Having the choice of whether or not to see ads is fine. Well, I hate
'em. And I don't see them at LEM anyhow,
because I use iCab (registered user).
And I have all your ads blocked, one by one, time after time. I hate
'em.
But the thing I am very unhappy about at MacFixit is that they are following the
path so many others have since the Web came into being - trying to
capture things people have been writing in public for the good of
everyone and locking up access, or the archive, so only paying
customers can see it.
That strikes me as the worst kind of stealing from the common shared
body of knowledge.
MacFixit is certainly not the first (nor the thousandth) company to
try to do this.
They all basically are trying to siphon off the good will and
generosity that has built up around the world thanks to the Usenet
newsgroups.
Why is there any hope they can succeed? In one word - no killfile
tool on Web browsers.
Google's "groups" is polluting the newsgroups by bringing in users
with an interface that doesn't allow killfiles.
It undercuts, belies, destroys, makes almost unimaginable the single,
simple form of self-restraint that allowed the newsgroups to function
for so many people for so long - the killfile tool on all the good
newsreaders.
Again we see people flaming those they don't want to see - and being
unable to imagine what in the newsgroups was the overwhelmingly
standard advice, use your killfile.
So rip open the newsgroups with the 20 year archive (Google); start
leading in new users using tools that lack killfiles (everyone); make
the commons less attractive (ditto); start setting up alternatives
(many groups, including LEM and MacFixit and Google).
And then steal from the poor - by making money be the gatekeeper for
the information.
So, I very much applaud LEM for not going to the locked
archive/paid user model, and staying with the annoying-but-filterable
advertising model.
I hope you will appreciate that it's worth paying you, not to avoid
the ads that I don't have to see, but to applaud you for keeping the
information all your readers have put on your page available to future
readers.
Thanks.
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