There were all kinds of hacks using the BitBlitter on the Amiga, especially for logical operations which it could do with aplomb. Not that anyone would be interested, but I believe I still have a bunch of them here stored on CD (from my CompuServer librarian days).
Sorry but I find MySQL user (programmer) hostile, only (somewhat SQL-92) standards compliant, somewhat fast in some instances providing you live within their SQL implementation, and more than something of a security nightmare as many default settings are idiotic, to say the least.
Now, supposedly, all will be magically better in 5.0 when it goes gold. I'm in wait and see mode. However, as a database engineer who is totally database agnostic (heck, everything agnostic), it still needs more than a bit of work. Then that's true of most of the industry.
Security? Standards? We don't need no stinkin' (insert here).
To get back to the review, these books are nice but not the whole answer and I have a real problem with any book that states in the title "How to do anything with...". Sorry, but I'm not someone that restricts myself to any one toolbox when it comes to creating applications, be it on the web, the server, or the desktop. I use, simply put, the best tool for the job, period. To paraphrase, when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and that is far too true of the the IT industry. I pick the tools to suit the job at hand, not the job at hand to suit the tools, or to force fit the job to match the tools.
PHP is nice (heck, very nice). MySQL is nice, and often speedy, but still needs more than a bit of work (although 5.0 and native XML support would make it beautiful, IMNSHO). Force-fitting everything into that paradigm is right up there with the morons that say Java can do anything, anytime, and better.
Not that I have anything against Java (yeah, right).
Frankly I have about every editor known to man (or woman) here and Crimson has become my favorite editor for day to day use. I still like emacs (boo hiss from the Vi(M) crowd I imagine, not!), but it does the job, is light-weight, and has a price that can't be argued with.
That's my bitch with the article as well. Sun would like us all to pay $1 per hour to use their grid (I misremember what IBM charges). Sooo..., for about $1 per hour to play 4 hours per week and people are complaining? I just don't get it, either as a geek or an economist.
It would be a wonderful world if all these servers were free but I live in the real world, and I'm one serious hard-core game junkie from time to time.
Nice troll. Sarcasm aside, what I said was that the probabilities are extremely small and when combined with the probabilities involved to achieve a worst case scenario you should be far more worried about an asteroid colliding with the earth than your worst case scenario. I actually read and analyzed the report and I understood the numbers.
There is a non-zero probablility that a nuclear reactor can be in cold shutdown and go (nearly) instaneously supercritical to meltdown. Similarly, there is a non-zero probability that all the molecules of atmosphere in a room can all move to one corner of a room leaving you sucking vacuum. There's even a non-zero probability that an X-particle/anti-particle pair can appear inside your body and consume it on the spot (X-particles are quantum size black holes if you didn't know;-).
However, that they are non-zero does not make them likely or even risky. Evaluation of risk is something humans get wrong time and again as they put feelings ahead of rational risk assessments. We see that in everyday behavior (DDT, Alar anyone?), we see it in decisions about (personal, homeland, computer) security, every arena really. John Stossell got this one right *sigh*. You are simply proving my point that inserting the word nuclear and it must be bad, despite numbers to prove that this is not risky at all.
I'm rational. I wonder about you. Sorry, but true.
One fundamental problem with your comparison (esp. in relation to TFA) is that you are comparing consumer (retail box) prices here. I know for a fact that what I pay for an Intel chip, since I design and build my own PC's, bears zero relation to what the big boys do, and quantity has little to do with that. Why? It wouldn't be hard for a firm to buy in quantity and give the geek consumer a significant discount to retail prices, and we are a significant force in the market as are many small white-box firms (something I also do from time to time).
I would be highly interested in what Dell/Gateway/etc. pay for each chip after discounts, exclusivity contracts, cross-marketing promotions ($$), and so forth. Given the low margins in the consumer computer business today, those have to be very steep unless there are significant overriding considerations (delivery dates/quantities).
It's going to be an interesting look into the whole consumer electronics business model.
I, for one, do not consider Wikipedia an authoritative source, but that is beside the point. Did you actually even read the report completely and examine the probabilities associated with the various accident scenarios? Judging from your somewhat hysterical postings you did not. If that were the case, and I were you, I'd be far more worried about the coming near miss scenario with that asteroid in the future.
In other words, the probabilities are very low of an accident occurring and even were one to occur, you have to consider the follow on probabilities of a catastrophic release which are also low (re: nose cone fragments, etc.). Aside from being a (nuclear,...) engineer, my first degrees were in statistics and I've been working and teaching in the field since I was 14. I think I might know what I'm talking about as well, especially when it comes to probability theory (my favorite).
That's the problem with so many people when you introduce the word nuclear into whatever discussion you may be having. Rational risk assessment goes right out the window despite presentation of the numbers.
Oooo..., it's nuclear, it must be bad!
BTW, thanks for the EIS, it was one of the more readable ones I've ever encountered.
It's only recently that LCD's have had fast enough response time to even be considered here. For the last 8 years I've been hooked on Trinitrons and you'll pry my Sony MultiScan G400 out of my cold dead arms. Heck, my mother has even promised to bury it with me! [I am *not* joking!]
Frankly I stopped noticing the wires after about day five and I have to look for them. Indeed, I now use them to ensure a consistent desktop layout from OS to OS:-). How's that for turning a "bug" into a feature.
For reference, one of the flat panel companies (can't remember which but you can search for it on PhysOrg.com) has a flat panel which uses nano-scale electron guns to achieve the same response and brilliance of a CRT with flat-panel form-factor and power use. Should be out in a year or so but God knows what the sucker will cost.
Wrong. There is zero risk of dispersal even if the launch vehicle explodes or if the vehicle should burn up on re-entry. The RTG's were designed to survive these types of events completely intact which is some serious, hard-core engineering. Frankly I was rather impressed and I don't impress easily when it comes to engineering.
Ain't that the truth! I used to spend my free time wandering from box to box at user's homes. I don't care what OS they are running, it doesn't matter, it's all the same. They aren't willing to learn even the minimums for self-protection. Computers should be like cars or toasters they tell me, it should just work even when the operator does something stupid. Now by the time I'm done the machine will take care of itself (patches, virus updates, scanning, adware, the works) but nine times out of ten I get a message that their machine is acting odd or slowing down and they want to know why. I ask a few questions and I find out that a friend recommended such and such a package (Symantec is big on my shit-list here but McAfee and others follow closely) and all the protections and self-healing I put in was blown away. Here that sucking sound? That's the vacuum in their skulls.
Pardon my rant but frankly I think the whole thing is unsolvable, period. I don't care what hardware, additions to the OS, or add-on software you come up with, it won't fix this problem. It's an arms race and defense always lags offense. And if the id10t is self-intent on blowing him/herself with the weapon system at their control, you can't stop them from suicidal stupidity.
It's no wonder that I don't work on personal machines any more. I got tired of breaking 2x4's on people's heads.
Not everyone is restricted by their EULA's to installing any particular version of Windows to just one machine. My license runs to having 10 of each (Win'2K all variants, Win'XP Pro) on ten machines at the same time. Kind of hard to run out of licenses don'tcha know if ya don't have that many machines you are working on at the same time. And this doesn't even go into the raft of other licenses I hold. Don't ass-u-me that everyone that uses this setup is busting a EULA. Maybe most are, but that's their problem. For field engineers this is highly recommended.
if the QEMU functionality is working now you could use Daemon Tools to mount the ISO as a DVD and run it from that under Windows. Not everyone can afford VMWare, Virtual Server, or one of the other solutions out there (I test them all here;-).
Side note: Addictive ain't extreme enough to describe VMWare WS5. I did the beta for VMWare and WOW! I particularly like teams and multiple snapshots. From a security standpoint, doing risky things on the 'net in a VM is a dream. After you are done, restore to a prior snapshot and who cares what some script-kiddie tried on that VM. That's just one nice thing about it. I really, really need a multiple-way mo-bo with dual-core Opterons stuffed with RAM *evil grin*.
I do look for dropped messages to other users but 100% of the messages to date are all domain this and domain that and so far as I can tell they want to sell me their mailing lists which is something I would never buy. That only encourages the evil bastards:-). One bright spot, so far no penis enlargement e-mails to date but I figure that is only a matter of time. My other accounts, hosted on other systems , are buried in those *sigh*.
That's what I seemed to misremember here as well. Something about Certified, Reciepted mail or a process-server being the only legally recognized binding mechanisms. Still, CYA (Cover your assets, of which I have none anyway;-).
So... Swiftel ain't so swift? Sorry, ah couldn't hep mysef! (sp. intentional;-)
Then the question becomes which e-mail address, format of the letter (subject line...), etc., was involved. I still assert that the proper channel for legal documents is paper especially given the Wild West nature of the web. I wouldn't take down a site just on the word of a phone call and I certainly wouldn't on the basis of an e-mail, although it sure would get my attention to see what someone was complaining about. Probably the whole thing will come down to whether they exercised due diligence. Then we'll have (at least in Australia) a more precise definition of what due diligence is for hosting providers. I foresee a huge new market in service provider liability insurance arising (in addition to what already exists). *Sigh*, it just ain't worth it.
I have 3 co-lo's which have individual domains, so far. Per the RFC, I dutifully set up the Postmaster addresses. Now, fortunately, as a free service my hosting service is providing SpamAssassin on each of these (and any other) domains that I have hosted on my co-lo's. Every day I see a ton of crap that SpamAssassin has marked as SPAM, some of which may be in the same category as one of these supposedly legally binding e-mails. I don't look at them; I don't read them; I send them right to the bit bucket.
Now they are saying, at least in Australia, that these are legally binding documents? Ya think?! IANAL but I have a real problem with this. The last time I looked legal notices were supposed to be on paper, not in the form of bits down the cable. This doesn't even begin to address the issue of legal liability for the ISP/hosting provider that does take action on one of these e-mails and it turns out that the e-mail was either fraudulent or in error. Sheesh, what a can of worms.
I do know one thing. For simple self-protection I am so not going to host anything other than something I myself create, and even then I'm probably going to end up in software patent hell, knowing my luck. So much for the Internet age. It was sweet while it lasted.
Tell me about it! I'm one of the former CompuServe librarians for the AmigaFora and I've been dutifully moving files between media for almost two decades now. Every year yet another copy is made (burned now) and put in the stack. Add in all the Windows stuff over the years and this is quite some stack I've built;-).
Backup has to be a religion and you have to change your religion as the tech moves.
I had three Maxtors fail in the same week. To say I wasn't a happy camper is an understatement, and since they were all (just) out of warranty, I had no recourse. While pricing new drives I noticed that Maxtor has lowered their warranty period to just 1 year vice the two or more before, which should tell us something about quality control.
While searching around I found that Seagates seem to have about the longest warranty and that's what I'm switching over to here as well as switching to SATA. It would be nice to have SCSI but the price of a SCSI adapter and the cost of the drives is prohibitive on my budget as I'm retired. It worked out rather well. Much more capacity and my machine is a lot faster now.
Fundamentally, the printing press has been extended to new arenas. So, how does society structure the legal system around this new technology? Congress has come up with an anser which is typical of Congress, simply crimalize everything at the behest of the moneyed interests that contribute to their campaign (and family) warchests. Fortunately there are a few judges out there that say "wait a minute" and actually think about the problem at hand.
Me? I'm with Mark Twain. "Congress is America's
only native criminal class."
Raising the issue of "potential profit" opens a whole can of worms I don't think we really want to delve into. So far, all the studies that I've seen, especially those from the BSA, are deeply flawed and I speak about that as an expert in the field of economic and sociological studies (econometrics & sociometrics). Who determines if a sale would have even been made in the case of a pirated product? If a person listens to a pirated song once, plays a game once, etc., and trashes it afterwards (or buys a legit copy), is it piracy? Other industries firmly believe in try before you buy, but not our entertainment industries. Why? The list goes on. As I said, 'a can of worms'.
Actually, the whole issue of software (and other media) piracy arises from the low opportunity costs for pirating such "products" versus the counter-costs arising from penalties and the probability of such penalties being enacted. Right now we have near zero opportunity costs on both counts and there is no way to dig our way out of this box. The sooner the media companies (software, entertainment, etc.) realize this and lower their media costs to some low multiple of the actual media costs, we won't see a fix for this. Actually, some good comparisons can be made to the drug trade in that the return from such activity as compared to the chance of arrest, and penalties incurred, are completely out of whack.
This is not to say the two are entirely comparable, especially in terms of externalities (costs to others), but similar in scale. No matter how draconian the enforcement, and it would literally take monitoring of every device to prevent, you are not going to stop it. Period.
This is a new age of publishing. The last time publishing radically changed (Gutenberg) there were similar dislocations. On the other hand, there were massive benefits to society after the period of adjustment. Nobody ever guaranteed scribes employment, although I should observe that they moved on and became bureaucrats {blech!}.
As an aside, I don't pirate, never have, and I can't see starting anytime soon. I get buried under software as it is just from legitimate companies. More than I'll ever use. And my interest in other entertainment is near zilch. An occasional strategy game, but the good ones are so rare that paying for them bothers me not at all. Maybe someone will come up with some other good ones if I encourage them (not!).
The major flaw in your analysis is that you are assuming (never ass-u-me) that the site is going to generate a click-through on that sole pass. Click-throughs are the only way to get paid these days. The days of ad impressions generating revenue are long gone (unless you are AOL as I recall). Another flaw is that a useful site is only going to get visited once. Sorry, but if the site is useful, not only will I be back, but surprise surprise, I unblock it here if it has tasteful ads (SlashDot, Google, BBC, all are on the unblock list here).
However, that is *my* choice. With other media I can leave the room, turn the page, use various technologies, but somehow on the 'net it becomes my responsibility/duty (!!) to receive/view these ads? I don't think so.
This is a two-way street here. As a consumer I am paying for my bandwidth and I should be able to dictate how that bandwidth is used. As a provider, and I do have a hosting service myself (80 GB/mo), depending on the ever unpredictable ad stream from click-throughs is sheer lunacy, IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion).
Strangely the sites I care about most are donation driven sites for the most part, or have ads I can live with, but they don't depend on ads as a revenue source. Time and again in the various webmaster journals/newsletters I receive here, the overriding theme is "Content is King". Good content and amazingly you see contributions. Or perhaps not so amazing at all. Depending on anything else for your revenue steram is setting yourself up for a business failure.
Actually I've been blocking everything since the '90's. When I visit a site, unless I choose otherwise, I'm in full stealth mode. No pop-ups (Javascript blocking), cookies, referrer, browser identification, ads, zip, nada, nothing. Look in your web logs and all you see is a date/time stamp and an IP address which may, or more probably not, match where I'm actually connecting from. This was done from a security standpoint and paid off handsomely when someone was spreading a worm via ads from one ad serving company sometime back. It also pays when I go spelunking the cracking boards to track what the kiddies/crackers are up to these days.
As you observed, we are seeing a paradigm shift and not just in online advertising. Google (which is completely unblocked here) showed that people will put up with unobtrusive newspaper style ads. Where Double-Click fails to get the demonstrated usability factors is that they believe that their advertising is a positive factor in the user experience. Now Double-Click is watching their revenue go down the tubes while Google is set to surpass the total advertising revenues spent on all of broadcast TV in the United States combined. Correlation does not always imply causation but I think there is a related set of variables here.
As for the TiVo factor cited in the replies below, I have noticed a trend in television advertising today for more engaging commercials. It used to be just when you watched the SuperBowl that you actually had engaging commercials. Now the trend seems to be towards having them year round. Furthermore, as someone points out, advertisers are actually getting their products incorporated into the show materials.
The innovation is there, but it is on the providers of material (internet or other media) to engage the audience in a useful manner without offending. Offend the audience and be not surprised when the tune out using various devices. Whatever happened to the consumer is always right?
Given a living constitution and bill of rights that can be defined as meaning whatever a group of judges want it to mean, this should be no surprise. Also given that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is now a government of the elites, by the elites and for the elites. Therefore if the elites "know" that you aren't doing right by your property (e.g. wetlands, development, etc.), they can either tell you how you must use it or just take it away from you. After all, you are too stupid to know anything. Right? You aren't one of the self-selected, self-annointed elites.
Too bad everywhere else on earth that I've been or lived, and that's a heck of a lot of the globe, is worse {sigh}. Costa Rica is looking better and better.
Slashdot Mirror
There were all kinds of hacks using the BitBlitter on the Amiga, especially for logical operations which it could do with aplomb. Not that anyone would be interested, but I believe I still have a bunch of them here stored on CD (from my CompuServer librarian days).
Now, supposedly, all will be magically better in 5.0 when it goes gold. I'm in wait and see mode. However, as a database engineer who is totally database agnostic (heck, everything agnostic), it still needs more than a bit of work. Then that's true of most of the industry.
Security? Standards? We don't need no stinkin' (insert here).
To get back to the review, these books are nice but not the whole answer and I have a real problem with any book that states in the title "How to do anything with...". Sorry, but I'm not someone that restricts myself to any one toolbox when it comes to creating applications, be it on the web, the server, or the desktop. I use, simply put, the best tool for the job, period. To paraphrase, when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and that is far too true of the the IT industry. I pick the tools to suit the job at hand, not the job at hand to suit the tools, or to force fit the job to match the tools.
PHP is nice (heck, very nice). MySQL is nice, and often speedy, but still needs more than a bit of work (although 5.0 and native XML support would make it beautiful, IMNSHO). Force-fitting everything into that paradigm is right up there with the morons that say Java can do anything, anytime, and better.
Not that I have anything against Java (yeah, right).
Frankly I have about every editor known to man (or woman) here and Crimson has become my favorite editor for day to day use. I still like emacs (boo hiss from the Vi(M) crowd I imagine, not!), but it does the job, is light-weight, and has a price that can't be argued with.
It would be a wonderful world if all these servers were free but I live in the real world, and I'm one serious hard-core game junkie from time to time.
There is a non-zero probablility that a nuclear reactor can be in cold shutdown and go (nearly) instaneously supercritical to meltdown. Similarly, there is a non-zero probability that all the molecules of atmosphere in a room can all move to one corner of a room leaving you sucking vacuum. There's even a non-zero probability that an X-particle/anti-particle pair can appear inside your body and consume it on the spot (X-particles are quantum size black holes if you didn't know ;-).
However, that they are non-zero does not make them likely or even risky. Evaluation of risk is something humans get wrong time and again as they put feelings ahead of rational risk assessments. We see that in everyday behavior (DDT, Alar anyone?), we see it in decisions about (personal, homeland, computer) security, every arena really. John Stossell got this one right *sigh*. You are simply proving my point that inserting the word nuclear and it must be bad, despite numbers to prove that this is not risky at all.
I'm rational. I wonder about you. Sorry, but true.
I would be highly interested in what Dell/Gateway/etc. pay for each chip after discounts, exclusivity contracts, cross-marketing promotions ($$), and so forth. Given the low margins in the consumer computer business today, those have to be very steep unless there are significant overriding considerations (delivery dates/quantities).
It's going to be an interesting look into the whole consumer electronics business model.
In other words, the probabilities are very low of an accident occurring and even were one to occur, you have to consider the follow on probabilities of a catastrophic release which are also low (re: nose cone fragments, etc.). Aside from being a (nuclear, ...) engineer, my first degrees were in statistics and I've been working and teaching in the field since I was 14. I think I might know what I'm talking about as well, especially when it comes to probability theory (my favorite).
That's the problem with so many people when you introduce the word nuclear into whatever discussion you may be having. Rational risk assessment goes right out the window despite presentation of the numbers.
Oooo..., it's nuclear, it must be bad!
BTW, thanks for the EIS, it was one of the more readable ones I've ever encountered.
To P & GP postings. Yep! Gotta make sure that ADM (Archer-Daniel Midlands) keeps in business, don'tcha know!
Frankly I stopped noticing the wires after about day five and I have to look for them. Indeed, I now use them to ensure a consistent desktop layout from OS to OS :-). How's that for turning a "bug" into a feature.
For reference, one of the flat panel companies (can't remember which but you can search for it on PhysOrg.com) has a flat panel which uses nano-scale electron guns to achieve the same response and brilliance of a CRT with flat-panel form-factor and power use. Should be out in a year or so but God knows what the sucker will cost.
Wrong. There is zero risk of dispersal even if the launch vehicle explodes or if the vehicle should burn up on re-entry. The RTG's were designed to survive these types of events completely intact which is some serious, hard-core engineering. Frankly I was rather impressed and I don't impress easily when it comes to engineering.
Pardon my rant but frankly I think the whole thing is unsolvable, period. I don't care what hardware, additions to the OS, or add-on software you come up with, it won't fix this problem. It's an arms race and defense always lags offense. And if the id10t is self-intent on blowing him/herself with the weapon system at their control, you can't stop them from suicidal stupidity.
It's no wonder that I don't work on personal machines any more. I got tired of breaking 2x4's on people's heads.
Not everyone is restricted by their EULA's to installing any particular version of Windows to just one machine. My license runs to having 10 of each (Win'2K all variants, Win'XP Pro) on ten machines at the same time. Kind of hard to run out of licenses don'tcha know if ya don't have that many machines you are working on at the same time. And this doesn't even go into the raft of other licenses I hold. Don't ass-u-me that everyone that uses this setup is busting a EULA. Maybe most are, but that's their problem. For field engineers this is highly recommended.
Side note: Addictive ain't extreme enough to describe VMWare WS5. I did the beta for VMWare and WOW! I particularly like teams and multiple snapshots. From a security standpoint, doing risky things on the 'net in a VM is a dream. After you are done, restore to a prior snapshot and who cares what some script-kiddie tried on that VM. That's just one nice thing about it. I really, really need a multiple-way mo-bo with dual-core Opterons stuffed with RAM *evil grin*.
I do look for dropped messages to other users but 100% of the messages to date are all domain this and domain that and so far as I can tell they want to sell me their mailing lists which is something I would never buy. That only encourages the evil bastards :-). One bright spot, so far no penis enlargement e-mails to date but I figure that is only a matter of time. My other accounts, hosted on other systems , are buried in those *sigh*.
That's what I seemed to misremember here as well. Something about Certified, Reciepted mail or a process-server being the only legally recognized binding mechanisms. Still, CYA (Cover your assets, of which I have none anyway ;-).
Then the question becomes which e-mail address, format of the letter (subject line...), etc., was involved. I still assert that the proper channel for legal documents is paper especially given the Wild West nature of the web. I wouldn't take down a site just on the word of a phone call and I certainly wouldn't on the basis of an e-mail, although it sure would get my attention to see what someone was complaining about. Probably the whole thing will come down to whether they exercised due diligence. Then we'll have (at least in Australia) a more precise definition of what due diligence is for hosting providers. I foresee a huge new market in service provider liability insurance arising (in addition to what already exists). *Sigh*, it just ain't worth it.
Now they are saying, at least in Australia, that these are legally binding documents? Ya think?! IANAL but I have a real problem with this. The last time I looked legal notices were supposed to be on paper, not in the form of bits down the cable. This doesn't even begin to address the issue of legal liability for the ISP/hosting provider that does take action on one of these e-mails and it turns out that the e-mail was either fraudulent or in error. Sheesh, what a can of worms.
I do know one thing. For simple self-protection I am so not going to host anything other than something I myself create, and even then I'm probably going to end up in software patent hell, knowing my luck. So much for the Internet age. It was sweet while it lasted.
Backup has to be a religion and you have to change your religion as the tech moves.
While searching around I found that Seagates seem to have about the longest warranty and that's what I'm switching over to here as well as switching to SATA. It would be nice to have SCSI but the price of a SCSI adapter and the cost of the drives is prohibitive on my budget as I'm retired. It worked out rather well. Much more capacity and my machine is a lot faster now.
Me? I'm with Mark Twain. "Congress is America's only native criminal class."
Actually, the whole issue of software (and other media) piracy arises from the low opportunity costs for pirating such "products" versus the counter-costs arising from penalties and the probability of such penalties being enacted. Right now we have near zero opportunity costs on both counts and there is no way to dig our way out of this box. The sooner the media companies (software, entertainment, etc.) realize this and lower their media costs to some low multiple of the actual media costs, we won't see a fix for this. Actually, some good comparisons can be made to the drug trade in that the return from such activity as compared to the chance of arrest, and penalties incurred, are completely out of whack.
This is not to say the two are entirely comparable, especially in terms of externalities (costs to others), but similar in scale. No matter how draconian the enforcement, and it would literally take monitoring of every device to prevent, you are not going to stop it. Period.
This is a new age of publishing. The last time publishing radically changed (Gutenberg) there were similar dislocations. On the other hand, there were massive benefits to society after the period of adjustment. Nobody ever guaranteed scribes employment, although I should observe that they moved on and became bureaucrats {blech!}.
As an aside, I don't pirate, never have, and I can't see starting anytime soon. I get buried under software as it is just from legitimate companies. More than I'll ever use. And my interest in other entertainment is near zilch. An occasional strategy game, but the good ones are so rare that paying for them bothers me not at all. Maybe someone will come up with some other good ones if I encourage them (not!).
Finally! Someone gets it right about which way the freerider effect works. Thank you!
However, that is *my* choice. With other media I can leave the room, turn the page, use various technologies, but somehow on the 'net it becomes my responsibility/duty (!!) to receive/view these ads? I don't think so.
This is a two-way street here. As a consumer I am paying for my bandwidth and I should be able to dictate how that bandwidth is used. As a provider, and I do have a hosting service myself (80 GB/mo), depending on the ever unpredictable ad stream from click-throughs is sheer lunacy, IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion).
Strangely the sites I care about most are donation driven sites for the most part, or have ads I can live with, but they don't depend on ads as a revenue source. Time and again in the various webmaster journals/newsletters I receive here, the overriding theme is "Content is King". Good content and amazingly you see contributions. Or perhaps not so amazing at all. Depending on anything else for your revenue steram is setting yourself up for a business failure.
As you observed, we are seeing a paradigm shift and not just in online advertising. Google (which is completely unblocked here) showed that people will put up with unobtrusive newspaper style ads. Where Double-Click fails to get the demonstrated usability factors is that they believe that their advertising is a positive factor in the user experience. Now Double-Click is watching their revenue go down the tubes while Google is set to surpass the total advertising revenues spent on all of broadcast TV in the United States combined. Correlation does not always imply causation but I think there is a related set of variables here.
As for the TiVo factor cited in the replies below, I have noticed a trend in television advertising today for more engaging commercials. It used to be just when you watched the SuperBowl that you actually had engaging commercials. Now the trend seems to be towards having them year round. Furthermore, as someone points out, advertisers are actually getting their products incorporated into the show materials.
The innovation is there, but it is on the providers of material (internet or other media) to engage the audience in a useful manner without offending. Offend the audience and be not surprised when the tune out using various devices. Whatever happened to the consumer is always right?
Too bad everywhere else on earth that I've been or lived, and that's a heck of a lot of the globe, is worse {sigh}. Costa Rica is looking better and better.