I know it's difficult for some people to believe how much it costs to keep a site like this up, but all I can say is, it is costly. Were I to expand to the amount of server power that I need right now, I would be back to losing a few hundred dollars a month. That doesn't mean I'm not going to do it, it just means I have to find new ways to do things.

Advertising is a very big reality on the web. There's a reason you don't see many/any big sites (aside from those wholly owned by larger entities) without advertising on them. I like to think that the advertising placements here are as unobtrusive as possible. If you want to go to whatever lengths to block those ads, all it's doing is shooting me and the site in the foot; I certainly won't stop those who do, and I completely understand their position. But the fact remains that this is a free service to them and at the end of the day, someone needs to pay for it. Thankfully, we have sponsors who purchase ad space to pick up that tab.

Similarly, a premium subscription is not going to "free" people from seeing the advertising. It would be difficult to convince people to advertise here if they knew that a certain percentage of active users could just opt out of the ads. Again, I'm not necessarily saying it's the most fair thing to the user, it's just a reality of doing business on the web.