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my question is, why do people believe these stories at face value?

Reminds me of that one chick that said she needed 20 grand to pay off expensive shopping sprees and then claimed the money poured in, that savekaryn website a few years back.

Somehow I doubt her (or this million dollar webpage) made any money until they claimed they made a bunch of money and then told newspapers who then spread the word and then sites started paying for advertising (or in karyn's case, just sending money).

And for those of you thinking "naw, internet hoaxs dont happen, the newspapers are surely checking their bank accounts, etc", think again: this guy claimed this christmas lights were being turned off and on by visitors to his website and it turned out to be a hoax. Dozens of major online news sites reported the lights as real, it wasnt until a reporter showed up unannounced and called a friend online and told them to turned the lights off & on and it didnt work that they finally figured out the hoax.

You'd think lights being turned on & off over the internet would be the easiest to verify, but it didnt stop everyone and their mother from reporting it as 100% true. Makes you wonder how much of the news is true and how much is a hoax?

So there you have it, there are internet hoaxes and fakes and the online news media reports every little story as 100% true without doing any fact-checking to verify it's true. Therefore I call this million dollar homepage mythbusted!

my theory: about half the pixels are stuff he just threw up there for nothing, linking to mom-and-pop shops who will be happy to get any hits at all. Now that he's getting a ~750 million hits a day he's able to charge real money.

While not as crucial as this one, I can think of two similarly novel uses of the Web to get what one wants.

Karyn Bosnak was $20,000 in the hole and set up SaveKaryn.com. Within a few months she had paid off all her debts from the contributions of strangers. Now she's an author.

Ramon Stoppelenburg wanted to travel around the world but had no money, so he started LetMeStayForADay.com, and managed to hitchhike around the world for a couple of years without spending a dime.

I also seem to recall a far older site called 'Send Me A Dollar', but I don't have the URL to hand now. Does anyone know of any other people who've used the Web for interesting personal gain?

"ABCNews is reporting on a 19-year-old college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. He created a site named ChewPlastic.com where students could search for files on the university network. Mind you, this is not a music file sharing software, this is just a search engine. Presumably, the search engine was being used to search for music files as well. The folks over at the RIAA did not take too kindly to the idea, and sued the student. He settled but denies any wrongdoing. What was settlement, you ask? His life's savings."

This dude settled cos it was the cheaper option, not cos he was pirating stuff. Its not like he was following in the footsteps of this wh0re.

How do we send these poor scapegoats some cash? Paypal? Personal Checks? Cash money in tin foil like grandma?

If SaveKaryn got her money, these guys are worthy for sure.

Really?

There seems to have been a recent change in how some people/businesses are coping with online financial difficulties - begging.

There's probably an earlier example, but save karyn comes quickly to mind. She spent too much money on shoes on her credit card and she asked for donations to pay it back - and people did.... or at least, they pledged money. It's become enough of a phenomenom that there are articles on wired, caplan, and newhouse and many many others. And that's mostly in the realm of personal begging.

Companies now seem to be joining in.
Mandrake now have this money drive, and another one earlier in the year. Gnome is asking for money. And there seems to be a trend of having software for ransom.

All of this concerns me because it seems that there a plethora of open source related companies/products that aren't viable on their own merits.

Simple enough, set up a website. Something like Karyn's mess of self pity, and collect for support.

Document the events in question, and supply mechanisms to petition the school district, the courts, and the local media. Unfortunately, since the DBS suffering girl is just that, a girl, you probably wouldn't want to post her name (unless it has been posted elsewhere in the media). Of course, that wouldn't keep you from posting her mom's name. If you want help designing the site and setting stuff up, I'll gladly pitch in.

Once you have it set up, I'll pay for Tom's next beer.

That story is here... she raised her money and is now looking to "hand off" to someone else in need.

Like THIS one??

If RMS doesn't understand the vocabulary issue, then why does he refer to "trusted computing" as "treacherous computing" throughout the article?

Oops.

Okay, so, yeah, RMS does get it. I must confess i did not actually read his article before making my post.. there were like 10 links in that blurb and it wasn't clear what was what :). Nevertheless, i am quite embarrased.

Although i'll hold to what i said-- RMS may get it, but in general not all of the other free software advocate people do.

Actually, RMS *really* gets it. This is a great article. It's too bad RMS never gets published outside of the incestuous circle of slashdot-like sites, he's so much more eloquent in writing... I wonder how hard it would be to get something like this RMS article published as a one-page advertisement in Newsweek. If karyn wossername can get $20,000 just becuase she couldn't manage her debt and she knows how to set up a website, the Slashdot Community could probably put together enough money for a newsweek ad :)

whatever. ugh. shame.

Save Karyn was the catalyst of all the copycat "begging" sites currently polluting cyberspace. I'm not fully against begging, but I'll just say this: if the demand/business model is good enough, there's no need to beg. Obviously, if the Perl Journal is indisposable, they wouldn't have to beg for subscribers for the purpose of survival...

Save Karyn

http://www.savekaryn.com is a site where Karyn wants visitors to her site to pay off her credit card debt via donations.

Doesn't that sound like an infringment of Amazon's patent?

If so, then this could be a good thing!

http://www.savekaryn.com/