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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.'"
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.
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.
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!!!!
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.