Has the world moved beyond dialup?

[Joy A]

There are many areas of both of our countries, mostly rural, that do not even have the opportunity to acquire high speed internet.

Yeap, you be right. There are lots of areas just a few miles up the hill around my little town that don't have the opportunity for broadband/high speed. It's been an issue up here for quite sometime.

[Time K]

You musta been outside for a looooong time Mike! FiberglassRV and Retirement, posted
Jul 28 2008, 09:44 AM

Hooo boy....that can't be good!

[Frederick L. Simson]

As to the question of dial up. There are many areas of both of our countries, mostly rural, that do not even have the opportunity to acquire high speed internet.

I know several people in Southern California (Imperial County) that would almost pay any price for high speed if they could get it. They've tried everything available; even satellite, without success.

NetZero is now running TV ads in this area for dialup for those who can no longer afford Broadband.

[Bigfoot Mike]

I did this a few times years back and was asked to stop ostensibly because it made image loads too slow for dialup users to "view".
Of course it makes it even harder for dialup if they must "upload" instead of link.

The whole point of my post was to bring this to your attention and to see if all the moderators still concur that you would rather have images uploaded instead of linked.

Sorry to be of trouble
Sorry I make Bill feel so old

Ron

PS all of the owners other 12 sites allow image inserts from external links

I deleted the icon for a few reasons.
1) Sometimes the person posting is stealing bandwidth from a site just to show a tool or what ever.
2) People don't respect the size limitations or are lazy and post photos 23 inches wide which screws up the website layout, upload speeds and causes people like me on air cards to burn up Verizons bandwidth limits unnecessarily.
3) Often within a short time the links fail and we have broken links all over the website. Then we get moderator calls to fix or find the link.
When I owned the website, I had an exhaustive discussion with all twelve moderators about it. We decided to delete the icon and give people plenty of space for photos with NO limitation on quantity.

I believe the size could grow to 800 pixels wide maybe. Here again, how long would it take for people on dial up or aircards and what is the benefit over what we are doing?

One last point I would like to make [b]very strongly is that you may have noticed, FiberglassRV.com comes up number one on Google in 24 categories. This is no accident. I programmed in many features, one of which is SPEED of page loading. Add large obese photos and you kill that advantage, and for what?

Mike Sanders (previous website owner and designer)

PS: At one point my BANDWIDTH cost me $50/mo because another RV webmaster was uploading ALL his photos to this site and then doing as you say, linking to his site. He never offered to help cover the overhead. He was Flat Out Stealing from me. Ron, your logic of downloading and uploading from a copyrighted site or linking photos from a copyrighted site is stealing both bandwidth and in some cases art work. You of all people should understand taking photos without permission is not right. Yes, I feel strongly about this.

[Roy in TO]

There are many areas of both of our countries, mostly rural, that do not even have the opportunity to acquire high speed internet.

And some of us have High Speed connections, that state high "up to" speeds, yet operate at dial up speeds especially when it rains.

[ronsmith100]

I deleted the icon for a few reasons.
1) Sometimes the person posting is stealing bandwidth from a site just to show a tool or what ever.
2) People don't respect the size limitations or are lazy and post photos 23 inches wide which screws up the website layout, upload speeds and causes people like me on air cards to burn up Verizons bandwidth limits unnecessarily.
3) Often within a short time the links fail and we have broken links all over the website. Then we get moderator calls to fix or find the link.
When I own the website, I had a exhaustive discussion with all twelve moderators about it. We decided to delete the icon and give people plenty of space for photos with NO limitation on quantity.

I understand your reason but disagree with your rational.
Rather than go through your responses point by point, I'll leave it thus:

You sold your site to Andy who owns dozens of - FOR PROFIT - sites, NONE of which kill linked images as you do here.
IRv2.com (also owned by Andy) which is ten times larger than this site allows linked images.
RV.net which is fifty times larger than this site also allows linked images.
One would think that they know what they are doing!

In fact, the ONLY other site I can find on the entire internet that does what you do here is casitafoum.com which is only 1/10th of your size.

So, I originaly made this post only because I was once told that the reason for not allowing linked images was because of dialup considerations. Now that we know that this is not "really" the reason I was hoping that the new admin would reconsider. But I am now absolutely sure this will not happen here even if Bill wets his pants.

As I told Donna, you are the admin and whatever you say goes.

Ron

[Donna D.]

Ron, you've obviously given this a lot of thought and done some research. So, how would you solve the dilemma we have when links die.. especially if linked to pictures? See the top post on this page. Often, without the picture the text in a post would be meaningless. Membership fluxes here. Members drop out overtime, without pictures those members posts become nearly irrelevant. You mentioned Lindy. If Lindy had linked all his pictures here, instead of embedding, and Webshots goes down... So, aren't we better off having pictures embedded here for all time? At least here on FiberglassRV we have a measure of control. I don't especially like it when members post text, then post a link to a picture archive. But usually the text makes sense without the link.

To me, this is the number one reason we DON'T link pictures.

BTW: I don't think Andy owns RV.net, just to keep the record straight.
WhoIs Lookup

[CliveAlive]

Good discussion.

I just went to www.irv2.com and clicked on CG Photo Reviews
at http://www.irv2.com/reviewpost/index.php which at the time of posting is a dead link!

[Donna D.]

It's been suggested to close this topic as we've covered all the bases and the poor horse has been beaten to death.

The folks in the backroom do hear what's been suggested and will take everything said under advisement. As it stands right now, with this software, we are going to continue to stay the course. Please no linked images and embed pictures at 600 pixels wide. If I had a crystal ball, I could tell you when these things might change.

In the meantime, everyone enjoy yourself here at FiberglassRV!