I haven't fiddled with Talisman for eons...but it didn't 'suck', I just preferred LiteSTEP...

Let's make sure we're on the same page here:

1) Talisman doesn't "suck". It is an excellently written piece of software IMO. It is a very good program.

2) I don't think that LightTek is doing anything that they feel is underhanded. We all have different thresholds of what we consider acceptable policy in terms of using other people's resources. LightTek, for instance, uses Download.com's animated download button (not the editor's choice but their internal one). I don't have a problem with that. Another person might. I talked to Jark and he doesn't have a problem with them linking to the files in the way they do because it still counts as a download on dA even if it doesn't explicitly show that they're getting the file from dA. I, on the other hand, would have a big problem with a commercial company linking directly to files here without our license.

There is nothing illegal in what they're doing. I just personally find it distasteful since I'm aware of how expensive bandwidth is. If Jark doesn't have a problem with it, then everything's fine (and he doesn't have a problem with it). I do, however, still maintain that I bet that Mian and Chaz and others might have a problem with it (especially since they're not even linked to on the partners page).

re: skinz, etc., As with Jark, one never knows other's opinions til they are asked. I was told that skinz_org was fully aware of the situation in its 'brown' era; I can't answer for now.

re: leeching. A leech wouldn't wait until the skinner sent a screenshot and a link. A leech would crawl the site for links periodically, and would most likely leech the screenshots as well. This isn't akin to mirroring the Talisman section. The links come from several different sites.

Like I said before, I don't think we differ that much. I think the difference in this case is that the *skinner* is responsible for their own hosting at Lighttek. Once, when I had deleted my files from skinz_org, I hosted my own Talisman themes on my own webspace. The process of adding them to the list at Lighttek was no different than when I hosted them at skinz. They just say, "e-mail us a link and a screenshot", and people tend to host their skins with skin hosting sites.

As I said, if anyone has a problem I'm sure a short note to Lighttek would solve it. Stardock has often felt the sting of people 'talking about' when they should be 'talking to'. I just think if there is a wrong here, it could be dealt with quietly and directly.

nice responce bakerstreet. I think that is the way to go and it seems it has now went there.

hmmm.... well I guess this is a issue we will here again. It is a matter of opinion and how it is viewed. To me it is alright as long as the link gives some thanks to the place it is linked too.


I guess when this XML thing gets standerized and companies have the same way of organizing thier XML, poeple can sell products that is not actually on thier own site. (this way more people come to thier site as a draw in)


HoverWeather! gets its info from Yaho but Yaho goes to great length to stop the 100kb a day of bandwidth being used by others.

I say its fine, but maybe Yaho feels differently.

As far as I know all weather apps leech weather info from someone. It is possible that some of the payware weather apps pay for the priviledge, but I know how most of the freeware apps work, and they are solidly leeching; sometimes a 10k page just to parse our 5 or 6 characters.

I know that some news/monotoring apps outside this community have been threatened. One, which shall remain nameless, had default settings to poll some news/weather sites every 3 minutes, and 20 or 30,000 people had downlaoded it. lol. tens of thousands of non-banner-clicking, needless hits every 3 minutes... lol. Now that would get ya upset.

hmmm.... well I guess that 10kb of data adds up when its is 30,000 people a day (and the fact that each person has it set to refresh every 10 minutes makes it 300,000)

So the total of 10kb ends up being about 3,000,000kbs of data.


Woooooowwww!!!
What is that into megabytes? I guess that would be 3GB of data (3,000mb)

Is my math wrong? That sounds like too much.

30,000 downloads of a 10k html file is 300,000k, or roughly 300 megs. What the real problem is, though, is thousands of useless hits every three minutes. Doesn't really matter if it is 1k or 100, paying for a pipe that would allow tens of thousands of people to connect to your site simulatenously isn't gonna make you happy, especially if many/most are never seeing your content or clicking your ads. It really makes a small-time webmaster think twice about opening up an rss feed. the slashdot effect can ruin ya.

I wish there was a weather service that simply recieved a location and returned a tempurature. It wouldn't be more than 4 characters to send back, and quick transactions like that wouldn't keep people bunched up. Kind of like a rss feed but simplified to just the temp and a positive or negative sign. I dunno why weather_com, and the NOAA pay for all the extra graphics and info on their pages. You could do it text-only and to the point a lot cheaper.