[KLUG Advocacy] Re: And the Spam Wars continue...

[Mike Williams]

advocacy-request@kalamazoolinux.org wrote:

>From: Bruce Smith <bruce@armintl.com>
>To: advocacy@kazoolug.org
>Date: 17 Nov 2002 09:36:17 -0500
>Subject: [KLUG Advocacy] Re: And the Spam Wars continue...
>Reply-To: advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
>
>I switched this to advocacy since this could turn into a debate.
>  
>
An argument?  about Spam?  oh, yeah, easily.

>>Okay, I don't remember if only email ads are spam, but the title was too
>>cute to resist. Anyway, I thought you guys might find this site amusing:
>>http://www.antiadblocker.com/
>>    
>>
>
>Personally I don't have a problem with banner ads, and I don't even care
>if they try to force visitors to their site to view them.
>  
>
Banners are fine.  Like television commercials, I accept them as a 
reasonable way for whoever's providing the content to pay their bills.

>I've always figured this is better than the alternative.  I don't want
>to pay a subscription fee to every web site I visit for information. 
>I'd MUCH rather see a banner ad on their web pages.
>
Well, in the early days the Internet was pretty much subscription only. 
 While I like the way it works now, subscriptions aren't a bad thing 
either.  People who value the information behind a subscription will pay 
for it.  Those that don't, won't.  All other things being equal, though, 
I prefer banners just because I'm inherently stingy.

>
>Popup ads are much more annoying, but I can still live with them, given
>the alternative.
>  
>
Popups are annoying.  The more they give you, the harder it is to find 
which window you were paying attention to in the first place.  What 
bothers me about popups is the ways in which they can abuse you. 
 Putting a Javascript Open command in the header, or having a website 
reopen itself when you close it, or one website "selling" it's "exit 
traffic" to another, who sells it to another ad nauseum, etc. etc. etc. 
 There are lots of dirty tricks like that that I think should never have 
been made into specs to be exploited in the first place.

>And for people who don't like ads on sites, DON'T GO TO THOSE SITES!!!
>Or buy a subscription from sites that offer ad-free browsing for a fee.
>(ala slashdot)
>
>  
>
Advocating choice.  The Linux mindset continues even when we're not 
talking tech!