False Advertising on Mudcat

Subject: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 05:07 PM

Has anyone actually been able to get free music from the little boxes on the left side of the Mudcat Home Page? I keep getting all of these wonderful (lol) offers but there doesn't seem to be any way that I can listen to music. Get rid of these thieves.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Wesley S
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 05:19 PM

Tanstaafl, my friend

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 05:37 PM

Falsies Being Advertised, on Mudcat???

~S~

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Peace
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 05:40 PM

I second Wesley's remark. The site's free. Ain't that enough?

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Max
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 05:45 PM

Well, those little annoying ads provide us with about 2/3rds our monthly expenses, so its kind of important that they stay.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Peace
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 05:48 PM

The ads don't annoy me, Max.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Allan C.
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 07:31 PM

Gawd! I'm just now trying to remember the last time I was ever on the Mudcat homepage! The homepage for my computer is the Forum and so I'm sure I haven't been to the Mudcat homepage for nearly a year. Free music? Heck, mebbe I'll go have a looksee. Perhaps I'll have better luck than our (~sigh~) anonymous GUEST.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 07:57 PM

LOL at Allan.......Same here old friend. I hadn't seen that page in a coon's age (we ran a thread a few years back determining the age of a raccoon btw) and I had to go look too.......actually took me a minute to think how to get there (:<))

Spaw

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 07:57 PM

"Tanstaafl" - nonsense. The Mudcat is very much a free lunch. And breakfast, tea and supper.

I hardly ever go to the Mudcat Home Page, and I doubt if many of us do - but don't tell those nice people who advertise there...

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST,Daily Visitor
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 08:56 PM

Enter www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm into the address line, then "drag" the address to your "Links" (usually on the extreme right of the address line). When you release it there it is stored as "The Mudcat Discussion Forum". Thereafter you can click on that link to bypass the home page. This is a tip from the least computer literate Mudcat fan.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Peace
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 09:10 PM

Next to me s/he means.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 09:28 PM

The ads aren't annoying. It's the fact that they are deceptive that is annoying. Has anyone been able to get some free music from them? Give it a try and find out. I would assume that Mudcat gets some money each time one of us clicks into these things. The more people who try it the more money that comes in...presumably.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 10:11 PM

Click, shmick. When I answer "y" to "Mudcat?", my Emacs does (w3m-browse-url "www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm"). Now, if I could just pretend it was a newsgroup --

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Affection and attention, how allied! What thin partitions love from grace divide! :||

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: wysiwyg
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 11:08 PM

GUEST, thanks for the heads-up about the ads. 'Nuff said?

~Susan

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Pauline L
Date: 12 Jan 06 - 11:41 PM

I think false advertising is a small price to pay for getting 2/3 of the funds needed to keep Mudcat going. Thank you, Max.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: open mike
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 12:07 AM

are the ads similar to the ones that appear below this box?
if so, i am glad they help keep this cat a-float..if they
did not it would be ALL up to us...and I hope we all find a
way to toss a little fish food into the fish bowl occasionally!
better yet, regularly..

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: alanabit
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 02:21 AM

It is a bit like complaining that someone gave you the wrong colour cup at the soup kitchen. Mudcat comes pretty cheap anyway!

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 02:55 AM

Tanstaafl

I'm glad you understood it McGrath. Without your further discussion, using real English words, it was Greek to me.


DC

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 03:21 AM

Some people just need to complain. Pay no attention.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: MMario
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 08:10 AM

The ad may be *on* Mudcat, but the advertizing is *by* another site, thorough another service. Mudcat has no obligation to proof or verify anyone elses advertizing.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 09:54 AM

Tanstaafl

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Heinlein's "Stranger In a Strange Land"

Linn (who ('nuther author) knows where her towel is at)

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: MMario
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 09:56 AM

Linn - don't you mean 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' ?

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Ferrara
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 10:05 AM

Why do I remember "Tanstaafl" in connection with someone riding a bicycle with huge balloon-like tires? Don't think it was Heinlein, either, although I've read both the above books.

And, Max, I agree. Congratulations for doing what you need to do, i'ts not a big thing and there is such a thing as carrying moral purity too far. Those ads are deceptive. I clicked on one once .... but not twice.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 10:15 AM

I think most responsible adults have come to the realization by now that internet ads are mostly ISP-capturing or email-capturing devices for snaring potential customers-- not customers for the products advertised, but e-commerce customers who will purchase the captured "market" data. This practice relies on the research-proven fact that there are plenty of irresponsible, immature "adults" who can't resist the word FREE.

So I do appreciate the initial poster's heads-up that Mudcat has its share of these "ads." But it still has far less than I encounter everywhere else I roam.

~Susan

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Peace
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 09:23 PM

Free Lunch
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Despite the claims of rabid science fiction fans, this bit of folk wisdom has been with us since the late 1940s. And the term free lunch is even older.

The term free lunch first appeared in print on 23 November 1854, in Wide West published in San Francisco. It is a reference to the practice of saloons giving free meals to attract clientele. Of course the savings is illusory as the price of the drinks subsidizes the food.

"The exact phrase, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is also first used in the city by the bay in the 1 June 1949 edition of the San Francisco News (although this is claimed to be a reprint of a 1938 editorial so it may be even older, but the original has not been found).

The science fiction fans come into the picture in 1966 with the publication of Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He did much to popularize the phrase, but as we have seen did not coin it. Some claim that he coined the acronym TANSTAAFL. But alas for those science fiction fans, even this is not true. Tanstaafl is found as far back as October 1949, only a few months after the earliest appearance of the phrase.

(Source: ADS-L, Oxford English Dictionary)"

That is from

www.wordorigins.org/wordorf.htm

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: bobad
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 09:29 PM

Da tings one can lurn round here.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 09:32 PM

Deffinately FALSE ADVERTISING!!!

The DT contains MORE than 9,000 free.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 09:36 PM

Just clicked on one of the ads for the first time for the fun of it. Was quite surprised it was called music room which appears to have no connection to The Music Room.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: kendall
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 10:57 PM

The Mudcat IS my homepage.

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: snarky
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 11:44 PM

...this yahoo wants to find something in the advertising! just click on it and we get money, you bozo!

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 13 Jan 06 - 11:56 PM

Yahoo, or Bozo? Make up your mind! [insert stupid little winking smiley face thing here] (Guess it depends on which bus you're on...)

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: False Advertising on Mudcat
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 14 Jan 06 - 07:51 AM

Can one of the clones please clarify what actually happens when we click on an ad, with regard to benefits for Mudcat? Does it mean that the site gets some actual per-click revenue, or what exactly?

Like several of the others above, I have the forum bookmarked so I always bypass the home page, but if I can help out the Cat in some tangible way by following these links, I certainly will. But I'd be glad to have some idea what actually happens when I click, apart from acquiring yet another cookie.