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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.'"
Only in America!
No kidding. This is one patent holding that I will only object to from the sidelines, and not try to disprove. :-)
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
For him, he's living out the american dream. The freedom to create and sell an idea.
Unfortunately, the mass population HATES this idea and in fact people have gone so far to block this technology with software.
This should get intresting...
Popups are similar to telemarketers. Often, the consumer is not intrested in the product. People who disliked this technology came up with devices to block telemarketers and now there is a legislative "do not call" list. It would be pretty hard to have a "do not popup" list. Unless the ISPs stepped in and placed ALL their users and perhaps had to pay a fee to keep the pop ups away.
just my 2 cents worth...
including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off
I think he'll find that everything can be turned off.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
This is a rhetorical question : how can one possibly patent a 'feature' built into web-browsers? Popups are only possible because some idiot decided that opening another window without the users consent (and even doing this recursively!) was "friendly" behavoir and belonged in the javascript spec. The same applies to sound. This is another consequence of our failing legal system (lets be honest : its on life support at best. Its BROKEN. While the basic tenants of judges, juries, and appeals might be good, the implementation is falling apart). If the legal system worked without application of large sums of money (and I would not call giving the victory to the one with the money 'justice') this patent would have no meaning.
Just because a fact used to be a fact, doesn't mean it always will be.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
This is crazy. Patents for using [html, java, activex, cgi] in a certain way is absurd.
Think of it as patenting a commercial. Completely absurd.
I hope they don't. As soon as they do, a lot more people will disable pop ups, and web sites would stop using them.
Good, right?
No, that means they come up with some other really annoying way of forcing you to look at ads.
Why?
If a site is going to bombard me with popup ads, or God Forbid audio, then I leave. I haven't found a site yet that is worth the hassle. You won't let me download your stuff unless I use popups? Fine. I will do neither.
Sites can spam me all they want with ads and flashing banners and sound and spyware. I simply won't visit the site again.
Seems like every time an article about spam/popups/whatever comes around, someone tries to find and post the address.
While it's a clever sort of revenge, it's not very practical. You don't send mail to a person, you send it to a building. If the person gets 'snail mail spammed,' all they have to do is move. The building remains 'spammed' for the next tenant, and the next...
Nope, don't like it, don't like it one bit...
What is stopping Microsoft from putting out a version or patch of/to IE that has this feature?
;) legitimate uses for popups on the web. Moronic IE users would probably never know why a particularly site was not working correctly because a popup was being blocked. I really think the blocking of popups should be something you specifically apply to your browser - yes, perhaps a patch would be sufficient - but I dont think it should be included by default.
I would imagine this is similar to TV manufacturers not including commercial-blocking features with their TV sets by default. Sure, you can buy equipment to do this, but you have to specifically take that course of action yourself. Commercials, while annoying, are healthy for the TV business, and TV manufacturers cannot destroy this industry without hurting themselves. The feature can exist, but it cannot be included by default.
Microsoft, as the de-facto standard of web browsers, needs to think carefully before swiping out entire features altogether. After all, "window.open" is technically part of the javascript spec, and there are some (though not many
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
No, wait, I'm a Quaker.
Rocket to the face then? That should about cover it.
Lets thank Brian Schuster for doing to the Popup what Unisys did to the Gif!!! :-D
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I OWN MY COMPUTER - its fully 100% a resource of MINE and nobody else. I also PAY for my internet access, by the month.
If he wants to force feed me ads - then he better damn well PAY me. And protect himself while walking around in public.
Given that it is your computer, why are you letting him execute hostile code on your computer? I mean, if you're using Explorer (for example) and your security level is set such that pop-up ads are able to execute, aren't you basically allowing pop-up ads?
Now, rational folks will avoid using Explorer because of that annoying dialog box that informs you that "an active-x control on this page could not be loaded" when you turn scripting off, but the same case holds for Netscape. Pop-ups exploit features that you have turned on. Turn them off, and pop-ups cease to work.
I've browsed for years with javascript turned off, and the only time I'm bombarded with crap (the LA Times is a good example of intrusive advertising) is when I temporarily enable JS to do some banking, and forget to turn it off. In IE, I just set the default to have active scripting off for all sites, and add a few "trusted" sites so scripting is enabled selectively for just those sites.
Think about it. Why do certain sites insist on forcing you to use javascript to browse their sites (ie, latimes.com). To make sure you can experience the full "benefit" of their pop-up/pop-under ads. Solution? Boycott these sites.