Slashdot Mirror

Things I miss are the sites where you could get free webspace to do whatever with, and not have to fart around with banner ads, popups, etc. Granted that's moot since I have a friend who hosts one of my sites.

My company, SurveyComplete, sponsors a service called AloofHosting which provides free webspace to people. Signups don't get to do anything they want with the space, it is understood that users are meant to host a website, and not use it as a file-server, but for the most part people seem pretty happy. It's also partially supported by a 2-line text ad placed in the footer of each webpage. So it's not really "free" as in without obligations, but it's very mild when compared with the popups and banners enforced on users of other "free" webpage services.

On the plus side, users do get 50MB of diskspace and 500MB of transfer a month. It's really a pretty good service, reminiscent of GeoCities before they placed the floating G on every page.

From the article, "Market researcher IDC expects to announce within weeks that Linux' PC market share in 2003 hit 3.2%, overtaking Apple Computer Inc.'s... Macintosh... software."

My company, SurveyComplete, programs online surveys for market research companies. That's all that we do, and we're damn good at it. In fact, I'd say that we're the best in the world at what we do at this point in time and I'm proud of my work. Last year we completed nearly fifty research studies, covering over 800,000 interviews.

This story really ticks me off because we performed an Awareness and Usage study across Internet Users (just two weeks ago) on the topic of Operating Systems and found that Linux is absolutely not overtaking Macintosh.

While 26% of the 1,100 respondents we interviewed were aware of Linux or one of its many distributions, only 1% use it on a daily or weekly basis. Macintosh comes in at a healthy 6%.

One of the most interesting findings in the study came from when we examined techies against the rest of the population and found that "Respondents who are male, aged 35 or more, use broadband, and are college educated (some college or more) are far more likely to be aware of Linux than the rest of the population" to the tune of 43% awareness of Linux in techies versus 15% in the rest of the population. That's a huge gap, a gargantuan gap. When we examined the operating systems respondents currently use, 3% of techies are using Linux versus less than 1% of the general population.

When I read the results, it really shocked me. Why, this means that 2004 is not going to be the year of Linux on the desktop -- this goes against everything I've heard on slashdot! All those hours I've spent reading articles by people in the open-source scene talking about how this year, was going to be it. But this makes more sense: Nobody has really heard about Linux outside of nerds.

Which is probably why the results of our study never appeared on slashdot (even though they were submitted last week.)

It's really frustrating that this pro-linux propaganda gets through onto the front page while articles like ours which have results that make sense, get dropped.

You can read our study results and find out if BSD is truly dead, here:

2004 SurveyComplete Operating System Awareness and Usage Study

6 of the 8 who voted against this were from states centrally located in the U.S.

It makes sense because long distance rates are cheaper there. A few cents a minute savings really adds up when you've got a phone room filled with hundreds of people working the phones.

I own a business programming online surveys and a lot of my work comes from research studies that used to be conducted by huge phone centers out in the midwest. I like to think that I'm helping put them out of business. Too bad that telephone surveys aren't affected by the do not call list. It would earn me more work! :)

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) phone centers in the U.S. sorted by state.

Here's a link to a java applet port of Elite:
http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/Elite.html

And did someone say market research? SurveyComplete can get your web survey programmed and ready for interviewing today! 500,000 interviews conducted so far this year. Alternately, you can sign up as a member of our consumer panel to take surveys for cash and prizes (i.e. support your habit.)

"Too much pie! That's your problem."

Here's a link to a java applet port of Elite:
http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/Elite.html

And did someone say market research? SurveyComplete can get your web survey programmed and ready for interviewing today! 500,000 interviews conducted so far this year. Alternately, you can sign up as a member of our consumer panel to take surveys for cash and prizes (i.e. support your habit.)

"Too much pie! That's your problem."

It's mirrored here courtesy of SurveyComplete.

Incedentally, I highly recommend the book Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve C McConnell. It tought me more about programming than the rest of my computer book bookshelf!

Another great resource is Safari. It's a web service that for a fee, allows you to view O'reilly, Que, and Sams books online. I find the code search feature to be invaluable. Cheap way to read technical books.

Here's another mirror.

Obligatory plug: Join the SurveyComplete panel.

Here's another mirror.

Obligatory plug: Join the SurveyComplete panel.