In the old days, explorers ventured into the unknown. If they were very lucky, a third of the original crew returned, crammed into the last ship that wasn't lost in a storm or on an uncharted shallow.
Those who did make it back had suffered - rotting food, no medical care...Peglegs, eye patches, anyone?
Here we are hundreds of years later and our explorers are worrying if they can smile for the cameras when they get back. If they can come up with a way to prevent it, great - but don't set a mission back five years to design around teeth!
I mean...I don't think it's wise to waste men and equipment on a fruitless undertaking, but no new worlds have ever been conquered without a fair amount of casualties. Missing teeth stopping the first landing on another planet (and potentially settling the question of life off our own planet) would be an insult to every great explorer that man has produced.
We need to grow a backbone if we expect to explore, but we won't...Politics and the media make it impossible. Kind of sucks, doesn't it?
Everyone loves to complain about the lack of high speed access in their area, but most people don't actually do anything about it.
Sure, they put their phone number in the little box on the telco's DSL web page...It says "Not available" and then they leave it at that.
You've GOT to be persistant to get service going in your area. I called every few weeks to the phone company and cable company for a year. Have your friends call, use payphones, etc. These companies are in business just like any other. If there is no "demand" for the service they will put it somewhere that they THINK there is demand.
I know some people are hopelessly stuck with modems because they live way out there. I'm five miles outside of a small town. There's a dairy farm next door...It's pretty rural here, but I've been on a DSL connection now (the first person activated in my area, imagine that!) for a few months.
After ordering the service, the technician who came for the install told me that the local switch had been "DSL ready" for nine months but they never activated the equipment. I think calling often and having friends and neighbors doing the same got them to actually do something.
It's a shame that you have to chase after something you want to BUY so badly, but it's amazing how clueless the companies are. I ordered my service, they did a line test, I received my modem...Then they told me my line didn't qualify because I was too far away (I can SEE the local switch out my window). Turns out the guy on the phone was reading the wrong screen...
Be persistant and don't believe anything they tell you, hehe...
Case
1ee7 LPB
...go buy a CD, DVD, and a new piece of software once a month!
Really, some people here are so out of it...The reason that the companies are so irritated is that they have it in their heads that they are losing big money because of illegal replication of their products. You know what? They ARE!
I'll be the first one to say that CDs are overpriced, but companies only understand one thing and that is being profitable.
Corporations, as well as the legal system, are organized and used to things taking years to play out. The community at large is not. I don't think for a second that designing new ways to share files is going to "win" against a corporation that knows they are losing sales.
At best, more people share files illegally and get the media companies more upset. End result is they further increase prices for the majority of people worldwide who don't know how to download Metallica and burn it onto a CD for their Linux enabled car.
It's not your right to steal someone else's product, regardless of what you think of the price. If you don't want to pay, don't buy it.
People will be pretty upset in a few years when we lose more personal liberties because a small percentage of people insist they can pirate the latest Britney Spears type groups (which by the way the media companies you love to hate engineered from the ground up to be popular, yet you MUST have it!?)
I just recently built a home from the ground up and wanted to make sure things were wired for the future. I'm also into energy efficiency and home automation. I'm not, however, a nutcase that is going to spend $10k to save $1k.
On wiring for new construction...I considered wireless, but the standards are always changing. Wireless can work later if you need it, but wiring can't be so easily upgraded. Wire your home properly to one access point. Remember to leave a wire drop in your attic or basement in case you forget to wire a specific location.
We ended up using the IBM Home Director ( link ) for the central wiring location. This allows me to control and reroute all the phone lines, computer networking, and cable.
For the physical wiring, we ran two independent CAT5 wires to each multimedia jack in our home. We also ran two RJ-45 coaxial cables to each point. The CAT5 can carry telephone or computer networking when using the home director, so you're really flexible. Having a LAN party? Unplug your phone lines at the box and plug it into the built in switch, for example.
The coax is nice because not only can we route standard cable to any room, we have a separate wire in there to rebroadcast throughout the house. For example, if you're running a DVD in the living room it can be fed back through to the Home Director and then sent out to other rooms easily.
On X10. This seems to be the most popular thing out there. I've been mildly successful with them. There are lots of modules available, and you can replace your standard switches and plugs with "in wall" versions of the plug-in modules. I have been replacing things in my house gradually - I wish I would have just had the electrician install them for me.
Also, don't plan on doing everything now. Although I have scads of wiring throughout the house, only 25% of it is hooked up right now. I don't NEED ethernet jacks in the kid's bedroom right now...So the wires are just there (clearly labeled, remember that part hehe) for the future.
I also would not recommend running all your wiring to a basement or garage that isn't going to have environmental control. I put mine in our walk in closet in the master bedroom. There's plenty of room here later if I need to expand outside the in-wall box. I wouldn't want to have a router or something like that sitting in a damp basement or someplace that wasn't going to be comfortable to work on it.
It's really not that expensive to put systems like this in during the building process. It's well worth it to not have to drag wires when you want to add a phone line to x room.
NASA has for years been trying to reduce the cost of spaceflight and increase the public's interest in their programs. I can see no better way to do this than to embrace the idea of civilians in space.
While $20 million for a ticket hardly makes a dent in the costs to launch the shuttle, the PR is worth much more.
They could even do a nationwide lottery...$5 per ticket and the winner goes to the space station! I'm sure there are laws against it --- but this is the natural evolution of space travel.
I also find it hard to believe that this guy would be getting in the way. With all the space available there now, I'm sure he can find a quiet corner.
What would be humorous would be if there WAS some kind of mishap while he was onboard and he managed to save the whole station from destruction by using a burst of thaleon particles from the main deflect...Oh wait, this is serious space flight business! No room for fun or trying new things, says NASA.
My site has been running for almost five years now. I've been through six or seven different advertising networks in that time. Our site has around 1.5 million unique visitors a month and over two million registered users...We are "home grown" as the site started as a hobby and just kept growing (no VC, no angel, etc).
One of the major problems with Internet advertising is that you CAN track the results so readily. Advertisers not only know that they are getting one click per one thousand banners, typically the more advanced also track how many people PURCHASE a product or HOW MUCH TIME they spend on the site after clicking through. So people suggesting that you can just click on a banner and then close the window are mistaken.
I personally believe that if such advanced tracking was available for television or print ads, marketing folks would be just as disappointed in the results.
And now, on to the important stuff. Here are some tips for people running sites that rely on advertising. This is based on five years of experience dealing with advertising networks and agencies.
Do not sign exclusive agreements! Exclusive agreements are a trap. NEVER sign off to one company, even if it means a lower split. You want them working for you, not the reverse.
Use multiple networks/agencies. If you have the traffic, use two or three different networks. Most will perform around the same level, but you can tweak your inventory from month to month. If Company A does better than Company B this month, Company A gets more ads next month.
Don't believe your contract. We were an early member of the Flycast network before they were acquired by Engage. Our contract states a 70/30% split (us receieving 70%). Last month they decided to change it to 50/50. If we don't accept, they stop serving ads for us. While there may be some degree of legal remedy here, the cost makes it prohibitive (little company vs big company lawyers). Just don't believe your contract protects you from them changing the terms...And believe that THEY will enforce their end of the contract.
Analyze your banner inventory. Good click-thrus bring in better campaigns. I have seen sites earn twice as much money with the same audience and ad views simply because their click-thru rate was (slightly) higher than another site. Examine each ad slot (if you can) and group together the spots with high click throughs and low click throughs...This way you can give "premium" placement to campaigns or networks that are earning you more money and they will see better results. Using one ad tag across the whole site will result in lower revenue.
Don't rely on advertising. Not many sites can do this successfully, but most haven't tried. Create optional membership programs with a small fee attached to them...This is what we have been doing. You would be surprised how loyal some visitors can be...Ask yourself this question, would you pay $20 a year to help keep/. going? I know I would, but we don't have the option, so/. is losing out on revenue (big no no). The best defense against falling ad rates is to not have to rely on them. Look at sponsorship possibilities...Diversifying your site's income can make a huge difference in the bottom-line.
I could ramble on but that's the best of what I have learned. I won't send an invoice either!;)
I highly recommend iBill. We have been using them for over two years now and they have worked out very well for us.
One of the best things about iBill is that they offer 24 hour voice support for merchants. They also offer a great variety of payment methods in addition to credit card. You can also allow your customers to pay via a 900 line and bill it to their phone, as well as online check payments. Everything is managed through one central interface.
Further, they have a new affiliate program, so you can do revenue sharing on your Web site without much of a hassle. This is a great way to drive more traffic to your site, and it's all administered on their end (no cutting checks for partners).
Another cool thing is that you don't need an Internet merchant account to get started. BUT, you can upgrade to this later and keep all the code you have developed and without making your customers migrate to a new payment method.
We process a few hundred thousand dollars worth of transactions a year and have looked at the other services, but they just don't seem to offer the same flexibility that iBill does. Case
...I don't mean that more end users will use Linux because it's getting a lot of press, or that every software company will think open-source is a great idea, or even that a flurry of new products will emerge.
One of the things that has held Linux back has been the fact that it wasn't a buzzword or considered acceptable for commercial applications by a large number of companies and IT departments around the world. Two years ago, suggesting using Linux for something considered mission critical wouldn't even be tolerated. Now marketing wants to issue a press release when it happens.
To me, this has been the greatest benefit for all the hype. We don't have to do things in closets in so much anymore! And once end users of these types of systems see the extra performance and stability they start asking about Linux on their workstation...Eventually they'll take it home as well if we don't drop the ball! Watching it trickle down is a great thing.
Looking over the spec, I see that the w3c spec will begin enforcing things that most browsers have allowed, such as without a closing tag.
Ugh! While I applaud efforts to bring more standardization to the Web I dislike the idea of forcing things like closing tags and quotation marks where they aren't needed.
Granted there are people out there who live and die by following standards, but closing every tag is something I don't want to deal with. When you're running a large site that receives millions of accesses daily shaving off a few extra bytes from pages can make massive bandwidth savings.
Ya, ya..DSL/Cable modems are more common and they enable great things, but anything that forces us to use more bandwidth than we have to in the name of "standards" seems silly to me, especially when most of America is still on 56k modems (not to mention the rest of the world).
I expect some Holy Hand Grenades to come my way after this one, but I've seem what non-standard trimmed up code can do and it saves time, money, and most importantly mucho bandwidth. Go look at the source at Yahoo for good examples of stripping tags and quotes.
In comment to a couple replies asking why such old technology is used... If I remember correctly it has to do with how radiation can effect the state of the processor and chipsets. Newer processors have increasingly smaller distances between the pathways on the surface of the chip. Since this distance is smaller, radiation can cause the electrical charge to "jump" across. There are ways to minimize these effects with shielding, but as far as I know this is an "add on" that is not done by the chip manufacturers themself. I guess this would create a lead time.. IE: A new P3 chip needs x months of work to have a good shielding design developed, x months to test that... Coupled with the fact that this hardware is designed years before launch and you can see how things can slip. Remember also that comparing your desktop to something in orbit that was designed 20 years ago for a specific task isn't as easy as it might appear...Until recently NASA custom designed it's hardware and software. So, the Hubble running at 25 Mhz using all custom hardware and software is going to be a lot more efficient than a 25 Mhz 486 running Windows since it's all task oriented. I'm no expert of course, but I haven't seen some of our resident Super-Technical Answer Dudes (tm) post anything yet. (Probably still working on the formulas for their posts hehe). Case
The precident that this case sets can potentialy be very damaging to the (still very young) ecomerce segment of our economy. What it says is: It's not payed for till it's payed for. It's not sold until it's sold. It's not a deal unless the check is in hand.
This is right on the money! My company has multiple levels of membership to our Web site. Most of our users pay for their access online via credit card.
It is not uncommon for someone to use our service for months, cancel their account, and then call their credit card company and dispute the charge on their bill. Credit card companies are fighting for customers now so they try to keep them happy---which also means giving them refunds with almost no questions asked.
Unfortunately for relatively new Internet companies, obtaining a merchant account is a difficult thing to do for this very reason. It is worse for us to fight with Visa/MC over billing disputes and have that flagged on our merchant account than it is to take the loss. It also takes a lot of time and effort to successfully win a dispute - they make it tough: forms, written documentation required, etc. In the end you spend $50 in staff time for a $20 membership.
Too bad for us that the scum of the net are starting to catch on to the fact that you can get away with not paying for services that you use. Something really does need to be done.
Slashdot Mirror
In the old days, explorers ventured into the unknown. If they were very lucky, a third of the original crew returned, crammed into the last ship that wasn't lost in a storm or on an uncharted shallow.
Those who did make it back had suffered - rotting food, no medical care...Peglegs, eye patches, anyone?
Here we are hundreds of years later and our explorers are worrying if they can smile for the cameras when they get back. If they can come up with a way to prevent it, great - but don't set a mission back five years to design around teeth!
I mean...I don't think it's wise to waste men and equipment on a fruitless undertaking, but no new worlds have ever been conquered without a fair amount of casualties. Missing teeth stopping the first landing on another planet (and potentially settling the question of life off our own planet) would be an insult to every great explorer that man has produced.
We need to grow a backbone if we expect to explore, but we won't...Politics and the media make it impossible. Kind of sucks, doesn't it?
Sure, they put their phone number in the little box on the telco's DSL web page...It says "Not available" and then they leave it at that.
You've GOT to be persistant to get service going in your area. I called every few weeks to the phone company and cable company for a year. Have your friends call, use payphones, etc. These companies are in business just like any other. If there is no "demand" for the service they will put it somewhere that they THINK there is demand.
I know some people are hopelessly stuck with modems because they live way out there. I'm five miles outside of a small town. There's a dairy farm next door...It's pretty rural here, but I've been on a DSL connection now (the first person activated in my area, imagine that!) for a few months.
After ordering the service, the technician who came for the install told me that the local switch had been "DSL ready" for nine months but they never activated the equipment. I think calling often and having friends and neighbors doing the same got them to actually do something.
It's a shame that you have to chase after something you want to BUY so badly, but it's amazing how clueless the companies are. I ordered my service, they did a line test, I received my modem...Then they told me my line didn't qualify because I was too far away (I can SEE the local switch out my window). Turns out the guy on the phone was reading the wrong screen...
Be persistant and don't believe anything they tell you, hehe...
Case
1ee7 LPB
-Better USB support
-P2P2P2P support for faster MP3 downloads
-Greatly improved SMP
-FreeCiv final + Minesweeper deluxe
-BIND security flaw patched
Case
Really, some people here are so out of it...The reason that the companies are so irritated is that they have it in their heads that they are losing big money because of illegal replication of their products. You know what? They ARE!
I'll be the first one to say that CDs are overpriced, but companies only understand one thing and that is being profitable.
Corporations, as well as the legal system, are organized and used to things taking years to play out. The community at large is not. I don't think for a second that designing new ways to share files is going to "win" against a corporation that knows they are losing sales.
At best, more people share files illegally and get the media companies more upset. End result is they further increase prices for the majority of people worldwide who don't know how to download Metallica and burn it onto a CD for their Linux enabled car.
It's not your right to steal someone else's product, regardless of what you think of the price. If you don't want to pay, don't buy it.
People will be pretty upset in a few years when we lose more personal liberties because a small percentage of people insist they can pirate the latest Britney Spears type groups (which by the way the media companies you love to hate engineered from the ground up to be popular, yet you MUST have it!?)
Case
On wiring for new construction...I considered wireless, but the standards are always changing. Wireless can work later if you need it, but wiring can't be so easily upgraded. Wire your home properly to one access point. Remember to leave a wire drop in your attic or basement in case you forget to wire a specific location.
We ended up using the IBM Home Director ( link ) for the central wiring location. This allows me to control and reroute all the phone lines, computer networking, and cable.
For the physical wiring, we ran two independent CAT5 wires to each multimedia jack in our home. We also ran two RJ-45 coaxial cables to each point. The CAT5 can carry telephone or computer networking when using the home director, so you're really flexible. Having a LAN party? Unplug your phone lines at the box and plug it into the built in switch, for example.
The coax is nice because not only can we route standard cable to any room, we have a separate wire in there to rebroadcast throughout the house. For example, if you're running a DVD in the living room it can be fed back through to the Home Director and then sent out to other rooms easily.
On X10. This seems to be the most popular thing out there. I've been mildly successful with them. There are lots of modules available, and you can replace your standard switches and plugs with "in wall" versions of the plug-in modules. I have been replacing things in my house gradually - I wish I would have just had the electrician install them for me.
Also, don't plan on doing everything now. Although I have scads of wiring throughout the house, only 25% of it is hooked up right now. I don't NEED ethernet jacks in the kid's bedroom right now...So the wires are just there (clearly labeled, remember that part hehe) for the future.
I also would not recommend running all your wiring to a basement or garage that isn't going to have environmental control. I put mine in our walk in closet in the master bedroom. There's plenty of room here later if I need to expand outside the in-wall box. I wouldn't want to have a router or something like that sitting in a damp basement or someplace that wasn't going to be comfortable to work on it.
It's really not that expensive to put systems like this in during the building process. It's well worth it to not have to drag wires when you want to add a phone line to x room.
Good luck,
Case
ALL YOUR WIRES... (just kidding, hehe)
While $20 million for a ticket hardly makes a dent in the costs to launch the shuttle, the PR is worth much more.
They could even do a nationwide lottery...$5 per ticket and the winner goes to the space station! I'm sure there are laws against it --- but this is the natural evolution of space travel.
I also find it hard to believe that this guy would be getting in the way. With all the space available there now, I'm sure he can find a quiet corner.
What would be humorous would be if there WAS some kind of mishap while he was onboard and he managed to save the whole station from destruction by using a burst of thaleon particles from the main deflect...Oh wait, this is serious space flight business! No room for fun or trying new things, says NASA.
One of the major problems with Internet advertising is that you CAN track the results so readily. Advertisers not only know that they are getting one click per one thousand banners, typically the more advanced also track how many people PURCHASE a product or HOW MUCH TIME they spend on the site after clicking through. So people suggesting that you can just click on a banner and then close the window are mistaken.
I personally believe that if such advanced tracking was available for television or print ads, marketing folks would be just as disappointed in the results.
And now, on to the important stuff. Here are some tips for people running sites that rely on advertising. This is based on five years of experience dealing with advertising networks and agencies.
- Do not sign exclusive agreements! Exclusive agreements are a trap. NEVER sign off to one company, even if it means a lower split. You want them working for you, not the reverse.
- Use multiple networks/agencies. If you have the traffic, use two or three different networks. Most will perform around the same level, but you can tweak your inventory from month to month. If Company A does better than Company B this month, Company A gets more ads next month.
- Don't believe your contract. We were an early member of the Flycast network before they were acquired by Engage. Our contract states a 70/30% split (us receieving 70%). Last month they decided to change it to 50/50. If we don't accept, they stop serving ads for us. While there may be some degree of legal remedy here, the cost makes it prohibitive (little company vs big company lawyers). Just don't believe your contract protects you from them changing the terms...And believe that THEY will enforce their end of the contract.
- Analyze your banner inventory. Good click-thrus bring in better campaigns. I have seen sites earn twice as much money with the same audience and ad views simply because their click-thru rate was (slightly) higher than another site. Examine each ad slot (if you can) and group together the spots with high click throughs and low click throughs...This way you can give "premium" placement to campaigns or networks that are earning you more money and they will see better results. Using one ad tag across the whole site will result in lower revenue.
- Don't rely on advertising. Not many sites can do this successfully, but most haven't tried. Create optional membership programs with a small fee attached to them...This is what we have been doing. You would be surprised how loyal some visitors can be...Ask yourself this question, would you pay $20 a year to help keep
/. going? I know I would, but we don't have the option, so /. is losing out on revenue (big no no). The best defense against falling ad rates is to not have to rely on them. Look at sponsorship possibilities...Diversifying your site's income can make a huge difference in the bottom-line.
I could ramble on but that's the best of what I have learned. I won't send an invoice either!Case
I highly recommend iBill. We have been using them for over two years now and they have worked out very well for us.
One of the best things about iBill is that they offer 24 hour voice support for merchants. They also offer a great variety of payment methods in addition to credit card. You can also allow your customers to pay via a 900 line and bill it to their phone, as well as online check payments. Everything is managed through one central interface.
Further, they have a new affiliate program, so you can do revenue sharing on your Web site without much of a hassle. This is a great way to drive more traffic to your site, and it's all administered on their end (no cutting checks for partners).
Another cool thing is that you don't need an Internet merchant account to get started. BUT, you can upgrade to this later and keep all the code you have developed and without making your customers migrate to a new payment method.
We process a few hundred thousand dollars worth of transactions a year and have looked at the other services, but they just don't seem to offer the same flexibility that iBill does. Case
One of the things that has held Linux back has been the fact that it wasn't a buzzword or considered acceptable for commercial applications by a large number of companies and IT departments around the world. Two years ago, suggesting using Linux for something considered mission critical wouldn't even be tolerated. Now marketing wants to issue a press release when it happens.
To me, this has been the greatest benefit for all the hype. We don't have to do things in closets in so much anymore! And once end users of these types of systems see the extra performance and stability they start asking about Linux on their workstation...Eventually they'll take it home as well if we don't drop the ball! Watching it trickle down is a great thing.
Case
Ugh! While I applaud efforts to bring more standardization to the Web I dislike the idea of forcing things like closing tags and quotation marks where they aren't needed.
Granted there are people out there who live and die by following standards, but closing every tag is something I don't want to deal with. When you're running a large site that receives millions of accesses daily shaving off a few extra bytes from pages can make massive bandwidth savings.
Ya, ya..DSL/Cable modems are more common and they enable great things, but anything that forces us to use more bandwidth than we have to in the name of "standards" seems silly to me, especially when most of America is still on 56k modems (not to mention the rest of the world).
I expect some Holy Hand Grenades to come my way after this one, but I've seem what non-standard trimmed up code can do and it saves time, money, and most importantly mucho bandwidth. Go look at the source at Yahoo for good examples of stripping tags and quotes.
case_igl
In comment to a couple replies asking why such old technology is used... If I remember correctly it has to do with how radiation can effect the state of the processor and chipsets. Newer processors have increasingly smaller distances between the pathways on the surface of the chip. Since this distance is smaller, radiation can cause the electrical charge to "jump" across. There are ways to minimize these effects with shielding, but as far as I know this is an "add on" that is not done by the chip manufacturers themself. I guess this would create a lead time.. IE: A new P3 chip needs x months of work to have a good shielding design developed, x months to test that... Coupled with the fact that this hardware is designed years before launch and you can see how things can slip. Remember also that comparing your desktop to something in orbit that was designed 20 years ago for a specific task isn't as easy as it might appear...Until recently NASA custom designed it's hardware and software. So, the Hubble running at 25 Mhz using all custom hardware and software is going to be a lot more efficient than a 25 Mhz 486 running Windows since it's all task oriented. I'm no expert of course, but I haven't seen some of our resident Super-Technical Answer Dudes (tm) post anything yet. (Probably still working on the formulas for their posts hehe). Case
This is right on the money! My company has multiple levels of membership to our Web site. Most of our users pay for their access online via credit card.
It is not uncommon for someone to use our service for months, cancel their account, and then call their credit card company and dispute the charge on their bill. Credit card companies are fighting for customers now so they try to keep them happy---which also means giving them refunds with almost no questions asked.
Unfortunately for relatively new Internet companies, obtaining a merchant account is a difficult thing to do for this very reason. It is worse for us to fight with Visa/MC over billing disputes and have that flagged on our merchant account than it is to take the loss. It also takes a lot of time and effort to successfully win a dispute - they make it tough: forms, written documentation required, etc. In the end you spend $50 in staff time for a $20 membership.
Too bad for us that the scum of the net are starting to catch on to the fact that you can get away with not paying for services that you use. Something really does need to be done.