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Dell's New Alienware Case Goes to Extremes To Prevent Overheating
MojoKid writes Dell's enthusiast Alienware brand has always stood out for its unique, other-worldly looks (sometimes good, sometimes, not so good) and there's such a thing as taking things to the next level, this might be it. However, there's more to this refresh than just shock value. It's actually a futuristic aesthetic with a rather purposeful design behind it. Today Alienware gave a sneak peek at their completely redesigned Alienware Area 51 desktop system. This refreshed system is unlike any previous Alienware rig you've seen. With a trapezoidal shape to its chassis, Dell-Alienware says you can place the Area-51 against a wall and not have to worry about thermals getting out of the control. That's because there's a controlled gap and a sharp angle to the chassis that ensures only a small part of the system actually rests near the wall, leaving extra room for hot air to escape up and away. This design also offers users easy access to rear IO ports. Despite the unique design, there's plenty of room for high end components inside. The retooled chassis can swallow up to three 300W double-wide full-length graphics cards. It also brings to the table Intel's latest and greatest Haswell-E in six-core or eight-core options, liquid cooled and nestled into Intel's X99 chipset. No word from Dell on the price but the new Area-51 is slated to start shipping in October.
The only way this could have been more blatant of an advertisement is if they had put in a preorder link. Even if it wasn't, their "controlled gap" is just a corner that juts out so you can't push it up against the wall properly. It's just not very impressive in terms of, well, anything.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the slashdot crowd builds their own rigs anyway.
Hello,
Dell didn't pay anything for it, as far as I can tell.
This is a post by MojoKid, who operates the HotHardware.Com site. I'm guessing he submitted the article to Slashdot in order to get some ad revenue from people visiting his site as a result.
I'm guessing that blocking
googletagservices.com
googleusercontent.com
tru.am
before visiting his site will make that a little more difficult.
I do not know if he is a Slashdot or a Dice Holdings, Inc., employee, but it would be nice if there was some sort of transparency statement, if that's the case.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
In other words, it's ok to place this directly agains the wall, because the shape ensures it cannot be placed agains the wall. Well done.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Before clicking the link I was trying to imagine how a trapezoidal shape could help and I could not. Well, that's because it is a hexagon. Sure, not a regular one, as the article says "like a triangle but with twice as many sides", and even more complicated than that (half the sides are hexagonal themselves, the other half rectangular), but I would not call it "trapezoidal" unless I did not know what that meant.
That said, yes, you can push it to the wall, but due to its shape it is actually longer (at its lower part) than a rectangular case would be, so you would be able to leave enough space behind with a rectangular case if you set it so that its front is at the same place where this hexagon reaches when it is all the way back to the wall. If they wanted to actually save space perhaps they could get air from the sides and out from the top on a rectangular shape (along with ports etc)? I don't know, I'm just saying.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Cooling doesn't have to be complicated.
So how much advertising did Dell buy ro get this story run?
Don't be ridiculous. It's not an advertisement. Alienware makes some pretty slick gaming rigs--I have a few myself as I am sure many other slashdotters do. I find it interesting to hear about their latest case design. Sorry if paranoia prevents you from enjoying the article.
I like the design, it is a lot better than boring old ATX.
Computer Industry should work together to make this a standard form factor.
It could be TTX - Trapezoidal TX?
Does someone know a trapezoid?
The airflow doesn't even make sense.
The Alienware "Trapezoidal" Area 51 Case.
Jesus... That thing is ugly.
I! Tego Arcana Dei.
It's a hexagonal prism, albeit not regular. So it may be called a plesiohedron?
I bought one of these, and between it and the Corsair H110, i don't even have any case fans on... the case has good ventilation at the top, and front... the case will be a fair bit cheaper than the premium alienware would be charging too
I don't know why there's so much hatred about this being a slashvertisement. I actually like articles about new hardware - it's one of the reasons I still visit sites like this.
I dig the new machine, and totally support people looking into alternative and hopefully improved/innovative designs. This thing looks cool.
You guys will figure that out when you calm down a bit.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
You can choose between either having 2 arms or 2 legs or we take your eyes. Unfortunately, we already have your soul.
D(H)ELL Inside.
if an author profits from writing about a product from the sales or desire to buy such product (e.g. views or clicks), then it is an advertisement.
pry your head out of ass, the air will smell much better.
Wow nice, aryeh some kind of internet detective?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'm guessing that blocking
googletagservices.com googleusercontent.com tru.am
before visiting his site will make that a little more difficult.
I do not know if he is a Slashdot or a Dice Holdings, Inc., employee, but it would be nice if there was some sort of transparency statement, if that's the case.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Seriously? Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising. This was a press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware. It's a VERY cool case and system design I think, so I submitted our story on it. Yes, I run HotHardware.com and no it's not even close to an advertisement. It's just our usual news coverage on a variety of topics around the computing space. Alienware had a press release on this new system design and we covered it, along with many other Tech news outlets I'm sure.
And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should. The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on and people employed to serve up news, reviews and other content you enjoy every day, essentially for free.
And good sites (like Slashdot and HotHardware) know how to separate church and state, where advertising does not affect editorial opinion.
Thank you, well said.
This attitude goes right along with assuming that every argument that differs from one's own is a shill for some corporate interest. Is there any position on any issue that can't be construed that way, by the decicated paranoid?.
There were reasons which I cannot seem to remember right now. Fan noise maybe? But why dont cases blow air up?
That's what I'd call it.
Sure, OK, 5-10 for a domain and hosting is chump change and sites like this are all run by volunteers. You go with that. Whatever works for ya.
I remember having a case that prevented placing it too close to a wall too, it simply had a flared base (also for stability). This was in the beige box era circa 1997, not really a new concept.
How do you like it? I was pretty intrigued when I saw one of these at a Fry's, but I went with the Carbide 300R (which is the best case I've had the pleasure of using). The 540, aside from being gigantic, seemed like overkill at the time.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
A domain is around 5-10 bucks and you can get hosting for less.
Sure you can. I've run various personal or social group sites over the years that just paid a little to keep things running, without expecting any sort of income in return. For the personal sites, I do it for the satisfaction of giving something back, and sometimes starting enjoyable discussions with others who share my interests.
I also run some commercial sites, aiming at a wider audience, charging real money for signing up. This is a completely different scale of commitment in terms of hardware, connectivity, and operating costs.
If you're running a discussion forum that you share with 50 friends, sure, it can be in the first category and you can do it for peanuts and enjoy all the high quality interaction you like. But running a significant news or social networking site with thousands of participants? Not even close.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The RAM on this thing is limited to 32GB. Pretty soon there will probably be laptops at Best Buy that support more than that.
Q: How much RAM do you really need?
A: It doesn't matter. GIVE ME MORE RAM!
lucm, indeed.
Seriously? Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising
It helps to increase that assumption when in the next paragraph you defend ad-block passionately.
If ads were guaranteed to be malware free, then I wouldn't block them, but ad-tech companies are more interested in vetting inventory than advertisers (because advertiser are the ones who pay, so ad-tech companies put a lot of effort into making sure they get a good product).
FWIW I thought your post was interesting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot.
I suspect in reality that the best sites would continue, but there would be a lot more paywalls around, probably less editorial integrity on open sites as things like product placements and affiliate referral fees became more reliable revenue streams, and maybe over time we'd eventually get somewhere with micropayments. In some ways, moving to more "honest" funding via paywalls and/or micropayments might be a better long-term model for the people who do produce good content and run valuable sites than what we have today, though no doubt it would be a painful transition with many casualties.
The thing that makes me a little sad inside is that the aggressive, irresponsible advertisers have spoiled the model for the moderate, responsible ones. Because of the former group, I do block very aggressively when I'm browsing, and I don't feel any guilt about it because my motivations are security, privacy and performance. However, I also have no problem with people who just want to make a bit of money from running a decent site, and I wouldn't block their ads if there were a reliable way to allow those while still eliminating the rest. Unfortunately, I don't see that being possible any time soon, which is why none of the commercial sites I've ever run myself has relied on ads as a business model.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hosting is chump change? I bet your experience is limited to goDaddy accounts. God forbid if someone wants to make money off their work.
It's become a recent trend for advertisers to construct ads that look and read just like news articles and stealthily insert them into Big Media outlets. However, there's no escaping this when it comes to things like desktops, laptops, tablets, etc...It's just the nature of the beast.
Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising.
Because there is a large number of the tinfoil hat crowd here. Unfortunately they aren't always wrong. There are sometimes stories that really are just PR in disguise. I've certainly seen a few of them slip through here on slashdot. I agree that this particular instance probably isn't PR but I can see that it might be hard to be sure.
If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot. Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should.
It also doesn't mean that I have some obligation to watch the ads, particularly given the privacy baggage that tends to come with them. I come to slashdot to read the content, not to watch ads or let companies track my every move. Your bad business model is not my problem. If I value what you have then I will pay for it. I pay for several magazines as well as subscriptions to several online media services I find valuable to me. Frankly most online ad services are invasive to the point of being creepy as hell. Why on earth would I support that in any way? Advertising companies are generally invasive and seem to have no clue about when they've crossed the line. If they had any ethical compass I might be more lenient but I regularly see interviews with people involved in the online ad industry and they regard website viewers like a rancher views a side of beef. No respect whatsoever.
The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on and people employed to serve up news, reviews and other content you enjoy every day, essentially for free.
Media funds through ads because it is easy but it is hardly the only means available. If you want to take advantage of the easy money don't be shocked when you get pushback. Newspapers are shriveling up because they built a business model based on a distribution monopoly and easy advertising dollars. Now that the distribution monopoly is broken by the internet their business model no longer allows monopoly profits. Your business is no different and if your business model is based on people being dumb enough to not block advertising that has a blatant disregard for privacy then I have no sympathy for you.
And good sites (like Slashdot and HotHardware) know how to separate church and state, where advertising does not affect editorial opinion.
The problem is that it sometimes is hard to tell the difference. Given that fact I would be a fool not to take control of my own privacy given that I have the means.
> And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block.
They do it because they prefer to experience the web without ads, not as a "badge of honour", dullard.
> If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist,
"everyone"
"would likely"
If fear, uncertainty, and doubt...
> including Slashdot
Slashdot isn't worth the price of ads. If it needs them to host its crappy platform - because the editing is done badly enough that a part-time volunteer with a learning disability could fill the role - well, bye, bye, Slashdot. This site's worth is in the articles (a bit) and the comments (oddly informed userbase).
> Just because you can block, doesn't mean you should.
You have it the wrong way round. Downloading the ads is the activity, and "blocking" is in fact not choosing to download them. If you're going to perform an ethical analysis, it starts, "Just because you can download ads, it doesn't mean you should."
> The internet is no different than any other media,
Yes it is. Start a newspaper and find out how much shit costs.
> where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on and people employed to serve up news, reviews and other content
No, most of the bills go toward all the overheads of physical stuff.
> you enjoy every day,
This is beginning to sound like a marketing prospectus.
> essentially for free.
"essentially"
If sponsorship had no cost to the visitor, there would be no sponsors. You're paying with bandwidth, CPU time, screen real estate, distractions, irrational thought changes (if the advertisers weren't able to influence you, they wouldn't advertise), increased price of the sponsor's product, and a very real risk of malware. Fuck all that. If you can't afford to run a site, post a breakdown of your costs, and I'm sure we'll find you're either making bank or pissing money away somewhere.
but when I am, I buy Alienware.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
It's more common than you might think. Good PR looks like content.
Why not trapezoid?
I'm not hearing a no....
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm afraid the trend for news on the internet is going to be infomercials. Obviously the printed paper business has taken a bad slide in revenue and papers don't make a whole lot of money off of internet news. The profit motive has destroyed many of the good things on the internet. Consider that the the most used search engine is really an ad agency of sorts. Why should we be surprised if our "free" news becomes nothing but commercials. The people in the suits would reason that if we wanted something of value we would pay for it. Maybe in the future our "free" news will be tailored to us personally to fit our preferences and psychological profile. Just today we received a chance to get a yearly subscription to the new york times for the small price of $1,099.95! If the little people want real news they will be expected to pay for it.
Um "press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware" == advertisement
and making a press release appear to be a review [also known as "branded content"] is a violation of church and state
but it's the new thing to get a few extra sheckles these days
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Perhaps because it's utterly and totally devoid of valuable information on the subject? When your copy is just "Ooh, look... Shiny!" and uncritically copying bits of info out of the manufacturer's press release... you are doing nothing more than advertising a product.
Adblock Plus allows non-annoying advertisements through the filter, to be displayed by default...
If every site used non-annoying ads, ad-blockers "would likely cease to exist."
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Seriously, "VERY cool case"? Yeah, OK, not visiting your site.
Why do people that read a legitimate news story always try to assume something is advertising. This was a press coordinated announcement by Dell-Alienware.
I know you are right in the middle of it since that is your website and that makes it difficult to see things from any other perspective, but you should take a step back and try to see it as an uninvolved bystander would because those two statements are fundamentally contradictory. They can not both be simultaneously true, press-release journalism is not legitimate news, if for no other reason than coordination reduces your ability to critically report a story.
"Up to triple and 900w", "Supports up to Five", "included 9". What is this shit on their ad? Are the marketroids even dumber than the people who buy this overpriced crap?
Does the thing still weigh 200 fucking pounds? That's always been my beef with Alienware computers. You need a fucking forklift just to move them around.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
Hi. Just have a quick comment about the ad blockers.
I work for an online media outlet that I won't name here. Our ad revenue fell sharply ~ 2008, and we would have been out of business if we had kept that model. Luckily, the owner was sharp enough to come up with an alternative source of revenue: our website is widely read by public policy makers, and so we offer stakeholders (eg, lobbyists) the opportunity to sponsor series of articles on the subject that they would like to see in the public debate. It's a win-win-win: we can pay journalists to write high-quality content, policy make can get news coverage that is analytic and unbiased in is content (although the folks who pay the bills can influence the subjects we cover) and industry gets to make sure that policy makers are informed about given subjects. We have a pretty chill atmosphere: we know that our business model is pretty stable, so there isn't pressure to grow all the time. It makes for a nice place to work and the business is profitable.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I highly recommend that you try to leave the ad-driven model behind; it is a dead end. There are alternatives out there, and while I don't know what will work for you, you will be happier if you find it.
No one made this article or anything in it "appear to be a review." It's an announcement and news release, that's it. There is no mention of testing, or passing judgement other than maybe an opinion on the design aesthetic, which is completely subjective anyway. At this point the dialog has gone off topic and off the rails, rather than discussing the post at hand. So I'm done with it. Carry on. Thanks
Wow what a thoughtless statement.
A domain is an irrelevant rounding error. A host is bloody expensive once you get past the pissy little amount of data you get for your $5 / month. A site like Slashdot has made fun of the ability to cripple other hosts just by linking to them, how much do you think the traffic bill is per month? Not to mention technical staff, editorial staff (which we all agree are often some kind of joke).
You really have no idea.
Oh, I do. Quite a good one, actually.
If you guys insist that hosting a web-site (!) on commodity servers (!) is expensive, you can continue using bloated scripts or look at ways to optimize your infrastructure:
one option (for the larger sites) is to put the DB and backup servers in the same datacenter and then just switch the (dumb) frontends around, once the traffic is gone (internal traffic is free, and if it's not it's time to change providers.), and streamline the dynamic parts of your website by using lightweight services and then including them in the static site with js/SSI/whatever.
On Digitalocean you get a TB for 5 bucks (!) on Linode you get 2 for 10. It's cheap.
Of course, if you need several servers, it means you have (a ton of) users, some of which can pay for "premium" features like a supporter-badge, feel good about it and pay for your infrastructure.
Administration, is also (super-) easy with docker, chef and whatnot. Press a button and there's your instance.
But I've got no idea, so go burn your money if you want to, and I'll keep my stuff lean and mean.
I disagree, let's have a look at Disqus, who (according to here) have around 100 servers total for serving (in 2011) "500 000 sites" with "15 millions of registered users" and "17 thousands of requests per second" for "250 million visitors (for August 2010.)". A later blog-post from Disqus itself puts that in perspective.
Let me re-iterate: they're handling 2M concurrent users with 5 servers!!
Granted, they don't use VPS' for 5 bucks (and they use more than those 5 servers), but what they're paying could be considered 5 bucks if they were playing in "our" ballpark here. Another interesting tidbit from there:
Ergo, a lot is possible, if the architecture is right. (If you're running slashcode, of course, then... well...)
Great! So you've got users who pay for the extra effort. My post was referring to that guy who was arguing that the internet needs ads, because everything is so expensive, which I still think is utter BS.
I don't know about social networking, but news sites can be made static, cached, and hosted cheaply. I don't have metrics here, but I think it's safe to assume that if Disqus can serve 250m visitors on 100 servers, you'll be able to serve a million and more on one; especially for a static site.
Also, I've implied a counter argument to MojoKid's statement that "The internet is no different than any other media," in the sense that you don't need to buy several Heidelberger's for a couple hundred thousand or more to start a news site. The upfront investment is almost totally negligible and a small percentage of subscribers is enough, once you hit the limits of your initial infrastructure. And when you do hit the limits, in most cases [educated guess], you will have some users willing to pay.
FTFY.
It's been a long time when I remember this happening last time, and back then, many hosts didn't accept more than 256 connections per default. See the apache documentation for info.
I know you've "left", but the article is totally written in the sense of an independent review of a sneak peek of the hardware and NOT by Dell/Alienware, and only by careful reading of the entire article do you actually find out it effectively an advertisement for the hardware.
A casual reader would easily mistake it for an actual review, and not the paid ad that it is.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Fuck hothardware and fuck slashdot and fuck dice this site is so 2000 and late
And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block.
Of course we're proud. What do you think we are, stupid? Who wants to sacrifice bandwidth so as to have a gaping security hole that occasionally installs malware directly via exploits, frequently contains deceptive warnings which actually link to malware, and at best are noisy or flashy distractions from the page itself? And then the pop-ups, pop-unders, redirects, phishing scams, etc. Things have gotten so nasty that Adblock Plus more effective for securing your computer than the so called "security software", and as a bonus it doesn't even eat all your processor and blocks ads besides.
And the worst is that the advent of ad-supported web pages has slowly pushed people away from producing quality content as a contribution to the world, and towards producing SEO or clickbait content (or perhaps the latter hides the former).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Even if large sites ran on your supposed commodity hardware on your cheap-arse hosting provider, you still conveniently ignore that people don't make websites for free. They make them to they can eat and feed their families.
So congrats you still have no idea.
You know somewhere that provides reliable hosting for five servers supplying 40MB/s each for less than 5-10 bucks? I doubt that very much. For the dedicated servers I use on one of the commercial sites I mentioned, I'd be running at over $1,000 per day for that kind of traffic.
Obviously no-one running at that kind of scale is still on the same kind of hardware and pricing set up that my little site is on, but dedicated/unmetered lines aren't cheap either. In any case, you get the point: the servers aren't the problem for high traffic sites, the network bandwidth is.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It looks like a really nice case, but too far outside my "minimalist" envelope. I do need to shake things up though; I haven't built a machine in too long. I need to bring a new one to life.
We don't track you. We don't do nasty things. Really!
Yeah, right. Know what? You lost my trust, and you'll have to work very hard to re-gain it, if ever.
because it IS ADVERTISING, you submitted it here to try and get more page hits, you could have linked directly to the alienware announcement, or to a site that isn't riddled with advertising links, but no you linked to your site with the intention of generating traffic and neither Slashdot nor hothardware are good examples of separate church and state.
> A casual reader would easily mistake it for an actual review, and not the paid ad that it is.
Check out the AdDetector add-on for firefox. It isn't perfect, in fact it doesn't even trigger on this "legitimate news story," but it is the next volley in the arms-race of advertising versus content.
And good sites (like Slashdot and HotHardware) know how to separate church and state, where advertising does not affect editorial opinion.
I would take you more seriously if you hadn't claimed that Slashdot separates advertising from editorial opinion.
And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block.
Well, look at it from another perspective. I have nothing against ads online. I understand they pay for stuff and whatnot. If I see something advertised on a site I like that I want, I'll follow the link there so they get their cut.
Well I used to.
I don't run adblock, but I hardly see any ads anymore.
You see, I'm browsing on the moment on an eee 900. As you may recall, it has a 900 MHz Celery P3 and a whole gig of ram. I basically run noscript and enable the minimum necessary to bring up the text and sometimes the pictures.
Why? Because frankly this thing doesn't have the CPU grunt to run every wierd bit of javascript that everyone seems to want to tack on to their pages these days. Sadly, it seems that advertisers not only want to advertise to you (that's fine) but want to do it while consuming as much of your CPU as they can (not fine).
So, I don't see most ads. I'm not proud of not seeing ads, I feel in fact vaguely guilty about it. However, I'm not going to re-enable all javascript and make browsing on this computer unusable.
On another note, once I disabled all the weird google services I noticed the creepy tracking went away and so I no longer get targeted ads. I'm seriously not re-enabling it again.
However please not, I do not nor will I likely ever run adblock.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Obviously, the example should be translated to the ballpark we're talking about here. I don't think *any* news site is doing 40MB/s. Including CNN/BBC/whatever. But you can get that traffic for 1.5-2k/month. Probably cheaper.
What a lousy business model.
Real money is made by sustainably providing value to the customers/users, not deciding that your hobby of talking about knitting pink socks is going to buy you a house and employing a legion of editors to chase that hallucination.
Last time I heard, there's a myriad of FLOSS CMS or web-publishing systems out there, slap a template on 'em or pay other people to do it for you, if you can't be bothered to invest a couple of weeks (hours?) learning how to do so.
What do you mean? Most of the internet runs on commodity hardware, so obviously, it's you who doesn't have a clue.
This is all way off-topic by now, but my point is still the same: MojoKid's position is probably correct. There are significant costs for servers and for bandwidth for any site that scales up, and they can easily become more than it's reasonable to expect a hobbyist to pay out of their own pocket if the site becomes popular.
Of course, this is all before there is any actual content on the site! Doing the planning and research and writing and editing and presentation of original material takes about as much time and money on a web site as in any other medium.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'll bet hyperventilating over the internet is the only exercise you get.
so if i run the fans backwards does it become a room cooling unit?
Seeing the GPU is placed in the front, i wonder how the video cables aught to be running..
its like placing a PC backwards on my desk. Against the wall of course, for good measure.
If there are such places, then go there, because you just described why you don't need an adblocker -- you already have ad-free sites for all your content, right?
The argument can be extended to anything. There are plenty of soup kitchens offering food for free, so it's your problem if you can't find a business model that works when you just take food without paying for it. Right?
I get the problem of annoying ads. First of all there's the malware ads and spoofing ads; those are awful. But even worse are those ads that play sound. The only time an ad should play sound is if it's inserted into or at the beginning / end of a video or audio stream. If somebody knows of an adblocker that just gets rid of any ad that plays sound (excluding those provisos) and leaves the rest, I'd take that, even if it just replaced the entire page with "Sorry! This site is awful and is committed to pissing you off. Go elsewhere.".
I can only imagine how many people have spilled a drink either from their desk downwards to their case or by directly putting a drink ontop of their case... Stupid to do, but with how many people drink coffee, soda, beer, etc while gaming/working, I think this case is going to be getting fried quite a bit with liquid leaking down into the case :(
No, it can not. I'm specifically talking about the cost to run a website, not a brick and mortar enterprise.
Don't worry, that's where I spend most of the time dedicated to my information needs. They're also usually much more accurate. Other sites (like slashdot) let me turn off ads without an adblocker (unfortunately not the slashvertisements). Some sites (like duckduckgo) I make an exception. Most of all, I definitely don't use that hardware site that spawned this discussion, or CNET, or other sites like that.
No, I described that there's plenty of places that don't use this shitty excuse for putting up ads all over your viewport, I also described that hosting costs are neglectable and stand in absolutely no comparison to the argument that "The internet is no different than any other media, where ads pay the bills to keep the lights on [...]" It's totally different in the sense that running costs are neglectable if done right (e.g. volunteers for editors, lean architecture, etc.).
I also wonder, if you get the problem of ads that track your surfing behavior?
Try looking at BlueHost. $5/month gets you unlimited data and traffic
And ad blocking. Don't even get me started. So many ad blockers are so proud of what they do, like it's some badge of honor to block. If everyone blocked ads, many quality web sites would likely cease to exist, including Slashdot.
I'm not "proud" of adblocking any more than I'm proud of locking my door at night. It's just basic personal security. It's a shame that my security needs conflict with the site's business model. But frankly, I'm not going to click on any ads anyway. I've clicked on maybe two in the past decade, and both were by accident. Mostly I'm not interested. Even if I *am* interested, I'm going go to the source web site directly, because I can't trust some random ad to be genuine.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay