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Mozilla The Internet It's funny. Laugh.

Not Enough Ads? Install Adbar. 451

Posted by michael from the !tangled-web dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Jesse Ruderman brings the worst feature of Opera, Advertisements, to Firefox with his extension Adbar. According to the page, 'adbar displays Google ads related to pages you view. Because the ads are relevant, they are occasionally useful. When adbar isn't displaying ads from Google, it displays Firefox-related things such as silly Firefox slogans, ads for other Mozilla software, and requests for donations to the Mozilla Foundation.'"
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Not Enough Ads? Install Adbar. More

Not Enough Ads? Install Adbar.

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  • Yeah, ok. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:07PM (#9977216)
    And when I'm done, I need to start installing my virus collection.

    • Re:Yeah, ok. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:09PM (#9977229)
      Don't copy that floppy!

    • Well (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mfh ( 56 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:15PM (#9977279) Homepage Journal
      I'm going to take a funny stance on this subject. Normally I would be annoyed by this sort of thing, but something occured to me when I read this /. article. Because Adbar is *not* spyware, I'm going to install it. I think people should support advertizing projects that take the high moral road. I'm going to reward these guys for staying legit and we'll see how it turns out. I wouldn't mind Google ads on pages I'm surfing, because there might be cool products or services I can buy related to the stuff I'm looking at. And, no, I'm not affiliated with this project in any way, shape or form, so don't ask! :-)

      • Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)

        by parksie ( 540658 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:17PM (#9977295)
        To me, it seems like the same thing as buying a trade magazine (say, Micro Mart in the UK). You are specifically *asking* for adverts on what you're looking at; in effect advertising yourself as a potential and interested buyer.

        • Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)

          by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima,Pandava&gmail,com> on Monday August 16, 2004 @02:20AM (#9978324) Journal
          Who buys trade magazines? You just fill out the zillion question form and they appear at your office for the rest of your life.

        • Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pilybaby ( 638883 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @03:50AM (#9978569)
          To me, it seems like the same thing as buying a trade magazine (say, Micro Mart in the UK). You are specifically *asking* for adverts on what you're looking at; in effect advertising yourself as a potential and interested buyer.


          Same with almost all mass media. The big guys are big guys because they can subsidise the cost of unit production through selling advertising. Thus the massivly popular labour and union papers that used to be around were brought down explicitly because they didn't sell advertising space and thus couldn't compete on price. Unfortunatly, as soon as one person does it the rest are forced to follow. It's a shame really as I think it's destroyed the news media in the western world (I can't vouch for other parts of the world).

      • Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)

        by GregChant ( 305127 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:28PM (#9977340)
        I think people should support advertizing projects that take the high moral road. I'm going to reward these guys for staying legit and we'll see how it turns out.

        But you're not helping anyone other than the advertisers. The adbar is run in test mode: the developer doesn't make a dime, and google doesn't make a dime.

        So, unless you're referring to the moral high road of all advertisers who display web ad content, which I find hard to believe, you're just another schmuck who hasn't read the damn article

        • Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Achoi77 ( 669484 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:46PM (#9977408)
          *woah* did you just insult a 2-digit UID? :-P


          All jocking aside, I beleive when grandparent says high moral road he's referring to is adware applications that don't hijack your computer, putting on excess bloat eventually rendering your computer useless on order to force their ads upon you.


          Personally I've enjoyed using google's ads, as they offer me more or less the most relevant stuff I'm looking for during my surfing session. If this thing even gets popular, perhaps there will be less and less browser spamming, less pop-ups, less harassment over all. Ok I'll stop dreaming now.


          In any case, I find google's ads very non-intrusive, and very relevant - those are the kind of ads I like to see.

          • Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)

            by halowolf ( 692775 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @11:40PM (#9977784)
            All jocking aside, I beleive when grandparent says high moral road he's referring to is adware applications that don't hijack your computer, putting on excess bloat eventually rendering your computer useless on order to force their ads upon you.

            Personally, I don't mind getting ads that are relevant and on my own terms. For some reason I quite enjoy looking at shopping catalogues and stuff even though 99% of the time I wouldn't buy anything from them. If there is something that I may be interested in then I don't mind being told about it.

            For instance I've got my Amazon recommendations list as part of the Mozilla Browser home tab group. I don't always look at it but I do find something on it every now and then that I am interested in, and best of all it learns my preferences and offers more relevant results. Though it does tend do go off in unexpected directions and makes some less than relevant selected obviously based on keyword association.

            Whats important for me is that the advertising is on my terms and not on the terms of someone else. I rarely watch any TV at the time is on and simply time shift it to where I can easily bypass the ads.

            I've worked for a number of marketing departments now and every one of them has been focused on getting into the customers mindset anyway they can. None of them seemed concerned about annoying potential customers with advertising that they didn't want. They would run competitions so they could harvest contact details to advertise to consumers with and such and they got mightily offended when I compared their "directed marketing" to SPAM. Oh well...

            • Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)

              by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) *
              None of them seemed concerned about annoying potential customers with advertising that they didn't want.

              That's what always utterly mystified my about marketing dweebs:

              Maybe I'm different then other folks, but annoy me only once, be it by a dumb, sexist, racist adds, by an insult of my intelligence, by rotten customer service, or by a flashy awfully colored popup blurting "HELLO, YOU HAVE HEMEROIDS!!!" into my general direction and you can bank on the fact that you lost my business...

              ...forever

              (OK, it g

          • Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)

            by BrainInAJar ( 584756 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @12:10AM (#9977887)
            " *woah* did you just insult a 2-digit UID? :-P"

            He bought it (the UID) on ebay, so it's okay

            • He did buy the uid on ebay (Score:5, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 16, 2004 @05:07AM (#9978727)
              who modded this as funny? he did buy the uid on ebay [ebay.com] A very little amount of research will also reveal the uid of the user who bought it.

              • Re:He did buy the uid on ebay (Score:5, Informative)

                by bgarcia ( 33222 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @07:35AM (#9979223) Homepage Journal
                Good god!

                He paid $115 for that ID! I guess he was sick of his current low karma [slashdot.org]

                LOL!

              • Intentional (Score:3, Interesting)

                by mfh ( 56 )
                I intentionally set up my Ebay acct with my old /. nick because I did not want to mask the fact that this happened and which nick I used before this transaction.

                I feel like I got a good deal on it. I was prepared to go higher than that price.

                I've always been a huge fan of Slasdot, and I started coming here when UIDs were about in the 4 digit range, but I never registered then and only posted AC. I bought this acct for my birthday, as the ultimate geek present to myself. My wife looked at me like I was nut

        • Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)

          by muyuubyou ( 621373 )
          But you're not helping anyone other than the advertisers. The adbar is run in test mode: the developer doesn't make a dime, and google doesn't make a dime.

          Google does make a dime. They get payed for every click those ads get.

        • FYI (Score:5, Interesting)

          by mfh ( 56 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:39PM (#9977608) Homepage Journal
          > you're just another schmuck who hasn't read the damn article

          I did RTFA, and I posted my response to it. The fact they are doing the test thing doesn't bother me. Google will likely make them change servers, so it's kind of a non-issue to me. Their product will move to whatever mechanism works. The fact they say you have to pay to be removed is likely a joke, but even if it isn't, I would rather know that kind of stuff *up front* rather than find out after I've installed something that it won't come off (like Gator). And it's the fact they have designed this project knowing full well that many people won't use it because it's ads, but yet they still branched the advertising medium into something else -- something moral -- I just feel like they deserve to get as many people supporting them as they can. Really, wouldn't you like to see the Internet advertising medium shift gears into something that doesn't hijack your computer? I certainly would.

          • Re:FYI (Score:5, Insightful)

            by misleb ( 129952 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @12:52AM (#9978065)
            All you are going to end up with is Adbar AND Gator on your computer. There is no reason to believe that Adbar would replace any other type of advertising. It would just amount to MORE advertising on the Internet. Ads in adbar as well as ads embedded in the site itself. See, the sites you visit want to make money too. It isn't like the money Google would get from this would somehow trickle down to other sites.

            Voluntarily installing adbar is stupid. It would be like installing a device that sits on top of your TV and scrolls advertisements while you watch shows... that also have advertisment.

            • Re:FYI (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Blimey85 ( 609949 )
              It would be like installing a device that sits on top of your TV and scrolls advertisements while you watch shows There are times when this would be nice. For example, say you are watching a cooking show and the chef uses some gadget that you really like. As it is, you may not have caught the beginning of the program when he/she told about the product so now you're in the dark and you can either go online and try to find it, or hope that you see it in a store. If you had ads going all the time, there could

      • Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)

        by soimless ( 651224 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:41PM (#9977621) Homepage Journal
        My question is if i can Adblock my Adbar?

      • Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)

        by robochan ( 706488 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:52PM (#9977659) Homepage
        I think people should support advertizing projects that take the high moral road. I'm going to reward these guys for staying legit and we'll see how it turns out.

        I honestly think that's the most grotesque, the most disgusting, thing I ever seen posted to slashdot. If you honestly beieve that ANY advertiser is moving ANY sort of morality - you're in serious need of intensive therapy.
        I used to be one of those advertising guys. I was surrounded by like people all the time. No advertising/marketing person that's ever walked this earth has ever given a shit about you, your browser, your wife, your children, your hamster or any moral high ground. The ONLY thing that's cared about is the bottom line.

      • Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)

        by FireFury03 ( 653718 ) <<slashdot> <at> <nexusuk.org>> on Monday August 16, 2004 @03:42AM (#9978557) Homepage
        But noone who is providing you with a service is benefiting. If the Mozilla Foundation were getting the money from the advertising then I would consider it.

        I am all in favor of Google's ads - they're nonintrusive and targetted (Hell, I use them on my website... I wish they would pay in sterling instead of sending 'checks' in dollars though). And I am in favor of the free websites using them (afterall, the ads are paying for the site instead of me). Whilest Google's ads are often useful, if they're not paying for something I'm using I would far prefer to have a list of related websites displayed rather than related adverts.

        I'd also argue that this is spyware in a way - I don't have a problem with it, but google will know where you're going since it _has_ to ask google for ads relevent to the current page. The difference between this "spyware" and true spyware is that the authors of the adbar aren't getting the data, Google is (and I would doubt that Google would ever use the information they can collect since it would be exceptionally bad publicity).

        What might be cool would be for the adbar to provide a list of projects to support and you could tick the ones you want your money going to (I would be much happier installing it if I could choose for the money generated by my clicks to go to the Mozilla foundation and various opensource projects that I use). This could quite easilly be done using the Google's AdSense categories to identify which project to pay a click to.

    • Re:Yeah, ok. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:42PM (#9977624)
      And when I'm done, I need to start installing my virus collection.

      This is awesome! I just found out that I can pay money to have my own conversations tapped [slashdot.org], and now I just found out that I can install a plugin for my browser that gives me more ads! If they ever come up with a device for my computer that shoves a hot poker in my ass every so often, I'll be in heaven!

    • My DVD Player (Score:5, Funny)

      by Frankie70 ( 803801 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @01:30AM (#9978176)
      I have hacked my DVD Player to play 5 minutes of advertisements after every 10 minutes of the movie. And my TIVO plays stored ads even when I watch the premium ad free channels.

  • IT'S A TRAP! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rylfaeth ( 138910 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:07PM (#9977218)
    or so shouts Admiral Adbar.
    -Rylfaeth

  • I hate to admit this... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Osrin ( 599427 ) * on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:08PM (#9977219) Homepage
    but I've been using gmail for a number of months now, and I'm finding their targeted advertising more and more helpful.

    I guess I've officially lost at the internet.

    • That's the thing about ads (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:25PM (#9977332) Homepage
      Ads are not inherently evil creations of hellish spawn (although it certainly seems that way at times). I can remember back when I was reading print mags for tech subjects, and being very interested in the ads. They were targeted at a subject I was interested in, and some of the products were products I was thinking of buying. Those ads helped me. I enjoyed seeing them.

      Some TV ads are so funny, you look forward to watching them (until you get sick of them.....WISE.....ER......BUD).

      I accept the usefulness and necessity of ads for providing "free" access to some information that would not otherwise be free of direct cost (or even possible) otherwise. This may sound surprising to anyone who has read the About page [funwithheadlines.net] on my web site, where I diss advertising executives. But that's different. I run a hobby site, just for fun, designed to make people laugh and then go about their lives. I pay for this myself and I don't believe advertising belongs on such Web sites, sites the Web was created for (person-to-person communication, not selling wares). But I don't hate advertising as a whole. I just want to see it kept in its proper place.

      And if you can make the ads relevant, interesting, useful, and even fun, it helps a LOT.

      • I can remember back when I was reading print mags for tech subjects, and being very interested in the ads. They were targeted at a subject I was interested in, and some of the products were products I was thinking of buying.

        This is why I've always scratched my head about people that scream so loudly about privacy issues as they relate to advertising.

        I'm sure advertisers honestly don't want to waste their time (or money) trying to sell you a product that you have no use in (except spammers, who cost-per-vi

        • Re:That's the thing about ads (Score:5, Informative)

          by jesser ( 77961 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @11:13PM (#9977708) Homepage Journal
          There are two ways advertisers can "violate your privacy".

          * They can send you unwanted advertisements (spam e-mail, junk faxes, telemarketing, adware). With spam and ads from adware, it is often difficult to tell where the ad came from and how to stop receiving ads from that source.

          * They can select which ads to show you based on information you consider private, such as demographic information or the contents of e-mails you receive.

          I don't mind the second, as long as I don't see ads for porn while someone is looking over my shoulder. Google was wise to make Gmail select ads based only on the current message.
      • "I accept the usefulness and necessity of ads for providing "free" access to some information that would not otherwise be free of direct cost (or even possible) otherwise"

        I just want to point out that it's not "free". Since somebody is paying for the ad that cost is reflected in the price of everything you buy. It's not free, you just pay for it some other time when you buy some product or another.
      • Ads are not inherently evil creations of hellish spawn ....

        Yes they are, but sometimes they can provide enough good that they overcome their inherently evil nature (kinda like Angel) -- as long as you don't climb bed with them, then all bets are off.

    • I'm just the opposite - I've learned to block the ads from my vision. Now, I know that they are there, but I read around them and barely notice them.

  • THANK GOD! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mcnut ( 712202 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:08PM (#9977223) Homepage
    I was worried I wasn't getting enough google ads reading slashdot every 30 minutes. no, but really, thats how sad I am.. I'm on a 30 minute refresh cycle..

  • Sometimes people actually want ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrRTFM ( 740877 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:08PM (#9977228) Journal
    When I'm buying a car or appliance, I like seeing ads - I go through all the catalogs and magazines looking for them.

    Although, I wouldnt it it as a sidebar on all the time, and I cant imagine internet ads being usefully targetted.

    • I find the Opera thing quite useful (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:45PM (#9977403)
      Often when I'm exploring for stuff I find that the Opera ads box proves useful finding a few extra things (almost like having Google running in parallel to what you're surfing). OK, a very limited search, but none the less sometimes useful

      But the eyecandy graphics just sounds like a complete waste. WTF does this do for anybody?

    • When you are shopping for something, what you should be looking for is reliable information, not ads.

      I sure as hell will never buy a car or anything pricey based on publicity.. Yeah, yeah, they are all car of the year, all have cheap prices (until you read the fine print), etc.

    • Re:Sometimes people actually want ads (Score:4, Insightful)

      by misleb ( 129952 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @01:13AM (#9978120)
      I'm sorry, but that has to be the most retarded method of "shopping" I have ever heard of. Advertisments are NOT there to inform you. They are there to mislead you into buying something you wouldn't otherwise buy. If you want to buy an appliance you should be searching the most unbiased consumer oriented sources you can find like Consumer Reports (although even those have been tainted by corporate influences). An informed, responsible consumer does not let advertisement directly influence their purchasing decisions. Advertisements are untrustworthy and insidious. We should be working as hard as possible to get them out of our lives... not invite them in. But I guess that is just me projecting my own opinions onto others. :-P

  • Does Google know about this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:09PM (#9977230)
    Google is very strict about where they allow their ads to be shown. For example, Google will not feed ads to sites that express extreme political views, or deal with taboo topics such as internet gambling.

    So, I'm wondering if they approved this project. If they haven't, then Google will be pulling the plug very shortly...

  • is there a version for (Score:5, Funny)

    by theguywhosaid ( 751709 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:09PM (#9977234) Homepage
    Internet Explorer?

  • Google is a special case (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tjlsmith ( 583149 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:10PM (#9977243)
    It's ads are actually GOOD - I've learned to pay attention to them when on Google. I might get this adbar...

    • Re:Google is a special case (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:14PM (#9977274)

      Sucker.

    • That's kind of interesting...

      MOST of the time, ads are targetted in this way (these days). If you go to a gaming review site, the ads on there are about games. If you go to a sex site, the ads on there are about ... sex sites. Ads targetting the content you're viewing is a very old idea. What's unique about Google ads is that they are on the search engine, so if you search about games, there are ads about games. I don't see how having a google ad on every webpage you visit would be much different from

  • Resolution to burn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bullseye_blam ( 589856 ) <.bullseye_1. .at. .yahoo.com.> on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:10PM (#9977250) Journal
    Sorry, I prefer to keep my [very limited] desktop space.

    Thanks anyway!

    -Bullseye

  • You just saved me from installing IE!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cytoman ( 792326 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:11PM (#9977252)
    Thanks, dude!!!! I was going Cold Turkey without the ads/popups after switching to Firefox... I needed to see those ads so bad that I was about to uninstall Firefox and switch to Windows so that I could use IE!!!!!!

    Yay Ads! I was feeling guilty about reading pages without watching ads... I was feeling guilty because seeing content without Ads is like stealing from the content makers. You saved my soul.

    • I actually feel this way... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gerf ( 532474 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:48PM (#9977643) Journal

      I've recently started to use Adblock with Firefox. Now, not only are all my pop-ups blocked, but I never saw an ad. It seriously took me a week to adjust to actually reading the information in front of me. Before, I'd automatically scan past most pictures and words before reading anything.

      Honest to God, it freaked me out. I even mentioned how weird it was to other people. Of course they gave me a weird look by saying all of this, but nevertheless it's true.

  • Odd (Score:3, Interesting)

    by niktesla ( 761443 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:11PM (#9977253) Homepage
    Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

    I find it funny that thats all I got when I first clicked on the article. Atleast this is an optional plugin, but it'd be funny if you ran it alongside Adblock.

  • Not quite real google ads... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:11PM (#9977254)
    Out of the FAQ...

    "Who gets money?
    adbar uses the "test" adsense mode, so advertisers don't pay Google and Google doesn't pay anyone"

    Somehow, I sense that Google's going to be pulling thier new test-viewer feature offline for more security to be added tomorrow.

  • Yep it's a joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by beakerMeep ( 716990 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:13PM (#9977266)
    From the site: "Can I register and get rid of the ads? Of course! Paypal $19 (51% cheaper than Opera!) to me or the Mozilla Foundation, then use Firefox's Extension Manager to uninstall adbar." What a waste of a parannoid attack I had there. Thanks slashdot.

  • Why post this is it some backhand insult to Opera? (Score:3, Funny)

    by loggia ( 309962 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:15PM (#9977281)
    What is the point of posting this story? Is it some kind of clever backhand insult to Opera?

    I use Opera all the time: number of times I have even noticed the ads consciously... um, never. Or let's say, just about the same number of times I notice them on SlashDot!

  • Don't cross the streams! (Score:5, Funny)

    by deep square leg ( 703399 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:16PM (#9977285)
    Don't install it next to Adblock! The meeting of these two opposing super-extensions will create an implosion that shall engulf the entire universe.

  • A use for those otherwise wasted cycles... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Brewer ( 66818 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:16PM (#9977288) Journal
    Install AdBar and Adblock and let 'em fight it out...

  • Google's "targeted" ads (Score:4, Funny)

    by chunkwhite86 ( 593696 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:23PM (#9977326)
    - These are not the ads you're looking for.
    - You can go about your business.
    - Move along.

  • Targeted Ads, eh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:34PM (#9977370)
    So based on the assumptions about slashdot users, you will get even MORE ads about "enlarging your member" based on surfing habits.

    • Re:Targeted Ads, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @11:15PM (#9977718)
      From what I've seen on slashdot, you'll see more ads about how .NET is the best thing since...well...nothing. Ads run the internet. It's a plain and simple fact. There is no way most websites could afford to stay up if it wasn't for ad revenue. And the only way to maximize efficiency is to target the ads specifically to the people who are going to view them. That's why there are so many microsoft ads on this website. But what do I care, it's not going to sway the moderation system so it's not going to make slashdot into another C|NET.

      Dealing with ads on the internet is like dealing with commercials on television. Accept them and move on.

  • How advertising will survive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Douglas Simmons ( 628988 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:40PM (#9977388) Homepage
    As technology improves, along will consumers' ability to "block" ads, whether on the computer or on television with a tivo-like hack. This is an example of the marketing industry returning fire by making forms of advertisements as appealing as possible to consumers (in this case, by letting them opt-in to receive ads of relevance).

    Take the Superbowl, to use television as an example. People tune in to that event even if they're not football fans just to see the ads. Millions were spent on those thirty second spots, and in a situation like that, millions more get spent on ad agencies to come up with entertaining ads.

    As more people learn how to "block" ads on different mediums one way or another, the greater the demand will become to write and produce advertisements entertaining enough that people will want to see them in addition to companies creating several different ads at a time so viewers do not get hit with so much repitition. This Firefox plugin illustrates my points by allowing proud consumers to be informed about what they could spend their money on by filtering out ads that will most likely be of no interest to that Firefox user. This way, if Firefox somehow figures out that you already have a big penis by analyzing your slashdot posts, then you won't be seeing that type of spam. Instead you'll be advised of products that your computer deems worthy for that purpose by judging its relevance to your MO (deduced by Firefox from your web behavior).

    If ads could be both very entertaining and minimally invasive, in addition to pushing products/services you'd most likely want to buy in a spontaneous situation, why wouldn't you install this? Not all of us are broke, and most of us want more stuff.

  • I just invented something too (Score:5, Funny)

    by oasis3582 ( 698323 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:42PM (#9977391)
    I just invented a reverse TiVo. It extracts all the commercials from a given time slot for viewing at a later date! One at a time folks!

    • Re:I just invented something too (Score:4, Interesting)

      by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @11:18PM (#9977723)
      That's not that far-fetched. At least the last time I was in Germany, the national (think NBC, ABC) TV stations still didn't run ads during TV shows. In fact, one station (ZDF IIRC) had a program called Meinzelmänchen which ran for about 30 minutes. Basically, it was 30 minutes of ads interspersed with 10-30 s animated spots of gnomes. It was wildly popular and the ads were all pretty good.

      Considering you only saw TV ads once a day during that time, you also remembered the ads a lot more.

  • Let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)

    by cicatrix1 ( 123440 ) <cicatrix1&gmail,com> on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:46PM (#9977410) Homepage
    It advertises for mozilla (in mozilla). It advertises things I'm already looking at. Does it advertise itself? I've been searching for this exact set of features! It's like the second coming!

  • reverse the approach (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jdkane ( 588293 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @09:54PM (#9977438)
    Instead of ads that try to target you all the time, instead the ads should be coralled into a place where they stay until you want to look at them. For example, if I wanted to buy a new fridge then I could go to the ads and look through as many as I want, but the rest of the time they stay suppressed (an ad aggregator of sorts that's not in your face all the time). Ads are useful under certain circumstances. It's my opinion that the current ad process in the browwer doesn't work anymore because people are too accustomed to it. Of course it doesn't work for me (and many of you at all) because of Firefox/Adblock, etc.

  • Honestly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nwbvt ( 768631 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:00PM (#9977464)
    I might actually install that if they made so that income generated from selling the ad space went to the mozilla foundation. I'd get to be cheap and financially help out mozilla.

  • Useful Joke (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cookiepus ( 154655 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:46PM (#9977632) Homepage
    The concept is obviously a joke but I can see something like this being a good idea.

    People mainly object to ads because of the format in which they're delivered: popups, Flash, spam, etc. People don't have a problem with advertisement-sponsored content itself (well, some do, but fuck 'em).

    Well, if we accept that we "pay" for content by exposing our eyeballs to advertisement, wouldn't it be useful to control the way in which we are subjected to adverts? For example, a site could provide meta-data, so to speak, about an ad, and the client will determine how to present it, based on use preference (ie, do you want the ad embedded in the page, or as a popup, or in its own frame, or whatever)

    This would be a pretty good concept because it means that advertisement would be delivered to you in a way which you mind the least (or perhaps is the most useful to you)

    Just thinking.

    • Re:Useful Joke (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TiggsPanther ( 611974 )

      People don't have a problem with advertisement-sponsored content itself (well, some do, but fuck 'em).

      Yes, some do. And for varying reasons.

      For one thing I find ad-banners (even non-popups) annoying because if I could afford whatever they're advertising I'd probably have paid for the product/site subscription in the first place.

      The other thing is that too many sites farm out their advertising space to someone else. This means that if I'm trying to read a site in a hurry the local content is delayed

  • Gah. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by amalcon ( 472105 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @10:50PM (#9977652)
    I always hate to see people actually go for something like this. Advertising is the one industry which provides nothing of value to society. The only ones who gain from advertising are medium to large businesses, as they are the only ones with the investment capital to saturate the market.

    That said, if these people can get anyone to fall for this, more power to them. That's capitalism. At least they are up front about it, and not sneaky and underhanded like Gator & the like.

  • Someone's gotta say it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Graabein ( 96715 ) on Sunday August 15, 2004 @11:47PM (#9977803) Journal
    1. Create Adbar extension for Firefox, nearly giving a lot of /. readers a heart attack
    2. Giggle uncontrollably at the predictable fallout
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

  • Spamderbird plugin is coming soon (Score:3, Funny)

    by iamacat ( 583406 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @01:42AM (#9978210)
    Surely Yahoo targeted promotional e-mail, based on keywords in your inbox, can be useful sometimes. Also, I have been hearing about those beneficial worms patching windows holes. Perhaps a firewall plugin is in order.

  • Thunderbird ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 16, 2004 @03:26AM (#9978514)
    I wish I had the same for Mozilla Thunderbird, so I can get more spam...

  • Inter cafe's could use this. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by elgaard ( 81259 ) <elgaard@@@agol...dk> on Monday August 16, 2004 @04:51AM (#9978703) Homepage
    Last month I used was in a internet Cafe in Dublin, that used CenturySurf Linux/firfox PCs. The only program they could was Firefox.

    I can see someone installing 1000's of public PC's wanting to put ads on them.

  • Does no-one in this thread think it's a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by brainburger ( 792239 ) on Monday August 16, 2004 @07:33AM (#9979209)
    Does no-one in this thread think it's a joke? It appears to be functional, but it is clearly humourous, satirical, ironic - that kind of thing. Hats off to them.

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