nope, not today! This topic does bring out the best in us doesn't it!

bakerstreet: I'm not ignoring it... I've read it...

Things are free until they get popular. As soon as they get popular then someone has to pay.
Skinning previously was 'free' due to the fact that it did not suck up anywhere near as much bandwidth as it does today. Just look at how many downloads a single skin would get in the days of skinz. Also skins back then were much less complex and hence not as large. WB skinned less so therefore there were less images and cnsequently less space being used up. More people had 56k modems so skins were typically a lot smaller. You'd think your skin was really popular if you broke 1000. Nowadays it's more like 5,000.

Now some maths (and I'm the first to admit I'm not very good at it):

a single 500k skin * 5000 = 2,500,000k

Multiply that by 10 : 25,000,000k

That is for 10 skins of 500k being downloaded by only 5000 people.

Adni's most popular WB skin has had 305,908 downloads since it's creation in February
It is 262k. so that is 80,147,896k just from that skin alone.

DesktopX themes are usually considerably bigger.

Mormegil's Faus-X theme has had less downloads at 81,888 (since Oct 2000) but is also considerably bigger at 2521k. This means it has used a whopping 206,439,648k

I think the numbers speak for themselves.

/me gives up for the night and goes to sleep.

Boza... My apologies. I assumed you were being righteously indignant out of childishness. It seems instead you have taken wise council and shut your trap. My apologies. Keep on that heading and your cheesbugers will be spit-free for the remainder of your days...

bakerstreet: I don't have to agree, or do I?

Everyone's different... especially me

dammit... that post came to late...

For the artists who make all this possible to do it for free is absurd.They are worth twice as much as there being paid!!I cannot believe people want it for free!!I call that the Mac way of thinking.Well, it does not cost that much for an endless supply of fun.The skinners are great at what they do and should be compensated well for it!!I for one find it very affordable.Keep up the good work and never mind the moochers.Tell them to do their own and then it's free!!

Well bakerstreet, you're right... But this can't be applied to a fast food restaurant. Of course it's just an excample... but my point is.

Don't change for others work.

I don't work for stardock, so I don't want them to take charges for my work if I gave it to them for free.

Well bakerstreet, you're right... But this can't be applied to a fast food restaurant. Of course it's just an excample... but my point is.

Don't charge for others work.

I don't work for stardock, so I don't want them to take charges for my work if I gave it to them for free.

oh no...

You are not *giving* Stardock your files, you can take them down whenever you like, and you can uncheck the box that allows them to use them. That amounts to free STORAGE.

You have every right to go get some Geocities space and upload them to there, to your own, free site. When you go a month or two with no visits, you will understand the service that Stardock is providing. Anyway, you have no problem at this point, since there is no work of yours here for Stardock to "charge for".

My hoisin chicken is probably burning, so I am off to feed myself. Enjoy.

yeah go ahead and make fun of me just because my english is not as good as yours!

God thank the GNU GPL, cause I can't afford buying Photoshop...

www.gimp.org

BTW... this site is not free storage... I can't upload my midi files here

end of discussion

g'night

Well...lots of fun we're having here...I'll see if I can find a short story about 'volunteers'....it's timely and appropriate when you realize that a LOT of people actually are WILLING to volunteer their time, expertise, talents, involvement, skins, etc to this site....for the pure benefit of the skinning community and their own self-worth, benefitting with tremendous exposure on a VERY highly visited [popular] site.

Hang on a bit....gotta hunt it down.

Read it when I do...

Found it.
Read it, oh my brothers, and devotchkas...

[Volunteers]

As some of you know, I'm a Grand Prix motor racing Official in Australia.
My first Australian Formula One GrandPrix was in 1980, and I have done 'em all since....those alone make 88 days of standing beside a race track, not counting the NUMEROUS other events, including the World Superbike Championship and the MotoGP [500 Grand Prix].

Now, diverging for a moment...
One of my fellow [idiot] Officials....ex Viet veteran [2 tours] and now deceased... ...was also a Volunteer Fire Fighter.....even ended up in California a few years ago...providing 'experienced' assistance...[Victoria, Oz is one of the worst parts of the world for bushfires...so we know our 'stuff']. He was a great guy...

Anyway back to me and the GP....
It was 2000, Melbourne...first race of the season....and 42 degrees centigrade in the shade...[that's 107.6 Farenheit].
There we were...[mad as always]..standing there, driver's left at turn 6...'surviving' as best we could.
The Firies have it harder than most...imagine beautiful beach weather....BUT....you are wearing a full Nomex fire-proof Overall, Leather boots [not shoes], gauntlet fire-proof gloves, and a balaclava...only your eyes get the gentle summer breeze...

Now, not being total morons, we rig up a small 2 metre square tarpaulin to the top of the catch-fence...[there's no alternate shade anywhere within the 'moat']..so at least there can be some respite if and when our duties allow us under its cover.

Then,
From behind us...in the spectator 'general admission' [no seats] area behind comes the dulcet tones of complaint....
"I can't see.....take down the tarp".
I look around to see a woman, about 50 standing in exactly the 'wrong' place for visibility, EVEN THOUGH THE AREA IS QUITE EMPTY AND SHE COULD GO ANYWHERE ELSE AND BE UNOBSTRUCTED.
A long 'discussion' along those lines ensues.
Her arguments...'well, you're paid to stand out there so deal with it'...
No, we are not, lady, we volunteer.
'well, you volunteered...you should know what to expect...you must like it...take it down'.

Now, fortunately for this woman, I was on Comms....meaning I was wearing a headset and in continuous communication with Race-Control, and the other corners, so couldn't just drop my gear, and go over and give her a piece of my mind, but had I, it would have been...
"Ma'am, we volunteer our time to do a JOB. The sole reason for the Officials actually BEING here is to keep a bunch of madmen driving really really fast for your enjoyment from dying quite as frequently as they have been known to. To do this 'small' task requires us to be not just experienced, but competent AND LUCID. If our concentration, commitment or attention is in any way impaired by such trivialities as Heat-stroke or Hypothermia, for that matter [I've had both], then the next we may know of it is at the inquest. Kindly leave and find yourself another vantage point. You can move, we cannot."

She was even phoning the event organization [supposedly] demanding action be taken...

But...
Our Sector Marshal [you wimp, Steve...] decided to be overly PC and we rigged the tarp to be removed during the events and only raised when the track was 'cold' [no racing].
One of the other Officials used another approach.
He aligned himself exactly between this woman and the apex of the corner, overtly obstructing her sight-line.
Eventually she moved on, and reports from sectors 8 and 9 came in that she'd been creating a nuisance there too..

One year later, 2001, I'm now at Turn 9, [my wife is at 3], and one of these volunteers [Graham Beverage] is hit and killed by flying debris at Turn 3.
Why was he there? Not for the benefit of that woman, that's for sure, but because he loved the sport, would put up with the weather, and knew he was just one in a thousand officials trying to keep the drivers alive while they did insane things in very fast cars...

Volunteering takes a 'special' type of person....one with 'not a lot of sense'...
Sometimes you get flak from ingrates...
But,
Most times it's worth it...

Jafo, thats at least the second time that I've read this story and I like it as good as the first time. If you post it again I know I'll read it again and still like it. Thank You.

Me 2 Your right! A volunteer is a special type of person

And a site like this CAN ran just by volunteers... Even a great OS like Linux can survive because of volunteers.

Btw... I made my first wallpaper tonight... Hope I won't run into any problems uploading it.


Doing stuff for others is not always about getting money. It's about getting new friens too. The more friends you have at your disposal, the more time you save. The faster you learn something, the more time you save. A lot if things is about saving time...

I want a nice looking wallpaper... I can do it myself, while learning. It is possible... but it'll take alot if time. So I try to find a friend that can do it much faster, and I can do something for him, as a favour. We both save time!

We get friends to use them for saving time...

Ok... it's not just about saving time.

But think about it... You are more kind to a person you might have use of.

Then you get to know the person... perhaps he/she complicates you efforts to save time. You decide you don't like him/her.


I know it's not that simple always. But sometimes it is.

I think I need to sleep now...

Incidentally Boza, you're no where near your download cap.

Most users never come near their download cap. Of the millions of people who have visited WinCustomize, only 12,000 people total have downloaded over 100 megabytes. And a significant number of them are customer or contributors in other ways and hence are't affected.

In a given year, this site may get 10 million+ unique people who visit.

1% of 10 million is 100,000.

So we're talking <.1% of the yearly visitors are affected by the download limit.

So we're talking a very tiny percentage of people who are affected but that tiny percentage users a significant portion of the bandwidth.

Given that this site has no pop up ads and barely any advertising, this site is completely free in every way for 99.9% (literally) of the yearly visitors.

I'd argue that WC is amongst the most free high traffic websites on the net. How many other sites these days with similar traffic don't have pop up ads or ads scrawled all over and yet is up 99.5% of the time, is reasonably fast, etc. and completely free for over 99.9% of the people who visit?

I think you have the wrong perception of what a friend is. You sound like a user of people, not a friend of them.

Indeed:
quote of boza: I want a nice looking wallpaper... I can do it myself, while learning. It is possible... but it'll take alot if time. So I try to find a friend that can do it much faster, and I can do something for him, as a favour. We both save time!

We get friends to use them for saving time...

The question is what the favor he mentions is.

The question one would ask then is does Boza or some other user not agree that if they've used 100 megabytes of bandwidth that he shouldn't do a "favor" in return? Such as register the software he's been using that 100 megs with? Or participate on the message boards in a constructive way? Or start providing skins back? Or buy a subscription to help pay for the bandwidth he used?

It seems to me that Boza effectively agrees with what WinCustomize is doing...

I know I wasn't sopposed to come back but this is sooo interesting

I have posted (as well as others) valid questions to your argument you making for a "free" site. Is there any reason why you post but not directly anwser the question??


Like making comments woud allow those users to upload all they want.



Or are you saying that 3 years ago whe the internet was new and know body knew nothing about how to run a site that every thing was free (free as in you could just download and say absolutly nothin'!!)



But now your being asked to do something.... anything after downloading 100mb and there are complaints???



I don't get it... is it a language barrier?? I really want to understand your arguemnt about the site but you still do not give any evidence as to your argument mgorbach. There is got to be more to your arguement then saying "we should just be able to download free"... Free as in not helping the skinners at all by commenting? What about all the stuff I mentioned above in this thread.




Maybe I missed it and we are now having a disscution on a more detailed topic.

oh you and by the way... what happened to those free storage online sites? you know.. the ones that allowed you do upload 30 mb of stuff?

is it possible that when we upload stuff it is being stored safly and in a orderly fashion?

And am I working for Stardock because they want money to pay for bandwidth consumtion and site maintainance??


It is funny how much the skinner is being used when the unseen downloader who just downloads and USES us for our skins that we give and says NOTHING. All they have to do is click and they don;t have to think about (Oracle, MySql, Web Site Host fees, bandwidth fees, maintainance fees, extra bandwidth fees, databasemanagement


Noewin... how much trafic do they get?

Deskmod.... traffic? and do they have a deal with Nullsoft? With Micro$oft? If they got the deal in such a small market, who else can?

DeviantART.... popup ads out the socket.. now they stared DA prints... sever down allot??? yes

Winamp.... now is AOL TimeWarner patner. Why? and how much bandwidth did they use anyway with all those 230kb (that's kilobytes... much smaller then megabytes)


Please tell me, am I saying something wrong here??? Is there a reason why we are still talking about why isn't the site "free" (as if it ever was totally free.. somebody was paying for something)



I guess a better question is why are the downloaders just downloading and using our designs and getting mad at us because we want some kind of responce?


ok, ok..... I'll be back sometime tommorrow... I know I said that before but I hope there is more actuall evendence backing up what your saying mgorbach

WiseOldMan: I'm not a user of people. As I said, it's a lot more than just saving time. BUT! saving time (read life) is what every carbon based life forms is after. And by having friends, we can save time. Life time.

I was tired when I wrote that. My friends like me, and I'm the kind person who can do a lot of things whitout complaining about payment, cause I know it's worth it. If not for getting anything in return, but for the good in it. Just to be a good friend.
When was the last time you accualy asked for money when you helped your best friend chop some trees.

Also... there is a language barrier. English is not my language, so I might find it difficult to express myself. Some takes advantage of this, to make fun of me. I don't really care about that...

I'm not using ANY software at all from stardock! The only thing I want from this site is the wallpapers So don't blame me for having software I've not paid for! Please! I'm not even using Photoshop. I'm quite sure at least 50% of the (not including proffesionals) users are using a piracy copy of Photoshop.
As for me... I'm using GIMP. And soon I might be able to help the development of GIMP. Just for the fun of it...

I know I'm not near my download capacity. But I still get messages telling me to subscribe... hm... gonna try flush the cokkie cach

Now I'm off to play keyboard for my band.

Have a nice day!

It's interesting, that You didn't answer any of joetheblows last questions. He made some good points, I think...