Curl, the language/environment/markup language...(Spanish Civil War)...

[Andrew Maizels]

Ron Stephens wrote:
 
> www.curl.com is the new website that I think just went up last Friday.
> Curl Corporation is a new MIT inspired outfit whose owners includes Tim
> Berners-Lee and Michael Dertoutzos (sp??) . I went there and I find it
> interesting, I wonder if anyone else has checked it out. If so, what do
> you think???

I think Microsoft has a new competitor in the dumb stunt competition. 
Check out their (Curl's) pricing structure:

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We charge commercial customers based on the total volume of Curl content
executed. This allows for pay-as-you-go billing. The total cost to
commercial customers is determined by:  

Baseline Price

Customers pay Curl Corporation based on the volume of Curl content
executed by their end users, as determined by a baseline price
discounted for annual volume commitments. The baseline price may be
increased for later versions of Curl products, but once established for
a specific version of a Curl product, it cannot be increased.

Volume Commitment
                          
Customers commit to an annual volume of between $12,000 and $600,000,
payable in equal monthly installments, with a minimum of $1,000 per
month. Customers can change their volume commitment level at any time,
although they are committed to the associated monthly fee. The volume of
content executed in excess of the monthly commitment fee is billed at
the current discounted price.

[And here's the kicker:]

Price per Volume (by characters)

Curl Corporation's usage-based software compiles information from
end-user plug-ins that encounter Curl content. Included in this
information is the number of characters of Curl content that are
executed by the plug-ins. Curl Corporation's fees are derived from the
total volume of Curl content executed by the plug-ins together with a
price per one billion characters as determined by the customer's annual
minimum fee commitment. 

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Excuse me?  You're going to do *what*?!

They're dead already, they just don't know it yet.

Andrew.
-- 
There's only one game in town.
You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't quit the game.            -- The four laws of thermodynamics.