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-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Answers

It's 12;34 AM, eastern, seems okay now. Maybe they were putting in more pop-ups--I got three new windows of pop-ups as soon as I clicked on the old Currents Board. Ugh!

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

0735 eastern--down again.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

8:27 EDT -- still down

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

11:10 am eastern, still down.

Newnan, Georgia, Sent in by Priscilla P.

I saw what I thought was a leaf in my driveway, but as I got closer, I saw it was alive. It certainly is a wonderful example of mother nature's ability to camouflage.

[Invasion of the body snatchers?]

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Now if we could just implant micro-cameras and teach those things to fly over Chinese subs and come back. . .

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

LOL Old Git.... So True!

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

But getting back to ezboard. There seems to be nothing wrong with access to the ezboard support forums, which is odd. Reading those various forums, I see people getting more and more angry--and there are posts which indicate complaint posts are being deleted so that only positive posts remain. I'm now wondering if someone/ones got angry enough to hack ezboard or if it's just poor management. It looks as if those who are most angry are kids, i.e., parents will buty them computers but not fork over the funds for CSC and the popups are driving them nuts.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

ezOP posts: 504 (4/15/01 1:45:28 pm) Reply Easter Sunday connection problems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- The downtime was related to a failed network appliance with our ISP. We have had continous problems with this ISP and they are in fact, going out of business now.

We have already negotiated a contract with another provider and will be moving into their network next week.

We were actually aware of the problem last night, but was unable to find a contact in order to tell them to fix their problem.

We apologize for this inconvenience, but assure you that we have already taken the steps in order to get our network on a more reliable network.

Edited by: ezboard at: 4/15/01 1:53:45 pm

-----------------------------------

I agree with you, OG. Something's still fishy.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

But. . . but. . . but. . . ezboard changed providers about two-three months ago, didn't they? And now they're changing again?

Another thing I noticed on those forums is that the ezboard staff members seem to be getting snittier instead of using good PR skills and soft-soaping as many customers as possible. They are also now talking about doing away with the free service altogether. I assume at that point they will say, well, since we no longer have the advertising revenue from the pop-ups on the free members, you can either pay even more than you already do or put up with pop-ups for your $15.

I mean, think about it. What advertiser is going to keep paying for pop-ups if their sales aren't increasing?

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

What can I add, OG? Except maybe the Fat Lady is starting to warm up in the Green Room...

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Here's a response to that ISP problem announcement:

Tyrion the Gnome, Registered User, posts: 22, (4/15/01 2:11:42 pm)

Re: Easter Sunday connection problems

You know guys, I really like EzBoard. Basically the layout is good, basically it is user-friendly, basically it offers a lot of features and options and is overall a neat piece of software. If it is working, that is.

However before I am going to pay only a single cent for one of those "marvelous" CSC programs, you gotta get off your butts and fix your constant problems and keep your promises.

1. Already a long time ago you promised to set up a possibility for the Europeans to pay via earthlink or whatever the name of that company was. I don't see that anything has happened.

2. You need to fix your bugs. This cookie comparison somewhere down the board was really nice and funny and all that, but as every comparison it is limping. On both legs. Because your so called cookie is going to be eaten up by those bugs from the inside, and personally I don't like bug-infested cookies and I am not going to pay for them either.

3. Your constant downtimes and the times when the servers are really slow suck as well. This adds to the bad performance caused by the bugs I mentioned in point 2.

4. If you have a business manager hired and are actually paying him/her, I want to give you a good advice. Fire him, as quick as possible. Your whole business policy sucked lately. You have done everything possible to offend users and to make users lose faith in you. Almost every day you are developing some new "great" plans; in fact it happens so often that it is confusing.

My advice: Get your bloody act straight at first, and don't develop constantly new stuff and new ideas that, due to the buggy scripts, are build on sand anyway. And before you actually try to charge users, you had better give a better performance as you are doing it right now. THEN, and only then I am going to pay. I would like to stay with EzBoard, because I appreciate the basic idea and concept. But if it doesn't work out I have no problems giving my money to another service that is more reliable.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

I'm glad that you posted the above note, OG. I wonder how long it'll be before it's deleted. I'll be watching, not because I have a grudge against EzBoard, but because I think the mismanagement (I'm being kind, here) is reflective of what's going on behind the scenes at other operations. At least Yahoo dropped their porn expansion. I'll be interested to see if they're going to start charging the users of their "clubs."

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

One of the many factors bothering me is ezboard keeps comparing itself to Yahoo, Salon, NYTimes and the other dot.coms who are now asking for money. Those comparisons are invalid because all of those companies provide services beyond bandwidth and maintenance. They have researchers and writers to pay, for one thing. With ezboard the content is provided free by the customers.

Another little nagging thought: if they are managing now with only 15 people, when their membership is at its height, what were those other 30 people doing before they were laid off?

And I do hate it when ezboard keeps saying, "We provided these services for free, now it's time to pay us back." The service was not free, it was paid for by the advertisers (and if they could afford to employ 45 staff members, that must have been some good income). We had to put up with the advertising, just like we do with commercial TV.

I really did like the board and all the bells and whistles, but I prefer knowing where we'll be next week. BTW, anybody have any ideas what to do if Greenspun goes down and we no longer have access to the old Currents board? :)

What about that chatroom like Bok's? Anybody got the URL?

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Old Git,

When homestead was bought out by ??? the chat function stoped working. Bok's is DOA. :(

There's always that MSN chat that we used to run to for safety.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Believe MSN went Tango Uniform also! We could always go to an e-mail format for a short time. . .

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

If we go email format, we should have a code so that echelon and carnivore don't freak out.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Those handles are not on The List. :)

-- Anonymous, April 16, 2001