I personally resent "free" net services like hotmail, which
"something in me tells me" threaten the genuinely good value
I get from my local Internet Service Provider. The
chickens do not eventually come home to roost: the
grasshoppers mutate into locusts
which wipe out everything in their mindless path.
I probably would not use the Internet if I had to
use the kind of services most "people" (as opposed to
businesses and high-end nerds with their own servers in
the basement...) use. Why? Because most internet
services are basically consumption oriented.
Yes, you can have your own Yahoo website, and I think
it's a good thing you can, but for someone serious
about *saying something* on the net, such facilities
must be quite limiting, without cgi scripting and
UNIX shell access. Such restrictions make the
medium get in one's way rather than facilitating.
Different topic: Where I work we have 5 people
woking full time on one HUGE Java application. This
has been going on for over 3 years. The project is
beyond my ability fully to understand. But I
recently learned the hard way the importance of
good tools, when the "Integrated Development Environment" (IDE)
I have been using for these past 3 years [Metrowerks
CodeWarrior -- excuse the name...] was threatened to
be replaced by a NOMINALLY FREE product [Sun's Forte].
I found that I could not do the job any more, period.
I felt fear and close to terror, alleviated only
by the thought that if worst came to worst, I could
buy the d-mned thing for US$600 out of my own
pocket and therefore be able to continue to
have a shot at keeping my job. "I never realized..."
(Just like the UDSA officer who couldn't imagine Mohammed
Atta might do something after he threatened to kill her???).
Well, now I know
better, and I appreciate how, in really tough situations,
sometimes one simply cannot "make do" with
"duct tape" -- no matter how much
expoerience one has --, but one really needs the right tools to be
able to accomplish the task.\
I end all my email at work with two self-grown dicta:
The shortest distance between two points is a
good user interface.
Do unto programmers and tech support staff as you
would have them do to end users.\
So far I have not been censored or censured.
\brad mccormick
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Signs of the times. The emerging information economy.
>
> ====================
>
> * The 'free forever' Net fades into history: Many services offered on
> the Web are now likely to cost you money
> (Vancouver Sun) The Net was supposed to be free -- forever. There would
> always be free e-mail, free content, free storage, free places to post
> photos of your cats. Sure, you might have to put up with some advertising --
> and learn to be quick with your mouse finger in zapping those jarring pop-up
> ads that disfigure even the site of the New York Times -- but the contents
> of your wallet would remain undisturbed. What were we thinking? Just last
> week users of Microsoft's free Hotmail service had all the sent-file
> messages more than 30 days old deleted. Bam, they were gone and, apparently,
> unrecoverable. The reason? Microsoft said it was to help people manage their
> e-mail more efficiently. Others noted the fact that on July 16 Microsoft
> began to attempt to get users to pay $19.95 US a year to up their e-mail
> storage limit to 10 megabytes from the two megabytes they now have. So far,
> only 300,000 or so of the more than 110 million Hotmail users have decided
> they need the extra storage, so the cleanout might be seen as a little extra
> push. Back in March, Yahoo also added new fees -- $29.99 US a year for mail
> forwarding, for example. If you go to CNN you'll discover that you can no
> longer watch video connected with its breaking stories. To do that you have
> to subscribe to CNN Newspass for $4.95 US a month. And a couple of weeks ago
> Apple, which had been using its iTool services -- free e-mail, Web pages,
> small amounts of online storage and the like -- announced that it was being
> replaced by something called .Mac. And, surprise, said Apple head honcho
> Steve Jobs, by the end of September .Mac -- with additional features such as
> backup software, virus protection, more storage and the like -- would cost
> users $100 US a year. However, there would be a special $49.95 introductory
> offer to those who already had iTool accounts. ( Source:
> <http://intranet/tbnews/stories/2002/20020801i0004.htm> )
>
> INFORMATION WANTS TO BE PAID FOR
> A new survey by the Online Publishers Association has found that in 2001
> consumers spent nearly double in online purchases what they had spent the
> year earlier. Not surprisingly, people are most willing to pay money for
> business and financial information, because that kind of information
> influences their livelihood -- but beyond that there is a more general trend
> toward increased consumer willingness to pay for online content. One
> example: there are now more than a million subscribers to the online
> greeting card company American Greetings.com, which charges $11.95 a year
> for virtual cards. Its chief executive says: "In the past five years, we
> trained customers that content was free -- that was our fault." And now?
> "Slowly but surely, people are paying for content." (New York Times 1 Aug
> 2002) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/technology/01ONLI.html
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
