Free eZines... Love 'em? Hate 'em? Use & Keep 'em?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Tracking cookie? What's a tracking cookie?

[Mark5]

On the other hand, I can see the hobby press scrambling in this direction, at least for their "regular" issues.  I think if Kalmbach put their monthly on-line and only offered the premium edition stuff (basically a "Best Of") in print, they'd find themselves in a very happy place financially.

I don't think we'll see on-line only any time soon, still plenty of older model railroaders that aint surfin the "internets". (I don't look at any "pay" online content).

What I would like to see is back issues on PDF (after they reach one year old or something). Digitizing the mags will avoid the common experience of back issues being "sold out".

[lashedup]

"Hate internet mags , and don't want to be locked on a site that may or not be secure ."

For the record Richie, looking at this page has set 6 new tracking cookies into your browser.  6!!!  The ACLSAL site... none.  The B&O site... none.  The C&NW site... none.  The TKM site... none.

And, just so you will know... Atlas... none.  Trainboard... none.  So if I were you I wouldn't be hanging around here.  And be careful of some of those railfan sites... Rail Pictures is the worse for malicious tracking cookies, and they are set up, not on the homepage but the individual views of various images on the site.  Not all pages, but quite a few.

Easy there - your tin foil hat is showing.

Not all cookies are bad, malicious or otherwise. A number of discussion forums use a "cookie" (a small piece of code) to keep track of when you last visited the forums so it can show you which topics are new since you last visited, keep track of your login status over time so you don't have to repeatedly log in, etc., etc.

That's not to say there aren't cookies out there that are designed to track what sites you look at and such. Quite frankly every time you make a credit card purchase a whole boatload of people know what you are buying,  how much you spent and what your purchase patterns are. Given all the things that we use in a modern life (Internet, cell phone, credit cards, ATM machines, Passports that are scanned and on and on) we aren't too hard to track or pin down. Heck, credit card companies have been selling your personal information for over 30 years now - it is big business for them to sell their customer lists. Not until the Internet came along did privacy issues become more of a public issue and start to put the clamp down on that kind of thing. This will likely be a constant battle between business and consumers for a long time to come.

As for the magazines, I think the use of PDF e-zines is a bridge between the print world and the website world and probably won't be the long-term future.

[ryourstone]

There's already some sort of GPS built into cell phones, no?  Location, name, number, billing address...  Eep!

Even the phones without built in GPS can be triangulated based on signal strength to within a few meters. Cops use this to pick people up all the time (drug dealers, etc). They really do think if they aren't talking on the phone they can't be traced, just like in the movies.

To stay relevent with the thread, I like PDFs I have 10 boxes of old magazines I lug around every time I have to move but can't seem to part with. CDs would be easier.

[Ian MacMillan]

I personally prefer mags in PDF format. I can bring them anywhere and read them anywhere and it keeps me from having filing cabinets filled with mags like I currently do.

Also since most of the e-zine producers I have seen edit and layout in a very large format, I can zoom in on photos without losing resolution or sharpness.

Even if e-zines do go to pay, I think they would be much cheaper than print due to overhead. But then again that may not last long as remember when alot of newspaper sites were pay to read? Many are now free because people stopped going to their site to read the info. I once had a reporter ask me after an interview (were everything was referred to the brass...I hate talking to reporters) if I subscribed to the Union Leader, to which I replied no. She asked why not and I told her I would just read it on their website for free. She then stated, well what if we started charging you to view it online... Simple I said, I would get my news somewhere else for free, I'm not going to pay for something that I can get for free.

Most of the sites I visit regularly that are "news" sites and are free are heavily ad supported, which does not bother me...that way its free and the staff still gets their money.

[Mark5]

I personally prefer mags in PDF format.

I like PDFs too but what publisher is going to put their current content in a PDF that can be freely cloned and distributed? Ethical questions aside, this would deeply cut into subscription revenue.

[Ian MacMillan]

I personally prefer mags in PDF format.

I like PDFs too but what publisher is going to put their current content in a PDF that can be freely cloned and distributed? Ethical questions aside, this would deeply cut into subscription revenue.

But we are talking about e-zines not conventional publishers, so sub rev is not at issue. About 90% of current e-zines are in PDF, so its apparently not an issue. Plus there are ways to make it so that PDF's can't be redistributed. Most e-zines are heavily ad supported as a pay base, not subscribers.

Theres also a conventional newspaper publisher up here (Conway Daily Sun) that does its paper in print and PDF every day. The only way they charge you is if you get home delivery. News stand and PDF are free, and thus you are only paying for home deliver as a "convenience".

[sparky]

Richie, it's been quite interesting watching your level of paranoia increase since you joined the A-board with your WebTV way back when.  Locking yourself inside your house hiding from the black helicopters doesn't seem like an enjoyable retirement to me, but to each his own.  Just my $.02.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

It's funny, I just had a big discussion about this with the CRHS magazine (ie, offering digital versions, which we do, and digital back issues).

We talked about potential lost revenue from "pass arounds", and it's my position (but not necessarily that of the group) that I don't think that the potential lost revenue from pass arounds is as high as you'd think. This is because every pass around does not equal a lost sale. If I have a very passing interest in something, I might read it if it's free, but if it's not, then I probably won't pay for it. Maybe if it's $1 or something like that, but not if it's $4.

So the only real "lost revenue" that I see is people who NEED that content for research they're performing, and I think the revenue loss from that can easily be offset by the value of the added exposure that you get from pass-arounds.

[tom mann]

"Hate internet mags , and don't want to be locked on a site that may or not be secure ."

For the record Richie, looking at this page has set 6 new tracking cookies into your browser.  6!!!  The ACLSAL site... none.  The B&O site... none.  The C&NW site... none.  The TKM site... none.

And, just so you will know... Atlas... none.  Trainboard... none.  So if I were you I wouldn't be hanging around here.  And be careful of some of those railfan sites... Rail Pictures is the worse for malicious tracking cookies, and they are set up, not on the homepage but the individual views of various images on the site.  Not all pages, but quite a few.

I really wish you wouldn't have stated this in this manner.  A lot of people will now think that Railwire is unsafe, when in reality, two of those cookies expire when your browser closes.  They are called "session cookies" and are created when you log in and navigate from page to page.  When you close your browser, they are gone.  The other cookie is to maintain your login when you open the browser.  This cookie is persistent, unlike the session ones.  It is more efficient to use the session from page to page because it is in memory.  

The other cookies are used by the advertisement module provided by Google.  Google does this to track your interests as you go from site to site where Google ads are displayed.  This is done anonymously.

And Trainboard and Atlas both use cookies as well, so you are wrong in your statement that they do not use cookies.

[sparky]

I have an older P3 computer that I use strictly for browsing.  No information that I want to keep secure is ever entered on this computer.  If I get a virus or malware, I simply do a clean install of XP and I'm off and running again.  Any files I download get a full scan before I move them to another computer.

[Mark5]

I personally prefer mags in PDF format.

I like PDFs too but what publisher is going to put their current content in a PDF that can be freely cloned and distributed? Ethical questions aside, this would deeply cut into subscription revenue.

But we are talking about e-zines not conventional publishers, so sub rev is not at issue. About 90% of current e-zines are in PDF, so its apparently not an issue. Plus there are ways to make it so that PDF's can't be redistributed. Most e-zines are heavily ad supported as a pay base, not subscribers.

Sorry, I guess this thread meanders a bit, someone mentioned MR so that's the context I was using ...

As for PDFs, I've never seen crack proof ones, but maybe they exist!

Theres also a conventional newspaper publisher up here (Conway Daily Sun) that does its paper in print and PDF every day. The only way they charge you is if you get home delivery. News stand and PDF are free, and thus you are only paying for home deliver as a "convenience".

A tabloid! I wonder what their business model is with all these major newspapers cutting back or going under (maybe they have lessons for them!) 

[jmlaboda]

"And Trainboard and Atlas both use cookies as well, so you are wrong in your statement that they do not use cookies."

They do use cookies, session cookies, but not "third party" tracking cookies, but I had not intent on making Railwire look bad.  I appologize for that.  I should have been far more more specific about what kind of cookies I was refering to, but that said, there still are ad cookies from this site that are blocked by my browser because they are third party tracking cookies.

The point I was trying to make was that even a forum such as this could have cookies that were not directly related to the forum, or even by the one who sets up the ads, such as Google.  And there are a number of ads that do contain malicious cookies, though, thankfully I have not encountered any here.  I did find it interesting that I found those six blocked, though two of them, from doubleclick.net, I am glad to have blocked, I have had the misfortune to have had malicious cookies from them before and they are no fun.

I keep my security settings for cookies quite high because I have had malicious third party cookies cause problems... they can be as serious as a virus.  But no such thing has been encountered here.  Likewise, as I mentioned earlier, no such problem has been encountered at the eZine download sites either.

[John]

I can't let this go without responding.

I work in computer security and spend my work day preventing this kind of thing. I access this site every day, and never once have had any malcode downloaded to any of my systems.

Each of us must determine the level of risk that they are willing to accept. My IT risk tolerance is low. Keep your anti virus up to date, stay away from porn sites, keep your system patch level current, and be aware of where you visit.

As far as cookies go, this site does deposit some cookies. We use those to help you log in, remember your last message read, etc.

The Google and Amazon cookies help pay the bills, and without them, you wouldn't be getting the RW free eZine either. Since you have have your browser set at a level that blocks cookies, you should be OK.  Will you ever get malcode from here? Not if I can help it, but it is possible. I allow the posters some liberties that other sites don't. There is a potential someone could deliver a payload in a GP40 picture (GP38-2 with sight glass are safe ), or a cross site scripting attack. Of course, it is just as possible that I will get hit today in the Mall parking lot.

Now, lets back to eZines

[Mark5]

With Firefox, if you're really paranoid you can set the browser to "dump" all cookies when you close it. But this means you'll have to log back on every time you reopen the browser.