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Grex > Coop12 > #113: Cyberspace Communications finances for June 2002 |  |
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| 25 new of 271 responses total. |
spooked
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response 232 of 271:
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Jul 10 11:11 UTC 2002 |
Yes, our vocab spans more than "Shut up, <$1>!"
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cmcgee
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response 233 of 271:
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Jul 10 11:58 UTC 2002 |
I don't understand the utility of having (scarce) staff time used to develop
two systems, one of which we won't use. What am I missing here?
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gull
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response 234 of 271:
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Jul 10 12:37 UTC 2002 |
Re #233: Among other things, some people *like* setting up and trying out
new systems. If they want to do it, I don't think we should stop them.
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brighn
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response 235 of 271:
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Jul 10 13:32 UTC 2002 |
Shut up, spooked.
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jp2
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response 236 of 271:
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Jul 10 14:29 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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slynne
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response 237 of 271:
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Jul 10 16:07 UTC 2002 |
re#226 - I think that people on both systems need to stop disrespecting
people who are not officially members, especially in policy
discussions. Sure, non-members shouldnt be allowed to vote but that
doesnt mean that they dont have worthwhile things to say.
The Mnet "user of the month" thing was an attempt to do encourage new
people by giving them some recognition. I think encouraging people to
buy memberships for others might help. If I were to ever send money to
grex or mnet, it would be because I value the communities there. I dont
care as much about the hardware. I also value individual people. I
would buy md a membership if he would agree to be my online bitch.
re#227 Are there bills that arent being paid?
re#228 What I find most interesting about Grex are the people.
Honestly. There are people here who absolutely fascinate me. Most of
them are guests. If I ever were to contribute money to Grex it would be
because of those people. To me, the challenge is how to recruit more
people like that. I tell people about Mnet and Grex all the time but it
is only rarely that I can talk someone into logging on and even more
rare that they contribute significantly. I wish I knew of a way to
troll around for interesting people. I keep trying but generally fail.
If I ever do figure out a way to recruit newbies, I will be sure to
share it.
re#230 You are right about the conferencing community being composed of
a very small (and aging) group. It is a close knit group that really
does have a bit of an "in-crowd" thing going on. It is often subtle and
it is something that sometimes puts users off and can make them feel
unwelcome. I think some of us (and I am including myself) should try to
be aware of that and should take efforts to make newer people and
people who arent sending in cash feel as if they are part of the group.
Once people feel part of the group, they are more likely to contribute.
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cross
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response 238 of 271:
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Jul 10 18:21 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jared
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response 239 of 271:
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Jul 10 18:43 UTC 2002 |
re #236
heh
A few comments here based on my obversations:
1) I have this notion in my mind (it may be wrong) that both STeve and
Marcus have always had something against x86 hardware. I seem to
recall a BoD meeting/other conversations that went something like:
mdw/steve: x86 hardware is unproven and unless it's been beaten on
so much i can believe someone won't find a way to hack root via some
CPU/FPU bug i will never trust it. (or some basic argument of
that sort which prevents a significant amount of discussion). This
was my observation and i decided to stay out of it because "they were
staff" and didn't seem interested in listening.
2) marcus/slynne are also right that a lot of us here posting, taking
up disk space with our whining, bitching and moaning in this item, have
come from the same basic environments. via (m-net|kitenet|arbornet) and
similar environments. i got started by waking up one day and saying
"i should learn something about this unix thing" and searching for unix on
hal9k and found to my amazement *2* public-access unix systems that had
local dial-up numbers.
The problem today that grex is facing relates to the history of grex and
where people came from. There was all the Dave Parks FUD that made
people move m-net to a community based system, and eventually
merging to arbornet. there was the grex splinter and some people on grex
have never gone back to m-net, or people have migrated over time...
People that have left m-net because it's too radical/young for them tend
to take harbor in grex. "i remember the day" .. when grex had 90-100 items
per season and m-net was doing 100+/mo. It's not easy to keep up and
while jamie does periodically have interesting comments, i don't always
appreciate the number of items he enters here in agora.
People have also left m-net and come here to grex because it's more stable.
For quite a long time I was going day-by-day thinking that m-net was going
to go under. Yes, grex has always had it's cliques and these always
serve as a social deterrent. I don't think that can be solved/worked
around at all. We can't force people to change in a voluntary
environment such as grex.
Now, to address seldons concerns,
Grex should search out new members and people that find the system
useful/interesting. This means getting them hooked while they are
young ;-). Grex should probally think about things such as a
membership drive similar to what NPR stations do. Companies
that are willing to do matching funds for membership donations.
Setting up a booth at ArtFair or other events. Give out flyers
there and make grex more 'web friendly' for those people who are
willing to live with backtalk, but can't understand how
to telnet in to become a newuser. Writing a java client (ick) or
similar for Party that would allow people to use the system ala
backtalk but for those realtime chats.
I don't watch the phone line usage. Perhaps that should be part of
the staff or a report at the BoD meeting each time. Then they
can vote to remove a line or add a line as needs dictate. It should
be observed but not kept to a very strict system.
Colocation: This issue can not be addressed until the hardware
issue is addressed. For those of you that are wondering, Grex
(last i saw it) would fill a 6' 19" rack if everything were stacked
in there properly. This does not address possible ventilation
issues.
Obviously moving to a smaller footprint system would alleviate
some of these size issues.
OS/Software Choice: It sounds like that is driving things more than
hardware which is good. This way you can pick the software solution
then the hardware. Seeings as hardware prices are always dropping
(well to a certain final low price-level that is) delaying is
not always a bad thing. Anyone here that has bought any IDE
drive in the past 2 years who looks at prices a month later thinks they
wasted money.
hardware choice: this is waiting for software choice it sounds like.
SCSI disks are many-many times more expensive but not always the
best choice for the entire system.
Putting swap on SCSI is ideal, but you can-not beat IDE for price-per-gig
and /home (or similar partitions) tend to not be as heavily used as
/var/mail or /var/log
Internet: Grex is in a comfy location right now. it's reliable(enough)
and priced at a reasonable level. if something
happens, we can always go to a commercial privder and get isdn as an
interim solution.
That being said: Grex is financally stable currently, to maintain this level
there should be some publicity done.
Hand out flyers that say "Grex, Ann Arbors community-based conferencing/chat
fourm since 19xx".
just print the word "FREE" in large letters around there a few times
and we'll get a deluge of new-users. Get these people to go to the
local coffee shops and such that have a board for people
to post things on. Go litter (not literally) campus come september. help
more people drop out ;-)
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jared
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response 240 of 271:
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Jul 10 18:43 UTC 2002 |
while i was writing the book, 238 slipped in.
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cross
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response 241 of 271:
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Jul 10 19:36 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jared
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response 242 of 271:
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Jul 10 19:42 UTC 2002 |
(i've not been following thigs very close as of late)
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md
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response 243 of 271:
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Jul 10 22:11 UTC 2002 |
237: The only reason I ever contributed to M-Nnet was the patrons' dial-
in line. If you weren't a patron, you had to attack-dial the regular
number forever sometimes. These huge Michael McClary scandals would be
in progress and you'd be *dying* for the latest news and all you'd get
was a busy signal. So I paid my dues and got access to the patron
line. Patrons were also given more disk space and access to the patron
cf, and probably other whoop-de-fucken-do stuff as well, none of which
I ever once used.
For several months after that a very kind M-Netter renewed my
patronship anonymously. I only recently found out who it was and was
quite surprised. She neither expected me to be her bitch nor cared a
whit that she was paying for my posts, btw.
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mdw
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response 244 of 271:
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Jul 11 02:53 UTC 2002 |
"Test-driving" openbsd on ultrasparc & x86 isn't twice the effort. It's
probably 1.1x the effort. The 10% extra isn't really wasted even if we
go with intel -- we're going to have to make all our stuff work with 64
bits soon enough even with intel.
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jep
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response 245 of 271:
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Jul 11 03:25 UTC 2002 |
re #239: Grex came about as a departure from the Dave Parks days of M-
Net.
OAFS, and the merger with Arbornet, came because Dave Parks announced
he was getting out of the conferencing game and some of us figured
someone had to run M-Net. That happened after Grex opened it's modems.
Sorry (because this is irrelevant), but I hate to see historical
inaccuracy creeping into the records.
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mdw
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response 246 of 271:
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Jul 11 04:57 UTC 2002 |
Dave Parks wanted to turn m-net into a 100% for-pay system, much like
the well in California. He had bought m-net as a private for-profit
investment, and was not realizing the return he had hoped for when he
bought it. This is the background against which grex was founded.
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rcurl
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response 247 of 271:
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Jul 11 05:16 UTC 2002 |
Re #243: this tells me that md is more interested in obtaining services
for dollars than in the charitable principles of maintaining an open
computer based conferencing system. That is totally his privilege, of
course, and no aspersions should be cast because of this. Grex should look
elsewhere for those that have some sense of the inherent charitable nature
of Grex and who believe that this deserves support.
That md is valuable participant on Grex is not relevent to where Grex
should direct its support-raising efforts.
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md
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response 248 of 271:
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Jul 11 11:02 UTC 2002 |
Rane is actually right!
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cmcgee
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response 249 of 271:
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Jul 11 12:00 UTC 2002 |
re 244. thanks Marcus.
I assume that software is chosen, hardware testing is proceding at a
reasonable pace, and therefore, the current issue for Grexers is to, once
again, figure out where our new members are lurking and somehow 1) let them
know about Grex, 2) get them to try Grex, 3) facinate them with our wit and
charm, and 4) persuade them to join Grex.
Some likely pools of new Grexers: people who want to learn Unix and don't
have access anywhere else; people who want to participate in bbs
conversations; people who want to participate in real-time conversations by
typing, not audio.
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jared
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response 250 of 271:
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Jul 11 13:05 UTC 2002 |
re 245
I wasn't trying to give a complete history of the systems, so please
correct away :). My account here + on m-net both have the correct
registration dates in them.
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davel
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response 251 of 271:
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Jul 11 13:15 UTC 2002 |
Re 249: "reasonable pace" may not be the way to describe it. It appears to
be proceeding at something like the pace such things do on Grex, which may
be reasonable for an all-volunteer effort with a relatively small pool of
volunteers. And it's (at this point) not exactly "hardware testing", but
rather working at getting the chosen OS (and all the stuff Grex will need
on top of that) up & working on the likely hardware platforms - still mostly
software issues, some of them at the OS level. You might well find it worth
browsing through the discussions in Garage, cmcgee - yes, they're geeky &
fairly abrasive, but if you ignore what you don't understand you'll have a
better feel for what's going on.
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cross
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response 252 of 271:
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Jul 11 15:56 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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brighn
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response 253 of 271:
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Jul 11 19:15 UTC 2002 |
#252> Huh? I'm an author, I don't say things like that.
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cross
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response 254 of 271:
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Jul 11 21:24 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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brighn
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response 255 of 271:
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Jul 11 21:25 UTC 2002 |
#254> Double huh?
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mdw
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response 256 of 271:
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Jul 12 08:58 UTC 2002 |
Authors vary in their abrasiveness (so do geeks). I have met authors
who had belief systems I've found very unpalatable. Some of them were
people who made RIAA look downright reasonable in comparison. Ie, the
sort of people whose anal possessiveness of their every word makes you
want to run home, burn everything you have of theirs, and try very hard
to forget they ever existed. I've also met authors who are downright
charming and interesting folks, with original ideas, and I think this is
really the more common sort. I think the two factors authors have in
common with each other is that, at least on paper, they *have* to be
entertaining (never mind what they're like in person), and they have to
have thick skins if they're to survive the inevitable harsh critique.
Some of those elements are certainly in common with conference goers.
But I think there are important differences between each of the 3:
authors, geeks, and conference participants. The successful author
rarely worries about building a community & sharing 2-way
communications. Geeks rarely consider themselves as social creatures; a
certain amount of anti-socialism is almost necessary as a rite of
passage. "Those who can, do; those who can't, talk" is practically a
motto of "geek" culture, never mind that the whole concept of geekism is
almost purely a social phenomenon. Being a computer conferencing
participant is manifestly a social thing; while writing is important,
it's the social exchange that drives the whole process. Being a
participant is scary to most people: it involves a willingness to expose
yourself to public view and being seen negatively. A certain amount of
thick skin is necessary to overcome this barrier. Beyond that, however,
it's all social contract - the real issue is not whether your skin is
thicker than anyone else, or your language more abrasive; but how well
you fit in with the social norms of everybody else, and how much what
you say sparks other people to say interesting things in turn.
In one sense, this doesn't matter at all. A willingness to open one's
pockbook is not necessarily coupled with a willingness to say anything
at all. While many of our present members are active conferencing
participants, some are not, but just like the idea of grex. Considering
the number of active participants we have in the conferences, vs. the
total number of users on grex, it becomes clear there are large groups
of people using grex who probably haven't the least idea of how grex is
funded or run, let alone how they could get involved. Asking these
people to develop thick skins before contributing money is probably not
sound financial policy.
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