Prince of Pop-ups

Ric writes "From the article lead paragraph: 'If you hate pop-up ads, you might blame Brian Shuster. A long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, Shuster recently received a patent for the ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it. And that's just the beginning - Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.'"

Comments

Hooray!

[koreth]

Here's hoping lots of sites don't want to pay the license fee and stop using popups.

Re:Hooray!

[rworne]

Why charge just the hosting site? They just send plain ol' text and images. The pop-ups are generated on the client side.

He should bill all the end users every time their browser violates his patent. If that proves too onerous, force a monthly fee levied on customers by the ISP.

I mean, if you are going to get greedy on the patent gravy train, you might as well go all out, no one's going to stop you for 20 years.

Re:Hooray!

[matrix29]

He could charge something like $.01 for everytime you use it and still make a killing.

Personally I would prefer a Mafia-Hitman public donation killing machine.

The idea is, everytime a public personality pisses you off you donate a buck to 5 bucks to kill them. The restrictions would be a limit of a maximum of 5 dollars per person per day. When the maximum bounty price is reached then whomever wants to claim the prize (with absolute proof of the resulting kill) goes out an kills that public personality. The money & day limit are to prevent the extremely wealthy from rigging a premature execution (as the extremely wealthy folks do not need charity murder events to reach their goals). This fund also would be limited only to those folks that are well known enough to be defined a "public personality".

So if Windows XP crashes, then drop a buck in the "Off Bill Gates Bounty". If Tom Delay makes an ass of himself then $5 to the "Bye Bye Tom Delay Bounty". If someone actually wants Bill Gates or Tom Delay to survive another day then they can donate to the "Save Bill Gates" fund (with the money limit of a maximum of $5 per day per person) and the money they donate will be used to randomly refund a donation from the "Kill Bill Gates" donation list.

Now the real Devil is in who is going to honestly and accurately administrate these funds and how will the public guarantee that the bounty will be paid in its entirety to the bounty hunter that does the job.

Its strength is in its "Power to the People" mindset (keeping loudmouths from staying obnoxious asses for the rest of their lives or at least shortening that period to a tolerable length). Its strength is in the "Behave Nice or Die" mindset. Its strength is that it can afford-ably deal with individuals that have gone beyond the confines of sane human behavior.

Its weaknesses lie in "The referendum of the pissed off". Its weaknesses lie in "Who can be trusted to set fair bounties and not rob the bank of the cash reward" (though another bounty on the crook that robs the first bounty would even things out I think). Its weakness is that every absolute power over life and death without a surefire method to prevent abuse will fail horribly in a very short time. Its weakness is that the wealthy and powerful will behave well at first then push lackeys into notoriety so they will be the fall guys to die for their criminal schemes (as is oddly already the case right now).

Of course, this wild idea is immoral on its face, a complete violation of everything America stands for, and fairly insane. It does seem to be a much more civilized method than having America re-enact the French Underclass slaughtering the monarchs and French Upper-class in the wee days of the civil revolts of the French Revolution. God knows there is nothing keeping the top wealthiest 1% of America from abusing the much less wealthy 99% and the eventual obvious slaughter that will occur if the richest 1% do not remove their collective heads from their collective asses and stop the money siphon and overseas tax-free money sinkholes that they are using now.

There's a simpler way...

[ChuckleBug]

Why doesn't he just cut through all the crap and patent the very idea of being a complete and utter asshole? Then he could demand royalties from all other assholes when they display their assholitudinism. Then, if they get pissed off and come after him, he can claim that in itself was assholish and sue for *that*.

It's the perfect plan. What could go wrong?

Re:There's a simpler way...

[Eccles]

Why doesn't he just cut through all the crap and patent the very idea of being a complete and utter asshole?

Way too much prior art...

Re:There's a simpler way...

[Binestar]

Why doesn't he just cut through all the crap and patent the very idea of being a complete and utter asshole?

Way too much prior art...

Since when has this stopped the USPO from issuing patents?

Re:There's a simpler way...

[frankie]

Since when has this stopped the USPO from issuing patents?

The USPTO is definitely a $2 whore, but they do demand some small amount of originality in patent applications. For example, this would be acceptable:

PATENT: Being a complete and utter asshole on the Internet

Add those three magic words, and the patent office will grant your wildest wishes.

Good

[dmarx]

Maybe this means that websites will stop using pop-ups.
Oh, and I think I devised a way to turn off the pop-up audio:
1. Press the power button on your computer's speakers.
2. When you're done with the site, press the power button again.
Gee, maybe I should patent this.

poetic revenge

[Acts of Attrition]

he's in internet porn eh? Maybe someone can fix it so he can't "pop-up" anymore

How Ironic

[UCRowerG]

Wonderful! An anti-popup web article that uses popup advertising!

I'm conflicted!!!

[I'm a racist.]

Do I like this man or hate him?

Pro: He promotes porn on the Internet.
Pro: He will sue a few people into not using pop-ups, at least for a little while.
Con: He "created" annoying pop-up ads.

The situation would be similar if Hillary Rosen, remaining the bitch that she is, was really hot and liked to give me blowjobs...

Okay, well, the blowjobs would easily win out. But you get the idea.

I have to p

[L. VeGas]

So in other words...

Patents pending for porno pop-up prince?

Re:I have to p

[gosand]

Patents pending for porno pop-up prince?

Precisely.

Postscript: pounding penis to pornography, provided by pop-up prince, prevalent among programmers posting postulations on slashdot.

Swift, merciless, brutal death is required

[mao che minh]

"Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off."

He must be murdered immediately. The consequences of any other course of action are too dire to even be conceptualized.

Murder.

Re:Swift, merciless, brutal death is required

[Have Blue]

No, the correct course of action is to place large speakers outside his house playing audio that cannot be turned off 24 hours a day until he shoots himself.

Re:Swift, merciless, brutal death is required

[daeley]

He must be murdered immediately.

This post should be modded +1 Inciteful. :)

Re:Swift, merciless, brutal death is required

[Loki_1929]

" No, the correct course of action is to place large speakers outside his house playing audio that cannot be turned off 24 hours a day until he shoots himself."

I propose the "Hampster Dance" song.

oh, it's better than that.

[twitter]

Here's hoping lots of sites don't want to pay the license fee and stop using popups.

It's not just the money, it's who's collecting. Anyone who wants to use a pop up having to bow down before the porn master who dreamed up the sleazy idea? Classic. I hope someone makes a big fuss and that it becomes common knowledge that advertisers are paying porn masters to be able to irritate you. Guilt by association and tribute! Suffer, you dick heads!

Ways to turn off audio

[chargen]

1) don't use a sound card. In the case of intregrated audio chips, buy a dremel tool
2) Turn off your speakers
3) Cut off your ears. See note regarding dremel tool in 1)

-Pete

What's the deal?

[dirtyboot]

I don't understand why you guys don't like Pop-Ups. The strawberry ones are delicious.

As Dave Barry once said...

[fobbman]

"I have a dream that a guy who designs popup ads is having a major colonoscopy, and the proctologist is saying, 'It's the darnedest thing! Every time I snip a polyp, two more spring up in its place!'"

Shuster, Shyster... what's the difference?

[Temsi]

the dictionary says:

shyster

n. Slang
An unethical, unscrupulous practitioner, especially of law.

Seems to fit Shuster quite well.

Re:Use Mozilla .......

[iamkrinkle]

audio pop-ups that can't be turned off? HA! I can't even get alsa/esd configured to have more than one sound source playing at the same time (and i always have music on). suckers...

yeah, great. I've got some patent ideas too

[Knuckles]

Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.'

I think I'll file for a patent on "Honking a truck's horn in a residential area from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., advertising a sale of one or more goods". I think I could get some license fees for that. To up my income, I will also file for "Yelling at a carefully chosen target group of people at prominent city places until they agree to buy one or more goods".

Jeez. Indeed, leaving the oceans was a bad idea, after all.