wasn't going to comment on this thread, but post 10 got to me. It seemed slightly rude. Probably wasn't meant that way, but it read like it. Odd Ditty Foundry Gimmies are freebies. No strings attached. No registration required. However, all ODF freebies can be had by either scrolling a bit down the page to read about what you are getting and clicking a large graphic, or by adding them to your cart. When they are added to the cart, they have to be approved. As one of the folks that does the approval, I can tell you that if the info isn't valid, I won't approve it. We operate under a constant risk of having to do this with all of our freebies, and the ODF Magic freebie is probably the best example of why. That announcment was made in the middle of my night. There were fewer than 700 people online at the time it was posted. 24 hours later, over a gig of bandwidth had been used. And 33 approvals. The approved ones use a different bandwidth meter as they come from a different server than the simple show up and grab it one does. If the show up and grab it stuff exceeds our monthly allowance (which is budgeted), we must suspend them. It's not that we don't want to offer them without any sort of catch (we do -- all of us love freebies as much as anyone else, lol), it's that there are some serious realities here to consider. The free magic pack is 13MB in size. It's got a lot of cool stuff in it. But 100 people downloading is 1300MB -- and our budget, which includes additional bandwidth over what we pay for already, is for 5GB total. And that's strictly for free stuff. I say all this because the purpose of registration is very much to slow down the bandwidth usage. I hated having to register yet again at yet another site, and trying to remember all that and so forth and so on. I also used to complain about it. Then I put up my first freebie. That was three years ago. wasn't even very good. My site, at the time, was shut down in three days by the bandwidth usage. That site was one which my regular customers went to to see the progress on their products and check on updates and send me information. That one freebie cost me pretty much a month's income. Which is not a whine or a complain -- it's simply a note. If you want good freebies and you want to be able to get them when you need them, you should register when it's asked. As for why the "registration" note isn't required, it's because when it was required, a whole bunch of people got togehter and screamed about how annoying that requirement was. SO they changed it. ;) And, lastly, why in heck are we even whining about this? For crying out loud, this stuff is free. someone, out the goodness of their heart, is giving stuff away. And there is a LOT of Good free stuff. Tons more than back in the day. Are we that ungrateful that we have to look this gift horse in the mouth?

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)