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Save the Earth and Get Free Stuff from Recycling with Freecycle Get ready to become more earth-conscious by freecycling. What is freecyling and how can it help the environment? As the name implies, the concept of freecycling is directly inspired by the idea of recycling. Freecycling is not only a great way to help protect the earth's natural resources and prevent the flooding of landfills, it is also a great and viable way to find goods and services that you really need. Thus, freecycling is a very practical approach to many of the problems that we face today. What is the Freecycle Network? Freecyling has found a home at freecylce.org. The Freecycle website is home to the Freecycle network. This network is made up of over 4,000 groups with a total member population of over four million people worldwide. The freecycle philosophy is spreading like wildfire as more and more people come to learn more about this exciting and environmentally friendly new exchange network. The Freecycle Network represents an entirely grassroots, nonprofit effort that allows people to get and give their stuff fro free in their own cities and towns. Freecycle allows all the good stuff that would normally end up in a landfill in the hands of someone who can really use it. A local volunteer who is in charge of coordinating the freecycling efforts and awareness in their own community moderates almost each local freecycle group. Membership to join the Freecycle Network is absolutely free and open to anyone with something to give, or get. In order to join the Freecycle Network today, simply find your local community by searching in the search box. The Ins and Outs of Freecycling for the Freecyling Newbie No freecycling is not a new, cutting edge sport—it is an easy way to manage one's owns possessions so that you leave a smaller footprint on the Earth. If you are new to freecycling, perhaps you could use a little guidance on how to get into the freecycling side of things. Here are some things you need to know before you get started in the exciting world of freecycling. Take the Right Kinds of Precautions When Freecycling One of the most important things you should do is to always make sure to freecycle safely. Freecycling often means coming into direct contact with seemingly perfect strangers. You should always maintain your safety and privacy when interacting with other members of your freecycling group. If you do not know someone well, avoid giving out your personal contact information right away. Whenever possible, try to make exchanges in a public setting or at least make sure that you are not alone with picking up or waiting for someone to pick up the item that is being freecycled. Tips and Hints for Using the Freecylce List What happens once you has signed up to become a part of your local freecycling group? Once you have successfully joined, you can use your local freecycling list to communicate with other members. You can post a message, read messages and send email to your local groups collective address. Most local freecycling groups use local yahoo groups to communicate. To send an email to the list, simply send an email to your local groups email address. If for some reason you wish to unsubscribe to your local freecyling group, you simply need to send an email to the unsubscribe address that is listed at the bottom of each email from your local freecycling group. For information on posting, replying or reading messages to your local yahoo group, visit your local group and become familiar with the delivery options. If you have any questions, contact your group's moderator directly.

Yes, Freebies are Real! If you tell someone that something is free, they immediately start looking for the catch. After all, the words of wisdom “there is no such thing as a free lunch” have usually been proven true for people time and again throughout life, and so a healthy cynicism towards free stuff usually springs up with good reason. If you are one of these skeptical types, however, you may be missing out on some really great stuff. The truth is that you CAN get free things that are really and truly free, and yes, actually worth having. You just have to know where to look. OK, here is where the caveat comes in. The definition of “free” often depends on the definition of “cost.” As any economist can tell you, cost really doesn’t only come down to how much money you have to hand over to get something. There are additional costs, like inconvenience and time spent doing something. And true, some freebies have these “non monetary” kinds of costs associated with them. You have to balance all of the costs with the value of the free stuff you are getting and decide if it is worth it to you. The two biggest costs associated with freebies? Time and convenience are at the top of the list. Time is a big factor in many free offers. Companies want a bit of your time in exchange for their free products. Indeed, some companies literally want hours of your time. Have you ever taken advantage of one of those “free weekend vacation” offers in which you received free accommodation in a beach house or condo for a weekend in exchange for suffering through a long presentation and intense sales pitch? For some people, they can handle the presentation and have no qualms about refusing to buy anything and the free vacation more than makes up for it. Other people would rather pay any price to avoid having to listen to one of these spiels. So, while these weekends are freebies, for some people, they cost too much. More often, a company wants your time in a less obvious way – they want you to spend time filling out forms. These forms may simply be your name, address and email address, or they may be very lengthy, quizzing you about buying habits and the like. The reason the companies want you to do these forms is often for market research, and they are more than happy to give you a freebie in exchange for this. Many people find the time spent filling out these forms will worth it to get a great free product. Convenience is the other cost involved with many freebies. Time and convenience go hand in hand in some cases – after all, it may not be especially convenient to fill out form after form simply because it is time consuming, but convenience takes another hit from freebies in the form of spam email. Often, signing up for a freebie can land you on a spam email list, and for some people, getting tons of spam is so inconvenient that they would rather pay full price. The truth about all of these costs of freebies is that the freebie is in the eye of the beholder. You have to decide what you are willing to put up with in order to get a free product. Once you know the limits to your freebie costs, than you can cash in on some really great products that don’t cost you a dime. When you spend five minutes filling out a form and get rewarded with a free DVD player that you have been wanting, you will realize that there are free things out there to be had.

Web Hosting - Sharing A Server � Things To Think About You can often get a substantial discount off web hosting fees by sharing a server with other sites. Or, you may have multiple sites of your own on the same system. But, just as sharing a house can have benefits and drawbacks, so too with a server. The first consideration is availability. Shared servers get re-booted more often than stand alone systems. That can happen for multiple reasons. Another site's software may produce a problem or make a change that requires a re-boot. While that's less common on Unix-based systems than on Windows, it still happens. Be prepared for more scheduled and unplanned outages when you share a server. Load is the next, and more obvious, issue. A single pickup truck can only haul so much weight. If the truck is already half-loaded with someone else's rocks, it will not haul yours as easily. Most websites are fairly static. A reader hits a page, then spends some time skimming it before loading another. During that time, the server has capacity to satisfy other requests without affecting you. All the shared resources - CPU, memory, disks, network and other components - can easily handle multiple users (up to a point). But all servers have inherent capacity limitations. The component that processes software instructions (the CPU) can only do so much. Most large servers will have more than one (some as many as 16), but there are still limits to what they can do. The more requests they receive, the busier they are. At a certain point, your software request (such as accessing a website page) has to wait a bit. Memory on a server functions in a similar way. It's a shared resource on the server and there is only so much of it. As it gets used up, the system lets one process use some, then another, in turn. But sharing that resource causes delays. The more requests there are, the longer the delays. You may experience that as waiting for a page to appear in the browser or a file to download. Bottlenecks can appear in other places outside, but connected to, the server itself. Network components get shared among multiple users along with everything else. And, as with those others, the more requests there are (and the longer they tie them up) the longer the delays you notice. The only way to get an objective look at whether a server and the connected network have enough capacity is to measure and test. All systems are capable of reporting how much of what is being used. Most can compile that information into some form of statistical report. Reviewing that data allows for a rational assessment of how much capacity is being used and how much is still available. It also allows a knowledgeable person to make projections of how much more sharing is possible with what level of impact. Request that information and, if necessary, get help in interpreting it. Then you can make a cost-benefit decision based on fact.