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I have DSL thru SpeakEasy.net. They are a very large provider and any person with DSL from an ISP that goes thru COVAD can swap over to them without any problems.

With the recent closing of a few DSL providers, they have taken in thousands of people. If your DSL provider is going under, i'd jump over to Speakeasy's website and give them a call or send them an email. What is even better is that they run linux systems and love setting up on linux systems (if someone needs help getting it setup). Their phone support is growing daily and aiming for a 5 min or less wait on hold and email support is sub-24 hour reply.

All I know is I pay 92.77/month for 1500down/384up, and I love the service. It's through Covad, with an ISP which I absolutely am in love with (speakeasy.net), but the local phone service is Verizon. Dunno, though, because I live in a historic area built fewer than 100 years ago; thus my guess is that the phone wiring is pretty antiquated, and yet I still get 1.5Mbps. What's going on?

Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net

I use Megapath and they're excellent, but since they've apparently stopped taking residential accounts I recommend people investigate SpeakEasy as well.

Today I saw that Speakeasy has a GIF ad that says "Speakeasy -- We Pay our Covad Bills": http://www.speakeasy.net/images/dsl/silver-speak-h eader.gif

SpeakEasy (the BEST DSL provider, IMHO) has a great dictionary for keeping your acronyms straight:

For the link-fearing:

http://www.speakeasy.net/dsl/dsl_dictionary.html

Or click Here

- JoeShmoe

Caino

Don't touch my .sig there!

It's really much more that the hardware and running costs far exceed the $40 a month that DSL companies are charging to make themselves competitive with the shared cable bandwidth. You really can't make money on DSL at the moment, plain and simple. On a personal note, I've been using SpeakEasy, who does pay their Covad bill, and they're GREAT.

Since may of last year I had ADSL with Ameritech. It was 768/128. It worked fine. No lag, zero PL in games. And DLing was fast. But then I saw speakeasy over at think geek offering 1.1/1.1 SDSL from covad. Oh man I was pysched. 1.1 upstream and almost no TOS restrictions (they allow you to do almost anything except run an IRC server, or a bussiness website). So I cancelled my ADSL with Ameritech (with a $100 penalty.. doh) and signed up with them; speakeasy said they had to have the line shutoff to work on it. fine. 2 Weeks later covad came out to run/test the line. Then...

"We're sorry, you are too far out of the loop, your SDSL order is technically unfeasable. We suggest our 144/144 (kilo-bits here) IDSL for $80 a month".

Well crap. I dont want to pay twice as much as I was paying with Ameritech for half the speed. So I came crawling back to Ameritech. But...

"We're sorry, ADSL is not available in your area. You have been added to a list and will be informed when it becomes available." BTW- my friend across the street has Ameritech ADSL.

So that's my story. I guess I got greedy. Ameritech is sending out a technician to see what the problem is (another 3 weeks). I tried talking with the sales represenitive, but it's no use. They can't help me. I asked speakeasy what they thought and they said the ADSL should have never been installed in the first play, and would have probably blown up (thats the word they used) within the next 6 months.

So 2 days ago I called @home and am having that installed tomorrow. For $27 a month for the first 3 months. If only I could get that uncapped....

Checkout Speakeasy. I was considering them for a while (I too have @Home, but my upstream restriction was magically increased to 32k) when I wanted to run a low-traffic webserver. As far as I can tell, Speakeasy doesn't care, and you can get decent upstream for less that double what you're currently paying.

Some mom and pop places are eating up their cousins and other siblings to stay alive and grow...I used to work for Fibernet. Check out the top bullet on the news at their front page. They just acquired someone else's user base. The ma's and pa's have to get big enough that they are hard enough to move off the block...That makes them less ma and pa'ish and also eliminates aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.

Or at least that's what it looks like to me.

Now I'm with speakeasy - service has been fine, they know *BSD and encourage free software, they gave me a static IP and no restrictions on running servers. And when there's a line problem they seem to know who to talk to inside PacBell to get things up again.

All--

I've been a Speakeasy.Net customer for a few months now, and for everybody who wants an ISP with a "Press 2 If You Have A Clue Button"...all those techs appeared to have went there. It's such a disorientingly wonderful thing to be able to converse about firewall rulesets, buggy ARP tables, and routing infrastructure hiccups with your *front line support* ISP provider.

They're not particularly expensive either. For $200/mo, they offer you flat rate 1.1/1.1 SDSL that actually works at full speed. They have, of course, plans with more standard pricing, but ya gotta spend your money on something, eh?

You can always save $10/mo by running a game server. No, I'm not joking.

Among other nice things, they'll actually talk to you when a spurious port scan spamgram appears to come from your host. I just went through what could have been a nightmare with any other provider--and worked with them to debug that nothing actually happened.

So, yeah. If you're tired of burnt out powerless cluebies, go hit Speakeasy.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

I got a great ISP. Speakeasy.Net. May have seen them on Thinkgeek if you go there often, or perhaps dslreports.com. They're unbelievable--fast, helpful, fair. They even gave me a second IP address for free, and not only do they allow multiple machines on one residential connection, but they support it.

If you happen to order a connection from them, do me a favor and put me down as a reference. My username is Aciel.

Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net

I Asked Jeeves, and found a nifty Mass Conversion Calculator. It claims that 244 grams is approximately 8.6 oz, or a little over half a pound. Hmm, weighs about as much as two quarter pounders from McDonald's (without the cheese, of course, since I'm allergic). It still seems kinda heavy to tote around in one's front pocket, but with that many features, sure! So what if only half of those many features work in my area!

Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net

This is from their advertisement for DSL service at www.thinkgeek.com

Eat meat? No competition here, no carnivore plans either.

Either it means they only hire vegetarians (grin), or that they won't allow Carnivore to be put in their network (well, without a fight, at least).

Don't forget Speakeasy.net!

I meant to say "no plans for Carnivore". I was misquoting this page.

Based on Speakeasy's corporate philosophy I think that they would fight Carnivore as much as humanely possible.

Besides, their service is top notch.

I got DSL a few months ago after giving the boot to a really awful unidirectional cablemodem. Admittedly I ordered it around the end of March and it wasn't installed until early June, but that was Verizon's fault (Verizon also mistakenly broke one of my phone lines in the process, boo). I've seen a lot of crappy DSL companies out there (ie Infospeed), so I was very careful about reading the contract when I found one I liked. And it worked! Bell Atlantic didn't have an office in my area, oddly enough, though they stuck an advertisement on my doorknob...so I contacted about five Covad ISPs with questions about policies and finally found mine. Now I'm surfing the web on a 1500/384 RADSL connection from Speakeasy.net (also the Seattle-based owners of one of the first ever Internet Cafes) and haven't had even a second of downtime since it got activated. They're all very helpful, and you get two free IPs with your order. You can get dynamic or static--your choice, and up to eight extras for 2.95 each (for more you need a business account). Plus I can run just about any kind of [non-IRC] server without violating the contract, and they'll even help me set up my hostname, et cetera. Two email addresses too, and a Q3A server. It's unbelievable--I must be extremely lucky. The only downside is that the closest POP is New York, and they route you through Seattle as default (you can request another POP, but they have to change your IP addresses--and that's not so bad anyway), even if you live in Washington, DC, like I do. But they're planning new POPs all over, including one in Phoenix if I remember correctly. For more information, they're at http://www.speakeasy.net. If you register, please put down Aciel as the reference. Happy surfing! Aciel aciel@speakeasy.net

I got DSL a few months ago after giving the boot to a really awful unidirectional cablemodem. Admittedly I ordered it around the end of March and it wasn't installed until early June, but that was Verizon's fault (Verizon also mistakenly broke one of my phone lines in the process, boo). I've seen a lot of crappy DSL companies out there (ie Infospeed), so I was very careful about reading the contract when I found one I liked. And it worked! Bell Atlantic didn't have an office in my area, oddly enough, though they stuck an advertisement on my doorknob...so I contacted about five Covad ISPs with questions about policies and finally found mine. Now I'm surfing the web on a 1500/384 RADSL connection from Speakeasy.net (also the Seattle-based owners of one of the first ever Internet Cafes) and haven't had even a second of downtime since it got activated. They're all very helpful, and you get two free IPs with your order. You can get dynamic or static--your choice, and up to eight extras for 2.95 each (for more you need a business account). Plus I can run just about any kind of [non-IRC] server without violating the contract, and they'll even help me set up my hostname, et cetera. Two email addresses too, and a Q3A server. It's unbelievable--I must be extremely lucky. The only downside is that the closest POP is New York, and they route you through Seattle as default (you can request another POP, but they have to change your IP addresses--and that's not so bad anyway), even if you live in Washington, DC, like I do. But they're planning new POPs all over, including one in Phoenix if I remember correctly. For more information, they're at http://www.speakeasy.net. If you register, please put down Aciel as the reference. Happy surfing! Aciel aciel@speakeasy.net

Separately, I've had good results with Speakeasy.net as a provider. Their website for subscribers lets you track the progress through the red tape and lets you see the actual logs that Covad maintains on the progress of the install.

XDG

That's interesting; I've only received nothing but the kindest of service from SpeakEasy.

SpeakEasy is the most politically aware and open network, having made an explicit commitment to freedoms in their mission statement and terms of service. I had to turn down several ISP's (such as InternetConnect) because of their draconian TOS (which included that they can charge me $1,000 if I potentially infringe on IP). SpeakEasy is the only ISP I trust.

Just recently, Nader spoke at the SpeakEasy cafe off 2nd and Bell, downtown Seattle. SpeakEasy has lent the back room to Free Radio Seattle as well. If SpeakEasy isn't a safe ISP, I don't know who is.

That's interesting; I've only received nothing but the kindest of service from SpeakEasy.

SpeakEasy is the most politically aware and open network, having made an explicit commitment to freedoms in their mission statement and terms of service. I had to turn down several ISP's (such as InternetConnect) because of their draconian TOS (which included that they can charge me $1,000 if I potentially infringe on IP). SpeakEasy is the only ISP I trust.

Just recently, Nader spoke at the SpeakEasy cafe off 2nd and Bell, downtown Seattle. SpeakEasy has lent the back room to Free Radio Seattle as well. If SpeakEasy isn't a safe ISP, I don't know who is.

I have 608/128kbps service with SpeakEasy in the Boston area. I ordered it in the beginning of May and was given an install date two weeks later. It's been running at the full 608kbps speed ever since, has never gone down, and the company is great in terms of catering to people who know what they want (i.e. multiple static IPs, encouraged domain and web serving, etc). I'd highly suggest them in any area, for that matter.

I live in Atlanta (Virginia Highlands area), I'm not in college, and I live in what could be considered a geek house. I work for an ISP in the area, and I decided to move out of my ultra-cramped apartment. I managed to find a steal of a house... well, half a house. Its been subletted into two seperate dwellings, one upstairs, and one in the basement. The basement dwelling was available. I quickly moved into this place, put an add out on Yahoo, and found a like-minded techie working in the same field as myself. Both of us being geeks (him, an NT administrator, and myself a security engineer using Linux and BSD), we had half an army of computers between us, so we signed-up for DSL through Speakeasy, I setup FreeBSD on a spare PPro200 for a NAT-firewall, and we now have 7 PCs running various operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, WinNT, Win2k, and Win98) with all the bandwidth we really need for around $60 a month.

Just goes to show that a) you don't need to be in college to have a geekhouse, b) FreeBSD can make a damn good firewall, and c) its all possible in Atlanta. Good luck with your searching!

IMHO - if you can get it, go RoadRunner - i have yet to have problems and it has been three months on CounterStrike bliss!

I live in the Albany area, and have used Road Runner for a while now. I live in a house with three roommates, two of whom are hardcore geeks. We have recently subscribed to DSL, from a local provider, Speakeasy, and are comparing the services before deciding to unsubscribe from either service.

Road Runner has been decent, in the sense that it has been alternately horrible and wondeful. When it's working, it runs 200kBps-300kBps. (note, that's bytes, not bits. Meaning 5 seconds per MB, tops) This beats the pants off the DSL, which for a comparable price gives us exactly 60kBps all the time. However, RoadRunner has gone down rather frequently (I can't say for sure it was network outages vs. line problems, but it fixed itself after a couple hours, and regardless of the cause it was still a problem) and has recently been very unreliable, as far as speed is concerned. For the past week or two I've been getting mostly around the 5-25 kBps range.

I'm not going to say one is better or worse, but they serve different needs. The DSL has provided us with a much more reliable connection, and allowed us 4 static IP Addresses, as well as giving us access to functons like reverse DNS. This is much better for the hardcore geeks and businesses who want to run their own email, web, ftp, etc... servers. RoadRunner, on the other hand, is much faster. It is a beautiful solution to the home recreational surfer who wants to fetch web pages and files at high speeds, but who doesn't need reliability or advanced functions, like static IPs.

Thus, I come to the conclusion that DSL is a better deal, provided you can find a good ISP (I strongly recommend speakeasy, they even fully support linux).

Try speakeasy.net. I've been with them for about two months, and they don't seem to mind servers at all. The price might seem a little high, but it's fast, reliable, and the main noc os is linux.

I figured I'd hear this eventually. I checked out DSL Reports to find out whether I could get DSL, since I knew I could not get the ADSL from the phone company because of my distance from the CO. While I was there, I found that I could get an expensive and slower DSL called SDSL (only 144Kb, and anywhere from $90-$125 a month) After some shuffling of bills and whatnot, I looked at the ISPs who provided the $90 service, and one was Flashcom. Fortunately, dslreports.com has user reviews. Flashcom was consistently the lowest ranked provider, so I went with SpeakEasy. It took 3 months to get it, due to some "incompatible pair" problem Covad was reporting that BellSouth was having. But, things did come online Saturday before last. Then, the next day, a storm blew out the line. Speakeasy has been easy to get support from, and they won't bill me until the line is back up and running, despite the fact that it was working fine for 24 hours before the storm. It's hard to get times for Covad to show up, because they are booked on weekends, but I have heard pretty good things about Speakeasy, but nothing but bad news about Flashcom.

And if you want a Unix-clone and can't find it on gnutella.wego.com, then you download gnotella as a tar.gz from here, or search on this php-form.

And if you want a Unix-clone and can't find it on gnutella.wego.com, then you download gnotella as a tar.gz from here, or search on this php-form.

Just wanted to point out that Gnotella 0.1 ( Gnutella Unix clone) is out. (I mirrored the tar.gz, since I couldn't find it on the webpage anymore)
Or you can, of course, use web-based gnutella-searches like this to search for your strawberry-rhubarb pie recipes.

Just wanted to point out that Gnotella 0.1 ( Gnutella Unix clone) is out. (I mirrored the tar.gz, since I couldn't find it on the webpage anymore)
Or you can, of course, use web-based gnutella-searches like this to search for your strawberry-rhubarb pie recipes.

Psion, thanks for the delightful read! That beaver giving a dam dam part had me rolling....and yes, I think there are some industrial soaps for washing evil off...although I've heard they leave a sticky residue, something about guilt or consience I think :)

At any rate I think what you've said makes sense. The only part I "had beef" with was the veal section. Whether or not they are blissfully ignorant, it's wrong to treat them that way simply so we can eat tender meat. That is something no other animal does. And you were right about being evil, that's the way it sounds to me as well. The big problem I have, though, is that nobody knows and as a result, they themselves are blissfully ignorant. I think that if everybody in America could see this photo* (see below) and then decide whether or not to dig into their veal meal, a good percentage would opt against it.

* If you don't want to look it's a calf lying in feces, not able to move, muscles in atrophy.

So I guess what I'm saying is that maybe both the humans and the animals are ignorant, but only one of the two is blissful. There are some of us (including the two of us) who have thought about these issues, but over half the people I associate with through work, school, etc. never do (maybe I should move? :) It's easier to not think about it. Anyway, thanks for the reason...and the optimism!

By the way, I was just watching the local "news" (in Philadelphia) and a trailor just bellied up on the highway. It was carrying 10,000 pounds of pig meat, all ruined now. Suddenly I feel sick...