Slashdot Mirror
Stopping The 56K Hate
A just-barely-Anonymous Coward writes: "Every day, hundreds of people are discriminated against by their Internet connection, banned from video/audio downloads, video/audio streaming, gaming, webcasts, and many other everyday Internet activities. The damage starts small -- hurt feelings, a little anger -- but soon it all escalates into pure rage that often leads up into the cutting of the aggressors' broadband line.
The broadband users of the internet are the ones that torment the little people. All too often they forget their true origins; where they came from back in the good old days before there were even 56k modems.
This website is dedicated to
stopping the hate of 56k modems. Show your support by joining the ranks." No accounting for taste, but I laughed from this end of a 53K connection to my ISP.
I stopped hating 56k when I stopped using it.
Out of sight, out of mind.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Wonderful, hard to read GIF banners added to thousands of sites around the world will surely help the needs of those of us who often surf through lynx to cut through most of the crap that people decide is 'better said' with an image.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It seems like a good point - broadband people can get used to high-speed access etc., and it's a good thing in general to have broadband, but it's also socially divisive - in the UK it's high-cost for high-bandwidth.......
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
Amazing - three smart comments, and not a "Yay! Frost Pist!" among them...
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
But not nearly as amusing as watching their counter skyrocket :) They're up to 277 or so hits since this was posted.
and once again.. it's porn. Certain porn-sites use a 'plugin' that basically makes your modem call a commercial dialin point owned by the porn-server. This makes for easy billing.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
This Externel Zoom 56 v.92 is decent enuff ;p
www.lpsg.org
can I mod this whole story down to Score: -1; troll?
Or, +1 funny?
I'd support 56k users...if they'd stop hating me for having DSL
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
All of us cable/dsl people will be back to 56k after all of our providers tank.
Apart from the fact that the graphical banners seem a bit unnecessary (wouldn't a text link be more in-keeping with the message?), I reckon there's a good point here. Unnecessary flash (small 'f') is often annoying and slows web speeds horribly. Just give me plain text sites any day! (Well, except when I am surfing at work. Flashy stuff is OK then.)
I'm a condescending broadband cable internet user. For transfers of even 100 megabytes can take hours on a modem. My dialup backup auto-kicks me after six hours of usage. I see very good reasons for 56Kbps users to be banned from file servers that serve such large files.
1) Chances are, your download will fail.
2) If there is a max user limit, you'll clog up the server for other people who would get the download done much faster.
Now, even with these good reasons, 56K people are gonna feel discriminated against. I would be. So there's no way to please everyone, so I guess I don't really see the point of this little movement.. Also, most people with 56K probably don't want to keep it, and would rather have broadband.
Feel sorry for the modem user - put more images on your page.
I get the feeling that the targetted point has been missed by a wide margin.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
In many of the cases mentioned, the problem lies in the fact that the people on 56K modems are slowing everyone else down. This isn't the case with say Q3Arena, but in games that require fast syncrhonization like Starcraft, the game goes at the speed of the slowest client. (and while sometimes this may be a cable user, most often it is not) While the modem user might *really* want to play, she/he shouldn't, because it is causing everyone else in the game grief.
:)
Of course, it would be nice if game authors made their networking code a little cleaner.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I don't expect folks who own a Honda scooter to feel discriminated against because they can't ride their wind-up toy on the highway, I expect them to keep out of my way, and on the side roads until they can buy something to get them where they're going faster. (Full disclosure: I had one of them there scooters, cheap and fun! But, Lordy! SLOW!) But I don't expect scooters riders to shout about The Man keeping them down because there are folks going faster.
If you've got a 56K modem, turn off the graphics until you find something you want to view, and save playing Flash games until you're at work. But don't try to make the rest of us feel bad because you don't have bandwidth. Ante up, then you can bootleg MP3's with the big boys!
Memes don't exist. Tell your friends.
nuff said
I was in an even worse spot. being so far from the switching station (35,000 M) I was told I was lucky to get the pathetic speed I was getting (26.6) I snatched the first broadband that became available (cable). I feel for 56K people and stilldespise high bandwith webpages that don't have "lite" versions. Have some pity for those who aren't in reach of faster connections!!
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!
For years and years there have been people with fast and with (relatively) slow Internet connections. Such as those working on universities having (on their job or campus) "broadband" since 10 years or more. Call it socially divisive if you like, but the same goes for cars, houses, expensive clubs, scientific journals (not everyone can read them) etc.
10 years ago those poor home-users on 28k8 or slower could not download whole directories full of pr0n that was to be found on ftp servers in those days, but those with a fast connection (mostly at work/university) could.
I do agree however that it is a shame to lock out people without reason by using large images, sounds etc. unnecessarily.
What i'm supposed to shed a tear cuase mommy won't cough up 40$ a month for some DSL?
Too bad. Get a job.
Theoretically part of "stopping the hate" of 56k modems would be to make websites cleaner with less "junk" graphics... yet they want people to add a banner to their site? Am I missing something?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
From the website:
> Select the banner you like best and upload it to your website...
> Please no porn/hate/other terrible thing- sites. You won't be accepted.
Even modem-users want to access porn/hate/other terrible thing- sites!
... and this is often done without warning the user, and after switching the modem to ATM0L0.
And most people spell this F R A U D.
This makes for easy billing
... way too dodgy!
Though surely at about $10/min? I would never trust anything from a porn site which attempts to execute on my local machine
And if you live in the UK, it's probably phoning a premium-rate line in Guyana or somewhere. We have rules on this stuff, but they are ineffective.
Sure, they put their phone number in the little box on the telco's DSL web page...It says "Not available" and then they leave it at that.
You've GOT to be persistant to get service going in your area. I called every few weeks to the phone company and cable company for a year. Have your friends call, use payphones, etc. These companies are in business just like any other. If there is no "demand" for the service they will put it somewhere that they THINK there is demand.
I know some people are hopelessly stuck with modems because they live way out there. I'm five miles outside of a small town. There's a dairy farm next door...It's pretty rural here, but I've been on a DSL connection now (the first person activated in my area, imagine that!) for a few months.
After ordering the service, the technician who came for the install told me that the local switch had been "DSL ready" for nine months but they never activated the equipment. I think calling often and having friends and neighbors doing the same got them to actually do something.
It's a shame that you have to chase after something you want to BUY so badly, but it's amazing how clueless the companies are. I ordered my service, they did a line test, I received my modem...Then they told me my line didn't qualify because I was too far away (I can SEE the local switch out my window). Turns out the guy on the phone was reading the wrong screen...
Be persistant and don't believe anything they tell you, hehe...
Case
1ee7 LPB
One of the other posts so far in this topic has commented that bandwidth is a privilege, not a right.
That may be - but it is a privilege only available to a select few. In Ireland, where I live, broadband access is commercially available only in very small areas of Dublin - we're talking a few thousand people, tops.
Many people would be prepared to pay for bandwidth if they could get it - but the fact is, they can't. There is no alternative to modem (or ISDN) dialup for the majority of people here. Worse, local calls are not free - so an hour at 56K costs the equivalent of US $1.00. It adds up.
How much is Cable/DSL in the states? US $50/month? For that, your average Irish modem user may have been lucky enough to get about 300MB of traffic through.
Fortunately it looks like this may change soon - thank god - but for now, we're stuck with V.90.
http://www.themeparks.ie
What's the matter? got banned from that warez FTP cuase your AOL account was to slow? boohoo...
Who needs *broadband* internet access anyway? Go to university and get yourself an ethernet drop. 100Mbps ethernet is much better than a puny 128kbps-uplink-capped connection from a company on the brink of bankruptcy.
(While the term has been wildly abused, "broadband" refers to a method of encoding data onto a physical medium; ethernet uses "baseband" encoding, while cable modems use "broadband" encoding. The difference is largely one of simplicity of encoding vs resistance to noise.)
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
because your so-called super-broadband might behave no better than a 56K modem line.
You may test your line by clicking here.
(I understand some of you might have sentimental thought against MS* and swear not clicking on any of their site for eternality. I appreciate if you can provide me with an alternatives bandwidth testing site. Thanks. ^_^)
broadband users just point your browser at a site that has been slashdotted that is how fast us 56ker's go all the time.
Frontpages using Flash are the online version of an SUV. Someone somewhere might really need it to get their message across but for most people it's just a titanic waste, IMVHO.
hey it's not my fault you're still using 90s technology. Get a job.
Funny != Insightful
GET A LIFE!
What are you 13?
If there was any doubt that Slashdot is aimed at teenagers, i think this is it.
When the pathetic ramblings of some little warez d00d make to the front page of slashdot it's time to bail...
The web will suck on a 56k modem. It dosent matter if the page is text only, it will still be slow, and thus suck.
Graphics can be good, graphics can be bad. Too much graphics can even saturate a high speed connection. But resonable levels of graphics saturate a 56k line.
Are there modem users who cant get a high speed connection because of cost, or its simply not aviable? Sure. Do I feal bad for them? A bit, sure - I think internet connectivity is important and am in fact on the Board of a Community Net that provides free dialup connectivity - but that dosent mean that desiginers should sacrafice for them. Or people with real connections should either.
Try CNET: http://webservices.cnet.com/bandwidth/.
No need to fill in the boxes, just click the button and it tells you how big your pipe is at the moment. Currently, I'm getting 1271kbps on Charter Pipeline. I think it's safe to say that beats my old 56k connection any day.
I know of some legit pornsites that use it. But yes.. it is easy to scam with this..
;)
Since I never felt the urge to use these plugins for easy (and high-priced) billing, I can't tell you the price, and I am not sure my boss would appreciate me finding out
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Insightful? Insightful? Man you can really see what a bunch of cocksmokers the mods are. Hey retardo mods: the nation of islam is highly anti-semitic. You think those jew bashing posts on slashdot are bad, go read some shit from farahkan. Whoever thinks that is insightful is very very naive, it's scary how naive really, not to mention they got trolled bigtime. Wow unquestioning political correctness total blinds these little fools.
Check out his site stats link at the bottom of the page, when I looked the last five users were all refered by slashdot :-)
-- Vagnerr - (www.vagnerr.com) Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
..and you can live without downloading much media.
It's not only porn :-)
There was a dutch website which showed you how to get from place A to place B with public transport (busses, trains and metros fyi).
One day they announced that their site would be only available through a dial-up line a one guilder per call. Never used it anymore, mostly because... I had a cable-modem.
Edwin, back on 56Kbps right now.
bash$
I work in a firm that builds websites. A normal part of the website construction is the business consulting part, where you look into the business rules for you site, and determine the user group you wish to address with the site. The next part is to determine the technology used by the user group. If a majority of the user group uses 56K (or less) the site will be designed for that... otherwise not. It's that simple.
This is not discrimination. It's common sense. If our clients fail to reach their customers they will be out of business. But at the same time we will use the best technology that will provide the best result (graphics, audio, video etc...)
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
People who feel they NEED broadband are nothing more than materialistic facists. These are the same petty little people who feel their possesions, especially ones on public display like cars, jewelry and yes internet access, determine their worth. Without their possesions, which usually have to be the BEST in some way, they feel they are insignificant losers, because they are. They have been brainwashed by our captalist/materialist machine which trains us to purchase more. More and faster is what we are trained to strive for and some do it with such blind fervor they fail to notice the loss of their soul in the race to die with the most toys.
hard to read
When I downloaded the button, I pumped up the gamma in GIMP by 2.0. This made it much easier to read.
GIF banners
A GIF would look silly next to my "burn all .gifs" button, so I converted it to PNG.
those of us who often surf through lynx
Users of Links, w3m, and Lynx will see the alt text "56K PRIDE" along with alt text for every other textual image on my site.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Read between the lines, you know what he's really bitching about is how all the warez and divx ftps and fservers have a minimum cps that's higher than some puny dial up can meet. This guys just mad cuase he can't get any warez.
People who optimize for lines faster than 56K are just plain lazy. Do you think people would have bothered creating heavier and heavier forms of compression for media if it weren't for the slowness of our connections? As the speed bar gets raised, people lose sight of the challenge of packing a crapload of content into a quickly downloaded page.
This happens in everything. Look at computer game designers who fancy up essentially 2-D games with resource hogging 3-D graphics. Look at the apathy with which consumers approach fuel economy of vehicles in the US because gas is so abundant and cheap.
The goal must be to think big in a small box if we are going to challenge ourselves.
That's right, not only is this a class warfare issue, but it's a racism one as well. Sheesh.
56K isnt even bad, when I left NJ, I could get either ISDN (total rip off, love mah bell), a T-1 or frac to the house (I love mah bell, they can run a t-1 (which is a circuit that has been around for 30 years) in 90 days (much, much less if you pay much much more, and give you 1.5 up down flawlessly), pray for DSL or cable to come around, they never did, and now probably never will, OR use my two trusty couriers to aggregate bandwidth and 26400 x 2. (Note, this kind of dialup account no longer exists anymore, RIP netcom =( ].
Anyways, 56K in that town was like 10 ft from the CO or less. Forget 56K at 10,000 ft.
I'm very upset that web pages are inline image laden, its very hard to navigate the web with all this super bandwidth sucking stuff lying around. sure its optional, but as unix admins know that in a pinch without X its VERY hard to use links/lynx and get anywhere usefule without the images! ITS terrible!
This is probably why usenet is still very popular around the world.
AFAIK, only 5% of the people in this country have broadband.
And in case you havn't noticed all "internet" companies having a hard time, thank you AT&T, Verizon, GTE, (Insert Bell here). They love it when the internet does bad because it threatens to deprecate thier sources of income! If 768/768 SDSL was $100 a month - and it was available everywhere, everyone everywhere would have it, and no one would use the phone (things like dialpad would replace it.) Remember, these idiots at PacBell charge me $30 a month just to have a phone number. Give me a break. I'm all for paying for bandwidth - but the DSL you may never get was destroyed by the Bells to protect their territory...
I'm hoping that "lite" versions of sites pop up so that when my broadband goes dark I can enjoy the net just the same.
- NOTE TO SUN, IBM, COMPAQ ET AL. FIX YOUR BROKEN NON-ECN AWARE FIREWALLS PLEASE.
Two more cents =)
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
can I mod this whole story down to Score: -1; troll? Or, +1 funny?
If you don't like the omelet that Slashdot serves, special order your own omelet at Kuro5hin, where YOU choose the stories.
-- Pinocchio Poppins, pin0cchio on Kuro5hinWill I retire or break 10K?
this is a pretty lame troll... then again, you got the moderator
Ok Boys !
Now, we just have hit an almost virgin website, around 277 hits when we started.
Lets get this blond newcomer become the HIT from today, with more than 400 000 hits this night 12.00am !!!
Slashdot will keep this young site from youth, and propel him to the Summit of ADVERTISEMENT payment scheme, with over 400KHits/day !!!
The first one who blows the counter wins an Electronic Puff 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Before you know it, we'll be discriminated against by the kernel version that we are using.
Apart from the fact that the graphical banners seem a bit unnecessary (wouldn't a text link be more in-keeping with the message?)
When I put one of the buttons on my own site, I used a graphical link with alt text. Such links show up as a text link on text browsers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
it's free again on the NS site :)
ofcourse.. what also helped was the fact that a LOT of the users of the online travelplanner where students, checking the train from the university, which doesn't use modems.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Some people can't even get higher than 26400 due to bad phone infrastructure, fiber connections, distance, etc. That's almost half of a 56k speed (actually 53k is max). :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm sure somebody on slashdot knows how to hack a 56k modem... the "govenor" is what's the problem... it keeps you from connecting at broad band speeds... I'm sure somebody in this infinitly deep pool of it resources knows how to do this... is it just on the modem side?...or is is slowed to 56k at server side as well?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Sorry, but the banners on the site such as this one, with their devil-esque design, appear, IMHO, much more like a call to dance with the devil in satanists orgies devourating cable/dsl users corpses than a peacefull ode to mutual respect.
Maybe the marketing as to be reviewed ?
Feel sorry for the modem user - put more images on your page.
When I took one of the banners, I made it 10 times smaller by converting it from JPG to an indexed PNG posterized to 6 levels, ending up with a 500 byte version that travels over a 50 kbps link in the time of the average eyeblink (100 ms). I also notified the webmistress of the location of this smaller PNG.
Will I retire or break 10K?
At home I have a 33.6 modem, and at work I have a 10mbit connection to the internet (I work at an ISP). Nowadays I don't like having to use the net at home, but when I do I find it quite bearable. Slashdot and all my everyday sites load fairly quickly and grabbing the odd file is fine.
One of the main problems with having a fairly quick internet connection, is always getting frustrated with the congestion between yourself and the site you are visiting. Just because you have a fast connection, doesn't mean the other end does.
When I used to be on modem all the time, I could quite easily download 250 meg a day, which is not all that bad. So really, being stuck on a modem isn't all that bad, just depends on what you use it for I guess.
I've heard of this - never seen it. Hmmm - perhaps I should stay in more. :)
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
It's not the USD $40 per month; it's the $200,000 or more up front to move your SO and kids into an area where broadband cheaper than T1 is offered. It's the $40 per month you still pay when you can't use the broadband because you are living in another town nine months out of the year. (That's one of the advantages of dial-up; you can dial-up in any town where your ISP has modems, and UUNET POPs are quite common.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Go to university and get yourself an ethernet drop. 100Mbps ethernet is much better than a puny 128kbps-uplink-capped connection
Sure, you'll get fast file transfers across the school's network, but what if 1,500 students are sharing the 6 Mbps fractional T3 uplink from your school to the Internet?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Without knowing for sure, I'd guess they put the rates into the T&Cs/EULA when you install it.
After all, everyone knows that no-one reads the damn' things. But if the rates are in there, then it does fulfil the rules/guidance from ICSTIS (the people in UK who run the premium-rate lines) and OFTEL (the people who say "you naughty naughty company" - unless you're BT) with regard to "properly informing" the caller of the rate.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
The short version is that "baud" usually refers to the "symbol rate" (how many "symbols" are sent per second), and "bps" says how many bits are sent per second. In the early days, each "symbol" sent 1 bit's worth of information, so baud rate equalled bit rate. On modern modems, each "symbol" sends multiple bits worth of information.
This page has a much more comprehensive discussion on the matter.
Back on-topic: Yes, I have to agree that these bloated pages, esp. the Flash-reliant monstrosities, are atrocious. Where I don't mind Flash is when the site posts a Flash movie that you can specifically click on to see. (AYB comes to mind...) Where I do mind is when the whole site is composed of SWF's.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Modem users are paupers who live in shacks dreaming of someday being rich enough to afford broadband. And food. Like all poor people, modem users are ugly, and ill-educated. Hatred of modem users is virtually a societal obligation.
And if you live in the UK, it's probably phoning a premium-rate line in Guyana or somewhere. We have rules on this stuff, but they are ineffective.
You're right. Its not as common as it was a few years back, but it still happens. Some poor schlub will download the "plugin", which then silently disconnects their modem, dials them into an international number in e.g Guyana and then, this is the best part, will leave them connected and just route all of their traffic. If the person stays connected for three hours but left the site after ten minutes, they're still connected.
Of course if you find a charge like this on your 'phone bill, call your Telco. When I was working at BT, we would get one or two cases like this a month, and in a lot of cases the charges would be refunded. Of course the company running the scam would soon disapear....bastards.
Heck, I use a cluncky old 14.4 external on my iPAQ's cradle if I'm really, really starved for e-mail at home, and just can't wait to get back to the office. Well, I got it for free (the modem, that is) - and it's only e-mail. Wouldn't want to surf on that small screen anyways... (O yes, I do have a decent computer at home too - but it's only turned on under exceptional circumstances - I try to lead a normal life when not at work :-).
...that broadband is not necessarily much faster than a modem! NTL in the UK offer a cheap GBP 6/mth ($10/mth) "Broadband" service capped at 64K over a cablemodem.
Now you'd be hard pressed to call that BROADband, but the technology is the same.
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
People without broadband just simply do batch downloads - I get my PC to download files in the backgound, then get on with something else.
Due to the fact that BT have done their level best to make broadband access rollout as complicated as possible, and also the fact that England has lots of itty bitty villages that noone will regard rolling a cable out to as profitable, and whose local exchanges are last on the list to be ugraded, the majority of the UK is still on 56K modems.
There are things you can do to make your life easier. I use one of the BT Anytime connections (unlimited net access for £14.99) but note it has a 2 hour timeout, which makes downloading the latest release of KDE a bit of a b*tch. So I've written a simple script which downloads a directory/ list of files, resuming if the net connection goes down by means of the FTP reget.
(If there's a properly written script to do this let me know)
Anyway, just because you have a broadband connection does not mean you're going to get 256K uploads - there are enough choke points at various points on your net travels to ensure that you are unlikely to be able to eplout your full upload rate. Web sites that don't bear this in mind are likely to be out of business RSN anyway. Web site designers catering to just the top of the market forget the principles that if you sell on the web you should appeal to as many people as possible, since only a tiny proportion of site accesses are likely to result in sales.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Not only that, but what about the speed-demons who love and use Lynx/Links/etc.? Streaming video? Pah!
It's text all the way!
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
You could live in Australia and be stuck with Tel$tra's pathetic excuse for broadband internet. Not only is my cablemodem capped at 64k/sec, but it also has a ridiculous 3GB/month download limit. I know people on dialup who do more in a month than I am allowed to do. And that's not mentioning Tel$tra ADSL...
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
some days all I can get is 2 kbs
it's because I am in South Africa and we don't have a digital infrastructure, my American collogues constant mail me and tell me of 1600 kbs on dial up and how they download superfluous stuff that they don't even look at most of the time, hell I am so underprivileged I have never even experienced streaming audio let alone streaming video.
Will Work for Bandwidth
Where is the LOVE/Speed Man ???
... i have to go eat something fattening now
Text browsers are hated because the people who use them are the worst kind of nerds. Get a life, ya fuckwit.
Well, I went to look at the site, and decided that it probably wasn't worth the CTRL-ALT-PLUS->broswer resize needed to zoom it in enough to read it.
So, I clicked on view source, and there it was - <font size="1">. Come on...
If I hadn't payed $130+/mo for dial-up in japan, I'd be hatin' 56K users just because of this site.
Think I'll go write some CSS2 code now and hate the 4.x browsers now...
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Access speeds vary in sync with the rest of the UK (between 7pm and 11pm can be a bitch) between 33K and 45K (which is rather annoying, but at least they tell you the truth). You do have to install their annoying client to open the connection (under Windows at least, I dunno about their Linux support), but I always minimise it and use a proper browser.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to use a less lame ISP, but at least I don't have to worry about prices etc. with them. And since there's neither cable or DSL available in my area, I'm kinda limited in my options.
And I'd rather give AOL money than give it to BT - at least AOL know how to run a profitable business, and would dearly love to charge me for DSL if only BT would get around to letting them.
i take this post to be pure sarcasm, and find it humorous. btw, i am one of the hated commie pinkos that reactionaries (you know who you are) love to deride... do have a fine motherfucking day!
Check these links!
.... go boys go!!
OS being used and
Browser being used
and
9 poor saps are surfing at 640x480.
IE5 on Windows 2000 easily the most popular OS amongst current readership (probably UK readers in their offices).
It seems some people are using IE2.0 (don't believe it), and Konqueror is beating Opera.
I'm most impressed by the fact 2 people just read the page using Amigas
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
"...go to university" is perfectly acceptable where the poster lives.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
56k straight out deserves to be hated. I'd expand this whole idea to modems in general. Ideally I'd have the whole technology burn in the festering pits of hell if there was a decent replacement solution for everybody.
In hindsight however, it's not that bad. My last 56k modem blew up and I've been dialing up to my ISP via a 14.4 modem I dug out of my closet. Half of the time I don't even connect above 9600. It hurts.
Wow. Look at the page counter on that site go!
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
OK, I don't use lynx, at least not very often. So here is my stupid question -
Aren't you still downloading the images, even if your browser doesn't/won't display them? If so, they're still going to bog down your connection.
I won't be joining your ranks, but you certainly have my support. Well maybe not, but at least I won't discriminate against you.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
56k users shouldn't hate those who have broadband. Hate the Bell Systems for practicing anti-competative tactics that restrict third party vendors (CLECs) from creating competition in broadband.
Competition in Telecommunications and Economic Growth by James K. Glassman
85% of Americans think this signature sucks
You == faggot
Anybody find it ironic that the banner and those huge 56k graphics are over 50K for the both of the banners? Wouldn't you think they'd make the page 56k friendly?
I recall dialing up to the Sierra BBS in California and watching each individual character write itself onto the screen. Then there was CompuServe, which I never tried but was offered as an add-on to the modem.
56,000? Don't cry to me, Argentina. The truth is I never left 110. :)
This probably one thing is overlooked in the bandwidth discussion -- newer technology such as stylesheets and the PNG format can improve performance on modems. Even Macromedia Flash (or SVG) can give you nice graphics at sizes that are smaller than equivalent GIFs or JPEGs.
You have been tagged. Fear me.
frist prosts r kewl
I second that!
I'm tired of getting questions at work from you dinosaurs out there wondering why it takes a day to download a song off Ogg! stop surfing with your 486 and get in the game!
I had a Cable hook-up and I'm a poor art student living on ramen noodles and cheap booze (long live Old Thompsons!). The price difference between an At&T phone hookup and cable is small. buy generic cereal and you're even!
How far back do we have to go in backwards compatibility?
DAMN!
Never trust a bald barber; he has no respect for your hair
perhaps all you 56k'ers can go start your own internet somewhere else, I have cable modem and this world is MINE!!!!hahahahahahahaha
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
That's a nearly 75% reduction in the filesize and download time of only one image on their page. It took me all of 30 seconds to do. They must hate 56k users too.
Software Wars
seems like a joke to me... and the banners are ugly/hard to read. I find it hard to believe someone has that much pride in their slow connection.
-- chris
Newspapers are not written forpeople with a grade 2 reading level, there writen so that adults can understand it.
No, they are written for a 5th grade reading comprehension level.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
How 'bout stopping the microscopically unreadable fonts? It's websites like that which aim to give the world population a nasty case of eyestrain.
In a perfect world, site authors would be kind enough to respect their readers' eyes. For now, thank goodness for Mozilla's CTRL + feature. Sheesh.
You all will say the same thing too as soon as you have to played an online game against a 56ker.
Try Emperor - Battle for Dune. I HATE playing that game against 56kers as it runs at the speed of the SLOWEST connection. I mean I hate the fact that the 56kers are actually given an advantage because they either live in the boonies or are too cheap to get broadband. I paid my money - I should get my performance. I am of the opinion that they should be BANNED from such online activites until they can get their performance up to par.
As far as bandwidth discrimination in general is concerned - I say GET OVER IT. The net is heading into the future - if your 4 year old 56k connection cannot do that same then thats your problem.
BTW - this seems like a dumb place to post this article considering most of us probably do have access to high bandwidth net connections. Did you actually expect much sympathy from us? Sorry we are all booked up on crazy here - try the next house.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
downloads, get a faster modem", implying that it a functional webpage
should include tons of graphics.
If one wants flashy blinking stuff, it's much more effective to
watch MTV. Internet is for exchanging information, and most images do
not enhance that purpose. Is it easyer to find information in a
tabloid-style newspaper with everything on the page screaming for
attentention in all colors of the rainbow, or in a serious newspaper?
Then why does everybody want to have a webpage look like a tabloid?
Both designers and visitors, apparently.
Images don't scale nicely with screen size or default font size,
you can't do a text search in an image, they take lots of time to
download unless you are willing to pay USD 100 per month for a private
broadband connection. On Useit.com, you can find a large
archive of tested information on usability of web sites that support
these statements.
The only real purpose that most images on web pages serve, is to
obscure the structure of a website, such that visitors will spend more
time to find out what it's all about --- and see more ads.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
But what they are saying is that broadband is not available in their areas. That is the problem with broadband - not everyone has it. I do, and I love it, but most of my freinds, don't, and I feel bad for them, as doing anything with a 56k (or lower!) connection takes a very long time. I'm all for upping the standards, and so are the people this article is about. Go read it.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
Well, we've got one group wanting us to bring everything down to a level of a child so that it is safe for children. Then, we've got another group wanting us to bring everything down to 56k so it is safe for narrowband users. And you've got vision impaired users wanting to rid the net of graphics.
And I'm sure there are all sorts of other fringe groups wanting to protest this and that because of their own personal problems.
Anyone remember the South Park Christmas Play were anything offensive was removed? I'm glad the net won't have to give into everyone's demands.
The AC, unfortunately, has broadband envy. Give him a T1 connection, and you'll see his protest wither away.
BTW... do you know how hard it was going from a cable modem to a 33.6 dialup a few years ago? The pain was incredible. And I certainly wasn't blaming all the high speed users for it.
Case in point: my boss. His home account is AOL (surprise). He pays $26.00 a month for this, which he continually has problems with (insert long list of issues as to why the modern world hates dial-up). A cable or DSL account would cost him $40.00. 50 cents a day extra, for the speed, for the convenience, for the hassles of winmodems being taken away (this from a man who paid over $100 a month EXTRA on his car lease just to get a car with leather seating).
3 years of me trying, and I still get the Friday @ 10pm calls 'it says the line is busy. what do I do?'.
Oh, did I happen to mention that his PC is plugged into his SECOND phone line, which costs him something like $20.00 a month on top? His reasoning for keeping it is that if anyone has to call him when the main line is busy... and yes, this is a man who will actually exceed his monthly allotment of AOL hours (I think it's 100 or so :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The broadband users of the internet are the ones that torment the little people. All too often they forget their true origins; where they came from back in the good old days before there were even 56k modems.
Oh, give me a break. I've got 1.2Mbps DSL with a static IP for $40/mo. As much as I love it, I will *never* forget where I came from.
My first home Internet connection was in 1988, as a kid in high school. It was a shell account on a Sun at Carleton University, and my connection was through a DEC LA-36 teletype and a 110-baud former phone company modem.
(As an aside, anyone else make the mistake of trying to run vi with a teletype? Urk.)
While the teletype was too bulky to keep, I do still have the old 110 baud modem.
Every now and then I'll fire up my old DEC VT-100, hook it up to my FreeBSD box, and log in at 300 baud for nostalgia's sake.
Nope; they're neat, but they're historical, like the 56k modem. Consumer broadband is here. Your only excuse for not having it is geographical.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
- create a sort of fun web page with a topic relevant to a majority of internet users (e.g. 56k modem users)
- add a banner add to the top of the page
- encourage people to link back to your page (will also increase your google rating)
- try to get featured on
/. for added exposure
Voilá!PS: why should anyone hate 56k users? I hate DSL users, if it wasn't for them and everyone would still be on 56k, we'd have less bloated websites.
(or am I missing something here?)
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
Look, the reason people don't want to send audio/video streaming down to a 56K modem is that it's just a waste of time and bandwidth. First of all, just because you have a 56k modem doesn't mean you're really doing 56k. You're probably operating somewhere around 28k, and that's if you have a good ISP. Even if you were getting true 56k operation, it would still be too slow to get anything out of downloading a 480X600 streaming video. All you would accomplish is adding on extra traffic to the video server which would mean that someone with the proper connection would not be able to retrieve the movie. I am so sick and tired of servers being dragged down to the point where even with my 1.5Mbps connection I get skipping video. I wish more people would implement restrictions based on connection speed and download ability.
~ now you know
I understand people outside the US bitching about this but inside the US we have choices. If broadband is on their high priority list then they should move. I want to have a nice view of an ocean or a lake but my finances wont allow it, however broadband is cheap and its all over the place.
I know some people don't want to move but they must realize life isn't fair and its full of choices. BTW, I moved from my quiet house in the middle of nowhere and one of the many reasons was broadband.
If your content truly requires all the fancy bells and whistles, that's fine. It might be polite to have an opening page saying what is needed and why, however.
If your content does not _need_ all the bells and whistles, that's still fine.. if you are competent enough to employ them such that they do not destroy access to the content.
If your content does not need the bells and whistles, but anyone who is to get to the content must blow the whistle and ring the bell.. really, why did you bother wasting your time? And other folks time, for that matter?
Some things do require more, but many do not.
There are a good many pgaes that basically just serve up text. Yes, dull. So graphics are added.
This is fine. Some folks even have enough clue to use ALT properly. The graphics add tot the page - but the lack of them wouldn't hurt the content. Other pages are graphic-dependent. I'd hardly expect something like a high resolution sky atlas to be anything other - but it has good reason to be.
What you seem to be arguing for, though, is the equivalent of scanning a newspaper (mainly text) and making it the final frame of an animated gif.
This accomplishes nothing in helping the content, but does annoy folks.
Or if I have you wrong, perhaps you just came across that bad and really meant that 'Some things call for more than plain text and we should be able to use the right tool for the job.' In that case, I agree with you.
I have not heard of any vision impaired users wanting to rid the net of graphics, by the way. I have heard of them wanting ALT used correctly and to have poorly thought out uses of graphics reduced. (If a graphic is doing a text job, why is there a graphic there? Wrong tool for the job.)
We have choices in the US? really? I'm in the middle of a very sizable city and I still can't get any broadband. So fuck off with your "move if you don't like it" attitude.
Maybe when mommy and daddy stop paying all your bills you'll begin to understand what the real world is all about.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
..and when you leave their guestbook, you get a fine flash animated ad, clearly not geared towards modem users. :-)
generally I've found that the majority of web pages don't really discriminate against modem users, they just tend to be either A) lazy, or B) don't know any better. Personally, I come from the good ol days of using a 33.6 I'd go to college and be on a T1, and every summer I'd go back to using a 33.6 - and I sort of realized how easy it is to overlook loading times.
All this time (for like 4 years now) I've been making web pages. When I first started out, page loading time was a HUGE issue - for which I got praised many times for quick loading times. Now days I still optimize my page as much as possible since it's sort of a habit, but people couldn't care less. Other pages equivalent to mine are can be 5 to 10 times larger (in kilobytes) with less content. It's amazing how many people make web pages and don't even THINK about people using slow connections - and more often than not they don't care either.
Besides which, doesn't mozilla (and opera) have image blocking capabilities?
When sending large files (>1M), I always consider who is getting the file before sending. If they have a dial-up, I'll send a link instead.
And since I'm >2 miles from my CO, I had to go with cable modem. It's a thing of beauty even at $45/month. I was able to drop my second phone line and ISP. About an even trade.
I didn't do it, and if I did, you can't prove it. Bart Simpson
Why? - BT Openworld. The future is here.
Well, it will be when the connection works and the exchange is fixed. Until then, the ADSL modem is a doorstop and the trusty 56k modem is buzzing along nicely...
I'm on the net all the time at my job with a trusty t1 connection, but almost never on my dialup at home.
Any questions?
Geez, if you want to support modem users, at least optimize your banner. I changed it to 256 colors, slimming it down to 17 KB. GIF is a much sharper format for text like this, but it does come out slightly larger at 18 KB.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
...or does anyone else remember 110 baud modems? Remember how blown away we all were when 300 baud came out?
It's called www.ihaveayugoandandicantcompeteinIndy.com
Please visit my site so anyone with a dinky car can participate in Indy racing.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The vast majority is on dialup. If you want them to think you can't design a responsive site then keep on doing what you claim to be. Dumass!
So, if we could get all the broadband snobs to donate their old 56k modems (since the consensus is they'll never go back....) maybe I (and those like me) could upgrade from 28.8!
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
To access my Commodore 64 web site!!!
$ telnet c64 250
Trying 10.10.10.7...
Connected to c64.
Escape character is '^]'.
LUnix Shell Version 2.2beta (15Feb2000)
# uname -a
uname -a
LNG 10.10.10.7 13 00 C64ntsc 6510
# ps
ps
PID ST Time PPID ID FP MEM
1 wcons 000048F866 0 00 C1 03
2 wcons 00028A530E 1 01 C1 09
4 cpu 00F1DF250C 2 02 01 11
5 cpu 01D9FB997B 2 03 01 17
6 wait 006980519C 2 04 41 05
17 cpu 0000528D90 6 05 81 0A
19 cpu 000000A991 17 06 81 07
#
PHEAR MY COMMODORE SKILLZ!!
seems like broadband is really expensive in the states. My Bell Canada Sympatico adsl only costs me $35 a month, including modem rental, and I know that cable modems are the same cost - and that's Canadian dollars, so it's like 46 cents USD. Maybe you wouldn't have the issue of dial-up discrimination if the broadband weren't so bloody expensive.
do not read this line twice.
you are now Übermensch.
Nietzsche is dead !
Takes 20-25 secs to find, download and run the shockwave on a highspeed LAN connection to my p3-500mhz laptop. Some pages start new windows others don't - doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason for the distinction. That's the kind of mass market gunk dialup users have to wade through.
or www.clairol.com if you prefer - the times are similar.
The truth is that all of these brand savvy companies don't give a greasy fuck what your experience is as long as they think it looks great and gets their brand image across.
All you dial uppers stuck in the past can go on back to "your internet" (a good local bbs with a FIDO feed....) And the rest of us "Wide Pipers" will not have to worry about all of these little bugs on our windshields.
In all honesty -- I think the previous message about mopeds on the freeway was a pretty good summary.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I love the fact that you can goto any computer store and buy a 56k modem, though it is nearly impossible to connect at 56k. I worked at an ISP in Northern Virginia, called Erols, for about 8 months (i'm sure many of you feel my pain). I never ever had a customer connect at 56k, nor have I ever connected at 56k, the fastest I have ever seen is 50k. Plus, Ma Bell (Verision in our area) only guarntees a 9600 baud connection. So I think the blame is at shitty phone lines and a crappy LEC (local exchange carrier). So FUCK you Bell, I've got cable.
it's a sig, wtf?
If 56k analog modem users are the ones being discriminated against, then, please explain to me why the fuck 24.0.0.0/8 is the most-scanned block on the Internet?
If modem users have it so bad, why does everyone want to hack broadband users?
I say everyone just STFU and deal with it.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'd think that a modem would be a good defense against the "multiple spawning windows of death" effect that some pr0n pages supposedly have (I wouldn't know, I only surf respectable smut sites). After all, if you have a slow connection, shouldn't you be able to close each window faster than it can download the script to open a new one? Heh. Of course, the dirt pics would also take longer to load, might "kill the mood"...
Freedom: "I won't!"
hmm i wonder if angelfire runs their servers on 56k?
I live roughly 20 miles north of Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in the U.S. I've lost track of how many ISPs, DSL providers, telcos, etc., I've called in the last three months, only to be told "no DSL in your area".
So I thought, fine, I'll go cable. In the last two weeks I've left three "I want to buy NOW, sign me up and start billing" messages with my cable TV provider -- not a sausage. I have come to the conclusion the sods just don't want my business.
I honestly don't get it. With the smaller companies going bankrupt and the larger companies no longer invincible, why don't these companies take the time to call me back? I'm here, I'm ready, I've already got the cable TV service, all they need to do is add on another sum of money to my bill. But I simply cannot get a response. And so I remain a 56K dial-up user.
Especially because many African and Asian countries have a homogenous non-white population. Targetting modem users in those countries for harasment is a direct racist act.
Non-western nations have every right to protect their racial purity from outside polution.
There's no room for a horse-pulled buggy in the fast lane of the interstate. Dial-up connections are not suited to downloads of over ten megabytes or so. Banning slow connections from downloading huge files is not banning them from the internet, it's a fairly minor concession to reality: like banning someone with a 1 minute ping from a twitch game.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Are you guys on crack?
if you're tired of it then just get a broadband connection. it's not that much more and it's like 100 times faster. I promise once you sit down at your own computer and see how fast web pages load and how movies play instantly you won't ever whine about 56k again, and you'll never go back. If you can't get DSL, get cable, if you can't get cable, get a dish. There's no excuse anymore. Broadband is progress. Whining about the net going broadband is like whining about computers no longer having 5.25 inch floppy drives, or that you can't put a 80 gig drive in your old 486 because they're descriminating against people with older computers and making hard drives that won't work. Then net is just growing, and Broadband is the way it's growing. Some day there will be a technology faster than cable or dsl. When that day comes are you going to sit there on dial up and whine still? get over it, call up your cable or phone company and pay the extra money. Chances are it's only twice as much, and it's 100 times faster. How many chances in life do you have to get something 100 times better for only twice as much? boo hoo shut up.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
the "56k Pride" logo on the site. Seeing that -- it's evident we have a movement on our hands. I am going to have my T1 removed right away. I feel so dirty....Repent
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
How can you be tolerant when you have attitudes like these? (http://www.penny-arcade.com/modem.shtml)
Bwahahaha...
Will
I don't suppose in your rush to post that you actually read the post. The Gentlemen in question and myself, as well, have no option for broadband. If they sold it in my area, I would buy it.
Hell, I live in a pretty nice area, too. You would think with all the wealthy Lexus drivers in San Clemente, CA PacBell would decide there is money to be made here. As it is now, my home connection is never better than 28.8. I do all of my surfing at work.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
ok, well, since everyone who's discrimitnated against has a slur word to describe them, lets make up one for dial up users. hmm... how about.. dialup bitch.. no wait, AOL lovers... no no no.. i know.. busy signal bitch... .. naah too long.. modem screechers.. no how about
idiotwhositstherewaytoolongbecausehedoesn'trealize howcheapandfastbroadbandissohebitchesabouthowslow5 6kisandhoweveryoneonthenetonlycaresaboutbroadband.
i like it
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
The NOI is on the forefront of the struggle against racism. They may have made some unfortunate remarks about jewish citizens but you can't call them antisemitic because they are not whites, they are proud African-Americans who despise all racist crackers with a passion.
Everyone loves to complain about the lack of high speed access in their area, but most people don't actually do anything about it.
I live 15 milies away from the capital of the United States and I can't get cable/DSL. Why? Unforunately because of my location zoning requirements require livable areas to have lots no smaller than two acres. Most other land is agricultural. I can't even get cable TV. It's not profitable. Am I anywhere near the Telco? Nope. What does Verizon tell me? No DSL any time soon, buddy. I can't get broadband because I can't do ANYTHING about it. I'd say most of us that gripe about it simply can't get it at all.
What really steams me is the people who don't think they can 'afford' broadband, or just plain wont pay the extra few pennies for it. These people deserve our wrath and then some
I'd pay. Believe me, I would pay if it was even possible to get ANYthing here.
Consumer broadband is here. Your only excuse for not having it is geographical.
Amen.
hmmm, dunno what all the fuss is about. My geek flat has a shared 28k8 modem (between two of us). We were going to get a 56k modem but with our squid cache and caching name server, 28k8 rockets along for us.
We're happy.
-- a 28k8 modem user
I bet Database's not being updated is the primary reason that DSL is not available in more places.
I don't know about the primary reason, but certainly a big one. My rule has always been (and it's worked for 4 attempted DSL installs, 2 successful):
Sometimes you just can't get DSL (or cable as the case may be, and most of the above suggestions apply there too), but more often the telco or cableco is just going with the easy install over anything that even whiffs of being complicated. Be persistent. Be a pain in the ass if they feed you lines. Don't be afraid to use the consumer agencies whose whole purpose is to make the telco give you the service you're paying for. Recognize when they really can't do it, but make them prove it.
-- Old Man Kensey
I would have thought that you techo-types would be more appreciative of your roots, and have more understanding for the old modems from whence you came. But if you must be so conceited and uppity about something which is hardly our fault or a high priority, then perhaps I should be thankful for my lack of broadband access, for fear I should become like you...
I have an external 56k modem, live in Atlanta and use Mindspring/Earthlink. But all I get from them is 28.8k. Does that mean I'm not hated?
Im sure 99% of you should feel lucky after you read this rant...
In 1997 i was on the beta list to test phone-line-return cable modems (from RCN) in my area... I couldnt sleep that night, and waited half the day for the cable guy to come... I ran downstairs and there he was at my door. Telling my father "its a long distance number for you return".
I cant connect to the internet higher than 28.8...
Here it is, 2001, years later and Sprint announces ADSL availiblity at 512K. IM FREE!
I get my modem, wait two weeks for activation then i suddenly get a letter in the mail saying my "phone lines" are supported!
I FLIP... under further research i discover we have this thing on our lines called pairgain, to split the lines in our neighborhood!
Im FUCKED again... so here i am, August 21st, 2001, stil waiting for my broadband. Most of my freinds either have phone line return, or DSL, because it appears its ONLY my neighborhood that has pairgain on the lines (due to an old farm house)
My only solution is RCN getting their digital 2way fiber optical network they call "megaband" which for the past 2 years they keep saying will be availible in "6-9 months".
Fuck them all.... I live in a high income area in New Jersey, and i have NO more than 28,800bps of dial-up, shit bandwidtb
--phinn
As a interesting fact: Saw this on gamesdomain right this minute. Must suck to have less than 100 Mbit.
Editor's Note: To prevent loss of clarity, the fullsize screenshots in this review are larger than usual. Modem users should expect load times of several minutes.
http://www.gozipstar.com/
I swear, I almost freaked when I loaded their site. Just take a look at the file size for their animation. A simple Animation Optimize in The GIMP cut the size almost in half, but still too large. (I've had several people who use their service ask why the page takes so long to load.)
Oh well, it's funny.)
(What's really sad is I don't think they realize that it's a problem. I've been told their entire service runs off a single WinNT box, which makes me sick just thinking about it (not as a troll/anti-MS thing, but as a single point of failure thing.))
Click to learn how to remove nasty slow banner ads permanently for free without installing software.
~dolo
**********
If it says "Troll" on this post,
I successfully annoyed a nerd herd!
...of old BBS days. Back 7 years ago when 28.8 was a luxury, there were a lot of BBS users who were shelling out the $150 for that luxury so their download of shareware DOOM could take 18 minutes rather than 3 hours.
The problem that came up with sysops was that too many people who still had the 2400 modems were taking too long online, hogging the precious nodes from other users. One BBS here in town decided to ban all 2400 baud users. After a flood of complaints (about 300 posts that day from 30 users) from users who had 2400 modems, he thought twice and kept them on, but limited them to 30 minutes online, rather than the traditional 60. Course, the ironic thing was that about 3/4ths of the users had only 2400 baud modems.
But it actually worked. After the initial complaints of, "I don't have the time to download DOOM," and "I can't play LORD, TradeWars, Ursurper, and BRE all in the same day anymore. My planet in TW was conquered because I couldn't defend it that day," things actually worked out. The 2400 users stopped erroneous downloads and playing all the games at once. They just realized that they couldn't do it with the modem they had.
Of course, the problem on the internet is that there isn't some sysop watching over traffic, but it's instead being shoved down our throats. I agree, there should be a way to stop anyone without anything less than ISDN to download files larger than 25 or 30MB. It's also insane that RealAudio and Quiktime offer streaming for "56K modems" when it requires at least an ISDN line to take that much data in at once. I can't stream with those programs, and I assume that most everyone else can't either with a 56K line.
Industry is the main cause of blame, but users should share some of it too. After finding out that their line is too slow, most should realize that they shouldn't continue to try.
So I checked out Pacific Bell's website.
"DSL Not available in your area" it said.
I called them and it was available, and at a higher speed than I'd gotten from Rhythms (384k versus 144k iDSL from Rhythms).
So "don't give up until you at least call" is sound advice in the real world.
Hope that helps.
D
Baud is a measure of number of signal changes per second. Each change in signal may transmit the value of one bit, or more often, several bits.
bps is just that - bits transmitted per second.
To illustrate the difference, a 2k4 modem transmits 4 bits per signal change and operates at 600 baud.
300bps modems transmitted 1 bit per change in signal, and could therefore correctly be called 300 baud modems. This practice of rating modems by "n baud" carried on afterwards with faster modems, often if not always used erroneously.
I emailed the webmistress. She said a text link would be fine, instead of a banner.
Now, she would say that no?
"Piter, too, is dead."
This site helped me a lot. Not because of its content (I suffer through my 56k in silence) but because of its useful statistics page. For instance, I've got a pretty good sample of average screen resolutions of slashdot readers!
/.?
1024x768 29132 %49.31
1280x1024 10249 %17.35
800x600 7256 %12.28
1152x864 4688 %7.94
Other 3812 %6.45
1600x1280 3287 %5.56
640x480 656 %1.11
Other than its stats page, though, this site is totally worthless. How'd it get onto
Instead of forming a union that combats the discrimination, they are adding to it. Their number one rule is that members must use 56k. What about all of the high-speed access users that agree with the plight of dialup users but can't show their support because of this short-sighted restriction on membership? For shame.
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." -Flaubert
> cheap booze (long live Old Thompsons!).
I brought back some 151 proof rum fron Jamaica just for fun. OMG does that stuff taste like crap.
Anyway, you really need broadband to the home to download the better, higher-resolution, higher-framerate lesbian pr0n, video clips from mainstream movies of women French kissing, that kind of thing.
Please stop. And I'm not a :ahem "Blonde newcomer" thank you. I just want to let you know I don't appreciate it. There will be put a stop to the counter games.
A. Lorenz
I use a 33K modem from home because installing cables in my block of flats in Australia requires a mountain of paperwork.
I remember getting ONE packet EVERY TEN SECONDS (I timed it) downloading Quicktime from the Apple site. The intervals between packets were far too regular to be caused merely by "slow traffic". I eventually gave up. Quicktime sucks anyway.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Let's not forget, of course, the 50-100k of pure HTML TEXT that big web sites have, like CNN, to say nothing of the pictures.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
What part of SC are you from? I used to install cable modems for Cox and I went to damned near every neighborhood in the city.
hahahahah...
:-)))
:-)
i don't care for those people,
that's weird, because i just got my cable modem last week.
anyway.... it's totally FREE for me...
you see, it's not operational here (israel) yet,
just adsl is. so the cable companies are doing "experiments", like a pilot before they begin their server (this is been going on for 2 years now). anyways, people on the experiment (which has now been enlarged), get 24/7 totally FREE internet access, including ISP cost.
eat your heart out.
You all go about broadband being the future, yes. We are all PC owners, too, we know the need for upgrading. The reason we all upgraded from the days of 5 inch floppies is because we /could/.
Now, the time comes for us to upgrade our connection. Oh, wait, I can't, I live in the middle of a field and they wont give me broadband.
Louisville, CO is a reasonably large town just outside of Boulder, CO in (what at least was) one of the hottest places in the country for SW engineers.
Until about a month ago, I could not get DSL, and even today am lucky I have service and only do due to a combination of luck and unaware service techs (when Qwest changed to DMT DSL that got me past one tech hurdle, but I've still got bridge taps on my line and am 18,500' from the CO, so technically I should have failed prequalification, but it works, and that's all I care about...)
The local cable company, AT&T Broadband, does not offer cable modem service and when asked said they have no plans to ever offer it as it would require a rather large head-end and infrastructure upgrade that, frankly, they are not interested in doing. For reference, I dropped my cable TV service over a year ago due to their inability to even deliver a clear television picture, let alone internet service.
The only other solution, since the first of the year or so, has been Sprint's wireless Broadband service, which, if you read the reviews at DSL Reports, often falls to a speed less than that of a 56K modem if the service is oversubscribed.
Add the recent death of Rhythms and the apparent coming death of both Covad and Excite@Home, and the opportunities for broadband access are actually decreasing...
if we're stuck with a 16.6?
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
As the founding member of the 56KKK, I'd like to warn you of this propaganda that they've been trying to brainwash you with. Modem users aren't like you or me, they are vile subhuman animals, and you shouldn't mix with them. As a nation, we need to segregate these modemmians from the rest of our otherwise wholesome nation, and take back what is ours. And if a few "0101101"s get burnt in their front yards, what's so wrong with that? They should know better than to mix with us normal people. Do you know that sinister modem users are taking the jobs away from broadband users like us? It's the modemmian conspiracy. They're to blame for the dotcom downturn, and they use their evil, devil-granted modemmian powers to place voodoo curses on you and I. Slashdot is obviously a front for the pro-modemmian group that is to blame for cattle mutilations, vandalism, and poisoning our nation's drinking water with dioxin. They'll enslave us all, unless we fight back, forcing us to use 9600 baud internet connections. Don't let it happen!
Joe Broadband
Grand Poobah of the Knights of the 56KKK
I hope I've offended no one, but this article was so dumb, I had to make fun of it some how. And if I got to spoof other hatemongers in the process, so much better. First-post-Nazi-guy, go to hell.
Absolutly 100% support the fuck off comment. Some people just dont have alternatives and will not be getting alternatives to 56K modem for years. It's not our bloody fault if dipshit Telcos are delaying the rollout of broadband.
I am taking a few moments from my (hectic) whirlwind schedule here to weigh in on the 56k dialup issue.
I'm like alot of early-adopters - started on the 'Net while it was in it's infancy. I can remember praising the technology gods for the fruition of someone's idead to "emulate" a SLIP connection. Thus was born TIA, The Internet Adapter.
I was chainlinked to my 9600 (then 14.4) modem dialling into my ISP-provided UNIX shell account, firing up TIA, and browsing the (then) new, improved graphical Internet with my buggy copy of Mosaic. Here I was, a 'Net newbie surfing the Internet, telnet'ing into MUSH's, actually using gopher and WAIS services, and enjoying the newness of it all.
If the internet had stayed a playground for the geeks in us, things would *still* be usable for 14.4 modem dialup users running TIA. Instead we are saddled with a commercially-burdened monstrosity which eats at our bandwidth contraints and gobbles up IP addresses like they were bon-bons in WeightWatchers meeting.
What do I *still* use for my Internet usage? A simple, easy-to-use, always-working 56K external modem. There was nothing like listening to the posts from months back about people's DSL woes and laughing at how my 56K modem STILL works. Even better, it works EVERYWHERE. Even in podunk nowhere you can get a 28.8K connection. Hell, I remember when I thought I was FORTUNATE to get a true 28.8K connection with my ISP.
So, for now, I think the cards are stacked against people who DON'T want to pay for leased-line/Frame Relay and CAN'T get DSL/Cable/Satellite/Whatever. The ISP's who haven't gone under still do one thing (reasonably) well - 56K dialup. I've tried DSL and Cable, it really only gets me to an hourglass at someone's poorly-constructed, Flash/Shockwave/Java/Plugin-requiring site that much faster.
The reports of dialup's death have been greatly exaggerated...
+that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
SHUT THE FUCK UP! NEXT..
No sig for you!!
Didn't you get it? Find out where service *IS* avaliable and MOVE YOUR ASS. How simple can it be? Who cares if you live in a major city, blah blah blah, yadda yadda. If you want broadband you can get it.
56k is shit. its fast as fuck, no joke. i am enjoying cable modem right now, though, its nice, but upstreams sucks. so what if it takes 2 days to dl 640 megs on a 56k. the files will arive anyways. i started with a 300 baud. ANSI bbses would kick my ass, but cruisin telenet and the like was fun. rock on, whatever your bandwidth. cable doesn't give me anything 56k couldn't. i was videoconferencing years ago on a 56k. got women naked and had them masturbate for me, it rocked, even at 56k. laters.
nil
than the old days. I booted all of the 300 baud users on my 3l33t BBS/AE (that's right, ASCII Express) when I got my USR 2400 baud modem. 1200/2400 only, baby!
I'm one of many paying for a 56k connection and actually getting speeds of about 24k. This does get upsetting as a true geek who could put a better connection to good use, especially when there's idiots out there with DSL who still have Code Red and don't know it. Life's not fair.
ASCII a stupid question, get a stupid ANSI.
I'm tired of getting questions at work from you dinosaurs out there wondering why it takes a day to download a song off Ogg!
I would have believed you if you said MP3, but since we all know that nobody uses Ogg, we know that you are a liar.
Liar.
Down here in Australia, nearly everyone is stuck on 56k. ADSL costs A$95 a month for 256kb/64kb with a 3GB a month cap. Ouch. Even worse, cable is only available in two cities in the entire country.
Firstly, I set up a junkbuster proxy on my box. Getting rid of all those stupid banners really does help, especially when I'm reading sites like *shudder* CNet or *shudder**shudder* ZDNet, with ther huge middle of the page Flash modem-killers. This feeds into a Squid caching proxy; it really does seem to help a fair bit. Thirdly, I run a BIND caching DNS server. Of course, there are plenty of other DNS servers around, but BIND is the one I saw first, so that's what I'm using.
Overall, with a bit of fiddling, it makes being stuck on a 56k suck slightly less.
The land of the 33.6 modem is where I came from before I had the $ to pay for broadband. All you dial up users who DO have the money for broadband need to stop all your bitching about how slow your dial up is and shell out the extra $10 a month and join the real world.
Macromedia
should be disconnected. That will stop the hate.
That is all.
It's so darling even if it usually only connects at 42.6 or 44Kbps. That must mean it's saving something for me! Can someone start a website for 56K modem lovers? It would be great! I'd visit it every day.
Say, since we're on the topic, maybe someone can help me. How to I compile PPP support as a module with kernel 2.4.9 (I'm running Red Hat 7.1)? Even though the ppp stuff is in my modules.conf file, it doesn't seem to be loading it at boot time. For some reason, I think the C-SLIP stuff needs to be loaded first (slhc.o), but nothing I do seems to work.
TIA! I want to love my 56K modem as much as I possibly can!!!!
I plan to put one of those banners on my site, after I blow it up about 500 percent and make it in BMP format so that the banner is a five meg download. That'll show those pesky broadband people! :P
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Dialup will continue for *years* because it simply works. Basically, I need my home PC for e-mail and personal finance tracking (balancing my checkbook, tracking investments, doing the occasional trade, etc.). Occasionally, I need to do some research, but it can all be handled without much difficulty with a dialup PPP account.
I've been using modems for years. Up until recently (e.g., some of the newer Apples - which have built in 56K modems), pretty much every single computer under $100,000 built in the last 7-8 years could communicate to an external modem through a legacy serial port with Hayes AT commands. I remember using a very expensive Telebit QBlazer back in 1994 on a UNIX workstation .
Dialup is not dead. If you're on the road, dialup PPP is still your lifeline in most of the world.
Go to DT instead.
Dude, you want to pay the closing costs on his new house just to get broadband???? I wish I had 4-5Gs to throw around just for broadband... I have been on a cable modem for the last 3 years and love it, but if I didn't have it in my area... I'd be surfin' at work, cuz I ain't sellig my house and buying a new one just for broadband.
Feel at least a little bit sorry for some of us in rural or isolated areas that have absolutely no opportunity for a faster connection. We went from DSL in a nearby small town to a connection speed of 21.6 on the farm. We have contacted every company within a 100 mile radius, begging them to bring us something faster. The only option that we have available is DirecPC and that costs upwards of $800 for the dish and setup.
And to the person who said people with slow modems shouldn't try to access information because they bog everyone down, I think you should be stripped of your broadband connection and forced to use to the slowest connection available. We have the same right you do to access information!!
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I was out of service for a MONTH with PacBell DSL, which I had to pay for.
I had to re-initialize the hard drive on my Mac, and when I reinstalled the DSL software, it was unable to create a connection.
So, I spent an hour on the phone with some southern-yokel who was trying to walk me through a clean installation (which I had already tried five times, so I just pretended to do it), before she agreed to send a tech over.
Lo and behold, when he arrives, he looks at the version of the software and says "dude this doesn't work on OS 9!.. this CD has what you need...and yeah.. I don't know Macs at all, so can you install it?"
Its pretty pathetic that they couldn't check the version over the phone, and that these "techs" use mac derivative operating systems and can't figure out how to double-click a CD on the desktop and run an installer.
I now use RoadRunner, and setting it up on an unsupported 10 year old 68k mac with IPnetrouter only took a matter of minutes.
"Rules:
One: You must be a 56k modem user.
"
the anti 56k discrimination group discriminates against my 33.6
Mommy and Daddy paying my bills? What in the fuck are you talking about? Back when I moved out of my parents house (12 YEARS AGO) I had a 2400 baud modem. I was very careful last time I moved to make sure the place I was moving to had a broadband connection. Sounds to me like your the one living with mommy and daddy or if broadband was so important you would move. Why don't try living in israel for a few years and then come back and whine about not having broadband you dumb fuck.
For once the biggest connection speed you will ever get with 56K is 54K because of carrier regulations.
2nd, if you live in an area like mine the fastest connection speed you get is 26K which is annoying and the carrier (in this case Qwest) does not assume responsibilty of their crappy lines.
Wouldn't you think that it would be nice, if the first areas that they would think about, when installing DSL equipment, should be the areas with the worst analog connection speeds?
I hate my 56K!
...But now that you have told me this important bit of information, from this point forward every time I find a person from Ireland playing on one of the MUGs I play online, I will immediately and loudly agitate for his removal. Stay the fuck out of Rogue Spear, CounterStrike, etc until you get better connections.
gonads and strife. yo motherfuckA WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Here's some spam for ya!
I'm making up this entire...
...block of spam because...
...I'm tired...
...of trying to get around the lameness filter...
...every time I wanna
S
P
A
M
S
L
A
S
H
D
O
T
!
!
!
!
Now, the only problem is that it's easiest...
...to just copy-and-paste the same thing again...
...and again...
...and again...
But the lameness filter catches it, so...
I have to waste time doing
T
H
I
S
 
S
H
I
T
Just so I can have fun.
Ah, fuck it, this should get around THAT LAMENESS FILTER.
Second verse, same as the first!
Here's some spam for ya!
I'm making up this entire...
...block of spam because...
...I'm tired...
...of trying to get around the lameness filter...
...every time I wanna
S
P
A
M
S
L
A
S
H
D
O
T
!
!
!
!
Now, the only problem is that it's easiest...
...to just copy-and-paste the same thing again...
...and again...
...and again...
But the lameness filter catches it, so...
I have to waste time doing
T
H
I
S
 
S
H
I
T
Just so I can have fun.
Ah, fuck it, this should get around THAT LAMENESS FILTER.
Second verse, same as the first!
Here's some spam for ya!
I'm making up this entire...
...block of spam because...
...I'm tired...
...of trying to get around the lameness filter...
...every time I wanna
S
P
A
M
S
L
A
S
H
D
O
T
!
!
!
!
Now, the only problem is that it's easiest...
...to just copy-and-paste the same thing again...
...and again...
...and again...
But the lameness filter catches it, so...
I have to waste time doing
T
H
I
S
 
S
H
I
T
Just so I can have fun.
Ah, fuck it, this should get around THAT LAMENESS FILTER.
Second verse, same as the first!