Don't push it....
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Posted on 05/07/2011 10:46:43 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Hope to have this thing wrapped up within a few days.
If you haven't made your donation yet, today would be a good day to get 'er done!!
Click the secure server link above or mail checks to:
Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much!!
Rebellion is brewing!!
Don't push it....
Posted on 10/12/2010 12:39:29 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Your donation is needed to keep FR on the air!!
Free Republic is currently delivering over 1.2 million pageviews to over 230,000 visitors per day. That's 40 million pageviews to 7 million visitors per month or 120 million pageviews per quarter, 480 million pageviews per year. We currently have over 350,000 registered screen names on FR. Out of these millions of visits, hundreds of millions of pageviews, hundreds of thousands of registered FReepers and hundreds of thousands of regular lurkers only a relatively FEW actually donate the funds to keep FR alive.
Now, I'm not complaining, because we've always managed to meet our fundraising goals in the past, but it is taking longer and longer to accomplish the task. And part of that may be because it's mostly the same few dedicated FReepers providing the funds, and, along with the rest of us, I'm sure they're stretched to the limit. Sure would be nice if a few more FReepers and lurkers would lend a hand and send in a few bucks. Doesn't take much. I think our average donation is around $20, but you can send in $5, $10, $20, $30 or more, and make it a monthly contribution if you can.
A relatively few good FReepers is all it takes to keep FR on the air so that hundreds of thousands of us can join together in kicking liberal butt and continue the fight for our freedom!!
For example, 1,500 dedicated FReepers and lurkers donating an average of $20 each per month is all it takes to continue delivering these hundreds of millions of propaganda-fighting, pro-liberty pages to tens of millions of readers every year. How many concerned citizens and potential voters can we reach for a tiny fraction of a cent per page? FR delivers a BIG bang for the buck!!
Thank you for providing the bang AND the buck!!
If you enjoy posting and or reading FR and have never donated before, please consider doing so today. You can donate by secure server using PayPal or Credit Card by clicking the link below:
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Or send your checks or money orders to:
Free Republic, LLC
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Fresno, CA 93794Free Republic is funded solely by donations from our readers and participants.
Thank you all very much for your continuing participation and support!!
Rebellion is brewing!!
The battles of Lexington and Concord begin anew today. Prayers for our beloved country and our precious Liberty!!
ROTFLOLOLOLOL. I haven’t opened any of my files to fetch the LOL’s! That’s hilarious!
Bump for New Monthy Donors!
Graphic Posted by FReeper onyx
Jim's Reply To Her Post:
I liked our old system much better.
You get sick, you go to the doctor, he writes prescription for the latest miracle drug, you pay doctor and pharmacist, get well and go back to work. Thank God you live and work in America!
You get really sick and have to go to the hospital. Thank God you live in America and your employer (or yourself) provides health insurance. The hospital uses the very latest in healthcare technology to make you well again. Thank God you live and work in America!
You get really, really, really sick and have lost your job and your health insurance, but you go to the hospital anyway and they use the latest healthcare technology to keep you alive, but put a lien on your house. Thank God you’re STILL ALIVE in America!
You get really, really, really sick, have lost your job and your home, but you go to the hospital anyway and they use the very latest in healthcare technology to keep you ALIVE, and medicare (provided by American workers) picks up the tab. Thank God you’re STILL alive and living in AMERICA rather than a socialist European country where healthcare is not so hot, but it’s free (IF and WHEN you can get it).
To answer your question, the majority of the folks are dealing with the flood as you would expect, since we’ve known it was coming for over a month now. I know you don’t have TV, so you can’t see the coverage, but the flooded homes are in what I call shanty town -— the low lying areas near and below the railroad tracks. Most are the homes of black folks, so you know that there’s a segement used to the wonderful government taking charge of everything. That’s about all I want to say on that subject.
The horrid damage and loss are the farms and crops. 900,000 acres, (I think I have that right).
It seems a lot of farmland is being destroyed. There was that flood on purpose because of Cairo, Illinois. It will ruin farmers and cut our food supply.
Right, and all this talk about bin-Laden is a distraction.
Food prices and gas prices and the debt ceiling, the crash of the worthless dollar.
Cajun is probably going to check and see if his hip boots are still in good shape............Just looking ahead.
Yeah. It’s “Don’t look here! Look over there!”
Jim's Statement Regarding The FR Servers
Jim's Original Post:
Click Link Above To View Original Post
Thank you all very much, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the system other than the fact that it runs on computers and that we run on a shoestring budget with no employees. It’s just me and John, Amy and Chris. I’ve been involved with computers since 1972 starting with the Univac and the IBM/360 and Digital’s PDP and VAX generations. Amy got started a few years earlier. John started programming when he was 14 and was a commercial programmer by 16. He was our C+ guru when we were in the software business. He introduced us to the Internet in the early 90’s before the browser had even been developed. I’ve been a programmer/analyst from the 70’s and also in programming/project management and data processing management and also owned my own software company.
The one biggest thing we’ve learned in all these years is that computer systems have a tendency to crash. And when the inevitable happens, we don’t panic. We troubleshoot, find the problems, fix them and go on. Been doing it for nearly forty years. There is nothing wrong with FR. It’s perfectly normal for systems to fail occasionally.
Now there are ways to make a system more bullet proof and to build-in back ups and redundancy, etc, so there is almost zero downtime for users, but these are usually reserved for critical operations. And that’s because they cost money. Lots of it.
For example we only have one tech, one programmer, one hardware guy, one security guy, one operating system guru, one perl guru, one mysql guru, one all around computer guy and John is it. He’s also our chief procurement officer and liaison with all vendors and suppliers and in his spare time he fills in as our research and development department. Dear old dad with 40 years experience in programming and managing legacy computer systems tries to join in and help but usually just gets in the way. John is a one man shop, he’s on call, on duty 24/7/365 with no vacations or holidays unless he carries a cell phone and lap top and he likes it that way.
We could hire three or four guys to do what John does and we still couldn’t cover it 24/7/365 and provide uninterruptible service. We’d still suffer downtime.
We could also build redundant systems. But that just doubles the cost, doubles the maintenance and doubles or triples the capital requirements and ongoing expense. And unless they were located in different parts of the country on different providers, the redundant systems would not guarantee 100% uptime. Guess what? Even multi-million dollar fail-safe systems fail occasionally. Computers crash! It’s a fact of life and we deal with it every day.
FR was started on zero capital. It was a hobby that has grown terribly out of control. It was a one man shop when I set it up. Amy came in later to help me administer it, then John took over the programming a couple years later and redesigned and rewrote it all at least three times since. He built the servers it runs on. Now it may be that if we had the money we could order all new equipment and redesign and rewrite the software again with an eye for making it all bullet proof, but that would require lots of money and probably hiring some additional talent and it would require time. But we have no money and no access to money. And we are reluctant to take on any additional debt.
Now we could go commercial. We could sell ads. We could sell subscriptions or memberships, We could sell t-shirts and hats. But the moment we do, we invite scrutiny and copyright lawsuits. Before going commercial we would have to scrub our archives of any possible copyright violations. And we’d have to tighten up our current operations to make sure no one posts anything that could get us into trouble with any publisher of stories, photos, images, etc. And with sharks like Righthaven swimming around, there will always be room for trouble. And going commercial still wouldn’t guarantee enough income to build and maintain a paid staff, bullet proof software, redundant systems, etc.
I’m an old dog and I like to keep it simple. We have a nice little system here. We are comfortable with the hardware and our software and our providers and it works fairly well. Actually, very well. We have some occasional problems and have been down a few times but as I said, there are no guarantees that if we had double or triple the size of our hardware or our staff that we still would not suffer some downtime occasionally. It happens.
And we’re perfectly comfortable with donor funding at a shoestring level. I’d hate to complicate the thing by going commercial. We are grassroots and it makes sense to me to keep it all grassroots and uncomplicated if we possibly can.
I see no reason whatsoever to panic about our systems our staffing or our funding.
And I really wish to thank all of YOU who make it possible. Your donations provide the capital we need to keep it all going and your continued participation on our forums makes FR the premier God and Country CONSERVATIVE site on the Internet!!
Thank God for the FReepers!! God bless you all.
588 posted on 01/11/2011 9:37:01 AM PST by Jim Robinson (Rebellion is brewing!! Nuke the corrupt commie bastards to HELL!!)
Yep. You will be prepared. There's already talk about NOLA again.
Our levies were built after the great flood of ‘27 so this is a test, but the Army Corps of Engineers is based here and they've been working to reinforce for over a month.
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