Advertising

[K3MRI]

We've decided to drop advertising support as of today Thursday, December 22, 2022 at 4:39:33 AM. Did we make the right choice? Are you okay with us dropping ads? We're not being facetious or cynical. Quite the contrary. Some internet users, we are told, appreciate the ads. We thought it was not worth the effort and nuisance to us all.

We've posted a poll, let us know what you think.

[KD3Y]

Great idea, Jim.  Thanks.

So tired of the ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads ads  everywhere.  In my opinion, If your product/service can't earn you a living without harassment revenue from your customer base (victims), then your product/service sucks.  A good product/service will support itself. 

Now I like the vintage ads.  They had class and weren't all up in your face like todays annoying ads are.  I can't imagine any mentally stable person "appreciating ads"  How brainwashed by big corpa do you have to be to get to that point?

By the way, I never knew you had ads.  My ad blocker blocks them so I never saw them.

I think a lot of web owners problem is they act like they're the only guy on the Internet.  What I mean is, I'm a member of about 40 different groups, forums, websites, etc.  If I paid each one of them $9 per month "membership" to remove their ads, that's a car payment every month.   There's just no Internet group/forum worth "upgrading" to remove ads, as I'm still ging to be ad-bombed on the other 39.

I miss the old Internet of the 90's.  Yeah I was sitting there with my 9600K baud modem for 3 minutes waiting for a website to load, but it was generally a harassment free, ad free, pleasurable experience before big corpa came along and ruined the Internet with ads, paywalls, data mining, and marketing.   If I was king of the world, the first order I'd make was the Internet be totally un-commercialized and businesses had to go out and actually work to earn their income.   In fact, corporations would be banned from the Internet because they don't know how to earn their income without exploiting a customer anymore.

Edited December 22, 2022 by KD3Y

[K3MRI]

32 minutes ago, KD3Y said:

I miss the old Internet of the 90's.  Yeah I was sitting there with my 9600K baud modem for 3 minutes waiting for a website to load,

1200 baud... my first. When I got a 9600 I thought that was it, we'll never need faster 🤣

[KD3Y]

10 minutes ago, K3MRI said:

1200 baud... my first. When I got a 9600 I thought that was it, we'll never need faster 🤣

Man when I got that Zoom 36K modem (serial port) and that desktop got hot-rodded with 32mb RAM and a 100mb hard drive I thought I was the stuff!   LOL
Imagine of you could look forward to today from back then and see what we have now, wouldn't it blow your mind?

I remember in the Army in the motor pool they had the computers with the 5 1/4 inch floppy drive and to order parts they had a gadget they would dial the number then lay the phone receiver into the device (it had a rubber cradle on it) and it would send the data and order the parts by modem.  You could hear the noise as it sent the data over the phone line,  Then they'd save the floppy for the "backup" each day so they had a record.  There was like 20,000 5 1/4 floppies in that metal cabinet.   LOL  We thought that was like from the year 2050 stuff!  

And I remember when the first gigabyte hard drives came out and I thought, "Why in the world would anybody ever need a 1 gigabyte hard drive."  Remember them?  Windows wouldn't even see the whole gigabyte, you have to section it out into smaller partitions to use the whole gigabyte.

Edited December 22, 2022 by KD3Y

[KD3Y]

Something else that pees me off more than advertising on some sites that I would like to support, but refuse to is the "auto renew".  As if they somehow feel justified to entitle themselves to reach into my wallet and take what they want.   I mean, if I went to the burger joint and ordered a big whopper, then everytime I went back to their joint they automatically just charged me for a big whopper....WTH?  I'M THE DECIDER (to quote a once popular President).  I decide what comes out of my account, how much, and when.  Not the other party. 

I hear the "who wants to be bothered with renewals"  WHAT?  It takes 0.25 seconds to click a button once per year to renew.  That's literally NO TIME out of my life.  So that's a BS excuse for them to self-entitle.

Ya know what I hate worse than  "having to renew"?  Having to argue with a site for 6 weeks over the phone and email about why they keep charging my card after I told them to cancel, then having to get in my truck and drive to the credit union to cancel my card and having to wait 10 days for a new one to come in the mail so they won't..CAN'T... keep charging it over and over after they've told me 136 times via email that they've cancelled the "recurring charge".

I belong to several forums that I would support, but not by giving entitlement to stick their hand in my pocket whenever they feel like it.   If they are "auto renewing" then that means my card data is stored on their server somewhere waiting to be hacked.  Yeah yeah yeah, I know, "We use the latest industry grade encryption". 

Well.........

Target was using "the latest industry grade encryption" when they had their data breech.  Wells Fargo was using "the latest industry grade encryption" when they had their data breech.  Yahoo was using "the latest industry grade encryption" when they got breeched.  So was Mariot Hotels.  So was Experian.  So was Equifax.  Heck DoD was using "the latest industry grade encryption" when they got breeched.   When you get a letter from the U.S. Department of Defense telling you your data, including all your family members data that you had put on your security clearance application was compromised (READ:  not even the most powerful government on the planet can protect your data stored on a server somewhere), then you understand there is no such thing as "the latest industry grade encryption".  Hell, 99.99%  of e-commerce site owners don't have a clue what "the latest industry grade encryption" is, that's something thats automatically added to their website when they copy and paste that shopping cart on their website.

 

 

[K3MRI]

17 hours ago, KD3Y said:

Something else that pees me off more than advertising on some sites that I would like to support, but refuse to is the "auto renew".  As if they somehow feel justified to entitle themselves to reach into my wallet and take what they want.   I mean, if I went to the burger joint and ordered a big whopper, then everytime I went back to their joint they automatically just charged me for a big whopper....WTH?  I'M THE DECIDER (to quote a once popular President).  I decide what comes out of my account, how much, and when.  Not the other party. 

I personally don't mind auto-renew as long as the system does the following:

• Tell me you are about to auto-renew me well in advance
• Force me to authorize the renewal!!!!!! Do not assume that because I did not reply I want to renew, I have to authorize it.
• Make it insanely, totally, fluidly possible for me to cancel the auto-renew. Do not make it a labyrinth of 'gotcha's' to leave you.

For me, auto-renew should be a form of 'we will remind you' as opposed to 'we will surreptitiously charge you again and again until you notice!! 🤬

[KD3Y]

Yes Jim. I agree.

The ones I dont like are the sneaky ones.  Such as is common with a lot of the domain registrars I used or have used.  "Only $4.99 per year!"   Then way down at the bottom of the page, in text one pixel tall where they know 99% of people wont see it..."$4.99 for the first year.  Auto renews at the regular price of $39.99 per year" or like some I've seen, "$4.99 introductory offer.  Auto renews at the retail price at the time of renewal"   Which literally translates to "we gonna charge you whatever we feel like next year."

 

One of the most abused punctuation in the English language....the poor little asterisk!    *which means, "everything you just read about our offer is a f-ing lie."

When you run your business honestly and with integrity, you don't have to hide the details in front of an asterisk, or use the page footer for mouse-print.

Edited December 23, 2022 by KD3Y

[K3MRI]

I just went through that with Comcast Business. My bad for misunderstanding the fine print... 🥵 Expensivo oversighto.