31 new of 357 responses total.
Rane. Don't walk...RUN... to the nearest movie rental place and rent the 1978 classic, "Animal House".
re #326 And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
Re 324, so that's an excuse to repeat the mistakes of the past? I don't find that a credible argument. Exceptional circumstances sometimes call for exceptional measures but not necessarily now. Honestly, if people won't pay for a membership, even the Board, we are in big trouble. I've encouraged the Board to pay up to be in line with the by-laws. We'll see how that goes. The idea of a 3 month membership that could be made retroactive into a yearly membership sounds like a good idea to me, if we can get the by-laws changed to allow that. It would even apply to the Board.
I like Mary's idea of moving the conferencing to a new platform. If this is done, wouldn't a benefit of it be that the corporate structure of grex-- which is to say 'cyberspace communications, inc." could finally be disolved? It is beyond obvious that whatever users are left here are not really enough to support a corporation and there aren't any other non profit activities going on that this corporation supports.
Except I wasn't suggesting moving anything. Everything here would continue as it otherwise would. A second system would not look or behave anything like this one. It would be quite different, actually. Or at least that's my hope.
If the bylaws are changed to change the dues, I recommend that the bylaws simply give the Board the authority to set the dues. It is rather unusual for bylaws to give specific financial specifications, like dues.
greedy cocksuckers...
I don't think dues should be asked for unless the board submits a plan for the future of grex. Right now as Grex's future looks bleak and nothing changes, you aren't making an argument for why this organization is worth supporting. Don't raise dues, or even ask for dues, until things get better. If Grex proves itself viable again there will be support for it, n the meantime its bills are minimal and it has money in the bank to last at least another year. I would suggest that doing anything about dues right now should in no way be a priority.
a busted clock is right twice a day and richard has the day's first
I want to be a voting member so I'm sending in $18. Now, if nobody else does I guess it's all going to pretty much go my way. ;-)
resp:336 I was thinking of getting 10 of my closest friend memberships as gifts and then starting a movement to remove certain items by membership vote just to see if I could get people to complain about it for the next ENTIRE decade!
I've paid my dues for 6 months so there's a couple of us members that can vote. Plus the couple other paid up members. We're on a roll! :-) I do like the idea of a 3 month membership. [Lynne slipped in...]
Have the two phone lines been dropped yet? I don't want to be paying for lines that nobody is using.
re# 337 you were "thinking" i doubt if it amouted to much re#339 stfu shopping cart girl,you pay nothing anyway
Re 339: see coop item 279 for the decision on this. I've been told that the request for one line to be dropped has been made to the phone company. I'm unsure if that has occurred yet. It's up to the phone company once the request has been made.
Something that seems to be missed here.... Grex is not just the BBS and party. Grex is a collection of things that includes those two, but they are not the sum of what Grex is. If the conferences are not used, that just means that that one part of the community is dying; that doesn't mean that Grex isn't used for other things (it is, all the time: people login to Grex for interactive use of Unix). In fact, I'd guess that this latter group outweighs the former by quite a bit now.
grex should also set a date where it will stop offering offsite email. you want offsite email? go to hotmail or gmail. at one point offering free email was a needed service but that was years ago. grex doesn't need to be in the email business at all now. re #342 grex was formed to be a community, not to be a place where assorted people can play around with unix.
So much for the "intellectual enrichment" aspect of Grex's principles, then. Learning about Unix is intellectual enrichment for some. The idea that Grex is about one or two things just isn't so, as Dan points out. Grex is different things to different people. Included in that is learning about Unix and about programming languages (hence conferences dedicated to those topics). A community does not need to go forward in lockstep, doing the same one or two things all the time. A community can be diverse in terms of interests, too. I'd like to see Grex offer more opportunities for people to get interested in Unix, programming, system administration, and application development in addition to improving the conferencing system and adding other ways for people to communicate.
So agree with Kent.
Re 332: yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Putting in specific numbers for the dues just makes it harder to change if we need to. While that may have been the orginal intent, times (and the economy) have changed and will continue to change. Re 334: The Board is working on a plan right now. This item was for getting some ideas of what people want to see, as input into a plan. Speak up if you have ideas that will help in planning what Grex should do going forward. But remember, that just saying Grex needs to improve or be better is not specific to what needs to be done. My idea of "better" may not be your idea of "better." [Obligatory Disclaimer: Ideas expressed in this item may be used by Grex for planning the future operations of the system and the organization. No guarantee is given that ANY idea given here will end up in a final plan for Grex going forward or influence Grex's operations, but it's likely some will.] Re 342: In regard to adding more tools for programming, I mentioned that in response 8 above, so this item has not been all about the BBS and party, though certainly those have been in the majority of comments. Anyway, I'm all for tools and information that could help people program and use Unix, including new languages, debuggers, etc. Maybe we could even do some tutorials on our web site?
Learning unix on grex I feel is outdated especially when you can get a decent linux/freebsd etc boxes for quite cheap. Dirt cheap if sindi helps. I doubt anyone would take the trouble to connect to grex just to practise his unix skills. But then again its what i think. The actual usage of grex maybe quite opposite.
m-net has plenty of students that use it to learn unix.just login and do a "w" and see what they are doing.haven't seen too much of that on grex
And, not everyone has the time, skills, or money (even though it's not all that expensive since an old computer will do) to put together a linux/*bsd box to play on. People quite often need to learn Unix for school or for work and would rather invest their time in aspects other than building a unix box. If we can make that learning process easier so much the better (and it's in line with our mission).
resp:344 Kent hits it so on the head here. resp:343 Whatever Grex was formed to be is only tangentially relevant at this point, in my opinion.
I get most of my mail at grex and might go away if the mail goes away. sdf has no spam filter.
yeah well let us know when you have upgraded to win95
Plus has the Ted Nugent intro, right?
confirmed today that the 2nd phn line is suppposed to be NOW disconnected. i ->reeeeally<- do not like their specific procedure however. regardless, it is axxomplished.
Did you try calling it? :)
hmmmmmmmmmmmm , intersting idea .. just did ... it stil answers with modem noises ... but (according to to the att rep, the billing will have stoppped as of the req date. we shall see .....
intercept msg ... no longer in servidce
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