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Mobilestar Less Mobile; Excite@Home Less Exciting
jc1 writes: "MobileStar, provider of 802.11b wireless LAN connectivity throughout 500 of the USA's Starbucks cafes, has laid off 88 of its staff, which a source described as "everybody". With the demise in August of Metricom's Ricochet service, one is left to wonder if there is a business to be made in providing public wireless Internet services." Or any broadband internet access at all - Excite@Home, currently in bankruptcy proceedings, has stopped taking any new orders.
first post for the ACs
mjl.
All these people are being laid off, and now they'll be sitting around in Starbucks without even having any connectivity.
It must be Bert. He's plotting against internet now that his story is out.
I loved my cable modem. I had it for 3+ years, worked flawlessly, good upload speed, GREAT upload speed, all the stuff you know.
OK, now I live in an area that isn't wired yet, and Comcast's predictions as to when it will get here seem to be rolling out into the future.
Meanwhile, Comcast here in Maryland seems to be endlessly running ads for new people to sign up. I wonder what will happen there?
Meanwhile, being 30k+ feet from my CO means that I am anxiously awaiting the installation of my ISDN line, complete with per minute charges. Blech!
-- "Vote Democrat. Because the current crop of conservatives are just bugnut crazy."
Path to Profitability.
2 years ago, it was get a customer base, then figure out how to exploit them to make a profit. Now people have realized that there are no barriers to entry, so you can't raise prices later. You have to show up front how you can make money off of each and every customer from day one, then hope you get enough of them to overcome useless overhead in the corporation (read, the CEO, CTO, C??, and much of the marketing dept.)
The days of giving away dollar bills for 3 quarters to generate revenue are over for the internet, show me how you can make money, or go the way of the Dodo bird
The coward oft, whom dainty viands fed,
That boasted much his lady's ears to please,
By help of them whom under him he led
Hath reaped the palm that valiance could not seize.
The unexpert that shores unknown ne'er sought,
Whom Neptune yet appalled not with fear,
In wandering ship on trustless seas hath taught
The skill to feel that time too long doth lere.
The sporting knight that scorneth Cupid's kind,
With fained cheer the pained cause to breed:
In game unhides the leaden sparks of mind,
And gains the goal, where glowing flames should speed,
Thus I see proof that truth and manly heart,
May not avail, if Fortune chance to start.
There is a HUGE HOLE in the latest linux kernel, I suggest you all read about it at sourceforge to see if you are at risk before upgrading.
-klerck
Now millions of people will be unable to download their child porn! This is a serious matter indeed.
Well I'm also a source, please quote me as saying 88 is, "not quite half" of their employees. There. Now it is cast as fact and not even the trolls can dispute it.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
MARIJUANA
Marijuana is a deciduous plant which grows from seeds. The fibrous section of the plant was (has been replaced by synthetics) used to make rope. The flowering tops, leaves, seeds, and resin of the plant is used by just about everyone to get high.
Normally, the vegetable parts of the plant are smoked to produce this "high," but thay can also be eaten. The axtive ingredient in marijuana resin is THC (tetahydrocannabinol). Marijuana contains from 1 - 4 per cent THC (4 per cent must be considered GOOD dope).
Marijuana grows wild in many parts of the world, and is cultivated in Mexice, Vietnam, Africa, Nepal, India, South America, etc.,etc. The marijuana sold in the United States comes primarily from, yes, the Uniited States.
It is estimated that at least 50 per cent of the grass on the streets in America is homegrown. The next largest bunch comes actoss the borders from Mexico, with smaller amounts filtering in from Panama, occasionally South America, and occasinally, Africa.
Hashish is the pure resin of the marijuana plant, which is scraped from the flowering tops of the plant and lumped together. Ganja is the ground-up tops of the finest plants. (It is also the name given to any sort of marijuana in Jamaica.)
Marijuana will deteriorate in about two years if exposed to light, air or heat. It should always be stored in cool places.
Grass prices in the United States are a direct reflection of the laws of supply and demand (and you thought that high school economics would never be useful). A series of large border busts, a short growing season, a bad crop, any number of things can drive the price of marijuana up. Demand still seems to be on the increase in the U.S., so prices seldom fall below last year's level.
Each year a small seasonal drought occurs, as last year's supply runs low, and next year's crop is not up yet. Prices usually rase about 20 - 75 per cent during this time and then fall back to "normal." Unquestionably, a large shortage of grass causes a percentage of smokers to turn to harder drugs instead. For this reason, no grass control program can ever be beneficial or "successful."
GROW IT!
There is one surefire way of avoiding high prices and the grass DT's: Grow your own. This is not as difficult as some "authorities" on the subject would make you believe. Marijuana is a weed, and a fairly vivacious one at that, and it will grow almost in spite of you.
OUTDOORS
Contrary to propular belief, grass grows well in many place on the North American continent. It will flourish even if the temperature does not raise above 75 degrees.
The plants do need a minimum of eight hours of sunlight per day and should be planted in late April/early May, but definitely, after the last frost of the year.
Growing an outdoor, or au naturel, crop has been the favored method over the years, because grass seems to grow better without as much attention when in its natural habitat.
Of course, an outdoors setting requires special precautions not encountered with an indoors crop; you must be able to avoid detection, both from law enforcement freaks and common freaks, both of whom will take your weed and probably use it. Of course, one will also arrest you. You must also have access to the area to prepare the soil and harvest the crop. There are two schools of thought about starting the seeds. One says you should start the seedlings for about ten days in an indoor starter box (see the indoor section) and then transplant. The other theory is that you should just start them in the correct location. Fewer plants will come up with this method, but there is no shock of transplant to kill some of the seedlings halfway through.
The soil should be preprepared for the little devils by turning it over a couple of times and adding about one cup of hydrated lime per square yard of soil and a little bit (not too much, now) of good water soluble nitrogen fertilizer. The soil should now be watered several times and left to sit about one week.
The plants should be planted at least three feet apart, getting too greedy and stacking them too close will result in stunted plants. The plants like some water during their growing season, BUT not too much. This is especially true around the roots, as too much water will rot the root system.
Grass grows well in corn or hops, and these plants will help provide some camouflage. It does not grow well with rye, spinach, or pepperweed. It is probally a good idea to plant in many small, broken patches, as people tend to notice patterns.
GENERAL GROWING INFO
Both the male and the female plant produce THC resin, although the male is not as strong as the female. In a good crop, the male will still be plenty smokable and should not be thrown away under any circumstances. Marijuana can reach a hight of twenty feet (or would you rather wish on a star) and obtain a diameter of 4 1/2 inches. If normal, it has a sex ratio of about 1:1, but this can be altered in several ways. The male plant dies in the 12th week of growing, the female will live another 3 - 5 weeks to produce her younguns. Females can weigh twice as much as males when they are mature.
Marijuana soil should compact when you squeeze it, but should also break apart with a small pressure and absorb water well. A nice test for either indoor or outdoor growing is to add a bunch of worms to the soil, if they live and hang aroung, it is good soil, but if they don't, well, change it. Worms also help keep the soil loose enough for the plants to grow well.
SEEDS
To get good grass, you should start with the right seeds. A nice starting point is to save the seeds form the best batch you have consumed. The seeds should be virile, that is, they should not be grey and shiriveled up, but green, meaty, and healthy appearing. A nice test is to drop the seeds on a hot frying pan. If they "CRACK," they are probably good for planting purposes.
The seeds should be soaked in distilled water overnight before planting. be sure to plant in the ground with the pointy end up. Plant about 1/2" deep. Healthy seeds will sprout in about five days.
SPROUTING
The best all around sprouting method is probably to make a sprouting box (as sold in nurseries) with a slated bottom or use paper cups with holes punched in the bottoms. The sprouting soil should be a mixture of humus, soil, and five sand with a bit of organic fertilizer and water mixed in about one week before planting.
When ready to transplant, you must be sure and leave a ball of soil around the roots of each plant. This whole ball is dropped into a baseball-sized hold in the permanent soil.
If you are growing/transplanting indoors, you should use a green safe light (purchased at nurseries) during the transplanting operation. If you are transplanting outdoors, you should time it about two hours befor sunset to avoid damage to the plant. Always wear cotton gloves when handling the young plants.
After the plants are set in the hole, you should water them. It is also a good idea to use a commercial transplant chemical (also purchased at nurseries) to help then overcome the shock.
INDOOR GROWING
Indoor growing has many advantages, besides the apparent fact that it is much harder to have your crop "found," you can control the ambient conditions just exactly as you want them and get a guaranteed "good" plant.
Plants grown indoors will not appear the same as their outdoor cousins. They will be scrawnier appearing with a weak stems and may even require you to tie them to a growing post to remain upright, but they will have as much or more resin!
If growing in a room, you should put tar paper on the floors and then buy sterilized bags of soil form a nursery. You will need about one cubic foot of soil for each plant.
The plants will need about 150ml of water per plant/per week. They will also need fresh air, so the room must be ventilated. (however, the fresh air should contain no tobacco smoke.)
At least eight hours of light a day must be provided. As you increase the light, the plants grow faster and show more females/less males. Sixteen hours of light per day seems to be the best combination, beyond this makes little or no appreciable difference in the plant quality. Another idea is to interrupt the night cycle with about one hour of light. This gives you more females.
The walls of your growing room should be painted white or covered with aluminum foil to reflect the light.
The lights themselves can be either bulbs of fluorescent. Figure about 75 watts per plant or one plant per two feet of flouresent tube. The fluorescents are the best, but do not use "cool white" types. The light sources should be an average of twenty inches from the plant and NEVER closer than 14 inches. They may be mounted on a rack and moved every few days as the plants grow.
The very best light sources are those made by Sylvania and others especially for growing plants (such as the "gro lux" types).
HARVESTING AND DRYING
The male plants will be taller and have about five green or yellow sepals, which will split open to fertilize the female plant with pollen. The female plant is shorter and has a small pistillate flower, which really doesn't look like a flower at all but rather a small bunch of leaves in a cluster.
If you don't want any seeds, just good dope, you should pick the males before they shed their pollen as the female will use some of her resin to make the seeds.
After another three to five weeks, after the males are gone, the females will begin to wither and die (from loneliness?), this is the time to pick. In some nefarious Middle Eastren countries, farmers reportedly put their beehives next to fiels of marijuana. The little devils collect the grass pollen for their honey, which is supposed to contain a fair dosage of THC.
The honey is then enjoyed by conventional methods or made into ambrosia. If you want seeds - let the males shed his pollen then pick him. Let the female go another month and pick her.
To cure the plants, they must be dried. On large crops, this is accomplished by constructing a drying box or drying room. You must have a heat source (such as an electric heater) which will make the box/room each 130 degrees. The box/room must be ventilated to carry off the water-vapor-laden air and replace it with fresh. A good box can be constructed from an orange crate with fiberglass insulated walls, vents in the tops, and screen shelves to hold the leaves. There must be a baffle between the leaves and the heat source. A quick cure for smaller amounts is to: cut the plant at the soil level and wrap it in a cloth so as not to loose any leavs. Take out any seeds by hand and store. Place all the leaves on a cookie sheet or aluminum foil and put them in the middle sheld of the oven, which is set on "broil." In a few seconds, the leaves will smoke and curl up, stir them around and give another ten seconds before you take them out.
TO INCREASE THE GOOD STUFF
There are several tricks to increase the number of females, or the THC content of plants:
You can make the plants mature in 36 days if you are in a hurry, by cutting back on the light to about 14 hours, but the plants will not be as big. You should gradually shorten the light cycle until you reach fourteen hours.
You can stop any watering as the plants begin to make the resin rise to the flowers. This will increse the resin a bit.
You can use a sunlamp on the plants as they begin to develop flower stalks.
You can snip off the flower, right at the spot where it joins the plant, and a new flower will form in a couple of weeks.
This can be repeated two or three times to get several times more flowers than usual.
If the plants are sprayed with Ethrel early in their growing stage, they will produce almost all female plants. This usually speeds up the flowering also, it may happen in as little as two weeks.
You can employ a growth changer called colchicine. This is a bit hard to get and expensive. (Should be ordered through a lab of some sort and costs about $35 a gram.)
To use the colchicine, you should prepare your presoaking solution of distilled water with about 0.10 per cent colchicine. This will cause many of the seeds to die and not germinate, but the ones that do come up will be polyploid plants. This is the accepted difference between such strains as "gold" and normal grass, and yours will definitely be superweed.
The problem here is that colchicine is a poison in larger quanities and may be poisonous in the first generation of plants. Bill Frake, author of Connoisseur's Handbook of Marijuana runs a very complete colchicine treatment down and warns against smoking the first generation plants (all succeeding generations will also be polyploid) because of this poisonous quality.
However, the Medical Index shows colchicine being given in very small quantities to people for treatment if various ailments. Although these quantities are small, they would appear to be larger than any you could recive form smoaking a seed-treated plant.
It would be a good idea to buy a copy of Connoisseur's, if you are planning to attempt this, and read Mr. Drake's complete instructions.
Another still-experimental process to increase the resin it to pinch off the leaf tips as soon as they appear from the time the plant is in the seedling stage on through its entire life-span. This produces a distorted, wrecked-looking plant which would be very difficuly to recognize as marijuana. Of course, there is less substance to this plant, but such wrecked creatures have been known to produce so much resin that it crystallizes a strong hash all over the surface of the plant -- might be wise to try it on a plant or two and see what happens.
PLANT PROBLEM CHART
Always check the overall enviromental conditions prior to passing judgment -- soil around 7 pH or slightly less -- plenty of water, light, fresh air, loose soil, no water standing in pools.
Symptom Probable problem/cure
Larger leaves turning yellow - smaller leaves still green. Nitrogen dificiency - add nitrate of soda or organic fertilizer.
Older leaves will curl at edges, turn dark, possibaly with a purple cast. Phosphorsus dificiency - add commercial phosphate.
Mature leaves develop a yellowish cast to least veinal areas. Magnesium dificiency - add commercial fertilizer with a magnesium content.
Mature leaves turn yellow and then become spotted with edge areas turning dark grey. Potassium dificiency - add muriate of potash.
Cracked stems, no healthy support tissue. Boron dificiency - add any plant food containing boron.
Small wrinkled leaves with yelloish vein systems. Zinc dificiency - add commercial plant food containing zinc.
Young leaves become deformed, possibaly yellowing. Molybedum dificiency - use any plant food with a bit of molydbenum in it.
BAD WEED/GOOD WEED
Can you turn bad weed into good weed? Surprisingly enough, the answer to this oft-asked inquiry is, yes!
Like most other things in life, the amount of good you are going to do relates directly to how much effort you are going to put into it. There are no instant, supermarket products which you can spray on Kansas catnip and have wonderweed, but there are a number of simplified, inexpensive processes (Gee, Mr. Wizard!) thich will enhance mediocre grass somewhat, ant there are a couple of fairly involved processes which will do up even almost-parsley weed into something worth writing home about.
EASES
Place the dope in a container which allows air to enter in a restricted fashion (such as a can with nail holes punched in its lid) and add a bunch of dry ice, and the place the whold shebang in the freezer for a few days. This process will add a certain amount of potency to the product, however, this only works with dry ice, if you use normal, everyday freezer ice, you will end up with a soggy mess...
Take a quantity of grass and dampen it, place in a baggie or another socially acceptable container, and store it in a dark, dampish place for a couple of weeks (burying it also seems to work). The grass will develop a mold which tastes a bit harsh, and burns a tiny bit funny, but does increase the potency. {Warning: Please check out the article "Preserving Pot Potency" before attempting this technique!}
Expose the grass to the high intensity light of a sunlamp for a full day or so. Personally, I don't feel that this is worth the effort, but if you just spent $400 of your friend's money for this brick of super-Colombian, right-from-the-President's-personal-stash, and it turns out to be Missouri weed, and you're packing your bags to leave town before the people arrive for their shares, well, you might at least try it. Can't hurt.
Take the undisirable portions of our stash (stems, seeds, weak weed, worms, etc.) and place them in a covered pot, with enough rubbing alchol to cover everything.
Now carefully boil the mixture on an electric stove or lab burner. Do not use gas -- the alchol is too flammable. After 45 minutes of heat, remove the pot and strain the solids out, saving the alcohol.
Now, repeat the process with the same residuals, but fresh alchol. When the second boil is over, remove the solids again, combine the two quantities of alcohol and reboil until you have a syrupy mixture. Now, this syrupy mixture will contain much of the THC formerly hidden in the stems and such. One simply takes this syrup the throughly combines it with the grass that one wishes to improve upon.
SPECIAL SECTION ON RELATED SUBJECT MARYGIN:
Marygin is an anagram of the words marijuana and gin, as in Eli Whitney. It is a plastic tumbler which acts much like a commercial cottin gin. One takes about one ounce of an harb and breaks it up. This is then placed in the Marygin and the protuding knod is roatated. This action turns the internal wheel, which separates the grass from the debris (seeds, stems).
It does not pulverize the grass as screens have a habit of doing and is easily washable. Marygin is available from:
GRASS
P.O. Box 5827
Tuscon, Arizona 85703
$5.00
Note, this address appears to have expired
Edmund Scientific Company
555 Edscorp Building
Barrington, New Jersy 08007
Free Catalog is a wonder of good things for the potential grass grower. They have an electric thermostat greenhouse for starting plants for a mere $14.95.
Soil test kits for PH - $2.40
Al test - $9.95
Soil thermometer - $2.75
Lights which approzimate the true color balance of the sun and are probably the most beneficial types available: 40 watt, 48 inch - 4 for $15.75.
Indoor sun bulb, 75 or 150 watt - $5.75.
And, they have a natural growth regualtor for plants (Gibberellin) which can change height, speed growth, and maturity, promote blossoming, etc. Each plant reacts differently to treatment with Gibberellin...there's no fun like experimenting - $2.00
SUGGESTED READING
The Connoisseur's Handbook of Marijuana, Bill Drake
Straight Arrow Publishing - $3.50
625 Third Street
San Francisco, California
Note, this address appears to have expired
FLASH
P.O.Box 16098
San Fransicso, California 94116
Stocks a series of pamphlets on grass, dope manufacture, cooking. Includes the Mary Jane Superweed series.
I moved from DSL to Cable - mostly because of the price/bandwidth issues of DSL. Yes I have got over 441kilobytes per second - quite often too over cable. That much bandwidth on DSL would cost me (if I could get it - which I can't) anywhere from 240-400$ per month. I've purchased 7mbps dsl for a company I used to work for - and I've rarely seen it go over 300kilobytes per second and just the bandwidth cost 240$.
:).
I sure hope they don't shut down the cable networks - because I kinda like it here
My ATT@Home service died mysteriously yesterday. Haven't had a chance to call support yet...
No changes to the setup by me, the 'Cable' light was still blinking, so the physicial connection between my computer and the central hub was operational, but neither Windows (via the shit @HOME software) nor Linux (via dhcpcd) will connect. Both worked fine less then 13 hours earlier.
It's all speculation at this point, but what a coincicence...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
You may disagree and claim that somebody can sell a CD full of the necessary tools for Windows users. Indeed this may be possible, but it will never rival the ease with which a Linux vendor can put together a Linux distro. And that is because each of the shareware programs has its own unique license, which may or may not permit redistribution and/or resale. Therefore the lack of connectivity will be good for Linux and bad for the competition.
-sting3r
It also hired the Diablo Management Group to "oversee an orderly sale of the assets," according to two sources.
I don't know about you, but I'd never sell my assets to someone coming to me on behalf of Diablo...
but what about areas that were served by MediaOne, then bought by AT&T, and then bought by Comcast so that AT&T could stay within federal limits? Billing comes from Comcast, but support comes from AT&T. Am I the only one that is confused by this? This has to be Bert, he is the only one that could think of something as whacked out as this!
/me wonders how long all the smaller companies in the Net business will last at this rate...
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The only thing they could have done worse is some buggy open source spaghetti code shitpile for their asslike webpage,
With a comments page that crashes more often than bombs into kabul
Love And Kisses,
BiffJerky the Troll
The case for Positive Nuclear Correction
Many of you may be wondering what Osama Bin Laden was hoping to communicate to the United States by killing tens of thousands of people. I propose that his extraorinarily effective message was this:
Arabic people from the Middle East do not deserve protection from genocide.
He did his best to communicate this message, and it is our duty to do our best to listen, and understand. Using public transportation as a weapon, he attempted to publicly slaughter more Americans than were killed in the Vietnam War by immolation, and attempted to kill everone in our government. Don't forget that both NY and Washington were failures by his standards: the planes hit too high, allowing many to escape, and Washington was just totally botched. Bin Laden intended to immolate more Americans than died in Vietnam and to kill everyone in our government without declaring war - all in the most cowardly and Internationally Illegal manner possible.
A culture capable of fostering this idea is, quite obviously, a culture in need of change. In the 1940's, Japan & Germany were home to two cultures in need of change. Many argued that they would come around to reason if we left them alone. I won't go into that.
Today, Germany is the first culture to speak out against racial purification attempts, Japan the first to speak out against Imperialism. Both learned cultural lessons. However, the cost of teaching them these lessons was immense for both them and for us. To make Japan understand - to make Germany understand - required the wholesale slaughter of millions of their citizens. This fact remains unchanged, today.
What has changed is that the cost for America need not be immense. While we are dire need of creating cultural change in the Middle East, we have the advantage of a large nuclear arsenal with which to accomplish this change. We can effectively fight World War II in a day, without losing a single American life. The lives that must be lost in the middle east are already lost, due to their cultural error - but technology allows us to save the lives of the Americans who would normally have to go to the Middle East and perform this task manually.
It is time for us to employ nuclear technology to save American lives and to effect cultural change. We must make the Middle East a region which is the first to speak out against terrorism - just as Germany and Japan speak out against their former crimes. We must accomplish this task in the time-honored manner: wholesale slaughter of civilian populations.
The only remaining question is which countries should be vaporized. The short list would appear to be Saudi Arabia (the home of Bin Laden), as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. But those details are out of place in this discussion.
Please, write your congressman in favor of Positive Nuclear Correction.
lame ass faggot.
die.
die very soon.
eat lots of beans and fart yourself to death.
in a closed room.
then light a match.
b00m.
no more anonymous faggot.
loser.
you know what?
this sort of tirade is no longer very interesting to type.
damnn
that sucks.
bye.
Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
It seems that this is just another case of the "small" ISP not making it. The profitable ones get bought up, and the rest... well...
I've had great difficulty finding an independent ISP in Eugene, OR. The two best, pond.net and continet.com, have both been sold to EarthLink in the last 8 months. Qwest.net has gone MSN, except for Macintosh.
The following are all options, none of which are particularly linux-friendly: MSN, AOL, JUNO/NetZero, Earthlink. You can still get ppp by telling Qwest that you have a Macintosh... that's it; everybody else seems to have proprietary software. I think this is a big challenge for getting joe-user to try a linux desktop.
Are the days of the simple, no-strings-attached ppp account gone?
That's a bit inflammatory, no? Didn't anyone ever tell you that not all Arabs are terrorists? This is exactly the type of division Osama wanted to achieve.
It's true, many arabs, including most of the arabs in America, sympathize with Osama Bin Laden, and perhaps raise funds for his al-Qaeda organization. But we can't let ourselves prejudge people just because they're muslim.
KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
There is no contradiction.
Imagine it! No more long pr0n downloads..just leave your laptop in your briefcase under the table for a few hours while you discuss 'business'. The pr0n is downloaded, you have a raise, what could be better?!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
...but it'll be coming from the mobile phone companies, like SprintPCS's "wireless web" and Voicestream (eventually AT&T too) with their GPRS. Doesn't look like unlimited service anymore, now pay by the minute or MB, at least for a while.
This happened to me twice in the past week. They know it's happening, and they seem to be taking their sweet time fixing it. If you don't muck around with your network card, release/renew, etc. you shouldn't run into any problems since it's only with the DHCP.
This is one time Linux dhcpcd is a bad thing- it's one of the few DHCP clients that actually plays by the rules, releasing your IP when you shutdown. Windows doesn't bother.
Overall ATT Broadband has their heads up their asses. They have managed to develop the WORST voice response system EVER. If you call the cable support number, they drag you through a huge menu, only to tell you to call another phone number. Another menu, a recorded woman who tells you about Nimda, how to reset your cable modem, then a recorded man who also tells you about Nimda, then a hold time ~20 mins. No wonder these companies are going under.. they couldn't manage a cable company, let alone an ISP.
Sorry to say, but the days of cheap bandwidth are over. To become profitable the vendors are gonna have to raise their rates. I, for one, would be happy to pay more to guarantee that the vendor would be there - 'cause if it's not, I am *hosed.*
I believe most of the functionality you mentioned has been "assimilated" into XP. :-)
Another point: linux distro CDs will cease to be readily available in the coming months. Stores are realizing that they are full of out-of-date stock of various distros that aren't selling. Don't believe me? Go to Staples/OfficeMax/GenericOfficeStore and look in their clearance section. It's sad.
So I think that the loss of broadband providers will have no positive impact on OSS.
Since a week ago or so my latencys have been huge. Pinging www.yahoo.com would get me times of 200-500 ms. Considering I playing online games a lot that just isn't acceptable! They get better early in the morning, I wonder if @home's network structure is suffering.
At least I now have time to finally finish Homeworld
We will leave whatever is left of Palestine to the Isrealis. They will be happy to take of their business.
First the U.S. must withdraw from the U.N. and renounce it for what it is: a mad dictator's club. NATO will revoke Article 7 of it's charter and the U.N. will be dissolved.
Then, to expendable cities like Baghdad, we will send 'strategic' missiles: the LGM-118A 'Peacekeeper' ICBMs with a range of over six thousand miles, from rail garrisons like Grand Forks AFB. Each Peacekeeper carries ten individual Avco MK 21 re-entry vehicles, ten individual W87 warheads capable of delivering a devastating 300-475 kiloton payload. Annihilation will be total.
Where we need to excercise more discretion, the Poseidon (C3) and Trident II (D-5) Fleet Ballistic Missile will be delivered from Ohio class ("Crimson Tide" anyone?) sumarines, each of which carries a set of nuclear MIRVs, each vehicle capable of delivering a 50-kilton payload.
Further, if there are sites where there are some structures deemed of religious or cultural significance, the LGM-30 Minuteman III 'tactical' missile can be easily modified to carry the neutron bomb (merely the detonator mechanism of the LGM-118A), which can literally evaporate life in the killzone while leaving standing structures virtually untouched.
For the cowards in their caves, we developed the B61-11 nuke just for this purpose... it burrows into the earth and delivers a punishing payload which transforms the area for miles around into a glowing gamma field of death. There is no shelter.
Let's see how they like their jihad at 400,000,000C.
We will knock their society back 1000 years, and by the time they come around to bother us again, we will be long gone, living on other planets.
"I have no idea with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but I can tell you this. World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." -Albert Einstein
Love And Kisses,
BiffJerky the Troll
don't ever take away my broadband connection. I don't know what I'd do. I have AT&T right now, and they have been pretty decent, back when they were MediaOne here in Cambridge, they sucked big hairy balls, but now the service is good, but expensive. I love it though, a linksys router there and the firewall it has, and then a wireless hub on top of that. I'm loving it, all with crazy fast downloads.
if that goes away, then I don't think I want to live.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Reading this over it makes no mention of Excite@home north of the 49th up here in Canada.
I had a friend who was supposed to get @home installed today so I wonder if it went through.
Any sources know how this affects Rogers and Cogeco?
If You Drink, Don't Park, Accidents Cause People.
guess everyone will have to use community wireless networks instead of paying your $19.95 to download email
All in all a good read though...much better than 95% of the drivel on here that tries to pass as commentary.
My cat's breath smells like cat food.--R. Wiggums
In an amazing turn of events, I have gained access to TOP-SECRET, HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL material about this television sensation.
yep, this fucker pretty much lists out the whole season. Let's check it out:
Episode 1:
A strange thing will happen and Captain Archer wants to investigate but T'Pol, the Vulcan, thinks it is highly illogical and uses the word "protocol" several times.
Episode 2:
A strange thing will happen and Captain Archer wants to investigate but T'Pol, the Vulcan, thinks it is highly illogical and uses the word "protocol" several times.
Episode 3: A strange thing will happen and Captain Archer wants to investigate but T'Pol, the Vulcan, thinks it is highly illogical and uses the word "protocol" several times.
Episode 4:A strange thing will happen and Captain Archer wants to investigate but T'Pol, the Vulcan, thinks it is highly illogical and uses the word "protocol" several times.
I remember last week (maybe two weeks) there was a discussion here about somebody setting up his own neighborhood wireless network. Now, granted, he had access to a 10Mb connection and lots of equipment. But, alot of the discussion seemed here seemed to center on the feasibility of it. Maybe now we will start to see more community-oriented networks setup by private citizens? Any thoughts?
I have @home in Canada and have not heard anything about not taking new orders, I do know someone who had it installed last week in Toronto. Although the past 2 days my service has been rather crappy :( but this happens once in a while. One thing to consider is, I remember reading a few months ago about Canada having the highest % of broadband users, or something to that effect.
Snoozer.
On calling AT&T Cable Modem Customer Service - they could not tell what was wrong. They insisted that I call the Cable TV Service also owned by AT&T (logically, this was TCI cable, and they provide the infrastructure). They did not have a clue.
Ultimately, this home network was down all night, costing me $$$ for lost work, as well as much aggravation. I physically found where the problem was (less than 5 miles away) and on trying to report it got a snotty response as to when they might have it fixed. I should have crawled up there with some RG-6 and done a quick patch job. All they had was some shithead on the phone saying "we know there is a line down" and could not offer any estimated downtime.
More relevant, the Cable Modem agreement says nothing about having anything to do with cable TV (i.e.: you don't have to have a subscription to the TV service to get your damned internet!), so WhyTF are they telling me to call the TV people when it's their problem TOO???
Either way, I agree that these companies are clueless regarding service - and should never have been allowed to provide it. I'll be mad when I have to go back to dialup, but probably not as mad as I was yesterday.
db
Cig:
ôô
In an amazing turn of events I realised you really are my bitch and I love how socially conscious you are and it just gets my motor revvin' so lets go watch California Dreamin that teen sitcom and we can eat super golden crisp oh yeh
I've emailed Starbucks about availability of this service and they responded that they do not advertise it until all stuff is trained, but I am welcome to go to the store and try. I went, and it actually works very nice, thought little expensive.
Taking into account all expenses of running T1 into each of 500 stores, delaying service roll out could cost a lot. I guess it cost enough to run Mobile Star into financial problems.
In an amazing turn of events, I have decided to give a million dollars to whoever makes slashdot's 400,000th first post. I'm not going to tell you when that is, but in fact I do know when it is and it will be coming soon.
So, keep on reaching for those fp's. Don't listen to the naysayers, the career-motivated single-mother moderators who may attempt to squelch your ambitions. Keep it up, because you just might wind up being a millionaire.
Unless you're one of those AC fags.
I live near Excite@Home HQ. I await the furniture auction; they had good furniture.
Well my comcast isn't affect up here in michigan... I sjut made changes to my acocunt around 9pm and it was no trouble other then the normal no clue tier 1
>Any sources know how this affects Rogers and Cogeco?
It shouldn't affect them at all. AFAIK all of the cable internet providers here in Canada are not actually members of the @home network, they just make use some of the @home content for things like the default homepage they setup during installation on windows boxen. This is certainly the case for Shaw out west anyways, I don't know much about Cogeco, but I'm pretty sure Roger's is semi-independent of excite@home too.
Hrm.... that's really weird. In reply, in Ottawa, Canada, I have easily 30 different dialup ISPs, most of which are PPP, many of which also offer SLIP. As well, we have 5 different high speed options, two wireless, and ALL linux compatible... two PPPoE. And those are all home-user-targetted ISPs under $50 monthly. The stakes- and speed- go up if you're a business user.
:)
:)
I've got it goooooooood.
Oh, did I mention, you can usually get a static IP- all you have to do is ask for one.
Urban Detail
They have crapless craps at the Stratosphere Casino...unfortunatel they haven't figured out how to take the Rou out of Roulette.
My other sig is extremely clever...
COMCAST has a short voice mail on their support which says "Transmissions in the Ann Arbor area may be slower than expected. Comcast is aware of the problem" before it forwards us to AT&T Broadband, which says that they aren't in charge here and to call Comcast again. Calling the CATV support gets you a human. In fact, it gets you a human who won't give out any information and claims that he'll lose his job if he gives you any contact information for him or anybody else in the Comcast repair or support department. Poor phone slave! No respect for a company with these whiny whiny policies.
Cowardly Comcast not only won't fix it, but they won't even say what's up or answer their own damn phone. I reported them to the Ann Arbor Cable Commission and got a couple emails - Ms. Maria Holmes seems to be the one I should talk to, but she hasn't yet worked up a response except for a 2-line form response that says she will "Pass your request for information on". I might go to the Cable Commission meeting the fourth Tuesday of October, but that's a long time away! If any Comcast employees are out there, I double-dog dare you to tell me what has happened to the network and when it will be fixed. I'll even buy you lunch at Wendy's or Subway, which we can discuss the issues over.
My name is Morris Slutsky, my email is broken_form at yahoo. I would love to get together some sort of support group for Comcast, so write me if you are a Comcast victim and want to sign a petition or go see the Cable Commission with me.
(message number)
My other sig is extremely clever...
It will most likely be like back in the old days of "The Wave". You'll have a Shaw.ca or similar e-mail address, and your local content as opposed to the national Excite content.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Tomorrow's news now: I can't connect to microsoft.com. Did their domain crash? are they being DoS'ed? were they attacked by terrorists? It could be something big.
you can check them out at sonic.net
and the funny thing is that they just announced this service a few days ago. Now I just need a the right wireless card and I can post comments to slashdot during lunch =p
Fucking asshole moderators. Probably terrorists in our lame slashdot-ass midst.
There are independant coffee houses in Seattle that offer free wireless access because they realize that customers might stop by and buy coffee and food whlie they use it, but they don't want to pay $30 a month for it, or a per-minute charge, since they are already spending money there. They go spend $50 a month on an ISP, $200 on their wireless router, and it's pretty much good.
I think where Starbucks failed was not adding wireless access, but thinking they would be able to charge a fortune for it instead of assuming they can make back the cost, and more, by the people that would stop by and have coffee while they use it that wouldn't stop by otherwise.
Write letter to your state Public Utility Commisions. Such rip-off artists like your bandwith provider should be severly punished. Soon everybody will go to jail thanks to Mr. Ashcroft.
I'm pretty sure Roger's is semi-independent of excite@home too.
To some extent, but not quite as arms-length as I'd prefer under the circumstances. Most Rogers services in Ontario are provided using Ontario-based servers. However, e-mail is still stored and handled by a server in San Francisco. I'm not entirely sure how integrated the on.home.com network is with the rest of @Home's stuff, but I do know that if Excite@Home kills the SF mail server, a lot of people in Ontario will be s-c-r-e-w-e-d.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
These guys just bought the remains of an Wireless ISP trough a bankruptcy proceeding in FL, for next to nothing. Geez at this rate it will be cheaper to buy an ISP than a new computer.
ITL.tv - Your Resource for financial news.
Could it have to do with that you couldn't get cable modems, even if the guy across the street could get it? just a thought.
ITL.tv - Your Resource for financial news.
this is really great news, if you ask me...
I've know @home was dying ever since the Code Red viruses first struck. Up until that point, I was permitted the ability to run my own email and web servers. When the viruses were ravaging @home's bandwidth, they created a blanket port filter on 25 and 80 (email and web). Needless to say, this pissed me off.
When I called to complain, I was sent to an endless queue of representatives who couldn't care less about my problem. That was the last week I subscribed to @home.
I guess they had more important things on their minds, like not going bankrupt!
Many businesses are now failing, not because of bad technology or bad business models, but because of poor execution. Startups are particularly beholden to their early investors, and all of the VCs were heavily pushing "land grab" business practices throughout the bubble. The reason is obvious: Stocks were valued primarily on audience, and if you want the best quick return on your investment, you demand practices that build audience share, period. Early investors don't care about long term prospects for a business, they just want a quick cash-out to flip into something else. The 1997 changes in post IPO-lockout (from two years to six months) only magnified the short term focus. Having structured the business with that bias, the result is inevitable.
Businesses fail for all kinds of reasons, many of which are completely out of control of the management or techs. Don't dismiss an idea just because somebody screwed the pooch in the past.
...-.-
Mod this back up! 'Tis most certain NOT offtopic. Verily the jist of said honeyed verses is thus: that sound may thy business plan be, and run thee thy company justly, yet may the fair visage of profitability turn aside from thee, if the cold dice of fortune fall not in thy favor.
Here, where I am. New Westminster, BC (suburb of Vancouver) I have both ADSL (1.5mbps down/540kbps up) and cable (SHAW@HOME - 3mpbs down/540kbps up) and I've had both in varying areas of the city for well over a year (4 years in the case of cable). I hate to admit it, but, I've had excellent service in the whole time (2 days downtime in 4 years isn't bad), with the occassional hiccup here and there, nothing serious.
I pay $40 CDN for each service, thats about $26.00/month in US dollars. Neither of my providers (Shaw & Telus) is in trouble of going down, both are very linux friendly. No special software to run or anything. I run 2 servers with both static and dynamic IP addresses. The only thing is other than the cable company censoring (refusing to carry) certain newsgroups, I can't bitch. Those of you in the U.K., you have my sincerest sympathies. Here it's cheap and reliable. There are also a number of independent ISP's offering ADSL at the same price and service/speed levels. There were at least 4 others last time I checked about 6 months ago. Why all the problems south of the border?
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity!
You're worse than Hitler
I'm a full-time telecommuter in Houston, with my main office in Dallas, both cities in MobileStar's Starbucks coverage area. I love getting out of the house, and with Ricochet gone, this was the best cheap alternative that let me work somewhere other than the house for a couple of days a week. I used the service yesterday, and I'm packing up my laptop again this morning to meet the Starbucks staff at the door at 5:30. They know me by name - I can't imagine a more perfect target user for this product. (Well, not that I'm perfect, but that too.)
I've signed up for MobileStar twice. The first time was an incredibly bad experience, so bad I started e-mailing their corporate staff by guessing their names (first initial, full last name @mobilestar.com). It worked, and I got a couple of suits to listen to my stories, and they even made some changes to their web site to reflect reality. They said it would work with any 802.11b card (but it didn't), they had router problems (couldn't pull up my Webtrends or other reports on 8000-9000 port range), the tech support staff would forget about your issue and not call you back. (On a side note, their tech support was extremely qualified, friendly, and easy to reach.)
What made me cancel was that it wasn't bulletproof reliable. They had a couple of days during my first month where I couldn't log on, and I had to call their customer service. In both cases, they couldn't fix the problem within a few minutes, and at that point, why should I bother to continue to burn my cell phone minutes, hanging around in Starbucks? I've got work to do, and faced with the prospect of either packing up my gear and going to another Starbucks (where the connection might not work) or going home to my DSL, I would just go home. You don't pay $30-$60 a month for that kind of reliability.
The access itself was awesome: I rarely saw anybody else in Starbucks using it, and so I had a full T1 to myself. My bosses loved it because I was always reachable, and I could do any diagnostic work remotely.
But again, the whole time I was using it, I only met two other people who used it. People just won't pay $30 a month to get wireless access in a coffee house, not when their home DSL or cable modem isn't much more than that. And one, two, or three users a month don't pay for a T1, at least not at those prices.
What's your damage, Heather?
Section 3.2 of the RFC:
Client-server interaction - reusing a previously allocated network address.
If the client receives neither a DHCPACK or a DHCPNAK message after employing the retransmission algorithm, the client MAY choose to use the previously allocated network address and configuration parameters for the remainder of the unexpired lease.
Basically, M$ is ok with re-using an unexpired Lease if Server does not respond. The problem is that M$ uses expired Leases all the time. Hence the collisions.
What do you use for a DHCP server that it goes belly up all the time?
My company offeres wireless locally at speeds up to T1, we have bandwidth control in place via QoS under linux to ensure customers don't use all our bandwidth for hosting and dial-up. We have IP accounting data from iptables and allow our customers to xfer up to 10GB for their initial $49/mo. They get all the speed they need but if they use the bandwidth then they'll have to pay for it. Every company that undersells bandwidth is going under, we are going strong.
The service is really provided by ATT broadband. excite is just a portal. AtHome provides some sort of caching technology. AtHome was supposed to provide mail server - but they did an absolutely awful job. AtHome was also supposed to provide part of the customer service, again absolutely awful job.
This is a little off topic, but I have always wondered how much geography plays into the ability to develop profitable wireless WAN. In the west, many cities have a huge mountain on one or both sides of the city (Denver, Phoenix, ALbuquerque, etc...). Would it be easier to design a network in these cities since line of sight would be pretty much guaranteed anywhere in the city.
I just ordered service on 10/10/01 (MM/DD/YY or DD/MM/YY) They are even offering 2 months free - that's right free until 2002!! And the self-installation kit is free as well!
I have had problems with comcast service though, like 200ms ping times to my gateway. I blame it on the partment complex density though. I'm moving to a house in a near by neighborhood, and we'll see how that goes...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
They bought just short of the release cycle and bought too much... Seems Wal-Mart's been handling it pretty much correctly- 5 of the latest copies of Mandrake at any store at any time; when they run out they know via their inventory system how fast they ran out so they can plan restock in an orderly manner and make sure they don't have much in the way of stale overstock and don't run too short for too long.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
BT seems to be charging in the same general ballpark for ADSL and ISP service that Verizon's charging for things here in Dallas, TX. It's a little more expensive (I'm getting 764k down and 128k up from them for about the same US dollars value...) but it's not enough to really count it as being that much more.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
They (@Home) don't really want you to run servers. In the past, they didn't really try to stop anyone, but in response to Code Red, they blocked incoming port 80 (but only in certain areas, e.g. not in my area.) According to their rules, this wouldn't deny anyone any functionality they can rightfully claim. You weren't really supposed to be running web and mail servers in the first place, so maybe it was inevitable that they would prevent you from doing so. And were you trying to get your service canclelled by complaining about the problem? Sheesh...
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
While it would have been nice, a T1 wasn't strictly needed. A fat ADSL pipe (1.5mbit down 764k up) would have handled them nicely (and much more cheaply when it could be obtained). Most people wouldn't need the bidirectional bandwidth that a T1 provides.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Amazingly, it seems standards-based free wireless access is spreading in independent cafes, if this article is to be believed. Anyone in the bay area try this?
Amazing that Macintosh is now synonymous with standards-based.
Lies about crimes
Are you sure it was @Home and not you local cable company in charge of the blocking? I've never had any problems with Insite@Home and I keep an open VNC on SSH on HTTP connection open to my home about 12 hours per day.
Joe
At first, I was not able to comprehend how Excite@home could be losing money when so many people were marching to broadband - unless they were running an Amazon.com-lose-money-on-every-transaction-and-mak e-it-up-in-volume business model. It remained a mystery until I found out that the only thing they do is provide all that useless crap "if you miss AOL, you will like this" content, and something about help(less)desk.
I certainly never cared for the former, and the latter is so bad that I would have to spend 30 minutes on the phone proving I had a clue and the problem was on their end before they would bother to look and see if the problem was on their end (it always was when I called because I knew enough to troubleshoot my own network first)
The most annoying thing about Excite is that I originally signed up under MediaOne RoadRunner - the Terms Of Service were great! I could run any server/OS I wanted to as long as I wasn't reselling their service or causing configuration/security problems. I had a good firewall and I ran an NT4 server with IIS, MS SQL server, and Cold Fusion for development purposes for over a year - never a problem. Once they switched to Excite, the TOS says I can't run any of that, soI shut down outside access to those services.
The Digital Sorceress
I was wondering the same thing when my Adelphia@home service went down for the better part of 24 hours over last weekend.
:-/
Needless to say, Excite@home has some infrastructure problems, but I think they inherited a lot of them. A couple of months ago our service bit the dust for nearly a week, and after the second day the tech support guys were allowed to explain to all the pissed off customers (like me) what was causing the problem.
Adelphia purchased TCI cable a couple of years ago here in the San Fernando Valley. Apparently they never bothered to inspect any of the switching equipment after the acquisition, and TCI had seriously overloaded some of the switches with more connections than was safe for optimal/sustained performance... kind of like a tangled octopus of extension cords plugged into a wall socket.
Anyway, the only people who had known this was going on were the old TCI people, who had either left or continued to report everything was hunky dory, right up until one of the switches blew up.
Multiply that one incident at one cable company by all of them, and it's no wonder they're in trouble.
Without going into specifics I can tell you that I have first hand knowledge of how this effects Cogeco and Rogers. In a nut shell Rogers and Cogeco are no different than the US cable companies. They get nntp, smtp, pop and web services from @Home. No @Home no service. I know for a fact that Cogeco has been informed by @Home that it's no longer accepting new customers. However both companies have a very big push on the way to develop a new services infrastructure for their customers. Cogeco is not far away from announcing their plans. Some cable companies have also received notice that @Home wants to cancel their agreement. Obviously this is bad for existing customers.
If I was a Cogeco customer I would be too concerned. If I was a Rogers customer, which I am, I would be a little concerned.
ta!
* a direct optical connection on the side of your home, which is
* Ethernet standards based, and
* Operates at 10MBps bidirectionally, with
* No shared bandwidth, so
* Buy our stuff, if
* You live in Sacramento, by checking out:
* www.winfirst.com and maybe, just maybe
* Your life will stop sucking.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
I've ordered Qwest DSL with MSN :( since there's
no other choices at this time. Will this not work with Linux? Surely it uses PPPoE or DHCP, right?
I don't get it. Demand for broadband is high. If the carriers are operating at a loss, why aren't they adjusting their rates?
Can somebody point me to an article that explains this?
Oh that's just SPLENDID.
I currently live in the Philadelphia area. A short while ago Comcast took over the existing Adelphia cable system. I have a 1-Way surfboard cable modem (telephone upstream, cable downstream.) Adelphia promised for the last 2 years they'd upgrade the infrastructure to support 2 way.
When Adelphia turned over the area to Comcast, it still maintained the cable modem network. So I still actually pay Adelphia for my cable modem, but my cable company is comcast. Comcast sent a letter out sometime in early August saying come September 22th, existing 1-way cable customers could schedule migration to 2-way. The date came and went, and I received no call from the cable company as promised.
Two days ago, I phone Comcast@Home to see what was up. Their reps are CLUELESS. The conversation went something like this:
"Ok, so you sent me this letter saying you'd have 2-way cable ready last month. So now you're telling me it's not ready?"
"Sir, your area is currently not servicable for 2-way."
"Then you guys just sent me this letter for the fun of it? Inventing dates off the top of your head? This couldn't have anything to do with the fact @Home is in bankruptcy now could it? Are you even installing new modems?"
"Yes we are."
"So when's my area going to be ready?"
"I don't know."
Argh!
I live approx 19,000 feet from my CO which makes me ineligble for DSL. I'm stuck with this crappy SB1000 modem for which the service is INCREDIBLY flaky. Both cable companies play "pass the blame" whenever I have service problems.
Besides DirecPC Satellite Service (and oh, the nightmare stories I've read about them) are there any other alternative high-bandwith solutions I should be aware of?
I contracted to a company who configured and installed the "kits" (router, switch, access points, UPS, etc) into the Starbucks' stores. The problem was inverse-pyramidal management with far too many layers of outsourcing.
I think the chain of outsourcing went something like this:
Starbucks contracted with
Compaq, who contracted with
MobileStar, who contracted with
NEC and IBM, who contracted with
Netcom (not the ISP), who contracted with
my company.
The management was FAR too top heavy and inefficient. The actual bottleneck was up the line a bit; Netcom did everything it could to make sure kits got out the door on time and installed under Draconian schedules. There was a schedule originally planned, but the folks up the chain couldn't get configurations and equipment to Netcom on time to meet it, and then (I believe) tried to put the blame on Netcom for not meeting deadlines.
Typical (mis)management.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
I have Excite@home. The speed is great. All the extra fluff (read content) sucks. I don't want to know the news as delivered by them. I don't need yet another email address. What I do need is a fast connection. And that is what I got. To my surprise I discovered that you do not have to install all the additional stuff to have access to the @home network. If you have the modem you can connect. My, no more fluff.
ADSL or cable is the same price (if you own the modem).
I have Telus ADSL and download at 150KB/s for CDN$30 per month.That's about $20 US.
I live in a brand new subdivision that basically has no hope of getting any kind of dsl/cable broadband any time soon (God bless Qwaste and the Deathstar).
Then a neighbor told me about a small isp (Mesa Networks) that was offering fixed 802.11b connections for residential service in my area with 1-mbps up/down for $58/month. I called them up, arranged an installation time for a week later and have been up and running with no problems for a few weeks now.
Since then, it occurred to me that small shops like these offering fixed wireless access are a perfect compromise between the bloated-beauracracy-from-hell providers (ie here, here and here) and the unreliable, unmanaged, unavailable you-get-what-you-pay-for communal neighborhood nets that have been spawned as a backlash. It's become obvious that turning a profit offering broadband where last mile wiring is involved is extremely difficult if not impossible. But, the infrastructure to manage fized wireless seems a lot more manageable from a small business perspective to me
Anyway, I don't have the time, inclination or expertise to professionally manage an isp network and I really hope that the model these guys are pursuing pays off - I think small local providers have a much better chance of tailoring solutions that can cost effectively meet the broadband needs of neighborhoods and communities.
HERE is a story about WINfirst.. they just fired up the first customer a few weeks ago.
Still don't know if they'lllet you run servers, tho..
Look at the Dreamcast. Superior technology, inferior marketing, early EOL.
Wow, I never thought I'd defend the Marketing Department *ducks*
@Home is only stopping adding new customers so that they can hand the respective customer provisioning databases to the cable companies. Can't hand off the DB's clean if you are still adding new customers. It is very important to separate Excite from @Home. @Home handles and maintains the mail servers, provisioning databases, News servers, proxy servers, backbone, core, and peering routers. Excite well they are the mind boggling useless money pit who absorbed all of funds that should have been set aside for Server, backbone, and circuit upgrades. C'mon George Bell lets spend another billion dollars for a greeting card company instead of a cable modem infrastructure that the MSO partners shook their head at! Oh yeah wait until the cable companies take over news and webspace and the like. The cable companies will quickly wish they could get someone to handle it all for only 25% of the customer take. People are going to suffer when the cable companies take over.
Mobilstar was just a lousy deal. I had no idea they were in financial trouble, so I actually considered signing up last week. I decided not to, because they want a year contract and $29.95/month for local-only service, only in Starbucks. You can't work from Starbucks, so this isn't really a serious service - it's a luxury item. Which is all very well and good - I would have bought it anyway - but it was just too expensive for the sort of person who would want wireless - a person who travels. They wanted $0.15/minute in addition to the $29.95/month if you wanted to use their service out of the area.
When will people learn that metered internet service is a non-starter, and that you need to provide a service that is priced attractively if you want customers? If they'd charged $29.95/month for access anywhere they had connectivity, they most likely would have generated a lot more income. Sigh.