[nearly original] An update on what I know from my end

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First off, THANKS Justin!
+1 for the 'buy from Justin' 'ads' being tacky. The fact that ebikes.ca is probably the best ebike store on the net is enough reason to buy from them. :)
That Justin is a first class, nice guy who's always willing to help is just ONE of the reasons for repeat business.
My problem with his 'investment' is that it will reduce the resources he has available, which would have been used to advance the e-revolution. (I doubt if he would have endangered his business's survival, but even a reduction in their stock would be a tragedy.)
When the time comes, we should try and find a way to relieve him of this unfair burden directly.
Bob
P.S. If it had been up to me (not as nice a guy as Justin), we'd be gone, and es would be in flame. :evil: :oops: Were lucky we have cooler heads to moderate us. (No reference to the moderators.)
P.P.S. I'm one of the poorest people on the forum, but I'd be willing to donate. I'm sure we could keep it self supporting without charging for membership or ads.
 
Joshua Goldberg said:
My 2 Cents
:roll: :roll: :roll: yeesh, next Don Hardon will chime in too...

Josh, don't you owe that 2 cents to the buyers you didn't pay back after your last business venture failed? Doesn't a failed business venture make you a questionable source for business advice? Since you are hounded off this board by folks that depise you (ie, those that know you) every time you post, why even voice an opinion at all? I guess you just need some attention, and getting beaten like a troll is better than being flat-out ignored.

Unlike you, I have faith in Justin to do right for the hobby, the forum, the industry, and himself. I have seen a number of slimeball vendors in this industry (yourself included) but Justin is different, he is one of the few whose heart is in the right place. Justin is the revered progenitor of the NA ebike movement that you (and you alone) fancy yourself to be, I guess that stings.

-JD
 
oatnet said:
Joshua Goldberg said:
My 2 Cents
:roll: :roll: :roll: yeesh, next Don Hardon will chime in too...

Josh, don't you owe that 2 cents to the buyers you didn't pay back after your last business venture failed? Doesn't a failed business venture make you a questionable source for business advice? Since you are hounded of this board by folks that depise you (ie, those that know you), why even voice an opinion at all? I guess you just need some attention, and getting beaten like a troll is better than being flat-out ignored.

Unlike you, I have faith in Justin to do right for the hobby, the forum, the industry, and himself. I have seen a number of slimeball vendors in this industry (yourself included) but Justin is different, he is one of the few whose heart is in the right place. Justin is the revered progenitor of the NA ebike movement that you (and you alone) fancy yourself to be, I guess that stings.

-JD

+1 :evil: STFU and pay what you owe.
 
Joshua Goldberg said:
My 2 Cents


Hey! This is great news guys! When a dirty crook doesn't like your system and plans, you know you're doing it the right way. :)

Thank you for contributing your moral indicator to ensure us all that we are doing the right thing. (not that we needed assurance though...)
 
liveforphysics said:
Hey! This is great news guys! When a dirty crook doesn't like your system and plans, you know you're doing it the right way. :)

ROFLCOPTER - The exception that proves the rule. :lol:
 
Don Harmon isn't a Member of E-S or he'd be in here peeing in the punch bowl.

Correction: It wasn't a Business Venture and to date 5 of the 9 have been repaid. I could have repaid the other 4 sooner but thanks to twits like Lesss that process will take many more months. Lesss essentially killed the Cow and then was surprised the flow of Milk stopped.

As for people not liking me. RU sure about that since I get loads of fan mail still and still operate my own Yahoo Group of like minded souls.

I have as much right to be here and voice my opinion as you. Was nice to see EMF is back. Sure hope all those months of psychiatric care helped him.
***********************************************

My 2 Cents[/quote]
:roll: :roll: :roll: yeesh, next Don Hardon will chime in too...

Josh, don't you owe that 2 cents to the buyers you didn't pay back after your last business venture failed? Doesn't a failed business venture make you a questionable source for business advice? Since you are hounded off this board by folks that depise you (ie, those that know you) every time you post, why even voice an opinion at all? I guess you just need some attention, and getting beaten like a troll is better than being flat-out ignored.

Unlike you, I have faith in Justin to do right for the hobby, the forum, the industry, and himself. I have seen a number of slimeball vendors in this industry (yourself included) but Justin is different, he is one of the few whose heart is in the right place. Justin is the revered progenitor of the NA ebike movement that you (and you alone) fancy yourself to be, I guess that stings.

-JD[/quote]
 
You guys are interesting. You won't take a hint.

EMF said it well: STFU about how to repay Justin for now. There will be a time.

Also if you want to send cease and desist orders, you must add this to your signature, like I did. Then you can battle in court and likely loose, but you will feel better for now:

Post licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

Read the clause closely when you signed up. You agreed to have your IP reside on an ES SQL file. You agreed to let ES do what they want with it. If you see it differently show me the clause, and we will debate it.
 
Thanks John, but I wouldn't say low life... just low awareness of the current situation, and I admit it is hard to put all the pieces together from the random posts here. There are fact involved, there are figures involved, there are also emotions involved. Justin is our head negotiator, plus the fact it is his cash, not ours.

We should give him the courtesy of dialoging with Trevor just the way he wants to. We shouldn't color the discussion. I am sure he will do well.

If it were up to me, the only subjects we would discuss today here on the board is the weather. :mrgreen:
 
I dreaded checking in today, afraid of what I would see. But low and behold, it seems that Justin has saved the day. :D

Thank you Justin. I can't wait to see what this joint evolves into.

When the time is right we need to try to pay Justin back. Maybe the best way to pay back for now is to be very tolerant of ANY chances made.
 
Joshua,

Remember that you're talking about a forum "owner" (in quotes because the meaning of that term is slippery in this context) charging rent to the folks who, for lack of a better analogy, wrote all the stuff in the library and made it worth visiting. When I pay a subscription fee for something, I'm thinking "what do I get for my payment?" and not "what do I have to contribute here that would be of value?"

The quality difference between commercial forums like V is for Voltage and fundamentally noncommercial forums like E-S or rec.bicycles.tech is pretty huge. The people who hang around the highly commercialized forums (ad-based or subscription-based) for very long are those who don't mind them, and who for whatever reason have little of value to offer.

There is no equitable way to pay a profit to the person who keeps the lights on, while charging a fee to the people who wrote all the material the lights are supposed to be illuminating. Robert Heinlein said "never work for free for someone who's working for money", and I believe that applies in this case. The best, most insightful and community-minded contributors understand this principle without having it spelled out for them, and they don't do it. That doesn't bode well for a thriving forum that converts to a commercial model. At best, you'll have an archive of all the good stuff from before the change, plus a sorry assortment of lesser activity afterward.

Chalo
 
bigmoose said:
You guys are interesting. You won't take a hint.

EMF said it well: STFU about how to repay Dustin for now. There will be a time.
If this is aimed at me too, sorry, tried to keep it within bounds, but you're right.
Re the weather, 46F, raining. I should go for a ride, even in the rain..... Lurking on ES is ALL I've done for 2 (or maybe 3?) days.
Bob
 
Bob... no one in particular, but to all of us, me included. This is like the teamsters negotiations without the cement shooz threat! :oops:
 
Would someone be willing to chronicle what has happened up to this point in one nice post? It would be really nice to just give people a link to it when they show up blathering about how we are making such a big fuss over some banner ads :roll: .

Also... there is a good chance that some of the more volatile content may start to get moderated - we need to get it written down and vetted before it disappears.

There are some very good writers here - does anyone volunteer?

-methods
 
Hi,

Big thanks to Justin for everything he is doing and trying to do!

A very wise man once said "you never lose when you give" and I'm sure thats true in your life in general and in this particular case.

Big thanks also to Big Moose for all of his wise advice.

Sincere thanks to Trevor for doing the right thing.
 
Thank YOU Justin_le!!!

Oh and the weather here is nice and over-cast, PERFECT for a ride, hopefully my body cooperates enough today to allow a nice long one! 8)
 
methods said:
Would someone be willing to chronicle what has happened up to this point in one nice post? It would be really nice to just give people a link to it when they show up blathering about how we are making such a big fuss over some banner ads :roll: .

Also... there is a good chance that some of the more volatile content may start to get moderated - we need to get it written down and vetted before it disappears.

There are some very good writers here - does anyone volunteer?

-methods


Now that someone competent has ftp access (plenty of offence intended to knightmb), what this site needs is a news page up front...so such a write up wouldnt just be buried in forum content.

This site needs a news blog on the front page...and i am sure great writers will contribute content weekly.

Justin get on the stick with some site improvements! :D It took knightmb 2 months under trevor to crank out a shitty mobile app. For a normal programmer that is one days work.

This site will flourish with someone competent at the helm with ftp access.
 
where the hell have you been, wasn't quite ready to start dredging the canal but the thought was there. We miss you on Yahoo.

You refer to the Archives of E-S re: what is in the past. I have very little use for what happened last year or 5 years ago and this is all that Intellectual Property everyone here is so concerned about. What Value is there in a post about how someone had a problem with a pulse modulated controller that went out of production several years ago or how some manufacturer ripped you off when that company no longer exists? All the schematics, drawings, video links from the past are of almost zero value now to anyone because the world moves on and isn't stuck in the past. Rick Kosiorek posted a few pages of pics showing one of my Sanyo/Rabbittool hub motors I was selling and well those pics were nice and the data interesting but those hub motors went out of production 5 years ago and so what is the Current Value in Dollars of those pages of pics/data?

You extract only the posts that are of a strictly technical nature and will have some connection to 2011/2012 and delete the rest and I'll bet you'll have no more than a few hundred pages of material that might have some value to someone.

What Value do you place on Posts saying it is 72 F outside today or some jerkoff in a car cut me off while I was riding my iZIP home. As for Intellectual Property a lot of Members here have double digit IQs who are here only because the Cartoons have not started on TV yet and when moving forward do we fight to retain posts from Members who contribute nothing of any value worth reading beyond their Humor value?

I like this crap re: the stuff I posted is mine and Trevor isn't going to make a buck from my Intellectual material. Good f*ckin grief give these guys a frontal lobotomy. Now if someone posted the schematics for the missile guidance system of the Raptor Fighter-Interceptor I could see them wanting that info protected but when you want crap like its 72 F outside today protected from Trevor something is wrong here.

Endless-Sphere is mostly a place you come to waste time shooting the sh*t with like minded souls and it is way better to be here than spending Quality Time with the misses. When a person is faced with a technical challenge they post asking for assistance and assistance is usually heaped upon them and that is good and as it should be.

When people come to E-S to blow off steam, take hostages or run people into the ground to make themselves feel better that happens too but is this the crap you want to keep in the Forum and fight to save it? Trevor could make a fortune selling a lot of E-S Posts to Howie Mandel for use in his stand up comedy acts. I know I get a chuckle reading a lot of what people here post and I have almost zero sense of humor. Oatnet alone could keep Howie Mandel's audiences in stitches laughing.

PS I'm not planning on hanging around E-S. Just dropped in to contribute my 2 Cents and make YPedal's day.


Chalo said:
Joshua,

Remember that you're talking about a forum "owner" (in quotes because the meaning of that term is slippery in this context) charging rent to the folks who, for lack of a better analogy, wrote all the stuff in the library and made it worth visiting. When I pay a subscription fee for something, I'm thinking "what do I get for my payment?" and not "what do I have to contribute here that would be of value?"

The quality difference between commercial forums like V is for Voltage and fundamentally noncommercial forums like E-S or rec.bicycles.tech is pretty huge. The people who hang around the highly commercialized forums (ad-based or subscription-based) for very long are those who don't mind them, and who for whatever reason have little of value to offer.

There is no equitable way to pay a profit to the person who keeps the lights on, while charging a fee to the people who wrote all the material the lights are supposed to be illuminating. Robert Heinlein said "never work for free for someone who's working for money", and I believe that applies in this case. The best, most insightful and community-minded contributors understand this principle without having it spelled out for them, and they don't do it. That doesn't bode well for a thriving forum that converts to a commercial model. At best, you'll have an archive of all the good stuff from before the change, plus a sorry assortment of lesser activity afterward.

Chalo
 
bigmoose said:
Also if you want to send cease and desist orders, you must add this to your signature, like I did. Then you can battle in court and likely loose, but you will feel better for now:

Post licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

Read the clause closely when you signed up. You agreed to have your IP reside on an ES SQL file. You agreed to let ES do what they want with it. If you see it differently show me the clause, and we will debate it.

To start with, I'm going by what I get by clicking the "Terms of Use" link at the login screen, which is also the same that you'll see by logging out and trying to register as a new user. The relevant section:

"You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any laws be it of your country, the country where “Endless-sphere.com” is hosted or International Law. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned, with notification of your Internet Service Provider if deemed required by us. The IP address of all posts are recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. You agree that “Endless-sphere.com” have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic at any time should we see fit. As a user you agree to any information you have entered to being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent, neither “Endless-sphere.com” nor phpBB shall be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised."

My understanding of copyright law (like you, I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, so take with an appropriately-sized grain of salt) is that you automatically own copyright to what you produce. No copyright notice or registration with the Copyright Office is required. This is US law, YMMV elsewhere. Unless there is a written transfer of copyright, you retain the rights. The TOS agreement says that our data will be stored, but makes no claim of ownership over it. Based on that, I believe that each of us individually retains full rights to everything we've written here. It's a little unclear what the law would say if we wanted to delete posts and the forum admin did not allow it - this may still be a bit of a gray area. It does not appear this will be necessary, but I suspect just the threat of copyright litigation from a group of members wanting to remove content would be a pretty large incentive not to test the law.
 
rhitee, you are right about an engineer giving legal advice... I am not good at that. However your post gave me the right words to google on. We all know stuff on the web is right. Here is an interesting summary:

http://www.forumdr.com/who-owns-forum-posts/67/

Who owns the content of a post posted on your forum? How do you respond if someone demands “their” posts be deleted and they threaten legal action if you don’t, but removal of the posts ruins a valuable thread? Where do you as the forum Admin or owner stand?
By default in the non-forum world, authors own the copyright on their own creations. This is an automatic right of the creator of the work, so technically the creator of the post is the copyright owner. However, by posting on a forum, you would have accepted the terms and conditions when you join a forum that covers this type of publication and what it implies. In posting you are accepting that your creative content (ie your post) will be published by the forum administrator and owner, and also that they have the right to edit or do what ever they like with your post as they see fit.
But does that mean that when material is publicly posted in a forum that this implies transfer of copyright ownership? The copyright lawyers can not even agree on this. The reality of the matter seems to be that there is no clear legal precedent yet made on this matter, and therefore until there is, then the issue will remain vague and uncertain. It has never been tested in court, let alone the issue of legal jurisdiction as to country of the Administrator, the country of the servers the forum is hosted in, etc.
What appears to be important is the terms that members agree to when they joined and whether they can withdraw the material they posted if they want to (eg when they leave a forum). To cover yourself, add into the forum rules something to the effect that ‘copyright to forum posts and other information become the property of the forum‘. In my forum rules I have strictly pointed out that all posts become owned by the forum. This gets politely pointed out to those making threats. I never hear from them again.

That's neat, nothing on record yet. So we can continue the campaign to the supreme court over ES and set the precedent. Perhaps we can have a bake sale to fund the effort! :D
 
And the T&C clause that says

As a user you agree to any information you have entered to being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent,

presumably means personal information, like name address, birth weight etc, and not forum posts. I assume that, because it says the information will not be disclosed without my consent. That can not be applicable to forum posts, surely. Which means the T&C says nothing about forum posts specifically, and as BM points out, it then comes down to precedent, of which there is none.

(oh, does US law have the concept of precedence?? I don't even know)

Eric
 
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