I fail to believe that we have a thread complaining about the completely innoffensive and shy little adbot. Good God, just scroll past the darn thing if you don't like it. It's not very intrusive-- I couldn't even tell you what's being advertised, though now I'm gonna go look. It's not popping up or planting obscene photos in my email. Let the darn thing stay, I say.

As to various ideologies, this is an internet discussion board. People's political ideology, however inarticulately expressed and unsupported by fact, is gonna pop up in their posts. Big deal. You can point out when you feel/know they're wrong, but don't be surprised when they get angry. Politics are too often a matter of faith, not fact. If I mention global warming, the superiority of steel frames, why Bush is a jerk, how schraeder is better than presta, abortion, why friction shifting is better than indexed, why Clinton should be in jail, or claim one component is better than another, I'm probably gonna have some one disagree (venhemently) with me. I'll survive somehow.

Have we ever had a pres that into cycling? What a boast that would be.

Jimmy Carter rides a custom Rivendell road bike.

Ad-Bot for President!

Chris, why don't you write in Ad-Bot when you go vote for your PM?
:D

Koff

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Joe, if I donate can you still keep the ads up? I tend to use them on occation, or at least they remind me of something that I was looking for. You should give the option of keeping them to help out the forums even more. Just a thought.

Jeff

I think Joe already does this from what he said in this thread
http://64.191.20.129/showthread.php?t=38732 Just scroll down to the bottom of the first page. :)

I have to agree $25.00 is not that much. But I donated $50.00 and I should be a double Red Star member ;)
Whats with that comment about the pig are you picking on me again. :D :lol:

Dosvadanya!
 

I too have joined the Red Brigade, and the impetus to do so I found in this very thread.

I notice that randya has stopped responding. I hope it doesn't mean that he's decided to stop reading and/or posting all together, because I enjoy his enthusiasm if not his politics. His initial post was ill-considered but I never got the impression from previous posts that he's a spoiled brat. I hope I'm not wrong.

I'm not gone, I'm just disgusted at how easily most members of our society (and this web page) passively accept the constant barrage of tens / hundreds / thousands of advertisements that they are subjected to on a daily basis. I don't care how 'benign' or 'well designed' the ads themselves are. I don't think the founding fathers had 'the freedom to constantly barrage the populace with stupid inane ads they really aren't interested in' in mind when the authored the constitution and later the bill of rights, nor do I think the founding fathers would have been very amused by the granting of the rights of citizens to corporations, nor by the granting of first amendment protections to corporations for the right to falsely advertise most any stupid product they so desire, first and foremost (but certainly not alone) the almighty motor vehicle...

Actually, I'm subjected to virtually no advertisements at all these days. The ad-bot hardly constitutes tens of advertisements. I haven't sat through a television commercial in years, I get very little junk-mail in my letterbox courtesy of a little sign (and those that do arrive generally end up in the rubbish bin before I even look at them). It's amazing just how little advertising gets through if one simply chooses to ignore it.

Well, Queensland is not in the United States of America now, is it?

No, but by all accounts, it's much worse (according to the tourists we get from America). Face it, nobody forces you to sit through advertising, it's a choice we all make. If you don't like television advertising, don't watch. If you don't like the ad-bot here, ignore it. If people shove junk mail in your letter box, throw it away. If people spam your e-mail, block them (or get a Yahoo account that filters out 95% of it). If people call you at home, get an answering machine to screen your calls, or do what I do and simply don't bother answering calls that come at intrusive times.

Advertising is like insults, it's up to us how seriously we take it, and this is the sole determinant of how intrusive it becomes.

I for one agree with you on your point about granting corporations the rights of citizens... this is a serious subject and how we as a nation address it will shape our lives in the coming century.

I don't, however, see how that applies to this web site. No one is forcing your or I to come to this web site. The operator is providing a service, and it sounds like it has been at considerable expense to himself over the years. He finally decided to try and make it pay for itself. But, even now he is not forcing you to look at the ads... he has provided a way for you contribute a small sum and avoid the ads all together. I haven't been that active in this site, but maybe if more of us would have contributed to it's operation before the ad's came along, he wouldn't have had to resort to such a measure. If anything, we should blame ourselves for taking from the community but not giving back.

What he said! :D

If you can come up with an alternative way of funding this site, let me know.

BTW, thanks for bringing up this topic, I have taken in more then $200 in donations over the last week, and plan on buying some ad spots on and offline to promote the forums. :)

Randya is worst then ad-bot. Are'nt you advertising you opinion. Well we either read it or forget about it just like advertisements. They both make the world go around. I would much rather talk about fixing my headset that i'm shocked that i did .

Joe,

Advertising is downright cheap in American Randonneur. You can buy a full page ad for $200 and the magazine's 8000 or so readers are all randonneurs- that is as hard core as a cyclist can get.
http://www.rusa.org/

Another print publication with reasonable advertising prices is Adventure Cycling. Although not nearly as cheap as RUSA.
http://www.adventurecyclist.org/

oops, I was wrong. A full page is $125. A half page is $85 and a quarter page is $65.

All right! :D

Wow, thanks Bob! I'll check that out.

Advertising is not something that you can just shut off or ignore, even if you chose to ignore the message in the ad, advertising is still everywhere. In addition to being on TV and radio; in newspapers and magazines; in your mailbox and on the internet; and on your phone line; it is also on billboards on busses, trains and buildings, both public and private; on T-shirts, caps and other clothing, etc., etc.

I view advertising as a serious and growing form of pollution, and like most pollution it is harmful - in the case of advertising, to the aural, visual and the mental environment - and we as a society should be working to either significantly reduce or eliminate the amount of advertising pollution we allow ourselves and our environment to be subject to.

Our constitution does not give corporations the right to freely pollute the physical environment we live in - for example the air we breathe or the water we drink - nor does it give corportations the right to freely pollute our aural, visual and mental environment with advertisements.

Our society has up until now tolerated the steady creeping takeover of our public spaces with advertising pollution, in much the same way that it has tolerated and allowed motorists to take over our public spaces with their dirty, noisy and dangerous vehicles. These social changes have crept up on us slowly and unquestioned, but it is never too late to question either of these practices, or to change them. Just because most of us have no experience with alternatives, having grown up and lived immersed in western culture for most or all of our lives, all too familiar with the constant hegemony of both advertising and motor vehicles, we don't have to accept the status quo, much less participate in it's propogation or defense. Why can't we imagine a different, more humanistic society, without the constant barrage of advertising, and not based on corporate avarice, and work for change to make it happen?

Simple solution since you don't like. Use an ad blocker. My ISP provides one at their firewall that stops all ads I mark as ads. Go find one, as there are many.

I agree with you to a point. But in reality Joe has to get money, this works and it is your choice to be here or not. I hate ads too but completely understand why he has to do it. Thats his right to make money (break even) on something he works so hard to provide. I know some succesful sites that go full on pay. At least this way, people who don't pay, still get to have fun on his site.

I do feel bad for you guys though. Everytime I go to the states I am disgusted with adverts. While we have some, we definately keep our wall space to ourselves :)