INQUIRER readers hate in-article adverts

Hey Mike, what's up with ads in the middle of some stories? See this article for an example http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9259.

It was that type of advertising that drove me away from zdnet.com as a news source because they were more concerned with advertising than telling the news. I know you guys need to make money so when I see an ad that interests me I click it. I don't need it shoved in my face.

Maybe the reason the other types of ads aren't getting the revenue the ad agencies predict is because people don't want those products...

Patrick Mallette

I've been enjoying your news mag for about 2-3 years now & it's been (news permitting) a consistently enjoyable experience.

That's why your latest ads placed in the middle of the story seriously piss me off ... i saw the trend appear earlier in hi-tech sites and I quite despise it.

I understand you need the income from the ads, but this style seriously cramps the readability of your stories, making me want to switch to another site after the first sentence in the story. On top of that the ads are animated, making my eyes jump continuously from the story.

Regards
Hopefully not an ex-reader

The REAL problem with banner and other ads, is that they don't rotate, and the sites behind them are lame and hostile. The current crop is flogged over, and over, and over again.

I don't ever need to visit another VISA ad site, I visited it once, it was lame and surfer hostile, and I never need to visit it again.

I visited the classmates ad once, visited the site, found it was lame, and never need to visit again, but have been shown the ad 100's of times. (maybe 1000's of times...) At this point the ad is only anoying.

Ad rotation on the Inquirer site is also low. Either I am not interested in many of the ads, or I already know about the product. There isn't much variety in the ads, so the click rate is going to be low.

It is furter a problem that most sites behind the ads are lame and hostile. As such users quickly learn than most ad sites are a waste of time. Since 95+% of ad sites are lame and hostile, even if a company has a good easy site, users expectations are already highly evolved to know that ad sites are lame and hostile.

I certainly don't expect Unicast to ensure that the sites behind their ads are good and easy to use. As such they will only add annoyance to the mix...

Want to increase the click through rate for the inquirer? then show ads that we havn't seen before, for a start, and also do quality control on the sittes behind them...

Mark

Your friendly "random generated" (?) advertisement about "mobile" with the spiffy Wall Street Yuppie male is a bandwidth hog. Anything that makes my ADSL stumble which is downloading your stuff at 1.4Mbps is a basic pig.

I can understand your need for revenue. However, tell the folks that they need to remember that a lot of your folks have 56k dial-up modems. No use to alienate the troops.

John O

Subject: Regarding advertising within articles

To whom it may concern:

God *Fucking* Dammit! Advertisements do NOT belong within the boundaries of an article. Period. I would comment further, but I believe I have made my point *crystal clear*.

Cheers,
Milton

Subject: Adverts

It was enough to see them surrounding the stories. I actually looked at them... Now, they must fill a large amount of screen real estate, smack dab in the middle of the article too?

Shame on you.

Bob

Subject: KILL THE ORANGE ADDS!

See how mad I am! I used all caps! I've lowered myself to the level of an AOL user. I'm hurt and disappointed in you Mageek. You used to be such a nice boy.

Corey

Mike replies
The campaign lasts a few days, and doesn't appear in all stories. I'll tell the agency to bog off next time. We really do need some money though :)

Mike

Subject: follow up to astronomical ink letters...

just to say that those complaining about high ink costs might investigate some of the many continuous ink systems now available for Epson - and increasingly Canon - printers. Essentially just rig up a set of pipes between the printheads and some big bottles of ink stacked beside the printer, and a bit of electronic trickery fooling the printer. Simple, and VERY cost effective per page.

And as for those complaining about the high cost of ink. Yes, it is egregiously high - but the ink itself is not just any old ink. Quite apart from physical characteristics (especially important for those with printers with permanent printheads), colour purity is far more variable than most people realise. No that magenta ink is NOT pure magenta colouring. Try dipping into a scientific paper on colour ink technology, and you find out just how unsatisfactory even the very best inks are at precisely filtering out some colours and not others. At the very least, you have to use C, M & Y inks that are designed for mutual use.

Julz

please advise that person who the article is about that the Lexmark Cartridges do not have an Expire date .. i know because i onlu use & sell Lexmark Printers never had a problem like that. how ever the lexmark cartridges are opnly good for 2-3 refills on the color or black before they stop working

Rose Thomas

Subject: Epson under attack for print cartridge tricks

I own an Epson Stylus C80. Its a very good printer, but had I known the cost for refills I wouldn't have purchased it. Even the so-called universal refill kits are not honest enough to state that these chip regulated printers do not apply.

There is an after market chip resetting devise that does work good. I've seen it range from $25 - $60. Proper instructions to refill these cartridges are quite difficult to find. And supposedly, only certain inks will work. Common refill inks may cause an adverse chemical reaction and potentially destroy the printer.

Its been time consuming and a lot of extra work and money. And I hardly ever print pictures.

Steve

Subject: Epson under attack for print cartridge tricks and HP inkjet cartridges have built-in expiry dates and previous Lexmark hanky-panky

When I finally bought an inkjet printer, I avoided those evil companies that make these 'sneaky-trick' ink cartridges. I ended up getting a S900 printer from Canon. Their BCI-6 ink comes in little tanks that can be individually replaced and contain nothing but ink (zero 'funny-business' technology). The Canon ink is still expensive at about US$1000 per litre, but at least they seem to have some integrity in the way they treat their customers. Also, if you really require huge amounts of ink then you can easily use readily available alternative (non-Canon) ink supplies sold in large tubs.

J. Harvey

Subject: Half-Life 2 and UT2004 release dates appear

I work for one of Gamestop's competitors over here in the states and while the release dates for UT and HL2 are fanciful they are the sameones we have received. These dates change all the time though, Gran Tourismo 3 was delayed 18 months, Brute Force 16 months now, and most games routinely have 6 or 8 month delays, Tomb Raider anyone oh yeah it got delayed again. These are all wayafter we got their first release dates. If you ttavel over to www.ebgames.com you can find the same release dates.

Email address supplied

Subject: Athlon 64: The processor that wasn't there?

I think you've hit the nail on the head. First, look at how the Athlon 64 was supposed to differ from the Opteron:

- less cache
- single DDR instead of dual DDR memory (according to most reports I have seen, but not all)
- no multiprocessor capability

P4 (and Barton) are already shipping with 512Kb L2 cache. Only a low-end processor has 256Kb L2 cache these days - and Athlon XP will fill that slot for some time anyway - so an Athlon 64 with less than 512k cache would make little sense.

Second, P4 chipsets supporting dual DDR memory are available. An Athlon 64 supporting single DDR would not be a viable competitor in the high-end desktop or games market.

Third, look at the Opteron prices. $300 at the bottom end is in the same ball-park as the top-end Athlon XP and P4.

All of which means that a viable Athlon 64 would have a die only a little smaller than the Opteron, have only a few less pins, and be sold for only a little less. So why produce Opteron and Athlon 64 separately? Far better surely to introduce a crippled Opteron in which some of the HT links and half the cache are disabled (incidentally increasing the die yield, because some dies that have too many cache errors to work as full Opterons can be sold as the desktop version).

BTW one use for 64-bit computing that hasn't been mentioned by The Inquirer is software validation. We use automated reasoning (AR) technology to prove that software is bug-free. This application very processor and memory intensive and we are struggling to validate our largest project in a 2Gb address space. Itanic doesn't look like the right solution because AR is an integer application and Itanic only shines in floating point stuff, but Opteron should fit the bill nicely.

Regards
David Crocker

Subject: Athlon 64: The processor that wasn't there? ECC memory.

Ever thought that the reason for the delay was so that the memory controller could be changed to Dual DDR400?

Richard

Subject: Atlon64 in Xbox ll???

Just want to bring up an issue here for debate, short and simple (guess you get a lot to read).

Why not simply sell Ahtlon64 to Microsoft to put in Xbox 2??? Opteron has 100 millions plus transistors so it would compete just fine against Prescott. AMD would get plenty of money (one billion or more properly in a few years) and Microsoft a chip that's both 32/64 bits and at 2000 Mhz+. With some help from Nvidia the Xbox 2 could be ready much sooner than Playstation 3 (less than a year or so). The software is almost already there and the hardware only needs to be assembled.

This would give Microsoft a good chance of increasing the price on Xbox 2 and be able to make software tolls easy to port the latest existing and the best PC-Games to the new platform. A great way to give more value to the Xbox online users.

Just a thought, just a thought.
All the best!
P-O Lenander

Subject: Reply to the athlon 64 conspiracy theory.

I have no inside information, I expect the Athlon 64 to be dropped based on competition with intels offerings.
Intel is planing to introduce dual channel DDR 800 MHz FSB workstations, so AMD would be insane to try to match the Intel processors by using an inferior bus speed when they have the technology for a superior bus.

The trick is simply to make a distinction between the Server, Workstation, and Desktop versions of the Opteron processor. Cache size is an obvious option, but the better options would be disabling EEC, and disabling the ability to use SMP.

Their is no chance that the server market will want a processor without ECC. AMD could also make an ECC version, Without SMP for the workstation.

I would expect the Non ECC version to have the faster performance, but that will be of no concern to corporate buyers.

The point is that its more about "marchitecture", and product placements. AMD needs to keep the old athlon as the new Duron. The worst scenario would be to have a cheep Opteron that could be overclocked giving the value buyers real power for free. By creating a higher minimum price for their 64bit processor, AMD will insure that their product in not commoditised (and sold at a loss), unless offcourse if Intel produces a superior product again.

So it makes perfect sense that AMD would want to make a very powerful workstation processor, it makes sense that they would ditch the Athlon64, I have been hoping it would happen for the last 6 months. The fact that you have provided so much extra information indicating the processor was ditched seems to confirm that AMD has made the correct strategic decision.

Regards
DanyK9

Subject: Athlon64 crippled Opteron?

Read and the article and the letters. In regard to David Crocker's comments, he is right on about:

Far better surely to introduce a crippled Opteron in which some of the HT links and half the cache are disabled (incidentally increasing the die yield, because some dies that have too many cache errors to work as full Opterons can be sold as the desktop version).

Anybody remember the 486SX versus the 486DX? From what I remember, wasn't 486SX exactly the same as the DX but the built-in math co-processor was disabled because of processing defects in the math co-processor that prevented it from working properly?

Keep up the good articles.
Greg Barber

Maybe it's actually not a conspiracy... Maybe they just *can't* (for what ever technical reason) make them go "fast enough".

All I know is that they'd better get an A64 out in the consumer space by the end of the year or they're toast...

Ron

Subject: Internet Explorer's dumbest bug ever revealed

You've probably already been sent this, but anyway...

Use that line of code and save the file as a .HTML file. Now try to preview it in Windows Explorer... On my Win2K SP3 machine (IE5.5 SP2) it pulled the whole explorer shell with it!

Fortunately Opera is not affected :)

Secure by Design? hrm, I think M$ still have a long way to go!

Dave Redfern

Subject: Motorola helps China grab RISC market market

Why do you presume the U.S. somehow perceives this deal in its own interest? Who in the U.S. are you pointing your finger? This is Synopsys and Motorola, not the Pentagon.

They're private companies, we are a free society, and they are doing business. Unfortunately this is what happens with a country regulated by laws. Its a democracy, maybe you don't understand. The concept here means the president, secretary of defense, or any politician cannot wave an authoritarian wand if and when they don't like what a business does.

Evidently you have no problem with self-righteous over simplification. Humble yourselves, tell it like it is. You know...use some of your disciplined journo sensitivity training.

Maybe you're right. Maybe this deal is foolish, self-serving, and/or potentially harmful to our shores. Point your finger only at the companies involved. It may not be as egotistically satisfying, but it is the truth...right?

Mike replies

If you guys -- I presume you're an American -- want to destroy your own home grown business and jobs by farming out -- and in some respects giving away your own technology to a Communist dictatorship, which is well armed and equipped with technology in some cases stolen from the USA, well so be it.

You should also perhaps examine the trade deficit between the USA and Communist China. Surely the rights of a country to survive should take precedence over the rights of individual shareholders?

Mike

Subject: Subject: Dell slammed for poor support

I was reading your article 4340 about the problems with Dell. I found my experiences to be quite similar.

I had considerable extra money for "Express Service" on-site service and other benefits which were suppose to exceed Dell's 24/7 award winning customer service.

Dell Tech Support, and I use the laughable terms of Tech and Support only because it is the title of the department, seems to consist of the rudest, aggravating and least knowledgeable "technicians" I have ever encountered.

In short, they wasted hours of my time with troubeshooting procedures which didn't have anything to do with the problem. After several days and less than helpful emails from Dell, I actually discovered the problem to be a loose connection on the mouse and USB cable.

In my first very email to Dell's "Tech Support", I expressed by personal belief, based on experience with similar problems, this was a degenarative hardware problem with the mouse.

They apparently do not even possess the compancy or necessary skills to pass a telephone call from their office to Customer Service without bungling the task. This happened no less than 4 times and of course necessatiated redialing and listening to at least 20 or more minutes of the most obnoxious music and frequently ear blasting announcements.

I am certain the decible level announcements exceed the maximums recommended by OSHA or any other safety group. The transfer of calls was never successfully made. I personally believe the bungling was a deliberate attempt to dissaude me from telling Customer Service about the level of service I was receiving.

To add to the problem, I have reason to suspect this problem was related to an earlier one which after much loss of time, data and productivity; Dell's technicians guided me through several system restores and finally had me reformat my hard drive and reload Windows XP Pro. Of course, this required several more days of loading programs, resetting defaults, restoring data, etc. Don't ask me about the alledged break points and backups which were suppose to prevent restoration problems.

Based on what I could glean from the less than useful technicians, is apparently they are not any type of computer professionials. Like your article indicated they are apparently following some sort of troubleshooting page or screen and are completely at a loss if they are required to deviate from it.

Apparently this is the solution many companies are using in lieu of properly trained staff. Whether it be Customer Service, Warranty Service, Technical Support, these companies are hiring some untrained or minimally trained, minimum wage jerk off street, giving them a book or computer screen and telling them not to bother their superiors with anything.

The are the sort of people Dell and perhaps other companies are covertly placing your equipment, data, business and such in the hands of. You might as well give the next person who happens past your office, your computer, business records, personnel files and everything else and hope he can take care of the problem.

If the technicians such as the several I conversed with were an example of the automotive industry, they would be having me change the oil and wiper fluid in order to troubleshoot a flat-tire. I think the Federal Trade Commission should file fraud charges on any company attempting to pass off inadequately trained and educated personal as techicians, personal assistants or any other title. Just like someone posing as a doctor, cop or priest.

Also the Federal Trade Commission should require these companies to honor on-site service calls within 24 business hours from the moment the customer requests assistance. If they want to run a problem by one of their engineers first, fine. However, either have the problem fixed or a properly equipped technician complete the repairs on-site within the 24 hour time frame.

So we have, my frustation, stress, lost data, lost productivity, more than twenty hours of personal time, a couple of hundred hours of anticipation of when my computer eat my data again, 5 hours of useless and irrating telephone tag and more than likely a lot more if this was related to the earlier problem. All of this over an optical mouse which, at best, cost Dell probably $5 to $7 or less, before net discounts.

I would sure like to see the FTC or some investigative agency, actually go undercover as a Dell tech. Based on my experience, I'd bet this is only the tip of the iceberg.

By the way, I took a look at some of Dell's so-called awards. I believe most are probably the mutual admiration society types given between corporations or media (which just happen to have vested financial interests). Also you might want to do a search engine, perhaps Google for the words "Dell Sucks". It seems like Dell is trying to run a close second to the old disgruntled AOL search terms. I'm certain most of those 38K plus results probably would like to give Dell additional awards.

Lyman 'Stan" Devin

Subject: HP spin doctors engineer storage smokescreen

Eva,

The EMA12000 is in fact a HSG80 based subsystem which is not the big brother of the EVA3000. The big brother which can support a maximum of 240 drives and is called the EVA 5000. The EVA3000 is a brand new product and is only within the last week or two been shipping. I don't see how you can honestly state a premiss that the company is pushing the VA over the EVA with such little time to make such a claim. HP has articulated it's road-map with great detail about 1 year ago. The documentation has been provided to any customer who has asked. I don't discount the possibility of some sales person reluctant to change their ways. I would however agree that the EVA 3000 is indeed a superior product to the VA line from hp classics storage group.

HP StorageWorks

Full disclosure: I'm a support engineer who supports the StorageWorks line of products and services.

Email address supplied

Eva needs to learn what an EMA12000 is. The EVA3000 is a 'lite' version of the EVA5000 not the EMA12000 which is the HSG80 controller based storage array.

The commentary is easier to spin if you get the details right.

PS: This isn't an official statement from HP so please don't post my name or email.

From an HP email address

Ummm, I don't mean to be picky but you might want to get your product facts correct in the story you worte yesterday.... although it did make me chuckle. ;)

The eva3000 is NOT a downsized EMA12000 storage array. Not even close.

The MA/EMA range is based on the HSG80 storage raid controller. It is a mid-range modular array, but it does not have any virtualisation capabilities.

The first-generation EVA storage array (now called the eva5000) is an enterprise class modular array with VersaStor technology. It's controller is known as the HSV110 (completely new design to it's predecessor).

The eva3000 is the baby brother of the eva5000 and is aimed at the mid-range market as the next step beyond the MA/EMA. It's is run by the HSV100 controller, but has all the same firmware and software capabilities of it's older brother.

Next time you want to put your own spin on the "Battle of the Spin Doctors", better double check your ammo first! ;)

From yet another HP email address

Subject: INQUIRER strongly promotes journalistic restraint, integrity

1. Please turn down the irony, it's breaking my windows (tee hee).

2. If you are the writer, who's the Ed. who keeps making parenthetical observations? Or is that too metaphysical a question to ask?

3. How the hell do you manage to write so much about so many worthwhile subjects, day in day out? Do you live in a benzedrine mine?

For the record, of course, I completely agree with ol' Twain's remarks. Keep kicking them - if they're lying on the gound it's only because they lack the backbone to stand up.

Tom

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