Ask About Setting Up a Community ISP

The Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative (RRIC) is one of the best-known member-owned ISPs around. It provides DSL service to the Ruby Ranch neighborhood in Summit County, Colorado. Carl Oppedahl, the RRIC "main man," has agreed to answer Slashdot questions about the possibilities and pitfalls of setting up something similar in other areas. Please read the RRIC FAQs before posting a question so that you don't ask something Carl has already answered a million times. Otherwise, the usual Slashdot interview rules apply: One question per post, we'll email Carl 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Comments

Re:Moslem, Moslim, Muslem, Muslim

[elmegil]

Clearly the words of a man who's bothered to read the book himself. NOT.

I think you can hardly do better in "blood soaked" than stories of God telling you to kill all the women and children along with the men. What book is that in? The Bible. Christians have of course done nothing to persecute others. They didn't, for example, kill millions in the so-called inquisition and the Crusades (the Children's Crusade being one of the really great ones, go look it up), and that's just the easiest example to come up with.

BTW I did ask a Muslem I know about Jihad etc, and he was very clear that the BS about the 49 virgins etc are about as representative of mainstream Islam as Pat Robertson is of mainstream Christianity; i.e. not one damn bit. Of course I don't expect your bigoted ass to actually bother checking on the propaganda you're being fed by the Christian right (who stand right behind those people killing other people if it's "for the right cause"...see the nuremburg files website for another example).

Have you read the Quran ?

[Taco Cowboy]

You speak as if you have read the Quran.

I have.

If you had read the Quran, you would know that the "49 virgins" thing is FROM the pages of Quran.

If it's "BS", then it's definitely BS from those who wrote the Quran.

And one more thing, those who had slammed the planes into WTC and killed over 3000 innocent people are DEFINITELY Moslems.

Yes, Christians in the past have done terrible things. But it's IN THE PAST !

Two wrongs don't make a right.

You just don't equate the wrongs Christians had made in the past to the CURRENT VIOLENCE that are being initiated by the bloody Moslems.

I am NOT saying that Christians have NO sins. It's that in TODAY'S WORLD, it's the Moslems who are perpetrating the violence.

NOT THE CHRISTIANS !

You do owe an apology to the over 3,000 people who have perished in the WTC bombing. They have died because of the bloody Moslem's believe that they will get their fill of 49 virgins (boys and/or girls) who are waiting for them in their "heaven" to "serve" them, just because those bloody assholes have "sacrified" themselves for their bloody "Allah".

Re:Have you read the Quran ?

[elmegil]

Christians have done no wrong for decades. Right. Let's take this to a better, more current analogy: Do you think racist skinheads who think nothing of beating and killing blacks, jews, and homosexuals represent Christianity? They claim to. Does this mean that they represent all Christians, or that all Christians should be held accountable for their crimes? I don't. And I don't think that the hijackers, for all the great horror of their crime, actually have any credibility to speak for Islam either. Just as you can pull words of the Qu'ran out of context and use them to justify bigotry against all Moslems (or however you want to spell it), I can pull similar words out of the Bible to justify the same kind of hatred for Christians (and if I pick the right sections, I can justify hatred for Jews while I'm at it).

To claim that you, as someone completely outside the culture and traditions of Islam, can speak with authority on what the Qu'ran means is laughable. When a friend of mine who has practiced Islam all his life tells me about his religion, I trust and believe him far more than some bigot who has had the whole "Moslems are bloody terrorists, cos it says so in one line of a huge book" drummed into his head for decades without bothering to look any further into the reality of this claim among the actual followers of the religion.

Of course now I can hear your yammering about "it says so in clear language"; well, you know what? The constitution says in clear language that Congress shall MAKE NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof, but I hear Christian Morons repeatedly claiming that this doesn't mean what it says, and that all our laws should be Christian laws. So tell me again why plain language is "obvious" in one place and "obviously not intended that way" in another.

How "mainstream" you wanna get ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Let me quote you:

"BTW I did ask a Muslem I know about Jihad etc, and he was very clear that the BS about
the 49 virgins etc are about as representative of mainstream Islam as
Pat Robertson is of mainstream Christianity; i.e. not one damn bit."

1. Will that "Muslem you asked" (or is THAT YOU ?!) tell the REAL TRUTH, about Jihad, and/or about the 49 virgins ?

2. If you want to get mainstream for the Moslems, you can't go further than that bloody Quran. The "49 virgins awaiting in heaven for those who martyled themselves for Allah" bit is IN THE QURAN !

Pray tell, where in Bible do you see any mention of "Pat Robertson"?

Re:Count yourself lucky !

[Taco Cowboy]

You sez:
"God knows, Christians and Christian countries have
never done anything bad to foreigners."

At the very least, no Christians have slammed two planes into tall buildings in the Moslem countries.

Moslems, on the other hand, has done so, to the World Trade Center in New York City.

Just in case you have forgotten, over 3,000 innocent people were brutally murdered !

Re:Count yourself lucky !

[ceejayoz]

The people who hit the WTC were no more Muslim than Hitler was Jewish. They violated many key parts of the religion they claim to follow.

Take your hate speech somewhere else.