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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.'"
Don't be. It's not his fault. He didn't "create" anything. GeoCities deployed the first pop-up ad in mid 1997. I know this because I did, and I'm currently looking at the source code I wrote to do it (scheduling, etc.). Keep in mind this was during a time when internet companies couldn't figure out how to make a profit... oh wait, never mind that last point. I'll still be happy to see 'em go.
A lot of sites (like the once really cool but now really pathetic Vintage Gaming Network) now block downloads or forum access or other features if you block popups.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Best solution I have found is to locate the advertising servers of the companies doing this crap, and blackhole them via your hosts file. I used to see this stuff all the time when reading the news on Yahoo!, but I have since managed to find most of their ad servers and redirect them to 127.0.0.1. Personally I keep a pretty long hosts file. If I find an ad/tracking server I simply add it to my hosts file. And ya, I run Mozilla as well.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.