to hijacking?
And don't hold your breath waiting for MS (or AOL, assuming they get a take) to issue a "security" patch to remedy this. You don't think "Trusted Computing" has anything to do with -your- trust, do you?
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
It's kind of depressing... While I certainly would (and have in the past) boycott any website that actively tries to piss me off, the problem is that I also would never see this in the first place, since my browser doesn't have the necessary "features".
What percentage of the IE users would not be willing to do it?
The enemies of Democracy are
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
Well, it's a personal thing, but I PREFER my browser windows to all be in one "alt-tab" location when I'm working on lots of stuff at once. And anyway, opera 6 lets you choose either SDI or MDI, which is obviously the best of both worlds.
We were right about the CueCat, perhaps you should trust us this time.
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.
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.
Someday, perhaps soon, AOL will be a Gecko based browser. And who can afford to cut off AOL? So Mozilla users can just hack the UA string to announce itself as AOL.
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.
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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.
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
Works fine for me... unfortunately.
This page is a clear illustration of how to make your web page too pretentious for anyone to want to care about. Inspired by some kind of television computer display, methinks; maybe the epilepsy-inducing monitors of early Bab5?
/Brian
(6) Browser authors will figure out how to /dev/null the stuff on command and bitch and whine at the idiots who created the technology for making them make their code base that much more complex.
I can pretty honestly say, though, that this will probably go nowhere -- can't remember the last site I ran across that changed my cursor, but the technology is there.
Just a sidebar: anyone ever read a book called Building Really Annoying Web Pages?
/Brian
Wonder if these guys got their business plan from "Internet Marketing for Dummies" by Laurence Cantor and J. Jovan Philyaw...
/brian
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
It's flash only and has some unplesent looking javascript that seems to try to disable all your toolbars and fullscreen the browser.
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. :-(
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
While we're on the topic, I might as well point out what I stumbled across over at fazed.net.
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.
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.