free stuff (a story of)

[wherorangi]

is a story about this here: http://www.salon.com/2016/07/04/my_little_free_library_war_how_our_suburban_front_yard_lending_box_made_me_hate_books_and_fear_my_neighbors/#comments

 

it helps to explain to me why I seem to have lots of free stuff in my Inventory. Stuff I dont have any real need or use for (:

ps

the story is told by a curmudgeon. In the way that only a true forreal curmudgeon can tell a story. About hope destroyed and darkness descended, and the remorseless struggle against such by a self-referentialled enlightened gentleman, humbled on the altar of zero as he himself descends into darkness

is a fun read tho (:

altho it does as well touch on the deeper aspects of human pyschological, and maybe even pathological, tendencies in some, when contemplating and exercising the price of zero for stuff

[Phil Deakins]

I would have read that article except for one thing. It's a horrible web page, full of ads, pictures, etc. That doesn't sound so bad but the thing that put me off completely is the video that automatically ran. I hate those.

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I hate those.

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jejejeje (:

says the resident curmudgeon q: (:

[Pamela Galli]

For the last 4 weeks, I suddenly find it almost impossible to walk due to extreme lag, it literally happened overnight and is no better despite changing graphics to low, checking for virus and malware, strange programmes running etc.

I dont however have low FPS, even in the very laggiest clubs its between 12 and 25, and usually much higher.  My broadband speed is higher than its ever been due to a house move, the Pc is only just over a year old and ran SL superbly till the last month. On checking statistics the Ping Sim is very unstable, going from 100 to the thousands briefly, I am totally clueless as to how to find the sudden cause of this  , any suggestions would be very gratefully received.

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

I would if I could see a reader view icon. Maybe the totally unwanted video of the Rolling Stones, that stays put regardless of scrolling, is covering it. What a bl--dy ridiculously annoying page. I wonder what idiot designed it. News pages are a lot like that - full of ads, ads and unrelated videos that are running, and unwanted other rubbish. And, of course, the pages dance while all the unwanted stuff downloads and gets displayed. It's why I don't look at them. If I want news, I use the BBC site, and I don't follow links off the site if I can help it.

[Pamela Galli]

IE may not have Reader View, which strips out all the junk.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 It's a horrible web page, full of ads, pictures, etc.

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Salon.com is about 8/10 on the Clickbait scale - fairly terrible, but I end up there somewhat frequently. I just tried to load it up in IE11 and it crashed, haha. I didn't see the same video nonsense (though like you, I roll unfiltered), but it probably came from the manymanymany Google adspots on that page. This is journalism now.

To be fair it was the first time I'd loaded up IE on this PC, I think ever (it's four years old).

I'd be tempted to just read it from the source myself (it's fairly easily parsed), it's a good account of why Free != Good, basically because people don't value things presented as being 'given away', won't participate further in the ecosystem. The author bemoans digital content (Kindle etc) but then also complains about running out of physical materials (books) - I've been giving away free digital content for years and I'm yet to run out of 1's and 0's.

Old economics be old.

[Phil Deakins]

I'm using Firefox. But it's ok. I have no real desire to encourage such stupidity by actually reading the page.

[Rufferta]

I enjoyed the article - it was so true.

 

Probably why I have too much inventory.

[wherorangi]

yes is interesting how it works sometimes

a link in the article points to another work that explores how we can sometimes treat the value of free in terms of cost to us, in a way that would not be justifiable in the normal price/value equation. Meaning that we can sometimes be prepared to pay a higher cost for free than we would for something that has a money price, even when that price is low and affordable to us

like as the author says: Ending up late for work bc we spent 45 minutes queuing for a free donut

a SL example

i have queued for about 26 hours altogether now on a 4/27 chance every 1 hour, to get these things for free (: So far I got 2 of them. At a cost of 13 hrs about each so far

they only cost 200L to buy. If I went to LR and worked for the money then would have got each in 8 hours about pretty easy (less even if I worked hard). Instead I spend an extra 5 hrs on each so far, bc free