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I hate to say I told you so, but...

They've never gone and done anything nefarious (Micro$haft)

Disregarding your weird insult toward Microsoft ("Micro$haft"?! What does that even mean?), I have to take issue with your claim that Google's never done anything nefarious. They've removed search results due to legal threats or ideological differences, refused paying people for Google ads (search Slackersguild for "Google" and read first-hand accounts), replaced Google Groups with a horrible barely-readable format, and aside from all that have not updated the search engine to make it suck less. I hate searching for things now because I get crappy spam pages that put the search terms in their HTML filenames. They do this because Google places higher value on pages with search terms directly in the URL. I also get tons of online catalog pages. It's extremely frustrating to search for reviews of anything because you always get twenty or so online catalog pages that are merely product descriptions with an empty "user review" section. I want a real review, not some store product description page.

Google is not the perfect company we all came to love in the late 90s. Here's hoping they learn from their mistakes before they get surpassed by someone else much worse.

Ok, ok, I have to admit that that was a lame attempt at whoring some karma. Sorry!

I also feel that I must confess that I have multiple personality disorder and use two other accounts to troll from. I'm a frustrated musician and a wannabee programmer who works phones for a help desk. I really hate anything open source since it means that I'll be out of a job (miserable as it is). I have no life, and even the people that used to like me think I'm a dick. I haven't been laid in seven years and as such I take out my sexual frustrations by obsessing over anyone who says anything negative about Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Fox News or the Republican Party. Even if it's true! I can't help myself! People keep telling me that I should get some professional help, but I just never seem to get around to it.

Thanks for listening. This has really been weighing heavily on me for the past year or so and I feel much better now having cleared the air. But if you want more confessions, look here to satify your curiosity.

Ok, ok, I have to admit that that was a lame attempt at whoring some karma. Sorry!

I also feel that I must confess that I have multiple personality disorder and use two other accounts to troll from. I'm a frustrated musician and a wannabee programmer who works phones for a help desk. I really hate anything open source since it means that I'll be out of a job (miserable as it is). I have no life, and even the people that used to like me think I'm a dick. I haven't been laid in seven years and as such I take out my sexual frustrations by obsessing over anyone who says anything negative about Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Fox News or the Republican Party. Even if it's true! I can't help myself! People keep telling me that I should get some professional help, but I just never seem to get around to it.

Thanks for listening. This has really been weighing heavily on me for the past year or so and I feel much better now having cleared the air. But if you want more confessions, look here to satify your curiosity.

Ok, ok, I have to admit that that was a lame attempt at whoring some karma. Sorry!

I also feel that I must confess that I have multiple personality disorder and use two other accounts to troll from. I'm a frustrated musician and a wannabee programmer who works phones for a help desk. I really hate anything open source since it means that I'll be out of a job (miserable as it is). I have no life, and even the people that used to like me think I'm a dick. I haven't been laid in seven years and as such I take out my sexual frustrations by obsessing over anyone who says anything negative about Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Fox News or the Republican Party. Even if it's true! I can't help myself! People keep telling me that I should get some professional help, but I just never seem to get around to it.

Thanks for listening. This has really been weighing heavily on me for the past year or so and I feel much better now having cleared the air. But if you want more confessions, look here to satify your curiosity.

SG had valid, real clicks for one of Google's ad programs. Because there were so many, Google simply didn't want to pay up. The only reason Google could give was that Nastard mentioned that there were banners above that people should click if they liked the product. They viewed this as "fraudulent clicks."

After Nastard posted the article, others submitted their stories of getting ripped off by Google:

Google Gone Bad
Google Does It Again!
Google Still Sucks
Google Ad Snatcher
Google Joins The Cause!

All you people finally tuning into the idea that Google has turned evil are just now catching on to something I've known for over a year now.

SG had valid, real clicks for one of Google's ad programs. Because there were so many, Google simply didn't want to pay up. The only reason Google could give was that Nastard mentioned that there were banners above that people should click if they liked the product. They viewed this as "fraudulent clicks."

After Nastard posted the article, others submitted their stories of getting ripped off by Google:

Google Gone Bad
Google Does It Again!
Google Still Sucks
Google Ad Snatcher
Google Joins The Cause!

All you people finally tuning into the idea that Google has turned evil are just now catching on to something I've known for over a year now.

SG had valid, real clicks for one of Google's ad programs. Because there were so many, Google simply didn't want to pay up. The only reason Google could give was that Nastard mentioned that there were banners above that people should click if they liked the product. They viewed this as "fraudulent clicks."

After Nastard posted the article, others submitted their stories of getting ripped off by Google:

Google Gone Bad
Google Does It Again!
Google Still Sucks
Google Ad Snatcher
Google Joins The Cause!

All you people finally tuning into the idea that Google has turned evil are just now catching on to something I've known for over a year now.

SG had valid, real clicks for one of Google's ad programs. Because there were so many, Google simply didn't want to pay up. The only reason Google could give was that Nastard mentioned that there were banners above that people should click if they liked the product. They viewed this as "fraudulent clicks."

After Nastard posted the article, others submitted their stories of getting ripped off by Google:

Google Gone Bad
Google Does It Again!
Google Still Sucks
Google Ad Snatcher
Google Joins The Cause!

All you people finally tuning into the idea that Google has turned evil are just now catching on to something I've known for over a year now.

SG had valid, real clicks for one of Google's ad programs. Because there were so many, Google simply didn't want to pay up. The only reason Google could give was that Nastard mentioned that there were banners above that people should click if they liked the product. They viewed this as "fraudulent clicks."

After Nastard posted the article, others submitted their stories of getting ripped off by Google:

Google Gone Bad
Google Does It Again!
Google Still Sucks
Google Ad Snatcher
Google Joins The Cause!

All you people finally tuning into the idea that Google has turned evil are just now catching on to something I've known for over a year now.

I'm afraid I can't read your email address. Is that supposed to be bonch@slackersguild.com?

I wrote for for a while

I wrote for for a while

Christ, I can't believe you took the time to compare someone's posts to someone else's like that. Might I suggest getting outside for a while.

I got the "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China" headline not only from the story that posted it but also from an anonymous post that was modded up once called "Slashdot lies, opinions, and half-truths" that I thought was interesting. The rest of your post, comparing "styles" of thought and other vague critiques, was bizarre and not evidence of me being this other guy. I have always been bonch, I wrote for for a while, and I've been posting to Slashdot for years and years.

This is hilarious, and I'm done humoring it. Go right ahead and believe I have some mysterious alter-ego in the form of this other guy.

Slackers Guild (shameless plug) ran AdSense banner ads for a time. We told people to click on the products they were interested in. Suddenly, we generated revenue, and Google decided it was too much and cut us off.

Read our articles about it here, here, and for amusement, here and here.

Needless to say, after being owed over a grand and not being paid because Google arbitrarily decided we had violated rules, Google AdWords left a sour taste in our mouths. They accused us of using bots, then when that didn't pan out, accused us of violating some sort of rule by encouraging our readers to--gasp--click on the products they were interested in. Eventually, it dwindled out, and one of us even wrote an ad snatcher for the fun of it.

The really shitty thing during the whole debacle was not only that they were withholding revenue, but how they repeatedly made us out to be the bad guys, claiming we cost them and their advertisers time and money because we gave them a lot of hits. Our site gave their advertisers tons of free exposure on our site. In fact, over a grand's worth.

Slackers Guild (shameless plug) ran AdSense banner ads for a time. We told people to click on the products they were interested in. Suddenly, we generated revenue, and Google decided it was too much and cut us off.

Read our articles about it here, here, and for amusement, here and here.

Needless to say, after being owed over a grand and not being paid because Google arbitrarily decided we had violated rules, Google AdWords left a sour taste in our mouths. They accused us of using bots, then when that didn't pan out, accused us of violating some sort of rule by encouraging our readers to--gasp--click on the products they were interested in. Eventually, it dwindled out, and one of us even wrote an ad snatcher for the fun of it.

The really shitty thing during the whole debacle was not only that they were withholding revenue, but how they repeatedly made us out to be the bad guys, claiming we cost them and their advertisers time and money because we gave them a lot of hits. Our site gave their advertisers tons of free exposure on our site. In fact, over a grand's worth.

Slackers Guild (shameless plug) ran AdSense banner ads for a time. We told people to click on the products they were interested in. Suddenly, we generated revenue, and Google decided it was too much and cut us off.

Read our articles about it here, here, and for amusement, here and here.

Needless to say, after being owed over a grand and not being paid because Google arbitrarily decided we had violated rules, Google AdWords left a sour taste in our mouths. They accused us of using bots, then when that didn't pan out, accused us of violating some sort of rule by encouraging our readers to--gasp--click on the products they were interested in. Eventually, it dwindled out, and one of us even wrote an ad snatcher for the fun of it.

The really shitty thing during the whole debacle was not only that they were withholding revenue, but how they repeatedly made us out to be the bad guys, claiming we cost them and their advertisers time and money because we gave them a lot of hits. Our site gave their advertisers tons of free exposure on our site. In fact, over a grand's worth.

Slackers Guild (shameless plug) ran AdSense banner ads for a time. We told people to click on the products they were interested in. Suddenly, we generated revenue, and Google decided it was too much and cut us off.

Read our articles about it here, here, and for amusement, here and here.

Needless to say, after being owed over a grand and not being paid because Google arbitrarily decided we had violated rules, Google AdWords left a sour taste in our mouths. They accused us of using bots, then when that didn't pan out, accused us of violating some sort of rule by encouraging our readers to--gasp--click on the products they were interested in. Eventually, it dwindled out, and one of us even wrote an ad snatcher for the fun of it.

The really shitty thing during the whole debacle was not only that they were withholding revenue, but how they repeatedly made us out to be the bad guys, claiming we cost them and their advertisers time and money because we gave them a lot of hits. Our site gave their advertisers tons of free exposure on our site. In fact, over a grand's worth.

Slackers Guild (shameless plug) ran AdSense banner ads for a time. We told people to click on the products they were interested in. Suddenly, we generated revenue, and Google decided it was too much and cut us off.

Read our articles about it here, here, and for amusement, here and here.

Needless to say, after being owed over a grand and not being paid because Google arbitrarily decided we had violated rules, Google AdWords left a sour taste in our mouths. They accused us of using bots, then when that didn't pan out, accused us of violating some sort of rule by encouraging our readers to--gasp--click on the products they were interested in. Eventually, it dwindled out, and one of us even wrote an ad snatcher for the fun of it.

The really shitty thing during the whole debacle was not only that they were withholding revenue, but how they repeatedly made us out to be the bad guys, claiming we cost them and their advertisers time and money because we gave them a lot of hits. Our site gave their advertisers tons of free exposure on our site. In fact, over a grand's worth.

Written at this Slackers Guild article.

Shameless plug, but I'm proud.

I'm sorry, but Google rips off people who are even mildly successful with their text ads.

See here, and here.

They've definitely lost my respect. Apparently, if you mention that there are text ads at the top of your site, and direct your readers to click on them if they're interested in the products, Google will tell you that you cheated the system through false clicks when your click amounts gets too high for them to spare the cash.

I'm sorry, but Google rips off people who are even mildly successful with their text ads.

See here, and here.

They've definitely lost my respect. Apparently, if you mention that there are text ads at the top of your site, and direct your readers to click on them if they're interested in the products, Google will tell you that you cheated the system through false clicks when your click amounts gets too high for them to spare the cash.

I've certainly had my issues with Google.

Before you go through all the effort of implementing Google Adsense on your site, take a look through their pages and calculate how much revenue it will bring in. Having trouble? That is because Google refuses to disclose the formula they use to pay webmasters, or even all the factors involved! You run the ads on your site, and THEN they decide how much to pay you based on whatever secret formula they are using that day. How arrogant can they get? Now I am a big Google fan, but I am not going to put up with this! It would be like taking a job at a store that refuses to tell you how your commission is calculated. Google should tell us the payout ratios BEFORE we implement their system and we should be notified when the formula changes.

Sure, some of your friends may be doing reasonably well now. Perhaps Google has goosed the system during this initial rollout period so that pay is decent. But what do you think will happen to pay rates once they reach critical mass? If your payment is down one month, how will you know whether it is a normal clickthrough fluctuation that could go back next month, or whether Google has changed the rules? You won't know!

Note that Adsense has garnered many other complaints as well. I would recommend boycotting this service until Google is honest enough to detail the revenue share arrangement.

Here is an idea: do a search on keywords that relate to your site and note who is advertising. Send them a mail offering 50% off Google rates if they wish to advertise on your site. That is probably a far higher percentage than Google pays you, and it puts you back in control over your web site earnings. And then let Google know about it by sending email to adsense-support@google.com . I am not trying to screw Google here - I just believe that need to be more open about the process. Refusing to tell webmasters how their pay is calculated in exploitative and reeks of arrogance.

I'm a slashdot article!

Now allow me to link to what the WSJ didn't, Slackers Guild.

I had agreed to let them use my real name only if they used my pseudonym and mentioned my site. Thanks a bunch.

incidentally, he started http://www.slackersguild.com. its been mentioned before on Slashdot when the For Dummies guys threatened the place for their Slacking for Dummies article

there is only so many times in a day you can "go make coffee" or "check your email".

Geek Slack List

• http://www.subgenius.com/
• http://www.slackersguild.com/
• BBC News
• http://www.memepool.com/
• http://www.plastic.com/
• http://www.arstechnica.com/
• http://www.metafilter.com/
• http://www.techdirt.com/
• http://www.bottomquark.com/ (Science News)
• http://newsforge.com/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/
• http://www.anandtech.com/
• http://www.bjorn3d.com/
• http://cellar.org - Image of the Day
• http://www.collegehumor.com/
• http://www.everything2.com/
• http://www.kuro5hin.org/
• http://www.theonion.com/
• NASA - Astronomy Picutre of the Day
• http://www.majorgeeks.com - Windows Shareware / Freeware
• http://www.advogato.org/
• http://www.sweetcode.org/
• http://www.disinfo.com/ - Disinformation
• http://www.somethingawful.com/
• http://www.astronomynow.com/ - Astronomy News
• http://www.aip.org/ - American Institue of Physics - News
• http://www.adequacy.org/

• The Effects of Moore's Law and Slacking 1 on Large Computations

Hope this helps =)

You forgot one site:

Slackers Guild. What do you want to do half-assed today?

Oh, please. As you know, Slackware has its own package management system, the same one it uses to install with. glibc, bash, and so forth *are* installed via binary packages. No need to recompile. Just follow slackware-current.

I upgraded KDE 2.2.1 to KDE 3.0.1 just by downloading the packages and using upgradepkg. I've also upgraded the kernel, a bunch of my X apps, and even X itself. All without compiling.

I should probably point this out--I'm an idiot. I probably shouldn't even be using a Linux system. But someone like me got Slackware Linux up and running and using all my devices. Wasn't hard at all. And now I have no reason to use Windows except to run certain games.

Then again, maybe I'm just ignorant since I haven't used any other distros since I first used Slackware 4.0. I guess I don't need to try the others when I've already got the best. :)

(shameless plug) Slackersguild will always use Slackware... ;)

free porn

At Slackersguild, we tried offering e-mail addresses.

The current server is old and dying under the load of hits we're getting per week. About $1000 for a new server is desperately needed. Unfortunately, exactly 1 person seemed interested in the e-mail address idea. We've also tried t-shirts, which was a failure.

Sadly, we're considering the same subscription-based model Slashdot is using now. We have no other choice--if we don't, the site will die. All of us do this for free in our spare time, and we don't want it to go, so we'll try anything--even selling our souls to the Internet capitalist machine--just to keep the site up.

I author on several sites, but the best for general-purpose reading is Slackers Guild.

Not much traffic yet, but I'm fairly lenient with upmods.

If you're a travel buff, there's always the site in my sig.

This seems like an appropriate time to mention the Slackers Guild.

Not that my .sig doesn't mention it for me.

As the victim of a recent stereo theft, I'm doing some hardcore shopping with the insurance company's money. I had a Kenwood z919 (MP3), but the problem was no removeable faceplate. I read the link (couldn't get the PDFs), and it looks like it has pretty much the same problem.

Considering that I'm shopping with someone else's money, I'd like to get something with the all-important geek factor. I just don't want to have it ripped out of my car again.

Don't get me started on dolphins.

My vote for the name? "Tasty".

the very first

free whores!

see?

goat sex

You could always hang out at my little slash-site for a year...

did you say slack-ass?

you wont catch us using this thing...

Here is a better review. A review by someone who sees movies the way they are meant to be viewed: as entertainment.

i dont know about you, but i am just happy to play with my balls

the best gaming site is here

theres a lovely writeup about that site here

and a little prayer

wrong, just look at the updated (as of 1/27/01) EULA here

neither have i

There's a mirror here

n0rk