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Time to change our philosophy. 6

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Sleidia

Technical User
May 4, 2001
1,284
FR
Again, the stupid way human beings "take care" of their creation
has brought nothing more than an enormous waste.

The internet could have been a very useful/powerful tool to help
people share ideas/projects that could make a better place for us
to live, but instead, what we got is another useless (or misused)
media clogged with stubborn and meaningless advertisings that
nobody would even want to read.

Yes, I've enough to see web pages that have only 1/4 of their space
filled with contents (I mean worthy information). You only get
banners, bigger than ever who suck your bandwidth and that you are
forced to read sometimes (layered ads). Everybody focus on terrorists
nowadays, but there is another kind of terrorism. The kind of
terrorists who don't want you do become smarter. They hijack the
knowledge and the great unused potential that people own.

First, we had the promise of radio. Because It became driven by
profit, it has become like a big channel that broadcasts mainly
the same stuff with the same ridiculous spoken ads.
Then, we had TV and it became worse. You have to eat your CMs. In
Australian TV, you get CMs every 10 minutes! Here, in France, you
have to bear big clusters of CMs (during almost 10/15 minutes) at
peak hours.

And now, the same stuff is happening to the internet.
Wherever you go, you are welcomed with pop-ups, gigantic banner ads,
and sneaky layered ads that make you do the only one thing possible:
leave the place. Even scientific sites (newscientist.com, space.com,
wired.com, etc...) have been rotten by this gangrene. There was a time
when only porno websites had the arrogance to throw pop-ups at your face.
Now, go to netscape's home page and see what happen.

How stupid are people who think sites visitors will click on a
banner ad??? People who sell/design/insert those banners would never
click on one of them in their private browsing experience. How can
spammers think people would click on an unwanted mail from some unknown
small stupid company to get a longer penis??

Here is what the internet looks like:
A very vast desert with a few human beings wandering. In this desert,
the number of signs (the ads) is 10 000 times larger than the number
of wandering people found in this desert. Unfortunately for those people,
signroads are scarce. They only know the well too much frequented places
but will hardly find the rare oasis of knowledge and interactivity they
might look for. Ironically, the guardians of this desert (us, web designers
and developpers) are either as lost as the other wanderers or pleased to
mislead others for money (editors of websites clogged by ads and spammers).

I have many personal projects I'm planning to upload in the future.
Of course, you have to make some profit to pay your hosting service and
to be able to get some food for your body. But I'll try to do it the
clever way in respect toward people who visit the site. I'm the one who
believes that you don't have to use banners if people think that what you
offer is interesting enough. Web masters want to make money the easy way
without even thinking they have to offer a challenging service that people
would be happy to use.

I also think that people should see the internet more like a tool than
a media. And some of them should think the internet is art. Why?
Many rich (or not so rich) people can pay thousands or millions of dollars
for a painting. Why not incitate sponsors ("mecenes" in french) to offer
some money to the creator of websites that may help humankind to gain help
or knowledge?

Nowadays, within one second, people can send a message thousands kilometers away.
But ironically, the easiest the information will spread, the meaningless the
information will become. We have to fix this problem quickly because future
technologies will make our everyday life unbearable if we go on this way (think about
wearable screen displays).

A last example: in the metro of Paris, we recently had plenty of flat screens
dispatched everywhere. They broadcast always the same endless loop of CMs.
They will never try to share with people rare thoughts or visions of better
ways to do things.





My Work...
...and More...
 
Sleida, that is why I use the Opera web browser. I can configure it so that pop-ups, pop-unders, etc., do not open. Check it out.


Commercial TV and radio are paid for solely by the advertising on it. You gotta have your Friends episode every week, but don't like the thought of paying for it? Then you have to put up with the ads -- TANSTAAFL.

You don't like the ads in scientific magazines? Too bad -- those ads are what keep the magazine afloat. Subscriptions alone won't keep it in press, as they account for about 20% of revenue. And have you looked at the cost of newsprint and ink over the last 15 years? Again, TANSTAAFL.

The internet is what the consensus of its users what it to be, not what some government agency had decided it should be. Why are there so many porn sites on the internet? Because lots of people pay for porn on the internet -- so much so it's become a cliche. And those banner ads? There are actually fewer of those than there use to be: they don't bring in the revenue necessary to justify paying for them. It's not that nobody clicks on them: people do. Just not in the numbers companies need to make them valuable enough for banner-ad-selling companies to make money doing it.

You are gaining access to a vast wilderness of data. You have the priviledge of having your thoughts sent out to a possible audience of millions. And your paltry connection fees won't cover it's cost. TANSTAAFL.

The idea of patronage is an interesting one -- it's been used for thousands of years. You make a deal with the Devil, though, through patronage: the patron often wants a say in what the artist is going to paint.


TANSTAAFL? "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". ______________________________________________________________________
Never forget that we are
made of the stuff of stars
 
Hello SLEIPNIR214.

Thanks for the feedback.

1) Asking me to use Opera as a my browser is like asking me
to use my feet instead of a car because someone stupid paved
the way with nails.

2) Can Opera do something against the 1/4 of the space of the pages
dedicated to advertising only? Will Opera re-arrange the layout of
the page??? Of course, I could choose to make my browser avoid
downloading images, but then we go back to 1).

3) I won't believe people who say that banners keep magazines afloat.
For example, WIRED and NEWSCIENTIST had the magazine on paper only before
going on the web. Then, web banners won't pay for the paper version I guess.
And Web Hosting Services are really cheap nowadays. Furthermore, most of the
articles like news come from agencies (the text is almost the same everywhere).
The only one reason is that they are greedy. They want more money. That's it.

4) I never say the problem came from some "conspiracy" or "agency". The problem
come from everybody (even from me who had to work for big commercial companies
[see my signature]).

5) When you say:"You have the priviledge of having your thoughts sent out to a
possible audience of millions.", you made a very good point by saying "possible".
Because actually, the weakness of the system is that only a few people will
gain access to those thoughts. I'm pretty sure tek-tips.com haven't millions
of visitors (even annualy). Interesting websites are very much difficult to find
than stupid websites you know. One of the problem is that people who have something
interesting to say aren't the ones who have the money and knowledge to makes their
site rank well in search engines.

6) The fact that people use the internet for email messaging mainly is a proof
that the web content is UN-INTERESTING and NON-ATTRACTIVE.
Do you really think that people are like sheep in demand of ridiculous things?
(thinking about the spycams stupid ads).

7) The painter does what the patron wants only when the painter is concentrated
on money, not on art.

My Work...
...and More...
 
Not for nothing, but it is possible to ignore the things you are not interested in. The pop-ups are irritating, I'll give you that, but I surf the web all the time. Just about all the sites I got to (mostly tech stuff) have some banners or ads on them. I just focus on the center of the page, where the content usually is, and ignore the rest. Your brain has a very powerful filter that can ignore unnecessary input. When you look around, there are a million variables of input being thrown at you, but you only focus on the things that are necessary to go about your business. Why can't you do that with the ads? I mean, the more you focus on the ads, the more they are going to drive you nuts.
 
Sleidia - In your original post you stated:

The internet could have been a very useful/powerful tool to help people share ideas/projects that could make a better place for us to live, but instead, what we got is another useless (or misused) media clogged with stubborn and meaningless advertisings that nobody would even want to read.

What makes you think that the internet has not been a very useful/powerful tool? Have you not used it to any kind of research at all? Have you not used it to find the answer to a question that would require a trip to the public library that even may not be there? Do you not know of a single person, who has no transportation or is an invalid who has not ordered and bought things on line? Have you not done a single product comparision before buying something? Have you not bought an impossible thing to find in person on ebay? Have you not done a google search? Have you not gone to CNN.com for late breaking news? Are you not a member of Tek-Tips, which has used the internet for you to publicize your opinions? Made travel reservations? I could go on and on.

So you have a problem with advertising? Get real. You are innudated on radio, TV, billboards, painted vehicles which are all forms of advertising? As sleipner214 and TekkieDave have already said - its part of business, its part of everyday life, and you deal with it.

Considering the alternative. How much do you want to pay for the wealth of information at your fingertips? Do you want to see the Internet regulated? If so, by whom? By some Government? NOT

No freedom comes without a price, and if I have to ignore a few popups and adds, close a window here and there, so what? That is such an insignificant effort compared with the value that its not even worth thinking about.

I agree, there is some true garbage out there, and you weed thru that, because there is real value, and if you haven't realized just how valuable the internet can be and IS, then you haven't used it the way it is already intended to be used. Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
 
1) Asking me to use Opera as a my browser is like asking me to use my feet instead of a car because someone stupid paved the way with nails.

-They didn't pave the way with nails, but they did throw ugly billboards all over the place. Of course without the billboards they couldn't pay for the (internet) highway to be built, so indeed at that point you would indeed be using your feet.


2) Can Opera do something against the 1/4 of the space of the pages dedicated to advertising only? Will Opera re-arrange the layout of the page??? Of course, I could choose to make my browser avoid downloading images, but then we go back to 1).

-Can your TV screen out commercials? In the U.S. there's the Public Broadcasting Service, a publicly-funded TV channel that is largely unwatched. Apparently most people are willing to tolerate the commercials, the income from the sales of the network airtime paying for the content that the people actually watch.

3) I won't believe people who say that banners keep magazines afloat. For example, WIRED and NEWSCIENTIST had the magazine on paper only before going on the web. Then, web banners won't pay for the paper version I guess.
And Web Hosting Services are really cheap nowadays. Furthermore, most of the articles like news come from agencies (the text is almost the same everywhere). The only one reason is that they are greedy. They want more money. That's it.

-Banners don't keep the magazines afloat, the magazine advertising space does (and subscriptions help, but advertising is usually the bulk of the income). Or are Wired and NewScientist ad-free in their paper version? The online sites must pay for themselves (to some degree) because otherwise you're offering a free version that will cut into your own subscription income, and I don't know of any successful businesses that seek to deliberately reduce their own profits.

-Also, web hosting services aren't the only cost involved in putting a news site online, the ongoing cost of services eats up an alarming amount of capital. Besides, you have to pay to post copyrighted content, and if you simply link to it a la drudgereport, the sites you're linking to will provide the pop-ups anyway.

4) I never say the problem came from some "conspiracy" or "agency". The problem come from everybody (even from me who had to work for big commercial companies [see my signature]).

-If the problem comes from everybody, how would you propose to solve it?

5) When you say:"You have the priviledge of having your thoughts sent out to a possible audience of millions.", you made a very good point by saying "possible". Because actually, the weakness of the system is that only a few people will gain access to those thoughts. I'm pretty sure tek-tips.com haven't millions of visitors (even annualy). Interesting websites are very much difficult to find
than stupid websites you know. One of the problem is that people who have something interesting to say aren't the ones who have the money and knowledge to makes their site rank well in search engines.

-So create a search engine that keys on interesting content, then find a way to fund it.

6) The fact that people use the internet for email messaging mainly is a proof that the web content is UN-INTERESTING and NON-ATTRACTIVE. Do you really think that people are like sheep in demand of ridiculous things? (thinking about the spycams stupid ads).

-No, it's proof that email messaging has proven to be more useful than content display/retrieval. Everyone wonders who the idiots are who are actually purchasing products advertised through spam and pop-ups. Hunt them down, remove their internet access, and you'll remove the (already limited) profitability from those ads and they'll go away.


7) The painter does what the patron wants only when the painter is concentrated on money, not on art.

-Which is why "starving artist" has become such a cliche.
 
To CajunCenturion:
------------------

I agree that the internet is a useful tool when you know
how to use it efficiently. I use it extensively but you have
to admit that consumerism is becoming more and more a pain
in everybody's ass. And I'm afraid the situation will worsen
in the future.

Even if, as you said, advertising is a necessary side of our
modern life, I maintain that we should build a web space where
banners or any form of consumerism should be banned and replaced
by the most useful form of accessible knowledge ever built.
Like some sort of protected area (regional parks in real life!).
I've tried to surf only on the .org recently, but it is quite difficult
to avoid going out of the area.
Of course there should't be a big boss controling the way information
should be used. But again, a protected area would be a good idea.]
Also, it would be an elegant idea to design a site/organization that could
help potential sponsors connect with web designers who have great ideas.

To SteveTheGeek's interesting one:
----------------------------------

- The internet existed before big companies made it so ugly.
- I barely watch TV because I was thinking that internet would be
a nice replacement(for a short period in fact!). Also, I always turn it
off when CMs come. I'm not patient enough to wait until they are finished.
- What can be seen on the Public Broadcasting in US?
- Concerning the search engine, I've got my idea on the subject.
- I didn't propose to solve the problem alone! I was just hoping that there
would be plenty of people who agree with me (as far as I can see, this isn't
the case! All of you are happy with the current situation, aren't you?)
- Artists are starving because others are too busy taking care of business.
My Work...
...and More...
 
Although it sounds good on paper, I see some very difficult logistical issues with regard to such a web space. Where are you going to build this web space where consumerism is banned without having a big boss. Who will establish want is and is not acceptable within this space? Who is going to police this safe area, and provide policy enforcement. What would the penalties be, and who would administer the penalties, for failure to adhere to the policies?

Who is going to decide just what is and is not consumerism?
I could argue that all of the links in your signature line are nothing more than consumerisms. They could have only one purpose - to take me to the web sites that you want me to go to, and why do you want me to go there?

How about this, lets make Tek-Tips, at least within the threads, posts, and individual signatures, to be free from any form of advertising and/or commercialim. Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
 
Yes, the internet originally came about because the U.S. agency ARPA wanted to stop paying for a mainframe in every university asking for one and instead share resources among them (I get this from Nerds 2.0.1 a terrific book which deals with the myth about nuclear attack survival). Ironic that a government attempt to save money would result in the greatest new communication medium since mankind learned to verbalize.

PBS offers (AFAIK) primarily educational and "cultural" programming, but check it out yourself at I don't watch much TV at all except for Enterprise, Andromeda, West Wing, and occasionally Battlebots, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

I think most people would agree that the commercialization and decreasing signal-to-noise ratio of the internet is a problem they're not happy with, but as the really smart fellow said about democracy, "It's the worst option, except for all the others."

And I'd submit artists are starving because under capitalism, if one does not produce a product others are willing to pay for, one starves.

The "web space where banners or any form of consumerism should be banned and replaced by the most useful form of accessible knowledge ever built" already exists, check out the .cn domain. :)

But in all seriousness, regional parks (in the U.S.) are paid for by usage fees and by government tax money. Start up your web space, and see if people will pay for access.
-Steve
 
By the way --
Sleidia - I am not asking you to change your signature line. I am merely trying to point out the subjectivity involved in trying to determine what is acceptable content, and what is commercialism. Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
 
In addition to all that has said, I would like to make one more point. If you don't like sites with lots of ads, don't go to them. Theoretically, if people stopped going to sites with tons of ads, the guys who run the sites would eventually cut out a bunch of the ad space, either because they have less sponsors (due to less site hits), or in order to draw back the surfers they lost. I am actually getting this from Adam Smith's "The wealth of Nations" {The Invisible hand of the consumer}, but the principle does apply to this situation. If you don't like, don't buy it. Eventually the producers will sell something you do like.
 
Sleidia, the internet is the last bastion of pure democracy. An estimated 300 million people who use the internet daily, and each of them has his or her own opinion about what it is and how it should be used. What we get every day is the concensus. Not agreement. Consensus.

Calling for a network with a moratorium on all advertising is a wonderful utopian ideal. But remember that "utopia" comes from the Greek works "ou" plus "topos", meaning "no place", and by implication stating that such a place does not exist. One man's advertising is another's free speech. I, for example, would be more willing to take your calls for an advertisement-free network more seriously if you weren't so obviously advertising in your signature line.

Suggesting that you use Opera is telling you that it is stupid to knowingly drive your car down that road full of nails and then afterward complain about your flat tires.

It takes a lot of money to operate the internet, obviously more than you realize. I am more than willing to turn off popups and dig through badly-designed content to get what I want, if it means I don't have to pay by the byte for my online research. ______________________________________________________________________
Never forget that we are
made of the stuff of stars
 
To CajunCenturion:
--------------------
Such a webspace wouldn't so difficult to build if you think of
it as some sort of web ring. Of course, there wouldn't be a big
server dedicated to this purpose. But what if you enter a portal
site that would be a frontier between the internet we actually know
and the internet made for knowledge sharing? All the websites linked
together would never bring you to an "evil" place [:)] and then, you
would have something similar to a closed web space that could hopefully
expand.

Concerning the "cops", what if every user would have the ability to
"red flag" a site that sells something? The idea is basic but more
brainstorming could lead to some interesting stuff. There could be
a charter (proper english??), "charte" in french, that would describe
what is allowed and what isn't. This isn't despotism to make rules for
a "community".

In one of my first message above, I already aknowledged the fact that
the sites found in my signature are commercial sites. But believe me when
I say I don't feel any reward for having built them (part from the technical
side). They are boring and useless sites that I would never show off if I was
in the protected area described above.

Commercialism is when someone is trying to sell something to others.

To SteveTheGeek:
-----------------
Your last point is irrelevant: you know (and your response proves it) that
I belong to a minority. So, wether or not I refuse to visit those websites
again won't have any effect. The majority of people love to be treated like
idiots, to wait for banner ads to disapear from the article they want to read,
to read an article splited in 5 short parts in order to contain more banners
(why can't they make it fit in a single page like it was before??), etc...
I guess there is nothing else to do because people became so accustomed to it.

What I see is that mediocrity will expand itself more and more. To me,
2001 Space Odissey is a laughable comedy. If only they knew...! (A.C Clark
& friends)
Anyway, we are in 2002 and I live in a country where I have to pay if I want to piss
outside. What a great civilization!
My Work...
...and More...
 
I find it interesting to see how quickly a philisophical viewpoint such as Sleidia has put forward can be so quickly slamed by so many people.
The concept of "realism" (which is, by its true definition, nothing more than an adherence to the status quo) has become such an idological centrepiece that anyone who disagrees with its decrees is imediatly branded a "dreamer" and cynical cliches like sleipnir's "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" can lay about in the place of any real argumentitive meat.
Statements as prosaic as Cajun's "Get Real" and other patronising insults, should easily be dismissed like the spam they are, if not for the weight of four and a half centuries of orthodoxy behind them.

So an honest question, not to be answered with an unthinking "its part of everyday life", but honestly:

Do you like the advertising?

A discussion baord like this is a perfect place to think outside the box. Removing the links from Sleidia's sig won't change the worlsd any more than refusing to wear Nike will stop third world slave labour. One thousand people refusing to wear Nike dosn't make any difference, but park those thousand people outside a downtown Nike store in Melbourne every friday for a couple of months and then you can make a difference.
A zone of the web without advertising - this is positive action, and this could make a difference! Yes it is a good idea on paper, and Cajun, they are valuable questions that were posed. Now lets work out the answers to them!
I for one am all for the idea, and i also have a bit of spare server space and a couple of domain names lying around that we could use.

So how about it? Lets stop flaming Sleidia because (s)he questions the way things are. Lets start something and see what happens.

Proof by experimentation.

--cb
 
To Sleipnir214:
----------------

You say "democracy" but you think "liberalism". This is where
the misunderstanding is.

Also, I didn't say we should behave like little dictators by
preventing others to use the web like they want.

I'm just proposing the idea to add a web space free of any
consumerism. That's all.

After that, anybody would be free to go wherever he wants.
But such a web space is missing and can't be called utopia.
That can be done.

Again, my signature is for showing my technical/design skills. Not
for selling anything.
>>>>>I don't feel any reward for having built them (part from the technical
side). They are boring and useless sites that I would never show off if I was
in the protected area described above.
My Work...
...and More...
 
No Sleidia, I mean literal democracy. Every user of the internet has a vote. He casts his vote whenever he follows a link to a site a second time. He casts another vote by recommending the site to friends. He casts still a third if he creates a web-site and places a link to the site from his own. It's evolutionary democracy in it's purest form -- the will of the people determine what is and is not successful. That's why the Google search engine has been so successful -- it bases its rankings on how many people link to a given site.

Sleidia, why shouldn't you pay to piss in a public toilet? Some organization, government or private, has to pay to maintain the toilets, doesn't it? That's the whole point of my throwing the acronym TANSTAAFL (or, in this case, TANSTAAFP) up again and again.

enigma174, having an open discussion means hearing voices which disagree with you. Labelling as "flames" the opinions of those who disagree with you is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling, "I'm not hearing you! I'm not hearing you!" Critial dialog is a part of the process, too.

enigma174, to answer your question, I honestly don't know if I like the ads or not. I don't notice them any more. The only ones that ever earned my attention were the popups, but my use of Opera has nicely taken care of that little problem.

Sleidia and enigma174 I have a question for both of you: What happens if you're successful? How will you pay for upgrades to servers and increases in bandwidth while you devote yourselves to bohemian purity of esthetics? ______________________________________________________________________
Never forget that we are
made of the stuff of stars
 
Personally, I am satisfied with the "status-quo" of the internet today.

Without the internet, advertisements and all. I would not have a fraction of the knowledge I have gained - over the last year alone. With some creative search terms, I have only once or twice been unable to locate what I need.

Sure no advertisements would be nice sometimes. But I have been on both sides of the table - I have clicked at times and bought, or clicked - considered it worthless to my needs and left. or clicked and saved it for later use.

I have also advertised a business through a banner on a community portal - which took our free link ranking of 15 to number 1 - which means increased sales either way you look at it.

I never have advertised on a popup advertisement however. Nor have I designed flashing irritating banners designed to catch the eye within the very small window of opportunity.

I have done entire term papers through research found on the web, I have bought many many items. I have made a small webpage to show off pictures of my nephew to the rest of our family who could not make it to the reunion.

I also run a small webserver - and as all know, it certainly is not cheap. Just to break even i'd need about 45 - 50 web customers. - this does not count improvements or expansion (.net server, etc.) as technology expands.

I am also a consumer, if I do not get a warm fuzzy feeling with a website I wish to purchase on - I will not. If I do not like the service I will not go there again. If I do feel satisfied - treated fairly - a good product for a fair price and good service, I will not look elsewhere (even if it's cheaper). Just as I do off the internet.

Not unlike a bookstore really - I can go in with an ASP book in mind, and must pass the cosmo, GQ, TEEN magazines on my way in, hey maybe that Popular Science will catch my eye, but then again maybe not. "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

-Adm. James Farragut

Stuart
 
Pictures talk louder then words, Make a website with no ads no pictures, no advertism only with phrases etc. Your website would look like a telephone book, after one visit I would never come back.
Who would pay the bills? The government? the electricity, the maintenance on the computers these things cannot be paid with air. Your content providers would work pro deo? Common money rules the worldTANSTAAFL


One option is to take out the graphics, animation, sound etc with the option tab on the tools menu. Your frames would load faster anyway.

What may be Interesting for someone maybe dull for some other people. Alias you are free to make your own non-comercial website, that is the freedom we all have, how you are going to sustain it is your headache. Maybe sending spam letters to every-one in Tek-tips?

Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr
 
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