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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Registration Still Required |
| 2004-08-11 |
| At last someone is addressing my pet hate. Pardon me while I engage in an Andy Rooney-esque rant, but I'm deeply unhappy. Over a year ago, I noted the growing tendency of newspaper websites to require registration, and offered some suggestions on how they might avoid irritating their readers, along with a warning: "Make it easy: Don't present people with long lists of questions. If you do, they'll just lie anyway. (Take a look at those lists of information you collect: how many people have given their email as 'nobody@biteme.com', and do you have an implausibly large number of 97-year-old black women living in Alaska as readers? I'll bet you do.) People don't mind a little of this kind of thing -- they appreciate that you're giving your product away. But they do mind when it goes beyond 'a little' -- and their idea of "a little" is 'really, only a little.'" The newspaper world, unaccountably, didn't follow my advice, and now you can count me among the irritated. And I'm not alone, judging by what Adam Penenberg writes in Wired News: "I have a confession. I'm not always who or what I appear to be. Depending on my mood, I'm a 92-year-old spinster from Topeka whose hobbies include snowboarding, macraméé and cryptology; the CEO of a successful high- tech firm in Bumblebutt, New York, whose company has a market capitalization of four cents; or an Alaskan mango grower. What magazines do I read? Soldier of Fortune, Modern Bride, Granta and High Times. Date of birth? Dec. 7, 1941. July 4, 1976. Jan. 1, 1901. My name? Jed Clampett, Mustang Sally or Freddy Fudbuster. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 www.bugmenot.com is your friend. The thing is: 90 pc of registration info is probably bogus. But 10pc is valid. And they can find it out |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2004-08-11 15:56 |