When Fleischman offered one of his books, Real World Adobe GoLive 6, as a free PDF, it was downloaded more than 10,000 times, which could have cost him $15,000 for excessive bandwidth.
Though I commend him for getting the word out about the problem, when he describes situations like his as "perfect storms that you cannot predict," I had to laugh. Internet users love to sponge files -- especially geeks for whom the term "Slashdot effect" was coined. It doesn't take Miss Cleo to recognize that a 23M PDF ebook might reduce your Web server to a smoldering pile of plastic and metal.
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