Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 13:34:54 -0400
Cc: online-news@planetarynews.com
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One person's wasted time is another's productive session....
At 7:45 AM -0500 8/8/98, David Hakala wrote:
> .. the average home Internet user wastes just over nine minutes per
> day, or 55 hours per year, waiting for Web pages to load -- fully
> 26 percent of all time spent on the Internet. Multiply that by a
> conservative measure of 43.1 million Internet users in the U.S.,
> and the grim total is 2.4 billion hours Web-wasted.
Not necessarily. This technique ASSUMES that the time spent waiting for a
web page is unavailable for anything else. But is it? When you surf from
a dial-up, is that all you do....? Do you just sit there staring at your
screen while it slowly registers a page? You do not check or compose reply
e-mail? Or listen to NPR? Or talk on the phone?
> "If you only waste nine or ten minutes a day, you're in good
> shape," said Ray Valdes, Gartner Group's research director for
> Internet strategies. "The fact is, the average Internet user is
> accustomed to a high level of pain."
Or accustomed to multitasking his/her time.....
> Overzealous Web site designers, overburdened Web servers
> and underpowered home computers all contribute to the pain.
Obsolete routers and too-thin local pipes (POTS) are also involved here.
Most large sites allow surfing with graphics turned off. This voiluntary
action reduces the wait considerably, and the user can always turn the
graphics on if he wishes. 5% to 10% of home users report surfing this way
most of the time, and up to a third do so occasionally.
Vin says, ...in part:
>Not long ago, we discussed surveys that estimated the amount of time the
>average Internet user spent daily deleting spams. Many of these surveys then
>converted that wasted time into the equivalent wage-hours and approximated
>the amount of dollars spams cause users worldwide to waste each year. The
>results were in the high hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.
The above method is an advocasy approach to this issue. Some of the false
assumptions are that everyone deletes spam everyday. That no one deletes
anything but spam. That all unsolicited e-mail is unwelcome by everyone.
That the amount of spam received by all users is uniform. All these
assumtions are unsupported. They are implicitly partisan positions.
>Yet, none of those surveys estimated that the average user was spending
>anywhere near NINE MINUTES per day deleting spams. If this NetRating survey
>is true (and I argue that it is), then it means that bloated webpages are
>wasting even more of people's time and money than spamming does. I hate to
>point this out, but it's true.
A waste of a person's time depends squarely on that person's perception.
It cannot be honestly imputed. What one person considers useful time
spent, another may not. Over generalization on what is or is not a "waste
of time" can be misleading. I prefer faster loading pages. But i do not
consider my wait for a page "wasted" if I am doing other things I enjoy,
...even if it is just listening to music, scanning a magazine article,
surfing cable channels, etc......
>Before anyone involved in the production of a website claims that spams are
>wasting users' time and money, they should first ask themselves if overuse
>of graphics in their own webpages are wasting even more of the users' time
>and money each day or year.
Overuse of graphics is tiresome. I especially dislike blinking banner ads.
These typically load first, and I usually resent the over-intrusiveness.
Users have
>asked to receive those webpages, a crucial difference. By contrast, spams
>are unsolicited, intrusive, and, worst of all, virtually never match a
>user's interests.
Virtually never? That is disputed by a survey you suggested that I read
several months ago. I brought this contradiction to the attention of the
list at that time. Don't you remember?
People's dislike of spam is inversely proportional to their interest in the
topic presented. Not all users dislike all spam equally. That assumption
does not stand scrutiny. A small group of good-folks are rabid about their
hatred of all spam, but most are not.
>I've worked against spam for many years. Neither filtering
>schemes nor industry 'self-policing' will reduce or stop it.
People are completely entitled to this opinion. But so far it is
unsupported by genuine analysis.
(Serious individuals make a distinction between genuine analysis and hokum
baloney, a point that clearly Vin understands and respects, but one that
Ddern and zd-whatever need to ponder. Poorly conceived and written
regulations based on both BAD SCIENCE and worse ideology are being struck
down by Federal courts, ....for example, try directing one's attention to
the EPA's latest legal problems)
Filtering and self-policing can reduce spam, and in places are said to have
done so. Steve Outings has developed software for this noble purpose.
While I suspect that such tools will not reduce spam enough in the
near-term to calm the zealots, they can certainly make a difference But
nothing will completely stop spam, not even legislation. Spam is a fact of
life. And the zealotry, too, is just another fact of life.
Society is already over-burdened with poorly conceived, unenforceable laws.
And even the obviously necessary laws, against robbery, murder, etc., do
not eliminate these forms of misbehavior. Government action IS NOT the
solution to every social problem. And automatically assuming that Federal
action is the best or only resort, is itself a threat to social justice and
economic good-order.
gotta go crunch numbers in the sunshine............ 8-)
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