When I joined this board around the the turn of the last century, it was rather small and comfy. There were the usual cliques as there are everywere in life, and newbies like me were outsiders. We were scrutinized and evaluated and judged for worthiness. I failed on all accounts, which I considered normal for someone like me, and even a compliment. If you are me, you get used to that stuff. Net traffic on this site was pretty good, but not great.
That was then. This is now. The board has exploded and traffic is huge. When lots of people access a site, the one who owns the site pays a fee for that. More people=more ISP fees. Lots of more people=lots of more ISP fees. Trust me. I know how this stuff works. It's called something like "loads of bandaids" or "loads of band width" or something like that.
On the other hand, a site which uses lots of bandaids and has lots of visits attracts lots of advertisers. Advertisers like to advertise where the action is happening.
So in order to pay for all the expenses of keeping this site active, and given the volume of the action on this site, our Dear Simon(tm) elected to use advertisers to help "defray" the cost of operating his operation and keep us all participating without charging us for that privilege.
In the Internet world there are what are known as "rotating ads." These are ads that rotate so quickly that you cannot click on them before they are replaced by another "rotating" ad. I tried to click on an ad which offered a primer on serial killing (which I really wanted to purchase) and it was quickly replaced by another ad before I could make my click. I got a coupon for "Wheaties" instead. Damn.
This is how Simon helped capture some of his orginal investment and how it helps him maintain this site, and ones should not criticize him for that unless they are willing to write checks to help pay for us to play. It is just the way the web world works.
For technophiles: I'm a programmer. I know how this stuff works. This site is a .NET site. That means DOT Net. You can know this because the file extensions are .ashx which for common people means "x rated asp for homosexuals." (heh, heh) Now, if that is not clear enough, in New York City, DOT Net programmers make an average of $135,000 per year while peons who program in .asp make an average of $80,000 per year. What does that tell you? It tells you that nearly NO one likes DOT Net, that's what! Otherwise, the market would be flooded with DOT Net people and the salaries would be lower than they are. Ninety or so percent of data aware websites that use Microsoft technology are still using the old puny .asp stuff, and most of the desktop applications are still using the old puny Visual Basic.
(I'm still trying to figure out where that slash goes: is it in the left bracket like </ or is it in the right bracket like />. I hate that part.) As I said, I am a programmer. And what is that shit where you have to put "eyeglasses" in code? You guys know what I mean: it's something like "<%".
But I digress. Simon has kept his site alive because he has generated traffic and traffic generates companies that want to pay to be there. Therefore, Simon pays some or most of his bills to keep we idiots happy.
I salute you sir, and to show you my respect, I will give you some super-secret source code. (Don't reveal this to anyone). Open up MS Word and on the first line type in this:
=rand(200,99) [enter]
Don't worry. It won't do any damage, but you will be surprised at what you see displayed!
Farkel