Yet Another Paywall
Damn it all! I just noticed yesterday that my favorite blogger of all, Radley Balko, is now behind a paywall. I recently announced here that he was now blogging via the Washington Post. I was in seventh heaven. Then the other day I couldn't get to any of the links he posted. Took me a few tries to realize there was a message saying I'd used up my free views and had to pay to continue.
I don't know how many free views I'm supposed to get, or when I can start over again. Balko, or not, I'm not going to pay $14.95 for yet another online subscription. Not unless I cancel all my other ones.
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Speaking of digital subscriptions, I'd advise staying away from the San Diego Union- Tribune. Some of you might recall I bit the bullet and subscribed to it so I could read another one of my favorite writer's (Steve Greenhut) stuff. I made the mistake of thinking the $3.95 was the full cost when it was just an introductory rate. The regular rate is $13.95- more than I was willing to pay.Nothing but trouble with their site. The main thing was they wouldn't let me read but one or two articles despite the upper corner of the page saying I was logged in. It kept sending me to the Subscribe/ Login page. I'd try to log in again and it said I was already logged in!
I e-mailed them once and they told me to keep trying. It didn't work so after another e-mail or two I called them on the phone asking them to cancel my subscription. The gal said she cancelled it yet a week or so later I see my credit card billed again.
I go back and forth with e-mails again. One reply told me they really didn't want to lose me and to try a certain login. I didn't even have to try that login. All of the sudden I could access all the stories... for about six days. Now I'm getting sent to the Subscribe page again.
I finally sent another e-mail once again explaining the whole situation, saying enough is enough. Please cancel my account. I never received a reply. I'm waiting to see if I get charged again.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:48 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I've been having problems with the Sac Bee sending me back to the sign in over and over. Don't like having t pay either. Ugh.
Remember when the internet used to be fun?
Even the "free" sites are so cluttered with ads that you can hardly navigate through them
Hey, you guys should have seen Steve Lewis, intrepid inventor entrepreneur, confront the Google Plex Monster last week. While Sparky and I wait for our Heartlands Lifeline Inter-Tribal Lottery Project to have its complex business plan finished for Bear River and Oglala Lakota tribes to move forward, another one of my old ideas surfaced in real time in December with lot's of hoopla and I was ticked off because idiot me have given up on trying to develop my ideas and had them open source on my website. For anyone with a search engine to find: Google found it. Computer goggles--2011 my idea combining another computer keyboard concept with mouse-less hidden screen file search function data base organizer that would be faster than any other existing keyboard system. Oh, I don't know if Google did find my computer goggles concept or not but I took my invention pages off my website. Because as soon as I read about Google Glass and poor wretch beautiful CEO Marissa Mayer having to come up with something to offset Google, I invented three wearable tech ideas within 24 hours. And one is a doozy. Will put Google Glass in the past. So I try to contact Google..
You try it. Try to reach a live human being at Google. Or Yahoo. I tried. I even joined Google "partners", ha-ha, in December. No response. No response to Google or Yahoo blogs. They are Fortress Corporations and you, are only their Prey as they seduce the world with NEW Gadgetry inventors like me invent only when I did it, my computer goggles, it was a novelty item, like virtual reality headgear, not something you want to burden your face with every day, like glasses, which I have to wear but given a choice would never promote anyone who didn't have to wear them wearing them.
My friends in the Bay Area where I stayed warned me about Google which they don't like at all, an Octupus sending tentacles into S.F and the Bay Area to drive out locals with their high salaries boosting rents and housing prices. But I had to see for myself, see if the Google ads for their X-labs "welcoming your ideas.." was b.s. or not. And it is.
What Google Plex really is a Brain Farm. Brain cows, 20 to 30 year old techies straight out of colleges are provided with an environment that looks and feels just like a college campus. And it's called a campus. Except there's Security unlike most campuses. To keep the Brain Cows from contacting the Real World. It's fairly easy to do because Techies were never known for their huge social consciousness in the first place. Anyway, unknown OLDER elites run their Brain Farm to produce Ideas, like mine, to woo the public with Gagetry, OOOOOhhh..New Gadgets...So yours truly went up to the Dragon's lair. And saw the Security so I went around to a side parking lot and side door of a building and waited for someone to come out. Your geezer looking just like the Techies with my backpack and tennies except gray hair walked right into the building and down the halls looking for anyone older than 30 in charge. Not to find any. Hit the cafeteria at lunch time and should have sat down immediately but wasn't swift enough and continued down the halls where Security found me and escorted me to the front where more of them waited. I held them at bay for about 20 minutes with my Righteous Indignation as an Inventor coming 250 Miles to talk to Google about my great idea and had filled the forms and no response from Google, what was a poor inventor to do but come to Google like I did?????? Security was up to five officials by the time I decided I couldn't get past them so I just left the building my self. And came away KNOWING I don't want to deal with Google at all.
It's independent for me and I have found my OLDER techie to help me develop a whooper of a new wearable tech idea. Biomystic Systems are us. Get in on the ground floor of a new tech company that going to take on the biggies and do things right.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, all AD driven money machines. If we let AD people run things, they run things into the ground right away trying to milk profits out of every single venue they can, like ADs every time you search for something now or look at a news article. It's sickening that we have to put up with ADS everywhere you turn now.
Our Biomystic Systems will be developing real AD removing software on our computer lines that actually do the job of screening out the Advertising World threatening to consume your freedom to seek information without being harassed by ADs during your computer internet experience.
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