Not only that, there are potentially new customers that will not go to them following that stunt. I'm one of them.
Mike
-Morgan
BATMAN When something is free it is customer volume that pays the bills. I wonder what the drop in customers coming through that virtual door was/is. A local oil change place went from boom to bust when they dropped the free $14.00 touchless car wash with every oil change. I don't know what the cost of every carwash was to them but they are slowly recovering by reinstating it. Still, there were loyal customers they will never get back.
When something is free it is customer volume that pays the bills. I wonder what the drop in customers coming through that virtual door was/is.
A local oil change place went from boom to bust when they dropped the free $14.00 touchless car wash with every oil change. I don't know what the cost of every carwash was to them but they are slowly recovering by reinstating it. Still, there were loyal customers they will never get back.
I deleted all my photos and deleted the account. PB still sends me emails but I have convinced my email account to dump them in the Spam folder.
Many clueless do not realize these online companies are A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Essentially no way to get to a Real Person.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There is no reason to go back to them.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
And so how much does it cost to have your own web site and host your own photos?
I ask because I know nothing about that sort of thing, and apparently a few of you do that?
Sheldon
ATLANTIC CENTRALI'm not the sure the $99 offer is real? I clicked on the link in the Email, and tried to email the customer service email on the page explaining the new offer, and my mail was returned undeliverable. That returned mail page had an attachment I did not open........... Also, from that page, link buttons to other plans or what should have been back to the Photobucket main page, did not work at all? Is the Email a scam to get you to open that attachment on the returned mail? From the photobucket main page, if you click on "plans", you cannot find the $99 offer as decribed in the Email?
Hi Sheldon:
I had the same experience. My message to the website listed on the offer bounced back too. I decided to go to their home page to see if I could find another email address and I did. When I sent a message to that address I got a response back that said the $99 offer was legitimate. Looks like they are pretty messed up if they can't even get their email addresses figured out.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Well Sheldon,
That depends on locale. You can buy a cheapo server $300 and pay about $100/year for a static IP and dns entry. Then depending on your internet connection. Where I am 100 mbit/sec is ~$200/month. But I would imagine that would handle all model railroading enthusiast needs. In an area where they offer fiber it would be a lot cheaper and faster.
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!
So ...
Your wife cheat's on you, you get divorced. She get's all your railroad stuff ( even though you've had it before you met her )
Then she "play's nice", and says ...
"For $100 you can have me back."
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ____-_____ MIND ???????????
There are NOT enough bad word's in the English language to cover this "Dispicable" act !!!
Photo bucket is DEAD ! I pity the fool's who would go back.
Just look up ANY thread from a year ago and tell me what you see.
You think my response is "Hostile" ?
I would rather have my teeth drilled while waiting in line at the D.M.V. than go back to Photobucket !
Rust...... It's a good thing !
DigitalGriffin Well Sheldon, That depends on locale. You can buy a cheapo server $300 and pay about $100/year for a static IP and dns entry. Then depending on your internet connection. Where I am 100 mbit/sec is ~$200/month. But I would imagine that would handle all model railroading enthusiast needs. In an area where they offer fiber it would be a lot cheaper and faster.
Thanks Don.
We have Fios fiber, 50 mbit/sec, $65 a month. We could get faster for about $100.
So to host my own photos I would have to spend $400, spend more per month, learn a bunch of stuff I don't know much about, invest a lot of time I don't have?
I understand it would do other stuff - stuff I don't need/want to do.
OR, I can struggle with learning some new free site, again wasting time I don't have, which may or maynot remain in business, or may start charging as well (still not sure how they make money?).
Or I can pay photobucket for their service which for me has always been reliable and easy to use........
The co-founder of one of the largest privately held companies in the US, very successful for some 60 years, in the fortune 500, once said "Everytime someone somewhere gets something for nothing, someone else somewhere does something for nothing - how much can you afford to do for nothing?".
There is no question Photobucket handled things poorly, but unless someone has seen there books, or is otherwise an expert on their type of business, it seems unfounded to assume you know what their profit/loss situation is.
To the earlier question of the cost of building the internet, yes it was some years ago, and yes advancements in equipment have allowed the internet to grow exponentially with only minor upgrades to the "power side".
But 18-20 years ago, as this was all starting, I wired several server hubs in the Baltimore area. One, located in downtown Baltimore, required a 3 million dollar upgade in the electrical service to an eight story office building so that two floors could be filled with servers.
This location was necessary because it is near hospitals, government buildings, businesses, banks, etc, who needed these new and upcoming services.
To provide the necessary power the incoming electrical service had to be increased from 1200 amps @ 480 volts to 4,000 amps @ 480 volts. The existing power company transformer vault under the street that fed the building was not large enough for the new transformer.
So, the basement of the building was dug out deeper. High voltage conduits were run below the new concrete floor as needed to supply new high voltage (4,160 volts) equipment in the basement and a series of transformers were installed in the basement to step the power from 4160 to 480.
For those of you not familar with this sort of thing, imagine 6" steel pipes with wires in them so big you can barely wrap your hand around them feeding into metal cabinets that look like refrigerators on steroids containing meters, fuses, switches, etc. 6-8 such cabinets bolted together in a row, and then feeding into a series of transformers that would pretty much fill up any average room in your house.
We had to unload these pieces from a flat bed truck on busy city streets, under the light rail overhead, move them on to the sidewalk, lower them into a sidewalk "hatch" into the basement, move them on dollies to their locations, rig them into place, pull wire, hook them, etc. The typical cabinet weighs 500 to 800 lbs.
Then new wiring had to be run from the basement to the floors that would hold the servers. Months and months of dangerous work in less than ideal conditons, and millions of dollars........
Repeated thousands of times around the country to prepare for the "information age".
Not to mention millions of miles of wire and fiber cable......
Another project I did - rewired one public high school to network every class room and upgrade power wiring for computers - 6 men, two years, mostly night work, much of it crawling around in 4' deep crawl space running conduit and pulling wire.
I think that project was about 2 million.........
Now think every hospital, office building, the infrastructure of every major internet provider, cable companies, the phone company............
But what do I know, I'm just a hick with a pickup, and some little trains without brains.......
Little Timmy So ... Your wife cheat's on you, you get divorced. She get's all your railroad stuff ( even though you've had it before you met her ) Then she "play's nice", and says ... "For $100 you can have me back." ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ____-_____ MIND ??????????? There are NOT enough bad word's in the English language to cover this "Dispicable" act !!! Photo bucket is DEAD ! I pity the fool's who would go back. Just look up ANY thread from a year ago and tell me what you see. You think my response is "Hostile" ? I would rather have my teeth drilled while waiting in line at the D.M.V. than go back to Photobucket !
So, going by your analogy, who in their right mind has there only copies of their photos on a photo hosting site? To be lost when they fold up shop or charge too much?
No matter about my use of photobucket or any other site, every photo I have is on my hard drive and backed up several other places.
The real loss is wasted time.....
ATLANTIC CENTRALNo matter about my use of photobucket or any other site, every photo I have is on my hard drive and backed up several other places.
I have done the same, so all it takes is time to post the photos to the forums again.
Perhaps the real question is "Do we need to spend the money to restore photos to old posts?". I'm not seeing any requests to re-post photos from old threads. That would seem to make paying Photobucket to restore the images a waste of both time and money.
Sheldon,
I pay around $ 120 per year to an internet host for unlimited bandwidth and all kinds of bells and whistles. I host three sites there including my train site. There are reliable hosts that charge much less than mine does, I had to go with the premium package to get certain advanced options that most users wouldn't need.
Hosting pictures on your own site would certainly be more work than PB, but not an insurmountable project once you have figured out how you are going to deal with the FTP software/code on your site.
I like the way MRH handles this with free server space on their site to host pics posted in their forums.
My PB pictures are still visible in posts - they haven't cut me off yet. I'm wondering if they aren't changing their mind and are leaving stuff up so they won't be known as the company that broke forums across the web (a little late for that).
Guy
see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site
hon30critterPerhaps the real question is "Do we need to spend the money to restore photos to old posts?". I'm not seeing any requests to re-post photos from old threads.
That's contrary to the experience on the Trains and Classic Trains forums, and of course to the somewhat different situation at RyPN restoring lost photos in their articles section. The difference there is that the original posters were willing to go through and edit all the post links to new and better servers; one poster changing something like 734 separate links (and of course uploading each linked image to hosting first). I will go on record as saying I'd like to see every one of those photobucket images eradicated from posts here, to the point where we might begin to forget there was ever so wrongheaded an exercise. (If unwilling to repost all the images, at least link to a placeholder that indicates why the images are actually missing ... I'll bet there are some pretty good memes out there that get the message across.)
Yes, paying Photobucket anything for anything that will appear in posts here, considering the alternatives, is a waste of everything but the time spent doing the one-time -- what was the phrase from 'Word Processor of the Gods' -- deletion from our lives.
OvermodThe difference there is that the original posters were willing to go through and edit all the post links to new and better servers; one poster changing something like 734 separate links (and of course uploading each linked image to hosting first).
I'm not sensing the same desire to replace the lost images here. Has anybody gone to that trouble? I've thought about doing it but I'm not sure that the time and effort required would be worth it.
hon30critterI'm not sensing the same desire to replace the lost images here. Has anybody gone to that trouble?
GRRRRR, the Bear.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Being an old man, I don't know much about photobucket but, this reminds me of the Union Pacific's licensing debacle of the mid 1990s. They also got hit with such a "dirty blizzard" that they dropped the whole mess and simply gave the licenses away.
ATLANTIC CENTRAL So, going by your analogy, who in their right mind has there only copies of their photos on a photo hosting site? To be lost when they fold up shop or charge too much? No matter about my use of photobucket or any other site, every photo I have is on my hard drive and backed up several other places. The real loss is wasted time..... Sheldon
Alton Junction
richg1998Many clueless do not realize these online companies are A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Essentially no way to get to a Real Person.
Wierd, because Doctor Wayne wrote this yesterday:
doctorwayneWhile I agree that their new policy was very poorly introduced, and is outrageously priced, I can't say enough good things about their support staff. They've always been quick to respond, very helpful, and very polite, too.
Doctor Wayne either figured out how to get to a real person or is also AI. Really the only two options I could see here.
hon30critter Overmod The difference there is that the original posters were willing to go through and edit all the post links to new and better servers; one poster changing something like 734 separate links (and of course uploading each linked image to hosting first). I'm not sensing the same desire to replace the lost images here. Has anybody gone to that trouble? I've thought about doing it but I'm not sure that the time and effort required would be worth it. Dave
Overmod The difference there is that the original posters were willing to go through and edit all the post links to new and better servers; one poster changing something like 734 separate links (and of course uploading each linked image to hosting first).
On another forum I post on, for a totally different subject matter (GRAVELY garden tractors), users cannot edit posts after about 1 hour.
And I have a seven year, 62 page running instructional thread, the 2nd most viewed thread in that section of that forum.
So replacing all my photo links would require administrator help, would take dozens of hours, and the loss of that info would be a loss to that community.
I'm glade 98% of the photos I'v posted on other forums are from my picture files. They are still up. I do not like to depend on others (PB) to control what I do and can't do. Still wish this Forum would let me upload pictures directly from my picture files and not have to link from another location, (a $middle man$). Tired of looking at that PB black speedometer. I have a very small amount of pictures on Flicker.
ATLANTIC CENTRALWe have Fios fiber, 50 mbit/sec, $65 a month. We could get faster for about $100. So to host my own photos I would have to spend $400, spend more per month, learn a bunch of stuff I don't know much about, invest a lot of time I don't have?
Your Fios terms of service prohibit running a server on a residential account.
From Verizon Online Terms of Service
" You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server."
Anyone interested can find the whole document here:
http://www.verizon.com/about/sites/default/files/Internet-ToS-09122017-ENGLISH.pdf
I have the right to remain silent. By posting here I have given up that right and accept that anything I say can and will be used as evidence to critique me.
carl425 ATLANTIC CENTRAL We have Fios fiber, 50 mbit/sec, $65 a month. We could get faster for about $100. So to host my own photos I would have to spend $400, spend more per month, learn a bunch of stuff I don't know much about, invest a lot of time I don't have? Your Fios terms of service prohibit running a server on a residential account. From Verizon Online Terms of Service " You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server." Anyone interested can find the whole document here: http://www.verizon.com/about/sites/default/files/Internet-ToS-09122017-ENGLISH.pdf
ATLANTIC CENTRAL We have Fios fiber, 50 mbit/sec, $65 a month. We could get faster for about $100. So to host my own photos I would have to spend $400, spend more per month, learn a bunch of stuff I don't know much about, invest a lot of time I don't have?
And there you have it, even more expense and more stuff I know too little about.
I'm a professional at what I do, and I am willing to pay professionals for what they do.....
Ok, it has been mentoned about the cost of installing servers was X, I hope you relize that those servers were opsolete, probubly on day one. A modern server over lets say 20 years would be 2,129,088 times capasity of one back then and that is not even considering other factors. I hope you don't think Photobucket still owns their own servers, they may but I doubt it. You also may not know that they disrupted e-bay sites, amazon sites and millions more or that they have another free site (or more) in their family.
BMMECNYC...Doctor Wayne either figured out how to get to a real person or is also AI. Really the only two options I could see here.
Well, I'm certainly not "artificial", and it's probably best that I don't address the "intelligent" part at all.
I was seriously considering abandonning photobucket when my "grandfathered" status expires, but, in my opinion, their $99.00/year option wouldn't be all that out-of-line, considering the ease of use. If I did opt out, I wouldn't likely bother going to another provider...I enjoy sharing photos because it's probably the best way to provide answers to questions, but it takes a lot of time, too.
As for rebuilding threads, I've done it extensively on Big Blue when our "Gallery" (an in-forum hosting site for photos posted within the forum) was removed. Photos posted there now can be from a site such as photobucket or Flickr, etc., or they can be added as attachments, although that requires the user to first re-size the photos - not that difficult.We also lost a lot of photos there when some technical difficulties arose - don't know the cause or details, but there were several threads there where the photos disappeared, but their identification remained visible. The one I remember best was a real-time exchange between a veteran modeller (the late biL Marsland, also a member here) and a relatively new, but very accomplished and committed member at Big Blue. The latter built a large outbuilding for his layout and proceeded to duplicate scenes in his area - photos of the prototype locales and photos of the modelled version were stunningly similar. However, he needed a backdrop, and while a commercially-made photo backdrop, even as large as might have been required, was a possibility, biL suggested that it be painted. The ensuing back-and-forth was possibly the best example I've seen of a well-skilled teacher with a talented and willing student (who had no prior knowledge of the subject), all played out before an enthralled on-line audience. That exchange went on for several pages, and anybody who cared to look was learning, too.Anyway, I got the photos from the "student" and labouriously re-inserted them into the thread in their proper places, all re-sized and added as attachments. Some time later (don't recall how long, probably 'cause I don't like thinking about it), more technical difficulties and the pictures were gone completely - no trace of them that would allow replacement.
As for back-ups of our own photos, sometimes even that doesn't escape technical glitches. My old computer was beginning to fail (still running Windows XP) and I was fortunate to get a new computer from my brother, so began transferring photos and documents, much of it to either discs or flash drives. I stumbled across a couple of items that I had overlooked, so plugged in an almost-full flash drive, and attempted to add those items to it. However, the computer didn't recognise that the drive had been plugged in, so I plugged an empty one into another port and transferred the items without difficulty. I then removed the almost-full one, and before putting it away, wanted to see something which I knew was on it. I quickly discovered that the key words were "was on it"...as in "but no longer is". Totally gone, not in the flash drive, not in the old computer, either. I'll be taking both for a professional assessment of what might have happened, but I'm not hopeful about that, either.
There are a few of my own threads on Big Blue that I intend to redo with attachments, just in case I do quit photobucket, but since things there move more slowly (smaller membership, so you don't have to dig too far back to find useful articles) than here, where posts drop off the first page fairly quickly, it's probably worthwhile. The "Search" function there also does actually function fairly well, so it's easier to find things than it is here.
While I'd like to think that I provide useful information and photos for the enjoyment and edification of others, I try to keep in mind that it's not really important if it survives and not always worth the time and effort to ensure that it does.
Wayne
Photobucket made thousands of enemies when they changed their policy so I imagine their quest to bring people back is falling on deaf ears.
Buzz off PB.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
ATLANTIC CENTRAL And so how much does it cost to have your own web site and host your own photos? I ask because I know nothing about that sort of thing, and apparently a few of you do that? Sheldon
It costs me $60 a year for my web hosting. But my provider has a plan for $30/yr that would easily fit most people's photo posting. At one point I actually was running two different web sites on mine which is why I even upgraded from their most basic plan which is only $12/yr. Now I only have my one site, so I suppose I could back it down.
Depending on what size photos you post, even the $12/yr plan might be sufficient.
Domain names are about $10-$15 per year to register.
I use an old version of Dreamweaver to maintain my site, so there is the content on my provider's server, a complete coppy of it on my local machine, which is backed up to my server, and all my pictures are also in the picture folder on my server which is replicated across at least 3 physical drives in the server plus backed up to an outside backup provider. Even if my web provider goes belly-up tomorrow (but I've been using them for at least 15 years now), my entire site won;t go away, and when I would re-establish it with another provider, all my broken images would be restored because the domain name is MINE.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
We are getting a bit off topic and I'm not going to argue your contribution to the work back then. But today's backbone providers and major companies are extremely sensitive to operating cost. They will upgrade networking equipment and servers if it delivers better efficiency. And the total estimated power draw hasn't increased that much with the exception of a few outliers which are now stablizing. Now that company growth has moderated. Intel makes most of their money selling chips that consume a lot less power to companies even though they aren't really faster.
And setting up your own server is a trivial task for a computer engineer like me. Install Windows. Set up port forwarding on the router. Install is and then choose among the home brews for image web servers. The hardest part is getting the site certificate and dns. Like I said it's a half days work.
$100 a year might be alright for a business, but I'm moving everything to Imgur since it's free and fast. Most of my major photos are moved now.
_________________________________________________________________
DigitalGriffin Sheldon, We are getting a bit off topic and I'm not going to argue your contribution to the work back then. But today's backbone providers and major companies are extremely sensitive to operating cost. They will upgrade networking equipment and servers if it delivers better efficiency. And the total estimated power draw hasn't increased that much with the exception of a few outliers which are now stablizing. Now that company growth has moderated. Intel makes most of their money selling chips that consume a lot less power to companies even though they aren't really faster. And setting up your own server is a trivial task for a computer engineer like me. Install Windows. Set up port forwarding on the router. Install is and then choose among the home brews for image web servers. The hardest part is getting the site certificate and dns. Like I said it's a half days work.
Don, I said in that post that I realize that improved hardware has offset increases in power needs - but it all had to be built in the first place, and it requires maintenance.
And if I wanted a web site I would pay someone like you, not struggle through it on my own.
I have a great IT guy.
But I don't need or want that in my life. I have no desire to put my life, or my business on the web.
My business would not benefit from a web page, and I will repeat, I have no interest in having a personal site.
So, even at $400, it sounds like I am both TIME and money ahead with Photobucket.......my time being much more important......