I think it's the assumption that every single poster will spend anything through Amazon. Sure, some of us have expensive habits, but others of us buy nothing at all.

Anyway, if we put an Amazon link in the left sidebar, I'll use it, and whatever flows into the kitty you're welcome to. But I expect to donate directly as well.

Why not attach a small optional rider to the latest ballot to poll people on approximately how much they spend online in a typical month? That might give us a better figure rather than just speculating. And I repeat, the poll would be optional.

If posters are anything like yours truly it's actually a very conservative estimate. I spend at least 200 dollars a month online, at Buffiliate potential sites, between personal and business expenditures

I'm with Sean, I'm afraid. Online purchases limited to coach tickets and suchlike, for the most part. Average online monthly spending likely to be less than $ 5.00 for me.

Online purchases are a big part of life for me because I hate shopping in real stores. I don't have a clue what the monthly figure would be.

I also want to apologize for the use of the word legislate. I saw a number of good suggestions on decreasing the board strain, and I agree with most of them. However, I also thought it seemed like the focus was starting to shift to blaming the underlying board problems on its usage, and I don't think that's the case. Like Fred's energy crisis analogy (and Fred, I'm only 30 so I remember my nightlight flickering a bit but that's it) we can do stuff to reduce strain, but that isn't going to fix the problem, it's just going to help alleviate it until a more permanent fix can be found.

I don't mean to say that the programmers are to blame for the problems, on the contrary they deserve all the credit for doing as much as they have and continue to do. But I think what ita and others have been saying is that Buffistas use a lot of resources, so reduce the strain a bit with smarter usage, and the code is ultimately what needs to be investigated because 200 mySQL connections open at the same time shouldn't be happening under current usage.

I hope I said that right. I'm beginning to think my posts in this thread are cursed so what I mean never comes through with what I say.

Whitefont needed in lightbulbs (3236)

Done, Trudy.

Do we have any way of knowing how many people are subscribed to each thread? This is a waste-of-time question. I don't want anyone to go do extra work. Seeing the stats on who is here from which country just made me wonder about stats, in general.

It's possible, but it would require someone to write a SQL query to figure it out.

Well, screw that, then. :)