I paid my lifetime subscription a few years back to not have to look at ads. Even bought a couple of gift subscriptions (that was back before Mr. Scribe retired and we had a bit of disposable income). I've enjoyed the experience.
So now I log on after a few days away, and what do I find?
Melt Your Fat Like Butter
99 Celebs Who Bared It All
Drive Traffic From Top Publishers
If I wanted that sort of crap, I'd go hang out at HuffPo or Yahoo or hundreds of other sites.
I know the economy's shit -- we just paid our rent for this month. But between the latest kerfuffles, some assorted misgivings about the direction of this site, and now being assailed by crap advertisements masquerading as "news links", I'm about fed up.
This isn't a GBCW, just a friendly warning that you're risking driving folks out of here with this sort of thing assailing our eyeballs. I've been here for over 10 years and have appreciated the information I've gathered and the community I've found. I don't need ads pushing the latest "quack" weight-loss cure that either doesn't work or kills people in the process, or side boob photos, or anything other than how we can go about electing more (and preferably better) Democrats.
Maybe I just need a break -- a long one.
/end rant
2:31 PM PT: Okay, brought up Daily Kos in Safari for Windows, and voila! no ads. Evidently this is some sort of Chrome thing, which sucks because I've been prefering Chrome to Safari lately on my Windows platform. I may have to go try and tweak some settings in Chrome, or maybe just ditch it altogether. I'll have to check and see if it's happening in the Mac version as well. (I do dual boot on my iMac for some Windows-only games like the current version of The Sims.)
Guess "don't be evil" is no longer operative at Google.
At least folks are warned.
2:40 PM PT: And Chrome for Mac is fine.
So is it Google that's evil or Microsoft? Or maybe both...