Say no to Adverts

You know those annoying breaks you get in the middle of stuff you're trying to watch ? That you always fast forward through ?

I've been getting bugged lately by someone claiming to come from Israel ...

They want to sell advertising on people's websites. Somehow, they've found this blog and they're trying to get me to sign up to them. The email today is a guilt-trip one, where they're saying I didn't get back to them the last time. Darn straight ! No way am I going to sign up for someone to infest this blog with the advertising that is a bane of so many people's lives !

Reasons :

You lose control over what's on the site you're responsible for. 3rd party content seems to be (info from forums) the most common means by which identity theft trojans and other nasties get on to a system. Displaying any link means you're obliged to make sure that link is safe for other people to click on. Delegating the control of that link to a third party means you no longer have the ability to protect your readers from malware.

I have removed sites from my blogroll in the past because I could no longer support what they linked to. In the case of the Mercs website, that was removed because the webmaster was unable or unwilling to implement what was necessary to prevent it being spammed to death by malware and porn people. So it got unceremoniously dumped off the link list.

I don't need the money. Offering up for advertising is like selling your soul. You lose the total editorial control over what gets posted because of the segment you have delegated to the advert people. I don't find that acceptable for this blog. I will point people towards various bits n bobs I've liked but that's my choice. As soon as the advert people get in, you lose that choice, possibly finding yourself plugging stuff that you know is absolute rubbish.

I like what's left of my soul, I'm not interested in selling any part of it.

Trust. This is the big one. I've had 2 emails recently from people wanting to affect the content of this blog, one is a blatant advert person with the other wanting to collect links. Nuff said about the advert person, however the link collector is slightly different. My hit counter (it collects more info, hidden behind a password) tells me the link collector comes from a South African hosting company, yet he claims to come from Israel. Sorry mate, that instantly flags up BOT, which is where I instantly flag up I'M IGNORING YOU.

Loading time. Not so big a point in the Broadband age but still a good one. When I was an active participant in Michele's Meet & Greet, I'd look at sites, wait a moment for them to load. If they took too long (and I have a decent connection), I'd say byebye and never look at them again. Long loading times is a big turn off. And adverts only serve to lengthen load times, the worst ones seem to demand to load before the rest of the page becomes visible (Register and Cricinfo were terrible for this, which was one big reason why I went hunting for adblockers)

Anyway - gotta get ready to go out for some more gaming now, so I'll cut short the rant on adverts and go for another advert myself :-)

Our gaming group has been steadily getting to grips with the latest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons, which has been heavily simplified in its 4th edition. Lots of interesting changes, where they've made the characters a lot more "generic" instead of in 3rd and 3.5ed where there was more in it for the Power Gaming Munchkins than the role players. Ok, we don't do hard core roleplay in our groups, we're more interested in bashing monsters. However, whereas in 3rd and 3.5ed the rules kinda got in the way, 4th ed rules seem to be a lot smoother.

I like it - and our group is playing well with them too. A change for the better ? :-)

PS When I get back tonight, I'll update this post with a link to the Flashblock and AdblockPlus post I did a while ago. Say no to adverts by banning all influence they may have from your browsing influence.