I posted the following comments on another site today, and although it's rare for me, if at all, to post "cross-sites" I feel that this is warranted, as not everyone reads every site.

A short primer on the word "free."
And more specifically, "internet related free.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, known as the internet (and some believe the founder was Al Gore :-) ) was the ARPANET. Simply, and I do mean simply stated, it was a research project where pieces of information could be shared by universities. When the TCP/IP protocol was decided on, anyone with a computer that was connected, ususally at universities, but you know the military was lurking about, as it was their idea originally, could freely share information (mostly research) through this form of communication.

The sharing concept took hold, as computers and their development grew. The people behind this growth, pioneers as they were (and still are), looked at this form of communication, along with the research as their "baby." They began to shun the commercialization of this medium as the internet grew into what we call the "web" today.

Thus, what was the freely sharing of information was seen to become something to be exploited for and by those evil corporations and individuals who would want to charge for this "sharing" concept.

The internet was, as some would argue and now look back, a sort of Utopia. A cyberspace utopia.

Today, we still have many bits and pieces of "free" sharing of information, but as all things, free costs money. Quite an oxymoron, don't you think?

So although this site, as well as others, require no fees to observe the freely sharing of whatever information you find here, it still costs the operator. This is why many of us, subscribe to Don's Domain, GC, VPHomepage, LVAdvisor, etc. because the quality of information, along with the willingness of people to contribute is of a slightly (or much more) higher quality than you'll get here (and other sites) for free.

To be sure there is still a lot of high quality information shared freely on free sites, but the main difference that I can see, is that these sites are all ADVANTAGE type of sites, of which the people here learn how to risk "real money" at the turn of a card, toss of a die, spin of a wheel, where they are likely in a matter of minutes lose much more than the costs of all these sites are combined for a full year.

I also think that every one of these sites have a full money back guarantee to them. So why wouldn't someone take a look. Sounds like an advantage play to me. :-)

cheers
bfb