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If you have a good product, you shouldn't need much advertising.

In a fair world, yes, but the situation is never cut-and-dry. I was beginning to agree with you until you said this, LBTL. Actually, the sad truth is that there are many good products out there that DO need more attention, a lot more, but get overlooked despite the best efforts of their creators. The fact is this world is not fair and despite what action said, people generally are assholes (our history is 90% war, abuse, and discrimination for a reason, you know). While I believe that virus-inducing ads should be gotten rid of, I think the option of ads should be left open at least for people just getting off the ground.

There are plenty of places to "advertise" your new product or service without paying for pop up ads and sidebar image ads.  Social media is huge, but so are forums, communities, and articles on popular websites.  If your product or service is GOOD, then people will share it.  If it's not good, it will require a TON of advertising just to get off the ground and will require constant advertising to keep a profit because of all the people that would never use the product or service again and would never recommend it to others (because it just wasn't good).  

There are exceptions.  I believe in local ads on Google and other search engines.  If a person is actually LOOKING for something, displaying them relative ads is absolutely fine because that's what they're actually looking for.  

The point is, there are tons of crappy products and services out there that only exist because of ads.  If the opportunity to mass advertise didn't exist, they would have died in their infancy because not many people actually like the product/service.

And ads aren't worth it unless you already have TONS of traffic.  With 1,000 visitors a day, you'd be lucky to make $10 a day in ads.  That means to make $10,000/month (not a lot when you consider the costs of running some of these larger websites), you have to have 1 MILLION visitors per month!

The alternative is for sites to change you money to look at them.

There are plenty of other ways to monetize the website without having annoying ads everywhere.  Create a product or service related to the theme of your website and sell it for a few bucks.  Host a contest or endorse a product.  Ask for donations.  Hire experts in the field and have your users pay to ask them questions directly.  Paid membership article based websites were never popular, even in the 1990's.  Everyone was thankful when they were (mostly) eliminated.  Some websites are trying this crap again today, but it doesn't work.  No one wants to pay to read an article.  Information is plentiful and it's everywhere.  If you can't get the information from one website, you'll find it on another.  

But honestly, even if there was NO financial compensation of any kind, there are plenty of websites out there that are run by volunteers.  There are plenty of people willing to create content and work for free, because they really enjoy what they do and don't consider it work.  Just look at all the free YouTube videos out there.  Sure, they can choose to get compensated by Google for advertising, but no one who's popular on YouTube created all those videos and offered all their help for the sole purpose of being financially compensated.  

My point is, the internet would go on if not another dollar was made by advertisements.  It would be an internet for the people and not the corporations.  If you ask me, that's a good thing.

You have to be very careful who you give your email to.  The way to stop these messages is to open each one and hit the "unsubscribe" button at the very bottom of each sender's email.  By law, they're required to have this information.  And unless you've got an easy to guess email (i.e. john@gmail.com), spammers haven't just started targeting you for no reason.  You gave it to them, or to another unscrupulous party that sold your email to them.

If there is no "unsubscribe" option, then it's probably a malware infested email sent by scammers and hackers in another country.  Unfortunately all you can do is add their emails to your junk mail list so you'll never see them in your inbox.

(some reason the site won't tell you the price unless you request it, odd).

It's a common practice of Newegg.  Samsung has a retail price of $99.99 on the drive, and it also has a "minimum advertised price" of $87.99.  If Newegg advertised it for less than $87.99, Samsung would refuse to sell to them in the future.  To sell it for less and avoid the legal issues, they make it so you have to have the price either emailed or texted to you.  For the record, at the moment the 250GB SSD is $84.99.  Quite a steal.  I'm not supposed to reveal this, but my wholesale price on this drive is $83.74 when I buy in lots of 20.  In lots of 50 they're $83.37 each.  For lots of 100, they're $83.01 each.  Buying 1,000 of these drives drops the price down to $82.97, so needless to say I usually buy in lots of 20, 50, or 100.

Is there any chance that the movie will get released here in Australia?

I'm sorry to say that if Universal hasn't decided to release it in your country, your only option is to pirate it.  It's absolutely ridiculous that movie studios release a movie to some countries and not to others because they want to charge different prices to everyone.  It's like we're still stuck in the 1990's.  The world has moved on and if they don't move with it, they're going to lose a LOT of money.  I haven't pirated the movie (I watched it on Netflix then I bought it), but I'm sure you'll be able to find it somewhere.

EDIT:  I just looked around for it on torrent sites, but it's not available anywhere.  I'm sorry but I won't upload this movie.  I pirate a LOT of stuff, but I don't want it to hurt Universal.  You're just going to have to wait until either they release it in your country or someone else uploads a torrent.  I don't know if Netflix will allow you to get it in your country (my guess is no), but it's available on Netflix here in the U.S.

I definitely think this was the worst movie so far.  It was freaking BORING as heck.  The lines were beyond cheesy.  "Oh, let's walk over here."  ***Pause for no dramatic effect whatsoever***  Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Stop.  The script was like a bad fanfiction and all the characters were out of character.  It was like a 20 minute TV episode stretched into almost an hour and a half.  In other words, painful.  It was painfully obvious that the writers didn't care about making a good story, and it felt like they were forcing stuff from the old movies into places where they didn't belong.  Like Ducky and Ruby's way of speaking.  They used to speak like that only occasionally and for a purpose.  Now it's just thrown in there for no reason whatsoever.  Ruby used to sound witty and funny.  Now she sounds almost retarded.  I had to try not to hold it against her because it was the writer's fault.  

And Grandpa Longneck and Threehorn's voice actors were absolutely terrible.  They would have been better off picking a woman or some random dude off the street for the voices.  You can barely understand them.  It sounds like they've got something stuck in their throat.

I know this review sounds harsh and I am still a big Land Before Time fan.  But this movie had so many issues I can't even count them all.  I'm sad to say that this movie was BELOW expectations, and my expectations had already been set very, VERY low by The Wisdom of Friends.  But I'd rather watch the 13th movie again than this trash.  

HOWEVER, I will watch this movie again in the next few days to review it again and see if my opinion of it changes the second time around.  However, I'm not hopeful.

I don't know.  I'd rather have it kind of blurry (DVD version) than grainy (Blu-Ray version).  The contrast and color is up way too high in the Blu-Ray version and the grain is a killer.  For God's sake they need to remake this movie from scratch.  The only way to have it look normal is to watch it on an old 1990's TV using the original VHS.  I like the original for nostalgia's sake, but they really need to remake it.  Keep the same voices, but redraw everything.  The Blu-Ray remake of the 1973 version of Disney's Robin Hood looks better than this:


http://i.imgur.com/9czgcSk.jpg

There's just no excuse for releasing such a poor quality product.

Is it just me or is the color REALLY off in the movie screenshots?  Chomper is a really dark purple, and it's like the contrast and color has been turned up to 100% on my monitor.  I've looked using several different screens and it's all the same.  I think Etta is supposed to be a lighter yellow rather than that mustardy color.

Awesome.  I don't know why I never thought of that.  Adding new emoticons is a great idea!

Using Windows XP in 2016.....not exactly the smartest thing to do.  But here's why I'm still using the ancient OS.  

As you all probably know, I absolutely HATED Windows Vista when it came out in 2006.  I absolutely refused to switch to it, and I advised all my clients to stay with XP.  That was a long time ago and Microsoft has released some great OS's since then.  Windows 7 was spectacular.  I switched all my personal computers to Windows 7 in 2009 when it was first released because it was rock solid out of the box.  Windows 7 was basically a polished version of Windows Vista with a new skin, but by 2009 all the kinks had been worked out and it was a pretty solid OS.

Windows 8 came out later in 2012.  Underneath all the BS it was another rock solid OS.  The issue with Windows 8 was too much focus on phones and tablets when it's really an OS for computers.  Windows 8 introduced some VERY great features such as UEFI support and a volume indicator when you hit the volume hotkeys on the keyboard.  It also updated to ancient file transfer protocol from Windows 95.  It also secured the Administrator account even further.  No longer would deactivating UAC give you full administrative rights.  Because of this, it was a MUCH more secure OS compared to Windows 7.

Then Windows 10 was released in 2015.  To be honest, it's a good OS, but not as good as Windows 8 under the hood.  Usability wise and looks wise, it's miles ahead of Windows 8.  But I'm most concerned with what's under the hood.  Windows 10 has some driver issues, and it breaks compatibility with a LOT of older software.  And there isn't much in the way of new features with Windows 10.  It's basically Windows 8 with an updated kernel and a start menu.  

Windows XP was released in 2001.  So after 15 years, and 3 subsequent good OS releases, why would anybody still be on Windows XP by choice?  Well to be honest, I haven't used XP on any of my personal machines since I upgraded to Windows 7 in 2009.  But I just built a new machine and loaded Windows XP on it.  The reason?  Old programs and games.

There were some programs and games that I still use that were totally broken by Windows 7 and Windows 8.  Unfortunately they don't work on Windows 10 either, so I've decided to keep a permanent Windows XP computer from now on.  I put it in my bedroom and connected it to my 65" TV.  This will now be the main computer in my bedroom.

Of course going online with Windows XP isn't smart.  So I've neutered internet capability.  I dual boot with Windows XP and Windows 10 on the same computer.  What this experience has taught me is how PRIMITIVE Windows XP actually is.  It's hard going from newer OS's back to Windows XP.  Honestly I thought it was going to be a breeze.  After all, it was my main OS for 8 years.  But in some ways.....a lot of ways......Windows XP is REALLY showing its age a lot worse than I anticipated.  However, on a fundamental level there's really not a whole lot of difference.  We could technically still be on Windows XP if Microsoft had kept up support for it.  It's a very impressive OS for something that came out 15 years ago.  

Now if I could run it on all my personal computers safely, would I?  The answer is a resounding NO.  Windows XP was impressive for a 15 year old OS, but I'd miss a lot of features in Windows 7,8, and 10.  And things that are so easy nowadays like moving all the user folders to a secondary hard drive require modifying the registry in Windows XP.  Each new version of Windows has a LOT of improvements.  Even Windows Vista had a good number of improvements (I just wasn't willing to deal with such a buggy OS for those improvements).  

However there's a certain amount of nostalgia that I get from using Windows XP again.  I genuinely like the OS.  And even though it's technically a dead OS now, it could still be a usable product today if Microsoft had kept up on it.

For anyone that's interested, here are the specs of my Windows XP computer:

- AMD A10-7850k 3.70Ghz Processor
- 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM
- 250GB SSD (Samsung 850 Pro)
- 2TB WD Black Hard Drive
- Windows XP Pro & Windows 10 Pro Dual Booted