Does anybody have any popcorn?
Seriously though. This hobby is one of the least expensive ones I've ever had. The FCT, at the $1.83333333 per month, is nothing. You can't even get a gallon of gas for that anymore. Other than the cost of the computer, which most people have purchased anyway, along with the internet service, which most people would have today, the cost of the program with the FCT is nothing in the scope of things. Especially since the number of hours spent using the program far out ways the initial cost of the purchases. Thinking from a business stand-point, this is called the ROI or return on investment, which in this case is pretty wonderful. Most companies would gladly have this kind of ratio of use to purchasing cost.
Yes, I understand that some people are on a tight budget. I was for over a year when I was unemployed. There are some things you need to cut out, otherwise you can't eat or purchase medication. While I was out of work, I had that choice. My unemployment did not cover my PD medication, which costs over $585 for one medication. Today I take another 7 different ones now, with one of the new ones now costing $860 per month without insurance. Today I am lucky with the insurance. Then I chose to eat instead, so I suffered the consequences which are not very nice.
But as others have said here, if it wasn't for N3V, we wouldn't have what we have today, and the cost of running the DLS is not free. It's the FCT that actually pays a good part of the maintenance and server costs to keep the gerbils and hamsters fed and the servers online.
Remember N3V is a business just like Microsoft, Gulf Oil, CBS, HBO, AOL, etc. A business makes money and pays employees that work there and to provide services that we purchase from them. The original founders of Auran were too generous, I think in the beginning, but that's all in the past now. I wonder if things may have been different if they had adopted a different business model in the beginning? But as they say, this was all water under the bridge, and we're in different times now than we ever were.
John
