If you don't know what bugmenot is, maybe I shouldn't tell you, but what the hell.
No one reads my blog anyway. So what difference does it make.
The premise of bugmenot is that you shouldn't have to register for anything
free on the internet. Their pet peeve is the new york times but extends to
include any site that provides free information. So, someone
registers at the NYT site, then they share the nick/pass in the bugmenot database.
Then anyone who is looking at a website that requires registration can look it up in bugmenot and
get the shared log/pass until someone (maybe the site owner) finds out and cancels the
account. Of course someone will just put another log/pass in a popular site. Really
popular sites could even brag about how many different bugmenots they've had.
But I digress.
The premise of bugmenot is "information should be, wants to be free,
and you shouldn't have to part with any personal information to get it."
Yah, information is free. There are great big piles of it all over
the internet. Good, bad, spam, academic, bullshit, ads, politically
motivated, true, false, slander, libel, clear, and murky, and just plain drivel. You can wallow
in that all day, never knowing if any of it is correct, up-to-date,
or even makes any sense.
But... suppose someone has organized a bunch of good current information
up in a database, cleaned up the writing, separated the truth from the fiction,
and made it very convenient for you to find whatever you want.
They have provided added value. The NY Times for example, just by being the
NYT, sort of carries an endorsement on anything they publish. Plus we believe
they adhere to some sort of journalistic standards and can basically back up
anything they write. That's why we read it. That's why people have PAID to read it for
decades. So why now should it suddenly be free?
A lot of registration sites don't ask for much more than a moniker & email, and
they have (or should have) a privacy policy promising that they'll never sell it. A lot of
free sites are ad-supported. Free sites need to be able to target their ads to stay in business.
Oh right, the same people who do bugmenot, probably think there shouldn't be any ads
either. So just how do they think that all this good info is gonna be built and updated? By nice people
who just do it to be nice? The web is littered with abandoned sites that started that way. But the nice people got tired of it, or got busy making a living.
Websites that allow posting have a legitimate reason to need people to register,
even if they're free sites. If you don't know why, just try allowing anonymous postings
on a BB. Your BB will soon be flooded with every kind of spam you can imagine.
The really interesting thing about bugmenot is that it's used by internet savvy people
with good high paying jobs. But those folks (I guess) seem to think that people who
provide free info shouldn't be able to make a living. And bugmenot specifically says oh we won't provide passwords for sites that are actually "selling" anything. Soooooo..... Sites that provide anything free are getting screwed, so they are moving bit by bit to selling what they previously gave free including information.
Right BUGMENOT. That's really what you wanted, isn't it!!!
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Scriptlance
just for fun I signed up at scriptlance. (http://www.scriptlance.com) So now I get to waste my time reading emails about these projects.
I have questions: How can doing ANYTHING for $5 generate any income for anyone. The overhead of just your time to check your emails and set up the job would surely cost more than that. Yet I see a lot of little jobs bid at $5. by newbies I guess hoping to lowball, treat it as a loss leader and get the gig so they can get a notch in their belt. It seems like you could get a bunch of your friends to sign up and award you fake projects with fake pay (I mean like you pay it back) and you could get a rep that way. Well if there is always some newbie willing to bid the job for $5, how can anyone ever expect to be paid reasonably for any work done through there. Secondly some of these projects are so poorly specified that it's hard to say whether it's a 30 minute job or a three week job. So you see bids for $20 and $30 and they say can be done. Well duh, ANYTHING, well OK, pretty much ANYTHING, can be done.
Thirdly, there's some premium service you can buy from scriptlance, like makes you privvy first and some other advantages. My experience with these premium sites is that's what they're really trying to sell, and they give out only tantalizing crumbs to people who don't sign up for the premium. But it's not very well explained anyway. You can't ever see anything on the project message boards, they seem to be private conversations between the bidder & the job guy, so why do they even post them. And half the jobs that come through are "private" you can't even see a description of it unless you're "invited."
So maybe someone who makes a big go of scriptlance can come through here and explain how one can break into the in-group. Oh, wait, no, that probably won't happen either. If I were sucking good bucks through the teat of script lance I would probably bogart how I did it, wouldn't want to share that pie.
Point is, I can't find much serious discussion about how effective it is, but my sense is it's a few making a killing at the expense and inconvenience of the many.
Unfortunately (remember I am nemo) very few people read MY blog, so I don't expect any comments. I sure would like to know what other scripters and script-hirers REALLY think.
I have questions: How can doing ANYTHING for $5 generate any income for anyone. The overhead of just your time to check your emails and set up the job would surely cost more than that. Yet I see a lot of little jobs bid at $5. by newbies I guess hoping to lowball, treat it as a loss leader and get the gig so they can get a notch in their belt. It seems like you could get a bunch of your friends to sign up and award you fake projects with fake pay (I mean like you pay it back) and you could get a rep that way. Well if there is always some newbie willing to bid the job for $5, how can anyone ever expect to be paid reasonably for any work done through there. Secondly some of these projects are so poorly specified that it's hard to say whether it's a 30 minute job or a three week job. So you see bids for $20 and $30 and they say can be done. Well duh, ANYTHING, well OK, pretty much ANYTHING, can be done.
Thirdly, there's some premium service you can buy from scriptlance, like makes you privvy first and some other advantages. My experience with these premium sites is that's what they're really trying to sell, and they give out only tantalizing crumbs to people who don't sign up for the premium. But it's not very well explained anyway. You can't ever see anything on the project message boards, they seem to be private conversations between the bidder & the job guy, so why do they even post them. And half the jobs that come through are "private" you can't even see a description of it unless you're "invited."
So maybe someone who makes a big go of scriptlance can come through here and explain how one can break into the in-group. Oh, wait, no, that probably won't happen either. If I were sucking good bucks through the teat of script lance I would probably bogart how I did it, wouldn't want to share that pie.
Point is, I can't find much serious discussion about how effective it is, but my sense is it's a few making a killing at the expense and inconvenience of the many.
Unfortunately (remember I am nemo) very few people read MY blog, so I don't expect any comments. I sure would like to know what other scripters and script-hirers REALLY think.
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