Yet didn't the US and USSR have agreements in place not to militarise space? Treaties that banned space-borne weapons?
The Space Race was about winning headlines, and proving the superiority of capitalism/democracy over communism (and vice versa), not military advantages.
I'd rather see no further manned exploration in space for another 50 years than see any exploration (exploitation?) that's driven by a military agenda: all that will acheive is a military build up in space with the US and most probably China developing space-based weapons.
Space exploration and space science should be carried out on peaceful, scientific grounds only. The world's major militaries can all wipe out life on the face of the Earth already, so being able to do it a few minutes faster with space-borne weapons is hardly my idea of progress.
Serious science, and even pseudo-science like manned missions to the Moon or Mars, provides the West with the best means of fostering positive relations with China in the medium term, and I'd hate to see any opportunity for the betterment of mankind blown because some cowboy decides that putting nukes above our heads is a smarter move than making sure that nobody will want to do it.
Just as the US's nukes begat the USSR's, which begat China's, which begat India's, which begat Pakistan's, any overt US militarisation of space would only lead to others following suit.
Your logic is so flawed in so many ways. By that rationale MSIE is the best broswer ever, Budweiser is the best beer, MacDonalds is the best restaurant in the world, etc.
Seriously, think about what you've written before you hit the "Submit" button next time. You're either trolling or very, very stupid. I'll leave it to others to decide which of the two applies.
Perhaps it's not as obvious to you because we're talking about two languages (if you consider them to be two languages) that overlap so much but it's far more obvious when it's, say, Spanish and English.
I'm a native English speaker and my Spanish is pretty good, but the butchery of Spanish that I've seen by most people with similar backgrounds, and the complete disdain they show when someone clearly can't understand what they've said is a sight to see.
How much respect you show someone else's language and culture really plays a big part in how they view you, especially if you are a guest in their country. Like I've pointed out before, this is perhaps a small tip of the iceberg thing but the number of times I've seen Americans laughing at English spellings that aren't common in the US just here on Slashdot has been far too numerous to count.
You might not think so but it's these small affronts that play a bigger part in how we perceive others - ignorant, racist, whatever - than most people truly appreciate.
I'll say it again, it doesn't hurt to respect other people's cultures. After all, what harm can that do?
On the contrary, respecting someone else's language is perhaps the best place to start when it comes to fostering a positive relationship with them.
Riled up? Because I'm mature enough to point out that we all have faults that makes me riled up, does it? OK, if you say so.
I'm British, and I'm also a big fan of American football. But when I'm talking about the game I don't talk about defence, I talk about defense. It's the small things like this, as much as the bigger things, that are true signs of how much you respect someone else's culture, and by extension, how much you respect them too.
From "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to carpet bombing innocent women and children. From New World to a Brave New World.
Please, don't start the "my country is better than your country" shit. It's a game that neither of us can truly win.
Sorry, I know there are transatlantic spelling differences but I doubt even Americans spell "pedantic" as "poduntic". Time you buy yourself a dictionary.
And, for the record, it is The Ministry of Defence, not The Ministry of Defense. I'm British, but I'd never refer to the US's equivalent, the DOD, as the Department of Defence. It's called respecting other cultures, you know?
Amazing that you aren't making a living as a telepath or clairvoyant.
I don't own a PDA phone, let alone one that has the ability to copulate. In fact, I don't even want to own one.
I prefer the situation I have right now, a PDA (which also acts as my MP3 player via its audio software and headphone jack) and a seperate phone, which lets me talk to someone on the phone and make notes or look up someone's details at the same time.
Don't give up the day job because being a telepath or clairvoyant sure doesn't look like it's your forte after all.
If you think of it as "just a phone" then, yes, of course it's going to compare badly size-wise when compared to dedicated phones.
But if you think of it as a PDA with a built-in phone, which is how you should be looking at it, then there's nothing at all wrong with its size at all.
Look at it this way, if it were any smaller then it would be useless as a PDA, right? So what good is making it smaller?
Seriously, I don't have huge hands (I'd describe mine as being of average size) and I find myself looking at most phones, PDAs, etc (not just the Treo range) and wishing the buttons were a little bit bigger: I'd hate to think how unusable these devices would be to a lot of people if they became any smaller and the buttons were to either become smaller still or be less well-spaced out.
I challenge you to find any of my posts where I say Windows is better than Linux or praise any Microsoft product without giving solid, valid reasons to back up what I've said.
I use whatever tool is most suitable to the task at hand. If I need a hammer then I'll use a hammer. If I need a screwdriver then I'll use a screwdriver. Pretending that one is patently better than the other for everything is not on my agenda and, frankly, I find it pointless to even start to suggest it is because most people aren't so stupid as to think that you're best off trying to screw something in with a hammer or hammer something in with a screwdriver.
Anyone who shouts out that a hammer is better than a screwdriver without recognising that the hammer isn't always the best tool for the job in hand is a hammer zealot in my book. And, honestly speaking, in a thread where "ease of use and functionality" was the topic being discussed, you pretty much have come out and done exactly that.
The fact that you can't qualify your original remarks when questioned - that you can't come up with a single answer to any of my questions - and have to resort to suggestions that I'm trolling for the hell of it doesn't help your position. It's like I'm asking you why a hammer is automatically better than a screwdriver and you're getting defensive and accusing me of being a screwdriver-lover because I fail to appreciate the "obvious" superiority of your tool of choice.
Perhaps you don't see this. Perhaps you don't care. But until you recognise that OSS vs CSS zealotry for zealotry's sake is counterproductive then you'll be the one that's loses out in the long run, not me.
Sorry, but you come across as a zealot: what unique properties does Linux have that facilitates the preparation of better Office-type documents?
Is there something special about Linux that makes it a better platform for creating letters, spreadsheets and presentations on?
This thread segment that you responded to is about the "ease of use and functionality" of Open Office vs Microsoft Office, not about OSS vs CSS, so your insertion of OSS vs CSS OS ideology is not relevant to a debate over which is the easier to use and more functional tool.
Or, put another way, when talking about the tool is best for a job, strictly speaking, who made it has no bearing on how good it is at doing what it needs to do.
I doubt that anywhere is SAC's remit for the B2 there is anything about tank-busting.
That's a job that the USAF leaves to more mobile aircraft, aircraft better suited to the modern-day battlefield such as the F-15 and the F-16. Or which is left to the US Army itself, with its tank-busting A-10s and AH-64A/Ds perfect for the job.
In fact, I'd challenge you to find a single B2 mission that's been carried out so far that has involved tank-busting, or any one that's been against a target that couldn't be just as effectively hit by a volley of cruise missile strikes.
Actually, I'm British (English, if you want to be even more precise) and I always call your country (I am assuming that you are Dutch) The Netherlands.
But when even the few Dutch people I know say they're from Holland rather than they're from The Netherlands it doesn't exactly help spread the right word, does it?
On a related note, the country of Iraq's name is not pronounced "I-rack" but rather "Ir-rark". And it's neighbour Iran's name is not pronounced "I-ran" but rather "Ir-ran". It amazes me that people can't get small details like that right.
Replace the word "Pete" in the saying "for Pete's sake", with a certain verb, and then abbreviate the three words down and you get "FFS". Pretty simple, huh?
Well, we're really into hypotheticals here but my point wasn't what would be good for Apple's own sales but more about which non-Apple computer manufacturers would we see something different (something other than "me too" stuff) from.
Of course, as long as Steve Jobs is at the helm, Apple is extremely unlikely to license its OS again: one of the first things that Jobs did when he returned to the company was to shut down the authorised clones, not least of all because they were cutting into Apple's profits and diluting its brand.
It's fairly clear that Jobs's vision of Apple is that it's best off creating products the emphasise the Apple brand as a strong plus point, so brand dilution via clones is probably the last thing on his mind.
Re:Never write off Microsoft...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 1
The UK and US did that during WWII too, and it worked out pretty well for them.
Your point (or, at least, the point you were trying to make) is worthless, and it's an entirely inappropriate comparison to make regardless of Godwin's Law.
Re:Never write off Microsoft...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 1
Microsoft's various court cases were a joke. In at least one case there's fairly damning proof that they doctored evidence to support their position.
However, without wanting to get sidetracked into all that, I'll just point out that developing MSIE, even MSIE for Mac, cost Microsoft millions and millions. Yet they gave the product away for nothing, just to destroy Netscape's dominance and to win market share.
The very definition of dumping is to sell something below what it cost to make, which is exactly what Microsoft did with MSIE.
An "HP Mac" might have been an interesting concept, say, 6 years ago, but today it wouldn't get me expecting anything but a "me too" product.
Now, an "IBM Mac" or a "Sony Mac" just might because IBM (despite the proposed sale of the PC division) and Sony have at least shown an ability to innovate desktop and notebook design, whereas HP, Dell and the rest of the field have barely contributed anything significant in a long time, if at all.
And if by some chance it doesn't work with non-Microsoft browsers then what the hell is Apple thinking about? Surely further tying users to Microsoft and Microsoft's way of thinking is contrary to Apple's long-term goals?
Re:Never write off Microsoft...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, really. You might have been one of the many Netscape users who abandoned it for MSIE but there were far more MSIE users who never even experienced Navigator and who've never run any browser other than that that came bundled with their OS in their lives.
Also, you're forgetting that Microsoft not only had MSIE on all Windows 95 machines as default but it was giving away its browser at the time when Netscape was still charging for it. For home users this wasn't an issue (because it wasn't exactly like the police would be breaking down your doors if you were a non-education user without a license) but for corporates it made MSIE even more of a no-brainer over Navigator/Communicator. Again, this free (as in beer) vs paid for was better marketing by Microsoft, albeit anti-competitive marketing in my opinion, as MSIE was 100 percent subsidised by other parts of Microsoft's business (in effect they "dumped" MSIE on the market).
Like I said, superior marketing.
Never write off Microsoft...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
And as Microsoft is getting attacked on all fronts, am I the only one smiling from ear to ear?
Or, put another way, Microsoft is competing on all fronts. You can bet your bottom dollar that's the way Bill Gates sees it and that he likes it that way too.
Lest we forget, Microsoft is still making money hand over fist, and its profits continue to rise. It might have missed its last profits forecast by some fraction of a percentage point but the Microsoft vs Everyone Else battle is still pretty firmly tipped in its favour.
The company is a behemoth. Apple isn't really a threat in the short or medium term because so many computer users (especially large corporates) are tied into x86-compatible architectures. iPods might and switching might help Apple erode some of the home market, but the business market isn't going to jump onto that bandwagon so easily. Besides, we all know that Microsoft will do whatever it takes to get the deal done when faced with the possibility of losing serious business to a competitor.
Firefox isn't really much more than an annoyance, because it will never have the marketing muscle to compete with MSIE - the reason why MSIE destroyed Netscape's dominance wasn't its superiority, it was because MSIE was just there, an easy mouse click away on every new Windows 95 PC, whereas Navigator wasn't, and needed to be installed from scratch.
Xbox might not have made any money but I doubt that Microsoft was expecting to get into the console gaming market and have made a profit by now. It's not in it for the short-term, it wants to be a long-term player, and the console gaming market, just like most things, is one in which you have to speculate to accumalate. The market was Nintendo/Sega, then Sony/Nintendo/Sega, now it's Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft (or maybe Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo): who's to say in five years time that it won't be Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo?
Never write off or underestimate what lies in Redmond. Too many companies have made that mistake - even mighty IBM - and learnt not to do it the hard way.
Who mentioned Slashdot? I sure as hell didn't; did anyone else?
Personally, I don't block ads by any means, universally or site-by-site. If I'm on Slashdot I might only see one ad that interests me every few months but on other sites I see ads that pique my curiosity far more often. And, frankly, I'm not going to waste my time blocking ads that are barely noticeable to me in the first place: 99.9 percent of the time I couldn't tell you what ads were on the last page I looked at anyhow.
Anyhow, regardless of how often I click through on ads, how relevant or irrelevant they are to me, or how often I notice them, I'm not one of the extremists who thinks ads are stealing their bandwidth: I've got a 1Mbit connection (and I bet most Slashdotters have at least the same) and it's not like those ads are holding back my web browsing in the slightest. If being served those ads keeps the websites that I frequent in the black then I'm happy as the proverbial lamb.
I don't block ads and neither do most of the people I know. Frankly, ads are beneficial to me because sometimes they let me find out about stuff that I would otherwise not have a clue about.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet didn't the US and USSR have agreements in place not to militarise space? Treaties that banned space-borne weapons?
The Space Race was about winning headlines, and proving the superiority of capitalism/democracy over communism (and vice versa), not military advantages.
I'd rather see no further manned exploration in space for another 50 years than see any exploration (exploitation?) that's driven by a military agenda: all that will acheive is a military build up in space with the US and most probably China developing space-based weapons.
Space exploration and space science should be carried out on peaceful, scientific grounds only. The world's major militaries can all wipe out life on the face of the Earth already, so being able to do it a few minutes faster with space-borne weapons is hardly my idea of progress.
Serious science, and even pseudo-science like manned missions to the Moon or Mars, provides the West with the best means of fostering positive relations with China in the medium term, and I'd hate to see any opportunity for the betterment of mankind blown because some cowboy decides that putting nukes above our heads is a smarter move than making sure that nobody will want to do it.
Just as the US's nukes begat the USSR's, which begat China's, which begat India's, which begat Pakistan's, any overt US militarisation of space would only lead to others following suit.
Your logic is so flawed in so many ways. By that rationale MSIE is the best broswer ever, Budweiser is the best beer, MacDonalds is the best restaurant in the world, etc.
Seriously, think about what you've written before you hit the "Submit" button next time. You're either trolling or very, very stupid. I'll leave it to others to decide which of the two applies.
Perhaps it's not as obvious to you because we're talking about two languages (if you consider them to be two languages) that overlap so much but it's far more obvious when it's, say, Spanish and English.
I'm a native English speaker and my Spanish is pretty good, but the butchery of Spanish that I've seen by most people with similar backgrounds, and the complete disdain they show when someone clearly can't understand what they've said is a sight to see.
How much respect you show someone else's language and culture really plays a big part in how they view you, especially if you are a guest in their country. Like I've pointed out before, this is perhaps a small tip of the iceberg thing but the number of times I've seen Americans laughing at English spellings that aren't common in the US just here on Slashdot has been far too numerous to count.
You might not think so but it's these small affronts that play a bigger part in how we perceive others - ignorant, racist, whatever - than most people truly appreciate.
I'll say it again, it doesn't hurt to respect other people's cultures. After all, what harm can that do?
On the contrary, respecting someone else's language is perhaps the best place to start when it comes to fostering a positive relationship with them.
Riled up? Because I'm mature enough to point out that we all have faults that makes me riled up, does it? OK, if you say so.
I'm British, and I'm also a big fan of American football. But when I'm talking about the game I don't talk about defence, I talk about defense. It's the small things like this, as much as the bigger things, that are true signs of how much you respect someone else's culture, and by extension, how much you respect them too.
From "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to carpet bombing innocent women and children. From New World to a Brave New World.
Please, don't start the "my country is better than your country" shit. It's a game that neither of us can truly win.
Sorry, I know there are transatlantic spelling differences but I doubt even Americans spell "pedantic" as "poduntic". Time you buy yourself a dictionary.
And, for the record, it is The Ministry of Defence, not The Ministry of Defense. I'm British, but I'd never refer to the US's equivalent, the DOD, as the Department of Defence. It's called respecting other cultures, you know?
Amazing that you aren't making a living as a telepath or clairvoyant.
I don't own a PDA phone, let alone one that has the ability to copulate. In fact, I don't even want to own one.
I prefer the situation I have right now, a PDA (which also acts as my MP3 player via its audio software and headphone jack) and a seperate phone, which lets me talk to someone on the phone and make notes or look up someone's details at the same time.
Don't give up the day job because being a telepath or clairvoyant sure doesn't look like it's your forte after all.
If you think of it as "just a phone" then, yes, of course it's going to compare badly size-wise when compared to dedicated phones.
But if you think of it as a PDA with a built-in phone, which is how you should be looking at it, then there's nothing at all wrong with its size at all.
Look at it this way, if it were any smaller then it would be useless as a PDA, right? So what good is making it smaller?
Seriously, I don't have huge hands (I'd describe mine as being of average size) and I find myself looking at most phones, PDAs, etc (not just the Treo range) and wishing the buttons were a little bit bigger: I'd hate to think how unusable these devices would be to a lot of people if they became any smaller and the buttons were to either become smaller still or be less well-spaced out.
Too big and bulky? You're kidding, right?
LMAO.
I challenge you to find any of my posts where I say Windows is better than Linux or praise any Microsoft product without giving solid, valid reasons to back up what I've said.
I use whatever tool is most suitable to the task at hand. If I need a hammer then I'll use a hammer. If I need a screwdriver then I'll use a screwdriver. Pretending that one is patently better than the other for everything is not on my agenda and, frankly, I find it pointless to even start to suggest it is because most people aren't so stupid as to think that you're best off trying to screw something in with a hammer or hammer something in with a screwdriver.
Anyone who shouts out that a hammer is better than a screwdriver without recognising that the hammer isn't always the best tool for the job in hand is a hammer zealot in my book. And, honestly speaking, in a thread where "ease of use and functionality" was the topic being discussed, you pretty much have come out and done exactly that.
The fact that you can't qualify your original remarks when questioned - that you can't come up with a single answer to any of my questions - and have to resort to suggestions that I'm trolling for the hell of it doesn't help your position. It's like I'm asking you why a hammer is automatically better than a screwdriver and you're getting defensive and accusing me of being a screwdriver-lover because I fail to appreciate the "obvious" superiority of your tool of choice.
Perhaps you don't see this. Perhaps you don't care. But until you recognise that OSS vs CSS zealotry for zealotry's sake is counterproductive then you'll be the one that's loses out in the long run, not me.
Sorry, but you come across as a zealot: what unique properties does Linux have that facilitates the preparation of better Office-type documents?
Is there something special about Linux that makes it a better platform for creating letters, spreadsheets and presentations on?
This thread segment that you responded to is about the "ease of use and functionality" of Open Office vs Microsoft Office, not about OSS vs CSS, so your insertion of OSS vs CSS OS ideology is not relevant to a debate over which is the easier to use and more functional tool.
Or, put another way, when talking about the tool is best for a job, strictly speaking, who made it has no bearing on how good it is at doing what it needs to do.
I doubt that anywhere is SAC's remit for the B2 there is anything about tank-busting.
That's a job that the USAF leaves to more mobile aircraft, aircraft better suited to the modern-day battlefield such as the F-15 and the F-16. Or which is left to the US Army itself, with its tank-busting A-10s and AH-64A/Ds perfect for the job.
In fact, I'd challenge you to find a single B2 mission that's been carried out so far that has involved tank-busting, or any one that's been against a target that couldn't be just as effectively hit by a volley of cruise missile strikes.
I think most experts would agree that a stealth bomber is not a retaliatory strike platform, it's a first strike one.
But ask yourself this: who needs a stealth bomber?
Certainly not the US, with its huge arsenal of cruise missiles at its disposal.
Actually, I'm British (English, if you want to be even more precise) and I always call your country (I am assuming that you are Dutch) The Netherlands.
But when even the few Dutch people I know say they're from Holland rather than they're from The Netherlands it doesn't exactly help spread the right word, does it?
On a related note, the country of Iraq's name is not pronounced "I-rack" but rather "Ir-rark". And it's neighbour Iran's name is not pronounced "I-ran" but rather "Ir-ran". It amazes me that people can't get small details like that right.
Replace the word "Pete" in the saying "for Pete's sake", with a certain verb, and then abbreviate the three words down and you get "FFS". Pretty simple, huh?
Well, we're really into hypotheticals here but my point wasn't what would be good for Apple's own sales but more about which non-Apple computer manufacturers would we see something different (something other than "me too" stuff) from.
Of course, as long as Steve Jobs is at the helm, Apple is extremely unlikely to license its OS again: one of the first things that Jobs did when he returned to the company was to shut down the authorised clones, not least of all because they were cutting into Apple's profits and diluting its brand.
It's fairly clear that Jobs's vision of Apple is that it's best off creating products the emphasise the Apple brand as a strong plus point, so brand dilution via clones is probably the last thing on his mind.
The UK and US did that during WWII too, and it worked out pretty well for them.
Your point (or, at least, the point you were trying to make) is worthless, and it's an entirely inappropriate comparison to make regardless of Godwin's Law.
Microsoft's various court cases were a joke. In at least one case there's fairly damning proof that they doctored evidence to support their position.
However, without wanting to get sidetracked into all that, I'll just point out that developing MSIE, even MSIE for Mac, cost Microsoft millions and millions. Yet they gave the product away for nothing, just to destroy Netscape's dominance and to win market share.
The very definition of dumping is to sell something below what it cost to make, which is exactly what Microsoft did with MSIE.
An "HP Mac" might have been an interesting concept, say, 6 years ago, but today it wouldn't get me expecting anything but a "me too" product.
Now, an "IBM Mac" or a "Sony Mac" just might because IBM (despite the proposed sale of the PC division) and Sony have at least shown an ability to innovate desktop and notebook design, whereas HP, Dell and the rest of the field have barely contributed anything significant in a long time, if at all.
Apple does know that there are other browsers on Windows platforms other than MSIE, right?
I'm sure it probably works fine with Opera, Firefox, etc, but why talk about "the Internet Explorer plugin"?
And if by some chance it doesn't work with non-Microsoft browsers then what the hell is Apple thinking about? Surely further tying users to Microsoft and Microsoft's way of thinking is contrary to Apple's long-term goals?
Yes, really. You might have been one of the many Netscape users who abandoned it for MSIE but there were far more MSIE users who never even experienced Navigator and who've never run any browser other than that that came bundled with their OS in their lives.
Also, you're forgetting that Microsoft not only had MSIE on all Windows 95 machines as default but it was giving away its browser at the time when Netscape was still charging for it. For home users this wasn't an issue (because it wasn't exactly like the police would be breaking down your doors if you were a non-education user without a license) but for corporates it made MSIE even more of a no-brainer over Navigator/Communicator. Again, this free (as in beer) vs paid for was better marketing by Microsoft, albeit anti-competitive marketing in my opinion, as MSIE was 100 percent subsidised by other parts of Microsoft's business (in effect they "dumped" MSIE on the market).
Like I said, superior marketing.
And as Microsoft is getting attacked on all fronts, am I the only one smiling from ear to ear?
Or, put another way, Microsoft is competing on all fronts. You can bet your bottom dollar that's the way Bill Gates sees it and that he likes it that way too.
Lest we forget, Microsoft is still making money hand over fist, and its profits continue to rise. It might have missed its last profits forecast by some fraction of a percentage point but the Microsoft vs Everyone Else battle is still pretty firmly tipped in its favour.
The company is a behemoth. Apple isn't really a threat in the short or medium term because so many computer users (especially large corporates) are tied into x86-compatible architectures. iPods might and switching might help Apple erode some of the home market, but the business market isn't going to jump onto that bandwagon so easily. Besides, we all know that Microsoft will do whatever it takes to get the deal done when faced with the possibility of losing serious business to a competitor.
Firefox isn't really much more than an annoyance, because it will never have the marketing muscle to compete with MSIE - the reason why MSIE destroyed Netscape's dominance wasn't its superiority, it was because MSIE was just there, an easy mouse click away on every new Windows 95 PC, whereas Navigator wasn't, and needed to be installed from scratch.
Xbox might not have made any money but I doubt that Microsoft was expecting to get into the console gaming market and have made a profit by now. It's not in it for the short-term, it wants to be a long-term player, and the console gaming market, just like most things, is one in which you have to speculate to accumalate. The market was Nintendo/Sega, then Sony/Nintendo/Sega, now it's Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft (or maybe Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo): who's to say in five years time that it won't be Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo?
Never write off or underestimate what lies in Redmond. Too many companies have made that mistake - even mighty IBM - and learnt not to do it the hard way.
Who mentioned Slashdot? I sure as hell didn't; did anyone else?
Personally, I don't block ads by any means, universally or site-by-site. If I'm on Slashdot I might only see one ad that interests me every few months but on other sites I see ads that pique my curiosity far more often. And, frankly, I'm not going to waste my time blocking ads that are barely noticeable to me in the first place: 99.9 percent of the time I couldn't tell you what ads were on the last page I looked at anyhow.
Anyhow, regardless of how often I click through on ads, how relevant or irrelevant they are to me, or how often I notice them, I'm not one of the extremists who thinks ads are stealing their bandwidth: I've got a 1Mbit connection (and I bet most Slashdotters have at least the same) and it's not like those ads are holding back my web browsing in the slightest. If being served those ads keeps the websites that I frequent in the black then I'm happy as the proverbial lamb.
I don't block ads and neither do most of the people I know. Frankly, ads are beneficial to me because sometimes they let me find out about stuff that I would otherwise not have a clue about.