Comment On The Great Google Banner Ad Conspiracy

You gotta give the president credit at least for (improperly) using Opera.

 

Catchpa  - "whiskey" - sounds good to me right about now

Irony, at its finest.

 

Revenge to the banner advertisers, too.

Heh.  Doesn't look good when the president of a company is so annoyed by his own product that he heavy-handedly blocks it.

 

captcha: zork.

ahh, Apple ][ days... 

Oh my God!...  Talking about eating your own dog food!

Where can you define blocked words in opera ? i know about blocked content (URLs, images) but not words...

As a network admin, I am constantly amazed at people who experience some kind of problem and it never crosses their mind they may have caused the problem.  This story sums it up perfectly.  I'm surprised he didn't find some way to blame M$.  Probably just didn't have enough time to think about it.

 Captcha:  Random...as in random acts of stupidity

Anonymous:

As a network admin, I am constantly amazed at people who experience some kind of problem and it never crosses their mind they may have caused the problem.  This story sums it up perfectly.  I'm surprised he didn't find some way to blame M$.  Probably just didn't have enough time to think about it.

Well, he did blame Google, which has become the latest "evil" corporation for people to complain about ....

As I usually say regarding code snippets, it's not the tools, it's the people using them. 

hoist on his own petard, I guess

 

/genius 

So, a pop-up banner-ad president hates things done by his own product so much he blocks it?

 Now if we can only get the Gods of the Internet to return all spam to the spammer's, maybe they would block themselves....

Where can you define blocked words in opera ? i know about blocked content (URLs, images) but not words...

 

He really didn't block the word.  If you read again, you'll see it blocked the Google search, which uses a GET url, which means the search term was in the URL... 

captcha: captcha

self referential, Brillant!!

no quack 

That is just precious.

 

And folks, this is how Scrum works in real life:

The pig go. Go is to the office. Late. The pig look. Look at
what? Empty office. The chicken shout. Shout something.
The something at the pig. The pig confusing. But the pig follow. Follow
with chicken. The chicken very angry. The pig browse. With Google. Chicken blame. Blame is to the White House. Shift blame. Blame is now to Google. The chicken now squawk. Squawk is "B-A-N-N-E-R'. Opera flash. Pig sigh. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.

 

Anonymous:

Where can you define blocked words in opera ? i know about blocked content (URLs, images) but not words...

Er, they are blocked URLs; his search terms were in the query string, and since he had URLs matching *banner* etc blocked, it wasn't loading them.

kuroshin:

And folks, this is how Scrum works in real life:

The pig go. Go is to the office. Late. The pig look. Look at
what? Empty office. The chicken shout. Shout something.
The something at the pig. The pig confusing. But the pig follow. Follow
with chicken. The chicken very angry. The pig browse. With Google. Chicken blame. Blame is to the White House. Shift blame. Blame is now to Google. The chicken now squawk. Squawk is "B-A-N-N-E-R'. Opera flash. Pig sigh. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.

 

11/10 Awsome 

This is the same kind of moron who thinks that popping up an advertisement across the middle of a web page is a good idea.  I bet this guy would figure that if I force the user to look at my advertisement, then they will buy my product.  They will never get irritated or annoyed with my company name and/or its services that are covering up what the user is really interested in.  Give this man a compiler, and he would swear that it was broken or not installed right before he looked into his code for the source of a bug.

 

tjo, he should have used the right regexps ...

*/banner/*
http://banner.*
[...]

no quack

ssprencel:

Give this man a compiler, and he would swear that it was broken or not installed right before he looked into his code for the source of a bug.

Dude!  That's harsh!  I resemble that remark.

Jeff S:

Anonymous:

As a network admin, I am constantly amazed at people who experience some kind of problem and it never crosses their mind they may have caused the problem.  This story sums it up perfectly.  I'm surprised he didn't find some way to blame M$.  Probably just didn't have enough time to think about it.

Well, he did blame Google, which has become the latest "evil" corporation for people to complain about ....

As I usually say regarding code snippets, it's not the tools, it's the people using them. 

 Although in the case, the person using them is the tool. :D
 

Given the subject matter, Alex, I think you should have included some sort of homage to David (or Bruce) Banner in your story. Perhaps when the president looks like he's going on a rampage.... you could have suggested that he looked about to turn big and green and split his (suddenly purple) pants. That woulda been cool!

boflexson:

That is just precious.

 

When your signature contains more content than your post, and that signature simply links to a website, and that website has nothing to do with the topics here on this forum, that's pretty much considered spam.... please consider changing your signature or you'll probably end up with your posts moderated.

 thanks!
 

kuroshin:

And folks, this is how Scrum works in real life:

The pig go. Go is to the office. Late. The pig look. Look at what? Empty office. The chicken shout. Shout something. The something at the pig. The pig confusing. But the pig follow. Follow with chicken. The chicken very angry. The pig browse. With Google. Chicken blame. Blame is to the White House. Shift blame. Blame is now to Google. The chicken now squawk. Squawk is "B-A-N-N-E-R'. Opera flash. Pig sigh. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.

Best post of the day!

ssprencel:

Give this man a compiler, and he would swear that it was broken or not installed right before he looked into his code for the source of a bug.

No, please don't...

This is why I don't like working 8 hour days. Neal shouldn't feel at all bad for arriving to work late. People like him in 7 hours acomplish as much as someone who works 8 hours. The proof is even in this post. While the whole office was working on this during the 45 minutes that he was late, Neal figured it out in 3 minutes.

 Neal should have gone home right after that meeting and told his boss that he's put in the equivilent of 8 hours of work, because if he wasn't around surely the boss would have spent the whole day to realize that he had blocked the search terms with Opera.

Anonymous:

ssprencel:

Give this man a compiler, and he would swear that it was broken or not installed right before he looked into his code for the source of a bug.

Dude!  That's harsh!  I resemble that remark.

 .... You resemble that remark? I think you mean "Resent"
 

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I've done this.  I sat down and entered a long list of block terms in Opera right after I installed it and I made a few mistakes causing some to be overly broad.  It was weeks later, when I started using Opera as my primary browser, that I started experiencing this exact same thing. Random web sites just wouldn't work.  I'd click a hyperlink and get nothing.  I spent hours over days frustrated by the experience and was just about to uninstall Opera when I moused over a link and glimpsed one of my block words flash in the status bar.  At that moment everything "clicked" for me.  I'm just glad I didn't drag half the development team into my office complaining about it first.

kuroshin:

And folks, this is how Scrum works in real life:

The pig go. Go is to the office. Late. The pig look. Look at what? Empty office. The chicken shout. Shout something. The something at the pig. The pig confusing. But the pig follow. Follow with chicken. The chicken very angry. The pig browse. With Google. Chicken blame. Blame is to the White House. Shift blame. Blame is now to Google. The chicken now squawk. Squawk is "B-A-N-N-E-R'. Opera flash. Pig sigh. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.

 

Brilliant !  No one else need reply ! 

 

seventoes:

Anonymous:

Dude!  That's harsh!  I resemble that remark.

 .... You resemble that remark? I think you mean "Resent"

Ummm, yeah dude, that's what I meant.  I resent that I resemble that remark.  I really do...

Jeff S:

boflexson:

That is just precious.

 

When your signature contains more content than your post, and that signature simply links to a website, and that website has nothing to do with the topics here on this forum, that's pretty much considered spam.... please consider changing your signature or you'll probably end up with your posts moderated.

 thanks!
 

At least the link is to something that is awesome (homebrew wine).  The bonus is that the site can also be considered community service...  They (Boflexson) are trying to a) make sure people don't go blind while making their homebrew and b) inspire people to try something creative and fun.

 At least that's my take on it.

Wow. Not only is he hypocritical (a banner-company president intentionally trying to block banner ads), he's a moron lashing out at the first (and second) scapegoat he can find:

1) He blamed Google, and only Google... thus implying he never even tried another search engine.

2) He only tried it in a single browser... despite the fact that Opera is NOT the default browser on ANY mainstream platform, and thus we can virtually guarantee something else was available (IE on Windows, Konqueror/Firefox/Mozilla on Linux, Safari on OSX). I mean, he's got 9 employees, in an internet-based company... surely ONE of them has a clue in this area.

3) He didn't even try it on a different computer. WTF?!? At all the businesses I've worked with/at, that's the FIRST thing they do when something goes wrong... yell over to someone else and ask if XYZ is working right.

4) He immediately assumed a conspiracy against ad companies, instead of choosing the simplest, most obvious explanation... somebody screwed up. In this case, himself.

5) He first blamed the government for censoring the entire internet in regards to ADVERTISING. Apparently it didn't occur to him that this would be a rather large news story. As in, ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HUGE.

6) Neal asks what's wrong, and the he gives him a totally useless answer. Furthermore, that answer is condescending (apparently Neal was supposed to know how exactly Google was putting them out of business already) and egotistical (Google is trying to put HIM out of business. If he gave a damn about the business and/or his employees, wouldn't he have said 'they're trying to put US out of business'? But no... 'they're screwing me, you're screwing me, everyone's screwing me'). Additionally, he's so out of control he even blames his own employees ('you're screwing me').

The guy is a freaking lunatic and a raging hothead. Given just this incident, I think he DESERVES to go out of business. The fact that he's still IN business is nothing short of a miracle. I feel sorry for everyone who works under him... it seems inevitable that he will eventually (and incorrectly) target his own employees.

I hope the banner ads make him miserable. His own ads, especially.

Sorry for the formatting... here it is again...
 

Wow. Not only is he hypocritical (a banner-company president intentionally trying to block banner ads), he's a moron lashing out at the first (and second) scapegoat he can find:

1) He blamed Google, and only Google... thus implying he never even tried another search engine.

2) He only tried it in a single browser... despite the fact that Opera is NOT the default browser on ANY mainstream platform, and thus we can virtually guarantee something else was available (IE on Windows, Konqueror/Firefox/Mozilla on Linux, Safari on OSX). I mean, he's got 9 employees, in an internet-based company... surely ONE of them has a clue in this area.

3) He didn't even try it on a different computer. WTF?!? At all the businesses I've worked with/at, that's the FIRST thing they do when something goes wrong... yell over to someone else and ask if XYZ is working right.

4) He immediately assumed a conspiracy against ad companies, instead of choosing the simplest, most obvious explanation... somebody screwed up. In this case, himself.

5) He first blamed the government for censoring the entire internet in regards to ADVERTISING. Apparently it didn't occur to him that this would be a rather large news story. As in, ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HUGE.

6) Neal asks what's wrong, and the he gives him a totally useless answer. Furthermore, that answer is condescending (apparently Neal was supposed to know how exactly Google was putting them out of business already) and egotistical (Google is trying to put HIM out of business. If he gave a damn about the business and/or his employees, wouldn't he have said 'they're trying to put US out of business'? But no... 'they're screwing me, you're screwing me, everyone's screwing me'). Additionally, he's so out of control he even blames his own employees ('you're screwing me').

The guy is a freaking lunatic and a raging hothead. Given just this incident, I think he DESERVES to go out of business. The fact that he's still IN business is nothing short of a miracle. I feel sorry for everyone who works under him... it seems inevitable that he will eventually (and incorrectly) target his own employees.

I hope the banner ads make him miserable. His own ads, especially.

I had the same problem too, all the images in my /admin/ interface were replaced with the alt text. Thankfully, I decided to check the source with the "View Generated Source" and noticed all the style='display: none;' attributes that adBlock had stuck in, and figured it out from there.

Diamonds:

This is why I don't like working 8 hour days. Neal shouldn't feel at all bad for arriving to work late. People like him in 7 hours acomplish as much as someone who works 8 hours. The proof is even in this post. While the whole office was working on this during the 45 minutes that he was late, Neal figured it out in 3 minutes.

If Neal got to work on time, he would have fixed the problem sooner and the whole office wouldn't have wasted their time watching the boss man yell.  Kudos for fixing the problem, but he wasted a lot of their time (and patience) by being tardy.

Anonymous:

Sorry for the formatting... here it is again...

The formatting wasn't the main problem with that post.

Speaking of banners... The banner at the bottom of the post caused the
page to take 10 seconds to load for me as my browser waited for
something from feeds.feedburner.com.  10 seconds isn't that much... but
a signficant delay caused by a banner ad on a post making fun of the
president of a banner advertising firm who was caught banning banner
ads... Well let's just say that the bounds of irony are being tested.

seventoes:

Anonymous:

ssprencel:

Give this man a compiler, and he would swear that it was broken or not installed right before he looked into his code for the source of a bug.

Dude!  That's harsh!  I resemble that remark.

 .... You resemble that remark? I think you mean "Resent"
 

*whoosh*

want to know what that noise was?  the sound of it going right over your head...

seventoes:

Anonymous:

ssprencel:

Give this man a compiler, and he would swear that it was broken or not installed right before he looked into his code for the source of a bug.

Dude!  That's harsh!  I resemble that remark.

 .... You resemble that remark? I think you mean "Resent"
 

Might wanna think about keeping compilers away from this one too ! :)

Anonymous:

So, a pop-up banner-ad president hates things done by his own product so much he blocks it?

Well, maybe his banners are photographed on a wooden table..

akatherder:

Diamonds:

This is why I don't like working 8 hour days. Neal shouldn't feel at all bad for arriving to work late. People like him in 7 hours acomplish as much as someone who works 8 hours. The proof is even in this post. While the whole office was working on this during the 45 minutes that he was late, Neal figured it out in 3 minutes.

If Neal got to work on time, he would have fixed the problem sooner and the whole office wouldn't have wasted their time watching the boss man yell.  Kudos for fixing the problem, but he wasted a lot of their time (and patience) by being tardy.

Great, so you are blaming Neal for his boss' and colleagues' moronic behaviour?

Who said life is fair... 

That boss needs to lay off the coke.  Seriously, it sounds like he has a substance abuse problem. 

 captcha = wtf

seventoes:

 .... You resemble that remark? I think you mean "Resent" 

Like 'ain't', I think that one has grown to the point where it's used entirely for humour.

He wasn't blocking banner ads, he was just trying to learn the customs of his targeted customers.  "Banner ads?  No, no.  Rectangular ads!"

Anonymous:

If Neal got to work on time, he would have fixed the problem sooner and the whole office wouldn't have wasted their time watching the boss man yell.  Kudos for fixing the problem, but he wasted a lot of their time (and patience) by being tardy.

... way to place blame incorrectly. It wasn't Neal's job to fix this problem, he just happened to be able to. Since it wasn't his job to do so, it isn't his fault that the entire department had an unproductive morning.

In fact, it's pretty stupid of everyone to just stand around for 45 minutes while the boss is yelling at them. If they really had a lot of work to do and were planning on blaming Neal for consuming their morning by being late to work, the other employees most likely would have given the "We're sorry, we don't know the answer and we feel terrible. Perhaps Neal will know when he gets here, but until then, we're heading back to our own tasks so that we don't waste any more of your precious money that is already being squandered by Google." response.

It's not Neal's fault the department is filled with people who have no time-management skills.

Anonymous:

Diamonds:

This is why I don't like working 8 hour days. Neal shouldn't feel at all bad for arriving to work late. People like him in 7 hours acomplish as much as someone who works 8 hours. The proof is even in this post. While the whole office was working on this during the 45 minutes that he was late, Neal figured it out in 3 minutes.

If Neal got to work on time, he would have fixed the problem sooner and the whole office wouldn't have wasted their time watching the boss man yell.  Kudos for fixing the problem, but he wasted a lot of their time (and patience) by being tardy.

 So now it's his fault that the rest of the office are a bunch of morons? Let's hope he never calls in sick or takes a vacation day, as apparently nothing will get done, and it will be Neal's fault.

kuroshin:

And folks, this is how Scrum works in real life:

The pig go. Go is to the office. Late. The pig look. Look at
what? Empty office. The chicken shout. Shout something.
The something at the pig. The pig confusing. But the pig follow. Follow
with chicken. The chicken very angry. The pig browse. With Google. Chicken blame. Blame is to the White House. Shift blame. Blame is now to Google. The chicken now squawk. Squawk is "B-A-N-N-E-R'. Opera flash. Pig sigh. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.

 

 I think I'm going to start writing all my emails in this form from now on.
 

kuroshin:

And folks, this is how Scrum works in real life:

The pig go. Go is to the office. Late. The pig look. Look at
what? Empty office. The chicken shout. Shout something.
The something at the pig. The pig confusing. But the pig follow. Follow
with chicken. The chicken very angry. The pig browse. With Google. Chicken blame. Blame is to the White House. Shift blame. Blame is now to Google. The chicken now squawk. Squawk is "B-A-N-N-E-R'. Opera flash. Pig sigh. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.

Best laugh I've had all week. Someone needs to build a Scrum dialectizer (http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/).

-J- 

Anonymous:

Diamonds:

This is why I don't like working 8 hour days. Neal shouldn't feel at all bad for arriving to work late. People like him in 7 hours acomplish as much as someone who works 8 hours. The proof is even in this post. While the whole office was working on this during the 45 minutes that he was late, Neal figured it out in 3 minutes.

If Neal got to work on time, he would have fixed the problem sooner and the whole office wouldn't have wasted their time watching the boss man yell.  Kudos for fixing the problem, but he wasted a lot of their time (and patience) by being tardy.

The way I see it is that Neal showed up 45 minutes late and so he has a 45 minute deficit.  Neal then fixes the problem in three minutes what nine people could not do in 45 minutes.  9x45 = 405 or 6 hours and 45 minutes.  Take away the 45 minutes of work that he was late for and the 3 minutes of work that he completed and Neal should be able to go home in 1 hour and 57 minutes.

omg

paula bean

brillant

wooden table

no quack

f---ing Google

bean bag girl

Well, in Soviet Russia, the banner ads....

Whoops, wrong site.  Sorry. 

Shark Tank had a story a few weeks back about a company whose new-fangled spam-blocker was generating false positives left and right.  See, the company is a mortgage broker, and... well, I'm sure y'all can figure it out from there.