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Grex > Oldcoop > #387: Cyberspace Communications finances for 2006 | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 23 new of 47 responses total. |
slynne
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response 25 of 47:
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Jan 18 20:15 UTC 2007 |
Maybe the board could consider lowering the dues for a while? It might
encourage more people to become voting members. The more people involved
in the process, the better, imho.
And, fwiw, I would also John being a participant in the voting process.
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tod
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response 26 of 47:
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Jan 18 23:03 UTC 2007 |
How can we find out how long we've been paying members? Is that online?
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scholar
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response 27 of 47:
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Jan 19 01:40 UTC 2007 |
Since when have we been paying members?!
I haven't gotten one red cent. :(
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denise
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response 28 of 47:
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Jan 19 03:36 UTC 2007 |
If the dues were lowered, I bet more people *would* become members. I know
I would if I could. :-)
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jep
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response 29 of 47:
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Jan 19 14:27 UTC 2007 |
I'd pay a nominal fee such as $5/year to be able to vote. I guess I can
become a member for a month if I want to vote oni anything, though, right?
I don't get anything from my membership; I pay it to support Grex. But
Grex doesn't need any support. It's piling up money. I just don't find
it support-worthy to help Grex have a bigger pile. I'll re-join when
Grex has used some of it's money for something and has any use at all
for more money.
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mary
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response 30 of 47:
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Jan 19 14:53 UTC 2007 |
The bylaws state:
ARTICLE 2: MEMBERSHIP
b. To be eligible to vote, an individual must be a current member and
have paid a minimum of three months dues.
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cross
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response 31 of 47:
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Jan 19 15:14 UTC 2007 |
Hmm, I say we quarter the membership cost, to $15 per year.
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jep
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response 32 of 47:
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Jan 19 15:34 UTC 2007 |
I say Grex should find something worthwhile to do with it's money. If
it cannot do that, it should lower the amount it is taking in. There's
no need for Grex to be stockpiling money.
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cross
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response 33 of 47:
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Jan 19 15:39 UTC 2007 |
Yes, I agree with you.
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slynne
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response 34 of 47:
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Jan 19 15:42 UTC 2007 |
Well. It is nice to have a financial cushion.
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aruba
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response 35 of 47:
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Jan 19 17:08 UTC 2007 |
Indeed. It wasn't so long ago that things looked pretty bleak. So before
we start reducing our income, let's talk about what to do while we have a
surplus.
mcnally was the only one to answer my question about what we could do that
wouldn't require a lot of staff time. Are there any other suggestions? We
actually have a spare (rebuilt) disk, sitting on my desk, that could be
installed in Grex at any time. (The result of sending in a disk for
warranty repair, and buying a new one at the same time.)
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cross
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response 36 of 47:
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Jan 19 18:08 UTC 2007 |
er, I'd like to point out that installing a new disk into grex and moving mail
to does require a bit of staff time. In fact, it would require about the same
amount of time it would take to move grex to a RAID system.
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remmers
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response 37 of 47:
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Jan 19 18:17 UTC 2007 |
Is "a bit" the same as "a lot"?
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cross
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response 38 of 47:
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Jan 19 19:10 UTC 2007 |
It depends on who's doing it, and how they transfered the data.
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mcnally
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response 39 of 47:
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Jan 19 22:53 UTC 2007 |
Installing a new disk onto Grex and moving mail onto it probably requires
no more than an hour of staff time in my estimation.
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cross
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response 40 of 47:
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Jan 20 02:37 UTC 2007 |
Similarily, I'd guess that putting in a RAID storage system would require
about half a day. The hardest part would probably be installing the harware
into the chasis; transfering the data and setting up the system to boot from
the RAID would be simple but just take a while.
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jep
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response 41 of 47:
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Jan 20 04:35 UTC 2007 |
re resp:35: Mark, I am in favor of Grex being financially secure. I
admire and appreciate the job you in particular, and the Board in
general, have done to get Grex into good position with it's money. But
there *is* a point where it's secure enough. It's my feeling that Grex
is there. It's taking in money which it doesn't need.
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remmers
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response 42 of 47:
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Jan 20 14:29 UTC 2007 |
It sounds like #39 would be a reasonable thing for somebody to do, as
it's not very time-consuming and would alleviate a vexing problem.
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maus
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response 43 of 47:
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Jan 20 14:49 UTC 2007 |
Does anyone have an order-of-magnitude guess of the cost of buying or
renting an anti-spam/anti-phish appliance? Maybe something like:
- http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/spam_overview.php
- https://www.mailfoundry.com/store/category_537368463fae/
-
http://www.mcafee.com/us/smb/products/anti_spam/secure_internet_gateway.h
tml
My understandign is that the staff time to put one of these in is fairly
small, and it would only consume one IP number and only require
changing, like, 2 lines in our DNS zone table.
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aruba
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response 44 of 47:
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Mar 9 21:50 UTC 2007 |
I finally got around to looking up the links mentioned in #43. Those look
like serious anti-spam appliances; on the order of $1000-1500 apiece. Does
anyone have any experience with any of them? If they actually work well,
then maybe we should consider one.
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nharmon
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response 45 of 47:
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Mar 9 22:18 UTC 2007 |
I think the appliances work pretty well. We have a McAfee anti-spam
appliance. However they would add to our physical footprint.
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mcnally
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response 46 of 47:
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Mar 10 00:48 UTC 2007 |
I wasn't very impressed when we demo'ed a Barracuda Networks spam
appliance at the ISP I work for and unless I'm confusing them with
another similar company I think there's a per-user component to their
pricing, which would be very undesirable for Grex, which has thousands
of mostly inactive users.
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nharmon
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response 47 of 47:
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Mar 10 02:29 UTC 2007 |
I can't speak on Barracuda's licensing, but McAfee does not have a
per-user licensing cost outside of them recommending different hardware
sizes depending on mail load.
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