An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission.
When I'm looking around for software to try out I'm usually on a schedule, or need something right away. By the time your hours-late email shows up I've already continued searching for other similar software, downloaded your competitors versions, and tried them out. If one of them fits my requirements why would I bother downloading yours hours after the fact?
Setup with Lycoris was easy, pretty much everything installed the way you'd expect it to. Matter of fact it was easy enough that I was considering recommending it to my non-techie family members.
HOWEVER, the dhcp client had tons of trouble with my cable modem. It setup fine, but would never stay connected for more than a couple of minutes. I had to keep re-running dhclient just to check email. I tried power cycling the modem + all the other obvious and not so obvious fixes. Nothing would keep Lycoris connected to Charter Cable's service for more than a couple minutes at a time.
A quick install of Mandrake and no problems. I'd say Lycoris has some things going for it, but Mandrake still runs circles around it.
My wife (also a readhead) dared me into marrying her. We drove overnight to Vegas to get married at 7am on an Sunday. So I definitely agree on the 'non-traditional' point. Of course we'd been engaged for 2 years at that point.
Since you're a redhead I am probably being redundant in advising this but, keep the boy in line and make sure he keeps up this habit of surprizing you.
Redheaded ladies are the special ones, and he's a very lucky man
Congrats and hope you two have a very long and happy life together.
I do know how to type, and my ring finger is size 15 so I definitely dont have "baby hands", and I love my blackberry based pager keyboard. I can do well over 40 words/minute with it using my thumbs. I have been praying for someone to get a clue and add one of these on to a PDA. All I can say is THANK YOU SHARP and GET THIS THING ON THE MARKET ASAP!!!
From their charter: 'IDRM is concerned with legal and social issues only to the extent that they affect or constrain DRM technology.'
I think thats more than half the problem. They arent asking IF something should be done, only how to do it. If someone comes up with a way to track every word I read in an ebook and then delete it so I cant re-read it what are the bets these guys would support it rather than 'constrain' the technology?
Maybe we should form the Internet Social Issues Team (IS IT) to address the things the corporations dont want to be bothered with.
I think a point people keep missing with most of these damned programs is that they change what you see before you decide what to do with it. I dont have any where near the problem with the pop-ups/unders since they differentiate themselves from the content I went to the site to see. However that damned TopText (or whatever they changed their name to in the last hour) and its like is a completely different ballgame. Changing/adding links on a site is complete Bull Shit. As the content provider I did the work to attract the user there, I paid for the bandwidth to provide that content. Now some shithead is putting his links(which he gets paid for) on to my site with out him having to do a damned thing. Is it legal, maybe, maybe not, I cant afford to spot a laywer enough cash to make it worth his wild to find out. Is it moral or right? Hell No! I did the work, I got the user/visitor there, I provided the page that they then change to make their fast buck.
As for them not changing the content, you are splitting very very technical hairs there. From the point of view of the AVERAGE user (not the average/.er) the content changes because the links change. Technical people(/.ers) would be curious why the link is yellow and find out and then know better. Non-technical (everyone else) will just think I was somehow highlighting a special link on my page for them to check out. Try to keep in mind that most web users can barely spell HTML, let alone tell you how it works or understand the difference between links generated by the page and links generated by the browser.
Am I a selfish bastard because I'm getting pissed that they are making money off my work without me getting a cent? Probably, but I just want to make enough to keep my sites live.
Anyone who argues that they pay for access to information by paying their ISP for their Internet connection is making a comlpetely FALSE arguement. ALL you are paying your ISP for is a connection to the network, period. That is not a payment for content.
Someone still has to pay for the content you receive to be hosted and connected to the Internet for you to then access.
There are two causes of failure in the current model. 1) Split costs, which people actually like since they dont want their ISPs (AOL, etc) controlling all the content. 2) Advertising isnt working to support content providers. If either of these causes is fixed then the whole arguement goes away, you just have to pick your poison.
I am so sick of whiners complaining about not wanting to pay for content cause it should all be free. ACCESS TO INFORMATION IS NEVER FREE. There is always some cost to gaining access to information, even your local library costs you money in the form of taxes.
Now if you havent already run off to flame me for this, consider the following. The Internet began life as an entity where information was provided without direct costs, this was possible because various parts of the government paid the bill for providing access to the information (through the military and schools). Now it has grown into a hybrid entity where commerical organizations are also footing the bill for information access (usually so they can sell you something or advertise something to you). However, the costs of providing access to the information are still having to be paid by someone. What needs to be found is a painless way to support content providers that wont be intrusive or a bottomless pit for the users.
Thought that just popped into my mind is a content budget for each user, similar to the flat fee for ISP access. Only the budget gets assigned to various content sites at the end of each month based on how frequently the user used the site, and how they rated it. And maybe you can flat out reject payments to sites as well, but then they dont have to let you back in. Hey, I dont want to get charged for every page I look at (I can just imagine how fast that would add up), nor do I want to pay some idiot for a site that sucks (I'm sure people think the same about my sites). Maybe some system along these lines would address most people's problems. Users have a limited cost exposure and control to keep from paying lamer sites while content providers can still get the support they need.
Who said anything about cutting out the election process? Whatever flaws our American system may have it still is one of the best models of government that has ever been invented. Even with that said it can still be improved, but a violent/armed coup is hardly necessary.
What I mean is that most people I know dont feel that they have real choices at the polls. It is boiled down to selecting the lesser of evils rather than being able to vote for a person they really want in office. By the time of the November elections none of the canidates for President were ones that I would have spent time campaigning for. Put "NONE OF THE ABOVE" on the ballot and see how many of our current politicians get elected.
It seems to me that most elected officials have forgotten that they were elected as our representatives. Instead it looks like politics have turned into a game to see how high an office a politician can be elected to and how long they can hold it. Politicians will do whatever they have to in order to gather more money than their opponents. When was the last time you heard about a politician turning down a donation because it was from a group/person that his/her own political views opposed? Not very damned often.
It would be nice to have a political party and politicians who just said here is our platform, here is what we believe, here is what we want to accomplish if we get elected and actually stuck to it rather than compromising a bit here and there to get more contributions.
As for Microsoft, you are right they arent evil. They are a company that does whatever they can get away with to get more business and income. Thats what corporate entities are supposed to do. If they didnt you'd hear more screaming from their stockholders than you currently hear on Slashdot. However, when they break the rules of society (ie anti-trust) without regard and without being held accountable then there is a problem. Microsoft makes decent products, but they tie them together in ways that make it hard for anyone else to compete. Thats the problem I have with them. If they competed fairly and were still as big as they are then I would be cheering them on for doing a good job.
As for my beliefs, they are far more complex and well thoughtout than you would give credit and than could be explained in a quick comment posted here.
...what do you do about it? Until someone comes up with a legitimate political party that is willing to do the job of governing the American society rather than pandering to anyone willing to write it a check we are SOL. 'course in order for that to happen the general public has to be want it to happen. Right now they are fat, dumb and happy with life a it is, so as a whole they are unwilling to rock the boat.
Gates & Co. have learned the real way to take over the world, keep people employed and happy and they will over look each little step on the long journey to where ever they are being led.
If I was a customer of Above.net and they suddenly decided to block my web access to a site which I use for support, etc I would think it would be a violation of our contract. They cannot just block access of their customers to resources and sites on the Internet without the consent of those same customers. If you were blocked from accessing Macromedia file a formal complaint with your ISP. Somewhere down the road someone you have access through is the check-writing customer of Above.net's. Enough formal complaints coming up the pipe might be a better message to them than the one they were trying to send to Macromedia...
I was in the same boat and signed the contract just because I _needed_ the money for backdue hosting bills.
However, the contract is pretty weak and could be voided in a class action. Question is where else to go? I dont know of any place else to go for ad outsourcing. As much as we all hate it we need to make some money just to pay for the basics of our sites. Free hosting just doesnt offer enough (ie MySQL, specific Apache changes, etc, etc, etc) and hosting and bandwidth arent cheap.
Before we all leap off the cliff and sue them into non-existance maybe we should have somewhere to land....
There was an article on here awhile back about improved advertising. Dont suppose anyone's done anything with it or thought about forming a co-op for sites too big to be on free hosting and too small to afford our own ad sales staff?
Anyone interested in such a thing? How'd we go about getting startup capital in the current market?
I suppose it'd be a bit much to get OSDN to sponsor the co-op...
So, let me understand this correctly. You think all information should be free unless that information is something you dont want someone else using because you dont trust their modivations?
Nice internal conflict you have there...
So who should judge who can get information and who cant?
No joke about UGO. I run The Nitpickers Site and am having big headaches with them. First they basically forced me to change my agreement with them (UGO: 'Agree to less money from now on or you wont see the 3 months back money we owe you') and then they are constantly late with payments. If I thought they had any kind of real funds I'd be trying for a class-action (and I hate lawyers).
Really bad thing is that they caught me just as I was starting to expand my site and bring other ones online. Now I'm trying to figure out how to cover the cost of hosting & bandwidth.
And paypal donations are a joke guys. I added a tipjar over a month ago. Net income: $3.00.
Point is my sites arent "Commerical". They provide content which I couldnt find elsewhere when I started them. They provide services or options which I couldnt find elsewhere. The idea of a web being nothing but links to other sites doesnt work. Somewhere those links have to point to something that you the user/visitor wants to see and that somewhere has to pay to exist.
I would LOVE it if I could get a sponsor who would pay for just the basic expenses of my sites existance. I'm not out to make a buck. It would have been nice, but that isnt my end goal. I like creating sites people enjoy using for the joy of knowing that people enjoy what I create. Tell me exactly where 'commerical' fits in there.
I run a number of sites. All of which I started for the LOVE of running them and creating something. What has it gotten me? A big fat bill every month for my hosting thats what.
I am not trying to make a mint of my sites.
I'm just trying to get them to pay for the expenses they cause me. I cannot justify taking the money it costs just to pay for the base necessities of sites which combined serve 2-3 million pages a month out of my family's mouth. And I'm not talking staff writers or PR people or junk costs like that, I'm talking a decent machine and ~30 Gigs of bandwidth.
How do you bridge the gap for sites which are getting more popular (ie over 500k-1m pages) but arent at the big time yet (ie Slashdot)? Bandwidth and hosting cost money which has to come from somewhere...
In order to qualify for non-profit status you have to be incorporated. How many open source projects do you know have gone through the hassle and paperwork to get Uncle Sam to declare them a not-for-profit corporation?
And what about individuals who registered their names with.org because some company grabbed.net or.com first?
Changing the rules retro-actively sucks. I hope people submit enough comments on this proposal addressing this issue to convince ICANN that they are doing something again without fully considering the implications...
Last time I checked it was against Federal Labor Laws for a company to discuss anything in regards to your employement with them with any other company that you might be working for or might possibly work for in the future.
Ask any HR person. There are very strict guidelines about what a company can say about a former employee without opening themselves up to lawsuit. Basically all they can say is that you did work for them from X date to Y date. They cant even comment on if you were fired or quit.
IF they are dumb enough to contact your current company get a good lawyer. It should be pretty easy to find one since this would be a slamdunk case with tons of precedent for a big judgement.
I run a couple of, apparently, less popular sites [:-) my big one is ~2M page views/month] and I am in the same boat. The ad network I am with just recently forced all affiliates to agree to a change in contract. As a result my banner income last month is $10 short of paying for hosting, let alone my work on the sites.
I like the idea of finding other income sources, but dont know if this is the right option. Obviously my users like the site, but can I really expect them to pay for using it? They are used to surfing it for free (I have specifically avoided charging any/all fees on my sites). Realistically you cannot count on a voluntary system providing the required revenue month to month. And a required payment system, if it is done on a site-by-site basis is just going to drive people away from the sites charging for surfing.
One of the other follow-ups said that information is free. This is a truism which isnt. Information may or may not be free, but providing that information is definitely not without cost. Like it or not hosting costs money. Compensation for the work put into creating, maintaining and improving the sites is almost always necessary.
Regardless of your feelings about a market economy there is still a time factor to be considered. Running a site requires time which can be spent on other pursuits. A basic site requires minimal time, but what about something more than basic. Or what about several sites that are more than just basic?
I love working on my sites. I'm trying to build a number of sites which I hope visitors will enjoy using. But I can guarantee that my wife, kid-to-be and dog would all love it more if I'd spend a lot less time on the computer.
Like it or not the smaller sites have to find a way to finance themselves. Hosting and time spent building the sites have to be paid for somehow. Unfortunately the enjoyment of building and providing sites doesnt do much to pay the bills when they come due.
BTW: There are a lot of people complaining about privacy concerns etc with Amazon. Has anyone thought about starting their own 'micropayments' system which addresses all of their concerns (ie no tracking, etc)? You might be surprized at how fast that system would grow....
Slashdot Mirror
Note: I'm a UofA Alum, but their screwup on that mirror deserves mention whenever they do something right...
If they dont publish a usable standard why should we care if MS and AOL's network can intertalk?
When I'm looking around for software to try out I'm usually on a schedule, or need something right away. By the time your hours-late email shows up I've already continued searching for other similar software, downloaded your competitors versions, and tried them out. If one of them fits my requirements why would I bother downloading yours hours after the fact?
HOWEVER, the dhcp client had tons of trouble with my cable modem. It setup fine, but would never stay connected for more than a couple of minutes. I had to keep re-running dhclient just to check email. I tried power cycling the modem + all the other obvious and not so obvious fixes. Nothing would keep Lycoris connected to Charter Cable's service for more than a couple minutes at a time.
A quick install of Mandrake and no problems. I'd say Lycoris has some things going for it, but Mandrake still runs circles around it.
I hate to say it, but I think I figured out the real reason Taco asked this way:
1) To set a new record for comments posted in an hour.
2) To set a new record for total comments posted on a story.
sorry, had to say it...
*EVILGRIN*
My wife (also a readhead) dared me into marrying her. We drove overnight to Vegas to get married at 7am on an Sunday. So I definitely agree on the 'non-traditional' point. Of course we'd been engaged for 2 years at that point.
Since you're a redhead I am probably being redundant in advising this but, keep the boy in line and make sure he keeps up this habit of surprizing you.
Redheaded ladies are the special ones, and he's a very lucky man
Congrats and hope you two have a very long and happy life together.
I do know how to type, and my ring finger is size 15 so I definitely dont have "baby hands", and I love my blackberry based pager keyboard. I can do well over 40 words/minute with it using my thumbs. I have been praying for someone to get a clue and add one of these on to a PDA. All I can say is THANK YOU SHARP and GET THIS THING ON THE MARKET ASAP!!!
I think thats more than half the problem. They arent asking IF something should be done, only how to do it. If someone comes up with a way to track every word I read in an ebook and then delete it so I cant re-read it what are the bets these guys would support it rather than 'constrain' the technology?
Maybe we should form the Internet Social Issues Team (IS IT) to address the things the corporations dont want to be bothered with.
As for them not changing the content, you are splitting very very technical hairs there. From the point of view of the AVERAGE user (not the average
Am I a selfish bastard because I'm getting pissed that they are making money off my work without me getting a cent? Probably, but I just want to make enough to keep my sites live.
Someone still has to pay for the content you receive to be hosted and connected to the Internet for you to then access.
There are two causes of failure in the current model. 1) Split costs, which people actually like since they dont want their ISPs (AOL, etc) controlling all the content. 2) Advertising isnt working to support content providers. If either of these causes is fixed then the whole arguement goes away, you just have to pick your poison.
I am so sick of whiners complaining about not wanting to pay for content cause it should all be free. ACCESS TO INFORMATION IS NEVER FREE. There is always some cost to gaining access to information, even your local library costs you money in the form of taxes.
Now if you havent already run off to flame me for this, consider the following. The Internet began life as an entity where information was provided without direct costs, this was possible because various parts of the government paid the bill for providing access to the information (through the military and schools). Now it has grown into a hybrid entity where commerical organizations are also footing the bill for information access (usually so they can sell you something or advertise something to you). However, the costs of providing access to the information are still having to be paid by someone. What needs to be found is a painless way to support content providers that wont be intrusive or a bottomless pit for the users.
Thought that just popped into my mind is a content budget for each user, similar to the flat fee for ISP access. Only the budget gets assigned to various content sites at the end of each month based on how frequently the user used the site, and how they rated it. And maybe you can flat out reject payments to sites as well, but then they dont have to let you back in. Hey, I dont want to get charged for every page I look at (I can just imagine how fast that would add up), nor do I want to pay some idiot for a site that sucks (I'm sure people think the same about my sites). Maybe some system along these lines would address most people's problems. Users have a limited cost exposure and control to keep from paying lamer sites while content providers can still get the support they need.
Hey, it's just a thought.
What I mean is that most people I know dont feel that they have real choices at the polls. It is boiled down to selecting the lesser of evils rather than being able to vote for a person they really want in office. By the time of the November elections none of the canidates for President were ones that I would have spent time campaigning for. Put "NONE OF THE ABOVE" on the ballot and see how many of our current politicians get elected.
It seems to me that most elected officials have forgotten that they were elected as our representatives. Instead it looks like politics have turned into a game to see how high an office a politician can be elected to and how long they can hold it. Politicians will do whatever they have to in order to gather more money than their opponents. When was the last time you heard about a politician turning down a donation because it was from a group/person that his/her own political views opposed? Not very damned often.
It would be nice to have a political party and politicians who just said here is our platform, here is what we believe, here is what we want to accomplish if we get elected and actually stuck to it rather than compromising a bit here and there to get more contributions.
As for Microsoft, you are right they arent evil. They are a company that does whatever they can get away with to get more business and income. Thats what corporate entities are supposed to do. If they didnt you'd hear more screaming from their stockholders than you currently hear on Slashdot. However, when they break the rules of society (ie anti-trust) without regard and without being held accountable then there is a problem. Microsoft makes decent products, but they tie them together in ways that make it hard for anyone else to compete. Thats the problem I have with them. If they competed fairly and were still as big as they are then I would be cheering them on for doing a good job.
As for my beliefs, they are far more complex and well thoughtout than you would give credit and than could be explained in a quick comment posted here.
Gates & Co. have learned the real way to take over the world, keep people employed and happy and they will over look each little step on the long journey to where ever they are being led.
it's still 20gb of removeable media!
If I was a customer of Above.net and they suddenly decided to block my web access to a site which I use for support, etc I would think it would be a violation of our contract. They cannot just block access of their customers to resources and sites on the Internet without the consent of those same customers. If you were blocked from accessing Macromedia file a formal complaint with your ISP. Somewhere down the road someone you have access through is the check-writing customer of Above.net's. Enough formal complaints coming up the pipe might be a better message to them than the one they were trying to send to Macromedia...
However, the contract is pretty weak and could be voided in a class action. Question is where else to go? I dont know of any place else to go for ad outsourcing. As much as we all hate it we need to make some money just to pay for the basics of our sites. Free hosting just doesnt offer enough (ie MySQL, specific Apache changes, etc, etc, etc) and hosting and bandwidth arent cheap.
Before we all leap off the cliff and sue them into non-existance maybe we should have somewhere to land....
There was an article on here awhile back about improved advertising. Dont suppose anyone's done anything with it or thought about forming a co-op for sites too big to be on free hosting and too small to afford our own ad sales staff?
Anyone interested in such a thing? How'd we go about getting startup capital in the current market?
I suppose it'd be a bit much to get OSDN to sponsor the co-op...
I hate bringing up the evil M-word (money) but it's needed to support sites...
Nice internal conflict you have there...
So who should judge who can get information and who cant?
Really bad thing is that they caught me just as I was starting to expand my site and bring other ones online. Now I'm trying to figure out how to cover the cost of hosting & bandwidth.
And paypal donations are a joke guys. I added a tipjar over a month ago. Net income: $3.00.
I would LOVE it if I could get a sponsor who would pay for just the basic expenses of my sites existance. I'm not out to make a buck. It would have been nice, but that isnt my end goal. I like creating sites people enjoy using for the joy of knowing that people enjoy what I create. Tell me exactly where 'commerical' fits in there.
I run a number of sites. All of which I started for the LOVE of running them and creating something. What has it gotten me? A big fat bill every month for my hosting thats what.
I am not trying to make a mint of my sites.
I'm just trying to get them to pay for the expenses they cause me. I cannot justify taking the money it costs just to pay for the base necessities of sites which combined serve 2-3 million pages a month out of my family's mouth. And I'm not talking staff writers or PR people or junk costs like that, I'm talking a decent machine and ~30 Gigs of bandwidth.
How do you bridge the gap for sites which are getting more popular (ie over 500k-1m pages) but arent at the big time yet (ie Slashdot)? Bandwidth and hosting cost money which has to come from somewhere...
And what about individuals who registered their names with .org because some company grabbed .net or .com first?
Changing the rules retro-actively sucks. I hope people submit enough comments on this proposal addressing this issue to convince ICANN that they are doing something again without fully considering the implications...
...that maybe the protest is just a cover and the real reason for putting "Sweatshop" on his shoes is because his feet stink?
Ask any HR person. There are very strict guidelines about what a company can say about a former employee without opening themselves up to lawsuit. Basically all they can say is that you did work for them from X date to Y date. They cant even comment on if you were fired or quit.
IF they are dumb enough to contact your current company get a good lawyer. It should be pretty easy to find one since this would be a slamdunk case with tons of precedent for a big judgement.
I like the idea of finding other income sources, but dont know if this is the right option. Obviously my users like the site, but can I really expect them to pay for using it? They are used to surfing it for free (I have specifically avoided charging any/all fees on my sites). Realistically you cannot count on a voluntary system providing the required revenue month to month. And a required payment system, if it is done on a site-by-site basis is just going to drive people away from the sites charging for surfing.
One of the other follow-ups said that information is free. This is a truism which isnt. Information may or may not be free, but providing that information is definitely not without cost. Like it or not hosting costs money. Compensation for the work put into creating, maintaining and improving the sites is almost always necessary.
Regardless of your feelings about a market economy there is still a time factor to be considered. Running a site requires time which can be spent on other pursuits. A basic site requires minimal time, but what about something more than basic. Or what about several sites that are more than just basic?
I love working on my sites. I'm trying to build a number of sites which I hope visitors will enjoy using. But I can guarantee that my wife, kid-to-be and dog would all love it more if I'd spend a lot less time on the computer.
Like it or not the smaller sites have to find a way to finance themselves. Hosting and time spent building the sites have to be paid for somehow. Unfortunately the enjoyment of building and providing sites doesnt do much to pay the bills when they come due.
BTW: There are a lot of people complaining about privacy concerns etc with Amazon. Has anyone thought about starting their own 'micropayments' system which addresses all of their concerns (ie no tracking, etc)? You might be surprized at how fast that system would grow....
the demos on the mirror site are returning error messages as fast as they were on the original site. O'joy.