At least on Experts Exchange, you can read the question/answers without signing up. It's just well-hidden (and doesn't show up in text-only browsers like w3m or links last I checked). You have to scroll all the way down the page past the looks-like-the-content-but-is-blurred-out-or-otherwise-obfuscated section, and past all of the navigation links. The content is actually there.
I don't necessarily condone their page design and misdirection, but I have found answers on them through Google searches in the past.
It wasn't always that way. They used to only show google it, but if a regular user came along they couldn't see it. Google got a bit mad and what you see is their current hack to appease google, and screw users.
This 'hack' was in place years ago. IIRC, I used to back in 2003 or maybe before then. Maybe at some point they removed it, then Google made them put it back?
It used to be Javascript-obfuscated. For all the times I clicked on one of their links only to have my blood pressure raised: I hope Experts Exchange withers away into obscurity.
When it was blurred out with JavaScript, I always was able to find the actual content further down the page. I think that the 'blurred out' version of it was just to make people give up. Either that or their JavaScript was broken for Firefox.
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And Experts Exchange...
At least on Experts Exchange, you can read the question/answers without signing up. It's just well-hidden (and doesn't show up in text-only browsers like w3m or links last I checked). You have to scroll all the way down the page past the looks-like-the-content-but-is-blurred-out-or-otherwise-obfuscated section, and past all of the navigation links. The content is actually there.
I don't necessarily condone their page design and misdirection, but I have found answers on them through Google searches in the past.
It wasn't always that way. They used to only show google it, but if a regular user came along they couldn't see it. Google got a bit mad and what you see is their current hack to appease google, and screw users.
This 'hack' was in place years ago. IIRC, I used to back in 2003 or maybe before then. Maybe at some point they removed it, then Google made them put it back?
It used to be Javascript-obfuscated. For all the times I clicked on one of their links only to have my blood pressure raised: I hope Experts Exchange withers away into obscurity.
When it was blurred out with JavaScript, I always was able to find the actual content further down the page. I think that the 'blurred out' version of it was just to make people give up. Either that or their JavaScript was broken for Firefox.