Reader Mark Fields was amused by the side-by-side advertisement and my column in PC Magazine. In the column I was moaning about net censorship and spying and the fall of Democracy. The ad was (kind of) for these exact tools!! Well, as they say, nobody ever went broke advertising next to a Dvorak column. Click here to read that column.

Incidentally Fields was suspicious of this placement and I can assure him that while advertisers request general placement, they cannot do it based on content since the deadlines for ads and editorial are quite different. Any advertiser can be put next to a Dvorak column by paying a premium. There is often a waiting list for these two spots. I never know who is going to crop up and they never know what I’m writing about. It’s more likely that I can pull a placement stunt like that than can an advertiser. That said advertising and editorial can be coordinated in onerous ways in very small publications. I can assure you that we don’t do it and couldn’t do it if we wanted to — and we don’t want to. It makes readers mad, so it’s a bad policy anyway.