The status of the subscription experiment

the problem I had was that (intermittantly) when sending more than 1 cookie back to the browser for a domain, IE would occassionally send back the first cookie it found rather than the cookie I had asked for.

I had set a "false cookie" in the login process as a place holder, and that cookie (just a place holder) was the root of the problem. I have taken great care to ensure that my scripts operate on a single cookie if at all possible.

Hope this helps!

see you,
Manny

---Josh

Pablo from Argentina

PD: Revise your code (the cache thing). When I login in from an article the page does not update and I can not to put a message until I refresh the not logged visited pages.

It might be educational to the mass audience to go into rough percentages of the various costs you listed below:
Averages
-----------
Salary
Employee Taxes
Health Insurance
Computer
Internet Connectivity
Office Space
Trade Show/Marketing
Legal/etc

Most people dont realize that the hidden costs of employment can be anywhere from 1.5 to 4 x the actual salary you are paid.

SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

I have other MSIE SSL / cookie solutions in my toolbox, email me if you want me to dig them up. I also have in my office a Windows 98SE notebook w/ IE 6, a Windows 98 desktop w/ IE 6, and a Windows XP workstation w/ IE 6 if you need some help testing. Being a web developer I have to keep lots of Windows platforms on hand for compatibility testing...

Sean Pecor.

Oh and in terms of reducing costs have you considered relocating? Canada offers a very high quality of life and is right next door. Those 1200 subscriptions at $5ea would work out to nearly $9480/month Cndn at current exchange rates. At that price you could have one very well paid staffer in Calgary or even two staffers.

You would not be the first Internet web site that made such a change. Securityfocus.com relocated most of their staff to Calgary precisely because you can live very well in Calgary on $70,000/yr Cndn. Some back of the napkin numbers makes that equivilent to about 740 subscribers.

Of course that is if you can stand living 1 hour from mountain resorts, hot springs and ski hills in the winter, hiking, boating and mountain biking in the summer, metropolitan atmosphere without the crime and crowding. Some of the mildest winters in the country. No earthquakes or hurricanes. If you have children the University of Calgary was recently declared the best University in Canada and the city has some of the best primary and secondary schooling anywhere. Also with the Supernet project going ahead in Alberta probably the fastest networks anywhere too. Did I mention broadband costs only $40 a month Cndn and is available everywhere in the city, soon the province?

Just a thought. ;)

BTW, I intend to subscribe soon.

In my personal case I love the editorials and kernel articles (and I'd continue subscribing at the current rate just for those), briefly read the security and language sections and skim most of the rest if nothing jumps out. If other user's preferences are similar for example that may suggest sections to trim if need be (and I hope it isn't!).

Just my 2c; thanks very much for a great publication,

Mark.

Still, in today's currency here in brazil, that's almost R$10!!! Each Real spends like a dollar here, and often more, so that's like paying U$10 a month. R$10 is about lunch for 2.

There are elections now that are battering the currency - perhaps soon things will settle down. Until then, I'll have to wait an extra week for lwn. And that in and of itself is not worth subscribing for in my view.

Rather, lwn is an asset worthy of keeping around. While its daily updates are not as verbose as another I can think of, its reputation is clearly untarnished. The weekly kernel section is my favorite, and something I look forward to. lwn is my sole source for a weekly kernel editorial.

In short, best wishes and hopefully soon I can contribute with more than words.

iksrazal

Yes, this is the first electronic publication I've ever subscribed to.

Yes, it's more than worth it.

Thanks for your efforts!

--pj

I flip between browsers all the time. I'm in NS4 right now. I use IE quite a bit, and Mozilla as well. (All under Win98)

Why? I like to get a fair view and feel for the web as many users get. I'm anticipating the new AOL being Mozilla based so I work it in to the rotation, besides, I really like Mozilla. (highlight word, right click, see Google search results)

I rarely use Linux on the desktop. I use Photoshop everyday, plus I get a truer average web view using the MS OS.

That's why this kid uses MS Windows and IE a lot of the time.

If you need further details, I would be happy to help you investigate. Just email me, the address is a valid one. I'm running IE5.5 under Win2k.

On a different note, congratulations on getting subscriptions going. I've been around from the beginning and would hate to see you go.

LWN is certainly worth 5 USDollars a month to me, even if this involves paying in a foreign currency, and so I have subscribed. But some facts
surrounding this subscription "experiment" are resonating with many things the community-currencies movement has been saying for years. Look at all the problems LWN has had with delayed payments/charges through Visa/MC/Amex merchant accounts and currency conversions. We also have many
third world readers for whom LWN has value, but the currency required to keep LWN going based in the US just isn't accessible in practice to these
readers. That doesn't mean there aren't ways those who prefer not to convert local stuff into dollars can contribute.

Part of the problem is the incompatibility between open-source Internet culture and closed-source monopoly kinds of money. The old-conventional stuff doesn't seem to be working very well in this context. Here we have a community of readers who are likely to have a fair bit of interest in each others' goods and services within a technologically adept marketplace, but a shortage of tickets to buy and sell with.

Community currencies start with an assertion, let's say by
Joe, using a database, that Pete or Mary has delivered $10 worth
on a particular date. So Joe's account goes down by 10 and Pete's
or Mary's goes up by 10. Just as banks create money out of nothing
when you borrow it into existence, CC money is credited into
existence with balances starting at zero and adding up to zero.
A CC centred around LWN might pay 10% of all transactions to
keep LWN going. If there are enough goods and services available
to meet LWN contributing staff and publishing needs, LWN might also
choose to accept some subscriptions paid using the community money
from 3rd world countries where there is a higher proportion of readers to
subscribers. CC users who have stuff to sell through use
of the CC advertise through a bulletin board or whatever.

This would give the editorial team access to our goods and services
traded by this means, in addition to the subsciption dollars which they need to pay bills and taxes wherever they want to live.

I have not found a reliable solution, but cookies with
no expiration set, (session dies on browser close),
typically work fine and are less likely to get stolen
due to some browser bug or XSS attack etc..

- cameron

create a community feel - there have been some suggestions already. mine is listing countries lwn.net subscription rate per capita.

why not review some commercial linux based software and then include that - similar to an advertising feature in a newpaper. That way the organisation gets a benefit (and has to pay for the privilege), but it is also an interesting read. For example I was just asked to install a time sheet and project management package for a company that was a 100% M$ shop until I helped them out ... I would give the install process 9.9/10 - 10 users for free, a good package, handy for companies and much better / more complete than some GPL community projects. Normally I am a 100% GPL "type" but I thought this co. had a good value product.