adrianmn

It's not impossible to disagree.

Since they post it as absolutism it means this should work on all cases not just this one. There are a gazillion wrong answers on internet and no one bothers to fix them and give the right answer.

Another way to disprove it is not the best way. Now that they told you this "secret" next time you have a question will you post a wrong answer or find the right place and try to formulate the question as best as you can?

Actually the correct analogy to ad blockers would be downloading a free trial/demo and cracking it for own use without paying for it - would you consider that piracy?

Completely agree with you on the points about the risk of brainwashing and impulse buying and people not realising how powerful and dangerous ads can be.

I would not go that far and claim all ads are brainwashing and manipulative. Going this route it means all communication is manipulative as there is an intention behind every word.

TV and Web are different channels. I agree that the right analogy is blocking with a cardboard when ads are in show.

Is it piracy when crackers remove part of the software that secures it as that annoys people and they only want to use the functionality?

You say you never clicked an ad. If you are visiting sites relevant to your industry you should actually check out the advertisers to keep an eye with what is happening in your industry(new tools, new conferences, new competition...).

Most of the big sites have CPM deals so they get paid for every visitor no matter of clicks or not.

And yes I hate intrusive ads as well and I don't watch TV channels with ads(I mostly watch football and HBO about 1-3 times a week).

The TV ad example is a false analogy. If the page has ads that you don't want to see you can close it(no one forces you to watch it) or go for the toilet break.

I agree that people hate ads and people also hate paying for things that can get for free(piracy).

You guys are missing my point of ad blockers being borderline piracy and mainly try to justify your reason for using them.

That is a publisher and advertiser problem as they did not create an ad relevant and/or engaging enough.

With retargeting ads this days it becomes easier to show relevant and targeted ads.

Actually most HN-ers are leaving huge money on the table right now for not using the highest ROI ad channel - retargeting.

Do you see how that is in perfect connection with the reason people pirate stuff?

Anti-piracy main reasoning is that if it's too expensive(too many ads in your case) just don't buy it. The 2nd main reason is lack of availability(in ad blocker case - lack of sites with less ads that give you same content).

As someone that has been involved in online publishing for over 10 years I have a strong opinion about ad blockers.

In my opinion using ad blockers is borderline piracy. Refusing the content creator his revenue by blocking his ads is little different than downloading music, books... without rewarding the creator. On top of that most of the quality content this days is on websites that have decent ads.

I am not trying to start a dispute if piracy is good or bad just wanted to express an opinion on ad blockers that many seem to miss.

www.chessclub.com and www.playchess.com have the best and strongest player pools. They also have educational materials and coaches if that is what you are after. Only ChessClub has a Mac client.

Or you could have built a list of buyers and survey them on what else they want to learn and have an instant market for your 2nd book since they already like your writing.

I was like this many years ago and managed to fix it.

I am strongly considering developing an online course about this and to get some more hands on experience I am happy to help few people for free. If you would like my help please email me your Skype details. You can find my email in my profile.

I will give you a different angle. Do you want to develop it for fun/fame/experience or for profit? If the former you should do it.

You should check out Alfred for quickly launching apps and many other useful things. Probably the most used app by many mac users.

I won't deal with a company that uses small terms pricing. It was easy for me to spot the displayed prices are for 3 months only but I stil find it deceiving.

Thanks for the recommendation. I did not found them when lurking the webhosting forums but they also got recommended to me on another forum so they are now my top choice with rackspace uk being the 2nd.

Nice post. I suggest you add a top posts on your sidebar as it will make it much easier to make a rss subscribe decision for your first time visitors.

If you want to build a business and not side projects you need business development and marketing.

There is a bias(extremely wrong in my opinion) in HN against this and that product is everything but real world business doesn't work like that. Unless you have a viral product(which still needs marketing to reach critical mass) it is marketing that will make or brake it.

Also .io and other extensions might be trendy and fun to use but real businesses use .com . If you target end users they will hardly remember the tld of your website. How many services that end up in .io or other similar ones do you use?

Generalization is what makes you dumb.

I am thinking along the same lines.

If OP reads this I would like to challenge him to count how many ad supported sites or apps compared to paid he uses and from the free ones how many would he stil use if they all become paid.

Also this comes from someone that has not run an ad based business. I wonder what happens if paid app model doesn't work out and they pivot again. Suddenly free becomes the greatest model ???

Things are never white and black when it comes to internet business, every business model has it's own place. Let's not forget that the no.1 web company uses ads for monetization. Would people pay to have google ads free? Do you think they feel taken advantage off because of the ads?

I recently finished their ruby foundations and build a basic app with rails and they are both excellent.

Very well structured and a pleasant way to learn.

They could add more exercises though.

Thanks. You have no contact options listed and I don't like using whois contact data. I have my contact details in my profile if you would like to reach me.

Will do but it doesn't seem to be heading that way :)

Are you also learning Rails?

I am refering to the screencasts - buying them from a publisher company as DVD's for half price or directly from the author for full price

Following another user advice in the thread I started learning using the updated django book and I must say is great so far( I am at chapter 3). I have previosuly looked over the rails book and this is better for a newcomer.

https://github.com/mariuz/django-book

Ebooks are just great when learning especially on dual screen setups. AFAK Rails books get updated really fast - and there are at least a few good introductory courses. There is a Django video series coming but who can wait untill December :)

http://gettingstartedwithdjango.com

Thanks for the django-book updated link. This seem to be exactly the scope of the linked github in the op.

The amazon book looks outdated and I am a bit surprised by the lack of django 1.4 learning material for newcomers to the framework as this is key for it's popularity.

I hope the linked updated django-book will provide enough teaching to get me up and running and be able to mainly use the django docs after.

I just started learning Django(going through the tutorial today).

Is the Django Book ready to use as it is to learn Django? The Django docs I think are not enough for someone starting out learning their first web framework(they seem to go deep right away and don't provide a structured way of learning).

Also are the changes done on Github published on the book website or better to grab it directly from Github?

This is what puts Django on top of my list so far. It would be more fun and productive if I can just start doing web apps and I can always jump in and learn some of the magic behind it in the future.

Is the Django book updated? The notice where it asks for help to get it updated it scared me as a newcomer(and probably many others) as I won't know to judge if what I read is updated material or not.

I understand this is an open source project but from the business perspective that notice is completely missplaced. The people looking there want to read the book and what they learn is that is outdated. The targeted audience that can actually help update the book most likelly hangs out somewhere else.