Is it my PC or this site? When I visit I have to clear an Ad.to proceed and very annoying pop up ads constantly come up and block the bottom third of screen and the working area of posts.. Is this something I have to learn to live with?
Its been annoying me for ages tried changing browser from MS To Chrome no difference. Have to be very carful when using the forum in case you hit the wrong link. Tried to get rid of them but seems to be to do with raising money for the browser companies. Curse of the internet!
Beyond my purview to change ad settings. Some of them do partly pay for the thousands Otto shells out to keep us online. (Though not nearly like they used to a decade ago since payouts were slashed.) When I look at the ad version of the forum, though, I don't see all that bad a view. Top and bottom banner ads. Pop-ups say to me that it might very much be worth clearing cookies and cache for here, and 'maybe' running a sweep with an adware cleaner like Malwarebytes, or whatever the trusted program du jour is. (I've forgotten as haven't engaged in such since Windows Defender became the pretty trustworthy norm.)
Become a patron or administrator. Not my place (genuinely, I can't) to tell you 'the other way', but I don't doubt someone else can explain.
The answer is clear for all to see , The internet is a Commercial Place. I try to generate interest to maintain the numbers of members. I stopped using Geno sites due to subscription charges. I now find myself trying to find things to post. Picking up on old threads. Cant go on for ever, the answer is in our hands. Stay or Go. No members, no advertising revenue. "Its the rich what gets the pleasure, Its the poor what gets the blame!"
This site costs over $5000/year to keep online. It generates zero profit. Ever been charged a single penny to use it? (Rhetorical. You have not.) I'm sorry, but you understand the square root of zero about how 'free' sites are kept online.
I really don't understand what, or who, you're getting at. Apart from the stay or go bit which has always been the case. A lot of people join to get answers. Some stay cos they share the interest. Some help out cos they have knowledge or advice to share. Others simply prefer to read. The membership is always changing, for various reasons. No one is obliged to post. No one is obliged to become a Patron in order to contribute to substantial running costs. It's been suggested here as a workaround for anyone who'd prefer not to see Google Ads. Stay or go indeed. Use the forum at no cost, apart from seeing a few Ads, or donate a few quid towards Otto's costs but please don't suggest that anyone is getting rich off this site.
Precisely dbf we are here because we help others but beware of popups. A curse of the internet I'm getting at no one. Simply stating a fact. End of message, back to things WW2
I have never got any ad pop ups (nor any pop ups of any king for that matter) nor any ad banners when visiting this forum. I am using Firefox if that's the reason? Michel
I know it is time to renew my patronage when I start getting the adverts etc. £30 or so for a years advert free use of the WW2 site seems pretty good value to me. Mike.
Not in itself. You probably have an 'Add-On' or like me, have blocked Google, Facebook & Twitter Javascript.
I have found this site to be so friendly and helpful, I would like to contribute by becoming a patron as Trux mentions, how can I do this please
an Please give that man a proverbial cigar ! Mozilla's FF and its many forks (like my current Pale Moon browser et al) crucially don't leak tracking data to feed the exploitative likes of Gurgle whose despicable Chrome spyware model is currently the basis of Opera (also said to have been popular for its intuitive GUI) My advice is to: Check out pro-security DDG 's core anti-tracking policy Only trust 'Open Source' software - despite the sad inability for certain nerdy whizz-kid development teams to match the simple usability needs of normal users also check out Nathan Lineback's Toasty Tech website Cue, for its Eastertide coincidence, Monty Python's Life of Brian final Calvary chorus twist - to Always Look on the Bright Side (of Death) ? Edited to add Nathan L's common sense take on browsers
STOP PRESS : Even more coincidentally, t this Good Friday morning's BBC Radio 4 Today programme announced a knighthood for a Gurgle DeepMind developer.. Though apparently unconfirmed by bbc.co.uk. it does at least echo the folowing Independent press report from yesterday[ Leading AI figures awarded honours [begin RANT] In my book AI = Automated Idiocy and Government Intelligence is on an oxymoronic par with the infamously-stereotypical Military kind but, as Spokeshave once famously put it. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,"but enough of my homespun injustice ethics for now ! [end RANT]
Best also heed today's news - a sob story about AI proving too expensive fo poor old impecunious diddums Gurgle tending to trigger my schadenfreude with its sheer irony but also too suggestive of even dirtier tricks ahead trying to make a new paywall business model work against huge odds. nor forget the anti-trust fate of Microsloth's IE world domination plan PS (re my earlier dismissal of so-called AI as Automated Idiocy): Did you spot the following WW2 gaffe cited in the news page I linkedabove ?; " Google has faced challenges coming to grips with the AI revolution - earlier this year Gemini, which can answer questions in text form but also generate pictures in response to text prompts, stoked controversy after it mistakenly created an image of the US Founding Fathers including a black man. It also generated German soldiers from World War Two, incorrectly featuring a black man and an Asian woman."
