In various discussions that we’ve had with readers about advertising, many people have suggested that we devise some more direct way for regular OSNews readers to support the site. (This is usually amid complaints about online advertising in general or about some specific ad method that we’re trying out) I personally don’t like the idea of soliciting donations, because I want people to get something in return for their monetary support. What we’ve come up with is an OSNews membership program. For a yearly fee of $20, you will be able to show your support of OSNews and receive the following benefits:
- Access to a fast loading members-only OSNews site, with no banner ads and no text-keyword ads.
- A monthly giveaway, with one of our members winning an OSNews-emblemed item (t-shirt, mug), software, electronic gizmo, or other goodie each month. First giveaway will be this month!
- Special pricing on OSNews merchandise. (We’re going to be having some new shirts and maybe some other swag made up in the next couple of months)
- The right to bitch and moan about OSNews content, functionality, or other gripes with just a little bit more authority.
This ad-free OSNews view has much faster load times than your average news web site (OSNews included). 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. If you’d like to see the ad-free OSNews in action, here’s a sample.
To get started, send your $20 to OSNews, along with your name and email address. (The email address you provide will only be used to let you know of new access information for the ad-free OSNews site and to announce each month’s prize giveaway. This email address will not be used for any other purposes and will not be sold or shown to anyone else.) You may send your money through Paypal. If you don’t have a Paypal account, you can get one through this link. If you already have a PayPal account, you may use this link to pay:
If you would like to mail a check or pay with some other method (including barter) or if you have any questions about the membership program please email me to discuss it.
Of the readers who sign up during the rest of June, one lucky one will receive a jaunty OSNews baseball cap.
The fine print:
Currently, your browser must support cookies to view the ad-free OSNews site. We’ve confirmed that it works on the following browsers: IE, all Gecko/Mozilla-based, all Netscapes, iCab, Omniweb, Konqueror, Safari, Opera. Unfortunately, NetPositive on BeOS and Dillo do not work at this time.
We reserve the right to suspend the prize giveaway or do it less frequently if the number of members falls below 100.
The price of a yearly membership could change at any time, though your payment of the current amount will always be good for twelve months.
If we decide to cancel the membership program for any reason, we will either refund each member’s money in its entirety or a pro-rated amount.
Currently, the OSNews Forum pages will not have the fast-loading, no-ad look, and might never have them. It all depends on how popular the membership program is, how difficult the redesign of the forum system is, and other factors.
> 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 http://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 1024×768 @ 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: http://www.w3.org
the web standards project: http://www.webstandards.org
web accessibility:
w3 – http://www.w3.org/WAI/
us gov’t – http://www.section508.gov and http://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..