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I'm sure free access to 1998 Stanford servers and bandwidth was nothing like getting AWS for free. And a lot of startups these days do actually get AWS for fre

by lafay 10y ago

I'm sure free access to 1998 Stanford servers and bandwidth was nothing like getting AWS for free. And a lot of startups these days do actually get AWS for free -- or at least the first $100K.

jasode 10y ago
>free access to 1998 Stanford servers and bandwidth was nothing like getting AWS for free. I wasn't comparing 1998 Stanford technology to 2016 AWS as if it was apples to apples. The "AWS" was a modern analogy to give an idea of what they didn't have to spend money on compared to other startups. In 1997, if you didn't have a university to host your (potential business) website, what were the options? You could call up one of the IBM/HP/Origin managed data centers and have them rack some servers. But that costs money, and requires a contract, etc, etc.
- monort 10y ago
  Rackspace launched in 1998, I think there are were dedicated server providers before them?
  - dkersten 10y ago
    I think the point is that this was very expensive.
    - monort 10y ago
      $99 per month https://web.archive.org/web/19981212020629/http://rackspace.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19981212020629/http://rackspace....
      - meat_fist 10y ago
        You've missed the point.
- hinkley 10y ago
  When NCSA was bringing you the World Wide Web and the University of Illinois millions in NSF grants and industry partnerships, and accolades and thank you's from vice presidential candidate Al Gore, all the work was being done in the nearly windowless basement of the old Oil Chemistry Building. The university charged NCSA for the privilege of occupying the tenth shittiest building on campus. And we joked about what other crappy building they'd gift us when they finally got around to giving us the space we had requested. Their definition of building us new space was to build a building for someone else and give us their hand me downs. And of course they owned all the IP and charged a pretty big tax on all of the income. I'm fairly certain we brought in almost as much money as the football program (who got a stadium upgrade the same year class sizes were increased to save money). I have no illusions of Stanford having a more generous program. All that free stuff isn't actually free.
edvinbesic 10y ago
You're not disagreeing with him. Thing is, even if you get AWS for free, you're better of minimizing your living expenses and spending that extra money on other aspects of your business to get it going.

by lafay 10y ago

I'm sure free access to 1998 Stanford servers and bandwidth was nothing like getting AWS for free. And a lot of startups these days do actually get AWS for free -- or at least the first $100K.

jasode 10y ago

>free access to 1998 Stanford servers and bandwidth was nothing like getting AWS for free. I wasn't comparing 1998 Stanford technology to 2016 AWS as if it was apples to apples. The "AWS" was a modern analogy to give an idea of what they didn't have to spend money on compared to other startups. In 1997, if you didn't have a university to host your (potential business) website, what were the options? You could call up one of the IBM/HP/Origin managed data centers and have them rack some servers. But that costs money, and requires a contract, etc, etc.

monort 10y ago
Rackspace launched in 1998, I think there are were dedicated server providers before them?
- dkersten 10y ago
  I think the point is that this was very expensive.
  - monort 10y ago
    $99 per month https://web.archive.org/web/19981212020629/http://rackspace.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19981212020629/http://rackspace....
    - meat_fist 10y ago
      You've missed the point.
hinkley 10y ago
When NCSA was bringing you the World Wide Web and the University of Illinois millions in NSF grants and industry partnerships, and accolades and thank you's from vice presidential candidate Al Gore, all the work was being done in the nearly windowless basement of the old Oil Chemistry Building. The university charged NCSA for the privilege of occupying the tenth shittiest building on campus. And we joked about what other crappy building they'd gift us when they finally got around to giving us the space we had requested. Their definition of building us new space was to build a building for someone else and give us their hand me downs. And of course they owned all the IP and charged a pretty big tax on all of the income. I'm fairly certain we brought in almost as much money as the football program (who got a stadium upgrade the same year class sizes were increased to save money). I have no illusions of Stanford having a more generous program. All that free stuff isn't actually free.

edvinbesic 10y ago

You're not disagreeing with him. Thing is, even if you get AWS for free, you're better of minimizing your living expenses and spending that extra money on other aspects of your business to get it going.