:: 17-Aug-1999 23:00 (Tuesday) ::
OK, So I’ve been a bit lax in my iGiving lately. I just noticed yesterday
that I’m getting 4 cents per click (limit five, as usual) when I do my
iGive looking each day. Quite nice, I can now raise 20 cents a day for
distributed.net before I’m even fully awake yet.
Plus, their den of attorneys has come up with a way for you to deduct a
portion of any purchases you make with an iGive advertiser. Pretty neat
trick.
It’s been a good eight months since I’ve mentioned iGive in my plan, so for
those who are not familiar with the concept, here’s the Reader’s Digest
Condensed version:
If you’re not aware, iGive is an easy way for you to help us fund
distributed.net without much effort on your part. iGive will donate money
to distributed.net in return for your viewing advertisements on the web or
buying stuff from iGive advertisers. distributed.net is one of the charter
non-profits with iGive, and distributed.net participants have used iGive to
raise over US$19,000, which has made statsbox-ii a reality and made it
possible for us to make much- needed hardware purchases. Although our
expenses aren’t huge, they do exist and our ability to branch out beyond
RSA-sponsored contests is dependent on our ability to generate a modest
income. (http://www.distributed.net/legal/ledger.html)
If nothing else, I’m glad that we’re in a position to support an
internet-based business model that in no way involves spam or bulk email.
iGive is a very net-friendly way for businesses to conduct business and I
wish them every success.
If you’d like to help us build statsbox-ii, it’s rather simple.
http://www.iGive.com/html/ssi.cfm?cid=1098&mid=3311
Right off the bat, we’ll get a couple bucks for the new membership, plus
each day you visit the iGive website and view five advertisements, we get
another $.50 or so. All in all, it takes only a few seconds and given the
number of participants we have, it really does add up.
Our relationship with iGive has been nothing but rewarding for both sides.
Excuse the shameless plug, but I really do think that these guys are on to
something worthwhile.
(end of the advert, it’s safe to look again…)
As AldE and decibel have described, our junket to Atlanta was a resounding
success. It was a real treat to finally meet some of the dnet cadre in
person. One downside is that decibel has ruined me by bringing along his
PalmV. I’ve made it several years resisting the temptation for a PDA,
but in the time I spent fiddling with his all my resistance has been
lost. I really need to get one of those things. Let the rationalizations
begin!
Now that I’m sobering up from the weekend, I’m digging back into statsbox.
The main issue right now is the recent breakage of the yesterday blocks
and keyrate info on the main rc5-64 stats page. I’m guessing this is a
simple fix — I hope to have it wrapped up tonight. I’m also putting the
finishing touches on a quick, but fun page of demographic information
culled from the participant edit pages of those participants who have
chosen to provide us with that information. It’s just a quick tally of
motivations and nationalities and such.
On the mid-term horizon, there’s a two new versions of Sybase ASE for Linux
that I need to investigate. One’s free, one isn’t. I need to run some
benchmarks and see if there’s a compelling reason to upgrade to one or the
other. From a cursory inspection of the new features, we can probably live
without the upgrade, but if the performance is better it’s obviously
something we need to schedule. Thanks to Wim ten Have and the rest of the
Sybase developers for their tireless support of the Open Source Software
community.
I’m sunburned, windblown, and it’s 100F (38C) at 18:00. Nothing to do
now but stay inside where’s it’s air conditioned and get back to coding.
Moo…