(OT) Welcome back the Newspaper boy

[homeowner]

Back in the late 90's it appeared that the daily newspaper was a dying thing. People could go online and read the news on multiple sites. This was true, and I found myself going in that direction. There were web sites that had the same text and photos as the paper. Some even had the cartoons. For awhile, I continued to get the newspaper as well as reading it online. Somewhere around 2003, I decided that it did not make sense to pay for the newspaper, which I was not reading very often anymore. I cancelled it. For a few years I would read the news online, and felt that was all I needed. However, in the last few years I've been noticing more and more that the news media websites have become so cluttered with useless garbage and ads that I was spending hours trying to get the latest news, and often left their sites feeling aggravated.

These sites are no longer like a newspaper. They are a massive clutter of trash, with bits and pieces of the news scattered in between. How many damn videos are needed to address a news story anyhow? And why all the flash content that takes quite awhile to load, occasionally causes my browser to crash, and becomes very annoying more often than now, when things are bouncing around on the page and popups and other useless jink, not to mention that the pages are at least half advertising, and clicking on something that appears to be news, is really ads. Then too, how many goddamn facebook and twitter icons do they really need on each page.

I've had it with the internet media sites. I just returned to getting my daily newspaper, and am very pleased. I can sit back and relax while reading the news, weather and sports, and even enjoy a few cartoons, without being bombarded with trash and other annoyances. Sure the paper costs a few bucks each week, but I have to take into consideration that electricity to run the computer costs money too, not to mention having to constantly upgrade the computer and install new browsers and software just to keep up with all this useless garbage they flood their sites with. After all, time is money too, and even if the upgrades dont cost anything, it takes time to keep installing the software and learning to use it. Yet, in the end, who needs it. A newspaper is pretty simple. It's a text news story, and some photos to back up the text. Then there's some advetising, and that's it. Whatever happened to the simple websites that looked like a newspaper?

Then again, it dont stop there. The entire internet has become a massive pile of garbage. Websites that used to offer content, now are filled with trash. The newsgroups are dying fast, which means soon, we will only have that repulsive facebook and twitter to say what we want to say, and only a huge mass of garbage for websites.

Considering what I've spent for computers, software, electricity to run them, and many many hours of my time, the cost of a newspaper is cheap in comparison. And better yet, I can sit back and read the newspaper without it poping up and telling me my browser is outdated and I need to install another version of adobe flash, or finding bad page rendering, where the text is on top of a photo, etc.....

Maybe the old ways were better.......

[Ed Pawlowski]

And you don't need a Wi-Fi connection in the bathroom to read it.

I considered stopping it after the last price increase, but after complaining they made me a deal. I've read the paper version all of my life and prefer it.

[Doug]

If you only use the computer to read news I might at least consider your opinion, otherwise not. I do several things on mine and while it does require upkeep on occasion and can be a pain (sounds like my wife too), I prefer to read my news on the net. I only get a Sunday newspaper because of my wife but she is starting to read on the net too.

[The Daring Dufas]

I tried lining the bottom of the birdcage with my roommate's laptop but....... O_o

TDD

[Stormin Mormon]

Thanks, one of my rare laughs.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

I tried lining the bottom of the birdcage with my roommate's laptop but....... O_o

TDD

[Harvey Specter]

+1,000,000

[Doug]

Heck, you just didn't use enough laptops .

[The Daring Dufas]

One must learn to filter out the male bovine droppings from the truth. O_o

TDD

[gpsman]

No ironymeter can withstand your assault. -----

- gpsman

[homeowner]

I use my computer for other stuff besides the news, but I'm only speaking of using the internet, not the computer itself.

I only use the internet to do email and occasionally look up a subject, for example, when I'm fixing my car and want to look up how to do the repair, or what type of fluid goes in the gear case, etc. Occasionally there may be another subject. Other than that, I read a few newsgroups, and bring up the local weather radar maps. That's it.

Back in the 90's I had fun on the internet. It's not fun anymore. It's downright aggravating most of the time, trying to find some useful content in a pile of rubbish. Even trying to do some research on a car repair or something like that is a huge struggle to find sites that actually have information, reather than those fake sites that try to lure a person there and are filled with nothing but ads, or want me to pay for the info, or register to read it. I refuse to pay, and refuse to register to read a damn article.

Af for social interaction with others, it seems that it's all about facebook these days, and that is nothing but a bunch of immature punks, while FB itself is monitoring everything we do and say. I wouldn't use FB even if they offerred to pay me for it.

As for upgrading, my oldest computer with Windows98 and my newest one with XP, both do everything else (non-internet) perfectly. I can watch movies, play music, edit photos, do accounting, type letters, and much more. It's just the internet stuff that keeps demanding upgrades.

Once usenet is dead, which wont be long, I'll probably cancel my internet service. I can get email and weather radar maps on my cellphone, and in the rare occasion that I need repair info for my car, I can go to a WIFI spot with my laptop. The internet overall is a dying thing except that horrid facebook.

[Doug]

I may not agree 100% but I see where you are coming from and admit you make valid points. Actually my daughter for other reasons does as you want... just uses her cell phone for internet tho she has a laptop and only uses it for internet when she comes to visit us. I find my cell phone a bit small and slow to use regularly for internet browsing even tho it's 4G and not that old. I guess for now, I'll stick with my internet service at home.

[Notat Home]

Where I live, the print media is terminal. The one local paper left is full of ads and has few news articles, and those are poorly written. A number of nationally known papers have moved to the internet and stopped their paper editions.

And you are correct in noting that the online newspapers are containing more and more ads that pop up over whatever you are reading, with an ad that is often targeted directly at you. Many papers now want money to access their online editions. One I read recently put a limit on how many articles you can read (10 per month)without subscribing. They usually do this with a cookie, so you can get around it by removing the cookie, but I'm sure they will be working on something that is more effective.

I read six or seven papers a day online, not that I buy what they are writing, but it is interesting to see how their biases affect their reporting of the same story. I couldn't afford to subscribe to all those papers in the print edition, and they couldn't deliver them to me as quickly as they can online, so there remain some advantages to using the internet to keep up on the news.

The internet is changing, and is not the free ride we have been used to. My feeling is that their selling ads is a way for them to stay in business, and my having to work around those ads is a small price for me to pay to get my news. One thing that irks me is that the ads change so frequently; if I find a page with an article that I like and an ad that interests me, if I read the article to the end (often on second and third pages), then go back to the original page to read the ad, it will no longer be there, having been replaced by another.

I thought usenet would die when all the ISPs stopped offering it, but it has managed to survive as I think the internet does not often offer a similar service. But I think also that the only people using usenet are old-timers who are hanging on. Younger people do not even know it is there. None of my kids, all adults now, knows about usenet.

[Bill]

Turn off or disable some or all of the "add-on's" in the browser (like flash). Web sites load a LOT faster!

[Frank]

Maybe an iPad is more suitable. When the bird poops on it, it will play an iTune.

[The Daring Dufas]

Perhaps it could be programed to "Tweet" when that occurs? There must be an app for that? ^_^

TDD

[Frank]

Damn it! Now you got me started:

[gonlah]

"Now get the hell off of my lawn!"

[homeowner]

I do agree it's hard to read those small screens on cellphones. But for a weather radar map, they are ok. And for email, as long as the email is text only, they work fine. I cant read most other websites on a small screen though.

Most young people dont even use email anymore. Everything goes on Facebook. That thought scares me. Like I want everyone to know that I woke up with a stomach ache, or my wife had her menstral cycle today. Then again, most of what these kids post on there is meaningless anyhow. I was recently in a bar, and the crowd was mostly 21 to 30. All night they sat there testing each other and taking photos of each other and posting them on FB. WTF???? Why cant they just talk to each other in the bar? I did not stay long......

I dont understand this young generation, and in many ways, I dont want to. I still remember the early days of the internet, when people went to geocities and made a simple website to share about themselves or their business or hobby. I enjoyed that. Today there is no such thing, just the commercial sites and FB. It's sad what the internet has become!

[homeowner]

I agree that usenet is mostly older people. But at least 90% of the groups are dead. That's the reason that the surviving groups, such as alt.home.repair have more off topic posts, such as this one, because the appropriate groups are dead. I have asked young people if they use "newsgroups" or "usenet". You're right, none of them know what that means..... But they sure try to get people like me to join their (BARF) Facebook!!!! No Thanks!

[The Daring Dufas]

I saw the dangers to privacy, opportunity for fraud and the fact that the social websites like Facebook would become data mines for government and corporations wishing to take advantage of people willingly giving out information on every aspect of their lives. It's astounding to me that people put their whole lives online oblivious to the hazards. O_o

TDD