Frequently Asked Questions
The following questions we get time and time again were all extracted from e-mails I've received over the years. These questions were all common enough that I put them in this FAQ.
Q. What is InetDaemon.Com?
A. InetDaemon.Com is a personal website which provides free training on various technical topics. Because the site is free, and it is not a business, I make no money. Because I make no money, I have no money to spend.
Q. Are you a company?
A. No. This is a personal website. I registered "InetDaemon.Com" in the .com space because I didn't have to meet any requirements to register the domain. The domains .net, .org and .edu all had restrictions at the time I registered InetDaemon.com, which was a long, long time ago in Internet terms (1997).
Q. Do you make any money from InetDaemon.Com?
A. Nope. Actually, I pay all the expenses for running this website out of my own pocket, so I lose money for doing this. I have to work a regular job to pay for this site. I have to go with el-cheapo hosting in order to afford to keep it up and running. If you're a kick-butt hosting provider and you would like to donate your services, please contact me.
Q. But you take donations. You gotta be rich!
A. $135. That is the sum total I've received in donations in 12 years. I appreciate the support of those wh odonated ($50 of that was actually from one person). Clearly, very few people find this site to be of sufficient value to donate money. That's around $11 per year of operation--even Uncle Sam consideres $11 per year too small to bother with. One month of my webhosting costs me almost that much, so every year I spend more than I received in all 12 years this site has been in operation. I have to work a regular job to pay for this site.
Q. Are you hiring?
A. This is a PERSONAL WEBSITE. There are NO JOBS AVAILABLE. I have to work a regular job to pay my webhosting provider.
Q. Does InetDaemon.Com accept advertising?
A. No. I have standards. If I start accepting advertising, I have to worry about the content of those ads and I lose control over what appears on my site in front of my readers, who, in some small fashion, trust me. I'm not jeopardizing that trust to make a fast buck. The tiny amount of cash I would receive just wouldn't be worth it.
Q. Does InetDaemon.Com need website language translation services?
A. No. I work a day job to pay for my lifestyle and this website. Even if I was interested, I can't afford them. See the previous questions.
Q. Does InetDaemon.Com need search engine placement services?
A. No. I get 12 million hits per year and I have more than 700,000 regular readers, at last count (4Q 2007). I work a day job to pay for my lifestyle and this website. Even if I was interested, I can't afford it.
Q. Is the InetDaemon.Com name available for sale?
A. No.
Q. There's a lot of broken links. Why don't you fix them?
A. Actually, I do fix them. They break faster than I can get them fixed. This entire site is maintained on a best-effort basis with no guarantees. This site has been online for 12 years. Many of the sites this website pointed to are gone (no longer exist), but InetDaemon.Com is still here. There are over 800 pages of HTML in this site, nevermind the images, style sheets, include files, CGI scripts etc. That's enough work to keep someone busy full time maintaining them. I have a day job, full time, a household to run and a family to take care of. I work on this site in my spare time, which I don't have a lot of. I simply don't have the time to investigate and to fix every single link.
Q. Page "X" is out of date.
A. See my previous answer regarding broken links. The page was as accurate as I could make it given the time available when I wrote it (thirty minutes or less, in most cases). I work full time at my day job and work on this site in my spare time. I do my best, but my time is limited and I don't get paid or make money maintaining this site.
Q. You don't get enough donations to pay to operate your site. You pay ten times what you receive in donations to your hosting provider. You spend hours working on this site for absolutely no monetary benefit. People flame you and call you an idiot when they find spelling errors and typos and you're still working on this site after 12 years? WHY?!?
A. Because every once in a while, I help someone and that is worth it.