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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: carranza2 who wrote (73680)4/29/2011 5:50:30 PM
From: Maurice Winn1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217710
 
<How does Zenbu make money? > People buy data on-line, which Zenbu sells them and splits 50:50 with the provider of the broadband. Even if the providers give away access vouchers free, there is a little bit of data bought directly on-line [neighbours, people parking outside to check email etc, middle of the night people when reception desk is closed]. About 8% of the data used is bought on-line, [6% in winter and 12% in summer], which is enough to pay the servers which are happy to work day and night for just a bit of electricity. It's easy work for them - running at 0.5% of capacity or something. They like to be kept cool too, and safe, so they live at maxnet.co.nz "Tame the Machines" is Maxnet's motto, which I like.

Funnily, one of our problems initially was the question, and people still ask, "How do you make money?" People are so used to being charged heaps by telecom companies that they have trouble understanding how little money it really takes to run such things. It seemed too good to be true; "If it's too good to be true, it probably is". But we have lots of street cred now. In some towns, it's hard to avoid a Zenbu signal such as Kaikoura and Paihia. Put "Kaikoura" in the "Map of Zones" - that's my favourite. zenbu.net.nz

Zenbu is highly scalable. The more the merrier. Just clone servers and plug them in. There are server hosting businesses around the world. Anywhere can do it. I took a Zenbu router to Australia 3 years ago and the motelier allowed me to plug it in so I had internet. Somebody found the signal, bought a credit and used it.

There is also a little bit of advertising on the site which makes some money [enough to cover the cost of Zenbu advertisements elsewhere].

It's MUCH more fun than that gambling on gold [GG], that atavistic aberration. GG is not even a zero sum game. One of the main reasons I didn't buy at $323 was that they wanted to charge 10% in and 10% out. I would then have the dubious pleasure of storing the stuff safely somewhere.

As a child, I collected silver 3d [in an ammunition pouch my father gave me - he had it in WWII]. Somebody stole it. I had quite a stash. That was a cheap lesson. I also buried some money in the garden once, in a can, but couldn't find it. I realized only years later than probably my brother or somebody saw me out digging, then went along later and stole it. Or possibly I just couldn't remember where it was.

As the Aztecs and Incas found when the Spanish paid them a visit, gold gets conquerors excited. Having shiny hats to wear and ornaments on the walls is splendiferous, but it can attract the wrong sort of people. Gold is also a waste of vast waste of effort. It's not even fun. Digging up gold is just useless. Valuable, for now, but useless in the long run. Getting out before the bubble crashes will be more important than getting out of sub prime mortgages before the crash.

Mqurice