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laz seeker (1 Viewer)

sif not 99

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Am i correct to assume that laz has sold out, sold the what was formerly a free resource "the lazseeker" which was of excelent repute to some bunch of profiteering no good people who want to charge 14.95 for the software?

I though this web site was to aid HSC students in their penultimate year of school rather than a resource to fleece your pockets with cash laz,

if this is the case then shame on you,
 

anti

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Originally posted by sif not 99
Am i correct to assume that laz has sold out, sold the what was formerly a free resource "the lazseeker" which was of excelent repute to some bunch of profiteering no good people who want to charge 14.95 for the software?

I though this web site was to aid HSC students in their penultimate year of school rather than a resource to fleece your pockets with cash laz,

if this is the case then shame on you,
Bored of Studies doesn't cost nothing to run, sif not 99. I believe that the administrators of this site gave MUCH thought to the decision to charge for the usage of LazSeeker.
 

SoFTuaRiaL

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Re: Re: laz seeker

Originally posted by anti


Bored of Studies doesn't cost nothing to run, sif not 99. I believe that the administrators of this site gave MUCH thought to the decision to charge for the usage of LazSeeker.
thats so true ... sif not 99, have u any idea how much it costs to maintain a website? first, the domain name costs min. $10 a month. having such a huge database of papers n notes on the web costs money. and the 2 boards (hscboardz and uniboardz) arent free either .... especially cos BOS doesnt have any sponsors .... i rekon its a good decision by the BOS team ..
 

SoFTuaRiaL

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Originally posted by InfiniteQ
True... doubt anyone would pay to estimate their UAI though.
i wud've :D not anymore though ... though i might pay to get my uni marks estimated :uhoh:
 

yr12

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We have been told sooooooooo many times to NEVER pay to have your UAI estimated. I have nothing against lazseeker and I do understand how costly this must be, but it can never accurately predict your UAI and we all know deep down that we should be paying for a machine to guess your UAI
 

Butterfly_Wings

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Re: Re: laz seeker

Originally posted by anti


Bored of Studies doesn't cost nothing to run, sif not 99. I believe that the administrators of this site gave MUCH thought to the decision to charge for the usage of LazSeeker.
The thing linked on the site isn't Lazseeker-it's UAI seeker, which was around last year, and was still pay-to-use back then. From what I can tell, Lazseeker is gone, and instead theres just a link to the Ozseek site...:confused:
 

Twintip

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UAI seeker says it's based on Laz Seeker this time though. :(

Well I know I won't be paying for it.

It would have been more effective to whack advertising all over the place. I can appreciate that hosting and bandwidth costs are substantial.
 

kini mini

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Originally posted by Twintip

Well I know I won't be paying for it.

It would have been more effective to whack advertising all over the place. I can appreciate that hosting and bandwidth costs are substantial.
I'm sorry you feel that way. $15 is not a lot of money, but I can well understand that you might not feel that it's worth your while. All I can say is that if you want a UAI estimator, then I think that UAI Seeker is the best available.

I don't know if you are aware of the current market for internet advertising - it's horrendous. And web hosting costs quite a lot of money as others have mentioned. HSC students are not a great group for advertising either as you don't have a large disposable income.
 

InfiniteQ

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Originally posted by Twintip
UAI seeker says it's based on Laz Seeker this time though. :(

Well I know I won't be paying for it.

It would have been more effective to whack advertising all over the place. I can appreciate that hosting and bandwidth costs are substantial.
I agree... I wouldn't mind coping with a bunch of annoying ads. The estimates give you a peace of mind.
 

InfiniteQ

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There's two sides to it obviously... yes it was done to cut costs etc but when you look at it from our pt of view ... we don't agree that we should have to pay to have our UAI's estimated. Schools do it for free, mine doesn't even do it but why should I have to pay to do it you know? But it's understandable in this case why things have turned out the way they have.
 

Minai

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Just to add another thought - no one has the right to demand the lazseeker - Lazarus updates it as he wishes, it is a good deal IMO - since the new Ozseek program was created by Laz himself, and now BoS is on free hosting - paid for by ozseek
 
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InfiniteQ

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Originally posted by Bon


Why should others have to use their time and money to provide it to you for free, to help you with your education when they have their own education to worry about?
You obviously didn't understand what I was trying to say. I was basically trying to say that I wouldn't pay for it because people's schools do it for free which puts me off from paying for it. I feel like "hmm, if they get it done for free, why do I have to pay for it?" So I'd rather not do it at all. I wasn't getting anyone using their time and money to provide it blah blah blah...
 

InfiniteQ

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Originally posted by MinAi
Just to add another thought - no one has the right to demand the lazseeker - Lazarus updates it as he wishes.
Which is fine and that's what the thread was about initially but it turned into a "is it worth even paying for?"
 
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timbk2

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Just to Clarify a couple of things... BOS is no longer on free hosting. To cope with the demands of our database, we have to pay a substantial amount to have our own server.
 

Minai

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Originally posted by timbk2
To cope with the demands of our database, we have to pay a substantial amount to have our own server.
therefore ppl should be grateful to those guys, and nothing less
 

Lazarus

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For completeness, I've included our statement in this thread too.


<hr>

Most of you will have noticed, by now, that there is no longer any link to the old LazSeeker program on this site.

It has been replaced with a page describing the new UAISeeker 2003.

Now, before you riot with rage and run screaming to murder our household pets, please let us explain the reasons behind this change.

Since the original launch of Bored of Studies in July of last year, we have channelled an extraordinarily large number of hours into the site, involving the tireless efforts of our team and requiring a modest amount of funding. We originally sought no recompense for our work indeed, we saw no need to. Free lunches dont last forever, it seems.

The popularity of the website grew far beyond anything we had ever expected, and towards the end of the year we were flooded with demands from you, the students to keep it operational. Our bandwidth consumption (the amount of data downloaded from the website) was increasing at a rate proportional to the popularity of the site, and with it, the costs of maintenance. In Australia, serving dozens of gigabytes of data every month is not cheap.

We found ourselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, we are a non-profit organisation devoted to assisting HSC students in whatever way we can, at no cost to them whatsoever. And on the other, our budgets as university students were being stretched rather excessively.

We researched as many possible solutions as we could think of, and none of them proved to be suitable. Commission from displaying advertisements is extremely limited at best. Commercial banners would cheapen the image of the website, damaging its reputation and we figured that most HSC students probably wouldnt click on them anyway.

We contacted several organisations asking for sponsorship; none was forthcoming. We wrote to tertiary institutions and popular universities; they imposed impractical conditions such as censorship. Our previous host was unable to handle the strain on the server; some of you may recall the random, spontaneous downtimes. We investigated other avenues, such as mergers with pre-existing educational websites, but could find no solution that was acceptable to us. And we obviously couldnt charge for the notes themselves.

Once these possibilities were exhausted, we were at a bit of a loss. We couldnt simply continue sinking time and energy into the website; our resources were already running thin. There seemed to be few options left to us. It was at this time that we were approached by Ozseek.

Essentially, they provided us with a way out. We were to jointly develop a new UAI program which superseded both LazSeeker and their previous UAISeeker 2002 service. In return, any costs incurred in the running and maintenance of the website would be reimbursed.

This was the ideal opportunity. LazSeeker would finally evolve into the service it was meant to be, students would have a singular and consistent resource for all of their UAI needs, and, perhaps most importantly, the Bored of Studies website would live on.

And so, we accepted. The streamlined sophistication of the UAISeeker 2002 interface was combined with the accuracy and technological elegance of the LazSeeker brain to provide the ultimate hybrid service. Our team is behind the UAISeeker 2003 one hundred percent.

One student has suggested that we were motivated by the prospect of profit. I can guarantee all of you now that profit was the furthest idea from our minds. Our primary concern was always the future of Bored of Studies. Any excess revenue gleaned from the service will be funnelled directly back into the website and related projects. Youll be completely supporting the site by using it.

We spent a good deal time of time ensuring that the new product is actually worth paying for. New functions ensure that all users receive true value for their money. In addition to this, were going to keep updating the program, adding a wide range of different calculation methods, results and statistical analyses at no extra charge so that all users keep getting value for money.

We greatly respect your opinions, and will endeavour to meet the needs of all students. If you want to see a particular feature, or have a useful suggestion to make, let us know! Well do our best to accommodate you.

We appreciate your understanding and patience regarding the launch of the new site. We will be adding hundreds of new notes progressively. In the meantime, please avail yourselves of the extensive resources already available, including the HSC Help forum we are always searching for the best way to help you, the students.


Sincerely,


James, Mark, Tim and Ian.
The Bored of Studies Team.
 

pri

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Ok I understand now why you guys had to do it, and fair enuf you ppl have saved many lives with the resources on the BOS site, however I think the argument comes from the fact that the lazseeker site always kinda implied that UAI seeker was crap because you cant really predict how hard or easy exams can be, because lazseeker was free nobody really cared about the innacuracies it may have concured.

- thanks for the explanations anywayz
 

timmii

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Originally posted by sif not 99

I though this web site was to aid HSC students in their penultimate year of school rather than a resource to fleece your pockets with cash laz,
Penultimate year? Perhaps that is what it would be if people did not have the opportunity to access the wealth of knowledge this site provides.

The Admin has spent soooo much time and effort on this site, trying to make it as relevant, user-friendly and helpful as possible. They deserve our thanks for that rather than our recriminations. Add onto that the obvious financial costs and I'm surprised that this site is still around at all, let alone free still for those who don't use the new UAI-seeker. Do you consider the course/scholarship/career of your choice to be worth more or less than $15...? Not to mention the saved anxiety that a question answered on the forums or in the notes could provide.

I don't know how anyone could even *consider* crying foul over this decision, the website is a *privilege* not a right, and its a tribute to the admin that you have become so comfortable enough to consider it that way.
 

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