Why must the internet make you JOIN everythng?

[LordMudd]

A TRU employee once ask me for my phone number. I asked her why. She said it was a survey to determine where they need to put more stores. I said "You need to worry about fixing the stores you have."

Now when they ask for my number, I tell them it is unlisted.


CCC.

[huedell]

I've been on the internet since before the beginning of the WWW (back in the Fetch and Gopher days). At the beginning of the WWW people made websites for the love of it. Cars, medicine, whatever; the website was there as a public service or a place for like-minded folks to meet.

Certainly these days the amount of traffic generated can elicit the need for adverts to counterbalance the costs of running a website, but to sell your viewers (and their browsing habits/lifestyles/innermost secrets) to a marketing company... that's entirely something else.

I was there at the start, before this was an issue, and I saw this creeping in and took countermeasures against it (a natural progression, not some sudden urge to "hide" myself). I'm always staggered by the (understandable) attitude from newbies that this is the "price" of being on the internet. It isn't, unless you're willing to submit to the rules set out by the insidious marketeers. They didn't make the internet, but they did corrupt it.

Sadly my children feel no need to cloak themselves and are entirely open books to the internet. God help 'em.

And.... THAT is why I don't recycle!



Seriously though, I'm sure what you're saying is dead-on. But, hey, it's just easier for me to submit.

Now, that's sad!