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An update: Some good news and some bad news

skollie

Silver Meritorious Patron
I was chatting earlier with some guys who thought it might be a good idea to Auction the torture of Alanzo for cash :)

You know $50 gets him into whatever avatar you choose for a day, $100 gets his text automatically changed so whenever he types the word "I" or "me" or "Important" it gets changed into "The armadillo has spoken" or something. $500 gets him banned for a week!

What do you think?

I love this idea and would love to go with option number 2! :D
Thanks Natascha for taking over the reins and keeping this great forum going.
 

Emma

Con te partirò
Administrator
A big THANK YOU to all those generous ESMBers who have donated so far.

There is only a little over $800 left to go which is amazing.

:grouphug:
 

nozeno

Gold Meritorious Patron
Well I wouldn't call me "generous" but I tithed.

No Uncle Sam it's not a dirty word.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
A big THANK YOU to all those generous ESMBers who have donated so far.

There is only a little over $800 left to go which is amazing.

:grouphug:

It's $225 over now. $1,000 just magically appeared. You must literally be in tears, Emma. I love this crowd.

Paul
 

Kookaburra

Gold Meritorious Patron
Woo Hoo!!!!

:cheerleader: .:buzzin:

:dancer:


The party's on for another year!

:party:


Thank-you everyone who donated. And especially the anonymous contributor who threw in that last $1000. Awesome!


For anyone who was mailing a cheque, Emma did say an extra few hundred in the kitty for professional technical help wouldn't go astray.
 

Good twin

Floater
Wait! Wait! I still have some money in my checking account and some available credit on my cards. It can't be over! :omg:
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Emma, you might want to give this careful consideration and maybe pay the $105. I don't know if you've heard of Righthaven. I've read a few articles about them over the past few months.

This article is on Wired.com at http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/, entitled "The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits." It begins:

Call it ingenious, call it evil or call it a little of both: Copyright troll Righthaven is exploiting a loophole in intellectual property law, suing websites that might have avoided any trace of civil liability had they spent a mere $105.

That’s the fee for a blog or other website to register a DMCA takedown agent with the U.S. Copyright Office, an obscure bureaucratic prerequisite to enjoying a legal “safe harbor” from copyright lawsuits over third-party posts, such as reader comments.

There’s no better time to become acquainted with that requirement.

Founded in March, the Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content of the Las Vegas Review-Journal for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post, or even excerpt, those articles without permission. The company has settled about 60 of 160 cases for a few thousand dollars each, and plans to expand its operations to other newspapers across the country.​
Anyone with a forum or blog or website that allows reader comments really ought to read this.

Does it apply to Emma? She's Australian, but isn't the site hosted in the US? There is a lot of copyrighted content from all over the place posted to ESMB. I doubt if the CofS would sue for posting excerpts of copyrighted Hubbard material, but what is stopping them buying up copyrights from third parties — just like Righthaven does — and then suing based on those copyright violations? They could do this through their own third parties, and not in their own name.

I'm not joking. The CofS probably hasn't thought of this yet, and I just presented the idea, but some other true believer who has read articles about Righthaven might just as easily try the same thing in order to try and shut down the enemies of mankind on ESMB.

Paul
 

Emma

Con te partirò
Administrator
Yep, I'm going to take Paul's advice and go with this one. There are funds left over so we can use some for that.
 

Emma

Con te partirò
Administrator
Another update:

It turns out that the server I referenced in my earlier post is not actually the server we are on. We are on an older machine that was on offer last year. That machine cost $239 not $219 per month. (I really should have read my thread from last year). It has 2GB or RAM and 250GB of space.

This year they are offering a similar but more modern machine with twice the RAM for $219 per month. So I'm probably going to swap servers (again). This is a newer machine and faster (and cheaper - go figure). Seeing as I budgeted for $219 per month this is a good thing.

Currently we have $470 over target. This doesn't include Paypal Fees unfortunately so it's really about $360. I'm going to spend $105 on Paul's recommendation mentioned earlier in the thread. There is also a $99 set up fee for the new server. This leaves about $150 to spend on paid help desk hours which is nice to have as I prefer to get the experts to apply upgrades to the board and we'll probably have to do a couple of upgrades over the next year. They charge $50 per hour for standard upgrades and other work.

So it has all worked out very nicely.

Thank you again to those people who gave their hard earned money. I really appreciate it and hopefully there are thousands of Scios who are yet to wake up who will appreciate it even more as the years roll on.

In the next few days the board will be down for a few hours as we swap servers and apply the software upgrade. This will be quite a big upgrade and you can expect to see a few new features on the board when we come back on line.
 

Human Again

Silver Meritorious Patron
:shithitfan::vacuum::bricks::sparky::duck::pcpunch::banghead:Hi :wave:

Um... for all those who were around to hear Emma's wonderful dada da da da da da! of an introduction from me and were waiting for the :runaround: :hattip: and :bow:
but instead heard... :sleepy: nothing
I can understand if you felt a little ... :confused2: andf thought :wtf:

If anyone was wondering if I'd :runaway: because (...deleted...) :flasher:'d me
or i'f I'd :faint: :keelover: :ghost:

Well the :waiting: is over! :happydance:
:giggle: :violin:

I was :ill: with one of those childhood illnesses :bug: that are pretty serious when you are :old: - Hey! I was going to say mature! - sheesh, these emoticons have a life of their own don't they? - anyhow back to the :laundry:
no , it's not dirty laundry! knock it off emoties!
My hubby :hidecomputer: so I couldn't work,

:whipped: :love15: No emoticon's stop it :naughty: Do they do his to anyone else?

:booze: :pullhair: Emoties don't made me :angry: !

:megaphone: ok that's it! :slap:

:drama2: :tobed: :slap:

:write: Using words, banning emoties from my post, wrestling control back.... STORY ...
I was sick, unable to string two words together and missed my cue, the entire money drive (hey how good is it that we can afford to put $ in, there's no need to anyone to act against their will and it's what we all want to support!) - and basiaclly anything that happened for weeks. I have only just surfaced :sleepy: :rubeyes:

Phew, (emoties seem to back under control)
So I'm back, and dear, patient Emma can begin to take some time for herself and we can all continue to party - and Em might even be able to party too instead of just working her a$$ off keeping house for the rest of us . :floor:
Oh my God! I hear I missed a whole meltdown!
:shithitfan: :duck: You are a star Em :sparky:
I am here now to keep the party going so the road out of Scientology is maintained :vacuum: in the flavour that is unique to ESMB and which has served us all so well, and which will serve thousands as they flee the collapsing dinosour of dismay and deceit.

Thank you to all who welcomed me :buzzin: , and I apologuise to anyone I messed up when I kept hitting the edit button instead of quote, now that I have admin buttons :duh: - don't worry I also know where the back button is! Phew!

:hmm:, well, maybe I am still a bit :dizzy: fevered, judging by the rambling content of this post :whistling: but rest assured I am on board, and here to serve.
:hey:
 
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