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The Return Of The Pop-Up Ad
SYFer writes "Shortly after upgrading my Macs to OS X 10.3.8, I noticed that I was getting pop-up ads on Safari. It had been so long since I'd seen a pop-up, I completely forgotten how annoying they can be. I went over to Apple's Support site to see if there was a relationship, but learned that the timing is just a coincidence (even though there's a lot of the usual FUD and flailing of arms in the discussion forums). In fact, it turns out that the pop-up advertisers (what's the proper denigrating term here?) have finally defeated the pop-up blocking functionality found in many browsers. MacFixIt is running a front page article on the topic and says 'Contrary to initial reports, this problem isn't limited to Safari; subsequent reports have noted pop-under ads victimizing a number of browsers that provide pop-up-blocking features, including the latest versions of Safari, FireFox, Mozilla, OmniWeb, and Camino.'"
Serves you right for using a fucking mac!
Sieg Heil Mein Fuhrer Bill Gates!
Kill the undesirables!
DEATH TO SUBHUMAN JEWISH SCUM!
It was an example. Don't like the politics of Drudge? Don't visit the site. Ass.
Cunts.
I believe the late prophet, Bill Hicks, referred to them as "suckers of Satan's cock." That seems fitting.
No popup there or on another site where the person mentioned popups. Are you guys using windows? I still get zero popups under linux.
I never said illegal. And there is a huge difference between too much of an asshole to shift your vision five pixels to the left vs not wanting your computer to be hijacked in an endless swarm of popups which prevent the actual content from being viewed. :)
If there were a plugin to redirect popups to the page they were launched from, I would use it. Demand for ways of making ads more friendly, as opposed to blocking them completely, seems to be non-existent.
Of course, I may some day make such an extension myself, but based on public interest in my first attempt at an extension, I apparently suck at writing those
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I know this will probably result in all sorts of "you are a f-ing idiot" responses, but here it goes.
Is it possible that pop-up blocking may actually constitute copyright infringement. I know the idea seems a little far-fetched, but it's possible. I use the pop-up blocking feature of FireFox, but it's occurred to me that it's possible that I am engaging in copyright infringement by blocking pop up advertisements. It may be analogous to the DVD players that filtered out the more "damaging" content of some DVDs. Would it constitute copyright infringement if a person sold newspapers that had all the advertisements blacked out/cut-out. Maybe. I'm not sure.
I know people are going to come back and say, copyright exhaustion, fair use, among other arguments. And I think it's an interesting debate, but fundamentally pop-up blocking modifies the "copy" of the web site provided to an end user.
In Europe, where "Author's Rights" are more important (contrasted with the copyright holder/end user rights) it may even be a stronger case that pop-up blocking is a misuse of the copyrighted material. I'm not taking a side either way on this one, I think it's just an interesting issue that people may want to consider. Be a little open-minded on this issue, think about the companies and employees that rely on that advertising to survive, feed their families, etc and just ponder the question.
I was going to mod this down, but there doesn't seem to be a "-1 Ignorant Buffoon"...
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.