At 9:56 PM +0200 on 7/13/99, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:
>>Quite expensivly, I might add. CD burns are normally in the thousands.
>
>Anthony,
>
> terminology again. OK, maybe my English wasn't good enough: I meant
>burning a CD-R, not pressing a CD-ROM. A CD-R medium is about 2.50 (that's
>DM, I guess this would be about $1) but it'd take some time until the CD-R
>burner (usually looks like a CD drive) had burnt it. For a full 650MB CD I
>guess it'd be about half an hour. Less takes less.
OK. I see. I have my own CD-R, so I know what you're talking about. But
people expect pressed CD's from companies (imagine the tech support calls:
"Why the heck is this cd _green_? Is it growing mold?") and the pressed
CD's are more durable, too. Also, some CD-ROMs can not always handle CD-R's.
CD-R's instead of CD's would mitigate the problem somewhat.
>
>>Could. But if the CD is full, they're not going to want to press a sperate
>>CD for it. Doubles the cost. Also, if they put a myserious folder full of
>>funny text files (as they would appear to the average user), they're going
>>to get their tech support people bombed with questions: "What's the
>>`source' folder for?"
>
> They just have to bury it as deep As Apple did with HC player and updater.
>And if they put it in a "C/C++ programmers" folder, nobody would look at
>it, I guess.
Remember, people flood tech support when the problem is they have not
plugged the dang thing in. People have used a mouse as a foot pedal, as on
a sewing machine. I've heard some expected to find a biological mouse and
were quite confused with the computer mouse...
End users (a significant percentage) are dumb.
But even if there were no dumb end users, if there are 40mb of OpenCard
source (remember: minimum file size on a CD is 24K, 1700 1-byte files would
accomplish that! Add in a resource fork, and you'd only need 850).
>
>>I don't think the Artistic allows the sources to be sold for money. And
>>even if it did, let's imagine average programmer:
>>
>> "Hmmm.... I can download this from opencard.org for free or I can
>> pay $30 to buy it from Joe..."
>
>Well, if they *know* they can DL it, that is. We need to make sure of that.
Agreed. I think the best way would be to get a domain name: OpenCard.com
(but with the real name!). Then, if someone types it into their browser,
they'll get the page wit the "download now" link.
