"And now explain to me why a CD in a shop costs about $20?"
Because you're paying an amount for the content and those who produced it as well.
This may come as a shock to you but you never just pay production costs for anything. A 20oz soda costs about a penny to produce but you pay $1.00. Why? Because it's been proven you will. The only issue with CD's is that no one can sell less than the RIAA says.
It's not an issue of price. If you don't want to pay $20 for a new CD, get a used copy.
I signed up. All that info I would assume would be used to make sure no one tries to get multiple pieces of the pie. I'd rather give the last 4 digits than the whole thing.
And frankly, if someone wants to steal the identity of a college student with dept I'd be more than happy to have them tracked down, press charges and collect damages.
Maybe they're purposly just trying to freak people out to keep the payout higher.
On second thought, I bet they're evil. Don't SIGN UP! It's A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE TRAP!
I remember on Winter in MN when the snow never completely covered the ground. Other years there were -90 degree windchills. We have a picture from another year with a snowman holding a sign with the date: April 26th. I believe that was the year we moved to Arizona.
The weather not consistant any where. Globably, the client changes every year. There's no reason to panic or think something screwy is going on. When did people start getting the idea that every year should be predictably the same? I would guess probably around the same time global warming and global cooling wackos starting showing up.
Shock of all shocks we have hot and cool summers in AZ. There's nothing to see here, move along.
You have bright light and dim light. Yet both travel at the same speed.
With black holes, light going towards the black hole collides with the gravity moving out. Gravity doesn't have to move faster since light runs into it. Imagine shouting into a jet engine.
You would not worry about such trivial things. All you need to know about gravity is that when gravity pulls the apple to the ground you pick it up, put it in your basket and shut the hell up.
"And no one has guessed my/. password. I don't even know it. I use the terribly insecure 'bookmark this link' method. If anyone guesses it, I'm screwed."
Does your book cover how to exploit this insecurity? Or do I have to resort to the social engineering section?
Actually htaccess can require an account OR ip. Google has no idea it's accessing password protected directories. No other crawler is allowed in however.
Most of Icarus Indie is still free. And can continue to be free because I'm charging a small fee for the parts that were the biggest burden on the site. The current bandwidth costs aren't an issue as it stands.
I enjoy putting up free sections on my site and do everything I can to keep them free. But then reality comes around and kicks you in the ass. So I came up with a way to make money while not completely destroying the site.
"Dear Jesus" was the third most used section of my site after the Drivers and DevZone. It's still free. "Fun With Cutouts" and "GameShot" are still free and also pretty popular. I also still allow free anonymous FTP.
I like free as much as the next guy but it's not entirely possible for many large sites like IcarusIndie.
Eventually you have to start charging money. And I'd rather cut off sections and charge for access than kill the whole thing.
"There's no mention of how to actually collect the micropayments,"
Collecting a lump sum of micropayments (no more than $10 for no less than a year) and using PayPal or VeriSign. The rock and the hard place is having to choose between those two because they both have issues.
The rock and the hard place was clearly defined in the article.
Collecting payments is easy. It's the companies that are the rock and a hard place. But don't let me stop you from taking things out of context. I only wrote the thing.
"None of that is covered here, and that's what's needed in order to have a viable micropayment system"
I acknowledge the problem. The solution to payments is a lump sum of micropayments. The solution to the social problem doesn't exactly have a short article solution now does it?
- Why change the name of the htaccess file? Apache by default makes sure that nobody can download a file called.htaccess. At least use those same controls to limit access to the crazily-named one.
A file named.htaccess on a windows system is a bitch to edit. That's why I changed the name and hid it.
- It's a really bad idea to use Visual Basic's deterministic Rnd function to generate passwords. (!)
If you want to run through all the possibilities of RND in 7 letter combinations be my guest. It's going to take a lot of tries to get one right and the password will be changed long before you succeed. And you'll be reported to your ISP.
- It's easy to use xcmd or bash or perl to make htpasswd read from a file, just like his program does.
I shouldn't have to use a command prompt for something so simple.
I know C and I had access to the C source for htpasswd. That's why I did it my way. There are dozens of solutions for every problem. It's kind of lame because I chose one that you don't think was the best.
- No programs around that analyze apache logs?? Holy crap, are you serious??
They suck for what I want to do. I looked. The only one I found that does okay is Analog but the output isn't what I want and all goes into a single file which is rediculous. Again, my solution works best for my needs. You can't very well bitch because I chose one you didn't.
There are none currently but the easy way is that if your account is completely unused you can get your money back minus the fees incured by the payment system. You'd get 4.55 back in my case. If you use your account then no, of course you're not getting a refund. Otherwise people would sign up, grab what they want, and demand a refund.
* A system for letting people reload pages
keywords "unlimited access" It's not asked because it's not an issue when you don't care how much or how little is accessed.
* A way to get people to trust your payment system (i.e. what if I pay my $10 and you go out of business)
Terms of Service. I've been around for 2 years and can afford to keep the site running indefinitly as it is now.
* The cost of doing this business
Nothing out of pocket. That's answered by the fact that through out the entire article I never mention something you have to pay out of pocket and at the end is "that's all you need." So yes, if you read the article you get the answer to that question.
* Dealing with forgeries
The auditing system. And I mention in the article how to kill off accounts if there are any issues. People will always try to find a way to fool you and well, that's business. It's not possible to go through all the ways people will try to steal and how to counter them.
So yes, those questions were mostly answered in the article. It's just not in "question answer" form yet.
You're right. That's why I waited until my bandwidth couldn't take it anymore so I knew charging for the content wasn't an unreasonable proposition.
IcarusIndie.com was free for two years. The sections that I locked up were locked up because of the high demand and bandwidth costs associated with them.
I'm not suggesting everyone and their dog try to charge for their web-site. IcarusIndie.com has proven itself over the last couple years and that's why I implemented the system.
I'm not charging for every word I write nor am I suggesting it. Heck, I'm not even doing it. If you'd actually, oh I dunno, check out the site, you'd see exactly what my content is and what's being charged for and what isn't. You don't need a "probably." If you don't feel it's worth the price of admission, fine. You're not required to drink in every bar.
"The thing is that some people just need to get lost when they want to charge for every thing under the sun."
I agree. That's why only a few major sections of the site are All Access Pass Only.
"When the article states "people think their ISP bill is an all access pass to the Internet" thats dangerously close to the MPAA and RIAA thinking"
It's a fact. Someone already brought it up. They paid for the bandwidth they shouldn't have to pay for content. People do think that. And they're wrong.
I'm charging for things that after 2 years of being free proved to be something people want. My bandwidth couldn't support the demand I didn't want to go to ads since they don't work so I decided to go with another system.
"all these fools that think they are going to somehow revolutionize (read enslave) the internet and make us pay for every click of the mouse should just take their greedy asses and screw off."
Yes, those people should go screw themselve but what part of "unlimited access for no less than a year for a small fee of no more than $10" in my proposed system lead you to believe I was suggesting you pay for every mouse click?
The system I'm using is designed to avoid just that. I recognize people don't want to pay alot of money and I don't need a lot of money so it works out.
Your complaints are valid when it comes to the traditional view of a micropayment system. But it has nothing to do with I've implemented.
Large sits like mine need money to exist. $5 a year unlimited access I think is a very fair system.
I don't expect to many people to pay since the sections locked down are pretty niche. But this thread is an examiation of the system, not the site.
Subcriptions to web-sites generally cost 10's of dollars per month.
I still consider it a micropayment system since it's a lump sum (and a small one at that) of micropayments over a large period of time of no less than a year to make the transaction worthwile.
It's not dishonest. It's a recognition of the fact that the structure isn't in place to do tiny transactions. The viable system at this point I think is lump sum. Yes you pay more upfront, but over time it works out to very little. 1.4 cents a day.
That's why I consider it a micropayment type system. You're paying very very little.
The code works perfectly. The question is whether it's a good idea. Yes, I can lock down my site and charge a small yearly admission fee but are people willing to pay it and is it a reasonable system.
The reasoning behind showing "how" it's done is to demonstrate that any web-site owner using Apache can easily and quickly use this system with no out of pocket costs.
So what do you think? Should they?
IcarusIndie.com was completely free for 2 years and from my logs it's obvious lots of people liked what I had to offer to the point where my bandwidth was sucked so dry I could barely browse the net on my own connection. Now I'm seeing if they're willing to pay a small fee to access a few major parts of it.
I'll be writing a follow-up to this based on the reactions from Slashdot.
The problem with 3rd parties handling the bills is you're right back to ads. If you have to sign up to a corporation to get money from people visiting your site whose to stop that corporation from forcing your site to do things you don't want to do in order to allow you the "privilage" of micropayments?
The reason I'm currently stuck with the lump sum method is because PayPal charges fees which make single micropayments impossible.
If there was simply a company out there that didn't charge transaction fees and charged commission only on $x of transactions (e.g. for every $10 in transactions they get $1 or $2) this problem would be solved.
I'd have no problem doing smaller account periods if I didn't have to pay 30 cents just in transaction fees. I'm considering offering a $1.00 for a 30 day all access acount as well. With the current payment processing companies out there, any less than $1.00 isn't really worth the effort.
It's too easy for such companies you suggest to start throwing their weight around.
I got just the opposite. I never ever ever use my yahoo account for anything. I checked it for the first time since July in late December and I had 900 messages. 800 were correctly identified as spam. 100 were spam messages that made it to my inbox. 89% block rate isn't too bad. But 900 spams in 3 months for an unused account is attrocious.
I use my hotmail address for pretty much everything and it's very clean. Instead of just deleting spam I use the block feature. Lately I've just been getting a lot of e-mail viruses.
Yahoo has a limit on the number of blocked addresses you can have. I ran into with those 100 spams in my inbox. I've yet to run into a limit with hotmail except on keywords.
So yeah, I'm sticking with hotmail for free accounts.
My family moved alot when I was younger and I remember sleeping upstairs with my older brother and my dad had an office up there as well. I don't think my younger brother was born yet which was just before I turned 2. I know it was before I turned 4 since I remember I wasn't in school for a year when we moved to a new house without an upstairs.
I remember this incident because my brother make a scary shadow on the wall and scared the hell out of me.
"Is it that much trouble to put together a good site map"
Depending on the site, yes. I run a site with over 20GB of information in over 200,000 files with thousands of directories. Although I could, I'm not going to create a site map for it. It'd be too overwhelming for the end user.
Instead I just organize the site so it makes sense and keep it shallow. It's never more than a few clicks to get where you want to go. Using SSI to keep a link list on the left side, it's very easy to move from one section to another or back to the front page of the site.
It's very rare if ever that I use a site map when browsing any web-site. A well organized site doesn't need one.
Ben
Having a 56K Modem Shouldn't Have to Hurt
on
DirectX 9 Finally Out
·
· Score: 2, Informative
DirectX 9 is now available from Microsoft but in very large files. Icarus Independent now offers an alternative here at the DevZone. Download as much or as little as you need. Each section of DirectX 9 is neatly zipped up in it's own file.
If the download is still a bit daunting head to here and request the DirectX 9 SDK be included on a Content CD which costs only $2 per 650MB plus shipping which is typically less than $2 within the US.
If you've ever taken the time to actually READ a EULA, no host, free or otherwise, takes responsibility for the content of your site. You are responsible for child porn on your site. The free host is just responsible for removing it when they find out about it and submitting YOUR information to the legal authorities so you can be prosecuted.
The only time the host is responsible is if they knowingly allow child porn or other illegal material like ROMs to be on their server.
I just refer girls I date to The Labyrinth (my writings) found at my web-site. They either come away thinking I'm one fucked up individual or find me interesting.
I'm religious but I'm not afraid to poke fun of my religion. Any like minded girl that can read "Justification for It's Existance" and not get offended at the line "Jesus tells the funniest stories when he's drunk" or "Dinner Party" and laugh at "Resurrected Jesus cookies" is a girl I want to get to know.
Researching someone on Google is lame. These days everyone and their dog and its chew toy has a web-site. If they don't have a personal site then stick to the old fashion "conversation."
Finding random spats of information someone wrote is an excellent way to get the wrong idea about them. Who knows when it was written, what they've gone through since then, ect. If someone wants others to know about them on-line, they'll put up a homepage and point you to it if you ever meet them.
I'd rather get to know someone before digging through their history and judging them without giving them a chance to explain. People change. They make mistakes. They move on.
How about the phone company just drops a nickel in your account charging the callers account unless you tell the phone company they can contact you without the fee.
The telemarkers will just see all those nickel fees on their phone bill and people will see a bunch of credits to their account.
There can then just be an automated message "this call will chrage your account a 5 cent caller fee, if you accept do not hang up." Or the call with just go through if they aren't required to pay the fee.
It can work, it would just take some work on the phone companies' part. There would be a lot of paper work between phone companies.
"i guess our kids will only be getting US approved history as usual."
Who cares? How long are you going to make your kid play in the "safe zone?" If they're old enough to be interested in news, and everything else from abroad then why in the world would you still be forcing your kid on the kids.us TLD?
If there's something you want your kids to know that isn't on kids.us, here's a thought, get it, print it and talk to your kids about it. That way they get what the government thinks is okay for kids when you're not around and additionally the stuff YOU approve when you are around.
By the time it's important enough they be aware of the world outside it's time to take the saftey off the internet anyway. There's no harm in exposing them to reality if you're there to guide them and explain things to them.
If you're worried about them heading straight for porn then watch your kids on-line. It's pretty lame to bitch that the government needs to protect your kids and then when they make an effort, people bitch that they're going too far.
Fine, screw it, raise your own kids and keep the government out of it completely.
Slashdot Mirror
You Peer to Peer EVERYTHING BY LAW
Whee communism!
Ben
"And now explain to me why a CD in a shop costs about $20?"
Because you're paying an amount for the content and those who produced it as well.
This may come as a shock to you but you never just pay production costs for anything. A 20oz soda costs about a penny to produce but you pay $1.00. Why? Because it's been proven you will. The only issue with CD's is that no one can sell less than the RIAA says.
It's not an issue of price. If you don't want to pay $20 for a new CD, get a used copy.
Ben
I signed up. All that info I would assume would be used to make sure no one tries to get multiple pieces of the pie. I'd rather give the last 4 digits than the whole thing.
And frankly, if someone wants to steal the identity of a college student with dept I'd be more than happy to have them tracked down, press charges and collect damages.
Maybe they're purposly just trying to freak people out to keep the payout higher.
On second thought, I bet they're evil. Don't SIGN UP! It's A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE TRAP!
Ben
I remember on Winter in MN when the snow never completely covered the ground. Other years there were -90 degree windchills. We have a picture from another year with a snowman holding a sign with the date: April 26th. I believe that was the year we moved to Arizona.
The weather not consistant any where. Globably, the client changes every year. There's no reason to panic or think something screwy is going on. When did people start getting the idea that every year should be predictably the same? I would guess probably around the same time global warming and global cooling wackos starting showing up.
Shock of all shocks we have hot and cool summers in AZ. There's nothing to see here, move along.
Ben
You have bright light and dim light. Yet both travel at the same speed.
With black holes, light going towards the black hole collides with the gravity moving out. Gravity doesn't have to move faster since light runs into it. Imagine shouting into a jet engine.
Ben
You would not worry about such trivial things. All you need to know about gravity is that when gravity pulls the apple to the ground you pick it up, put it in your basket and shut the hell up.
Ben
"And no one has guessed my /. password. I don't even know it. I use the terribly insecure 'bookmark this link' method. If anyone guesses it, I'm screwed."
Does your book cover how to exploit this insecurity? Or do I have to resort to the social engineering section?
Innocent minds want to know.
Ben
Actually htaccess can require an account OR ip. Google has no idea it's accessing password protected directories. No other crawler is allowed in however.
Ben
Most of Icarus Indie is still free. And can continue to be free because I'm charging a small fee for the parts that were the biggest burden on the site. The current bandwidth costs aren't an issue as it stands.
I enjoy putting up free sections on my site and do everything I can to keep them free. But then reality comes around and kicks you in the ass. So I came up with a way to make money while not completely destroying the site.
"Dear Jesus" was the third most used section of my site after the Drivers and DevZone. It's still free. "Fun With Cutouts" and "GameShot" are still free and also pretty popular. I also still allow free anonymous FTP.
I like free as much as the next guy but it's not entirely possible for many large sites like IcarusIndie.
Eventually you have to start charging money. And I'd rather cut off sections and charge for access than kill the whole thing.
Ben
"There's no mention of how to actually collect the micropayments,"
Collecting a lump sum of micropayments (no more than $10 for no less than a year) and using PayPal or VeriSign. The rock and the hard place is having to choose between those two because they both have issues.
The rock and the hard place was clearly defined in the article.
Collecting payments is easy. It's the companies that are the rock and a hard place. But don't let me stop you from taking things out of context. I only wrote the thing.
Ben
"None of that is covered here, and that's what's needed in order to have a viable micropayment system"
.htaccess. At least use those same controls to limit access to the crazily-named one.
.htaccess on a windows system is a bitch to edit. That's why I changed the name and hid it.
I acknowledge the problem. The solution to payments is a lump sum of micropayments. The solution to the social problem doesn't exactly have a short article solution now does it?
- Why change the name of the htaccess file? Apache by default makes sure that nobody can download a file called
A file named
- It's a really bad idea to use Visual Basic's deterministic Rnd function to generate passwords. (!)
If you want to run through all the possibilities of RND in 7 letter combinations be my guest. It's going to take a lot of tries to get one right and the password will be changed long before you succeed. And you'll be reported to your ISP.
- It's easy to use xcmd or bash or perl to make htpasswd read from a file, just like his program does.
I shouldn't have to use a command prompt for something so simple.
I know C and I had access to the C source for htpasswd. That's why I did it my way. There are dozens of solutions for every problem. It's kind of lame because I chose one that you don't think was the best.
- No programs around that analyze apache logs?? Holy crap, are you serious??
They suck for what I want to do. I looked. The only one I found that does okay is Analog but the output isn't what I want and all goes into a single file which is rediculous. Again, my solution works best for my needs. You can't very well bitch because I chose one you didn't.
Ben
Important questions unasked:
* A system for refunds
There are none currently but the easy way is that if your account is completely unused you can get your money back minus the fees incured by the payment system. You'd get 4.55 back in my case. If you use your account then no, of course you're not getting a refund. Otherwise people would sign up, grab what they want, and demand a refund.
* A system for letting people reload pages
keywords "unlimited access" It's not asked because it's not an issue when you don't care how much or how little is accessed.
* A way to get people to trust your payment system (i.e. what if I pay my $10 and you go out of business)
Terms of Service. I've been around for 2 years and can afford to keep the site running indefinitly as it is now.
* The cost of doing this business
Nothing out of pocket. That's answered by the fact that through out the entire article I never mention something you have to pay out of pocket and at the end is "that's all you need." So yes, if you read the article you get the answer to that question.
* Dealing with forgeries
The auditing system. And I mention in the article how to kill off accounts if there are any issues. People will always try to find a way to fool you and well, that's business. It's not possible to go through all the ways people will try to steal and how to counter them.
So yes, those questions were mostly answered in the article. It's just not in "question answer" form yet.
Ben
You're right. That's why I waited until my bandwidth couldn't take it anymore so I knew charging for the content wasn't an unreasonable proposition.
IcarusIndie.com was free for two years. The sections that I locked up were locked up because of the high demand and bandwidth costs associated with them.
I'm not suggesting everyone and their dog try to charge for their web-site. IcarusIndie.com has proven itself over the last couple years and that's why I implemented the system.
Ben
"Your content probably isnt even worth 10 cents"
I'm not charging for every word I write nor am I suggesting it. Heck, I'm not even doing it. If you'd actually, oh I dunno, check out the site, you'd see exactly what my content is and what's being charged for and what isn't. You don't need a "probably." If you don't feel it's worth the price of admission, fine. You're not required to drink in every bar.
"The thing is that some people just need to get lost when they want to charge for every thing under the sun."
I agree. That's why only a few major sections of the site are All Access Pass Only.
"When the article states "people think their ISP bill is an all access pass to the Internet" thats dangerously close to the MPAA and RIAA thinking"
It's a fact. Someone already brought it up. They paid for the bandwidth they shouldn't have to pay for content. People do think that. And they're wrong.
I'm charging for things that after 2 years of being free proved to be something people want. My bandwidth couldn't support the demand I didn't want to go to ads since they don't work so I decided to go with another system.
"all these fools that think they are going to somehow revolutionize (read enslave) the internet and make us pay for every click of the mouse should just take their greedy asses and screw off."
Yes, those people should go screw themselve but what part of "unlimited access for no less than a year for a small fee of no more than $10" in my proposed system lead you to believe I was suggesting you pay for every mouse click?
The system I'm using is designed to avoid just that. I recognize people don't want to pay alot of money and I don't need a lot of money so it works out.
Your complaints are valid when it comes to the traditional view of a micropayment system. But it has nothing to do with I've implemented.
Large sits like mine need money to exist. $5 a year unlimited access I think is a very fair system.
I don't expect to many people to pay since the sections locked down are pretty niche. But this thread is an examiation of the system, not the site.
Ben
Subcriptions to web-sites generally cost 10's of dollars per month.
I still consider it a micropayment system since it's a lump sum (and a small one at that) of micropayments over a large period of time of no less than a year to make the transaction worthwile.
It's not dishonest. It's a recognition of the fact that the structure isn't in place to do tiny transactions. The viable system at this point I think is lump sum. Yes you pay more upfront, but over time it works out to very little. 1.4 cents a day.
That's why I consider it a micropayment type system. You're paying very very little.
Ben
The code works perfectly. The question is whether it's a good idea. Yes, I can lock down my site and charge a small yearly admission fee but are people willing to pay it and is it a reasonable system.
The reasoning behind showing "how" it's done is to demonstrate that any web-site owner using Apache can easily and quickly use this system with no out of pocket costs.
So what do you think? Should they?
IcarusIndie.com was completely free for 2 years and from my logs it's obvious lots of people liked what I had to offer to the point where my bandwidth was sucked so dry I could barely browse the net on my own connection. Now I'm seeing if they're willing to pay a small fee to access a few major parts of it.
I'll be writing a follow-up to this based on the reactions from Slashdot.
Ben
The problem with 3rd parties handling the bills is you're right back to ads. If you have to sign up to a corporation to get money from people visiting your site whose to stop that corporation from forcing your site to do things you don't want to do in order to allow you the "privilage" of micropayments?
The reason I'm currently stuck with the lump sum method is because PayPal charges fees which make single micropayments impossible.
If there was simply a company out there that didn't charge transaction fees and charged commission only on $x of transactions (e.g. for every $10 in transactions they get $1 or $2) this problem would be solved.
I'd have no problem doing smaller account periods if I didn't have to pay 30 cents just in transaction fees. I'm considering offering a $1.00 for a 30 day all access acount as well. With the current payment processing companies out there, any less than $1.00 isn't really worth the effort.
It's too easy for such companies you suggest to start throwing their weight around.
Ben
I got just the opposite. I never ever ever use my yahoo account for anything. I checked it for the first time since July in late December and I had 900 messages. 800 were correctly identified as spam. 100 were spam messages that made it to my inbox. 89% block rate isn't too bad. But 900 spams in 3 months for an unused account is attrocious.
I use my hotmail address for pretty much everything and it's very clean. Instead of just deleting spam I use the block feature. Lately I've just been getting a lot of e-mail viruses.
Yahoo has a limit on the number of blocked addresses you can have. I ran into with those 100 spams in my inbox. I've yet to run into a limit with hotmail except on keywords.
So yeah, I'm sticking with hotmail for free accounts.
Ben
My family moved alot when I was younger and I remember sleeping upstairs with my older brother and my dad had an office up there as well. I don't think my younger brother was born yet which was just before I turned 2. I know it was before I turned 4 since I remember I wasn't in school for a year when we moved to a new house without an upstairs.
I remember this incident because my brother make a scary shadow on the wall and scared the hell out of me.
Ben
"Is it that much trouble to put together a good site map"
Depending on the site, yes. I run a site with over 20GB of information in over 200,000 files with thousands of directories. Although I could, I'm not going to create a site map for it. It'd be too overwhelming for the end user.
Instead I just organize the site so it makes sense and keep it shallow. It's never more than a few clicks to get where you want to go. Using SSI to keep a link list on the left side, it's very easy to move from one section to another or back to the front page of the site.
It's very rare if ever that I use a site map when browsing any web-site. A well organized site doesn't need one.
Ben
DirectX 9 is now available from Microsoft but in very large files. Icarus Independent now offers an alternative here at the DevZone. Download as much or as little as you need. Each section of DirectX 9 is neatly zipped up in it's own file.
If the download is still a bit daunting head to here and request the DirectX 9 SDK be included on a Content CD which costs only $2 per 650MB plus shipping which is typically less than $2 within the US.
Ben
If you've ever taken the time to actually READ a EULA, no host, free or otherwise, takes responsibility for the content of your site. You are responsible for child porn on your site. The free host is just responsible for removing it when they find out about it and submitting YOUR information to the legal authorities so you can be prosecuted.
The only time the host is responsible is if they knowingly allow child porn or other illegal material like ROMs to be on their server.
Ben
I just refer girls I date to The Labyrinth (my writings) found at my web-site. They either come away thinking I'm one fucked up individual or find me interesting.
I'm religious but I'm not afraid to poke fun of my religion. Any like minded girl that can read "Justification for It's Existance" and not get offended at the line "Jesus tells the funniest stories when he's drunk" or "Dinner Party" and laugh at "Resurrected Jesus cookies" is a girl I want to get to know.
Researching someone on Google is lame. These days everyone and their dog and its chew toy has a web-site. If they don't have a personal site then stick to the old fashion "conversation."
Finding random spats of information someone wrote is an excellent way to get the wrong idea about them. Who knows when it was written, what they've gone through since then, ect. If someone wants others to know about them on-line, they'll put up a homepage and point you to it if you ever meet them.
I'd rather get to know someone before digging through their history and judging them without giving them a chance to explain. People change. They make mistakes. They move on.
Ben
How about the phone company just drops a nickel in your account charging the callers account unless you tell the phone company they can contact you without the fee.
The telemarkers will just see all those nickel fees on their phone bill and people will see a bunch of credits to their account.
There can then just be an automated message "this call will chrage your account a 5 cent caller fee, if you accept do not hang up." Or the call with just go through if they aren't required to pay the fee.
It can work, it would just take some work on the phone companies' part. There would be a lot of paper work between phone companies.
Ben
"i guess our kids will only be getting US approved history as usual."
Who cares? How long are you going to make your kid play in the "safe zone?" If they're old enough to be interested in news, and everything else from abroad then why in the world would you still be forcing your kid on the kids.us TLD?
If there's something you want your kids to know that isn't on kids.us, here's a thought, get it, print it and talk to your kids about it. That way they get what the government thinks is okay for kids when you're not around and additionally the stuff YOU approve when you are around.
By the time it's important enough they be aware of the world outside it's time to take the saftey off the internet anyway. There's no harm in exposing them to reality if you're there to guide them and explain things to them.
If you're worried about them heading straight for porn then watch your kids on-line. It's pretty lame to bitch that the government needs to protect your kids and then when they make an effort, people bitch that they're going too far.
Fine, screw it, raise your own kids and keep the government out of it completely.
Ben