OSNews

Done. I'm happy to support such a great site. Keep up the great work.

Once again, monetary payments are made where value is added. OSNews is a gem on the web. Happy to do it.

Ok, that makes 3 of us. How about the rest of you regulars...

Definitely worth $20

Jim in Az

OSNews is probably the only site for which I would be willing to do this, not because I want a faster site, but because OSNews is great.

Agreed, it's probably worth $20. But I have some questions:
1. Why do you need this money now? (bandwidth etc, yeah, but it seems you've been doing pretty good so far)
2. Who will get the money? I seem to recall that Eugenia has said many times that she doesn't get paid for her work here, and it's mostly that (her work) I like about OSnews. Even if I very, very often disagree with her, I usually like her articles anyway. I don't want to pay unless she gets a significant part of it.
3. (actually not a question, but...) I really think you should redesign the forum system, too. Those who pay deserve that.

The only ads that I find annoying are the large ones that are right in the middle of a story. Other sites seem to do this better in their text layout with the same size ads.

That, and ads that start talking. If I wanted that I would watch TV.

Strangely enough, I find the site without ads to look rather bare.

The monthly raffle of swag sounds cool, but I'll have to hold off paying for OSNews for now.

>Other sites seem to do this better in their text layout with the same size ads.

There is no way I can align them to the text, for compatibility reasons with older long osnews articles that had also images aligned left and right (some browsers are broken and they render on image on top of the other). Therefore, the big ad will have to not wrap around text.
Buying a subscription will let you get rid of this ad as well.

>Strangely enough, I find the site without ads to look rather bare.

Maybe. But it is up to the point. And FAST.

>Who will get the money?

David. He is the owner of OSNews. Thank you for the kind thought though.

I'd be more than happy to pay to make the ads disappear. It drives me nuts when I'm trying to read the article and constantly get distracted by a blinking ad on the left or on the top of the page.

im almost tempted to pay the $20 and still use the site with ads. thats how much enjoyment i get out of this site.

On average, modem users should see the ad-free OSNews load 5x faster than the regular site. Broadband users should see a 2x improvement. This is due mainly to the elimination of nested HTML table code (which dramatically speeds rendering time) and of course fewer graphics (from various servers around the Net) to load.

*cough* CSS *cough*

The grahpics are irrelevant since a good browser does not wait for gfx before it renders a webpage and decent html defines the size of it's graphics.

I thought this might interest some of you. It is a little off topic BUT. . .

With Mozilla you can disable most, 95% of the ads by doing the following:

1 - Create a file called userContent.css and place it into the profile chrome directory

2 - Enter the following into the file:

iframe, object, embed{ display: none !important }

3 - this will disable about 90% to 95% of all ads, as a result "cheating" websites out of the ads.

So, something to be aware of even though most users are not aware of this technique for Mozilla/Netscape and possibly other Mozilla based browsers.

Now, on topic, I am more than glad to support this site! It is worth my 20 bucks. Just please keep the ads straight to the point and simple. I have a problem with sites that use ads and they take up 30% to 50% of the side bar, article or banner. Its a turn off and annoying

> The grahpics are irrelevant since a good browser does not wait for gfx before it renders a webpage and decent html defines the size of it's graphics.

Nested tables plus the additional 3 KB of text that the ad-version has HAVE AN EFFECT overall on speed. The speed increase is much more visible on plain modems of course.

I think I may just pay the $20. I'd feel better about it if OSNEWS can continue to generate more original content, especially covering non-Linux and non-OSX areas. Those two items are covered quite well elsewhere. My personal preference is to see more interviews and more articles on non-mainstream OS' (which OSNEWS is already quite good at) and more interviews that get away from the usual "what do you need to get more marketshare type stuff?"

I'm particularly pleased that OSNEWS appears to be offering the same content to paid and unpaid users. That makes me quite happy and I'd much sooner pay a subscription under this model rather than the pay for extra content model (similar to salon.com).

Thanks for the good work!

-geoff

This will probably be modded down, or accused as a troll, but the truth is that I won't pay for OSNews until I see a more uniform approach to content.

I know that both myself and others have complained (loudly at times) in the past about Eugenia over-personalizing the site, but it's generally the truth. Such items as her calling users an "a**hole" in the forums when they disgree -Without being modded down- or modding down others simply because they veer off topic a bit (all the while keeping Eugenias off-topic posts intact) don't exactly make me think that $20.00 is going to suddenly turn this into the professional site that it has the potential of being.

Before all the Eugenia supporters come out of the woodwork (Hi Rajan!), let me give some examples:

The aforementioned insults are a great example. When someone questions Eugenias treatment of other users, or her use of this site, she immediately goes on a rant explaining in BIG BOLD TERMS and broken english about how she can't be bothered and that readers should just get used to her as English is not her native language.

That's fine for what it's worth, but for $20.00, I'd like some level of professionalism. I don't think readers exactly like being ridiculed by someone who's obviously in the wrong, and who's ever-so-quick to suggest that if you continue to disagree with her, she'll ban your IP. Most people like to feel that their opinion will at least be dealt with some respect. Your notes about subscribers having a stronger voice is nice, but how about some signs of freedom of speech now, before we plop down our 20 bucks?

I touched upon her whole "modding down" threat above... If you read the modded comments (and you should! They're often either more honest or funny than a lot of what gets left in the forums), you'll often see that the messages being modded down are there due to Eugenias personal opinions, rather than because they violate the esteemed terms of this site.

Hell, Eugenia often breaks those same terms, but because she's the "Greek Goddess" that she is, her opinions stay intact, insults, mis-spellings, UPPERCAPS and all.

Which brings me to another point: Consistency.

This site often swings widely between professional journalism (ie, interviews, articles, and links to other similar sites content) and personal hokeyness (Yesterdays Lycoris ad never should have been posted on the front page. If news is slow for a day, it's slow. Why fill the space with needless crap that's obviously not OS news?).

While I don't neccesarily mind Eugenia constantly voicing her opinion (she has at times had valid points, and great comments), front page items shouldn't be things like "Hey! What do you think of my latest GUI designs" (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3725). Such things make this site appear to be much more her personal plaything than a serious, OS-related news site, which is what I believe your original goal is/was. Similarly, voicing this opinion in response to some of what gets posted often gets the post modded down, or you end up in another shouting match with Eugenia over who's right (and as all long time readers know, Eugenia's never wrong!)

Also, there seems to be a lot of polls lately (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3673 ; http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3775 ; http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3791) making front page news. While such items can be nice diversions on occassion, repeatedly running poll after poll makes the site appear to be rather amateurish. Again, if there's no good OS news on a given day, why fill it with fluff? I guess I really don't mind the things, but why would I want to pay $20 just to be inundated with polls which don't really mean anything to me? (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3737)

On the plus side, OSNews does offer a great source for alternative OS news. Granted, such information's often available elsewhere (and similarly, OSNews often links to other sites for it's information), but it is nice to have one source for referencing all that's going on out there.

Also, Some of the articles and interviews you guys have hosted are really nice and well thought out. Similarly though, Eugenias professionalism towards both your readers and any OS and/or manufacturer who she doesn't care for often brings down the level of integrity for this site (http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2407). Actually the article I just referenced is a great example of Eugenias duplicitiy: Rather than deal with potential submissions professionally and confidentially, she airs her dirty laundry out for all to see, and then wonders aloud why people/vendors won't involved her or her site more than they currently do.

Such actions are laughable, but they don't warrant $20 a year.

I won't do my usual "Eugenia is the albatross upon OSNews neck" rant, but if you want my hard earned money, Eugenias demeanor has to change. The other editors and authors tend to be likale, well-rounded people who can offer good opinions, all the while accepting others points of views. With Eugenia, there is no "middle ground". It's very black and white with her, and this in turn makes this site look like her plaything rather than a pro OS-related news site.

While I like surfing here occasionally for my fix of OS News, if I'm paying for it, I'd like it presented in a more professional manner than it currently is. Similarly, if I'm going to be modded down for having and voicing my opinion, than Eugenia and others should be expected to adhere to these same guidelines for which I'm being chastised.

To offer a rebuttal to a story and be modded down for it is one thing, but when the person modding you down gets to express their point of view in addition to ridiculing you for yours, it's a bit childish.

Todays OSNews environment is ok. It's not great, but it's a lot better than many of the alternatives. If you raise the level of professionalism, I'd be more than happy to subscribe. If however the site's going to continue to teeter between professional journalism and "It's my way or the highway" personilization, then thanks, but I'll pass.

I read OSNews with Mozilla, blocking every graphic advertisement I find. After a few days, there's barely a couple of ads that still make it to the rendering. I just can't stand those BIG FAT ads right in the middle of the page. Anyway, my point is that thanks to (or because of) Mozilla, the ad-free feature of the "membership" is not interesting enough.

On another topic: because of web sites like OSNews, I had to set a minimum font size. Sites like this one set smaller font sizes, just because average users aren't considered smart enough to properly set up their browser according to their comfort. Because of that, I loose the variety of relative font sizes.

The HTML code looks like it was puked out in 1996. No offense, but who does the coding? Eugenia, aren't you supposedly a web developer?
Let me access OSNews without any kind of advertisement, with a clear design, XHTML-1.0 strict and CSS 1/2 compliant, and I will pay $40 a year if that helps you improve the site; you don't seem motivated yet.

I wouldn't expect anything different from you Mr. Banned/Canceled or whatever you are called this week. You don't like me, you never did anyway.

>The HTML code looks like it was puked out in 1996.

Sweetheart there is a GOOD reason why our code is "1996". So it can render on ALL DAMNED BROKEN browsers of this world. I will NOT support XHTML and CSS, because that breaks compatibility with all mobile and older OS browsers.

Remember, OSNews is supposed to work on every damned OS in this world, including weird devices. It was my GOAL from day 1. It was not a mistake, it was a design decision.

...that my poignant, truthfull and witty comments will never be moderated down?!

I'll probably sign up sometime in the future... $20 for a year is a great deal... I am most certainly interested in T-Shirts...

Sweetheart
Sweetie, I don't believe we ever mated. Did we?

So it can render on ALL DAMNED BROKEN browsers of this world.
I'll give you that it can be a challenge, mostly for someone who is not used to web standards. But it IS possible. Especially with this kind of basic design.

It was not a mistake, it was a design decision.
Was it a design decision to not provide a DOCTYPE? To not enclose attributes inside quotes? To have inconsistent casing? To use font tags, when I'm sure people using (very) old browsers wouldn't even notice that the text below isn't red, and isn't in Verdana?

Could we see the statistics? Ever?

I have to agree with Mr. Banned. I like the site, and I like to read it. However, I can't get over the reactive responses. I like to read Eugenia's articles, and appreciate her work on the site. However, as someone who runs the site, I'd like to see her contribute to the professional feel of the site.

For example, her response above. Someone insulted the HTML code of the site. She could have written something like "I know new standards like XHTML are cleaner. However, we have chosen to support mobile and older browsers". That sounds better than "SWEETHEART...NOT SUPPORT XHTML", etc.

I'm considering joining the site anyway, but I think Banned has a point. Everyone's opinion should be respected.

Until eugenia cussed out someone else in the forum.

Sorry, but the level of professionalism needs to go way up around here.

Also, someone who's native language *is* English should be allowed to edit / correct the articles posted here or at least review them for accuracy. Seriously.

Look, I do all this work here, for free. If David gets a number of subscriptions, great. If not, fine with me too. The bottom line is, I do OSNews for fun. OSNews would have not be where it is today without me. You can see this statement as "egoistic" as you might want, but it is the truth. I brought this site from 700 visitors a day, to 120,000 per day. I work HARD for it, *EVERY DAY* for 2 years, there were many times that my husband asked me to stop as it would get in the middle of our lives. But I continued, because I find it fun. If it is not going to be fun anymore for me, there is no reason for me to contribute. I only left the site for a month last December and traffic dropped 25% in a matter of days and it was in the decline. I decided to come back and make this site even bigger. I succeeded. March-April were the biggest months ever so far. 3,5+ million pages per month.

If you like the site the way it is now, shade off the $20 and help out David's business and bandwidth needs and get a fast and clean site for you to browse daily.

If you don't like the site the way it is now because of your nitpickings here and there, don't bother paying. It won't make a difference for me anyway.

And if I go because I am not "professional enough", don't expect this site to be the same, as updated twice daily, as into things, or with many original articles. Again, I am just being truthful, I am not "full of it". And to be honest, I don't care. My original agreement with David was to simply take over a dead site. In the begining, we didn't even have ads or cared about them. But as the traffic gone up, we had to support bandwidth, so we added ads. There were never guidelines/goals to become "professional 'la CNN". OSNews WAS and IS a hobby for me. Nothing has changed on my end.

Well, I would possibly be willing to pay but there's a big problem. As a Finn and without any credit card, using PayPal is impossible for me.

Eugenia, since your origin is Greece, could there be a way for us Europeans to pay you? I don't have any credit card and I'm unable to get any.

Mr. Banned has a point indeed. Emotional rationales never win, sweetheart.

>Eugenia, since your origin is Greece, could there be a way for us Europeans to pay you?

Thanks Hank, but I don't receive money for OSNews.

This is the first time I've posted here since, I dunno, around October or November of last year.

Why am I breaking my self-imposed posting exile? Because MrBanned made a good point and then Eugenia came along and proved it for him:

Sweetheart there is a GOOD reason why our code is "1996". So it can render on ALL DAMNED BROKEN browsers of this world. I will NOT support XHTML and CSS, because that breaks compatibility with all mobile and older OS browsers.

Remember, OSNews is supposed to work on every damned OS in this world, including weird devices. It was my GOAL from day 1. It was not a mistake, it was a design decision.

That's just so ... rude. Who wants to be talked to that way? Who wants to be condescended to? Now who wants to PAY REAL MONEY to be talked to and condescended to that way? Granted there are people in the world who will pay to be treated like crap but they are (hopefully) few and far between.

Take a look at Eugenia's reply I quoted above. Think how very easy it would be to make that a cool, professional response to a very valid complaint (paying customers, especially when you don't have their money yet, are always right, right?)

Imagine a reply like this (and this is just a rough draft typed straight out of my head and unedited, a little thought could make it much better):

"At OSNews it is very important to us that the site be available to the widest possible audience. This includes a dizzying array of browsers and devices, many with odd little quirks that prevent proper display of more modern / advanced features such as the ones you describe. By implementing those features, a large portion of our readership would be left out in the cold.

Please remember that OSNews is a site for users of ALL operating systems and while we strive to give our readers the best possible experience there's no way we can make everyone happy all of the time.

Thanks for your opinions! They help make the site better for everyone."[/i]

Just a thought.

YES, it was RUDE. And I am not taking it back.

Because I have SHED TEARS and GONE to the HOSPITAL when coding this thing. Because OSNews is MY BLOOD AND TEARS.

I will let no one critisize that part of my work.

THIS IS WHY I replied that way. Because I spent time at the hospital when working NIGHT AND DAY to have OSNews coded in time!

You don't like it this unprofessional attitude (but full of emotion which also shows that we are PEOPLE around here and not PAID DRONES)? If you don't, don't pay up.

>Thanks Hank, but I don't receive money for OSNews.

I meant it in such a way that since you're from Europe you understand that there are people from elsewhere in the world. Some Yankees just ignore that and say for instance, "use a credit card, everyone has one". (Of course this stereotype only applies to only some Americans...)

Hopefully this list of possible advantages of paid subscriptions will be taken in the spirit it was given, that of constructive criticism. I want to see OSNews stick around. (By the way, the people complaining about unprofessionalism do more damage than the supposed "unprofessionalism" did in the first place. People are biased, even in the news. Learn to live with it.)

So here's the list.

1. Ads?
I actually use PriceGrabber, so don't get rid of that sidebar ad. The inline ads and especially the popups are annoying, but not worth $20 to disable (it's trivial to tell Mozilla to disable popups anyway). This is worth maybe $2/month for me. If I can remember to log in.

2. Monthly Giveaways?
I've never been the gambling type, so giveaways and other things I can't count on don't appeal to me.

3. Special Pricing?
If I wished to support OSNews, I would buy the merchandise outright, so I also don't care about special pricing.

4. Authority?
You want to attract paying members while not losing nonpaying readers. If you lose nonpaying readers, how are you going to attract paying members? So I see some controversy here. If I have a suggestion or complaint, I would hope that the editors of OSNews would be open enough to consideration without regard to whether I pay or not. But realistically, if the purpose of the web site is to make money, then money will have some influence. I think the idea of "authority" needs to be better defined.

So what would I pay for? What do I think could be given a price without losing readers?

5. Forums.
Either exclusive write access to the forum, or some indicator by my handle showing that I am a paying member. This appeals to the human desire for honor, and is a possible answer to "authority," above. Or maybe paying users could have more control over modding. How about a system like Slashdot? Nonpaying users could only be "Anonymous Cowards." Maybe allow paying members to use graphical smileys, etc. Some kind of advanced forum privileges for paying members is worth $5-10 for me.

6. Additional Services provided by OSNews.
Maybe an e-mail account (spam-free, of course), web space, branded software (like an RSS reader, although I already have Trillian bring me my news), 3rd level DNS, etc. Depending on the offerings, I might pay $10-20/month or more.

So, take it or leave it. OSNews does a good job of gathering the latest information on various operating systems, better than Slashdot. I would consider donating outright, but in order to pay for a monthly subscription, I would need to see some real value in it.

I do think people should support the site, and think it is a great idea to accept PayPal.

Perhaps having a range of prices would be better? I don't think you should allow people to just enter any price they wish, as that could quickly result in stupid prices that cost you money in fees (such as a $0.01 payment, that would cost you over $0.30 in fees, depending on your account type.)

Maybe a choice of $5, $10, $20, $25 buttons?

Btw, I'd rather like to see Eugenia getting a portion of the money as well. She _is_ a major contributor to OSNews. The site wouldn't even exist anymore without her support.

I read this site every day...I don't read my newspaper everyday...I pay more for my newspaper. $20 is a great deal to support OSnews.com

Keep up the good work.

Paul

I already paid, partly because one of the benefits stated above
is:

* The right to bitch and moan about OSNews content,
functionality, or other gripes with just a little bit
more authority.

And now you replied to someone with the line "I will let no
one critisize that part of my work."...

Can I get my money back, please?

Jim in Az

Eugenia...you DO realize that you're shooting yourself in the foot right? You may not be getting a dime of that money, but you're asking us to pay for this site, which i think is a great idea. If i pay, and put up a valid complaint about the (apparently outdated) html, and you piss and moan as usual... i'll end up saying "fuck off, give me my money back". As soon as people give OSNews money, they become a customer, and the customer is always right. You could deny that before cause we werent paying, but you cant avoid it now.

Do you have a specific gripe? Because I didn't hear it. If it is about HTML, the site is as it is for compatibility reasons. I explained that.

If it is another gripe, by all means, let us hear it and we will do whatever we can to satisfy your needs.

You guys give the lady a break for Xt's sake. What are you whining about now? You may not agree with every single thing she does, and I myself don't, but you have to admit that she does an excellent job. She is the only reason why this site is nearly as popular as it is. We all saw what happened when she left last december, OSNEWS became sterile and uninteresting. And you all saw what happened when she came back, you could notice the difference almost right away.

It isn't just her articles, although those, too, are part of it. Its the force of her personality as well.

If anything, about the only reason I would support OSNEWS is Eugenia. But she isn't getting paid yet, so if David wants to earn my $20 from something other than advertising, I would suggest that the site start providing some additional value, other than just being a place where people get news and sound off. Such as a tech help-section where people who get stuck about something can come in, ask quick questions, and hopefully have all these loud-mouthed techies around here help out with something. Offer something that the competition doesn't have!

Or perhaps we just enjoy seeing new articles several times a day, and if she isn't around, the other editors simply don't post the quantity of articles.

I check 4-5 times a day, and if there are no new articles by the 2-3rd check, I skip til tomorrow.

See, that's the thing. You're getting defensive as well. And fired up. Eugenia's response to my earlier post basically said "If I leave the site will go downhill".

Agreed. I like her work here. I never asked her to leave. I hope she continues to contribute. What I did ask, is that she reply more politely.

And I did it without using all capital letters. We can be human, and respectful.

-b

I thought I made myself clear. If you say that you won't let *anyone* criticize - note spelling - part of your work, then I just lost one of my benefits.

Jim in Az

Of course when I pointed out someones spelling mistakes, I had to spell the Subject line wrong myself

Jim in Az

Ok, here is an apology to the first commentator #16.
I didn't mean to be insulting or anything, but I do get defensive when it gets to the code of this site, as I have indeed spit blood to get it up and running in time. I have replied so many times on this specific HTML issue that I just find it tiring to say the same thing over and over, so one more time: it was my design decision for compatibility reasons.

Anyway, Skamp et all, sorry if I sounded too grumpy. But the last few days were not really great for me. We are 6 weeks without a car (smashed it), I stayed up to 1 AM last night (and was very tired because of WWDC) in order to write the WWDC article that gone live today, and still, I get chastisized by people. I didn't HAVE to stay up all night and finish the article. But I did. I just find that people are not as supportive sometimes, because they don't know what's really behind the scenes. But I do work hard over here and do my best.

> If you say that you won't let *anyone* criticize - note spelling - part of your work, then I just lost one of my benefits.

You misunderstood. I said: "this" part of my work, not any part of my work. The "this" goes to HTML, not spelling.

If you see a headline or frontpage story that doesn't interest you or doesn't seem appropriate to you, DON'T READ IT and move on with your life...don't we get enough of these idiotic complaints on Slashdot???

I think it was big of you to post this. Bravo.

I hope Everyone's post remain respectful in the future. If so, this will continue to be a site worth paying for, and this program will do well. I plan on joining soon myself.
I assume this is a standard sign in system? (Ie, my membership allows me to access this from home and work?)

-b

That's not the point. Nobody has an issue with any articles, we love the articles.

Eugenia - why moderate a posting with the rules and a link to the OFFICIAL rules in it, and then outright DELETE another posting that quoted it? What was illegal about posting the rules?

I understand that you work hard, and it is always hard to take criticism from the peanut gallery, but count to 10 before you spring to the attack. A little more politeness would go a long way to soothing the environment around here. You always seem like you are 30 seconds from a complete emotional meltdown. Nobody dares say anything negative, because if they do - watch out.

Relax. Learn to graciously accept criticism, and if you cannot do that, then stop doing this 'job' that you do for free and that causes you so much trouble and emotional turmoil. Get a paying job - go into business for yourself - become a freelance writer (you have the skills, btw).

It is far more important to be happy. Do whatever it takes to make yourself happy. Don't worry about the site, or the readers. If the other editors step up to the plate and post more than one or two articles a day, everyone will be fine.

>my membership allows me to access this from home and work?)

Yes, from any PC.

I wasn't going to post because I was laughing too hard but then some of the comments got a little out of hand. For the sake of my own sanity, let's get a little perspective here ... maybe we can all relax and think about this for a moment.

Mr. Banned slammed Eugenia, she fights back and now she is the one called unprofessional. Using this logic, besides being a troublemaker, what does this sequence of events make Mr. Banned (the originator of the trouble)? Is he too unprofessional? If not, why not?

As civil human beings, who were taught to be polite, why are you saying he is right to be rude? He is right because you believe that when someone is rude then it is unprofessional to reply in kind?

And for those of you agreeing with this belief - that attacking an attacker is unprofessional - then is it correct to attack Eugenia some more and continue being rude?

Besides rude, what does this make you?

I remember someone telling me once that if you do not fight evil then you become evil. So, which philosophy do you live your life?

Let's look at it this way. If all of us were standing in a room, would you act this way? If the majority of you acted this rude toward each other, would you expect the majority of us to stay or leave?

Personally, I'd leave.

Eugenia does a great job. She writes great original work. She used to put a lot of effort into the articles. It was a joy to read them. So please show some consideration.

If you want to subscibe - then - subscribe. If you don't but want to see original work - then at least be gracious enough to the person who writes them. Someone has to pay for this stuff - and it most likely doesn't cost you anything to have a banner show up on your screen - so there is no need to block them.

Hope everyone has a terrific day and you all learn to give a little back to the people who surround you. Peace be with all of you.

> and then outright DELETE another posting that quoted it?

Deleted because it is a copy of an already published comment. Duplication.

Yes, from any PC.

Will non-PC devices work?

Okay, just had to ask that. Sounds good though. The new member design is nice too, although a bit too empty. Just want to see where this goes, probably wont pay. But yes, I have to agree with what was said earlier - rules are for everyone

How about this.

How about Editors follow the rules they expect everyone else to follow?

Such as NOT cursing...

Another person was moderated down for mentioning this, which doesn't make any sense. His comment was not offensive in any reasonable way. All it stated was that it was obvious an editor had violated their own rules.

with privoxy installed and my browser proxying through it.
Maybe the rest of you should try it and forget about the ads.

You don't get the clean design though.

Sorry, I'm a college student, if I had a job I would support this site, as I visit it every day. Hopefully my viewing the ads is enough to support your excellent site. Sorry once again.

Maybe when I graduate, if this site maintains it's quality, then maybe I will support OSNews with a membership.

Anyway, great site, I hope it continues to be a success. It's a much higher quality site than a certain other high-profile news site ;-)

I just bought mine. Keep up the good work...

Sure there are other ways around this. I use a method of mozilla filtering (Cycloneous The warrior mentioned before). However this is handy at work.

And, sometimes you buy things just to support. Ie, I pay for discs of OpenBSD, because I've used there stuff for years, and want to see it continue.

-b

I'm in!!

Eugenia does a great job and it is her personality that comes through in the forum that makes OS News special. She does do it for fun (but Eugenia, having to go to the hospital does not sound like fun to me, so you take it easy!!!) and for no other reason.

Some of you must realize though that it is not Eugenia who mods down all those posts - there are other contrbuting editors that do it too, so that should not be all put on her shoulders.

Also, contributing editors do help with stuff like proof reading. There is not always enough time, but people try to help each other out in that area. Eugenia's English has improved so dramatically since BeNews days that she can write many, many paragraphs and I would have no idea Enlish is a second languare to her.

OS News is my start-up or home page. It's the first thing I see in he morning (besides my wife:-). That's how strongly I feel about it.

Good job on the subscriptions.

Bad job screaming and yelling at everyone who disagrees with you. You made their point for them.

Pouring in "blood and sweat" to a project does not excuse poor behavior. Take a deep breath, life is too short.

By Eugenia: I wouldn't expect anything different from you Mr. Banned/Canceled or whatever you are called this week. You don't like me, you never did anyway.

Actually Eugenia, you and I have exchanged pleasantries in the past, and you've even published an article of mine on this site. The fact that I didn't go out of my way to say "Oh, and by the way Eugenia, I go by the name 'Mr. Cancelled' on your website, and thanks ever-so-much for continually insulting my opinion, and lording your accomplishments over your viewers like you do" probably says a bit about me and how I treat others. Why be insulting just to get your point across?

Oh, and since we're on the subject of treating others, my name change was completely due to your banning my IP for a couple of days after I dared to question why you were being so insulting to others. You probably don't remember the conversation, but you were throwing around all kinds of four letter words, and when I dared to reply and justify the terms you were using towards me and others, you banned my IP. Nice way to encourage the free exchange of ideas...

Actually you probably banned a lot of people since I was on a dialup at that point (You probably shouldn't ban dialups since users get a different IP ever time they connect!). Ever since I've posted as Mr. Banned on your site (except for occasional slipups as I go by 'Mr. Cancelled' on a number of sites).

So while I disagree strongly with you and your ego at times, I think it's a quick write-off that you'd assume I've always been against you. Our disagreements usually stem from the way you're treating your audience, and/or how you treat their feedback. You're not often too professional towards others, yet you expect a lot of respect in return for all your "hard work".

Providing a service and being good at it is one thing. It by no means gives you the right to just play god with people, or to treat them and their opinions like crap. To imply that you're better than us just because you've chosen to work on this site is ridiculous.

And that, generally speaking, has always been where we've disagreed.

Eugenia, please don't listen to people who supposedly want more professionalism but haven't an interesting bit to say, except ranting at you. If they have something personal to say, please choose other means, not these forums. I'm not interested. Very few, if at all, are. Please troll elsewhere.

And about your language: I just hate those canned supposedly professional responses. Eugenia, there is no question about what you mean, and you express it well. And it's funny to read as well.

And you may call me sweetheart any time :-)

<soapbox>

Look, I've been reading all the posts from you folks complaining about this or that. It's simple. Someone has to pay for the bandwidth and the server space. If all you want to do is whine about paying for a service that you use every day, then go back to Slashdot, you'll fit in well there.

If, on the other hand, you believe in supporting a decent news service, then pony-up the $20. I really don't think it will break any of us.

</soapbox>

1) Lets all block ads and screw up the internet market, good idea

2) For someone who does most of the work on a website, I think Eugenia should be able to speak her mind.

It looks as if the comments section is becoming, in a large part, a cult of personality centered around Eugenia. In a way, it reminds me of a bit from Private Parts, "the people who like Stern say the listen to him because they want to find out what he'll say next, the people who don't like Stern say the listen to him to because they want to find out what he'll say next."

Although, I have noticed Eugenia being held to a higher standard than others. For instance, I don't think anyone has commented on the rudeness of the comment that sparked the HTML discussion (unless "puked out" has less derogatory connotations that I'm unaware of). And on this point, at least, I agree with Eugenia. I used to work for a company that did web design/hosting and compatiblity was always one of the largest concerns. We used straight HTML, no browser-specific features, no JS, SWF, etc. In fact, the litmust test for a site was whether or not it rendered correctly in Netscape 3 (which, at the time, was the oldest browser that still had a significant number of users).

Putting on my multimedia student hat for a moment, audience is an important factor in any communication. And graphic design (and web design) is merely communicating with the "visual language". Compatiblity is, I imagine, a doubly-important factor for this website. Judging from the comments for various articles, this website has a disproportionate number of visitors who are BeOS/Amiga/etc users and may not be using a cutting-edge browser.

I don't know what the hell people want in a site, but frankly, I like the way it renders; it's readable, clean, easy to find things. It works well in Firebird. Seriously though like Kai said, it is a normal thing for not every article - either in content or tone - to be of interest to you. Just get on with your life. I don't always agree with the opinions or even tone here, but all in all, I read this site *every day* so there must be something - many things - about it that I like.

Frankly I love the slightly irritated rants against things like usability. Not enough people, especially in the Linux world, pay attention to consistency of design and I'm glad someone's out there who is constructively critical. That's one of the reasons I come here. I'm a total Linux advocate but man, it needs some work on consistency. The desktop part of it just feels sloppy - usable, but sloppy.

I subscribed. Now, what do I do to get rid of the ads, etc.? I don't see any way to login on the front page.

i'm very happy to support OSNews and at some point you'll get a cheque for $20, but if i could up the ante a little with my own wish list:
* ability to filter out comments from non-paying members or at least see the members' ones first.
* better still: a threaded comments system (iirc this has been discussed to death before) with or without modding.
* more techie articles (os development, compiler writing, gui design) or perhaps a series of tutorials from invited "speakers"?
keep up the good work! you'll get a cheque once i work out what $20 is in real money (UKP)

Maybe you could have a couple of different plans:

1. Pay $20 to remove ads.
2. Pay $20 to remove Eugenia's posts.
3. Pay $20 to get Eugenia's posts.

That way, everyone can be happy about something and you can all stop bickering!

Not to disagree with everything you said, but some things are just silly.

If you read the modded comments (and you should! They're often either more honest or funny than a lot of what gets left in the forums)

As a matter of fact, I usually do. In general, they're modded down for a good reason. They are sometimes funny and honest, but neither does that mean they shouldn't be modded down, either.

Why fill the space with needless crap that's obviously not OS news?

I don't know how many times this has to be repeated (I've lost track myself), but this site is not just about OS news. Were that the case, this would almost certainly be a far more academic and dry place -- more interesting to me perhaps with its discussions on the intricacies of implementing priority queues for SMP, but I doubt most people share my tastes in that regard. To tell the truth, I like the site a lot better as it is, too.

Also, there seems to be a lot of polls lately (...) making front page news.

Since there's only one "page", I don't see how else polls should be presented (after one adds a comment to an article on SCO vs. IBM?). I personally find the polls interesting.

I won't do my usual "Eugenia is the albatross upon OSNews neck" rant...

I'd really hate to see that rant, considering that what you wrote here was, effectively, a "Eugenia is the albatross around OSNews' neck rant". Notice the correct English, btw. (After all, you criticized hers.)

The other editors and authors tend to be likale, well-rounded people who can offer good opinions, all the while accepting others points of views.

That's not what quite a lot of other people have said. The withering criticism of Mike Bouma a couple of weeks ago comes to mind.

To conclude: there's nothing here you couldn't air privately through email. Public criticism may give one more satisfaction, but it is almost always less effective. If you don't like the response, vote with your feet -- er, your fingers -- and don't visit the site.

All subscribers will be emailed information on how to connect to the ad-free site later this week.

1. $0 to read and post comments.
2. $20 to complain about Eugenia's posts.
3. $40 if she flames you back, and you get to participate in a flame war (cf "I'm here for an argument").

just payed. keep it up!

Firstly I'd like to say that I think OSNews is well worth $20 a year. The news and information is always excellent. Eugenia and the other editors do an excellent job.

Now onto some of the gripes that I've been reading here. Firstly, as you may have guessed by the above paragraph is a comment directed to Eugenia. You appear to feel that because you don't get paid for your work that it doesn't matter how emotional/rude/antagonistic you seem (getting that from some of your earlier comments). You must remember even as an unpaid editor on a news site that any comments are a reflection on the site in general. As for that style comment I've seen less by Eugenia than by several trolls and legitimate commenters and those are primarily from the trolls.

Now, the legitimate commenters should also be careful about the wording of their comments and try to avoid/extinguish any flame war, because your comments are a reflection on your own groups (ie: Linux, windows, Mac users, etc.)

If I am wrong in any of the above please feel free to correct me. I could be way off base here, I've been known to write stuff out of emotion. But everybody, editor or commenter, please try to avoid posting out of emotion, take some deep breaths and count to 10 or whatever it takes to calm down and clear your head before posting.

BTW, I've been regularily reading the articles and comments, now, for around 6 months and find the site much more useful than alot of other "new" sites. And sorry Eugenia for using you specificly.

Gotta say that if doing this site causes you health issues and interferes with your marriage yet you keep doing it there is a problem there. How can something be fun if it causes you ill health and problems in your marriage? I understand dedication but sheesh....there should be limits. When you start thinking the world is gonna stop spinning because you're not around you need to step back, take a deep breath, and reevaluate. I like the site. I like the articles. What I don't like is people thinking they have to kill themselves (literally or not) over something like this. The site will continue if you're not working 24x7.

I have a credit card which I used 2 times in ~5 years, and will not use much, for personal principles sake. Like that Finish friend, I could pay by bank cheque or postal account,I have no urgency on it since I ue the price grabber too (support osnews this way). Please look to it in the future (other payment method).

@ Eugenia:
Some people are really too picky to have the right to an answer (like that html complaint, there is always some ego-centered "star"/"top-model" who thinks he owns the crown of .
> However, some polite answer can give so much more power to an answer, specially when the complaint was rude or rather pointless, and you will not loose your reason.

Who cares about html code being "outdated" ? and what does that mean ?
What does "inconsistent tag casing" means to you ? (that's a personal point of view of an html writer, I prefer no casing for example, and I get lost/distracted with heavy html casing!) - if you want to learn/read html on a page you don't complain about tag casing, that's stupid. - if this html works for its purposes where is the benefit to include xhtml and bizz-bang technics ... hue ... keep it simple - and fast - tought, some javascript could be introduced, Mozilla composer does let you do something almost easily).
I don't mean to protect Eugenia at all, she a big girl already, but this kind of comments are rather pointless to me. No ofense to anybody in particular, of course.

To sum up what has been said before:
-Eugenia is the reason we're all visiting this site
-She can get too emotional (even if a comment is completely unfair, you can answer politely or just ignore it)

Tip: Keep on posting and don't read the comments
Advantage: You get a lot more spare time, your blood pressure won't rise as much as it does now and people here will stop complaining about you being emotional.
Disadvantage: She will miss questions and underbuilt critic. But I'm sure the other contributers are reading the comments and they can take care of this.

ok I should've reread that, too much mixing with you/she
but you get the point

1. Ads?
I actually use PriceGrabber, so don't get rid of that sidebar ad. The inline ads and especially the popups are annoying, but not worth $20 to disable (it's trivial to tell Mozilla to disable popups anyway). This is worth maybe $2/month for me. If I can remember to log in.

ok, Traal, lets do the maths here ... $20 a year, that's $1.66 per month ... you havent spent much time thinking about posting this comment before pressing the "submit comment"-button, right?

Quote:Hell, Eugenia often breaks those same terms, but because she's the "Greek Goddess" that she is

Well, she is definitely my favourite Greek (after Jennifer Aniston that is ;-), and osnews.com is nº24 in a favourite site ranking in Portugal, in front CNET news! this may not mean much to you Mr. Banned but i'm sure it means a lot to other people.
http://www.uinks.pt/topuinks.html

I contribute money, in the form of buying things, for corporations I want to support. But what gets my money is not someone saying "look at my product, its worth what we're asking you to pay for it" but someone who says "Here's my product or service, I'm giving it to you for free. My websites costs me x amount and I could use your support, we also sell the same product with commercial support, etc."

Anyway, its an ideology thing. I don't mind the ads. Thanks, but no thanks. I give and share with people who enjoy giving and sharing for the sake of giving and sharing, not to make a profit. Its about love, something you guys just wouldn't understand.

I appreciate the work, tho. Much better than CNN's technology section. Less ads, too, I think.

Why would Eugenia care if anyone pays for this service?
She wont see a dime. She might as well tell you all to fuck yourselves on a daily basis.

And on another note, David must be pretty smart to get Eugenia to work her ass off while he is collecting the subscription money, Eugenia should just make her own fucking site and get all the benjamins.

Just a thought, but I'm sure I will mysteriously disappear.

By the way, I will never pay for anything I don't have to and I'm sure lots of people feel the same, but I still respect the effort and work that goes into something like this. I just don't think I want to give more of my money out. I am poor. Do you have discounts for people that suck at life? Or people with no money? What about people that have dogs with only 3 legs?

And will there be an option if I managed to collect enough bottles this weekend that perhaps I would be able to buy myself an article space, even if its completely irrelevant to this sites topic?

So I could have my 5 minutes of fame so to speak. It can be angering or peaceful or hateful. OR happy happy joy joy. or all of the above simultaneously, like a massive emotional orgy. Which I hear Greeks are pretty fond of.

My boss is greek, he doesn't like me. So I think by this time Eugenia already doesn't like me, but that's ok, she is a charity worker and for that I laugh.

YOU COULD BE MAKING MONEY EUGENIA, DOING LESS WORK.
(I know you are fond of capitals and I'm sure you skip everything else and get to them!)

GOOD DAY
GO PLAY IN TRAFFIC

Is it good idea to allow only to the memembers that who paid can submit the comments, so the non-memebers will not have the ability of submit the comment?

This way I can think is to get rid of trolls quickly, or create some login system with the real email required? This is one of most things what I am wishing for.

Anyway, I am going to pay for it; I love what Eugenia is doing to OSNews so far! :-)

"I only left the site for a month last December and traffic dropped 25% in a matter of days and it was in the decline."

The Christmas season couldn't have had anything to do with that.

:-P hehe

Well, I've signed up and paid my $20 because I like the site. Good work people and keep it up. As for... professionalism -- I've been at the receiving end of poor professionalism as well at this site (as well as seen it, often) and have to agree that it should be improved. Specifically, here are my suggestions, as they relate to my previous experiences:

Everyone should strive to be polite on public forums and in public in general, but I believe that editors in a public forum such as this have a greater responsibility.

Suggestions for improvements are usually meant to be helpful. They should not be taken as a personal attack. Criticisms may be off-topic however. If there is some ambiguity as to the actual intent of a suggestion, or question, giving the benefit of the doubt and taking the comment at face value is usually best -- such a level-headed response is appropriate for the non-trolls (who may have stepped onto a land-mine without realizing it) and boring for the trolls (trolls want emotional, virulent responses).

Editors should hold themselves to the same (or higher) level of respect that are expected of people in geneneral, and the members in particular. That's just part of being an editor.

I'm fascinated by OS's and have been since I knew what one was, at age 7. I've been an avid geek, computer user, and programmer since the Atari 800's debut, at that same age (48K of ram BAYBEE). OS's (and platforms) have ALWAYS been a religious topic for whatever reason, but I believe that this takes away from the passion of the art, not adds to it.

Thank you!

"Everyone should strive to be polite on public forums and in public in general..."

Oh, for the love of life! This site was/is one of the few refuges from the current bland wave of "political correctness" that seems to be everywhere.

"Let's all be nice and quiet and polite. Please, don't shout, and talk nicely. You're all *wunderphul*! Group hug!"

Please. Excuse me while I vomit briefly. Comments/opinions that are passionately expressed are much more important than some artificial saccharine "let's all love each other and think twice about other people's feelings" approach.

If you have something say, say it. SHOUT it even, if you like. Mispel it in the heat of the momment. Just don't filter yourself to match someone else's concept of what constitutes "acceptable" behaviour.

Have a GREAT day!!! :-) :-) I'm so HAPPY!

OSNews is one of the news sites that I ritually visit every day. I would be more than happy to pay... and I did!

I love this site. I don't always agree with Eugenia but I still come here everyday...many times a day.

I have a feeling Americans tend to say 'the customer is king'. With other words: Americans think that if they pay, they are right. It is NOT SO. If I was able, I would pay the money for the site. I think I will, but as mentioned earlier, in Europe, Paypal isn't a standard yet (nor is a creditcard). The European culture is not 'bribed' so easily by payments, and criticism doesn't rely on money transfers.
Eugenia, I have been reading Adam's (I would like to say YOUR) site for a few months now, and if I don't see an update every 6 hours, I am disappointed. Go tell ZDnet or Cnet, I haven't seen more frequent updates (except maybe slashdot)! You're doing a great job, and we all support you (and don't want you in the hospital).
Since this site is quite a personal and intimate one, I would suggest that subscribers get 5mb of space on the OSNEWS server to make a profile like you did, with personal history and pictures, to bind customers (as we say in the Netherlands, 'klantenbinding' or as we say in France 'familiariser la clientèle').
Another tip: a new forum for different languages. To have specific language-forums would help improve your market penetration!
Last point: students (like myself) don't have a lot a lot of money (although $20 isn't much), so for these people, which are the future advocates of an OS, it might be possible to give them subscriber status if they link to your site on their university homepage. Think about it!

Simon

but i'do it if i could!

As I'm sure most of you know, what David is doing is not something new. Just as an example, the MacFixit site started something up like this a couple of years ago and I joined. Even for long standing sites like that, costs go up as server space and bandwidth increase, need to increase. Somebody siad he wouldn't pay for anything he didn't have to. That is unfortunate. To support (if you can) something you enjoy participating in, learn from and impart knowledge to others is certainly something I'm willing to support.

Also, in all this talk about Eugenia, I have yet to see it noted that she is the target of at least one person every day. often more than one. If you are doing something you love, yet are bashed every single day, it has to have an effect on a person. It is no wonder to me that she blows her top once in a while. To me, the greatest example of the no win situation she is in is the hilarious numbers of times she's been accused of being "pro" or "anti" the same companies! That is how subjective many readers are. They cannot see past their own specific interests. She's been accused of everything. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

if you have a complaint about the boards, don't complain to the boards. It's that simple. Some of you who start in on eugenia would do that to me, a man, for about 5 seconds.

No one in free society disrespects your right to free speech. It's a pretty simple concept. There is news reports, and there is commentary. They have to cover the costs of some things, and banner ads take up room for both. but so does trolls.

"modded down threats?" fool, your lucky she doesn't drop kick you outright, and I really don't fault her or blame her.

As always, Eugenia and Co, they ain't getting rich on this. they do this because they love it, and some of this wanting to remove some banners is so they can put in more of what they want to talk about. Heh, Operating Systems. There are over 200 you know.

Hell yeah, I love this this site. It's next to Google

By being polite, I don't mean that we should all spend our time talking about puppies and ice cream. I'm referring to insults, ad-hominem attacks, flamebaits and flames, and other garbage that passes for discussion. I'm here to talk about OS's. I'm here because I'm passionate about OS's, not for flamefests and religious wars. If I wanted to get into a daily tech-jihad, I'd go to slashdot. This isn't about PC -- this is about signal/noise ratio.

Erik

The HTML code looks like it was puked out in 1996. No offense, but who does the coding? Eugenia, aren't you supposedly a web developer?


Even though Eugenia has been accused of being rude/unprofessional because of her comments made in this thread, I note that her comment was not in response to Mr. Banned, but to Skamp who said:

The HTML code looks like it was puked out in 1996. No offense, but who does the coding? Eugenia, aren't you supposedly a web developer?

Ok, I don't care what country you come from - THAT was rude. So why are you so surprised that you got a rude reply? See, some of you are just like customers in the general sense - you have absolutely NO qualms about shitting all over other people and the work they do, and yet expected to be treated professionally in return, even when you're not paying. Well, I say the hell with that. My response would've been even more rude than Eudgenia's and I assure you that anyone making comments like that would never be able to return to this site if I had anything to do with it. You don't like the HTML rendering here? Fine, go get your OS news over at ZDNet or Slashdot.

As for the $20, I won't personally do it until I am sure that the person doing 80%+ of the work around here is getting 80% of the profits. If Eugenia ever leaves (which she probably will), this site is going to go to hell in about 3 days. I know from experience that even though you poured your heart and soul into a site, there's only so long you can continue to do it for free when most of your audience are a bunch of ungreatful bastards

Here is a compromise: http://skamp.nerim.net/osnews/
I raised this issue because OSNews is now asking for money. Want me to pay? Give me something in return! I've been readind OSNews for some time now, and I like it. But I couldn't stand the staff asking for money and never (AFAIK) listening to suggestions.

So, here it is. The link above leads to the standards compliant equivalent of http://www.osnews.com/demo.html .
It is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS level 2. It renders correctly in MSIE 6, Opera 7, Mozilla 1.3, links (that's all I have). It uses the same structure of tables, yet only a few simple corrections where necessary to make it compliant and more user friendly (I'm referring to font sizes).

I'm only trying to show how easy it is. You don't like it? Not my problem. You do like it? /me happy.

So why are you so surprised that you got a rude reply?
Where did you read that I was surprised? I certainly was not. Eugenia's reply was typical of her.

Anyway, now that I've provided a quick proof of concept, I've justified my rants. Improve the web site, and I'll be glad to subscribe.

To those who do not like the Web Site design F$#% you!
Don't you realize that the content is what it matters?

Dude, you're cracking me up!

Are you really as 70's hood as you seem to be?

"Some of you who start in on eugenia would do that to me, a man, for about 5 seconds. "

"No one in free society disrespects your right to free speech"

"modded down threats?" fool, your lucky she doesn't drop kick you outright"

Your post reads like you're like 50% Shaft and 50% Mr-T.

I'm almost expecting a response like "Shaft don't have to take that Fool!"

:)

... that I agree with Mr Banned, because I find his observations constructive.

I had also written an 8-line comment, which I had to erase, considering the rules of the terms of usage (the "THESE TERMS" link at the bottom).

OSNews crew, please consider changing those terms or, if that´s not possible, choose other rules more respectful to your readers.

If that´s still not possible, then keep the rules as they are, but then I ask you to reword them so that they sound more mature, at least.

Lee Nooks.

My friend, even if I might be "under fire" again, let me tell you that your effort, does not render correctly on Safari. It does not render correctly on iCab. It renders terribly on Omniweb. It renders with big fonts on Mozilla too. Opera 6 on Mac has problems too!

And I haven't even tested it yet with old browsers like NS 4, NS2/3, NetPositive, Dillo, NeXT and OS/2 browsers, Amiga and QNX browsers either. Remember, OSnews is not a Linux or a Windows or a Mac site. We get hits from the most weird OSes you have ever heard!!

Skamp, I will say that for the last time: We do use old code, because there are still old browsers around. Yes, it would be nice to have modern code, but when that creates problems -- like your demo -- then we can't justify such switch. OSnews HAS to render on ALL OSes that it reports on. And that includes bad/old/weird devices and old OSes. We have to sacrifice modernism for compatibility. We need to be ACCESSIBLE. Not "cool". If you want cool, go to www.whatisthematrix.com

I will ask you a simple question: Does the current OSNews renders ok on your browser? As it was intended to? I bet it is. Then, why all the rant for XHTML and what not? Doesn't worth it, cause I ain't gonna sacrifice compatibility and accessibility not even for a $10000 donation.

SHAFT!

Damn right....

id proly pony up the cash too ...

> cause I ain't gonna sacrifice compatibility and accessibility

And speed in many cases, as there are browsers who have very slow CSS implementation when this is heavily used.

Haha, go to the Apple story. they call me a "BeOS fangirl". And here, you say you won't buy because I am bashing BeOS.

You guys are cracking me up!

the reason this site is so interesting and fun is BECAUSE it's so personal.

you want something "professional" and sterile.

i'd say go make your own site.

while i disagree at times with points Eugenia has made, i like the whole "feel" of the site.

i'll try to cough up my 20 at some point.

Imagine if I (you) paid $20 for every site that I visited on a daily basis. Ha, I would have to sell my car (ok, I'm gonna do that anyways, but not for this), and find another job to make up for my tuition! Ha ha ha.

Ok, on a serious note, I can't pay the $20 atm, but when I can, I will (no really I will . I like this site, the news rolls by pretty quickly (which I like), the web page design is very good (despite what the past 97 replies said), forums are also well designed.

I hate writing HTML, and I have to respect the people who actually do a good job of it So, thanks to all the OSNews people (whoever you are).

Regarding recent articles about Microsoft's purchase of Virtual PC and the articles about Windows 2003:

Last week I went an ISV class provided by MS. It dealt mainly with .Net and migrating applications from the 1.0 framework to the 1.1 framework and from VB6 to .Net and prgramming for 2003 Server. It was a hands on training class. They were using Virtual PC to provide a hard disk image that contained Windows 2003, VS.NET 2002, VS.NET 2003, SFU 3.0, and many, many other packages. The VPC disk image is over 10 gigs but compresses to 4.5 gigs and was distributed to us on a DVD. I thought it was interesting to see them making use of VPC so soon and so effectively.

Yeah, I know it's offtopic but hey, it's better than a flame/troll/personal attack...

I HATE professional replies, it's like if the person wants to hide his faults and talk coldly like a machine.

We are humans and we like to talk to another human, not a MACHINE.

That's why I like Osnews and another Computer store http://www.shoprbc.com, By talking like *Humans*, people are generally attracted to that business. That why I'm attracted to Osnews

your effort does not render correctly on Safari. It does not render correctly on iCab. It renders terribly on Omniweb. It renders with big fonts on Mozilla too. Opera 6 on Mac has problems too!
Do you even try to understand what I'm saying? It renders with big fonts because you kept the default settings. The default font size in my demo is set to medium. Does that ring a bell?
As for the browers you mentionned, since you aren't specific I can't reply on that. Anyway, I worked on it for an hour, I'm not saying it's perfect at that point.

And I haven't even tested it yet with old browsers like NS 4, NS2/3, NetPositive, Dillo, NeXT and OS/2 browsers, Amiga and QNX browsers either.
Show us the friggin' stats! Really, what is the proportion of visitors using such browsers? Such as NetPositive? Unlike you, I do listen to people, and I accept to be proven wrong.

If you want cool, go to www.whatisthematrix.com
Can't you focus? I never talked about making the web site cool, only more comfortable to read - and quicker to load.

Does the current OSNews renders ok on your browser? As it was intended to? I bet it is.
It doesn't. Pay attention: I wrote in my first post that I had to set a minimum font size in my browser, because OSNews renders with insanely small font sizes, since my screen and my browser are properly configured.

In French, we say: n'est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre. Ask JBQ what it means. Have fun.

Pay $20 a year to read BeOS News and have Eugeneric interface designs unprofessionally and rudely thrust down my throat by a hysterical internet stalker? No.

Jest in revenge aside, I have another suggestion...

Eugenia should step back a bit and give space for others to make their mark, reposition OS News by raising the overall quality of journalism and comment moderation, and go for a big money shot. Intead of advertising or membership fees, I'd suggest OS News creates a credible annual award which could attract a sponsor with deep pockets. There's also the possibility of syndication to paying sites if the journalistic quality is raised enough. Another possibility is to explore the market split between consumer and producer - better targetted articles might attract a higher quality of advertising revenue.

Show us the friggin' stats! Really, what is the proportion of visitors using such browsers? Such as NetPositive? Unlike you, I do listen to people, and I accept to be proven wrong.

I don't understand this. This is OSNEWS.COM ... the site carries news about OSes most of us have never heard of, but the one thing that ALL modern OSes gain early in their development is a browser. Do you have ANY idea at all the hoops OSNews has to jump through to render legibly on every browser in use in the entire world on every conceivable OS? I don't think you do. I certainly do not.

You are complaining because you have to tweak the font sizes so you'd like to implement changes that might break the site completely for who knows how many users? What do the stats matter? That seems a bit petty to me.

Eugenia wants the site to be operating system and browser agnostic. If just three people a month surf in using Abrowse (I think) on AmigaOS, she wants them to see the site rendering properly. Having a site called "OSNews.com" that doesn't render properly on EVERY operating system would be sort of silly if you stop and think about it for a second.

And while I'm ranting ... it sounds a lot like you're saying, "There is only a few of them, let 'em rot," referring to the stats on the less popular browsers.

That's not what OSNews is about. If she's going to do that, why bother to post news about their operating systems at all? Heck, why not just make it easy on herself and only support IE and Mozilla. Any OS worth a damn has a port of Moz, right? Then she can only post news about "important" operating systems ...

Like the editors here have said a million times, getting something about your OS posted here has nothing to do with market share. No favorites. That's the way it should be.

You are complaining because you have to tweak the font sizes so you'd like to implement changes that might break the site completely for who knows how many users? What do the stats matter? That seems a bit petty to me.

I agree 100%. My vision is like 20/80 and even I can see the small font sizes. Why is this so damn important? Either stop whinning or go somewhere.

If just three people a month surf in using Abrowse (I think) on AmigaOS, she wants them to see the site rendering properly. Having a site called "OSNews.com" that doesn't render properly on EVERY operating system would be sort of silly if you stop and think about it for a second.
I represent one guy a day who uses an obscure OS called GNU/Linux with XFree86 (Xft enabled) and Mozilla 1.3.1, running in 1024x768 @ 106ppi. It doesn't render well.

The font size issue aside, she could take half an hour and make tags lowercase, use double quotes around attributes, leave the FONT element behind, specify a transitional doctype (XHTML transitional for instance would be appropriate)... All of that without changing the structure of the pages, without adding CSS, would make the web site standards compliant, and still have it rendered exactly as it is now in those obscure browsers.

I'm talking to hard walls here, we probably should drop the subject.

Do you even try to understand what I'm saying? It renders with big fonts because you kept the default settings. The default font size in my demo is set to medium. Does that ring a bell?

Err? Your font size is way too big, which it's over 12 size.


As for the browers you mentionned, since you aren't specific I can't reply on that. Anyway, I worked on it for an hour, I'm not saying it's perfect at that point.

No, your isn't perfect. It's too ugly and everything is so big in Opera7, Mozilla, Galeon and Epiphany. The demo one is a lot better than your. If you dislike it, go away.

QNX's default web browser, Voyager, renders OSNews OK. No bad, not great, but well enough. Opera for QNX and Mozilla are far better anyway.

QNX Voyager is a Netscape-3 compliant browser. And yes, I have tested with it. It is only normal that Mozilla and Opera will do a better job. But I have made sure that browsers like Amiga Voyager/ABrowse and QNX Voyager and BeOS NetPositive etc are all render OSNews just fine.

I've read almost all the comments, and I'm definitely sick of this discussion.

OS News is also rendered on mobile devices using WML. The tags are all HTML 3 (or maybe even 2) compliant, because modern browsers compensate by rendering pretty close to perfectly, but mobile browsers don't. This site attempts to be 100% cross platform. The entire rest of the discussion is moot. If you don't like it, take advantage of the hard work someone else has done writing your browser and crank up your font sizes.

Is there anyone out there who has some feedback or suggestions about subscriber benefits that doesn't involve Eugenia specifically?

I like reading OSNews, and have received help and great info in the forums. I have to admit though, that I didn't read all 120+ of the posts for this...

Money's a bit tight now, so I'll continue to support this site by looking at the ads. :-)

Best Wishes,
Bob

First off, Eugenia is the developer of the site, and decides what goes up and what goes down. So for people to argue about something so small as how see writes her code is pathetic, and petty! Let her develop the site how she sees fit, if it's old then it's old. If you guys have SUCH a problem with how she writes her code, then do it yourself! Go for it, make you own OS news site, and try to get everything working and all the connection neccessary to get something off the ground.

I for one would pay the $20 for a membership, but frankly I would like to see more of a higher order within the site as being a paying member. How that is put together, I'm not sure. I'm perfectly fine with how the site is and how it functions right now!

Should be interesting to see how this all shapes up, now that everybody has shown their TRUE teeth. Can't we all just get along, and just take the complaints with a straight face. Be like Microsoft, when a customer argues about something just stand their with a smile and completely ignore them

1) Staff writers prevented from replying in any comment thread for any story they post. Too many times here on OSNews authors berate people and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that the author's view is the onlyview that will be considered valid. That's wrong, everyone's opinion is valid.

2) Consistent, accurate, and un-biased application of the useage terms. All too often OSNews authors break the rules of the site when replying to posts. A particular author posts more vulagarity when she is ranting than I've ever seen any patron post. Comments get moderated down not for breaking the posting rules, but because the author just didn't like the comment. Posts get deleted for completely arbitrary reasons. Basically, currently the useage terms could be better written as, "Patron beware, Posts are moderated based solely on the site moderator's whims"

3) Site authors prevented from using the news-submission system to post personal opinions or show personal hobby work under the guise of "reporting OS news".

4) Generally make this site follow some basic rules of jounralism. This site currently feels more like a weblog with some news reports thrown in for good measure. I can get a subscription to a dead-tree tech magazine for about the same money and be certain that I'm getting a publication that follows a predictable set of journalism rules.

I'm using links in both text and graphic mode (links -g) and i see no ads at all on OSnews.

I Think This Is A Great Site, Its The First Site I Check Daily And Works Great With The Browsers I Use , Mozilla, Firebird And Lynx looks Well. I Have Been Coming To This Since 1999 (looked Quite Differnt Back then), And Don't Think It's Been a Waste of time At All, The Forums Are Rather Diverse which Will Bring Up Different View Points, Which Is Great For The OS Community. It Really Pushes Peoples Knowledge And What They Believe In. But When It Gets Personal Into Name Calling and Trash talking Thats Just Childish. Dammit were not in elementary school now are we? Eugenia has done a great service for the OS community for the past years First Doing BeNews then OSNews. Maybe not every one might not agree with that, but thats there right. But in MY Opinion she has done much with Interesting and Opinionated articles and always checks the forums to lend an helping hand to people with questions. Thats My 2cents

I'll admit I whine occasionally. What gets me is when I see these posts that just trash the efforts of the people maintaining this and other news sites. Every article pretty much sucks, the maintainers are biased AND clueless, unprofessional, a waste of valuable time, etc. When I see these posts I always think: fine, don't come here!

Eugenia and the others do a great job coming up with a very interesting mix of articles day after day. And they have to put up with a lot of garbage as is evident from this thread alone.

While I have no desire to pay for premium access to a website, I do wish you luck. This does seem to be a decent site with good articles so hopefully long may it continue that way.

I've read almost all the comments, and I'm definitely sick of this discussion.

Agree...


Is there anyone out there who has some feedback or suggestions about subscriber benefits that doesn't involve Eugenia specifically?

I do: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3878&offset=75&rows=90#11... :-)

This side is in part the concentration of other sides news not its own (some times it is).

Will the web pages that contain the info linked to osnews get any money?

Dont think so.

I hope the $20 make this side have more reviews/news of its own and not linked.

I have read, as I write this comment, all 122 previously posted comments.

Allah's blue balls!! This started out as a simple article. OSNews is looking for a way to make money to pay for increased expenses. Do you want to pay or not?

Eugenia expresses her personal opinions? How dare she!! Next she will probably, state facts with which people will disagree (No, the world is not flat!) You are free to express your own opinions and post them to the site. Do so.

Your comment got modded down? You must have written something that offended someone with the ability to remove your comment. Their opinion beat your opinion. Check!! Get over it and get on with it. Ask what was offensive about your comment (by some private method [e-mail anyone?]).

I read this site every day. I enjoy it, as it is informative and entertaining. I view it on five different browsers (IE, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, and one other [I cannot remember the name]). It renders well on all five.

Once I see some sort of demo (screenshots, maybe) of what the "for pay" version of the site will look like, I will consider "buying in". The idea is sound, but I learned by the age of seven not to buy "a pig in a poke".

Note: For those of you not familiar with American redneck slang, a pig in a poke is simply purchasing something sight unseen.

:) i use links for browsing so no graphics and indeed fast

lagnaf, There was a link in the story to a sample of the "for pay" version, but it was a bit buried:

http://www.osnews.com/demo.html

I think this is a great site, and I already paid my $20 ;-)

I don't always agree to Eugenia, but I like her articles :-)

Eugenia, I will give you a tip, any insulting comment that is not related to the topic, like personal insults and bashing your work, should get deleted. That way no one can read it. no one complains...it does not get extended. I will gladly pay 20 dollars (when I find work) for the site.

So keep up the good work and delete the messages, you will see the difference.

No, editors should not have permission to moderate comments. That's the job of a non bias third party PERIOD. David, I can't bring myself to spend any money on OSNews for the reasons we discussed via email some time ago. It doesn't seem like a whole lot has changed, definately not enough for me.

The problem with the OS world that it becomes more and more like religion. : Choose the OS that fit and serve you well for the job you are about to do. Personly I use MacOSX, Windows XP and Linux on a daily basis, depending on the job that I want done.

Actually, that is her job. There is a place for everything. You do not like her spelling, her attitude or whatever there is a link "Contact Us". That is the place to complain, not the forums. Also, remove anonymous and you can reply to any person and insult then by email. Easy solution. You can complain, only in private. Registration should help a lot these site into removing those insults from the forum. IMO everyone should register to post and be asked if they want a free registration or a paid registration. That way you remove the anonymous post.

MutomboPR - I agree with you.

Eugenia - David owns the site, you are in charge of it, thus you have ALL RIGHTS to do whatever you wish. This is not a democracy, and you are not an elected official.

You don't 'owe' anyone the 'right' to have their post remain visible. Anything that does not directly relate to the article should be deleted out of hand.

Please note the 180 degree attitude change here.

If you wish, you could add a note to that effect in the site rules - just a simple statement that comments may be deleted at any time, for any reason.

I bet the occurrence of hostilities would diminish a bit, and those that get off on seeing people react to their trolling would stop posting.

Keep up the good work.

But I am serious about your health and happiness - no job is worth losing them, especially an unpaid job!

I think what skamp was trying to show was the separation of content and presentation. It's the goal of html/xhtml and css.

The main idea is that the content is presented in a standard way. It can be limited to html 3 tags. Tags past that should be ignored by browsers that don't support them. So, you write CSS separately and the html separately. If a browser doesn't support that part of css, it doesn't display it, but it does degrade gracefully... Letting the content still be presented. As a browser is improved, then the presentation gets improved, but the content is still present.

The separation and writing of more valid code lends itself to easier accessibility. If you've ever used a screen reader (for blind people), sites can be terrible. There are general layout guidelines that greatly enhance accessibility. It would be nice for OSnews to promote these.. It's good for any site to promote these. These are simple things like: use as few tables as possible, put navigation bars on the right side of the page so the content gets accessed first, use the proper skip tags so users can skip sections, use descriptive alt tags for images, etc.

People take issue with the font size, but what scamp did is what is recommended. Use variable font sizes (like pecent or em) so that people's browsers can set the font size.. That way people who have bad eyes or a bad monitor can have bigger fonts for less eye strain.

With these theories, the content (not presentation) should be available to the largest audience possible.. Including all browsers and almost all people. It's little changes like this that make the internet a better place for all.

So, don't bash on skamp, he's just trying to do the right thing.

Here's some links on it:
w3c: www.w3.org
the web standards project: www.webstandards.org
web accessibility:
w3 - www.w3.org/WAI/
us gov't - www.section508.gov and www.webaim.org/standards/508/checklist
accessibility validators: http://wave.webaim.org/index.jsp and http://bobby.cast.org

Happy to donate $20.. Love the site!

Before I dish out $20 for a year, I suggest that David start paying the employees. First pay off the bandwidth/server costs, then pay the employees a percentage of what's left that directly correlates to how much work they put in on the site.

This would promote a few good things:
1. More news updates, special features, etc.
2. More site updates, code updates, features, etc.
3. People would get paid.. At least something.
4. 1 and 2 would cause more people to join the site, thus increasing profits.

The downside is people could start fighting to do updates. But, maybe not.

It'd also be good to see some of the possible profit (if any), go into savings to help pay for future bandwidth costs (say 10% is saved, with the rest going to staff). It might not be much, but it would help.

Had to skip a couple of pages of this rant, but just wanted to drop my own feelings in the pot.

1) I check this site every day and find it to be one of the more informative sites to do with all aspects of any OS.

2) I think that the articles are very professionally done and that Eugenia does a stirling job ... keep it up!

3) Payment for an ad-free version is a great idea, hope it keeps OSNews going.

On a more personal note I'm not foolish to enough to expect the type of sterile articles and forum responses that a larger more 'professional' organisation would provide. So what if some of the editors spit venom occasionally when being hen pecked by forum contributers with nothing better to do... viva la passion.

Oh and Kyles ideas are a good one ... if there is a bit of spare cash, wouldn't hurt to share the wealth with some of your more prominent posters.

I can't belive this conversation about the HTML went on for so long, and I'm almost reluctant to post at this point because I think monst people would have given up by now. But just to set the record straight, I thought I should address the issue of paying people.

Don't overestimate the amount of money that OSNews makes. This is not 1999. Advertising rates suck these days, especially when you won't run some of the more obnoxious intrusive ones. This site does not make enough money to pay anyone enough that they could quit their day job. It pays enough money to keep the servers running and buy us new computers and other goodies from time to time. It also pays an accountant, my mobile phone, and other expenses, including travel to conferences. We could give our volunteers and submitters a small honorarium for their work, but it would only be a gesture, and I don't think it would affect their dedication. Actually, it would probably have the opposite effect, because when people started to feel that what they were doing for OSNews was to be compensated in money (myself included) it wouldn't seem like a good deal.

Let me also mention that Eugenia is a foreign citizen living (legally) in the United States, but is not permitted to work. Even if I wanted to pay her (and I would if she asked) that would be putting her at risk of deportation. Eugenia works so hard on OSNews because she (usually) loves it. Nevertheless, I make sure that when she needs something broadly related to her OSNews work, like the NeXT workstation OSNews just bought for her, she gets it.

Also, I launched the membership program not to make more money, but to address a legitimate complaint that some of our most regular readers have. People said that they'd be willing to support the site directly if they didn't have to look at ads, and I wanted to give them the chance to put their money where their mouth is, and I tried to calculate roughly what a regular reader would generate in ad and affiliate revenue in a year. Someone who reads every article and comes back 4 times per day would probably generate $40 in ad revenue in the year. So for some, the membership option makes us less money. But I'm not trying to squeeze every cent out of this site. I'm only looking for sustainability.

So far, about 40 people have taken us up on membership, FYI.

I hope this clarifies matters.

Why not set up a slush fund with the left over cash (whenever there is any) and donate part of it (under the counter.. slush) to the contributors and save some of it for bandwidth costs.

I guess I probably shouldn't join. Since I read every story, and all comments, and check the site about 6 - 8 times per day (a few in the morning, a few in the afternoon, and once at night).. I'm giving you about 80 bucks a year. Not too bad.

If there are 1,500 of me.. Then that's over $100,000 a year.

As long as contributors get some sort of kudos. They are the ones who keep the visitors coming.

As I think this site would suck ultimate with out her. I don't mind her problems with certain users as long its not going to the end of name calling and she is a human and maybe also a temparate person (being from south of europe and stuff).

I hardly see this dude David Adams doing anything. And so I think the osnews staff should all get a percentage of cake depending on their role and the ammount of work.

I'm not going to pay for a subscription. I like my news free and don't mind the adds. I don't even notice them.

You should also think of moving your forum software to something like phpbb as now the UI just sucks. If this means that 10 people with a WAP device can't access so be it.

Anyway I really don't like that Eugenia is getting nothing and feel she is treated like a slave but the managment.

What if she would fork this site? Then OSnews would be nothing. I personaly would follow her to a new site. So please give her a piece of the pie and maybe its even enough so that she can work more on that what she loves doing: Working for OSNews.

If there are 1,500 of me.. Then that's over $100,000 a year.

Wow. I wish there were, because we make way, way less than that per year from advertising. I probably over-calculated. Someone who generates 50 pageviews per day 300 days per year probably earns us about $20 in advertising.

I've read the whole discussion upto the 120's comment (yeah, I know, i'm nuts - I did that for the first time in my life).
I've to say that there're some real assholes visiting this site and getting nuts at Eugenia. Who gave you the right to open your mouth at her and say whatever you want in whatever manner? Someone made this point and I fully support it: being polite is just a way of showing your respect toward someone.
Before saying something, stop for a minute and think: how much personal time and efforts does Eugenia put into this site? Does she get any profit from it? If she does something, isn't there a some logic and consideration behing this?

All these personal attacks should stop immediately. Eugenia doesn't deserve to read all this shit.


And a note about spelling and other language-related mistakes. I'm not a native speaker of English, nor does Eugenia. Stop thinking that if americans can speak it (which isn't true, by the way...) then everyone else in the world does too. Damn it, it's one of the most complicated languages in the world!!! What do you expect from a non native speaker? I am surprised that this site isn't in French/Greek with links to 'translate this article into your favourite "international language"'.
You can rest assured, that Eugenia's level is much beyond the critique. Think a bit: she's a GREEK, maintaining one of the leading websites about OSes completely in ENGLISH, and she does it WELL. Would YOU have the same success if you had to make a site in Japanese?


Sergey.


PS. Eugenia, you're a damn lucky person that you have to deal and support only English, while coding OSNews. You can't imagine what a freakin' headache it is to try to support browsers while making a website in Hebrew, for example... Holyshit, most of them can't even render the gliphs correctly, not talking about RTL direction!!! ;`-((
PPS. that's why most of the "alternative" OSes are completely no-use to the non-English speaking community (and especially for the non-latinic alphabet languages). We still have to come back to MS Windows if we want to use/read our languages.

I would gladly pay for OSNews, only to support. The ads are no disturb to me, without them the page even looks a bit bold ;-)
There are just 2 problems:
- i'm a poor soldier and that 20$ make a third of my monthly salary (which I collect month-by-month to be able to pay for the university, later).
- even if I manage to get that sum, there's no way to transfer it to you! Sorry, we're not America, there's no such thing as PayPal here... Also, I don't have an international creditcard and sending a cheque will be no use, as it's of a local bank. Do you have some suggestions?

Looks great on a resume, that's profit enough for some.

Thanks for the clarification.

OSNews is really worth $20/yr. I already block ads using Privoxy, so it's really for the support :-)

Eugenia and David, keep up the good work! Sorry for all the frustration.

Are there any plans for http://www.NewMobileComputing.com ?

Suggestion: what about a counter of subscribed people on the main page?

R/

People slamming Eugenia are doing so for a good reason. Politeness is a two-way street. The fact that Eugenia puts so much time into this site doesn't give her carte blanche to go off on anyone whenever she chooses. Latest example is the win2k sp4 update. The first posting she made was a smart-ass comment to the first poster about the EULA of other operating systems as if it really has anything to do with the EULA of Windows.

As to Americans and English some linguists think that English spoken by Americans is closer to "original" English than that spoken in England. Go figure. At any rate your attempt at America bashing was quite lame. Americans speak English. Get over it.

As to doing OS News in Japanese...if I knew how to speak/write Japanese I'm sure I could be just as good at as Eugenia is doing in English. Hell, she *lives* in America and I suspect spends a lot of time speaking English. She writes a lot in English (obviously). She gets lots of practice...of course shes good at it.

Seems I'm not the only non-US resident without the ubiquitous plastic card. And at my age, I don't know what my chances of getting one would be. Would a bank draft cause a problem for OS News?
I love this site & would be happy to support it. Eugenia's the heart & soul of OSNews, the site renders perfectly for me in Opera, Mozilla & NetPositive, & all this carping about HTML, tags, etc, is so much nit-picking.

I agree, Eugenia is over the top..