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Free-PC Bites the Dust
Jade & eann write, "Not too long ago, we signed up for Free-PC, mainly to see if we could find a way around their ads. :) It ends up we just had to be patient. After the merger with emachines, they've discontinued the FreePC program and their Internet service this past week: the details are here. If you have one of these systems, it's now yours to keep. They're not even bothering to have people send back the machines."
They failed because forcing people to view ads gets annoying and most people just ignore the ads anyway so the advertisers don't get enough ROI to make the system worthwhile.
Anyone care to find out if Linux or Free BSD will run on one of these beasts?
It somehow seems a proper thing to do.
Too bad I didn't get me some of those.
You can't handle the truth.
That's a righteous way to end a company. One of the very few money-oriented operations that exist(ed) :D
i was at Demo '99 when bill gross announced it - i think of it now as the pinnacle of consumer internet business model madness....R.I.P. Theses types of companies really will not make it in the long term that just try to get users with no idea of what value they provide or why anyone should use them...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
I signed up for one, but they never sent it. Probably because I'm under 18.
Stupid age of majority....
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
Nice new Compaq PC. The FreePC soft was easy to bypass, so I had Win98 (no choice, but I could turn the ads off at least) and Linux running on it for months. Getting the title on the PC now is just icing on the cake. Thanks FreePC!
~Tiroth
I received one of these a few months back. It's a Compaq mini tower with the bare minimum you'd expect to get at a store. It is a great machine if you consider it is free, but not one i'd buy with my own money. It has 64MB mem., however, this is shared with the video card that is built onto the motherboard. It leave 54MB of that available for the system. I'm not sure if this is the reason that the display(and consequently, the mouse) would freeze up for a few seconds at a time once in a while. Is anyone able to confirm this? ~Jack
has anybody had a chance to try out the eslate sub 1000 dollar laptop from e-machines??? is it any good?
If you were to get one of these free pc's, you should follow their wishes.
By bypassing the ad's, you are effectively stealing from them. The only other moral option is to not take part in the promotion at all. But since morality is scarce in the world, the company goes under. Imagine how many people who couldn't afford a pc, being able to get one. They would simply have to trade their time to watch ads in return. Its a simple exchange.
It's not "free"
Its only an exchange of a different commodity.
They also have the option not to take part in the offer.
It's sad that an idea such as this goes down the toilet.
I don't support it, but I think it should be available for those you do.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Full version: Pay for it.
Free version: Agree to have ads *in the software's window*
Free version with no ads: Fewer features.
With "free hardware incl. ads" going down the drain, I wonder if Eudora's business model will be more successful.
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You may like my a cappella music
Didn't work that way. There were very few available, so you had to fill out a (legnthy) form, and they were choosing people of certain demographics, to support their marketing. I have no idea who they gave them to, and on exactly what basis, but it was NOT easy to get one of these things.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Does anyone know when this announcement was made? February 14 has already come and gone, so either this is old news or they really didn't play nice with their customers on the email part -- it couldn't be too hard to set up a temporary forwarding service. I suppose they just expect their customers not to complain after getting to keep the machine for free, eh?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I'm kind of concerned whether outcomes like this eventually will have a similar impact on free ISP dial-up services like Netzero and Altavista. I've recently heard of free DSL. Will it also bite the dust?
I used to use Netzero, found it better than my local for-fee ISP. But the ads drove me crazy and none of them were relevant. How many times do I need a Macy's Bridal gown ad in my face? Once DSL became available in my area, my life has never been the same. Free at last!
Somebody shoot me.. I was going to get one of those when I first heard about it, but procrastinated and soon forgot about it. I would have loved a free computer, even if it were a dell or compaq... *long sigh*
The last story had 300 posts while everyone's waiting for Futurama, now that it's on, this story gets nothing.
I told a few of my users at work the free pcs were okay for them since they weren't doing anything important with their machines, but that I'd never get one. Looks like they win out.
-jpowers
This is a sign of bigger things to come. Granted, this was a dumb idea to begin with, but it's an example of how paying for everything with advertising doesn't always work. Yes, it does work often, take broadcast television for example, or radio, but it can also fail miserably. Just think of all these wonderful internet services that we enjoy free of charge, possibly providing only a modicum of information about ourselves. Now think about how many of those companies are making money. Some of them that are not may still, but some of them will be doomed just like FreePC. We might have to *shudder* pay for things. That might require *shudder* identifying ourselves. Anonymity as we know it could be ending. Anarchists of the world unite!
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Too bad they mixed it in with a bunch of privacy-compromising technology.
I set my Nephew up with freei.net last weekend and discovered I could force-quit (on a Mac) their lame banner ad displayer and retain the connection. Truly a good "feature"!
I saw a documentary the other day about a soup kitchen in Silicon Valley.
.com startups.
.......
.It's boast was that its clients had the highest IQs amongst 'down and outs'. Most of these people were either coders who had burnt out, been put out to grass (for being too old), or had lost their shirts (and houses) in failed
Reading this article, it figures. Wonder if I saw any Free PC execs in the queue ?
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
Shareware failed because most people would rather steal than pay up. They have all kinds of justifications for it, but that's what it comes down to. Plus all the sleazy CD distributors who intentionally obfuscated the distribution agreements didn't help either.
Eventually the software market reached the point where the only way to make money on software was to get into the pre-loaded software channel. Microsoft won that war and thousands of small authors got erased from the market.
I don't know the music industry the way I know the software industry but I expect there is a similar dynamic at work: leeches who steal -> publishers who become assholes -> creatives who must agree to ripoff terms to get any distribution -> honest customers who feel abused.
I wonder if this business model will ever succeed.
There's an amusing and lengthy flash intro at FreeComputer.com, but no actual content yet, besides an e-mail address.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The problem with shareware was that too many not-so-good programs were distributed that asked for far too high prices. These died out and only few shareware authors remained, but those that did are alive and well.
The same thing is happening on Palm Pilot now. There are a lot of small hacks that ask for a ridiculous 50$ registration fee. Those will fade and be forgotten, but those other Palm shareware software applications, those that are worth registering, will continue to exist.
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You may like my a cappella music
the American Dream: something for nothing. And the advertising supported Internet can be heard loudly now choking on its own excreta. MSN slips away and joins the dot-comatose. Time now for the geek-dream.
20 Million Ah0Lers backstroking for Antartica with a Microsoft shareholder under each arm.
Right. And they already do. Just look at billboards around you.
An increasing number of billboards say "your ad could be here!" these days. Sometimes you will see posters for charity. these posters are not free advertisement by the billboard owner to the charity organization. These are just a way to hide that this billboard was not sold for "normal" advertisement.
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You may like my a cappella music
It was announced several weeks ago. I recall reading about it in NYT's "Circuits" section. I don't know why I didn't submit it.
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Can I still sign up for one of those machines???
I filled out the form a couple years ago, just screwing around.. honestly told them that I had 6 computers, and filled out everything else.. never dreaming I would get it.. then a couple monthes ago they sent me an email and I got a free pc/monitor.. it was pretty slow while running all those ads, but after I formatted and reinstalled, its not a bad system.. for free.
At least in my opinion. Apple was right to tell those FreeMac people to take their business elsewhere.
My aunt received a free PC as part of the program. Now that it's discontinued, she obviously doens't need to look at the ads - so how can I get rid of them for her? Are they just programs that run in the background or is it an entire explorer shell replacement?
(I haven't seen the PC yet, but I'd like to help her out - thanks =)
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
The things that people don't get is that advertising viewership has always been the same.
Let's take a look at the traditional model vs. the internet model for a moment. The traditional model (television/radio) sends out advertisements to the viewership in hopes that it will boost product sales. The internet does the same, except that they look for website readership. So what's the real difference? Website click-throughs can be tracked. TV ads cannot.
Advertisers assume that if an ad is played during a show that people watch, then the people see it. You and I know this, but the Advertising exec's have yet to get it. Websites have the technology to realize that this is absolutely false. Almost nobody watches ads, TV or otherwise, but until there is a way to track TV views physical viewing and comprehending of an ad (designated by a click-through online), the execs will never know that the ads they spend so much money on are simply not effective.
Anybody use this freewwweb service? I signed up
for it last week (under Windows), and have yet
to see an ad, or even receive an advert email.
I was even reading on an NG where people use the
service under Linux.... How the hell do these
people make money? Is my Windows install messed up
or something? I figured on having to look at some
kind of ever-present floater ad, like I hear
Netzero, etc, uses. I'm not bitching, mind you...
I just find it a little strange in this day and age
of ever-present advertising that I'm getting
something for *free*, no strings attached. Am I
going to be tracked down, and brainwashed into
joining a Seinfeldian cult of carpet cleaners?
In the last paragraph, the second sentence should read "You and I know this IS FALSE..."
What reason did FreePC have for having recipients of their free machines' credit card numbers? Did they threaten to charge people who were able to evade the advertising software? If so, did they ever charge people? And what exactly was the company able to do by owning the title of the PC? Recall it if they found someone evading?
I reported this 2 weeks ago when I got notification from E-Machines that it was being discontinued.....why is it I find I am always ignored by the people who run Slashdot?
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
If your submissions are any good, lots of other people will also be submitting them, and eventually in about 2 weeks one of them will luck out and get a story in :)
Hopefully with HDTV there would be a way to get rid of commercials altogether with some utility that would notice when a commercial starts and when it ends or something like that.
Thank you
You can't handle the truth.
Dear Open/Free zealiots. This shows exectly what is in store for your free software. Good Luck. -- Good software comes with a price.
~ ,'~-,'~
~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'
~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'~,'~-,'
Before I posted it, the story before this had stuff coming so fast it was almost a chatroom. Only 1/12th of the world had it when I posted, but a much larger percentage of /. users live here, and since there was nothing on TV, we all checked /. at the same time.
jpowers
-jpowers
EXPLORER caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 015f:bff9d709. Registers: EAX=c00300f0 CS=015f EIP=bff9d709 EFLGS=00010216 EBX=0312ff88 SS=0167 ESP=030efe3c EBP=030f00d8 ECX=00000000 DS=0167 ESI=030f0228 FS=3fc7 EDX=bff76859 ES=0167 EDI=0312ff80 GS=0000 Bytes at CS:EIP:
Like this?
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
The reason why FreePC failed but broadcast television works is that with television the user still pays for the receiving unit (the TV), while the PCs were given away for free. Everyone who wants radio has to buy a radio, while the radio station only has to get the license to broadcast (and renew occasionally), put up an antenna, pay for some talent, and broadcast away. The ads mostly pay for talent and execs salaries, with some remaining for profit and upkeep.
Compare to universities, in that students buy a computer, and then hook to a T1/T3 backbone and get the "bandwidth" as part of tuition. Internet is "essentially" free, and all it took was a receiving unit. Giving away the receiving units too might be a bit much, hoping to recoop ~$500 per consumer was pie in the sky.
Free internet access services (iNet)? Maybe, but here's a better idea.
New houses come with electric outlets and a connecteed power line (duh). Also, they have phone lines (double duh) because no one would want a house without them. In ten years, I believe that you would not want to rent a house or apartment unless it had some sort of high-speed internet access available. Once the cable line / phone line is set up for two-way digital access, then essentially all you have to do is hook up and tell the provider so (suspiciously like you would for cable TV today). Internet access could even be factored in with rent. Hey, my old dorm wae $350/month with free cable.
I tried to convince a friend to get a cable modem, and install ethernet 10base-T wire in the walls attached to a hub and the modem. Five rooms = $10 extra a month in rent for "free" unlimited internet connection as fast as you would want = free internet for landlord with tidy profit besides. He wouldn't do it though, I think he hates money.
In the case of television you can argue that there's no bargain because there wasn't any consent. But it's hard to argue that when someone asks for a free computer that someone else is paying for. There's a pretty clear bargain there.
The commons are your and my attention. Internet advertisers can deliver ads at extremely low cost, so the commons is getting overfished and exhausted.
Macafee -> Anti Virus
ID -> Doom Quake and other games
mIRC
CuteFTP.
PKWare -> PKZip
These were the cream of the shareware crop and they are still alive
and well. The 1st 2 are huge companies with million$ in revenue.
Macafee bought up 3 other companies outright.
They all still do shareware. The problem is that buying shareware
is so much of a hassle even when the price is low that many people
don't bother. I.e. The $30 graphics program market until recently
consisted of people who didn't have a credit card.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
TANSTAAFL, my ass.
Free-PC has just demonstrated that socialism *does* work. Those with money invested, and the money was spent providing free computers for those who lacked money. The upshot? The investors lost a few dollars, but they can easily afford it. The proletariant got their hands on some computers, which they desperately needed. Only with modern communications can the Revolution now succeed. We've just taken a long step in that direction, thanks to the vision of the Free-PC people.
Marx once said, "the capitalist will sell you the rope you hang him with." That's true, but did Marx ever anticipate that the capitalist would *give* us the rope, as a present? No, I don't think the great man was ever that optimistic. Times are good. Progress is being made. The workers are learning and gaining strength -- just look at the WTO riots! Power to the people, right on, as they say. It won't be long now.
Viva la revolucion!
acutally, they were a halfway decent system for free, a Compaq presario 64mb ram, 4 gig HD, 380 mhz amd k6-2, yes, linux will run on them, but the video card sucks, and I cant find out how to get X to run on it, its a SiS530 AGP chipset, so if anyone can help me get X to run on it, email me at jsblake@mindspring.com and the reason they went out of business was that emachines bought them out, and they didnt feel like wasting the time to keep going with it....they didnt "go out of business" now their programmers and stuff are writing useless stuff for emachines systems.
Hey Brainiac, That offer wasn't free.
You exchanged your time to watch ads and fill out a long survey for a monetarily free PC.
If free software required me to watch ads, i probably wouldn't use it.
Oh yea, bad software comes with a price too.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
http://www2.awl.com/cseng/ to see that Bjarne Stroustrup will be taking questions on Slashdot this week.
This may be slightly off-topic.
Can you distinctly remember one internet ad that really stuck in your mind like a tv ad sometimes can do? Such as the bud commericals. I really can't. Is this because of the lack of quality of the ads? or the medium? somthing to think about.
Actually, advertising is a rather exact science. There is one parameter to be maximized: profit. If a company invests in advertising, and this increases sales enough to bring more profit than what the advertising cost, it worked.
Profit is the only parameter that matters to the advertiser. However, it's a different matter to the broadcaster. TV networks are _very_ interested in demonstrating to their advertisers what the audience was. They do not try to infer that any of the viewers actually *saw* those ads. What they want to do is to show what share of the total number of customers saw their program, compared to other advertisements. Remember that companies usually don't rely on a single medium for their ads. What audience research methods try to do is evaluate the relative merits of different media. Counting clicks in internet banners is a relatively easy and accurate method of evaluating this.
Moderators, take note:
1)Read the moderation guidelines before moderating anything
I think this one eluded me till now. it would always be nice to have a free PC :), even if its to late, I was wondering what were the complete specs on the machines that they were supplying I heard someone mention K6-2 chips, could anyone tell me the complete package of what they "gave" to people hardware wise? thnx in advance
I should have accepted it when it was offered to me (~4 months after sign up)
You've just made my day!
Is that a real picture?
If so is there a good story behind it?
gggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr rrrrrr... ive had this song stuck in my head all day now because of you! lol, anyways.. thought I should just share the fun =P
Steve walks warily down the street,
with the brim pulled way down low
Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet,
machine guns ready to go
Are you ready, Are you ready for this
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
How do you think I'm going to get along,
without you, when you're gone
You took me for everything that I had,
and kicked me out on my own
Are you happy, are you satisfied
How long can you stand the heat
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
There are plenty of ways you can hurt a man
And bring him to the ground
You can beat him
You can cheat him
You can treat him bad and leave him
When he's down
But I'm ready, yes I'm ready for you
I'm standing on my own two feet
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
repeating the sound of the beat
-confidential
I snipped out the links because they contained my user id. Subject: FREE-PC PROGRAM TO BE DISCONTINUED
.
- -----------
Dear david,
As part of our recent merger with eMachines, we have decided to terminate the Free-PC program. It was a difficult decision for us, but it's important for us to focus our resources on providing new desktop software applications for eMachines PCs.
As a result, we are going to transfer title of your PC to you. This means that the PC is now yours free and clear. We will be destroying your credit card information, and we will be sending you written confirmation of this as well as the title transfer. We are also including instructions at the conclusion of this email so that you can remove the Free-PC Resource Center (the advertising display and utility buttons) from your screen. Of course, your warranty is still valid, and you can continue to receive technical support on your PC by dialing the appropriate number below:
For Compaq Computers: (281) 927-5272
For Dell Computers: (888) 560-8324
As part of this change, we will be discontinuing our free Internet access service effective February 14, 2000. Between now and then, we encourage you to look into alternatives for connecting to the Internet. We'd like your transition to be as smooth as possible, so we've listed a few of the most popular free Internet service providers below, along with links to Web pages where you can sign up for their service. We'll also be sending additional information on each of these providers in separate emails. After February 14, our local dial-up numbers will no longer work. At that time, all @freepcmail.com accounts will also be shut down. All of the Internet service providers listed below can provide you with new email addresses. We encourage you to notify your family, friends and associates with whom you correspond about your new email address prior to February 14.
AltaVista
snip
BlueLight
snip
WorldSpy
snip
For those of you who specifically requested that we send you occasional offers or information on particular subjects you were interested in, we will continue to pass along those offers as they come in. In fact, those offers may become even more attractive as we are able to negotiate even better deals now that we are representing literally millions of eMachines users as well. As always, if you find that these offers are no longer of interest, there are instructions within each email on how to remove your name from the mailing list for that topic.
Finally, we would very much like to stay in touch with you and ask your opinion about the new software programs we are designing. If you would be willing to occasionally look at new programs and give us feedback, please click on the following link mailto:betatest@emachinesinc.com to send us an email letting us know.
It has been our sincere pleasure to provide you with your Free-PC. We hope you will continue to get many hours of enjoyment from it. If you have any further questions, please visit our Web site at snip
Sincerely,
eMachines Customer Support
**INSTRUCTIONS FOR REMOVING YOUR FREE-PC RESOURCE CENTER**
*Be sure you have signed up with a new Internet service provider before you do the following!*
1. Turn on your computer.
2. When the red COMPAQ or blue DELL logo appears, immediately press and hold the left SHIFT key.
3. Keep holding down the key until you see the message "WINDOWS is running in safe mode".
4. Release the SHIFT key, and click on the "OK" button.
5. Once the computer has completely turned on, double click the icon "My Computer".
6. When the "My Computer" window opens, double click the folder called "Program Files".
7. Delete the "PC" folder by left clicking it so that it is highlighted and then press the "DELETE" key on the keyboard.
8. Click "OK" if prompted.
9. Click the "START" button on the lower left side of your screen, select "Shutdown" and restart the computer.
-------------------------------------------------
Although we sent this e-mail to you, eMachines makes no warranties or guarantees about the products or services advertised. If you do not wish to receive special offer emails from eMachines, click here snip to unsubscribe or update your interest profile.
Here's what I don't get. If someone can't afford a computer and an internet connection (That's about 300$ to start with and 13.95$/month) then how is this someone a viable target for advertising! I mean how much money can this poor person spend on the products advertised on his screen(to make up for the cost of the computer and the internet connection) if he can't even afford that 300$ computer! This idea doesn't work for poor people. It works for people who have the money, but wouldn't bother otherwise.. Maybe all the poor people got one of these and the advertisers didn't get anything in return(That 300$ they had to spend on the computer).. maybe it got discontinued because of this..
The failure of Free-PC proves that socialism *does* work?
Moron.
I signed up to get one of those just after they started the program.. I got an e-mail to sign up again a couple of months ago, which I did.. Still never got the system... Oh well. Missed the boat.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I have a free PC, but the one I signed my mother up for never got to being shipped. Now that I have this one in the clear, I'd love to give it to her, but I'm wondering if there's another place out there that'll do what Free-PC was doing... I'll put up with the ads (hey, I did with this one!). I saw freecomputer.com, but they're still working on it.
Any sites? Let me know.
The Dilbert story was almost a year old, this one's only almost a week old. At this rate the stories will be up a few seconds before they happen in just another day or so. Just another example of the non-linear nature of time in The Slashdot Zone.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
But low income persons still spend money.
Why get a $1000 from all the millionaires when $1 from all the low income persons will give you so much more money?
People will spend $3 dollars a day on cigarettes (~90 bucks a month) but not 14 bucks a month on internet because "they can't afford it."
There is no way you will get money from people via online ads if they can't get online.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
It was linked to from hardOCP, they didn't give any story.
I saw it on Freshmeat, and being the click-on-anyting-new type person I am I decided to download it. The installer didn't work quite right on my system, so I wind up telnetting in like I always have, however YMMV...I'm waiting for the next version myself, b/c a nice clicky-gui for pine would be real nice...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
...That these kind of systems cannot work. People are making all sorts of comparisons with TV commercials and so forth, which isn't really fair.
The main differences, are interactivity and bandwidth. A first point, is TV ads are full-screen, full-motion, and full-sound. This allows for a much more human-friendly presentation.
Secondly, and most importantly, is interactivity- When an ad comes on TV, you're not missing the TV show... It's not going on without you. But on the web, you could look at the ad, or you could skim down and ignore everything except whatever it is you came to the page for. Billboards don't work online. Something different needs to come about.
TV is a single stream coming to you, but the web isn't. When it's an uninterrupted stream, they can force ads to you, but forced web systems can
allways be hacked, because there's a difference between content you request, and content that's spammed. On tv, you request the whole thing, ads and all by turning it on.
Oh yeah, and plus you'd never see your average joe shmoe reach for his remote if "switch to the channel with the monkey and win $20" came up on the screen!
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
wasnt this posted already?!?
I just hope Al Gore doesn't come up with something better, since I'm starting to grow fond of this internet thing.
Except for this case... But who knew that the company was going to go under when they signed up for their free PC? I had original devious intentions of getting one of these PC's and then just stripping the parts out of it, then I read their wacky contract and decided it wasn't worth the hassel. Of course now I feel like a fool for not getting it, but as many people have stated so far it wasn't that good of a PC to begin with, but hey a free processor and ram is always good (junk the rest of the trash heap) so cheers to all of you who got one and can keep it now :)
- Matt "Virotype" Lovullo owner/head art dept. , Phantom MX http://www.phantommx.com
Optiplex
The people who got PCs from FreePC made an explicit agreement with FreePC not to bypass/block the ads, in exchange for a free PC. If you made an agreement with your cable company to get free cable if you sat through all the commercials in the shows you watch, it would indeed be unethical to leave the room during the commercials.
Woah. You should lay off the juice. Seriously.
:P ) having too much control over the people. If it gets much worse anyone with half a shred of dignity will be among the first to become martyrs, as they will NOT sit idly by and watch as the lives of the individual people get taken over. They will stand up and fight against the mindset you outlined in your post.
Heaven forbid the individuals have control over their surroundings. I mean, that wouldn't be democratic would it? We should all be controlled in our daily rituals by big corporations, and the ones who have an individual thought should be dragged off to 'reeducation facilities' to get mind-fscked.
Come on, where did your comment even come from? You speak of the free software advocates/programmers being communistic.. I may be naive but it seems the ideals of those are much more appealing now, and in the foreseeable future than being under the thumb of one gigantic infrastructure that will tell me when to eat, sleep, piss, and copulate.
It's already getting pretty bad, with corporations and governments (yea, I said it
You, sir, have my sincere pity.
-Shadowcaster
Free PC's Live Up to Their Name By -X- @ 1:14p 2/07/2000 http://www.geeknews.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?keyword= free-pc 25,000 Free-PC users got a interesting email notification from FreePC recently in their inbox. The email, stating that since the merger with EMachines, FreePC will stop providing free internet access to it's users. It is however allowing users of the service to keep the Compaq they were given for free, no strings attached. Free-PC's ISP service will go down for the count the 14th of this month. Source - ZDNN
-X- webmaster@xgeneration.net
It works in many ways. Broadcast television advertising is still the most effective advertising method in existence. Don't ask your co-workers, because the average slashdotter is probably less exposed than the average car-washer. But let me tell you, I worked in a car wash for over a year, and those guys have fanatic brand-loyalty, mostly from t.v. ads combined with NASCAR sponsorships. Just because you may be aloof to all of this, doesn't mean that the average joe is. Broadcast television is making money hand over fist, and will continue to do so for quite a while yet.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
yes, there will always be cracks around the banner ads.
.dll that makes the banner ad window not display.Which isn't to say people won't make the cracked .dll version anyway; a lot of the time defeating copy protection is done sheerly for the challenge and fun of it, not to actually use the program in question. Basically the more complex the copy protection is to break, the more interesting to break it is and thus the more likely it is to get broken by somebody. I know this one old guy who's been an expert at cracking software protection since he started doing it on the apple //.. these days he actually goes and buys all his software legally, but once he's bought it he goes and finds or figures out a way around the copy protection, just because that's more fun than actually putting the real S/N in the dialog box.
but the thing is they [qualcomm] aren't exactly _losing_ anything by releasing a banner ad version. look at it this way; anyone who would be willing to download a crack for the full w/ads version so they didn't have to look at the banner ads would be just as willing to just warez the normal, pay full version with no banner ads by default.
in fact this kind of person has probably _already_ warezed the normal full version, and is unaffected by the announcement of the banner-ad version.
anyway i'm sure it's easier to write an s/n generator for the full version than a cracked
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
FreePC failed for the same reason that any number of web startups are going to fail. They gave away PCs to just anybody, hoping that the add click through rates would pay to support the business. There is no way this will work unless you either have a truly gigantic audience, or a small targeted audience that you can also target adds to. You really have to have adds that your targets are likely to click on, rather than just radom stuff you are trying to sell them. An execellent discussion of this is in one of Robert Cringley's recent columns at. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20000203
He describes a company he consulted with that had a very similar business model to FreePC and failed in a very similar way.
Until you mentioned it, I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that Slashdot had ads in the first place. No joke.
The advertisement industry is dying in part because of the Internet, but not because advertising is cheap. The industry is dying because many of the people who actually buy things are using the Internet. Yet these very same people have gotten so completely sick of the ads that they ignore them. Eventually these people get sick of privacy-violating trash like Doubleclick, loads of cookies being blasted into their machines, annoying web sites which are purposefully designed so that you can't back out of them in Netscape, web sites which open new windows for no reason, annoying animated GIFs, porn advertisements, stupid pop up ads, USENET spam, and Email spam.
Not only do I block advertisements, but I make value judgements on companies based on how annoying their ads are. If it's related to computers and they do something that really grates my nerves, I will never buy from that company if I have a choice. If they're popping up stupid ads in new windows, I will not give my business to that company.
In some cases the ads are offensive. In many cases the ads are stupid. In almost all cases the ads are annoying. In the majority of cases the ads take up far more bandwidth than they're worth. Therefore, I block dedicated ad sites using Junkbuster. I block cookies except from some sites. I don't visit sites which are incompetently designed (e.g. using Java all over the place for no good reason) or which are designed to be annoying (e.g. opening every clicked link in a new browser window). If I keep seeing the same ad many times, I block that ad specifically.
If the advertisement and website industries don't like this, then they can fix the problems without violating my privacy. I don't know how they'll do it, and I don't want to waste the energy thinking about it. Only very rarely do I buy a product because it's advertised on the TV or radio, and I have never bought a product bceause of an annoying pop-up or banner ad.
Gawd did Slashdot pick this one up late.
This, methinks, is totally out of bound with the prevailing sentiment- but I think the advertising thing has been blown a little out of proportion. I hate annoying and intrusive ads, and I really hate spam email... but generally advertising does have a useful purpose. Namely, to let me know about things I might want. While I am scared shitless of people having too much personal information about me, I can't say that the ostensible goal - that is to customize ad messages to the people who are most likely to benefit from them - is all bad. I mean... i think most of us spend a huge portion of our time buying stuff and thinking about buying stuff... and if people want to let me know about how to buy stuff i want more or are paying less for then I'm a little disingenuous to bitch endlessly right?
It's more the privacy issues and the annoying/intrusive stuff that everyone has a problem with methinks. I mean... advertisements are information... selling stuff makes up the economy... and this is the information economy right? It's making all the geeks rich, we can't complain too much.....
You are a scumbag jerk and nobody likes you, not even cmdr. taco and his worker bees.
We can all suck up to him for being such a genius. "Oh Dr. Stroustrup, how did you ever think of designing such a great language like C++ then marketing a shitty book about it that we are all required to buy from you. You're my hero."
alt.tv is a huge billboard on the corner of the busiest intersection in Melbourne (AU, not FL). It shows video images, sound, and newsbites scrolling along the bottom. The screen is probably at least 30' x 30'...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
After reading a lot of comments I felt 'Hell, click the ads', but thanks for setting me straight. I signed up for none of these banners. I will click for the sites I love. But beware to all you little 'mom-n-pop' sites: BannerXchange blows, and really annoys people with 56kbps. I have DSL, I am lucky
Beau C
wonder how long it will be before some of these machines start showing up on Ebay.
Snorp
lets say it takes 10 people @ 40k/year to run slashdot. thats 400k/year. lets say the click-through rate is 1/1000 and each click through grosses $0.01 you would need 4e5 * 1e2 * 1e3 = 4e10 hits per year. which is ~1e8/day which is 100 million hits per day to break even. lets say everyone is on the net in the future, 10e9 people, that means you would need about 1% of the population to visit slashdot everyday to stay in business.
You are badly misinformed.
ID Software doesn't make shareware. McAfee, even if they offer a low-end product through shareware (not last time I looked) are not primarily a shareware company.
PKWare are suffering badly because of InfoZip (who are Free Software) and WinZip (who have a kewl Windows program)
The closest I can think of to a success would be Paint Shop Pro, but that's now outrageously expensive and pretending (badly) to be PhotoShop.
Nag-based shareware is much worse than most other kinds of non-Free Software. I can have some respect for people who ask in their README for $10 for a copy of their work, but the ones that hassle you? Give me a break!
OT:
ReGet spawns multiple connections to an FTP server with different offsets and kills them after a small transfer. This is a nasty thing to do to a server since they are optimized for full file transfers.
linux-kernel note about ReGet
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
First of all, Slashdot doesn't operate on a clickthrough basis, they operate on an impression basis. They get paid for you seeing the ad whether you click on it or not. Therefore, the 1/1000 part doesn't apply in this case. They only will need 109,000 hits per day to pay the 400k
per year, assuming the $0.01 per ad impression
rate, which is typical. Judging by the average
slashdot effect, I'd say that 109,000 hits is
easily in the bag.
However, in the case of clickthroughs, they generally pay 10x as much since they have a better chance to profit from the ad if someone actually clicks on it then if they glance on it and never go anywhere with it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I don't understand it either, but the success of cubic zirconia jewellery sold on the Home Shopping Channel would seem to prove us both wrong. Who buys tacky crap from the Franklin Mint ? Maybe it looks nicer in trailers or something, but it certainly isn't me buying it.
Poor people still spend money -- and much of it is spent on trash.
i saw their java applet back in 96' and it was the sh*t back then..
it's still around.
If you know anyone working at a pawn shop, go ask them to tell you some stories about their customers. You'll be amazed at the amount of cash people spend and what they buy.
Remember, they're not _all_ poor because they don't *earn* much money, quite a few of em are poor because they *spend* all they get as soon as they get it... which is why companies like Free-PC are/were willing to take a gamble on an advertising-based venture.
A little bit of money management would go a long way toward reducing the number of 'poor' people in America.. course, it would also mean the death of home shopping networks, pawn shops, and ad-based businesses =)
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Is that a real picture?
.sig!
If so is there a good story behind it?
Linux Today pointed to Fairfax IT's brief mention and link to the photo.
I was literally ROTFLMAO.   Need to make it my
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Or this.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I submitted this 2 weeks ago. Slashdot is getting slow.
I have a free-pc, and I knew once the merger/buy took place that free-pcs days were numbered. First thing I did was by a pci nic and drop a linux cd in. Its too bad its a cyrix chip though, I have found that they are upgradeable to an AMDk6-2 333 chip however.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Here is a link to the letter (E-mail) I received.
No more Win98 for me!
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Since 20 sept 1999, my ad filtering proxy reports the following:
This means that roughly a third of all the images on the sites I visit are ads!
Now, these numbers aren't the absolute truth (numbers rarely are). For one, ads are mostly cache inhibited, thus getting a higher proxy rating than site "chrome" images. Also, I mostly browse with images turned off, so my average image/page rate is very low (around three images per page). And of course my choice of sites to visit affects the turnout. Nevertheless, the 1/3 ad/image rate was a bit of a shock.
. . . moron.
hmm, ran out of letters in the title :)
Speaking from my observations of people while practicing law for five years, the real dividing line between the middle & lower slasses is not income, but the planning horizon--and part of this comes from how you were brought up.
For the middle class, saving, grabbing the better price, and a lng planning horizon is just part of life. "impulse" purchases exist, but in smaller quantities. Buy the $100 package now (even though it means doing without something else) rather than spend $10/month for a year. Plan your income over several months, rather than paycheck to paycheck (thought this isn't necessarily possible).
I struggled taking economics (I have a Ph.D and am a professor of the subject) because of the notions of "rationality"--it just doesn't describe how a large portion of the population acts. We make models that describe how behavior changes when the interest rate changes, but for those who carry balances on credit charge, it's not the interest rate that tends to matter, or the price of the object, but the monthly payment. Taken to the extreme, $30/month forever looks better than $50 once.
About once a month, I had the same conversation about Sear's cards with prosepective bankruptcy clients (many of whom didn't understand why *I* wouldn't let them make payments).
"Here's my Sears bill, but it's wrong. It's the same as when I bought it two years."
"How much do you pay each month."
"THe payment they show me."
"That's the minimum payment. And you have a late charge every month."
The minimum payment is 2%, the interest rate 1.75%. That's a 400 month amortization schedule . . . (actually longer, because the payment drops over time).
They blink. And there aren't many places where you find larger concentrations of folks annoyed by blinking than here.
I don't block ads per se. I block anything that blinks at me . . .
Is the world really so harsh that people have to rip off companyes like this? For every one of these that goes under people lose jobs and sometimes more. Can't we, Internet users, try to be a bit more of force for good?
My wife and I actually used the Free-PC to plan our trip to hawaii. We used it to purchase small gifts for Christmas and what not. It was just terribly slow and sometimes annoying to use. We often found our selves hopping on to a linux box on the cable modem. Atleast it was an interesting idea, and the presario 2285v is an upgrade compared to all the 486's I use.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
The reasons Free-PC failed are two-fold. First, the business model was just wrong. If they wanted to double their customers they had to double their expenses. They had hundreds of thousands of people who wanted Free-PCs but they didn't have the enormous amount of money required to buy the PCs and fill the orders. Second, the company was really screwed up (take it from someone who worked there (briefly)). Imagine a company where ad stats are the foundation of how they make money--AND THE STATS WERE NEVER RIGHT. They weren't being recorded right and they weren't being reported right. Imagine a company where the whole point was great ad delivery--AND THE AD DELIVERY WAS SO SCREWED UP THAT SALES COULDN'T SELL ADS. Want 100,000 impressions? Sorry, the software only allows for pay-per-click. E-machines got taken to the cleaners on that one. In their IPO filing, E-machines's valuation makes their purchase of Free-PC worth about $40 mil (since it was all stock). Makes you wonder about the management of E-machines. Bill Gross is laughing all the way to the bank on this one.
Actually, it's millions of people who wanted
Free-PCs, Mr. Sullivan.
I get the feeling this guy missed out on the eMachines stock options and is just a bitter loser.
I beg to differ.
Quake 1, 2, & 3 are all share ware of the "Incomplete product" variety. I.e. You can download a fully playable "complete" game and enjoy yourself for a while then you go to the store and buy the version with the extra levels and whatnot.
It may not be the main product but you can still get Macafee anti virus via FTP with an expiration date. That's why they bought up other companies. They can make lots of money in other channels and with other products.
I thought WinZip was a PKWare product. If it isn't then PKWare may as well be dead.
They got too ambitious. too bad.
I agree.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Wouldn't that be a shame.
Damn I wish I would have gotten in on that in the beginning. I'd have a free computer.
1. Millions of people say they wanted them but when it came time to actually give them away, most people didn't want them even though they signed up. 2. Who says I missed out on the stock options? 3. Not Mr. Sullivan. Close but no cigar.