Oooh, it’s a Ubuntu Billboard! I snapped this while at 70 mph going up 101 northbound (just after the Ralston exit in Redwood City, FYI).
I know the quality isn’t great, but hey, it’s a cellphone cam. What do you want? 
It’s just great to see the World’sGreatestOS(TM) publicized somewhere in the Real World.
[...] WildBill maakte deze foto langs de snelweg bij Redwoord City, VS. [...]
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Sick billboard.
Kudos on blocking IE.
Please don’t hate on IE so much, not everyone has a choice in what browser they use. I work in a hell hole where they HATE everything non-M$ (the IT borg even loves Vista) I have managed to get Maxthon on my computer (but I don’t know when thay will find that and kill it too)
That’s awesome….
That is killer!
Haha awesome! I saw that yesterday when I left work (EA). I remember saying to my friend that we should take a picture and submit a digg article… guess you beat me to it
I don’t think I’ve ever been able to go 70mph on the 101… maybe 30 tops. This must have been at noon or something right?
Ubuntu Billboard
Look at the beautiful Ubuntu Billboard WildBill got a photo of as he was driving by.
Pretty neat huh? I’m not a huge Ubuntu fan, but I do appreciate it. If I wasn’t such an avid Slackware user, Ubuntu would be my distro of choice. In fa…
[...] Linux, Interesting, Advertising | no comments yet | permalink Written byPatrick Havens Ubuntu Blog » First Ubuntu Billboard spotted Thanks to Wildbill’scellphone photo clicking speed, we now can see the first Ubuntu billboard. Ever. [...]
[...] Whoa… way cool! [...]
I like to see ubuntu getting more popular on webservers.
I thought I was the world’s only conservative Ubuntu geek! Boy, am I glad to have come accross this blog!
Instantly blogrolled!
[...] Okay, I’m all for people advocating certain causes. I really am. Put your little “FireFox is IE7″ and “Get FireFox cause it rul3z0rs” banners around. But stopping me from getting to your content? [...]
[...] Hey, what’s that on the side of the road? First Ubuntu Billboard Spotted Tags: 리눅스, 우분투 [...]
[...] I would think hell would freeze over before I see an outdoor billboard for a Linux distro but apparently WildBill was able to capture the 1st billboard for Ubuntu. Anyway, being that I use to buy media, couple questions popped in my head: [...]
Linux is for the home and server room. Desktop users have no choice as Linux sucks in the desktop. So how can IE users appreciate your billboard if you block them?
[...] Posted by hornbeck Mon, 07 Aug 2006 03:18:42 GMT Here is a picture of a Ubuntu Billboard in Silicon Valley. As some people know, I worked on Ubuntu in its early stages and was the technical editor for This book. Glad to see it getting some press and that they are getting the word out. [...]
Awesome to finally see an advertisement of this nature! I’m an hardcore Ubuntu fan myself, simply can’t get enough of that distro.
Thanks a lot for snapping the picture.
Regards, Stian Karlsen.
Ubuntu’s popularity is growing very fast. I think they need to make a deal with Dell or some other PC maker to pre-install ubuntu on desktop/laptop..
[...] Is this cool or what? Maybe America’s first Ubuntu billboard… *heh* [...]
[...] Update (August 7, 2006): This billboard has been widely covered in the tech community, accompanied by a low-quality cameraphone picture and a lot of people who don’t quite know what’s going on. First, the billboard is not a fake or a hoax; it really exists. Second, despite many claims, the billboard is not in Redwood City, California; the marshy land to the east of Highway 101 between Hillsdale and Ralston Avenues is actually part of Belmont, California, although Redwood Shores, Foster City, and San Mateo are all nearby. Third, the billboard was erected the morning of Tuesday, August 1 and remained standing as of today. I’ve not yet encountered a picture of the billboard with a higher resolution or better quality than the one above, although there may be one somewhere. [...]
Wow, that’s a very nice ideea. But I’m wondering, how many ppl will get it
To those who liked the picture: thanks! I’m glad to see Ubuntu getting a ton of positive press – it’s so great to be involved in this much excitement about an open source project.
Wow, I didn’t know people would get so pissed about me blocking IE. Jeez, I can’t abide whiners. To those people, I say…
PISS OFF. It’s my site, I’ll do what I want. Welcome to Web 2.0. Don’t like it? Get a copy of FireFox or figure out a way around it. Jeez. There are a shitload of IE-only sites out there – I’m just returning the favor.
Batman: Linux is NOT just for the server room. Buy a copy of Ubuntu Hacks and test out Ubuntu. You might expand your horizons.
Jeremy: Yep, I’m only targeting IE. Deal with it. Don’t like it? Fine, don’t visit the site. Last I checked, it was a free internet.
GET A REAL BROWSER, people. You might like it. And once you do that, then you can get a real OS too, one that doesn’t get wiped out by every retarded virus that comes down the email pipe.
I think the billboard is great, just as Ubuntu is great! I started with 5.04, 5.10 and now 6.06 just keep getting better.
Ubuntu doesn’t ship with Internet Exploder, so the IE blocking is a non-issue for me.
6.06 DOES ship with Network Manger, the coolest package in years for making wifi and WPA work easily and seamless on Linux.
Ubuntu is a great product!
May I use this post’s image in a blog post? I will also include a link.
Sure Lloyd, go ahead! Thanks!
[...] [...]
[...] Remember that Ubuntu Billboard I blogged about? Looks like it’s taken down. I noticed its absence on my commute to work. Hopefully Mr. Shuttleworth will do other forms of advertising – I had a lot of people mention to me they saw the billboard and were prompted to test drive the LiveCD of Ubuntu. (Well, that and the fact that they knew I helped write a book.) [...]
Ubuntu is great, if I could get my 3G internet card to work on it, it would be perfect…..
You’re a prick.
YAY! I’ve finally made it in the intarweb world, I can die happy.
We need to see more of these in MSLand (Redmond WA)!
That’s pretty damn cool. I don’t understand why people have a problem with you blocking IE, Bill. I remember all the sites that were Netscape- or IE- only years ago. There are still sites out there that design for IE, or only for Flash-enabled browsers. Or only with Javascript. I think it’s fair to target and get rid of IE. Would you mind sharing the code you used? I may adopt it with my future site.
I pulled the code from http://explorerdestroyer.com.
In reply to comment 23, I’m using IE as I speak, I got in by disabling scripting on your site. Blocking IE is the peak of arrogance and this behaviour is actually STOPPING me from switching. If you dislike someone, stooping to their level doesn’t make you cool, it makes you as bad as the person or organisation you dislike.
If I were to switch from IE it won’t be to Firefox, probably one of its alternatives, and it’s directly because of behaviour like yours. But until the compatibility issues are sorted I’m staying where I am… and no, I’ve NEVER gotten an ounce of spyware. And I don’t care about tabbed browsing, that’s what the taskbar’s for.
Good job man!
Inspired me to do the same.
[...] To make you look at what your server’s doing. Heh. Apparently someone dugg (or is it “digg’d”?) a picture I took of a Ubuntu billboard in the Redwood City area almost a year and a half ago. I got a call from friends saying “Your server’s buried, dude!” [...]
People like you force me to have IE as my default and most trusted browser. Don’t be so stuck up! We get the point.
Sorry to add to the “whining” about blocking IE, but I have one simple question for you:
If the internet is “free,” (and of course you’re “free” to block whatever browser you want) – what business is it of YOURS what browser / OS anyone else uses? Sure, you’re a fan of a particular OS, and a particular browser. But why should it MATTER to you what other people use?
Some billboard ads are very affordable.
So I guess Ubuntu is just trying to test new ways to get Linux on people’s mindes.
Some people just don’t want to support Internet Explorer. Its called Internet Explorer because it still doesn’t know where the hell its at and maybe people don’t want to have to tell it that every other line.
Brett: We care, because IE isn’t standards compliant, so web developers have to do double to work to make their site work. They do the standards compliant code (Firefox, Opera, etc.) and then they have to recode it again to make it work in IE.
It’s a catch 22 situation because on one hand, we want people to be able to see our site, so we do all the extra work to make it work in IE as well.
On the other hand, we want to stop having to do all of this extra work just because Microsoft doesn’t want to do their part to make their browser standards compliant.
However if we fix our site so it looks fine in IE, the end user will be none the wiser as to the fact that their browser (in my humble opinion) sucks.
So there you have it. This site blocks IE because the admin doesn’t want to do the extra work anymore (and possibly for other reasons as well, but that would be my reason.)
Hey I see you’re forcing me to use shitty fucking firefox that makes me update my browser every single time I run it. I honestly think that IE with Google toolbar is the better browser to use. Dont force your shitty browser on me, I should make have chose whatever browser I want without elitist nerds forcing a choice for me. Now that I finished posting this, I can go back to using IE and not visiting your site again. thx
[...] http://wildbill.nulldevice.net/wordpress/?p=177 [...]
Nice scene, a beauty of art.
Although I’m glad to see Linux becoming more popular, I wouldn’t go so far to say Ubuntu is the worlds best OS. Debian (which is the core foundation for Ubuntu) will always rule
Regarding the IE script, cheers to you my friend. Megaqwerty hit the nail right on the head. As a developer, I can’t tell you how many hours of my life have been wasted “fixing” COMPLIANT code just so the site would render properly in IE.
Until Microsoft decides to conform to international standards instead of their own, IE users can goto hell. I can’t help but ask myself, “who’s the real snob here?” when it’s MS that thinks they’re to good to WORK WITH the world instead of against the world..
I surf the net as GoogleBot anyway..
RE: to comment number 43 by “fuckfirefox.” You clearly didn’t read the article you linked to. That article is IN FAVOR of Firefox you dolt. Way to go. Such typical IE user behavior.
[...] WildBill published a post in 2006 with a picture of a roadside billboard advertising Ubuntu, which happened to land on the Digg front page a couple days ago. Even though I don’t necessarily agree with the statement, “It’s just great to see the World’sGreatestOS(TM) publicized” (Debian pwns j00), seeing Linux out in the open like that was pretty refreshing; at least until I started reading visitor’s comments. [...]
[...] Well, the digg-gasm continues, and I keep getting more and more retarded comments on that Ubuntu billboard blog post from 2006. Apparently there are a bunch of whiners bitching that I block IE on this site. Whatever. Deal with it. [...]
Megaqwerty & Bill -
Thanks for the responses. It may interest you to know that yep, I’m a web developer by trade and I’m quite conversant with the problems of cross-browser complications. My company’s site has traffic from folks using several different versions of IE, FF, Opera and several others as well.
Here’s my point: If you’ve done your level best to make your site truly compliant in the most browsers, then kudos. Believe it or not, we actually tell people using severely back-level browsers (a complaining customer using IE4 is the example that springs to mind) to update to a more modern browser.
MS has recently announced that IE8 (not released yet) has passed the ACID2 test:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archi.....stone.aspx
That being said, here’s my hypothetical to you: will you continue to block *all* versions of IE? Even if I’m using IE8 (after it’s released)?
“It’s a catch 22 situation because on one hand, we want people to be able to see our site, so we do all the extra work to make it work in IE as well.”
Really? I think the onload function for Bill’s site is broken then.
Also, your site fails the w3c compliance test. You have characters on your page that don’t match the encoding you’ve specified. To be fair, I thought it might just be a comment on this page but I tried another page in the archive and it fails too. It’s not a big error, but it still puts you in the camp of people with invalid sites.
It’s too bad about the blocker. I think you’d have much better success with winning people over to firefox if they could see your site and read the things you have to say. I’m afraid that a lot of people will take you up on your offer to just not read your site if they don’t like it, in which case you have lost all influence you might have had. Preaching to the choir is not a productive way to expand the user base for whatever piece of software you would like to see have wider adoption. Most people, when told to piss off, do so, and leave with a bitter taste that they will associate with the software you are promoting, since they will associate that software with you.