{"id":3848,"date":"2010-10-05T07:54:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-05T06:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3848"},"modified":"2010-10-05T08:19:20","modified_gmt":"2010-10-05T07:19:20","slug":"taking-the-mick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3848","title":{"rendered":"Taking the mick?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I shall keep this generic because I don’t want to embarrass anyone…<\/em><\/p>\n

We are complex animals, us human beings. We’re capable of being simple at times, but the naked truth is that we have more levels of – at times conflicting – personality that sometimes even our best friends don’t know us.<\/p>\n

And that’s part of the ‘being human’ thing, that’s part of what makes us tick.<\/p>\n

Just when you think you know that person at work, you discover some totally left-field thing about them that forces you to re-evaluate your entire perspective.<\/p>\n

It may be a good re-evaluation, it may be not good. My point is that an unexpected piece of information is revealed and you’re suddenly looking at a person who isn’t quite the person you thought it was.<\/p>\n

But it doesn’t only happen with people at work, does it? It can happen with anyone, anywhere, any time and, sometimes, for the most unexpected reason.<\/p>\n

You might think you know everything about me but…<\/p>\n

You may or may not know this, but I host websites for people. I do this as well as most of the commercial webhosting concerns – and better than some!<\/p>\n

My hosting is inexpensive, ultra reliable, provides a 24\/7 helpdesk (which, frankly, is so seldom used it’s actually gratifying) and has annual downtime which, for the current year, is being measured in units of 1 second.<\/p>\n

And, because I’m occasionally (as Ian<\/a> so elegantly put it in a recent email to me) soft, I will take a view on what my hosting service costs people.<\/p>\n

Some months ago I took on a young guy – he’s in his 20’s – as a hosting ‘customer’.<\/p>\n

He produces a daily conversation-based podcast and, due to a variety of reasons, he had run in to a number of issues with the company who hosted his podcast website.<\/p>\n

There were unpaid bills and, as corporates do when bills are outstanding, they took his website down. This had the effect of removing him – and his podcast – from the internet.<\/p>\n

Because I liked what he did, I offered to take him on.<\/p>\n

So I bought a new domain name for him, I set him up with a hosted website, I gave him unlimited webspace, I gave him unlimited bandwidth transfer and I gave him an FTP account and a bunch of email addresses.<\/p>\n

The key word here is ‘gave’; I have not charged him for any of these things, it never was my intention to charge him for any of these things and that’s an understanding that we both have.<\/p>\n

Had.<\/p>\n

Last night I visited his website, just to see how he was doing. While I was there I noticed that on every single page he has a funding widget.<\/p>\n

The text in this funding widget says:<\/p>\n

Running Costs:
\n<\/strong>It takes $1,000 per month to run (name of his podcast\/website). If you enjoy what we do, please think about supporting us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hang on one cotton picking moment!<\/p>\n

He produces a conversation-based podcast. What that means is he sits in front of a microphone and he talks.<\/p>\n

He has no costs.<\/p>\n

He has no Performing Rights Society licence to buy, he sits in the attic of his parents’ house and all of his content is self-produced.<\/p>\n

Anyone who listens to his podcast knows these facts.<\/p>\n

And for the grand sum of no pounds and no pence he has a free domain name, unlimited webspace, unlimited bandwidth, a bunch of email addresses and an FTP account.<\/p>\n

But he doesn’t tell his website visitors or his podcast listeners that he has these things for free.<\/p>\n

Instead of telling them this fact, he has put up a funding widget that says ‘it takes $1,000 per month to run’ his project.<\/p>\n

And yet he has, on a number of occasions, told his listeners that my organisation hosts his show.<\/p>\n

Therefore, by clear implication (in my head at least), he’s telling people that his hosting costs are $1,000 per month – not free as they actually are.<\/p>\n

Be honest folks.<\/p>\n

Am I justified to feel a sense of outrage at what he’s done?<\/p>\n

Do you think I have overstepped the mark by writing to him, telling him that my organisation is going to raise his hosting costs from \u00c2\u00a30.00p to $1,000\/month to keep in line with his funding widget?<\/p>\n

Do you think I should continue providing a service for nothing while he tells people that his product costs $1,000\/month to run?<\/p>\n

Come on, be honest.<\/p>\n

Because even now, 12 hours after discovering his funding widget, I am still fuming about this.<\/p>\n

You’re going to have to talk me down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I shall keep this generic because I don’t want to embarrass anyone… We are complex animals, us human beings. We’re capable of being simple at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}