Nothing in Life worth having is worth Nothing

The WritersUA conference concluded on Wednesday with a panel of experts making predictions about the future. One of the predictions that Chuck Martin reports was mentioned on the conference blog site is that the Internet will someday not be free and that a paid subscription will be required to bypass ads. That's something I hope doesn't happen. It seems to me that it will, though, because people are always looking for a new way to make money. Why shouldn't there be a price paid for the Internet? Your connection to the Internet isn't free - generally - because you are paying for a service. What service does the Internet provide or, the better question, what service doesn't the Internet provide? Not sure where I'm going with this so bear with me. The services that the Internet doesn't provide are all services we, as humans, do not trust someone else to do - the Internet doesn't pick a car for us if we're in the market but it makes finding the car you want easier. It doesn't fill up the car with gas but it makes finding the cheapest local price in your area. It doesn't pick out a band that you will like but it makes finding the best band you had never heard relatively easier to find because you can sample a band's material online. So the Internet is doing all these things for us and we aren't paying for it. If you find software that someone has written, you can contribute to a PayPal fund and help that developer out but there's nothing that makes you do it.

Maybe the prediction that the Internet will no longer be free is a good thing. The Internet is not my friend this AM. I use Logmein.com to access my virtual PC on my Vista PC b/c my scroll wheel doesn't work when I go in through VM player but it does when I use logmein.com. This AM, though, logmein.com doesn't like me and has not allowed me to access my PC. I'm paying for that because I use my scroll wheel nearly every minute I use a PC. Put your fingers away from the scroll wheel and see how easy it is to do stuff. It's not!

Today is Good Friday but it's a challenging one as well.

Update: Our excellent Sys Admin fixed my PC issue so I'm productive...