Post by Dwight WilliamsSo why is it still useful to me if it's as dead as you say?
Just out of curiosity - as you seem to be very strongly opinionated
(Dwight showed up at the last board meeting and attempted to express
these opinions) on this matter...
What about FreePort, in 2005, is so useful? What about FreePort, in 2005,
justifies the special modem server setup, and maintenance (at least the
effort to keep it running, as much of it is too hard to maintain) of
volunteers or donation dollars, the majority of the donation dollars
coming from people who have access to PPP.
If it is newsgroups, I don't agree. I don't login to FreePort anymore,
and haven't for almost two years now. I post news using SLRN, but from
my home machine. The newsgroups are completely accessible, and with much
better newsgroup reading clients.
If it is email, I don't agree. NCF has commercial quality mail servers
running using standard protocols that have existed for two decades.
If it is browsing information, I don't agree. The web pages have more
capability in terms of information presentation. One could argue that
they are currently not fully utilized - but this can be changed, or
improved. Pictures don't replace words, but they do an excellent job
of making the reading experience more pleasing, and additional
formatting allows greater detail to be shown on a single page with
a minimal amount of confusion.
If it is IRC, that has been dead for 3+ years. People prefer to access
messenger software that allows them to speak to their non-NCF friends.
MSN, Yahoo, any of the public IRC servers, etc. are preferred.
What's left? To me, the ONLY thing dial-up FreePort offers are:
1) Comfort. The more traditional of people than invested effort in
learning this interface, who are unwilling to invest additional
effort into keeping up to date with technology. I have no sympathy
for this. To me, NCF is about introducing technology, not ensuring
that people can stagnant themselves.
2) Extremely low end hardware, or those who prefer to under-utilize
their hardware, or who are unaware that their hardware is being
under-utilized. Many scenarios in here, however, I don't believe
at all, that in 2005, people cannot get access to a computer that
supports PPP. People have been offloading their costs to NCF for
more than a decade. Instead of spending $60 on a used computer
that supports PPP, they'll ask NCF to pay employee salaries, and
invest volunteer time into maintaining an antiquated system? Where
is the business case here? There is another cost - by splitting
employee and volunteer effort, employees and volunteers are held
back from fully developing the new system. We'd have to go over the
math, however, I'm suspecting, that in some cases, people could
choose to, for one year, spend their recommended $60/year donation
on a used computer, instead of donation to NCF, and if we could get
rid of FreePort, the overall result to NCF would be an improvement.
The question here is - is it more valuable to spend $60 on the member
getting a used computer? Or on NCF staff salaries to maintain the old
system?
3) The perception that by NCF hosting the services, and only provided
'thin client' access, that the home computer is more secure, as it
is not directly accessible over the network, nor are the applications
executed on the home computer. For this one, I do believe in this -
however, due to the general failure of NCF's thin client project, I
don't think that a significant number of members actually share this
perception. I think maybe a few dozen people have this perception,
and however justified it may be, it is not sufficient unless generally
shared and used.
Personally, I think most everybody supporting FreePort fall into category 1,
and perhaps partially into category 2. Category 3 is not widely understood,
and those who believe they fall into this category, I strongly believe to
have heard of this concept, and tacked into onto their repetoire of excuses
not to migrate away from FreePort.
There is a love for FreePort. It was there first. It's just software, though,
and it doesn't deserve your love.
mark
--
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