I've gone through this myself. I wanted to start a hosting business. I got an ISDN connection into my basement and set up a couple of linux boxes. The ISDN (from UUNET) cost $600/month for the feed plus $120/month for the line. I never broke even.
Eventually I moved to co-located with 9netave.com and now I'm making money. I positioned myself as a low cost hosting company and automated everything to make it so that it wouldn't drain more time than it was worth.
The moral of the story is to start with something you can afford, and expand as required. Since you're just building one site I'd start with a hosting company and build and test it there. It would suck to pay all the money to set up a co-lo and then have the thing fizzle. (Short plug: I support php3 and mysql plus 100MB storage for $20/month - Sorry - I had to!)
If all looks good, move it to a co-locate and try to go big-time. If that takes off then maybe you can afford your own bandwidth, but it's tough to compete with co-location.
As my business grows it may become less expensive to run my own T1, but then I'm loosing the speed of all those OC-3's, so it'd probably never happen.
It seems to me that they aren't playing nice with the rest of us on the 'net. Fine. They don't have to play nice. We don't have to play nice with them either! What if we all...
Block any IP from their network from port 80 on any web servers we might run
Use scripts to re-direct them from our site if we can't block them altogether
What else could we do to make their lives miserable?
It seems to me that there's a lot of us, and we can at least tick them off if we choose.
Can you imagine if even 10% of web sites blocked access from their networks? Maybe then they'd play nice. I'm probably dreaming...
I'd just like to add to this that it isn't even really RAD specific but an excellent manual for anyone managing software projects of all kinds. I call this book "The Bible of Software Development".
Lets step back to look at this. With all the publicity GNU/Linux is getting, lots of people are trying GNU/Linux for the first time. Most of these people don't have a UNIX or hacker mentality, and are going to think that GNU/Linux sucks. Yes ease of use issues are being solved, but let's face it - we're not there yet. Having MS Office would help a lot to make the transition easier for these people.
On the other hand, other office like projects might suffer if something like office takes interest away from them. For those of use are GNU heads, we know our way is the better way. Open source is a fundamentally superior way to develop software. Proprietary software has two things going for it right now: It has been working on easy to use applications for the masses longer, and it is the status quo. Free software is catching up, and the status quo is changing.
Office for GNU/Linux might hurt us in the short term, but as pointy haired bosses get used to the GNU Order they're going to start questioning why they can't get the fixes and enhancements they want to their proprietary apps. Before long they'll be dumping proprietary software and contributing to free software along with the hobbyists.
I think for now Office for GNU/Linux is good because I'm worried that when a large enough chunk of users have a bad experience with GNU/Linux it will loose its good name in the media, and then it will be much more difficult to gain acceptance. Office would help to stop that from happening. Since I know free software can't loose in the long run, I don't mind some short term set-backs.
I made it though to the page, and it contains this note: *UPDATED ETA: TUESDAY LATE EVENING USA PST WE HAVE THE FILE! THE FILE IS CURRENTLY 4.8GB, CURRENTLY MAKING IT SMALLET THE TARGA 2000 WE WERE USING BLEW UP AND WE'RE BURNING IT ONTO 6 CDS, TAKING IT TO SOMEONE ELSE'S PC TO MAKE IT AVAILABLE TO THE WEB
It goes on to say... THE LIST OF MIRRORS WILL ALSO GO UP AT JEDINET.COM STARWARZ.COM AND NEWSDROID.COM IF YOU CANT GET ON HERE LATER TONIGHT
Maybe this calls for an update to the story on the main slashdot page?
Good, I'm running 2.6. Its a slow machine, but it gets the job done.
Heh heh, I wonder how many Linux users will be forced to request the NT version because of the relatively small number of Sparc boxes out there. I was dissapointed they didn't offer a Linux version. Maybe they thought that they'd get/.'d if they did.
I would love a good resource for Script-Fu stuff
on
Script-Fu Website
·
· Score: 1
I find Script-Fu more difficult than assembler. At least that I can step through in a debugger. In the lastest script I've been working on I've been having trouble with the equality operator, can you imagine that? Looks to me like I'm doing it the same as other script-fu's, but mine doesn't work. Granted I am an idiot, but I can do equality tests in countless other languages.
I hope the new script-fu site will put in a discussion area for people who like me are struggling with script-fu.
Slashdot Mirror
Eventually I moved to co-located with 9netave.com and now I'm making money. I positioned myself as a low cost hosting company and automated everything to make it so that it wouldn't drain more time than it was worth.
The moral of the story is to start with something you can afford, and expand as required. Since you're just building one site I'd start with a hosting company and build and test it there. It would suck to pay all the money to set up a co-lo and then have the thing fizzle. (Short plug: I support php3 and mysql plus 100MB storage for $20/month - Sorry - I had to!)
If all looks good, move it to a co-locate and try to go big-time. If that takes off then maybe you can afford your own bandwidth, but it's tough to compete with co-location.
As my business grows it may become less expensive to run my own T1, but then I'm loosing the speed of all those OC-3's, so it'd probably never happen.
Hope this helps.
- Block any IP from their network from port 80 on any web servers we might run
- Use scripts to re-direct them from our site if we can't block them altogether
- What else could we do to make their lives miserable?
It seems to me that there's a lot of us, and we can at least tick them off if we choose.Can you imagine if even 10% of web sites blocked access from their networks? Maybe then they'd play nice. I'm probably dreaming...
I'd just like to add to this that it isn't even really RAD specific but an excellent manual for anyone managing software projects of all kinds. I call this book "The Bible of Software Development".
On the other hand, other office like projects might suffer if something like office takes interest away from them. For those of use are GNU heads, we know our way is the better way. Open source is a fundamentally superior way to develop software. Proprietary software has two things going for it right now: It has been working on easy to use applications for the masses longer, and it is the status quo. Free software is catching up, and the status quo is changing.
Office for GNU/Linux might hurt us in the short term, but as pointy haired bosses get used to the GNU Order they're going to start questioning why they can't get the fixes and enhancements they want to their proprietary apps. Before long they'll be dumping proprietary software and contributing to free software along with the hobbyists.
I think for now Office for GNU/Linux is good because I'm worried that when a large enough chunk of users have a bad experience with GNU/Linux it will loose its good name in the media, and then it will be much more difficult to gain acceptance. Office would help to stop that from happening. Since I know free software can't loose in the long run, I don't mind some short term set-backs.
It goes on to say... THE LIST OF MIRRORS WILL ALSO GO UP AT JEDINET.COM STARWARZ.COM AND NEWSDROID.COM IF YOU CANT GET ON HERE LATER TONIGHT
Maybe this calls for an update to the story on the main slashdot page?
Heh heh, I wonder how many Linux users will be forced to request the NT version because of the relatively small number of Sparc boxes out there. I was dissapointed they didn't offer a Linux version. Maybe they thought that they'd get /.'d if they did.
I hope the new script-fu site will put in a discussion area for people who like me are struggling with script-fu.
Take Care,
Vic.