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Monday, March 19 2001

A bit of unsolicited advice to all those who are keen on billing for online content.

I'd better not have to read it on a computer if you want me to pay for it. Do yourself a favour and make sure that everything you publish comes in three flavours : whatever koolaid the design weirdos happen to be drinking, plain old text for plain old printing and plain old xml for me to custom roll a morning paper to take to it a cafe. We've had three to five years, depending on how you're counting, to spin the idea of self as a crack-addled speed-freak doing everything on a shiny, beeping, glowing piece of plastic and no one but the gadget-whores really bought it. If we're all suddenly going to have to pay for everything we read online, you can be pretty sure we're also going to want to be able to read it offline and at our leisure too. Just remember that all bets are off when you start charging people money for stuff.

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Sunday, March 18 2001 ←  → Tuesday, March 20 2001