This is all way off-topic by now, but my point is still the same: MojoKid's position is probably correct. There are significant costs for servers and for bandwidth for any site that scales up, and they can easily become more than it's reasonable to expect a hobbyist to pay out of their own pocket if the site becomes popular.

Of course, this is all before there is any actual content on the site! Doing the planning and research and writing and editing and presentation of original material takes about as much time and money on a web site as in any other medium.

You know somewhere that provides reliable hosting for five servers supplying 40MB/s each for less than 5-10 bucks? I doubt that very much. For the dedicated servers I use on one of the commercial sites I mentioned, I'd be running at over $1,000 per day for that kind of traffic.

Obviously no-one running at that kind of scale is still on the same kind of hardware and pricing set up that my little site is on, but dedicated/unmetered lines aren't cheap either. In any case, you get the point: the servers aren't the problem for high traffic sites, the network bandwidth is.

I suspect in reality that the best sites would continue, but there would be a lot more paywalls around, probably less editorial integrity on open sites as things like product placements and affiliate referral fees became more reliable revenue streams, and maybe over time we'd eventually get somewhere with micropayments. In some ways, moving to more "honest" funding via paywalls and/or micropayments might be a better long-term model for the people who do produce good content and run valuable sites than what we have today, though no doubt it would be a painful transition with many casualties.

The thing that makes me a little sad inside is that the aggressive, irresponsible advertisers have spoiled the model for the moderate, responsible ones. Because of the former group, I do block very aggressively when I'm browsing, and I don't feel any guilt about it because my motivations are security, privacy and performance. However, I also have no problem with people who just want to make a bit of money from running a decent site, and I wouldn't block their ads if there were a reliable way to allow those while still eliminating the rest. Unfortunately, I don't see that being possible any time soon, which is why none of the commercial sites I've ever run myself has relied on ads as a business model.

Sure you can. I've run various personal or social group sites over the years that just paid a little to keep things running, without expecting any sort of income in return. For the personal sites, I do it for the satisfaction of giving something back, and sometimes starting enjoyable discussions with others who share my interests.

I also run some commercial sites, aiming at a wider audience, charging real money for signing up. This is a completely different scale of commitment in terms of hardware, connectivity, and operating costs.

If you're running a discussion forum that you share with 50 friends, sure, it can be in the first category and you can do it for peanuts and enjoy all the high quality interaction you like. But running a significant news or social networking site with thousands of participants? Not even close.

As a man, I'm not that keen on threats of murder or felony assault. I expect women in public life to be able to handle hurtful comments, but credible death threats are wrong and anybody, regardless of race, sex, or planet of origin, needs to take them seriously.

Ah, accusations from an anonymous coward. Do you have any actual evidence for your claims?

Kids effectively have no rights. At least in recent memory (I haven't been following this, and it may have changed), many juvenile courts and similar institutions were assumed to be working for the benefit of the kids, which removed all sorts of protections. If I go to court, it is understood that the judge isn't on my side, and if I get convicted the sentence won't be to my benefit. Therefore, I get such things as the right to counsel and the presumption of innocence. Juvenile "justice" tended to dispense with such inconveniences.

So, yes, if I write violent fiction (and I do sometimes, never published though), or fiction about acts of terrorism, no problem. If my son had done that while in K-12 school, he could have been in serious trouble.

What makes you think people haven't attacked the film/TV industry, the music industry, or various religious groups as being misogynist? I've seen all three being accused. If you haven't, well, you must follow gaming news a lot more than other news. Nothing wrong with that, but you're making statements out of ignorance.

Sarkeesian has chosen to attack what she sees as misogyny in video games, much as others have attacked it in various other art forms and religions and other sorts of groups. She's specializing, which is a reasonable thing to do. She herself doesn't need to concentrate on misogyny everywhere, particularly when many other people are attacking perceived misogyny all over.

Corporate policies? You think corporate policies on women haven't been attacked? Do you read Slashdot articles that aren't about games? Have you missed all the articles on allegations of sexism and misogynist behavior in the tech industry? They attracted a lot of comments. Gamers aren't being singled out in any way, shape, or form here.

Why is this modded Flamebait? It's a blunt expression of opinions on her work, which is not objectionable, with some insults, which aren't that bad. It also insists that she should be safe from threats of violence, and that those who make them should be punished. Seems perfectly legit to me.

What I'd really like with modern trends is more emphasis on "private clouds". I want to put my data on my own server on my own network, so it can be accessed from any of my devices around the house and over VPN if I'm out, but with the data always securely under my control and backed up according to my wishes.

This is easy for some formats, including plain files obviously. However, it's surprisingly awkward for stuff like e-mail, where there are plenty of relevant concepts like IMAP and mail stores and smart hosts and web mail systems, but actually setting them up in a useful combination if you're not an experienced sysadmin is quite a challenge.

Sadly, it seems even the best FOSS client software is dying out these days, often because "everyone has Google Whatever". As far as I know there hasn't yet been a lot of movement in the FOSS world towards having easily-deployable private clouds for e-mail, shared documents, and so on, which always surprises me given the implicit freedom, independence, privacy and security.

You might not have much recourse even if it's a commercial service you're using. Ironically, on-line back-up services are among the worst offenders. If you use one, go ahead and check its terms, and see whether any of those lovely restoration options they offer will still be there if they decide to close down on a whim. (Hint: Probably they won't, and all you'll get is maybe 48 or 72 hours to download as much as you can at the same time as every other customer they have is trying to do the same.)

If it matters, back it up on systems you control yourself. If it's private, don't upload it to anything, and encrypt the back-ups. It's really that simple. Then again, so is "make sure you back up your important files", and how many people don't do that because it's mildly inconvenient? Maybe those on-line back-up services aren't quite so bad after all...

Impeachment of a President is a fundamentally political act, not a law enforcement act. I suppose judges could rule the no-fly list illegal, and then allow lawsuits against either the government or individuals enforcing it.

Which normal? Reagan normal? Bush I normal? Bush II normal? They're not the same, you know. I miss Republicans that actually thought balancing the budget was a worthy goal. Nobody's done it in a long time except Clinton.

The Feds have legitimate authority to regulate interstate flights. This tends to cover intrastate flights, on the usual improbably stretch of the interstate commerce clause, but arguably they have authority to regulate airports that are used for interstate flights.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a legitimate purpose for a no-fly list.

If we're fairly sure we know somebody's a terrorist, then putting that guy on the no-fly list will only warn him we're onto him. All he has to do is take periodic flights to keep informed. Therefore, the people we really think should be barred from flying often can be put on the list only by interfering with investigations.

A no-fly list does not prevent people from traveling, but rather inconveniences them. A terrorist on the no-fly list who wants to go from New York to Las Vegas is going to be a lot less annoyed than an innocent person. It doesn't prevent a terrorist from hijacking a plane into a building, because we've basically solved that problem. It may keep a bomb off the plane, but, really, how often would that happen? And couldn't the terrorist cause more terror by sniping at schoolchildren or something?