Not only do you asstards make me have an account to read your tripe, but you then don’t seem to remember my login, and when I try to retrieve my password, which I already gave correctly, you generate “System Error, try again later.” If I try to create a new login, you sure do remember the e-mail I gave you and block me from creating it though. Heckuva business model there! Remind me not to give a fuck the next time you complain the newspaper business can’t make money these days.
I’ve had a log-in acct with the NYTimes site for approximately a million years and have never, ever had the problems you describe.
P.S. If you don’t want to bother with an actual acct, use bugmenot.com.
In my day, you had to plunk down good money to get a newspaper. And then you got ink all over your hands. In my day, the newspapers had a columnist named Ann Landers who told people like you to KWICHERBEEFIN.
Maybe its a pebcak error.
Something about the OP has my MPSIMS-dar going off. I’ll move it there from The BBQ Pit to quiet the noises in my head.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
I second bugmenot.com, although you’ll have to occasionally grab another username/password.
At work on the shared computer I use, Firefox is set to completely clear cookies on logout. Usually when I am asked to login (because I have read the magical number of articles before you are required to login), I just close Firefox and restart it. I do have an account I use sometimes though as well. I don’t really want to see “Welcome, upyours123” as my login name in the upper right corner – most of the usernames on bugmenot.com are like that.
I’ve always been able to get into their website without logging in 
.
You don’t even need to go to bugmenot.com. If you’re using FireFox (and if not, why not?) you can install the BugMeNot plugin and logging in to any site involves just right-clicking on the login box and selecting “login with bugmenot.” It’ll even automagically run through a list of logins for you until it finds one that works.
You’re seriously complaining about having to log into a site to get for free content that would otherwise cost you several hundred dollars per year?
ooooh, shiny.
I believe he’s complaining about not being able to login, despite purchasing an account subscription.
NYTimes accts do not cost anything – it’s just a login.
They do have a premium option.
That said the NY Times site is not one of the better designed ones around. I don’t go often, since I get the real paper, but it took me forever to find the A. O. Scott talking about 2001, which was mentioned in the Science Section Moon issue, but not linked to in the online version.
I have had the same experience as the OP. There’s something severely buggy about NYTimes’ website cookies and/or cookying process. A login that I create will be rejected on subsequent visits. I use bugmenot, having long long since had my fill of this bs.
I posted something about bugmenot.com a few years ago and was threatened with having my membership revoked and had my post removed. That was at a time when the Dope was a pay to post site and bugmenot would give enough info to post here without paying. Has the Dope relaxed it’s stance on bugmenot?
So, it isn’t just me.
Exactly.
And it doesn’t seem to be related to cookies, because I am supplying them with my login info. More like a problem with their membership database.
Sites like bugmenot are fine but really how hard is it to get a hotmail account.
Here’s a great way to do this. Get a email reader called PopPeeper. It’s free and once you get it you won’t know how you lived without it.
Unlike most email reader, PopPeeper reads webmail like Hotmail.
Then just create an account like PostMarkxxx@hotmail.
You could have 50 hotmail accounts easily managed with PopPeeper. So just create for sign-ins
Usually when you go into a site and it has worked fine then suddenly stops it’s one of two things.
First your cookies and / or cache is hopelessly corrupted. So what you need to do is delete all your cache and cookies and start over fresh.
This can be a pain 'cause you have to retype any saved info again, and you can’t selectively delete. Often you have to completely start over.
Second it’s usually the site is upgoing some changes or security upgrades and the code is wrong and no one told them yet.
My biggest gripe about reg sites is that often I’ll come across a very easily answered question in a forum and to post an answer that’ll help, I have to register even though I know darn well I’ll never use the site again.
I too thought that it was not to be mentioned. I seem to recall others having been admonished.
There is no rule against discussing bugmenot.
We do ask that you don’t register for the Straight Dope Message Boards using bugmenot, because we want to have a valid email address on file in case we need to contact you for anything. We don’t need to very often (and yes, we know you can create throwaway email addresses using other systems), but when we do, we need a good address.
But talk all you wish.
ETA: (If you want to discuss using bugmenot to register for the SDMB, please don’t do it in this forum – take it to About This Message Board).