Slashdot Mirror

...except in the UK, where "Metro" is available for free on many form of public transport in the bigger cities. Why buy a paper when you can get one for free - especially when there's already one waiting on the bus, so you don't have to find a newsstand?

I for one belive that it is acceptable to blame the games industry for the death of their son while they grieve. But as happens everytime, it will blow over and sales of manhunt will continue. What I do not belive is acceptable is a report in yestardays Metro. Their article says that the parents are going to sue rockstart games as well as sony.

Tom.

Back at the start of online advertising, it was just a banner. But immediately, people got furious at these ads "eating up bandwidth". Of course, an ad is more data to download, so yes, it does use some of your bandwidth. But, especially in those days, this was absolutely dwarfed by the huge volume of largely unnecessary images on sites. I once did an informal study of web sites such as Yahoo, Excite UK, and the total size of the images was usually twice as big as the size of the banner ad.

Smaller sites such as my own survived solely on advertising revenues. I had no pop-ups, just one banner on each page. It hardly took up "90% of screen space" like one poster suggests.

Now, because people have got a very negative view of ad banners (with virtually no justification), the industry has virtually declined to nothing, and sites like mine are in serious financial difficulty. It is no wonder that companies are then increasingly trying desperate measures like pop-ups. Personally I have decided not to display pop-ups though. As for people pointing to the success of Google's text ads as an example, it's just not applicable to most sites. Google can display relevant ads, and as a person is using Google to find something, ads are more appropriate anyway. It simply wouldn't be economical for sites with more modest traffic to set up their own "AdWords" system.

Now I'm not sure if my site will survive. I'm sure many people will be thinking "Well, if it's good enough, people will pay!". That's true: but the site isn't really good enough. I know that sounds like a strange admission, but in other forms of media it's an acceptable business model. For instance, look at the free UK newspaper Metro (distributed on trains and buses usually). Would you pay for that? No. But you read it because it's free, and it's paid for by advertisers.

Before /.-ers condemn the entire online advertising industry so harshly, they should realise the implications--if the downturn in the market continues, a significant proportion of the web will vanish. You might not be bothered, but some people will be!

(Thanks for reading this massive post!)

funny, metro newspaper (13/9/2000) somehow noted the prof's comments as being in favour of keeping everyones gfp's forever and ever amen.

this already happens with minor criminal offenses such as 1-3 year cautioning. although in court a caution cannot be used (except in certain cases), they are still kept on file and as such are accessible by a range of law-enforcement bodies here.

remember who points it out to you that "you are entitled to witness the destruction of the record upon the expiry of your caution" because you won't see it happen.

it's been happening to us since the year dot though: french "criminal ear"; "i didn't like the look of him, sarge"; police videotaping at protest marches.

my dad remembers that in the 60's there was a unofficial list of certain criminal records compiled under the guise of "resource files" - supposedly for the use of demographers and statisticans, but naturally accessible by MI5 MI6 et al.

you can bet your ass this is still being added to.

but most people however would be quite happy to give up certain freedoms so that those who are considered to be a threat to "them" (---not to mean the state---) could be tracked.

the real worry is not therefore the records themselves but their use - genetic profiling.

"it has come to our attention, sir, that you are 74% likely, at this age, to commit theft. anything you say may be used as evidence"..