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.
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...
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
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)
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.
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
... 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
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. ^_^)
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.
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
..and you can live without downloading much media.
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.
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.
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
And who needs broadband, you ask? I do. I build web sites for a living, so it's kind of important that I have a high speed connection for work.
Also, my cable modem's uploads are capped at 256kbps, not 128kbps, and my downloads have exceeded 2Mbps...
Anyway, when I was in school we didn't have 100Mbps, we had 10Mbps. And upload speeds (which happened to be full speed) didn't really matter anyway because our campus network admins blocked incoming connections for security purposes. (i.e., no personal FTP/WWW/game/etc. servers) What good is a fast upload if you have nothing to send and nowhere to send it?
--guru
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).
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?
Note to the wary:Easy cowboy!
:-)
Watch those figures and don't get too enthusiastic!
If you are behind a corporate or ISP proxy, then you are seeing the bandwidth available between CNET and your proxy, so plz take with pinch of salt. I'm not saying it's the case in this instance, but I imagine 1000s of folk are about to click the link and try it
When you build things, you dont build them for the lowest common denominator.
I'm sorry, but sometimes you do, or at least you should!
Take a look at these two UK sites:
John Charcol Finances and
Intelligent Finance
Note how the IF site is clean and slick, while you have to wait for the entire Charcol page to load before you use it. Even when you are on a broadband connection the "snappiness" of the site matters.
The main web design problems in the world are caused by people trying to make the most of those flashy graphic design courses they were sent on, and less on delivering the appropriate level of functionality for the site. I just don't trust a web site which bloats out on every link & load.
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.
This is a fantastic link! It also means we can see what the mix of MS vs Linux is within the readership, and how many of those Linux users actually use Netscape ;-)
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
"...go to university" is perfectly acceptable where the poster lives.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Main Entry: 1 privilege
Pronunciation: 'priv-lij, 'pri-v&-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin privilegium law for or against a private person, from privus private + leg-, lex law
Date: 12th century
: a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor : PREROGATIVE; especially : such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office
Damn. Where are the BLINK tags when you need them?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
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. :)
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
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.
I HATE playing that game against 56kers
...
/. over Lynx from a VMS terminal somewhere. I'd guess you are the same type that thinks everyone who wants a job can get one, the rest are too lazy, and that anyone who can't afford to eat should be left to the wolves.
Why? Is this because it presents a level playing field and you get your ar*e kicked? Bah Haw! Look mummy I'm throwing my toys out of the pram
I paid my money - I should get my performance
Go tell that to your bandwidth provider. Ask him why you never seem to get near the 512Kbit connection he promised, and he'll go laugh in your face.
most of us probably do have access to high bandwidth net
You tell that to they guy reading
*SIGH*
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.
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!
Well, as of about 10:00 AM EST, here's the breakdown (the top five spots, anyway), with about 18000 hits showing:
;)
By OS:
Windows 2000: 34.39%
Windows 98: 19.76%
Windows NT: 16.14%
Linux: 15.62%
Unknown: 5.36%
And one poor soul using Windows 3.1
By browser:
Explorer 5.0: 62.86%
Netscape 4.0: 18.04%
Explorer 2.0: 6.45%
Netscape 3.0: 4.06%
Konqueror: 2.76%
Along with two users of Lynx and one of Mosaic...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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.
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!"
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.
Isn't there a saying: "A picture is worth 1000 words, except when it is a picture of a word."
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.
They both do something I hate, and that is code their page to a fixed pixel width/height. As if everyone in the world uses 800x600. On my 1600x1200 display, it takes up about 25% of my screen. Oh and then there are those that use fixed pixel sizes instead of the more prefered 'em' font measurement. Use ems and I can control the font size to my liking.
Both of those sites suck.
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
...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
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
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.