I didn't mean to imply that either example is of anything other than humorous significance.
But I do maintain that the two examples are pretty similar:
a) Neither is of any practical significance. They look bad but don't do any noticeable harm.
b) Most importantly, thay both point to government bureaucracies that, due to the huge scope of their missions, and limited resources, are simply unable to apply enough critical oversight to make their efforts have a useful affect. For the Patent Office, it regards intellectual property. For the INS, it regards aliens staying in this country.
Our country draws much of its strength from immigrants and from technological innovation. Both these examples are illustrations of inabilities to intelligently regulate these two areas.
So I stand by the analogy. I regret if any implication of serious malfeasance was communicated. I intended to convey an impression incidental negligence, symptomatic of a poorly designed and implimented organisational structure and oversight.
The government does a lot of things right. And sometimes it gets unfair flak for errors that are inevitable in human affairs. But it also screws up and could improve, which is what I meant to point out.
Accusations of FUD have reached FUD-like proportions.
The real bottleneck to shrinking computers are no longer really the actual chips and disks. These are getting smaller and lighter and more energy efficient (well, at least the first two anyway).
What has not been effectively shrunk yet is the areas of human interface. The input (mouse and keyboard) and output (computer screen)
On the input size, cameras and microphones are shrinking, so these may be useful. On the output side, I know there are small screens out there, but to get real work done, you often need a big screen area.
Kenya, the speaker's home country, has a lot worse problems than high telco charges. Of course, it's a lot safer to complain about the telcos than one's own miscreant government. Especially when that government, unlike the telcos, will actually kill and rape dissidents, and does so on a wholesale basis.
This article is a completely non-critical piece of crap, as is the accompanying slashdot write-up.
A better summary would be:
Africa sucks, it's their own damn fault, and the rulers like to use the West as a scapegoat.
This is by the same federal government, (though, to be fair, by a different agency), that issued student visas to the 9-11 hijackers 6 months after the fact.
I'm not a lawyer, but is there anyone out there who is? Wouldn't this sort of gross incompetence bring into question other patents issued, at least by this obviously negligent examiner?
And at least the "Tarzan" yell part gives off the strong suggestion that this was submitted as a goof.
The intellectual property laws in this country have become nonsensical and counter-productive in their execution and enforcement.
what I mean is, when is it okay to post nude pictures on the internet? And won't you be embarassed when your kids see 'em, especially the pictures their father took the nights they were conceived?
Seriously though, how much privacy should we be able to insist upon.
Certainly plenty when our naked bodies are concerned.
I normally dislike getting into a flame war with an anonymous piece of shit troll, but for you I'll make an exception.
Did your DNA get hopelessly rearranged when your mother screwed your father up the ass once too many times after she humped the neighborhood's stray dogs?
Pretty pathetic there, fanboy. Isn't it way past your bedtime? Or are you waiting for your Daddy to come into your room and diddle you?
It is not outlandish to question the technical expertise of a computer company, whatever their area of specialization, when they can't even keep together a robust server environment to serve out their website.
Are you going to suggest to suggest that Lycorsis' inability to maintin a website in the face of higher-than-average interest in their product is a good thing? Does their inability to handle servers suggest a greater ability to handle the desktop environment? I don't care if they farmed out the servers to some hosting company. Being unable to maintain a stable web presence suggests Bush League.
If they were some hobbyist with a personal web page, I wouldn't be so quick to criticize, but when they are a supposedly professional company, they are not helping their business by being unable to serve potential customers. And an inablility to maintain the most fundamental business aspects of their enterprise does not bode well for the continued support on the technical end.
You are out of your depth here, sycophant. Great way to defend the company too, moron, by spouting out insulting inanities. You are such a moron, it is almost painful. You are suggesting Slashdot is to blame for giving the company some free publicity? What a novel concept, a sort of reverse-referral program: "Tell your friends about our compny's products, AND WE'LL BILL YOU FOR THE TROUBLE IT CAUSES US". Maybe their motto should be "DON"T BOTHER US, WE'RE BUSY."
They don't have to worry about that with you though, anonymous fanboy coward, because you have no friends.
As their company sinks into oblivion, they can feel secure knowing that their website won't be stressed because the only dweeb visiting it will be you.
Hell, they are a small company and it really isn't such a big deal. I wish them luck and maybe I'll try out their distro sometime (when they're back online).
but you, fanboy, are an odiously fermenting douchebag.
I always get antsy about trusting a distro when its site gets slashdotted. It just suggests to me they are operating with very limited resources, and are not ready for widespread attention.
I want to consider their distro but I can't get to it. I'm sure there are people reading this telling me to be patient, but I think that when you are promoting an OS that gets its fame as a server OS, your fucking Internet connection to the rest of the fucking world should not get frozen up when you get popular.
They don't publish their business rates online, you have to call to find out. I've noticed quite a few high-speed ISP's do the same.
Of course, the residential rates are posted online, but those are with dynamic IP and no service-level agreement. I read no SLA as them saying, "maybe you'll get this speed and maybe you won't, depends if we feel like it. So don't depend on residential service. If you need something dependable, get our business service, which we won't tell you the price of publically."
And since all the baby bells own the last mile of wire, and the FCC has pretty much told them they don't have to allow access to other ISP's at cost, they can always fuck over their competitors.
Pardon my language, but business is not for the meek.
Despite its title, the article states the scientists are unsure of how "hard-coded" gravity is in the brain:
It's possible that the astronauts did adapt to 0-g, and then readapted back to 1-g again. It's also possible that the brain is able to learn and retain multiple models of acceleration. In different situations, it might simply choose which one to apply. That, in fact, is what McIntyre and his colleagues believe is going on.
In other words, like on Slashdot and other publications, the headline writers didn't read the article, or deliberately misstated its conclusion in the interest of an exciting headline.
When you get down to it, most guns are not the best weapon to have on an airplane.
Pressurized cabins don't like bullet holes. it's such a cramped crowded space that firing a gun will justy as likely hit a bystander as a hijacker.
The 9-11 hijackings succeeded because noone on the planes expected the hijackers to be suicidal.
A sharp mind is ultimately more dangerous than any weapon.
Let's face it, just as a thought experiment, it's not too hard to figure out a way for a hijacker to use an armed passenger for his own benefit, or at least to effectively neutralize him.
I am not claiming that we are defenseless against terrorists. My ultimate point is that it is adaptibility and quick situational thinking, not bureaucratized procedures, that will prove most effective against terrorists.
My guess is what happened is that Hoss got annoyed at the rent-a-cops, and the rent-a-cops used this as an excuse to delay him.
There are two sides to the story, and we are just hearing one of them. The rent-a-cops probably were assholes, but my guess is that Hoss probably got unnecessarily huffy as well.
I did read it, only I read the whole article, which I have excerpted below:
"Italian researchers began studying the illnesses of veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions after noting an apparently high number of cancers.
Scores of other countries then announced they would also begin screening their troops for depleted uranium exposure and unexplained illnesses."
But...
"Italy subsequently reported it found the incidence of cancer in soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo was lower than that in the general population."
The kidney is the most likely organ to suffer toxic effects from uranium. The few human studies that have been done indicate that kidney failure is likely to occur within a few days at concentrations above 50 micrograms of uranium per gram of kidney.
Minor kidney problems are thought to be linked with concentrations of about 1 microgram per gram of kidney.
The Royal Society estimated that most soldiers would have levels of 0.005 micrograms per gram of kidney, or less.
Soldiers who survived a tank hit with depleted uranium ammunition would likely have kidney uranium levels of 4 micrograms per gram.
In other words, the slashdot write-up is an example of the worst kind of anti-nuclear hysterical ignorance. This isn't the first time such technophobia has appeared on Slashdot.
Well, the cash portion is only $200K. Giving cash value to the dilution of shareholder value for the $600K stock award is tricky but essentially zer, and I'm sure that the lawyers' fees are at least a few $10K when all is said and done.
So the cash crunch isn't solely due to the name thing.
What I am particularly horrified at is the poor quality of the financial data presented on their web site.
I'm not surprised that they are reduced to begging for money: I wouldn't lend or invest money with them based on those shoddy disclosures.
This is a tiny company with about 100 employees and a few million dollars in sales.
Let's face it, when a sound business is facing a temporary cash crunch, short-term financing is available. That they can't get thaty financing is a signal that they are not a sound business, whatever the quality of their coding might be.
From the prospectus, it sounds like there was a lot of stuff in earlier Mandrake releases that could have confused the two, especially regarding the use of magic, etc. etc.
But I agree with your sentiments: lawyers are scum.
There's a funny note on the end of the prospectus ( http://www.mandrakesoft.com/toprint/kbcprospectus_ mdk_en.pdf (look on page 22 of the PDF)) that mentions that they are in talks with the Hearst corporation because of a dispute over their name (Hearst owns the rights to "Mandrake the Magician"). Apparently Mandrake will owe Hearst $200K cash and $600K stock to get to keep the name.
Of course, the Prospectus isn't the latest word and the deal isn't finalized.
It's just interesting what you can find in financial documents.
I must say, however, that I could not find a link to anything as worthwhile as an American-style 10Q or 10K report on the Mandrake site. Their prospectus has basically NO historic financial data, and they depend on some pretty astronomical growth, just to stay afloat.
What's also intersting, is that on p 14 of the aforementioned prospectus, they make a big deal of being the #1 US Linux retail distro, overtaking Red Hat. What is really interesting, however, is that the most phenomenal growth is by SUSE, which doubled it's market share in the same year that Mandrake upped its market share by a measly %10.
Well, I guess it wasn't so bad. The thing finally downloaded after fits and starts that would have scared away most casual users, but I'm satisfied.
I changed to the modern skin over the old Netscape theme.
It's strange switching browsers. I've only been on ie for a little over a year, but my rythym of use has adapted to it. It's hard to make another switch. The old netscape interface just felt wrong.
It was particularly disquieting seeing that old 1997 message in my mailbox from Mike Andreessen "Senior VP Technology, CTO Netscape Communications". Hmm.... maybe that ought to be updated.
After the stillbirth that was Netscape 6.0, I really despair of anyone knocking ie of of its roost.
This Mozilla seems cool but it is definitely still rough around the edges.
This brings to mind the story of the drunk searching for his wallet by thee streetlight. He knows he didn't lose it there, but the light makes it easier to look for it!
The cumulative effect of pervasive advertising is why I am not so violently opposed to alternatives to banner ads. Compared to advertising in tv and print, banner ads are tiny and unobtrusive. Click-through measurement makes sense for some items, but mostly for impulse purchases. They are the equivalent to the late night informercial in appeal. Brand building and reinforcement is a more obscure effect and not measurable solely by click-through, but still the main purpose of advertising.
Going through The End of Free, I found one site, Netsurfer, that posted a pretty good explanation of why they were shifting to a subscription model.
To recap my understanding of the issue, regular print periodicals are either completely paid for by users (mostly books, and your more distinquished journals), or by a combination of user fees and ad fees (most magazines and newspapers). A few periodicals get by purely on advertising (Village Voice, for instance)
It should be noted that in the mixed fee case, advertising provides the vast majority of revenue. Subscription fees pretty much are just used as a signal to advertisers that people are actually reading, and therefore willing to pay for, a magazine.
Since online pubs can completely verify readership, the signalling aspect of subscrber fees should have been rendered unnecessary. Also, since distribution of online content is cheaper than regular paper pubs by several orders of magnitude (though certainly not free, as was once touted), online pubs were thought to have an advantage over offline pubs in that regard.
Somewhere along the line, this new paradigm has, at least temporarily collapsed. I suspect a lot of it has to do with poor understanding of market forces and implemantation rather than the ultimate unfeasability of ad-supported, free online content.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't mean to imply that either example is of anything other than humorous significance.
But I do maintain that the two examples are pretty similar:
a) Neither is of any practical significance. They look bad but don't do any noticeable harm.
b) Most importantly, thay both point to government bureaucracies that, due to the huge scope of their missions, and limited resources, are simply unable to apply enough critical oversight to make their efforts have a useful affect. For the Patent Office, it regards intellectual property. For the INS, it regards aliens staying in this country.
Our country draws much of its strength from immigrants and from technological innovation. Both these examples are illustrations of inabilities to intelligently regulate these two areas.
So I stand by the analogy. I regret if any implication of serious malfeasance was communicated. I intended to convey an impression incidental negligence, symptomatic of a poorly designed and implimented organisational structure and oversight.
The government does a lot of things right. And sometimes it gets unfair flak for errors that are inevitable in human affairs. But it also screws up and could improve, which is what I meant to point out.
Accusations of FUD have reached FUD-like proportions.
The real bottleneck to shrinking computers are no longer really the actual chips and disks. These are getting smaller and lighter and more energy efficient (well, at least the first two anyway).
What has not been effectively shrunk yet is the areas of human interface. The input (mouse and keyboard) and output (computer screen)
On the input size, cameras and microphones are shrinking, so these may be useful. On the output side, I know there are small screens out there, but to get real work done, you often need a big screen area.
[Richard Bell, Chairman of Kenya's ISP Association said,]"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a billion dollars a year."
I think that the fairness of the current setup has already been discussed sufficiently.
What I want to point out is the incendiary language used by the quoted speaker. This is pretty funny coming from a continent where the victims of rape are subject to execution.
Kenya, the speaker's home country, has a lot worse problems than high telco charges. Of course, it's a lot safer to complain about the telcos than one's own miscreant government. Especially when that government, unlike the telcos, will actually kill and rape dissidents, and does so on a wholesale basis.
This article is a completely non-critical piece of crap, as is the accompanying slashdot write-up.
A better summary would be:
Africa sucks, it's their own damn fault, and the rulers like to use the West as a scapegoat.
This is by the same federal government, (though, to be fair, by a different agency), that issued student visas to the 9-11 hijackers 6 months after the fact.
I'm not a lawyer, but is there anyone out there who is? Wouldn't this sort of gross incompetence bring into question other patents issued, at least by this obviously negligent examiner?
And at least the "Tarzan" yell part gives off the strong suggestion that this was submitted as a goof.
The intellectual property laws in this country have become nonsensical and counter-productive in their execution and enforcement.
Embarassing.
Funny though.
what I mean is, when is it okay to post nude pictures on the internet? And won't you be embarassed when your kids see 'em, especially the pictures their father took the nights they were conceived?
Seriously though, how much privacy should we be able to insist upon.
Certainly plenty when our naked bodies are concerned.
what constitutes permission for fair use?
Doesn't Lycoris just use rpm's? Once you ignore the KDE shell, shouldn't it be able to run any Linux program?
I don't know, that's why I'm asking.
I normally dislike getting into a flame war with an anonymous piece of shit troll, but for you I'll make an exception.
Did your DNA get hopelessly rearranged when your mother screwed your father up the ass once too many times after she humped the neighborhood's stray dogs?
Pretty pathetic there, fanboy. Isn't it way past your bedtime? Or are you waiting for your Daddy to come into your room and diddle you?
It is not outlandish to question the technical expertise of a computer company, whatever their area of specialization, when they can't even keep together a robust server environment to serve out their website.
Are you going to suggest to suggest that Lycorsis' inability to maintin a website in the face of higher-than-average interest in their product is a good thing? Does their inability to handle servers suggest a greater ability to handle the desktop environment? I don't care if they farmed out the servers to some hosting company. Being unable to maintain a stable web presence suggests Bush League.
If they were some hobbyist with a personal web page, I wouldn't be so quick to criticize, but when they are a supposedly professional company, they are not helping their business by being unable to serve potential customers. And an inablility to maintain the most fundamental business aspects of their enterprise does not bode well for the continued support on the technical end.
You are out of your depth here, sycophant. Great way to defend the company too, moron, by spouting out insulting inanities. You are such a moron, it is almost painful. You are suggesting Slashdot is to blame for giving the company some free publicity? What a novel concept, a sort of reverse-referral program: "Tell your friends about our compny's products, AND WE'LL BILL YOU FOR THE TROUBLE IT CAUSES US". Maybe their motto should be "DON"T BOTHER US, WE'RE BUSY."
They don't have to worry about that with you though, anonymous fanboy coward, because you have no friends.
As their company sinks into oblivion, they can feel secure knowing that their website won't be stressed because the only dweeb visiting it will be you.
Hell, they are a small company and it really isn't such a big deal. I wish them luck and maybe I'll try out their distro sometime (when they're back online).
but you, fanboy, are an odiously fermenting douchebag.
I always get antsy about trusting a distro when its site gets slashdotted. It just suggests to me they are operating with very limited resources, and are not ready for widespread attention.
I want to consider their distro but I can't get to it. I'm sure there are people reading this telling me to be patient, but I think that when you are promoting an OS that gets its fame as a server OS, your fucking Internet connection to the rest of the fucking world should not get frozen up when you get popular.
I live in NYC. Verizon is my DSL carrier.
Here is the pisser:
They don't publish their business rates online, you have to call to find out. I've noticed quite a few high-speed ISP's do the same.
Of course, the residential rates are posted online, but those are with dynamic IP and no service-level agreement. I read no SLA as them saying, "maybe you'll get this speed and maybe you won't, depends if we feel like it. So don't depend on residential service. If you need something dependable, get our business service, which we won't tell you the price of publically."
And since all the baby bells own the last mile of wire, and the FCC has pretty much told them they don't have to allow access to other ISP's at cost, they can always fuck over their competitors.
Pardon my language, but business is not for the meek.
That's funny
Despite its title, the article states the scientists are unsure of how "hard-coded" gravity is in the brain:
It's possible that the astronauts did adapt to 0-g, and then readapted back to 1-g again. It's also possible that the brain is able to learn and retain multiple models of acceleration. In different situations, it might simply choose which one to apply. That, in fact, is what McIntyre and his colleagues believe is going on.
In other words, like on Slashdot and other publications, the headline writers didn't read the article, or deliberately misstated its conclusion in the interest of an exciting headline.
When you get down to it, most guns are not the best weapon to have on an airplane.
Pressurized cabins don't like bullet holes. it's such a cramped crowded space that firing a gun will justy as likely hit a bystander as a hijacker.
The 9-11 hijackings succeeded because noone on the planes expected the hijackers to be suicidal.
A sharp mind is ultimately more dangerous than any weapon.
Let's face it, just as a thought experiment, it's not too hard to figure out a way for a hijacker to use an armed passenger for his own benefit, or at least to effectively neutralize him.
I am not claiming that we are defenseless against terrorists. My ultimate point is that it is adaptibility and quick situational thinking, not bureaucratized procedures, that will prove most effective against terrorists.
My guess is what happened is that Hoss got annoyed at the rent-a-cops, and the rent-a-cops used this as an excuse to delay him.
There are two sides to the story, and we are just hearing one of them. The rent-a-cops probably were assholes, but my guess is that Hoss probably got unnecessarily huffy as well.
here's an editorial on that incident from the Washington times:
5 .h tm
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020202-3287461
Seems that the airport security weren't even aware of what the CMH was.
Well at least the INS managed to get Mohammed Atta his student visa.
From a personal point of view, however, I've not particularly noticed any inconvenience from heightened airport security, and I live in NYC.
Frankly, I think this airport security frenzy is a great illustration of closing the barn door after the horse has run off.
I did read it, only I read the whole article, which I have excerpted below:
2 84 3170.htm
"Italian researchers began studying the illnesses of veterans of Balkans peacekeeping missions after noting an apparently high number of cancers.
Scores of other countries then announced they would also begin screening their troops for depleted uranium exposure and unexplained illnesses."
But...
" Italy subsequently reported it found the incidence of cancer in soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo was lower than that in the general population. "
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/news/nation/
In other words, people took anecdotal evidence, reached a certain conclusion, but after further study found that the initial impression was erroneous.
Double sheesh.
Making the headline depleted uranium may stop kidneys "in days", when such an occurence is almost impossible is fear-mongering.
The case of Gulf War veterans will not be aided by deliberately misleading headlines.
From what I read in the article, Italian troops in Bosnia had a lower incidence of cancer than the general population.
The facts cited in the article make widespread harm from DU weapons seem unlikely, especially in the short term.
In my world, I base my opinions on the data, which is something that it seems you should play closer attention to in your so-called "reality".
The kidney is the most likely organ to suffer toxic effects from uranium. The few human studies that have been done indicate that kidney failure is likely to occur within a few days at concentrations above 50 micrograms of uranium per gram of kidney.
Minor kidney problems are thought to be linked with concentrations of about 1 microgram per gram of kidney.
The Royal Society estimated that most soldiers would have levels of 0.005 micrograms per gram of kidney, or less.
Soldiers who survived a tank hit with depleted uranium ammunition would likely have kidney uranium levels of 4 micrograms per gram.
In other words, the slashdot write-up is an example of the worst kind of anti-nuclear hysterical ignorance. This isn't the first time such technophobia has appeared on Slashdot.
Well, the cash portion is only $200K. Giving cash value to the dilution of shareholder value for the $600K stock award is tricky but essentially zer, and I'm sure that the lawyers' fees are at least a few $10K when all is said and done.
So the cash crunch isn't solely due to the name thing.
What I am particularly horrified at is the poor quality of the financial data presented on their web site.
I'm not surprised that they are reduced to begging for money: I wouldn't lend or invest money with them based on those shoddy disclosures.
This is a tiny company with about 100 employees and a few million dollars in sales.
Let's face it, when a sound business is facing a temporary cash crunch, short-term financing is available. That they can't get thaty financing is a signal that they are not a sound business, whatever the quality of their coding might be.
From the prospectus, it sounds like there was a lot of stuff in earlier Mandrake releases that could have confused the two, especially regarding the use of magic, etc. etc.
But I agree with your sentiments: lawyers are scum.
There's a funny note on the end of the prospectus ( http://www.mandrakesoft.com/toprint/kbcprospectus_ mdk_en.pdf (look on page 22 of the PDF)) that mentions that they are in talks with the Hearst corporation because of a dispute over their name (Hearst owns the rights to "Mandrake the Magician"). Apparently Mandrake will owe Hearst $200K cash and $600K stock to get to keep the name.
Of course, the Prospectus isn't the latest word and the deal isn't finalized.
It's just interesting what you can find in financial documents.
I must say, however, that I could not find a link to anything as worthwhile as an American-style 10Q or 10K report on the Mandrake site. Their prospectus has basically NO historic financial data, and they depend on some pretty astronomical growth, just to stay afloat.
What's also intersting, is that on p 14 of the aforementioned prospectus, they make a big deal of being the #1 US Linux retail distro, overtaking Red Hat. What is really interesting, however, is that the most phenomenal growth is by SUSE, which doubled it's market share in the same year that Mandrake upped its market share by a measly %10.
Well, I guess it wasn't so bad. The thing finally downloaded after fits and starts that would have scared away most casual users, but I'm satisfied.
I changed to the modern skin over the old Netscape theme.
It's strange switching browsers. I've only been on ie for a little over a year, but my rythym of use has adapted to it. It's hard to make another switch. The old netscape interface just felt wrong.
It was particularly disquieting seeing that old 1997 message in my mailbox from Mike Andreessen "Senior VP Technology, CTO
Netscape Communications". Hmm.... maybe that ought to be updated.
After the stillbirth that was Netscape 6.0, I really despair of anyone knocking ie of of its roost.
This Mozilla seems cool but it is definitely still rough around the edges.
So I'm taking the plunge and trying to download it. Of course, the ftp site is slashdotted.
I guess you could say that the distribution network of mozilla hasn't reached that 1.0 milestone either yet.
I hope the distribution capacity catches up with the code sooner rather than later.
This brings to mind the story of the drunk searching for his wallet by thee streetlight. He knows he didn't lose it there, but the light makes it easier to look for it!
The cumulative effect of pervasive advertising is why I am not so violently opposed to alternatives to banner ads. Compared to advertising in tv and print, banner ads are tiny and unobtrusive. Click-through measurement makes sense for some items, but mostly for impulse purchases. They are the equivalent to the late night informercial in appeal. Brand building and reinforcement is a more obscure effect and not measurable solely by click-through, but still the main purpose of advertising.
Advertising is an imprecise art.
Going through The End of Free, I found one site, Netsurfer, that posted a pretty good explanation of why they were shifting to a subscription model.
To recap my understanding of the issue, regular print periodicals are either completely paid for by users (mostly books, and your more distinquished journals), or by a combination of user fees and ad fees (most magazines and newspapers). A few periodicals get by purely on advertising (Village Voice, for instance)
It should be noted that in the mixed fee case, advertising provides the vast majority of revenue. Subscription fees pretty much are just used as a signal to advertisers that people are actually reading, and therefore willing to pay for, a magazine.
Since online pubs can completely verify readership, the signalling aspect of subscrber fees should have been rendered unnecessary. Also, since distribution of online content is cheaper than regular paper pubs by several orders of magnitude (though certainly not free, as was once touted), online pubs were thought to have an advantage over offline pubs in that regard.
Somewhere along the line, this new paradigm has, at least temporarily collapsed. I suspect a lot of it has to do with poor understanding of market forces and implemantation rather than the ultimate unfeasability of ad-supported, free online content.