How about donating hardware?
I could kick in about $30.
If my promotion comes through, I’d double it to $60.
Great job, Minxsmom! I hope your promotion comes through, true, but don’t worry about the amount. Even $5 is a generous contribution!
OK, I’m going to start a thread about this in MPSIMS, where hopefully it will get more exposure.
Running total: $432
Pepper had a copy of the e-mail from Dan Kaplan. I reprint an excerpt from it here since it is purely business oriented:
> >From: Dan Kaplan <dkaplan@chicagoreader.com>
> >To: "Una Persson" <una_persson@hotmail.com>
> >CC: tubadiva@aol.com
> >Subject: Re:
> >Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 17:10:04 -0500
> >
> >The advertising banner position is no longer
> available at the top of the
> >message board. There was a special case a few
> months ago when a regular
> >poster passed away, but we hard coded that "banner"
> to those pages...
So, that was the reason given for the lack of ads when I asked about it. Like I said, I wasn’t upset or took it personally. I just have had a few people asking if I could prove that the Chicago Reader really did not accept ads at the time I stated.
That’s about the same response I got when I asked him if I could sponser the Wally banner for an extra time. He said I could put a banner on the main page if I wanted at the regular rate, but no banner on the 'board pages.
Even though I would be very willing to contribute to this board if it would help, I disagree with your pledge drive. I realize this is non-binding, but I can’t imagine contributions working unless they were totally anonymous.
But put me down for $20 anyway.
Jim
Ah, I’d give $40.
I can afford 20 bucks but it would have to be cash in the mail.
( Don’t ask. Revenuers… 
)
With MM’s extra $10 I make the total now to be $482.
It ain’t cheap, this hyar ignernce-fightin’.
I’m in for $50.
And with Ogre’s $50 we’re at $532. Halfway there to nickin’ me for another $50.
Ack! I just found the thread Anthracite started in MPSIMS. Instead of having this thing run in two places, why don’t you make any further pledges over in Join the Straightdope PBS Fund Drive! Help our Board!
Looks like I’ve already been nicked once, and the second time is close at hand.
Sorry all! I thought you might notice my post above about starting a new thread. I’ll update the totals, woohoo!
Thanks beatle. We’re going to suck you dry! Err…that is,… :o
Cough $40,000 for a server!??!?! Egads! Fathom’s server (which runs like 30 sites including the 3FMB) cost around $1,500.
How much would a server that would make this board fly with doubble the posting rate as it is now? Opal’s site is pretty quick but not as big/busy? I have no idea on this, (Down Opal, I am a supporter… LOL ) I’m on a DSL and using 600hz so SDMB is pretty quick for me lately but 33.6 modem on a 200hz machine on a busy day might be a bit frustrating. Do they use this server for more than the SDMB? If all this is old info, sorry for asking it to be repeated, just stumbled on to this and I am courious and willing to help with $ if it went to the correct place.
3½¢
Catbiker and Opal, I too, think a lot could be done for $5-8K, or, IOW, for a lot less than $40K.
I’d still like to hear some specifics.
We kicked this question over to Jerry the Tech God and he’ll get back to us, but from what I’ve heard before, I think we’re more in the 10-15K price bracket.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Found some info that Uncle B put in another thread, teach me to keep my post finger in the holster till I look around more. Anywho, I wonder why the seperate server set up, or split like it is, I don’t know the tech. stuff but money is the bottom line so… Anywho, the ideas about losing what we have if we get too big, worth thinking about also…:: sigh ::::::; Only thing that does not change is that things change… Wish I could accept it all…
3½¢
Well what specs are you looking for in a server? My husband is a system developer and he says you can get a server with a gig of ram, gig processor, SCSI, etc for $6k or so if not cheaper. I’m just really curious what would throw it up to 10-50k, it just seems REALLY high.
Well, it also depends upon who pays for the tech support. While it is true that tech support is often considered an overhead cost, at some companies it is not. If I buy a web server for use even in my own department, I have to pay from my project around $60 an hour for my own company’s tech support.
But it gets even more expensive if they have to hire outside personnel to do the job. A few times a client has asked me to help them set up their PC to run the power plant analysis software I write - including installing Windows NT, etc. Something I’m good at, but don’t like doing. Since I don’t like doing it, I charge them $1100 a day. And they sign off with no hesitation.
And as I’m sure you know, while it sure sounds neato that there are so many experienced and smart computer persons on the SDMB that would come to the Chicago Reader office to volunteer help, that is not a valid solution for most businesses for so many reasons it is not even worth talking about.
So I can see a $10,000 machine with $5,000 labor, or vice-versa.
What is it that would keep the server price up to 10K even?
I was able to price a nice rack-mount Linux (x86) server with 1G RAM and a 750Mhz processor for under 5K.
I have seen almost 1000 cgi-enabled websites hosted on a single Sun UE2, which is kinda old now, probably around 15K. And of course the sparc architecture is a lot pricier than x86.
So what is the basis for the conclusion of such expensive hardware? They are currently using RedHat Linux, which I assume they plan on continuing with-- it’s probably the most cost-effective option in any case. Last I knew Linux was still weak on utilizing multi cpus effectively, so multi cpus would probably be a waste of money – but a GHz processor would go a VERY long way anyway.
… $1,500 in 1998!