Slashdot Mirror


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.'"

9 of 539 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hooray! by Slime-dogg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  2. I think he'll find... by radish · · Score: 4, Insightful


    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"

  3. Hmm by ShooterNeo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Great.. by stratjakt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Popups arent similar to telemarketers. If you don't like them, you needn't visit sites that use them. They aren't unsolicited in that regard.

    People throw around phrases like "vote with your wallet" but seldom practice what they preach. Don't like a certain method of advertising? Don't visit those sites.

    Same as if (for example) Nickelodeon started running ads for cigarettes and beer during "The Wiggles". Stop watching nickelodeon.

    But everyone sits through it, not wanting to be inconvenienced by their principles, and waits for some sort of law to make it alright.

    And now we have a billion zillion conflicting laws restricting what we can or cannot do. Bah.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  5. Re:Hooray! by Acidic_Diarrhea · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Webads don't bring in very much? Where are you getting your data? I believe you can search Slashdot and find an article from a month or two back regarding the New York times turning their online prescence into a money making venture (and not money making in the sense of $0.01 over the line, but real money) because of the advertisements.

    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.
  6. Re:As good of place as any by kmac06 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. I have a problem with this... by tinrobot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

  8. Re:As good of place as any by TheWickedKingJeremy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is stopping Microsoft from putting out a version or patch of/to IE that has this feature?

    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 ;) 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.

    --

    my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
  9. Re:Hooray! by einhverfr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Lets thank Brian Schuster for doing to the Popup what Unisys did to the Gif!!! :-D

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP