The problem I have with this review is the "is definitely worth purchasing." part of the review. The game is a magnificent achievement and looks just wonderful. The story telling is awesome and completely engrossing. However, as much as I would recommend you PLAY this game, I would NOT recommend you buy it. Any program that installs stealth applications that aren't listed in the EULA, makes registry keys using virus writing techniques and installs files that can't be accessed, read or deleted is MALWARE. By definition. In fact, I believe installing programs without the computer owner's knowledge or permission is considered ILLEGAL. So, as 2K doesn't care about the law, neither should we. Go download the game as soon as you can. The more money 2k losses over their bad actions the better. I canceled my pre-order (which was stupid to begin with.. Why would you offer Pay-Pal AND credit card purchases, but not accept anything but a credit card through pay-pal??? It boggles the mind!) and will not buy this game. Copy protection only really affects those that buy the game legally. As it is, I now have a wonderful game I can install as many times as I like without any issues. Still pissed off that after I am done with it I will have to completely reformat my PC when I am done due to SecuROM so I cam remove the stupid thing.
I have three ratings, Buy, Pirate and waste of Bandwidth. This is defiantly a pirate only game. Unless you want to take the risk of having unknown files, registry keys, and services that you can't delete on your computer with only Sony's say-so that they are secure. Sorry, just don't buy it, especially from Sony.
I just saw the video of the poor tech who fell asleep while waiting on hold for 90 minutes. The guy who posted that deserves to have his balls cut off. 15 min of fame at the cost of ruining someone's life. Nice deal I guess, if you are a dick head.
That is a bit of a misunderstanding. When at full length with the anhcor obriting in geostationary, the tension on the string is almost nothing. It just has to support the weight of the string. Woven fibers will work just as well. There is a really good book on the whole thing by Arthur C. Clark called "The Fountains of Paradise". It is fiction but Clark based his work on real science.
There are two types of problems, scientific, where we need theroy to make a basis for design (such as the creation of carbon nano chains in the first place) and engineering. Engineering problems are ones that can be solved by the application of time and money. With the Space Elevator we have a simple engineering problem. The materials science has already been done and the realization of longer nano fibers is simple a mater of putting the time and money into creating them. The BIG problem is that we haven't made 63,000 miles of continuous anything before.
Alot of people can't grasp the idea of the space elevator because it seems to defy common sense. It feels too much like lifting one's self by your boot straps. But the science is solid and, acctualy, rather old. Up until now the major problem WAS a scientific one. We had no fiber of the base strength were we could create a cable that wouldn't snap under it's own weight. Multiple fibers, woven together are much stronger per unit of weight so there is no need for one continuous strand 63,000 miles in lenght and in fact, this is a less than ideal solution.
No mater how much we spent on the elevator we would make it back in only a few years. Right now it costs about $100,000/lbs to launch something into orbit. The space elevator would reduce that price to around $1000/lbs. That is a HUGE savings. Add to that that we can then realistically farm space for solar energy and have a realistic way of getting it down from orbit and it becomes very much a cost positive proposition. Space Shuttles and rocket lanches are increadibly expensive and wasteful procedures that should be scrapped, or reduced significantly and the money redirected to space elevator projects. Again, the big problem is perception. Those in charge of the purse strings refuse to belive that it is posible, even after science has proven, again and again, it is.
You need to read up on the tech dude. We can make nano carbon fiber chains that are over 1 cm long. They only need a little more length before you can weave these fibers into a super strong cable.
The materials science isn't the problem. As stated before, we have never made 36,000 miles of ANYTHING before.
I want preinstalled NOTHING. That is it, just nothing. No windows, no shovelware, no headaches and no anoyances of paying for crap I don't want, and won't use. Just give me the option to have a empty hard drive ON ALL MODELS.
Seems simple enought to me. Then you can install what you like on it. I am sick of buying a new copy of a OS I already own again and again just to feed the MS machine.
Always nice to hear critical advice from someone who didn't even come CLOSE to finishing their degree. Nice.. VERY nice!
Sorry, being rich and stealing your first product from others (even if they refuse to take you to court, hint hint, nudge nudge), doesn't give you license to comment on the state of Computer Science.
The way I see it is that it sets a president. Google offers a indispensable service to the world and these kind of judgments are predicated on the idea that the service can be forced to comply with all sorts of local laws, and be interfered with at what amounts to judical whim. Google's disaster in China is a good example. It is time that Google stood up to this kind of political blackmail and showed these judges just how much their economies rely on Google. It is time Google says "this is the service, if you don't like it, don't use it" not just to Belgium, but to China and the rest of the world as well.
Otherwise why is it okay to bend to political pressure in Belgium, but not in China. One size fits all as far as I am concerned.
No more Google for Belgium. It is about time that Google flexes its muscle against some of this political BS that is flying around. Google Inc is FAR more powerful then the government of Belgium, not to mention the loss of that market has little effect on Google International.
The bottom line here is that Belgium needs Google FAR more then Google needs Belgium.
They didn't predict that linux will remain second best at ALL. In fact, given the current conditions Linux will WIN!
"Having obtained this basic result, we investigate the conditions that will warrant that Linux ends up forcing Windows out. We do this by modifying the model in two ways. First of all, we look at the effect of having buyers such as governments and some large corporations committed to deployment of Linux in their organizations. We call such buyers strategic. In addition to cost-related reasons, governments back Linux because having access to the source code allows them to verify that sensitive data is treated securely. Binary code makes it hard to figure out who has access to information flowing in a network. Companies such as IBM, in contrast, back Linux because they see in OSS one way to diminish Microsoft's dominance. We find that the presence of strategic buyers together with Linux's sufficiently strong demand-side learning results in Windows being driven out of the market. This may be one main reason why Microsoft has been providing chunks of Windows' source code to governments."
Currently we have large stratigic buyers who are buying into linux in a big way. China is no small fish. This sounds more like the situation as it stands now. What he IS saying is that Linux will NEVER displace Microsoft "On it's own merits" because the superiority of the OS doesn't defeat Micosofts current large install base. We DO need things like the Free Software Foundation, it is critically important for linux that governments see the advantages of the development model and buy in.
You can see from the actions of Microsoft that they have known this data for quite some time, or at least are reacting in much the ways that the study recommends. So this IS a fight and the winner is by no means certain. One thing that I got out of this was that while Linux can accually defeat Microsoft, MS can't acctually defeat Linux and force it to dissapear. Think about that for a while.
So every time you apply for that job, you are getting a negitive on your credit report. So you go for 50 job interviews looking for that PERFECT job. They do 50 checks on you and while you started OUT with good credit.. you now have very BAD credit as you are seen as a credit seeker.
This should be illegal and companies that do it should be fined and their HR directors jailed. Credit has nothing to do with the person's ablity or capiblity to do the job. Period!
It is truely a sad day. Steve Irwin was an expert animal handler and while much of what he does looks very dangerous, and IS, he is trained and experienced to handle it. Risks are part of his job and he knew those risks before he ever jumped in the water. He brought an ever lasting energy and joy to the study of even the most mundaine creature.
If you would like a lesson on why the foolish should leave wild animals alone just watch the movie "Grisly Man".
UNIX: "The reports of my demise have been greatly exadurated"
Lets go on with a list of some the Unixes out there.
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
HP-UX
Solaris
AIX (HUGE user base)
Unix is hardly dead. The problem is most people don't know what UNIX acctually IS. GNU stands for GNU is NOT Unix. Unix is a standard that is owned by The Open Group http://www.unix.org/. If your OS meets the standards they set out, you can apply to call your product Unix. Linux, doesn't meet these standards and so can't be called Unix. The BSDs on the other hand DO, hense why we call them BSD Unix and not BSD Linux or some other moniker. To say "Unix is dead" is stupid. Large clustered servers using virtualization is a huge and growing compoent of IT infrastructure. So while you may think you are accessing a Windows NT server, that "Server" could very well being running as a virtualization in a large cluster that is running AIX.
People tend to only see what is in front of their eyes. Users think that Microsoft is the only way to go, or what their offices use exclusivly because that is what they see every day. Their entire backend could be Unix or Linux and they will still say they are a "Windows Shop". As for administrators, how many of THEM consider what OS their routers are running when asked "Do you run only Windows?"
Unix isn't going anywhere. The Open Group is doing just fine, and as Unix is a standard, not a company it means that ANYONE can make a new Unix. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Once MS is gone.. you will be able to say "Windows is Dead". Unix, like Rock and Roll, will never die, becuase someone will always insist on digging up the corpse.
Okay, I hate to be a party pooper but sailboats won this races a few hundred years back. Winds are generated by the sun warming up the air, sailboats use this power to generate forward momentum. IE. Solar powered. A solar cell vehicle has to transform the suns energy twice before it is turned into forward momentium (Sun's radiation > Electrical > mechanical) so the systems aren't all that different or more complex. Sailboats just use the free energy that is already avalible.
I think this goes under "Pointless displays of useless technology"
It was durning the mid 90s in one of my first jobs that I got wind of this. The company was called Chipworks and what they did was breakdown microchip in order to diagnose IP violations. Some of the things you see under a microscope on these chips are just amazing. Clowns, Trains, little designs lots of crazy stuff. I remember being shocked at the time when I found out that the manufacturer of the chip under my lens was S3 and that we were investigating them for IP violations.
Does anyone know how that turned out? I left the company before I found out and haven't read anything about it. Also, any bets THIS time. Once a cheater, always a cheater is a truism that might apply here./troll
You make an excellent point. Advertisers obviously belive that currently they are recieving value for dollars spent. But are they acctually receiving that value. How are result measured? The artical that you linked to was regarding an industry event so there would be an obvious bias. What I would love to see would be consumer surveys asking how often people click on those banners and text ads and how often they acctually buy from said sites. Then a determination could be made if these ads drive sales, increase market awareness or do not much of anything at all. If you work in advertising this data should be trivial to gather. If it isn't then I would have to come to the conclusion that someone, somewhere hasn't done their homework.
There is an obvious answer here, and it has been there all the time. Media IS the new net. Bittorrent makes distrubution of very large files to thousands of users practical, not requiring a massive expenditure just in bandwidth that would drive up the cost of running such a site unreasonably (Anyone remember Heavy.com?). Advertisers have (finally) realized that internet users, esspecially heavy net users are a market niche all unto them selves and form a unique demographic that can be marketed to. So release video.. TV shows, movies on the net with ads targeted to the internet demographic. People WATCH commercials. Some people really LIKE commercials. I know I would be more than happy to watch a commercial or two at the beginning of a TV show if it ment that I could download it legally. At the very least then the cops will only have to go after those who distribute the show sans commercials, instead of just about every bittorrent user in the world, like the situation now. Watching ads IS a method of payment. If you place ads in something people want and in a way that means they will watch them (IE at the beginning or end of a TV show. See http://www.cbc.ca/clips/national/thenational.ram for a good example) Then, ads could be for new shows, things people WANT. Television adds are still THE most effective method of advertising. It has amazed me that the ad industry is still stuck in the era of print advertising in newspapers in the online world.
The thing is, you are talking about spam and that works entirely differently from Adds on websites. With spam there is little to no cost associated with sending out the material so you can send out millions and millions of emails and if only a fraction of a percent reply then you have made a profit. Adds on websites don't work the same way as they are very VERY expensive to buy and to serve up. Money is flowing out from the advertisers to the websites and there has to be a return on that investment. Right now the advertisers rely on stats that have been compromised by bots and other automated systems and their ignorance of the realities of the online world have played into our hands, letting websites and webmasters make money off of adds that have little or no value to the business paying for them. Cars and airline tickets are an excellent example. The web is being used more and more in research for auto sales and car manufactures websites are more important then ever, however, how much traffic to those sites is acctually generated by those banner adds? I doubt that most visitors who are seriously researching a purchance clicked on some add by Ford Motor Company, they just typed it www.ford.com into their web browser. Airline tickets are another. People are more likly to go to a site recomended by a friend then click on a banner add.
We really should take a look at the reasons why this would be. Websites are relitivly easy to put up and can be a flashy front to a site that has little or no real value. We all have been burned by sites that seem to be more then they are, so why would I trust a banner add???? So the problem is two fold. First, people just aren't into impulse purchaces on the web to the extent that the advertisers would like to belive and second there is a lack of trust between the consumer and the advertisers. Fix those two things and maybe, MAYBE adds might accutally be worth their while.
Until then, sell T-Shirts. Hell, I know at least two people who funded their Olympic dreams that way!
Are doomed to repeat it. What happens when the bubble burts THIS time? As I recall the lack of real revenue generated by adds (IE People acctually BUYING something) was what caused the first IT crash to happen. If no one acctually buys anything from those adds, if they don't drive sales, then sooner or later they will be discontinued and the revenue they generate for YOUR site, will disapear overnight. Yes, adds make Google alot of money. But that money will dry up VERY quickly once it is determined that the adds aren't cost effective.
Find a REAL revenue stream, not a fantasy. This can include subscription fees, links with online merchants.. hell, sell T-Shirts! If you rely on add revenue, then you have NO control over that revenue stream and it can disapear just as fast as you got it.
Peace
Slashdot Mirror
The problem I have with this review is the "is definitely worth purchasing." part of the review. The game is a magnificent achievement and looks just wonderful. The story telling is awesome and completely engrossing. However, as much as I would recommend you PLAY this game, I would NOT recommend you buy it. Any program that installs stealth applications that aren't listed in the EULA, makes registry keys using virus writing techniques and installs files that can't be accessed, read or deleted is MALWARE. By definition. In fact, I believe installing programs without the computer owner's knowledge or permission is considered ILLEGAL. So, as 2K doesn't care about the law, neither should we. Go download the game as soon as you can. The more money 2k losses over their bad actions the better. I canceled my pre-order (which was stupid to begin with.. Why would you offer Pay-Pal AND credit card purchases, but not accept anything but a credit card through pay-pal??? It boggles the mind!) and will not buy this game. Copy protection only really affects those that buy the game legally. As it is, I now have a wonderful game I can install as many times as I like without any issues. Still pissed off that after I am done with it I will have to completely reformat my PC when I am done due to SecuROM so I cam remove the stupid thing.
I have three ratings, Buy, Pirate and waste of Bandwidth. This is defiantly a pirate only game. Unless you want to take the risk of having unknown files, registry keys, and services that you can't delete on your computer with only Sony's say-so that they are secure. Sorry, just don't buy it, especially from Sony.
Ta!
and I didn't comment on no stocks!
/joke
Damn people using my name in vain, when will it stop!!!
I just saw the video of the poor tech who fell asleep while waiting on hold for 90 minutes. The guy who posted that deserves to have his balls cut off. 15 min of fame at the cost of ruining someone's life. Nice deal I guess, if you are a dick head.
not in one continous length.
we are working on longer fibers. Time and money. that is all that is required.
Sorry about the formatting of the above post.. don't know why anyone would prefer HTML formatting to be the default.. ugh!
That is a bit of a misunderstanding. When at full length with the anhcor obriting in geostationary, the tension on the string is almost nothing. It just has to support the weight of the string. Woven fibers will work just as well. There is a really good book on the whole thing by Arthur C. Clark called "The Fountains of Paradise". It is fiction but Clark based his work on real science. There are two types of problems, scientific, where we need theroy to make a basis for design (such as the creation of carbon nano chains in the first place) and engineering. Engineering problems are ones that can be solved by the application of time and money. With the Space Elevator we have a simple engineering problem. The materials science has already been done and the realization of longer nano fibers is simple a mater of putting the time and money into creating them. The BIG problem is that we haven't made 63,000 miles of continuous anything before. Alot of people can't grasp the idea of the space elevator because it seems to defy common sense. It feels too much like lifting one's self by your boot straps. But the science is solid and, acctualy, rather old. Up until now the major problem WAS a scientific one. We had no fiber of the base strength were we could create a cable that wouldn't snap under it's own weight. Multiple fibers, woven together are much stronger per unit of weight so there is no need for one continuous strand 63,000 miles in lenght and in fact, this is a less than ideal solution. No mater how much we spent on the elevator we would make it back in only a few years. Right now it costs about $100,000/lbs to launch something into orbit. The space elevator would reduce that price to around $1000/lbs. That is a HUGE savings. Add to that that we can then realistically farm space for solar energy and have a realistic way of getting it down from orbit and it becomes very much a cost positive proposition. Space Shuttles and rocket lanches are increadibly expensive and wasteful procedures that should be scrapped, or reduced significantly and the money redirected to space elevator projects. Again, the big problem is perception. Those in charge of the purse strings refuse to belive that it is posible, even after science has proven, again and again, it is.
You need to read up on the tech dude. We can make nano carbon fiber chains that are over 1 cm long. They only need a little more length before you can weave these fibers into a super strong cable. The materials science isn't the problem. As stated before, we have never made 36,000 miles of ANYTHING before.
I want preinstalled NOTHING. That is it, just nothing. No windows, no shovelware, no headaches and no anoyances of paying for crap I don't want, and won't use. Just give me the option to have a empty hard drive ON ALL MODELS.
Seems simple enought to me. Then you can install what you like on it. I am sick of buying a new copy of a OS I already own again and again just to feed the MS machine.
Always nice to hear critical advice from someone who didn't even come CLOSE to finishing their degree. Nice.. VERY nice!
Sorry, being rich and stealing your first product from others (even if they refuse to take you to court, hint hint, nudge nudge), doesn't give you license to comment on the state of Computer Science.
The way I see it is that it sets a president. Google offers a indispensable service to the world and these kind of judgments are predicated on the idea that the service can be forced to comply with all sorts of local laws, and be interfered with at what amounts to judical whim. Google's disaster in China is a good example. It is time that Google stood up to this kind of political blackmail and showed these judges just how much their economies rely on Google. It is time Google says "this is the service, if you don't like it, don't use it" not just to Belgium, but to China and the rest of the world as well.
Otherwise why is it okay to bend to political pressure in Belgium, but not in China. One size fits all as far as I am concerned.
No more Google for Belgium. It is about time that Google flexes its muscle against some of this political BS that is flying around. Google Inc is FAR more powerful then the government of Belgium, not to mention the loss of that market has little effect on Google International.
The bottom line here is that Belgium needs Google FAR more then Google needs Belgium.
OBSD wins hands down anyhow. Watching Theo verbally demolish the competition would just be the icing on the cake!
That is SIMPLE compared to my Tamia Frog!
Yes. yes and YES. BASIC did suck donkey nut sack. PASCAL is designed for learnerning and teaching programming. You just can't go wrong.
They didn't predict that linux will remain second best at ALL. In fact, given the current conditions Linux will WIN!
"Having obtained this basic result, we investigate the conditions that will warrant that Linux ends up forcing Windows out. We do this by modifying the model in two ways. First of all, we look at the effect of having buyers such as governments and some large corporations committed to deployment of Linux in their organizations. We call such buyers strategic. In addition to cost-related reasons, governments back Linux because having access to the source code allows them to verify that sensitive data is treated securely. Binary code makes it hard to figure out who has access to information flowing in a network. Companies such as IBM, in contrast, back Linux because they see in OSS one way to diminish Microsoft's dominance. We find that the presence of strategic buyers together with Linux's sufficiently strong demand-side learning results in Windows being driven out of the market. This may be one main reason why Microsoft has been providing chunks of Windows' source code to governments."
Currently we have large stratigic buyers who are buying into linux in a big way. China is no small fish. This sounds more like the situation as it stands now. What he IS saying is that Linux will NEVER displace Microsoft "On it's own merits" because the superiority of the OS doesn't defeat Micosofts current large install base. We DO need things like the Free Software Foundation, it is critically important for linux that governments see the advantages of the development model and buy in.
You can see from the actions of Microsoft that they have known this data for quite some time, or at least are reacting in much the ways that the study recommends. So this IS a fight and the winner is by no means certain. One thing that I got out of this was that while Linux can accually defeat Microsoft, MS can't acctually defeat Linux and force it to dissapear. Think about that for a while.
So every time you apply for that job, you are getting a negitive on your credit report. So you go for 50 job interviews looking for that PERFECT job. They do 50 checks on you and while you started OUT with good credit.. you now have very BAD credit as you are seen as a credit seeker.
This should be illegal and companies that do it should be fined and their HR directors jailed. Credit has nothing to do with the person's ablity or capiblity to do the job. Period!
It is truely a sad day. Steve Irwin was an expert animal handler and while much of what he does looks very dangerous, and IS, he is trained and experienced to handle it. Risks are part of his job and he knew those risks before he ever jumped in the water. He brought an ever lasting energy and joy to the study of even the most mundaine creature.
If you would like a lesson on why the foolish should leave wild animals alone just watch the movie "Grisly Man".
My heart goes out to his family.
If we are, please let me know. I have, and love, my C3000 running first Deb and then Gentoo.
UNIX: "The reports of my demise have been greatly exadurated"
Lets go on with a list of some the Unixes out there.
FreeBSD OpenBSD HP-UX Solaris AIX (HUGE user base)
Unix is hardly dead. The problem is most people don't know what UNIX acctually IS. GNU stands for GNU is NOT Unix. Unix is a standard that is owned by The Open Group http://www.unix.org/. If your OS meets the standards they set out, you can apply to call your product Unix. Linux, doesn't meet these standards and so can't be called Unix. The BSDs on the other hand DO, hense why we call them BSD Unix and not BSD Linux or some other moniker. To say "Unix is dead" is stupid. Large clustered servers using virtualization is a huge and growing compoent of IT infrastructure. So while you may think you are accessing a Windows NT server, that "Server" could very well being running as a virtualization in a large cluster that is running AIX.
People tend to only see what is in front of their eyes. Users think that Microsoft is the only way to go, or what their offices use exclusivly because that is what they see every day. Their entire backend could be Unix or Linux and they will still say they are a "Windows Shop". As for administrators, how many of THEM consider what OS their routers are running when asked "Do you run only Windows?"
Unix isn't going anywhere. The Open Group is doing just fine, and as Unix is a standard, not a company it means that ANYONE can make a new Unix. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Once MS is gone.. you will be able to say "Windows is Dead". Unix, like Rock and Roll, will never die, becuase someone will always insist on digging up the corpse.
Peace
The cat who walks through walls.
Okay, I hate to be a party pooper but sailboats won this races a few hundred years back. Winds are generated by the sun warming up the air, sailboats use this power to generate forward momentum. IE. Solar powered. A solar cell vehicle has to transform the suns energy twice before it is turned into forward momentium (Sun's radiation > Electrical > mechanical) so the systems aren't all that different or more complex. Sailboats just use the free energy that is already avalible.
I think this goes under "Pointless displays of useless technology"
troll
/troll
It was durning the mid 90s in one of my first jobs that I got wind of this. The company was called Chipworks and what they did was breakdown microchip in order to diagnose IP violations. Some of the things you see under a microscope on these chips are just amazing. Clowns, Trains, little designs lots of crazy stuff. I remember being shocked at the time when I found out that the manufacturer of the chip under my lens was S3 and that we were investigating them for IP violations.
Does anyone know how that turned out? I left the company before I found out and haven't read anything about it. Also, any bets THIS time. Once a cheater, always a cheater is a truism that might apply here.
You make an excellent point. Advertisers obviously belive that currently they are recieving value for dollars spent. But are they acctually receiving that value. How are result measured? The artical that you linked to was regarding an industry event so there would be an obvious bias. What I would love to see would be consumer surveys asking how often people click on those banners and text ads and how often they acctually buy from said sites. Then a determination could be made if these ads drive sales, increase market awareness or do not much of anything at all. If you work in advertising this data should be trivial to gather. If it isn't then I would have to come to the conclusion that someone, somewhere hasn't done their homework.
There is an obvious answer here, and it has been there all the time. Media IS the new net. Bittorrent makes distrubution of very large files to thousands of users practical, not requiring a massive expenditure just in bandwidth that would drive up the cost of running such a site unreasonably (Anyone remember Heavy.com?). Advertisers have (finally) realized that internet users, esspecially heavy net users are a market niche all unto them selves and form a unique demographic that can be marketed to. So release video.. TV shows, movies on the net with ads targeted to the internet demographic. People WATCH commercials. Some people really LIKE commercials. I know I would be more than happy to watch a commercial or two at the beginning of a TV show if it ment that I could download it legally. At the very least then the cops will only have to go after those who distribute the show sans commercials, instead of just about every bittorrent user in the world, like the situation now. Watching ads IS a method of payment. If you place ads in something people want and in a way that means they will watch them (IE at the beginning or end of a TV show. See http://www.cbc.ca/clips/national/thenational.ram for a good example) Then, ads could be for new shows, things people WANT. Television adds are still THE most effective method of advertising. It has amazed me that the ad industry is still stuck in the era of print advertising in newspapers in the online world.
Just my two cents.
The thing is, you are talking about spam and that works entirely differently from Adds on websites. With spam there is little to no cost associated with sending out the material so you can send out millions and millions of emails and if only a fraction of a percent reply then you have made a profit. Adds on websites don't work the same way as they are very VERY expensive to buy and to serve up. Money is flowing out from the advertisers to the websites and there has to be a return on that investment. Right now the advertisers rely on stats that have been compromised by bots and other automated systems and their ignorance of the realities of the online world have played into our hands, letting websites and webmasters make money off of adds that have little or no value to the business paying for them. Cars and airline tickets are an excellent example. The web is being used more and more in research for auto sales and car manufactures websites are more important then ever, however, how much traffic to those sites is acctually generated by those banner adds? I doubt that most visitors who are seriously researching a purchance clicked on some add by Ford Motor Company, they just typed it www.ford.com into their web browser. Airline tickets are another. People are more likly to go to a site recomended by a friend then click on a banner add.
We really should take a look at the reasons why this would be. Websites are relitivly easy to put up and can be a flashy front to a site that has little or no real value. We all have been burned by sites that seem to be more then they are, so why would I trust a banner add???? So the problem is two fold. First, people just aren't into impulse purchaces on the web to the extent that the advertisers would like to belive and second there is a lack of trust between the consumer and the advertisers. Fix those two things and maybe, MAYBE adds might accutally be worth their while.
Until then, sell T-Shirts. Hell, I know at least two people who funded their Olympic dreams that way!
Peace
Are doomed to repeat it. What happens when the bubble burts THIS time? As I recall the lack of real revenue generated by adds (IE People acctually BUYING something) was what caused the first IT crash to happen. If no one acctually buys anything from those adds, if they don't drive sales, then sooner or later they will be discontinued and the revenue they generate for YOUR site, will disapear overnight. Yes, adds make Google alot of money. But that money will dry up VERY quickly once it is determined that the adds aren't cost effective. Find a REAL revenue stream, not a fantasy. This can include subscription fees, links with online merchants.. hell, sell T-Shirts! If you rely on add revenue, then you have NO control over that revenue stream and it can disapear just as fast as you got it. Peace