Rupert Murdoch Hates Google, Loves the iPad 412
Hugh Pickens writes "The Register reports that News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, reiterated his disgust at how search engines handle news and called on old media to rethink how their stories are distributed on the web. 'It's produced a river of gold, but those words are being taken mostly from the newspapers,' said Rupert. 'I think they ought to stop it, that the newspapers ought to stand up and let them do their own reporting.' Murdoch added that the iPad was a 'wonderful tool' for listening to music, watching videos and reading newspapers. 'It may well be the saving of the newspaper industry,' by making it cheaper to distribute content to a broader audience, Murdoch said. 'I'm old, I like the tactile experience of the newspaper,' Murdoch said. '(But) if you have less newspapers and more of these, that's OK. It doesn't destroy the traditional newspaper, it just comes in a different form.'"
Endorsement (Score:5, Insightful)
Logically... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm torn... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm an Apple fan, I think the iPad is an incredible media consumption device....
But then Murdoch had to open his stupid mount.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Suggestion for Rupert (Score:5, Insightful)
robots.txt
Yes of course (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no surprise the media loves a locked down device. If enough people have these kind of crippled devices, they can stop making content available online and require apps or subscriptions for everything. This also helps to explain the media's unabashed love for the iPad.
The other reason Murdoch likes the iPad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Online + Printed: $2.99/week
iPad only: $3.99/week
Anyone else see the problem here?
Go ahead, Rupert, make our day (Score:5, Insightful)
reiterated his disgust at how search engines handle news and called on old media to rethink how their stories are distributed on the web.
Then do us all a favor and pull your tabloid rags off Google. What's stopping you? I'm sure the core of your readers will stay with you, it's the only source that tells them what they want to hear.
Re:Logically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight... (Score:1, Insightful)
Most publishers are desperate for readers. In fact, many sites *pay* for advertising to get people to their sites.
Rupert gets this for free from Google and other search engines, but fails to seize the opportunity to make money off it, or even to make a compelling enough site to keep subscribers around, and somehow this is Google's fault?
It seems like (Score:5, Insightful)
We need a better free press (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Endorsement (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's like an Endorsement from Beelzebub.
The CEO of Microsoft didn't endorse it, at least not yet, that I know of.
Re:The other reason Murdoch likes the iPad... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Ipad app includes mandatory douchbag hipster tax.
I suppose a subset of people who buy the Ipad also know how to use a web browser and thus can access the Online WSJ without the added tax.
Re:It seems like (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Sooner the Better (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Logically... (Score:3, Insightful)
The next logical step to ask is who paid him to endorse iPad. Google? Microsoft? ~
Re:iPads as newspaper replacement (Score:5, Insightful)
The executive, disgruntled, then asks: Why would a kid pay $100 for that device if he can get a comic book for just 15 cents?
Everyone laughs at Susan.
Re:We need a better free press (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed I have noticed that most of the breaking stories these days have come from Wikileaks. Although not technically news it's been much more informative then traditional rags that put a spin on everything.
Re:Yes of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. This is where Apple has been going for a long time now, and the world of a locked down device, where you only access media through one controlled point, where all apps have to be obtained from one supplier who keeps a tight lock on what can be installed, that's a wet dream for Big Content. If you think about it, the most important aspect of it is that you can bar hacks that will unlock DRMd media. As long as you just had DRMd media, but freedom to install whatever software you wanted, and the ability to transfer files from machine to machine simply by copying them across, DRM was always going to be readily hackable.
What we are moving towards is a situation where you will buy your content from Apple only, you will not be able to copy it without Apple's consent, you will install no apps that Apple does not like. So DRM will really work. Not only that, but all the content will at last be family friendly and politically correct. No need to worry about nasty subversive political sites, or swimsuit pictures showing up unexpectedly.
Apple is far, far worse than Microsoft. Microsoft is an old fashioned tech company, similar in attitude to IBM or HP etc. Its anti competitive of course, very market share focussed. But it does not have this stifling desire to control what customers do and read, it does not worry much about what content is accessed by the products it sells which give it its market share.
Apple is not really, in spirit, a tech company at all, or rather, its a unique sort of tech company, its a tech company in the tradition of Walt Disney 1955. So it is always thinking, how to use its tech position to control what customers do, think and read. That is the fundamental aim to which all its design tends. Its natural allies are Big Content companies. It has sometimes been said that Apple had DRM imposed on it against its will. Don't believe it. DRM and lockin are central to the Apple value system, they are shared values with the content and media industries. It seems inexplicable to Apple fans that it should be trying to ban the reading of perfectly lawful publications on its devices. You have to realize that Apple thinks of itself as Walt Disney 1955, but who in the 21st century has chosen to deliver its family friendly and politically correct content via computers and tablets. This is all of a piece, part of the same thing. This is why your music was DRMd, even when the rights owners did not want it to be. DRM is central to the Apple vision of how the world should work, as is content censorship.
I read that you cannot activate the iPad from Linux. Now, why would that be, exactly....? Its because open source is the enemy for Apple, even more than for MS, because it represents intellectual freedom. That is what is really at issue here. Do you want to live in a world in which a sort of latter day Disney tells you what you can read? Most of the press and media do. They cannot wait to be part of that latter day Disney consortium. That's the appeal of Apple today.
The Slate article is spot on. Its come a long way, and its ended up, like many revolutionaries, turning into a far worse version of what it originally campaigned against.
Yet again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm torn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Sooner the Better (Score:2, Insightful)
When your mother named you dmgxmichael did your father object?
IOW: you're no less anonymous than any other coward on here.
Re:Go ahead, Rupert, make our day (Score:4, Insightful)
Tabloid rags? WSJ? Geez, I'm as non-Republican as they come but you sound like an idiot saying that.
I'd prefer avoiding going into some redundant spiel, but basically:
Finally, I'm close friends with some journalists. People who've written for the NY Times and Village Voice, rags like Entertainment Weekly, and more local papers you probably don't know. These people do good work (though more rarely when it's EW or People), and some of them are having problems figuring out what to do once they can't do what they're good at. It seems very likely that we're entering into a period that will historically be known as the nadir of journalism, the time when something not under any one person's individual control lead to the loss of a generation of reporters.
Re:The Sooner the Better (Score:3, Insightful)
In my estimation, it makes the most sense to have independent journalists (i.e. bloggers) reporting on local events and having those individual reports being compiled or organized by a central figure, like Google is doing now, or any newspaper could do if they get their head out of their ass. Eventually, in such a system, folks could establish credibility, networks and trust. They would be independent in every sense of the word. It's not a perfect model, but I do think it's a workable one.
Oh, and by the way, screws to the douches like Murdoch who think they can tell others what to think through their media empires.
Re:Suggestion for Rupert (Score:5, Insightful)
Rupert's company knows [newscorp.com] about robots.txt. See, they allow everything.
And Foxnews is even kind enough to provide sitemaps targeted at facilitating Google [foxnews.com]
Rupert's mantra should probably be listen to what I say, (pay no attention to what I do)
Re:Go ahead, Rupert, make our day (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suggestion for Rupert (Score:5, Insightful)
no way! Like the MPAA and RIAA before him. Rupert wants to have his cake AND eat it too.
He wants Google to stop pinching his content - but DOESN'T want them to stop indexing his sites.
He wants to stop others from pinching his content - but he WON'T stop pinching content from other FREE sites if it'll embellish a story. (eg. pics/quotes from Facebook tribute pages of people who've ended up in the news)
You WILL submit!
Re:Logically... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was actually quite shocked when the Economist site went free. Beats me why - those were high-quality articles I was willing to pay for. As in, pay to access the site.
Here's what's not cool though: bitching that Google is stealing from you, when you're not even following Google's suggestion on how to prevent Google from indexing your content. That's just pure whining and ass-hattery.
Re:Endorsement (Score:5, Insightful)
For once Murdoch and I have something in common. I'd love to see all Murdoch's sited completely covered by a paywall, I long for the day when I wont accidentally stumble across one of his poorly written tabloids which contains little more then thinly veiled propaganda.
Re:Logically... (Score:4, Insightful)
Paywalls are just a pain in the ass to deal with.
I don't object to them much on moral grounds as long as the fees aren't exorbitant.
But whipping out a credit card for a sub-dollar transaction is hardly worth the time it takes to track down my wallet.
Re:Yes of course (Score:1, Insightful)
The Xbox is a "razor and blades" strategy, and the DRM is mostly there to ensure that MS gets a piece of all money made on the Xbox platform. It's also there to attempt to keep rampant cheating down, but the money is the major thing.
And Microsoft clearly is no enemy of DRM; they put DRM out the wazzoo in Windows Vista to make sure that you can't do naughty illegal things that the Big Media companies don't want you to do.
All that said, there is exactly zip zero nada evidence that Microsoft is trying to use the DRM to start controlling what software you can install on your own computing devices. Windows smartphones do not have an "app store" and Microsoft doesn't care what you install on them. Microsoft has tried to push "ultra mobile PCs" which were like an iPad only years ago, and they didn't try to control what software you install on them. There are a few tablet PCs being sold with Windows 7 and guess what sherlock, Microsoft doesn't try to control what you install on them.
So, if you have some amazing evidence to back up your bald assertions, then whip it out and show us. Otherwise I don't believe you.
Re:Go ahead, Rupert, make our day (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually he's trying to have it both ways, the headline and first sentence to be indexed by google, the link leading to the paywall.
I wonder if Google's super secret search algorithm has the ability to tell if this is happening (I.E. the page content essentially not being there) and degrade these results in relevance (which is what I'm asking a search engine to do, order the results by the relevance to the search string)
Re:Logically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all - it is not that Murdoch likes the iPad, but the reason he likes it. It is a locked-down device designed for passive media consumption.
If the fact that Murdoch is promoting the iPad really should be setting of alarm bells in your geek psyche.
Re:Logically... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whining is because he wants google to cut him checks in exchange for the status quo, but they know he needs them more than they need him.
Re:Logically... (Score:2, Insightful)
No there's nothing wrong with paying for apps that have been lovingly crafted and gone over by apple with a fine-tooth comb.
But it's wrong when they stop everyone downloading free apps or digging into the OS themselves if they want to are are willing to forego the guarantees.
Re:I'm torn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Only on Slashdot do people believe that consumers buy Apple products because they're "cool and hip".
Because usability is for pussies, right?
Re:Endorsement (Score:5, Insightful)
I long for the day when I wont accidentally stumble across one of his poorly written tabloids which contains little more then thinly veiled propaganda.
Which 'content' in the overwhelming majority of cases they have not even created themselves (Murdoch's business model has no money left for good investigative journalists): they just syndicate the news from AP (which does get paid by Google) or steal it from some blogger (who does not get paid by Murdoch), add their propaganda to it (which Murdoch should be paying for for us to read. A lot.) and then they slap their advertisements on it (which Murdoch should be paying us for as well - my attention has value and Murdoch should not expect to be able to steal it for free).
Google on the other hand provides good functionality (a good, unbiased search index and good apps) in exchange for my attention.
Really, Murdoch should not feel so entitled to the resources of this world. He should compete for them like the rest of the planet does. Right now, as far as I'm concerned his business offer to me falls far short of being as competitive as Google's.
Re:The Sooner the Better (Score:3, Insightful)
Rubbish, just because your slashdot identity is not your real world identity does not make it the same as posting AC. People don't stalk AC for revenge modding, astroturfing purposes, etc, nor can they look up AC's comment history and use it against them, nor can they tag AC as friend/foe.
I personally recognise quite a few far-right nutters by their slashdot id, I don't mark them as foes but I also don't bother responding to their crap. There are others who I recognise as having well reasoned opinions, similar ideals, or a specific field of expertise.
In other words a slashdot user has a searchable track record, an observable personality, and in many cases a reputation, an AC has none of those things.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Endorsement (Score:3, Insightful)
Hooray! No one will target content towards you! Goodbye /., you will be missed.
I would be interested to see how many people adblock /. and deprive this wonderful site of revenue. It's likely similar to the percentage that do so to Ars. [arstechnica.com]
Re:Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's someone with a reliable track record, then yeah. In this case, it's Rupert Murdoch who has a track record of being reliable, in the sense that all he's endorsed in the past has been bad for me. I simply don't share his taste, and what's good for him makes the world worse off for me. ;-)
Re:Logically... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup. It actually makes things worse for them, because rather than accepting that they have to drastically change how they work to take account of the internet, they're just gearing up for paywall + iPad to save them.
The interesting thing is that their biggest competitor (the Daily Telegraph) is owned by a couple of guys who haven't been in the newspaper business for long, so they're not so ingrained in the old models. They're hired a young editor who gets that it has to run 24 hours, target every device out there and so forth.
If the Telegraph play it right, they'll just get a whole load of online readers switching from The Times.
Re:Endorsement (Score:5, Insightful)
Early after I made my Slashdot account I had adblock on but didn't pay it any mind, and then I saw the "thanks to you contributing positively to this board, you are eligible to turn off ads"
I felt it was such an honorable and honest system that I disabled adblock for Slashdot and didn't opt-out of the ads. It also made me disable it for other sites I appreciate, like Hulu or even Google.com. Reddit has a "Thank you for not using AdBlock" graphic in place of an ad sometimes. I think it's what Google was saying some time ago: adblockers aren't ruining free websites, people will eventually use them to block out annoying or undesirable ads while choosing to support the websites they would like to support.
Not that I'm saying this behavior is in the majority, but it might grow with the usage of AdBlockers.
Re:Logically... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. Google News creates value by aggregating the news.
I usually get my news from one of my national newspapers, but sometimes (especially with International news) I want to know how multiples newspapers reported the issue. Everyone's biased, reading multiple sides of an issue is the best way to get a broader view on a topic.
Besides, Google News only shows two or three lines of content. I always have to click on the website link to read the article, which loads their ads. I don't see how this "exploits" their work.
Re:Endorsement (Score:1, Insightful)
You bet - Murdoch loves the closed, walled garden of Apple devices. What he hates is customers gaining control over content.
In his ideal world, our eyeballs would be licensed.
Re:Oh grandpa! (Score:2, Insightful)
They could easily edit their robots.txt and keep Google out,
Murdoch may be evil, but can we at least understand what he wants? The 'problem' isn't with being indexed, it's about how it works with a paywall.
Google insist that, to be indexed, you show visitors clicking through the same page that their crawler sees. So they won't index stories that users will have to pay to see. (In fact, they make an exception [blogspot.com] if you can get the first few pages for free.) Sites using a paywall have often quietly allowed a 'back door', whereby visitors coming from google can see the page without paying, just so that it gets indexed. Murdoch would like to do away with that system, so that he can charge anyone who wants to see his news.
Even if he gets his way, it probably won't make much difference. Pagerank is based on links to your content, and there simply won't be so many links to content that needs a subscription. So his paywalled sites will sink down the results.
There is a reason why the kid would pay. (Score:2, Insightful)
The mainstream media would hype for months to no end the "revolutionary" idea, and this before the company would spend a single penny on hyping of their own.
By the time the idea came into fruition most people of weak moral fortitude, lets call them fanboys, would feel compelled to buy it no matter what disregarding of hand a plethora of coolheaded and intellectually objective assesments against the idea.
They would actually *queue* tu buy this non essential article (and least in the USSR they queue for necessary items) and would rise the item triumphally the item on the air, Lion King wise, like if having won something like an olympic medal or an Engineering degree (the thought ...).
These people would consider acting triumphally after spending hundreds of $HARD_CURRENCY in a luxury item a reason for celbration. I humbly suggest that is a celebration of personal validation: I spend, therefore I am.
Sorry, I think I sligthly over the board in my reply.
Re:Endorsement (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, uniquely amongst extremely rich people, he's not a nice man.
Re:Yes of course (Score:3, Insightful)
"So their whole stated goal of removing DRM from the iTunes Store and never wanting it there in the first place... where does that fit?"
It fits in marketing mostly.
Whilst Jobs was telling us he'd love to do away with DRM, and how he hates it, but can't get rid of it because the studios force it upon him, other online music vendors like eMusic, Play and Amazon were selling DRM free music with the blessing of the music industry and often at lower prices than Apple's DRM'd versions. So what Steve Jobs said about the music industry's interest in DRM, didn't actually reflect reality, although Apple fanboys bought it (and people wonder why people joke about Steve Jobs having a reality distortion field?).
It was pretty obvious why Apple supported DRM, and it was pretty obvious why you couldn't re-download content you've bought from iTunes after the first time, even though this is a standard feature amongst the vast majority of digital content providers- it's all about profit for Apple. Apple was quite aware of the fact that iTunes got the online music distribution thing wrapped up pretty well initially, and with this success knew full well that by ensuring iTunes was difficult about syncing with other media players, and ensuring content was DRM protected with proprietary DRM, it meant that if people's iPods broke, or the battery life reached unacceptable levels and as with the majority of the consumer it meant they'd just get a new media player because of no easy battery changes in iPods, they'd have to basically go Apple again, or lose possibly hundreds of dollars they'd invested in content from Apple. Also, if people lost their content, they couldn't just re-download it again, they'd have to re-buy it.
Apples strategy has been pretty clear to anyone with any level of objectivity and clarity from day 1 - it's all about customer lock-in, to a greater degree than any other tech company in history, including Microsoft. Apple wants to make sure that if you need a new devices, or new content that you HAVE to buy Apple, or face losing out other investments. It's all about making sure that if you go Apple, you have to reasonably stay Apple or suffer even more expensive consequences.
Of course, Apple finally caved on DRM but only after the likes of Amazon started to really eat into their marketshare, and when they did cave, they did so by introducing higher prices- a reasonable way for them to offset the loss in lock in profits I suppose.
If people think Microsoft is bad with their proprietary office software and formats causing corporate lock-in then they'd run for the hills if they evaluate the level of lock-in that Apple pushes.
Of course, the obvious solution for most of us is to just not ever go Apple in the first place. But it's those like my girlfriend who don't understand the issues of DRM that get sucked in, such that when her iPod failed, she found she couldn't move the content off of it to her Android phone (which did everything she wanted, why should she have to buy a new iPod as well?). I solved it for her by just downloading MP3 copies of her music- I don't care about the legality of it, it was morally by far the correct solution.
Regarding Apple and open source, the only reason Apple support open source is because they need it to help them do the things they can't do well in house. They only support it where they have to to the degree that some members of the OSS community aren't put off writing software that benefits Apple and beyond that point, where they can do stuff in house well, they've demonstrated time and time again they're not interested in OSS. To them it's just a business tool, they certainly have no interest in supporting the ideology itself, else they wouldn't have so many closed source products, they wouldn't push h264 as the HTML5 video standard and so forth. Microsoft releases FOSS stuff too, but that doesn't mean they support the ideology, they just use it where it suits them, no different to Apple, the difference is Microsoft doesn't really try and
No, endorsement from its primary customer (Score:5, Insightful)
iPad's customer is big media. It is not us. Oh sure, many of us love the idea of the iPad but honestly look who is benefiting most from it. e-Book sellers now get to raise prices, even Amazon caved on this and many originally thought Amazon to be a bunch of money grubbing jerks for charging so much for an e-Book. Hell, Apple handed their end users right into the hands of the new consumer, big media, and the end users are rejoicing at being bent over a barrel.
So of course Murdoch loves it, a whole slew of new ways for us to transfer money to them and their friends. And we will be happy for it because we will look so cool at Starbucks and the student centers.
Re:Yeah. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just sit tight. There are going to be at least a dozen or more Android-based tablets hitting the market by the end of 2010 that should fill in all the features missing from the iPad. Steve Jobs wants Apple to sell you the walled garden approach and Android-tablet vendors just want to sell you their awesome tablet and let you use whatever open software you want on it. I know which device(s) I'm going to support with my wallet.
Murdoch is avoiding the real story (Score:3, Insightful)
Murdoch has got it ass-about. The reason that print media is dying is that the classified advertising model that was so profitable for so long has died. Craigslist has done far, far more damage to Murdoch's business than Google ever has, and there's nothing he can do about it. The cover price on newspapers doesn't even get close to covering the printing cost, let alone profit.
Another thing, maybe he can see coming. Online media provides a way of measuring advertising efficiency, something that is not possible in print. Count the clicks. As corporate advertising etc is going online so bean counters can know it's effectiveness. Same goes for job ads.
Print is dying because its advertising is obsolescent, not because of Google. Murdoch must know that
Re:Logically... (Score:5, Insightful)
If The Times or other of his publications go behind a paywall then not only is he losing the random visitors but also his loyal visitors who suddenly pay for stuff they got for free previously. Needless to say ad revenue will fall through the floor and the site must rely on the patronage of subscribers to keep the site going.
Maybe there is a enough people who regularly fork out for his content that makes it financially viable, but everyone else will be quite content to get their news from the many hundreds of other news outlets providing similar / identical coverage. If someone needs a fix of right wing rhetoric they can get it from countless blogs. I hope his plans tank and tank badly.
Re:Yeah. (Score:2, Insightful)
the featureset makes it seem like it'd be a good spot between e-reader and netbook
isn't that like saying apple's discovered a new meal between breakfast and brunch? i guess some people may enjoy it, while others find it unnecessary.
Apple = Ignorance (Score:1, Insightful)
Well put.
However, my opinion is still pretty much the same, and as the geek I am, I of course knew most of your arguments from before.
The point is however, internet and PCs bring _unprecedented_ freedom in the world, in a world historically full of tyranny and serfdom. The "nice" iPad product of today, might very well become the DRM and privacy intrusive, locked-down, out-of-alternatives variant of tomorrow when everyone copies Apple's businessplan and governments starts to stamp down its heavy boots to support dying dinosaur-corporations. "Why should 'normal' people have access to fully programmable PCs?", they will say. "We have invented pretty much everything needed to be invented", is another one, the first step on the ladder down to our downfall in so case.
Even disregarding the future, iPhone, iPad, OS X and the likes prevent my flexibility and freedoms TODAY. That is why I regret buying Macbook Pro (no, the expensive hardware doesn't run Win XP superior to PCs today and OS X is shit for a geek. Darwin is far from Linux and apt-get goodies in so many ways I can't summarize it here even), iPhone (no tether, no MMS, no smileys), iPod (locked-down filesystem, otherwise pretty much OK) and I certainly wouldn't consider buying an iPad too, or any Apple product anymore, for that matter. Even my so-called "super" n-version airport is noticably much slower than other wireless networks and have piss-poor range, besides configuration is by a shitty proprietary application, as it also is with iPhone and most proprietary crap from Apple.
Unless you pay for updates, they are always incremental and not enhancing much. To really update, you have to buy the latest version gadget, disregarding that software updates could have given the same features = bad for environment. E.g. why is my 1st gen iPhone still lacking basic mobile features in 2010? Answer: It will never get properly updated. The same goes for OS X and every other product from Apple.
Apple is purposefully locked down their gadgets and having serious control-freak issues.
So buying and supporting Apple on a false sense of convenience, can have adverse effects from today on. Unless one is ignorant of these things, or just don't care.
IOW, Fuck Apple! If they don't change their attitude, I wish them a descent to be an example of how not to do business (screw your customers while hyping your product). Just because they're successful at it, doesn't make it right if it hampers people in the long run.
Problem is there is so much hype and myths surrounding Apple, and people are still falling for the propaganda (been there, done that). Common sense should prevail over longer time hopefully.
funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
given that most "news" these days seems to be verbatim copies of press releases passed around by AP or similar agencies...
the investigative journalist are a myth these days, much the same as the rugged individual and other such concepts that US people wraps themselves in each day.
Re:Yeah, we know who Rupert Murdoch sounds like (Score:4, Insightful)
You American right-wingers have absolutely no idea how skewed to the right your politics are. It's so bad, France's president, who comes from their political right wing, thinks it's absurd that there was such strong debate about healthcare reform. In Canada, our opinions are similar, and this surely applies in most if not all other democratic countries. The people in the US that watch Fox News and take it seriously are utterly brainwashed. It's so bad from our perspective that I have friends who aren't convinced that such people really exist in significant quanitities in the US, because it's so hard to believe. We find it hard to understand how so many people are all drinking Kool-Aid like this.
This isn't to say that I wholeheartedly endorse the Democratic Party (of course not), but their political leanings are much saner from an outside-the-US perspective.
Re:Endorsement (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem I have is this...
Ads take up my allotted amount of data i can download per month.
If I hit 5gb on my phone or 250gb on my land line- I get penalized- not the advertising company.
I am okay with small, polite ads. I'm not okay with large ads, flash ads, etc.
They had an ad on another site which downloaded 30 jpg's and then flipped between them to make a rolling banner ad of different products. Every time I went to that page, it redownloaded every image. I didn't notice it for the first few weeks but one day it was screwed up and it displayed the images all at once as they downloaded and I went "holy crap, that's downloading a lot of pictures!" So I blocked it.
And since then anything that moves a lot- I block the entire ad domain.
I don't like company "A" saying, "keep your usage down" and then company "B" says, "here's a few megabytes of data every time you browse this page".