RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] programmers that don't know tarballs?

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> Welcome to the world of web standards. YES they're written for the
> colorblind, we're required (especially those like me in state
> government) to write pages that are readable by all possible people.  
> Someday soon we'll be required to write HTML that is readable without
> a computer to take care of the poor people without PC's.  As for bad
> color choices, that's what you get when half the web -doesn't- have to
> conform to standards.

I already make an effort to make my websites readable without a PC..
partly due to the fact I love to use the web from my cell phone and partly
due to the fact I work with the handicapped and poor alot. That isn't to
say that every page I make is that way but I try to consider it in site
design, especially with code or sites that will be used a lot.

> 1) A lack of ads won't bring down the web, however, it will bring down
> the free web.  Without ads, we'll be limited to official sites which
> can afford to stay up because they sell something.

BS. We had web sites before anyone thought to put ads on them.. much less
before people were willing to pay for such ad space. Even before the web
there were lots of good sites in existance and a good many of them were
not funded by the government or schools. That is not to say they the sites
didn't often borrow bandwidth off the government or their hosting school
but the computers and all the work involved was usually entirely donated
and often sites would eventually shift to being ran on donations. Before
even that there were BBS's and they were often very high quality and free.

You would probably see the death of the Yahoo-like giant sites, or at
least far fewer giant sites being created, but in my opinion that is the
way the Net is supposed to be. Massively distributed where everyone has
the same chance to be heard. Bandwidth and hardware is a LOT cheaper these
days too.

> 2) Sites that need banners aren't always poor quality, I've seen one
> that was probably the best anime site out there, but people who are
> interested expect it free, so they won't help pay for it.  On top of
> that, without banners saying "we need money", how would they get those
> donations?

I didn't say they were always poor quality. If they sell a product then
I'll buy it if I like it. If all they sell is information then I'll still
buy it if I like it and find the cost reasonable for it's value. If the
information is something easily reproduced without them though it will not
be worth my money to pay a subscription fee. As much as I like Slashdot it
is not worth a subscription fee as is because I can find lots of other
communities that deal with the same subjects, or even create my own. That
is especially true if the sites Slashdot links to also start changing
subscription fees. One idea though would be that Slashdot would be worth
subscribing to if the other sites switched to a subscription model and
Slashdot made a deal with them to let their readers access articles linked
to from Slashdot without being subscribers to the individual sites.

Also it's quite easy to choose what banners are filtered out and what
banners are not. As long as their banner is within their own site and is
not spammy it'd likely be left alone.

> 3) The web is moving away from banners.  Banner sites are paying less, and
> offering less services for the pages that display their banners. The site I
> just mentioned was shut down because its banners no longer paid enough for
> the $600 a month hosting fee.  In a last ditch effort to help out, they
> tried a clicking spree, clicking all sites that came up in the banner.  This
> caused the banner company to drop them, so the full cost of the $600 was
> left to the site owner.  He put up a "Paypal" banner for donations to the
> site, and while he got over 100 donors, none of them had enough money to
> support the site.

It happens. I have to wonder why it cost $600/month hosting fee though.
You can get a pretty decent host with reasonable levels of bandwidth for a
lot less than that. If they had that many users and the users wouldn't
cough up the money in donations then they deserve to have lost a great
site. I would have slimmed the site though in that case where sizable
donations were coming in ($100-$200 month isn't bad) but not enough..
improved cachability (is that a word?), fewer graphics, services cut back
to include only the things that are needed but don't drive up bandwidth
and diskspace usage.

Also it should be noted that since 9-11 donations for other things seem to
have dropped through the floor. I guess people can only donate so much and
they've donated to that cause. Reasonable but harsh for some of us. :)

I do think a micro-donations idea is good.. sort of like micro-payments
but 100% optional.. so you can suggest your browser an amount to pay per
page or kilobyte or something on certain sites and the browser will take
care of donating for you. I think if it were that easy more people would
do it. If it added up to a buck or two per month per user it'd help a lot
and since it's optional people wouldn't worry so much about oppression of
those to poor to pay or being suckered into paying for sites that use
dirty tricks like endless popup windows.

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