Slashdot Mirror

Submitter: He also claims '[their] market research indicates that, except for pop-ups, people really don't mind ads.'"
CowboyNeil: This seems like the kind of thing that would keep me from using "free" wireless access, but I've a feeling I'm in the minority.

Actually, Mr. Cowboy, you just validated their business plan.

While the idea of free wireless Internet access is fun for the user, there's still the annoying fact that someone's paying for your bandwidth. Ideally, geeks like us would be more than happy to open their broadband connections to the world -- I would, if I could get broadband in rural east Texas.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough altruistic geeks per square mile to sustain that "business model". So someone has to pay the bill. Why not advertisers?

I run Opera, but I'm too cheap to pay for it. So I have a banner ad built into my browser. I even click it sometimes -- out of curiosity, or to send Opera some ad clicks. I'm willing to put up with advertising to get the product, and lucky for me, the model is working.

I hope ad-supported wireless access takes off. I wouldn't put my money in the companies, though... anyone remember Bluelight?

Quick everyone! If we slashdot bluelight.com (reducing the server to a pile of putrid slag), the whole case will become moot since bluelight.com will be worthless!
Oh wait it already was, nevermind.

That's not necessarily true, I'm not positive about Wal-Mart, but I know Kmart has a couple kisks in each store where you can order things from bluelight.com in their case. I imagine Wal-mart has something similar in their stores. It's not the convenience of shopping from home, but it allows you to get things that each store might not stock.

here it is for those too lazy to find it. This is the cheapest on the internet now. AFAIK

xbox-scene is a great website for xbox hacking and mod chip information. It even has a comparison of all the xbox mod chips available.


kmart has the Xbox : $180 (item# 981320) can't beat that price. (10% off)

I know I'll get modded down for this, but here's an example:

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 22, @02:45PM
JackBlack tells us about the "unbelievable deal you can get at KMart on all their overstocked computers and periphials! You won't believe the kind of prices on these things! I don't know about you people, but I'd rather swallow Draino than buy boxen from Big K! But, shit, whatever, I guess.

Timothy is his own conflict of interest.

What is happening to Slashdot these days?

--SC

It all depends.

Web Developer and Web Designer are two completely different things.

If you want to work at a small company, and develop from scratch, learn Perl, PHP, and PostgreSQL. These seem to be the standards. They work well (I have built several sites with PHP/PgSQL), and are pretty easy to learn, plus they are pretty good under heavy loads.

If you want to work for a larger company with more divisions than Einstein, you will need to know Java. SQL of some sort. That's about it.

I wouldn't even bother 'learning' ASP, because truth is truth, it's ridiculously simple, and can be learned in a weekend(besides, it's microsoft!!)

Look at the large sites out there: IBM, Target, and Bluelight.com. They all use J2EE compliant Application servers.

Look at some of these: Art Technology Group's Dynamo, Blue Martini, BEA's WebLogic, and IBM's WebSphere.

Some of these guys even have demo downloads, so you can see what you might be working with. Basically, learn the basics(HTML, CSS, Javascript), learn a programming language(C, C++, Perl, Java) and then start playing with the combination. Good luck, and have fun!!

Why would it not stand up in court? If you don't agree to the terms, get another ISP...

Hell... if you want free access, there are other options... for example, BlueLight is offered by K-Mart (Where the "K" stands for Kwality).

Depending on where you look, many are sold out: Amazon and Buy for instance. I did find some in stock at Kmart (anyone know what model that is? it doesnt say) as well as Circuit City (link may not work, uses sessionID stuff).

-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...

As user choice in controlling screen real-estate diminishes, the difference between ISPs that cost (in $) and free ones (no $) continues to blur. I wonder how different AOL/MSN will be from NetZero/Bluelight (wrt their control of user screens) in 2 years time. How will this market shakeup...?

Anyway, AOLusers can always Upgrade(Tm) to getting their internet curtesy of KMart for free!
:^>

besides why are you paying for dial-up access anyways?

Bluelight
NetZero
FreeInet
FreeWWWeb

Whoa ... wait this isn't possible ... how in the world could netpliance do this? Ahhh yes the Internet service ... take a $5 a month internet service and charge $20 for it ... within a year the I-Openers would reap in millions of dollars ... until some geek decided he wanted to play inside his. If they were going to have such a cow why didn't they just lease the boxes? ...

As for canceling the Service or getting a free service like NetZero, FreeI, TheSimpsons, Lycos, Altavista, or BlueLight you are forced into this horrid agreement. Not to mention what if you own a cable modem and want to just network the box into the home lan. Can't do that.

I actually can see the article in maximum PC's "Watchdog" right now ... Netpliance will soon be the enemy that once stood in the place of WebTv ... BTW why has no one hacked one of those yet?

I just want to back up the feelings that I have and that have been growing due to rampant abuses of power and the fact that a little conspiracy has essentially screwed a whole class of people over.

Dude, you're seeing things from a strictly user-based perspective. There are a lot of things in the 'net that are beyond user control...but choice of ISP isn't one of them. If your ISP does something you don't like--be that yanking things from you, or behaving so badly as to get themselves UDP'd--then you can change to another.

I've posted elsewhere in this thread about public-access or commercial news servers. They are out there; you can use them, and since USENET is all they do, you can be darned sure they do it pretty well. You're not strictly locked into one ISP forever, you know.

The net shouldn't cost so god damned much in the first place.

Guess what? It doesn't anymore. In fact, if I lost my school account, I could 'net completely for free just by using a dialin account from someone like AltaVista, Bluelight.com, Worldspy, or any of the dozen other free-dialup ISPs out there. (Granted, I'd be stuck in Windows as none yet support Linux, but still.) Add those to a news-only ISP, and you've got free news.

Well, let's see. There's Deja & Remarq just for starters.

Yahoo also has a listing of public-access USENET sites. Sadly, spammers being who and what they are, most public-access sites that allow posting soon become abused right out of existence.

For those willing to pay a bit of extra money, there is also Yahoo's commercial news server category.

There are always choices for USENET service. Even if you already pay your ISP for its USENET, additional access elsewhere isn't really all that expensive. These are also viable options for people who use free dialin services like AltaVista or Blue Light that don't provide anything beyond bare-bones dialup access.