About
Placeholder: information about the crew at radiant.matrix and the purpose of the site.
Table of Contents
1. FAQ
1. FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
1.1 General FAQ
1.1.1 Who are you?
My name is Darren Meyer, and I’m a technologist, software developer, and information security specialist. I can be contacted by sending e-mail to darren.meyer at the domain gmail.com.
1.2 Advertising FAQ
You may notice the Google AdSense pages in the right-hand column, or perhaps between a post and its comments. I’m posting this based on the advice of some friends who fielded many questions about the use of AdSense on their pages. Hopefully, this will keep the questions down to a minimum, so we can spend more time on the site itself.
1.2.1 Why do you have ads on the page to begin with?
It’s very simple. We spend time working on this site, we pay to host it on a reliable network, and we don’t charge our readers. Ads give us the opportunity to offset some of those costs, and the possibility of making a little extra money. That’s motivation to continually improve and maintain the site.
We work on the site mainly because we love doing it, and want to share with others. However, the more users we attract, the more expensive it becomes for us to maintain. Ads offset that because (at least in theory), the more users we get, the more revenue the ads generate. That means we have a better chance of continuing to afford our hosting bill, and the site stays up for everyone to enjoy.
1.2.2 Why Google AdSense?
It’s easy. We get ads that have something to do with what’s on the site, which we consider better than random advertising that no one cares about. Plus, AdSense ads are text-only, meaning no huge bandwidth costs (for users or for us). It also means the ads aren’t distracting. AdSense ads fall nicely in line with what we believe advertising on the web should be: simple, relevant, and unobtrusive.
1.2.3 How much money do you make with this?
The AdSense terms of service prevent us from answering this one.
1.2.4 How do you make money with AdSense?
That largely depends on how the advertisers choose to buy their AdWords. Advertisers either pay per click or per impression. With the former, we get paid when someone is interested enough in an ad to click it. With the latter, we get paid for displaying the ad. We have no control over what type of ads we get, or how many of each type. Google pays our commission when it is cost-effective for them to do so. Google’s AdSense Page goes into far more detail about how the program works.
1.2.5 Does this mean I should click on ads to help you out?
NO! We chose AdWords largely because it would deliver relevant and interesting advertising to our users. Clicking on ads you aren’t interested in is unfair to the advertiser, to us, and to our other users.
It costs per-click advertisers money, which they pay in good faith to try and reach people who are actually interested in what they are advertising. It’s unethical to click an ad link you aren’t interested in.
It hurts us because if the advertiser or Google detects such behavior, they recover the money they’ve paid us, which might already have been spent! It could also lead to us losing our account, which would be very hard on our site.
And, it’s harder on other users because they have a smaller chance of seeing ads that actually interest them. We find ads on others’ sites to be a useful way of learning about new products and services — random clicking could cause that useful feature to be extremely limited.
In other words, don’t click on an ad unless you’re actually interested in it! It just works the best for everyone that way.
1.2.6 Are you (or Google) able to track me through the ads on your site?
Google is not Doubleclick. They do not, to our knowledge, track your surfing habits by means of AdSense. Even if they did, they have no mechanism to correlate the information with your name or other personal information. We don’t consider it a risk.
Our site does not track your habits at all. The only cookies we set are related to maintaining your user login and counting unique visitors. The first is a courtesy to you, and the second helps us to anticipate our hosting requirements.
Of course, you could always use a browser that suppors session-only cookies and not have to worry about the issue in the first place. :-)
1.2.7 Can I turn off the ads on your site? What if I pay a subscription fee to you?
We don’t provide a way to turn off ads. However, we don’t try to control what you do on your machine, either. If you wish to block ads, there are client-side solutions that will do this. If you choose to block the AdSense ads, however, we do request that you use a system that will prevent them from actually downloading, and not one that merely hides them from view. This is because some of the advertisers are charged as soon as the ads are downloaded — and we think downloading them and then hiding them from view is unfair to those advertisers.
We currently have no plans to implement a subscription system — we’d like to keep this site completely free as long as possible. Things change, and maybe someday that will be the only way to meet our bandwidth bills.