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Two seconds of your time to help a poor shareware developer
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Scifience
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Feb 11, 2007, 06:24 PM
 
Quick favor to ask: please digg this story about SafariSpeed to help get some downloads (and registrations).

Digg - Speed Up Safari - Remove Page Loading Delay

I just had to spend $325 a month on top of my hosting bills for a Cisco firewall after we got hit with a nasty round of hacking attempts / DoS attacks (best guess at this point is that it was by some people who I got shut down for distributing illegal serials for the app and many others). I could really use the money from some extra registrations to help offset this cost...so I'm trying to drum up some publicity for SafariSpeed through Digg.

I'm not one to usually ask favors on forums, but... please! I'm sure I'll catch some flack for this, but thanks in advance anyway!
     
Atomic Rooster
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Feb 11, 2007, 06:41 PM
 
Hint...don't piss people off.
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 11, 2007, 06:43 PM
 
done and done
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 11, 2007, 06:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by Atomic Rooster View Post
Hint...don't piss people off.
I really wasn't trying to...it somehow seemed wrong to just let them get away distributing serial numbers not only for my software but also for tons of other stuff. But you're right. In hindsight, it would have been better to let it go. But instead I've had 70mbps of DoS traffic aimed at my IPs at different points over the last few days.
     
hickey
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Feb 11, 2007, 06:49 PM
 
dugged
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 11, 2007, 06:59 PM
 
jeebus, that thing really does work wonders. just paid for a license

-a
     
Peter
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Feb 11, 2007, 07:28 PM
 
didn't this use to be free?
we don't have time to stop for gas
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 11, 2007, 07:29 PM
 
Originally Posted by Peter View Post
didn't this use to be free?
Yes, it did. But then I started getting $500/month bandwidth bills, and it couldn't afford to be free anymore.

Each time I would release a new version, I would get ~30,000 downloads in a day or two. My share host kicked me out for using too many resources, and I ended up having to get a dedicated server. I'm paying $425 a month for the server, and now another $325 for this firewall.

Trust me, I'm not making a dime. I'm still spending about $200 a month of my own money to keep this running not including this new firewall. On a student budget, that's tough.
     
macintologist
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Feb 11, 2007, 07:47 PM
 
I tried it out and it didn't do anything for me. Most of the things you can do in SafariSpeed can be done with alternative freeware like Safari Enhancer

I dugg your story though. No harsh feelings
     
Doofy
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Feb 11, 2007, 08:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by Scifience View Post
Each time I would release a new version, I would get ~30,000 downloads in a day or two. My share host kicked me out for using too many resources, and I ended up having to get a dedicated server. I'm paying $425 a month for the server, and now another $325 for this firewall.
Why don't ya distribute via BitTorrent? They invented it for just this kind of thing.

Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 11, 2007, 09:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Why don't ya distribute via BitTorrent? They invented it for just this kind of thing.

Mainly because it isn't terribly easy to use, and the target market is users who are looking for a quick and easy way to make the changes. If you're comfortable enough to mess with opening ports for BitTorrent, downloading a client, configuring it, etc., chances are you'll just use the Terminal to apply the changes in the first place.
     
Doofy
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Feb 11, 2007, 09:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by Scifience View Post
Mainly because it isn't terribly easy to use, and the target market is users who are looking for a quick and easy way to make the changes. If you're comfortable enough to mess with opening ports for BitTorrent, downloading a client, configuring it, etc., chances are you'll just use the Terminal to apply the changes in the first place.
Ahhh. Oh well, it was worth a try.
Been inclined to wander... off the beaten track.
That's where there's thunder... and the wind shouts back.
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 11, 2007, 11:14 PM
 
Wow guys!

We did it! SafariSpeed made it to the front page of Digg! Thanks so much!
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 12, 2007, 03:13 AM
 
<snip> posting while drinking is bad
-a
( Last edited by brassplayersrock²; Feb 12, 2007 at 10:55 AM. )
     
Chuckit
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Feb 12, 2007, 03:21 AM
 
I like the apparent logic there. "This works fine for everybody but me. ****ING PIECE OF JUNK!"
Chuck
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"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 12, 2007, 03:25 AM
 
<snip> posting while drinking is bad

-a
( Last edited by brassplayersrock²; Feb 12, 2007 at 10:55 AM. )
     
torsoboy
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Feb 12, 2007, 04:01 AM
 
I think that is why you are supposed to try it before buying it. I think that is the normal route for sharware. Maybe your other app is a peice of junk because it can't work with this one?
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 12, 2007, 04:45 AM
 
so safari is a piece of junk??
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 12, 2007, 06:38 AM
 
Originally Posted by brassplayersrock View Post
i had to delete this thing. one of the features made uploading to facebook, imageshack etc impossible, and i do mean impossible. after i uninstalled and deleted, everything worked fine again
****ing piece of junk. i want my 8 bucks back ([email protected]) is my paypal account
-a
This is an issue with turning off the cache. Since your computer is unable to temporarily store images in the cache, it can't upload them. Any method you use to turn off Safari's cache will have the same effect - not just SafariSpeed. You want your money back, though, so I sent you a refund.

And yes, indeed, trying it before you buy is the idea.
     
Gossamer
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Feb 12, 2007, 10:29 AM
 
Originally Posted by Scifience View Post
This is an issue with turning off the cache. Since your computer is unable to temporarily store images in the cache, it can't upload them. Any method you use to turn off Safari's cache will have the same effect - not just SafariSpeed. You want your money back, though, so I sent you a refund.

And yes, indeed, trying it before you buy is the idea.
Yep, I let Scifience know about this issue quite a while back. I love the disabled page loading delay and disabled cache. My connection is fast enough that it works better for me this way. And once a week or so when I want to upload something to Facebook I spend an extra 3 seconds and open Camino instead.
     
mdc
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Feb 12, 2007, 10:46 AM
 
Maybe that would explain why I couldn't upload to imageshack
     
kmkkid
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Feb 12, 2007, 10:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by brassplayersrock View Post
i had to delete this thing. one of the features made uploading to facebook, imageshack etc impossible, and i do mean impossible. after i uninstalled and deleted, everything worked fine again
****ing piece of junk. i want my 8 bucks back ([email protected]) is my paypal account
-a

How old are you?
     
zerostar
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Feb 12, 2007, 11:22 AM
 
You could take the $325 and buy a PC and run an IPcop firewall, that would save you the monthly expense and probably a little more manageable with 3 or 4 nics in it.

There are also places to host your small shareware file on that could save you much of the cost of hosting if you would do mirrors or some such.
     
xi_hyperon
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Feb 12, 2007, 11:40 AM
 
You might want to read this.

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive � Amusing
     
RAILhead
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Feb 12, 2007, 12:03 PM
 
Spam?

Open Safari's preferences file at ~/Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.Safari.plist in a text editor and add these two lines somewhere inside the <dict> tag:

<key>WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay</key>
<real>0.25</real>

The default value is 1.0. Lowering the value will decrease the time Safari waits to render. Some side effects may be flashing page content as it loads, but it definitely feels faster. Now send me $4.
"Everything's so clear to me now: I'm the keeper of the cheese and you're the lemon merchant. Get it? And he knows it.
That's why he's gonna kill us. So we got to beat it. Yeah. Before he let's loose the marmosets on us."
my bandmy web sitemy guitar effectsmy photosfacebookbrightpoint
     
RAILhead
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Feb 12, 2007, 12:05 PM
 
Ahh, here's the blog text:

I just saw this article on Digg about how to “speed up Safari” by reducing the “page load delay” in preferences. In the comments are many testimonials like “Oh my gosh! Safari is so much faster now!” This just goes to prove how inaccurate people’s powers of perception are when it comes to measuring the performance of browsers. I say this because the preference in question is dead and does absolutely nothing in Safari 1.3 and Safari 2.0.

Keep your $4 and $8.
"Everything's so clear to me now: I'm the keeper of the cheese and you're the lemon merchant. Get it? And he knows it.
That's why he's gonna kill us. So we got to beat it. Yeah. Before he let's loose the marmosets on us."
my bandmy web sitemy guitar effectsmy photosfacebookbrightpoint
     
kernokerno
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Feb 12, 2007, 12:34 PM
 
done
     
Oisín
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Feb 12, 2007, 12:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by RAILhead View Post
Ahh, here's the blog text:

I just saw this article on Digg about how to “speed up Safari” by reducing the “page load delay” in preferences. In the comments are many testimonials like “Oh my gosh! Safari is so much faster now!” This just goes to prove how inaccurate people’s powers of perception are when it comes to measuring the performance of browsers. I say this because the preference in question is dead and does absolutely nothing in Safari 1.3 and Safari 2.0.

Keep your $4 and $8.
Just for reference, the app does more than just reduce page load time (which, of course, it technically doesn’t actually do anymore).
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 12, 2007, 01:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by xi_hyperon View Post
You might want to read this.

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive � Amusing
I already responded to that in the blog's comments. You can read what I said below:

Hi,

I’m the developer of this utility in question.

I honestly had no idea that this no longer worked in Safari 2.0. I have updated the product’s website to that effect, making it clear that this doesn’t effect the latest releases of Safari. The first version of SafariSpeed was released years ago when this did apparently actually do something, and the feature has stuck around. Not that it matters, but this hint in its command line form still gets passed around Mac OS X Hints and other forums on a routine basis.

If anybody who registered feels like they got ripped off because of this, I truly apologize. I had no idea whatsoever about this until just now. Please drop me an e-mail using the form on the website or send it to awarofka AT scifience DOT net along with the e-mail address you used to register and what payment method you used and I’ll give you a full refund. I hope, though, that you will still find the other features (disabling favorite icons, cache, interface change, PDF support, debug menu, which as far as I know still do what they are supposed to - Dave, want to confirm this?) useful.

Thanks,

Alex

My offer of a refund stands - ripping people off was certainly not my goal here. I honestly believed that this worked, as did everyone I talked to. The other features of the app work as intended, which Dave confirmed in a reply to my comment. He did note that the cache should not slow Safari down, but again, there is a lot of people who will claim otherwise which is why the feature is there.

And RAILhead, I was not trying to spam the forum. This is the first time I have posted anything remotely spammy since I joined years ago (unless you count asking for beta testers). I'm sorry if you feel that this is spam.
     
kmkkid
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Feb 12, 2007, 01:36 PM
 
Spam by any other name is still spam.

Begging people to help your wallet by advertising (submitting to digg) is spam, it's no different than the people who come on here and ask you to click a link so they can have a free iPod.

But, it's up to the mods.
     
bstone
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Feb 12, 2007, 01:45 PM
 
diggued
Emergency Medicine & Urgent Care.
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 12, 2007, 06:12 PM
 
just so everyone is clear, i was drinking a bit last night when posting, so yeah, my tirade was childish, and unlike me. i did however receive a full refund from scifience,(thank you btw) and in return for his niceness gave him a small donation.

-a
     
besson3c
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Feb 12, 2007, 06:40 PM
 
What kind of hardware does your dedicated server have? $400+ is a lot of money, have you shopped around?
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 12, 2007, 11:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
What kind of hardware does your dedicated server have? $400+ is a lot of money, have you shopped around?
It's hosted at Rackspace...they're not exactly the cheapest, but after a terrible experience with some other hosts, I decided to go with them.

500GB bandwidth, AMD Opteron Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 70GB RAID, 100mbit port, RHEL4. Nothing too crazy at all.
     
Peter
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Feb 13, 2007, 04:12 AM
 
so, how did you do after being dugg?
decent sales?
we don't have time to stop for gas
     
torsoboy
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Feb 13, 2007, 11:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by Scifience View Post
It's hosted at Rackspace...they're not exactly the cheapest, but after a terrible experience with some other hosts, I decided to go with them.

500GB bandwidth, AMD Opteron Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 70GB RAID, 100mbit port, RHEL4. Nothing too crazy at all.
Check out calpop (Dedicated Servers By CalPOP - Call Today!!) for a better rate and unmetered bandwidth. They are a pretty big company (for a private hosting business), and I know people that think they're great. We used them for co-location stuff in the past, but it was a hassle when we needed to switch out hard drives, etc. with them being 7 hours away. With a standard server that they provide for you and without the need of upgrading hardware all of the time they would be a good choice I think.

Note: To serve a piece of shareware you probably don't need 2 gigs of RAM.
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 13, 2007, 06:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by Peter View Post
so, how did you do after being dugg?
decent sales?
Yeah, made almost $1000. And only one person actually asked for a refund despite Dave Hyatt's debunking one of the program's main features (see http://www.scifience.net/blog/).

Thanks again for all the help!
     
Kevin
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Feb 13, 2007, 07:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by kmkkid View Post
Spam by any other name is still spam.

Begging people to help your wallet by advertising (submitting to digg) is spam, it's no different than the people who come on here and ask you to click a link so they can have a free iPod.

But, it's up to the mods.
Agreed. Not to mention he has been spamming this app in other places in this forum.

Do suckers really pay for stuff they can get for free?

He may be getting attacked because of these reasons.
     
Atomic Rooster
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Feb 13, 2007, 07:10 PM
 
Good for you. Then I won't have to mention that Onyx has this feature and is free.
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 13, 2007, 07:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
Agreed. Not to mention he has been spamming this app in other places in this forum.

He may be getting attacked because of these reasons.
Um, care to show me where I was spamming this here? I did a search for the name of the app and the only theads about it that I started were from a year ago or more. This is the first thread I have made about it in a long time. I'm not sure how this can count as spamming...

Also, the reason I was getting attacked was, as I posted above, because I got some hackers angry when I had their ISP chase after them for distributing serials for my program. If anybody would seriously attempt to hack a server because someone posts about an application they wrote a few times over five years, they have some serious problems. I don't even have a link to it in my signature, while many other people on MacNN do promote their websites in this way.
     
Kevin
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Feb 13, 2007, 07:16 PM
 
Originally Posted by Atomic Rooster View Post
Good for you. Then I won't have to mention that Onyx has this feature and is free.


BTW

Quick favor to ask: please digg this story about SafariSpeed to help get some downloads (and registrations).

Attempting to get people to dig up your story to get more money is spam.
     
Scifience  (op)
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Feb 13, 2007, 08:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
Quick favor to ask: please digg this story about SafariSpeed to help get some downloads (and registrations).

Attempting to get people to dig up your story to get more money is spam.
Maybe. I'm not going to argue that. I am going to argue this, though:

Originally Posted by Kevin View Post
Not to mention he has been spamming this app in other places in this forum.
     
brassplayersrock²
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Feb 14, 2007, 12:19 AM
 
it's called ignoring someone who is baiting you.
     
FireWire
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Feb 14, 2007, 12:50 AM
 
I think some people need to review their definition of "spam". According to Wikipedia:
Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, which are almost universally undesired.
So, a newbie that registers and post ads for Viagra or "Get Vista for 20$" are in fact spammers. That's not what I see here: I see a friend who asks his buddies to help him. We're a community, I consider we're all "friends" in a way. It's not like he has a post count of 1 and is linking to his paysite. He's asking us to help him by doing a little bit of word-of-mouth. When one of us makes something, we should be pround and encourage him.

If one of your friend had a band and set up a concert and called you to ask you to help publicize the event, would you reply "stop spamming my phoneline"?
     
Chuckit
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Feb 14, 2007, 01:38 AM
 
Originally Posted by Kevin View Post


BTW

Quick favor to ask: please digg this story about SafariSpeed to help get some downloads (and registrations).

Attempting to get people to dig up your story to get more money is spam.
Making pointless, insulting posts like that is being a bitch.
Chuck
___
"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
     
climber
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Feb 14, 2007, 01:38 AM
 
Kevin would!
climber
     
Kevin
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Feb 14, 2007, 08:12 AM
 
Originally Posted by Scifience View Post
Maybe. I'm not going to argue that. I am going to argue this, though:
Remember the conversation we had not too long ago about your app when you started spamming about it in the middle of a thread?

If not, I am sure I can find the thread for you.
     
Kevin
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Feb 14, 2007, 08:14 AM
 
Originally Posted by FireWire View Post
I think some people need to review their definition of "spam".
Spam is any UNWANTED/Off topic pushing of a product or service that the pusher is making money off of.

Had he posted it in the software forum it would still be spam. But atleast it wouldn't be off topic.

As a matter of fact HE KNEW he'd catch flack for posting this. (He said so in his first post) So he KNEW what he was doing was shady.

Not only that, I doubt Digg would approve of his artificially bumping his story up to get more hits.
     
FireWire
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Feb 14, 2007, 02:44 PM
 
I think there's a slight difference between a friendly "plug" and spam..

SPAM are impersonal messages, sent in bulk or unsolicited, from someone that doesn't know you and is only after your money. What I see here is a long time poster (over 1000 posts), asking nicely to help him to promote something he has done. I have a few friends who have bands and they are sometimes asking to go vote for them, or to put the word out about them. What's wrong with that?

By the way, there's not really "off-topic" messages in the Lounge.. and I don't see a problem with him digging his story.. many website (including MacNN) put a Digg link in their story for people to click on it.. A link on a frontpage or a link in a post is the same thing for me...
     
zerostar
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Feb 14, 2007, 02:48 PM
 
Yeah I don't mind this post as I have asked for help in the past, I'd hate to see this become a trend though...
     
 
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