[ale] [rant] I dislike "we only support winblows/OSX"AT&T internet

[Dylan Northrup]

A long time ago, (04.03.08), in a galaxy far, far away, Watson, Keith R. wrote:

:=> -----Original Message-----
:=> Watson, Keith R. wrote:
:=> > So how is using opendns any better than what Earthlink is doing with
:=> > their DNS?
:=> 
:=> If you create an account with OpenDNS, you can turn this off. I've
:=been
:=> using openDNS for a while because they're much more reliable than
:=Charter.
:=
:=Maybe there is something about there service that I don't understand. To
:=quote from their FAQ
:=
:=How we're free: We make money just like Google and Yahoo
:=
:=People frequently ask us how we can offer such a fantastic service
:=without charging a dime. OpenDNS makes money the same way Google and
:=Yahoo do - by showing relevant ads when we show you search results. Our
:=number one priority is to deliver the best possible user experience,
:=which means you won't find any pop-ups, pop-unders, or anything like
:=that around here.
:=
:=So how is it still free if I can turn off the ads?

Does it matter?  If they provide a service that suits your needs, why would
you need to worry about what their income stream is like?  The paranoid
answer is "They're gathering my stats and selling them" which their Privacy
Policy doesn't prohibit in the agregate (tohugh it does say they remove IP 
information from anonymous users of their DNS servers within 2 days of the
DNS request).

Given the number of DNS requests, they service, assuming 0.1% of them are
typos, that's still 4-5 million ad impressions per day.  Given that the ads
likely have some relevance to the initial DNS request, that would be a
compelling sales pitch to someone buying ads (as long as they don't mind
their target market being folks who make typos. . . perhaps typing
instruction software makers ;-)

-- 
Dylan Northrup - docx at io.com - http://www.io.com/~docx/
"Harder to work, harder to strive, hard to be glad to be alive, but it's
 really worth it if you give it a try." -- Cowboy Mouth, 'Easy'