Just a quick comment to let you know I’ve removed the Amazon ads that once adorned the sidebars. I’ve been considering their removal for the past month or two because they slow down the site’s page load time but I wavered on the side that some visitors might find them useful so I left them up. However, Amazon has twice adjusted its user agreement within the last 30 days. One of those adjustments changed their linking policy and the second one served to combine its Amazon U.K, Amazon FR and Amazon DE user agreements such that one agreement for Amazon EU covers all three programs. That latter change is a little guise about EU harmony and a big ruse to inflict ever more stringent rules to its affiliates; rules that heavily favor Amazon over its affiliates. As you can tell, I am not happy with the changes. To be blunt, I feel pretty shafted by Amazon and I am sure many other webmasters will feel the same once they read Amazon’s new user agreement.

Amazon was and still is one of the most complicated affiliate programs to administer due to its use of separate sites for separate customer regions. For an affiliate to receive commission from product referrals the referred referees  had to purchase directly from the Amazon site to which the affiliate referred him/her. For example:

when an affiliate (publisher) sends someone to Amazon U.K and that someone purchases an item through Amazon U.K then the affiliate earns commission; but when someone is referred to Amazon U.K and moves across to Amazon US and makes a purchase through Amazon US then the affiliate earns nothing.

That means that affiliates who wish to advertise Amazon products for commission have two choices:

1. sign up to one Amazon site’s affiliate program (usually Amazon US) and advertise its products solely, or
2. sign up to all Amazon programs and use an ad server like OpenX to display separate ads from each different Amazon program according to a visitor’s geographic location.

As you can see, Amazon already favors itself above its affiliates beyond reasonableness – it gets a lot of free publicity from webmasters who hope to make a financial return on their hard work and valuable advertisement space.

The first alteration Amazon made to its affiliate program (less than a month ago) prohibited webmasters from adding their affiliate links to search engines and permits Amazon to not issue commission to affiliates when visitors arrive at Amazon through links listed by search engines.

Reasonable enough, Amazon has to protect itself from those webmasters who use unscrupulous advertisement methods to drive prospects to Amazon via their personal affiliate links. However, there is one slight issue with this rule: search engines find links to websites through websites; it is entirely possible for a scrupulous webmaster to link to an Amazon product on his/her own websites and for a search engine to display the link to that Amazon product when it returns its search results; hence a well intentioned webmaster who follows Amazon’s rules might be penalized through no mistake of his own; and this is especially likely when products are advertised via Twitter which is something Amazon encourages its affiliates to do.

It is my understanding that the second (and most recent) major alteration, the one that unifies its British, German and French user agreements prohibits the use of Amazon links in forum, blog and other website signatures and prohibits the use of automated shops except those provided by Amazon. To a lot of webmasters (not I), these are standard marketing practices. A lot of webmasters will now have to change their signatures and close their automated shops.

I have one more Amazon link to remove from my network of sites. Thankfully it is served by OpenX so I can replace it with a link provided by a more favorable advertisement program. With the exception of that link, from this time onwards, I will not advertise products for Amazon until they change their affiliate program to one that is less hostile to the webmasters who use it to advertise Amazon.

I will still buy products through Amazon, they have some pretty amazing deals I just won’t be advertising their products for the foreseeable future.

I do have another reason to be grumpy about Amazon: for the whole time I have advertised their products I have made not one sale. Tens of thousands of ad impressions across several websites and zero sales and a couple of click-throughs. I will stick with the likes of Clickbank, Affiliate Future and Affiliate Window from no onwards. At least their products sell and they pay more commission which helps pay toward my server and domain registration fees.

Here is Amazon’s official overview of its new EU user agreement, enjoy:

Operating Agreement Update, March 1 2010 version compared with February 1 2010 version

The Associates Programme Operating Agreement has been updated effective March 1, 2010. A single Operating Agreement governing the Associates Programme for each of the Amazon sites in the UK, DE and FR, and a combined sign up process for new Associates enables enrolment in one, two, or all three programmes at once. The updated Operating Agreement has been restructured to make the information you want more accessible. In addition, some terms of the agreement have changed. For instance, the updated agreement clarifies or modifies (see sections referenced below for applicable agreement provisions):

• your rights and obligations regarding content, offers, and links posted in connection with the program, as well as your use of our content and trademarks (see Linking Requirements, Programme Participation Requirements, and sections 3,4, 5, and 11 of the Operating Agreement);
• your responsibilities for your site users’ claims (see section 5 of the Operating Agreement);
• your obligations to provide us with certain information and for keeping information you give us accurate and up to date (see section 2 of the Operating Agreement);
• your obligations as to communications regarding your relationship with us (see section 10 of the Operating Agreement);
• prohibitions on (i) your placement of Special Links in posts to the Amazon site (e.g., in reviews or on forums), (ii) your use of sub-tags to identify specific users, (iii) making inaccurate, deceptive, or misleading claims about any product, the Amazon site, or any Amazon policy, promotion, or price, (iv) your ability to collect account information used by our customers in connection with any Amazon site, and (v) your use of any malicious or harmful code or any automatically-installing software application on your site (see Linking Requirements, Programme Participation Requirements, and section 10 of the Operating Agreement);
• your representations and warranties (see Linking Requirements, Programme Participation Requirements, and the preamble and sections 5, 12, and 13 of the Operating Agreement);
• your indemnity and other obligations to us (see section 5 of the Operating Agreement)
• our rights to monitor your compliance with the agreement (see section 4 of the Operating Agreement);
• rights to withhold payment of advertising fees in certain circumstances (see section 4 of the Operating Agreement);
• our right to charge administration fees on and/or close dormant accounts (see section 8 of the Operating Agreement);
• the minimum advertising fees that you must earn before payment by direct deposit, cheque, or gift certificate can be issued (see section 8 of the Operating Agreement);
• the amount of prior notice of any modifications to or termination of the agreement (see sections 14 and 15 of the Operating Agreement);
• our rights in what you submit to us (see section 12 of the Operating Agreement); and
• limitations of obligations and liability (see sections 17 and 18 of the Operating Agreement).

This is only a general summary of some of the changes and does not affect the interpretation of the updated Operating Agreement. Your continued participation in the program constitutes your acceptance of the updated agreement. Therefore, please carefully read the updated Operating Agreement.

The full new agreement is available here.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010

It’s 14:00 hours at GMT so Christmas is well and truly underway throughout a lot of the world so I thought I’d take the time to wish every one of you and your family a very merry Christmas and a prosperous 2010. I sincerely hope that the year to come in 2010 is more friendly for you than the one of 2009 which will be behind us all in only a few days. I hear there will be a full moon on the final day of this year and I hope it heralds in a new beginning with an end to old, bad habits and the many wars that befell us all during the last decade which seems to have been filled with so much selfishness and dis-genuineness.

Have fun, be hopeful and keep looking toward our future. Remember that God shines on those who smile :)

Merry Christmas!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2009

The biggest lie in Linux is that it’s hard to learn. That lie’s perpetuated by Linux users who can’t be bothered to provide full, well explained solutions to the difficulties had by new Linux users. The number of times I’ve visited a forum to answer a few support queries and seen other Linux users refuse to help newbies install software because they think the newbie should use a pure Linux program or the seasoned users refuse to provide alternate solutions to software and hardware issues than those a newbie has already tried because the veterans think any other solution is not the standard way to do it.

My first try of Linux came through Wubi, a program that installs Ubuntu Linux onto a virtual partition (a pretend disc) within a Windows operating system. It made it easy: I didn’t have to play with partitions and worry about screwing-up my Windows installation. That was over four years ago when I lived in Holland and didn’t know enough Dutch to follow my Dutch version of Windows so the chance to use something in English was not an opportunity I was about to pass-up.

Now there are Live Discs which enable the adventurous to use or try Linux without even installing it to a hard disk so it’s even easier to use it and it doesn’t cost anything because it’s free (they’re brilliant for recovering data from damaged hard-drives and circumventing security protocols too). Actually, Live Discs have been around for over a decade, I was just ignorant of them until a couple of years ago.

In all honesty, Windows and Linux are as easy to use as one’n'other. Both have their good and bad points:

Windows and Linux both have good and bad points

Windows has lots of easy to install software available for it;

Linux has lots of software. Most distributions (distros) have an inbuilt library of available to download and install software  which cuts down the time spent finding good software;

Windows is a fairly stable product (or, at least, was until Microsoft unleashed the beta version of Windows 7, Vista) that auto-updates itself;

Linux is a stable product that auto-updates itself and the software installed in it;

Unlike Windows, Linux version upgrades are free. When a new version is released, an update notice is issued by the operating system and the upgrade is performed without restarts and with the operating system still being usable while the upgrade occurs;

Unlike Linux, nearly all Windows software comes as an executable package that need only be clicked to be installed. Not all Linux software found outside of a distro’s software library (Package Manager) is installed via a click’n'play package. Linux software found in the wild comes in many different forms: some are like Windows executable packages that need clicking to start the installation process but other packages have to be installed via the command line; an,

The Linux package manager makes Linux very attractive to a lot of people specially so because the thousands of packages in it are freely available and extra repositories (libraries) can be added to it to increase the number of software packages available through the Package Manager. It’s the lack of consistency in the way software packages found on the Net are installed and the lack of friendly installation and configuration advice that causes a lot of people to shun Linux; and who can blame them? Thankfully, a new bread of Linux users and developers has evolved to provide better advice delivered with a smile and to create better, more complete, application user guides.

Bullies threaten the future of Linux

I’ve met a lot of very inconsiderate, rude bullies in Linux forums. I don’t know what it is about Linux that brings out the worst in computer users but I suspect it has something to do with the “them and us” attitude of a few socially inept geeks who’ve been spoiled by the attention Linux has been getting from people in the real world. Friendly geeks, please accept my apology here, I too am a Geek with a capital “G”; I didn’t study Chemistry and Physics at University without being at least part Geek.

Much to the chagrin of many Linux purists, many of the great Linux applications are being ported to Windows. Personally, this is a good thing, it helps many of the good Linux application developers to get some more well deserved publicity and recognition; secondly, it helps show the world that there’s life on the other side of their Windows. Conversely, to the annoyance of the non-purists and dabblers, there are few commercial programs being ported to Linux. It’s no real surprise given that most non-Linux programs have a lot of very good competitors that are freely available and many Linux users use Linux because of its range of free software so there’s little financial incentive for commercial vendors to convert their software to Linux; and nor will there be until more people move away from Windows toward Linux who want to use their familiar commercial Windows products.

OpenOffice is a good contender to Microsoft Office, GIMP is a good replacement to Photoshop, Evolution replaces Outlook, Scribus is an alternative to Publisher, LinuxCAD is comparable with AutoCAD, Amarok beats Media Player hands down (in my opinion), Linux Multimedia Player (LMMS) is similar to Fruity Loops. They’re all free alternatives and it’s a shame a few twats use their natural social skillessness to frighten off those who are tempted to use Linux because they’re preventing some really good programs from getting the outing they deserve.

Install enough programs from the Net and you're bound to catch a few sharks eventually

Unlike many, I don’t extol the virtues of Linux just for the sake of it; I’m not blind to its faults; and they are many, just as with Windows: Linux does crash occasionally, just like Windows; and Linux isn’t safe from viruses, trojans, key-loggers and hackers, just like Windows, it’s only as secure as it’s user is security conscious – anyone who installs any program from the Net will eventually catch a shark. Those Linux users who put their distro onto a mythical alter that they worship do no justice to their favourite idol: it’s inevitable failings only serve to turn away converts, disillusioned – a prospect’s expectations should always be set low enough that they can only ever be exceeded.

Purists need to take their distros off their altars

Let’s face it, most people are happy with any computer that lets them browse the Web, write emails, play solitaire, write the occasional letter, play DVDs and listen to music. They are things that most graphical operating systems will let them do. There’s even an open source BIOS based operating system that boots a computer within a few seconds and lets them do just that.

Were I to buy a pre-built computer that shipped with Windows, I’d return the Windows license to Microsoft for the refund and install KDE Linux onto it. That would be my decision to make just as it would be anybody else’s to keep the license and use Windows; and many of the mouthy Linux users need to accept that and stop preaching their religion to those whom wish not to convert. Ditto when they wish to help the tempted: they should be polite and offer solutions with proper instructions, examples and explanations. It’s a much better way to convert the infidels, don’t you think?

ADDENDUM:

This article has upset one or two of the Linux users who found this article through tuxmachines.org who believe I have unfairly cast the Linux community in a bad light. I’d like it to be known that most Linux users are just as friendly as the users of any other operating system. Those who do act rudely to newcomers are a minority group; they might be the most vocal ones – those who are regularly met in forums and message boards – but that cannot be helped; at least, not yet. Maybe, when more people come over to Linux, the less vocal and friendlier majority will feel more comfortable about helping other Linux users without the fear of being ridiculed for their mistakes by the vocal minority. I look forward to that time.