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.'"
Here's hoping lots of sites don't want to pay the license fee and stop using popups.
If this guy can start charging people for using popups then these webpages won't pay and popups will start dying off. While a patent like this is mostly a bad thing, the side effects are good!
Of course I use mozilla with popup filtering enabled, so it's not really that much of an issue to me. =)
Do you Gentoo!?
God Bless Mozilla .. no more pop-ups. Hopefully it will still block those audio pop-ups "that can't be turned off."
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?
To inundate him with junk mail, of course, and also to hit him up for money. Or just hit him. No, wait, I'm a Quaker. I keep forgetting that...
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
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.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
he's in internet porn eh? Maybe someone can fix it so he can't "pop-up" anymore
Hopefully he charges astronomical licence fees for both "innovations" retroactive to the day he filed. Hopefully that will be the nail in the coffin that drives these scourges off the desktop.
Heck, I wish somebody had patented spam as well!
My rights don't need management.
Wonderful! An anti-popup web article that uses popup advertising!
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"
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.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
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.
So in other words...
Patents pending for porno pop-up prince?
Best Windows Freeware
He must be murdered immediately. The consequences of any other course of action are too dire to even be conceptualized.
Murder.
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!!!!
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!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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
(The popups appear when you click a "next page" or "previous page" link in the article, so Mozilla must be treating it as a requested popup. In addition to a whitelist of sites that are allowed to throw popups, Mozilla needs a blacklist of sites that are never allowed to throw popups.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I was asked a question by a co-worker yesterday, and did not have a solid answer. Since it somewhat relates to this story and google did nothing but bring back ads for popup blockers, I thought I would loose it to the /. people. Simple question -- Anybody who has used Firebird, Mozilla, Opera, etc -- has seen how much better the browsing experience is without countless popups. What is stopping Microsoft from putting out a version or patch of/to IE that has this feature? I know that the conspirecy theorists could speculate to no end on this one, but is there a simple answer?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I don't understand why you guys don't like Pop-Ups. The strawberry ones are delicious.
"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!'"
the dictionary says:
shyster
n. Slang
An unethical, unscrupulous practitioner, especially of law.
Seems to fit Shuster quite well.
-- This sig for rent.
"interact with the browser to modify or control one or more of the browser functions, such that the user is directed to a predesignated site or page, instead of accessing the site or page typically associated with the selected browser function."
So he patented misleading people via a web browser...
Intersting.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
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...
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.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns