Satellite Internet Service for Macs?

Untimely Ripp'd asks: "Satellite broadband has been available to PC users for half a decade, and still is not trivially available to Mac users. It can be done, but it's always an unsupported hack, or it requires buying expensive extra hardware and software. I cannot understand why Hughes and the other providers would refuse to spend the relatively few dollars necessary to develop a couple of device drivers and glue libraries. Time after time, the vendors have said, 'it's coming,' but it never does, and the promise eventually goes away. (Earthlink's FAQ page no longer says that Mac software is being developed, for example). I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied. Does anyone know of any serious tech hurdle that would make it cost more than $100K or so to develop the necessary software?" this article mentions one-way Mac service coming online from OWC in a future expansion, along with nationwide service. A comment from that story does mention a simple solution, but why is it that Satellite service, even one way satellite service, depends on Windows-only software? What other solutions have Mac users resorted to when they wanted their Macs connected?

Comments

Again?

[Clue4All]

I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied.

How many times can we go over this same point? It's the same for Linux and Mac, it's just not economically viable to develop software for something used by less than 5% of the computing masses. It doesn't pay, plain and simple, and companies aren't going to waste money developing with little to no returns. I await next week's Ask Slashdot with the same question.

Re:Again?

[NineNine]

Actually, there are more costs than just development... They'd have to spend money on support for the product, money on the marketing, etc. Rolling out a product for a different platform isn't as simple as paying some guy to write the code. There's a lot more that goes into it. So I guess I'm re-enforcing the parent here. It's just not economical, but even more so than saying "Well, it only costs $100K for development".

Re:Again?

[Otter]

Also, while Mac users may be ~5% of the total, they're a vanishingly small percentage of the construction supervisors, petrologists and logging bosses who need a satellite link. This troll is essentially correct, even if he can't spell Shih-Tzu.

Re:Again?

[GlassHeart]

It's the same for Linux and Mac, it's just not economically viable to develop software for something used by less than 5%

One way to make money is to build a product that 95% of the people use. Another way to make money is to build a product that 5% of the people use. Microsoft certainly made a boatload of money, but Apple is not exactly bankrupt. In fact, I'd expect that Mac sales of Adobe Photoshop account for significantly more than 5%.

In practice, a lot of times you'll find that the reason a minority OS is not supported is not because somebody determined that it was not viable, but that nobody ever bothered to see if it was viable or not. Only the former is a good business decision.

Re:Again?

[BitGeek]

This is why these bullshit reports from IDC and gartner should not be tolerated.

Even based on THIER numbers, the Mac Marketshare of currently used computers accessing the internet is around %15 to %20. Making them prime candidates for this type of access.

Furthermore, simple thought about who runs linux boxes tells you that the linux market would probably be profitable for them as well. Even if the linux market share was only %2 (I'm not saying it is)--- whats relevant is how much money you'll make from the customers, not how much of the market there is.

For Mac software, for instance, its a very lucurative market. Mac users spend more and buy more software items than Windows users AND there's less competition. so its quite possible that if you release a good product you could be 4 times as profitable in the Mac space as the PC space-- even though its much smaller. Simply not having Microsoft there to take away your thunder is a big help in itself.

Unfortunately, most of these decisions are made by newbie marketing types who don't understand the industry and don't think for themselves-- they just all do what everyone else is doing and so you end up with 10 different applications in category X on the Windows side, all loosing money, and one done by some guy in a garage on the Mac side making more than he can figure out how to spend.

The value of a market is the number of people who will buy your service-- not the number of people you have to try and reach to tell you about the service. A 10,000 person market is more valuable than a 100 million person market if you can get 500 customers for $500 in the former and $250 customers for $1 million in the latter.

Re:Again?

[Archfeld]

not that I am knocking you but do you have numbers to back up this claim...I fully agree that IDC and Gartner OFTEN have ulterior motives but a 10% difference is SIGNIFICANT.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is pretty inaccurate. I'm a systems engineer at a major satellite networking provider not unrelated to this story. I'm not working on the current consumer offerings, but on the next-generation system. Of course, I don't speak for said employer.

The DirecWay satellite is pretty much paid for - sure it's a large capital investment up front, but the software side is a constant ongoing expense. The software is constantly under revision by a largeish team of software developers and network engineers. New features are still being added. That's a lot of salaries to pay, and it doesn't stop. Software is never finished. Adding support for another operating system, at least with the current (legacy?) satellite networks, is a large undertaking. All the spoofing for the consumer products is done by software, and it fools with the TCP/IP stack directly. It also needs to be supported. There's at least 10 programmer salaries and about 50 customer service people, just to have a shot at the .1% of the 5% of computer users who have macs and might want satellite internet. If you look at the news, you'll see that the consumer side of the business isn't doing so well anyway - it's a very small take-up rate, so even that .1% estimate is extremely generous.

Are you a shareholder of Hughes? If you were, would you want them spending 3+ million dollars a year on software that _might_ get 5000 subscribers at under $70 a month? It's hard enough making a profit with 100,000 subscribers on the PC platform. Don't forget that there are a whole host of other costs - installer training, advertising (subscriber acquisition costs are huge), etc.

So my position isn't one where I would know what anyone's future plans are - hell, they could be releasing Mac software tomorrow and I wouldn't know. But you're seriously underestimating the costs of software development and support for adding an OS.

Re:Again?

[ealar dlanvuli]

I have no clue what your first paragraph is saying, so I'll ignore it.

You will gain 5% market penetration by supporting apple assuming all other factors are equal (which the are probably not in this case.. but you didn't say that did you)

I seriously doubt they have 100% market penetration in the PC world. In fact I own a PC and I don't have satelite, so I know they do not.

Say they have 10% penetration in the Wintel land, (this is very generous), and lets give Wintel 90% marketshare for consumer PC's (this might be accurate in europe and america, dubious worldwide), now you have 9% marketshare.

Lets add 10% of the Mac users out there, you gain 1/2%.

Now lets calculate the percent change in marketshare. Looks to be 5.5555555..%, seems to me they have gained prety close to the proposed 5% market penetration. This means for every 19 customers you have, you could have one more.

This applies equally well to browser arguments, in fact there it's even more valid, as the cost increases much slower if you develop right to begin with.

I have proven two things to myself here

1: People like you who make claims like "it only has 5% marketshare, so it's obviously worthless to support" definatly do not work in any sort of money-related position, and you are definatly not MBA's.

2: Neither of you have a clue how statistics work to manipluate truth.

Re:Again?

[swdunlop]

Having done a stint or two of technical support, a tour in quality assurance, I can point out several costs of supporting less-used OS's and hardware platforms.

First, it's not quite so easy to provide technical support for more than one environment. Like it or not, it isn't just a case of hitting Command-C instead of Control-C; Windows users expect one set of UI conventions, Mac users expect another, and Unix users want it three different ways, and it should also work from the command line. Each OS requires different tactics to work around existing issues. For technical support departments supporting diverse platforms is a nightmare, since it means they have to either spend most of their time in training, or provide multiple specialized departments, which can easily eat up manpower.

Setting rigid support boundaries is a partial solution, but I have yet to have a customer who knew of the support boundaries and had a problem outside those nicely defined lines who didn't try to cajole and/or threaten me into helping him "just this once." It wastes my time, and his.

For developers, this is similarly a nightmare. I know of one decent cross-platform GUI toolkit that works on X11, Win32 and Mac OS, and on the Mac, it doesn't conform strictly to the Apple User Interface guidelines. Compound that with the highly specialized skillset required to write drivers for a particular operating system, with some exceptions, and to go with your bloated support department, you'll have an increased software development budget, and QA budget.

The only recourse we fringe users have is open standards; encourage your vendors to use published protocols, open standards and to document their API's. Take those documents and write a solution for your environment of choice.

Re:Again?

[dfung]

> Say they have 10% penetration in the Wintel
> land, (this is very generous), and lets give
> Wintel 90% marketshare for consumer PC's (this
> might be accurate in europe and america,
> dubious worldwide), now you have 9%
> marketshare.
>
>Lets add 10% of the Mac users out there, you
> gain 1/2%.
>
>Now lets calculate the percent change in
> marketshare. Looks to be 5.5555555..%, seems
> to me they have gained prety close to the
> proposed 5% market penetration. This means for
> every 19 customers you have, you could have
> one more.

Actually, this is amazingly close to the proof of why they *don't* support alternate OSes.

Start with a realistic market penetration for satellite connectivity - probably 0.1%, which is still probably generous. I don't even think DSL or cable have 10% each.

At this point, the mathematical argument you make could conceivably hold true - add a 5% platform and get 5% more users. But numerically, that number is really small and you gain them at very high cost. You have to pay to develop a new version of software and keep developing it as the world and the platform move forward (this is a big deal in the brave new world of OS X), provide technical support to these new users (along with all the people that aren't upgrading along the way), documentation, advertising so that anybody knows it exists, etc., etc.

If all these numbers were in the millions, then you might at least try to make a go at it - the per head cost might not look great, but it's not ridiculous. But these numbers are probably in the 10s of thousands for the Windows platform, and you probably would have to battle for even a couple of thousand Mac users. With a million users, $500K for software and support infrastructure might work - for 2000 Mac users, it would just be stupid.

When you try to sell this to your boss, he'll say, "we only have 0.1% market share with our existing product and support which targets the biggest mass market. Wouldn't be be better off spending the half-mil on advertisting for the current product? Couldn't we double our market share [e.g., tens of thousands more customers]?".

And you know that he'd be right, don't you?

David Fung

Re:Again?

[Jason Earl]

So what about enough of the specification of the hardware and TCP/IP hacks so that someone else could write a Linux driver? You wouldn't have to support it, you wouldn't have to write it, and your competitors are probably already reverse engineering your work in order to pick up anything not patented. I can totally understand why you don't want to be in the business of writing and supporting drivers, but Linuxers aren't really asking you to write the drivers.

Just curious.

Re:Again?

[Graymalkin]

Your arguement makes perfect sense and I have to say I agree. However I think the problem on the developer side doesn't lie with the fact supporting Macs would only get you .1% of 5% of the market but instead with the fact Hughes/EchoStar/everyone else screwed up originally in their implementation. The soon to be released DW4020 (maybe it is released already) is how the sat providers SHOULD have originally rolled out their connection equipment.

Using USB based equipment in my ever so humble opinion was a major screwup on their part. Besides the obscene price tag of the equipment and installation (far more than my DirecTV system cost me) the USB satellite modem was a huge turn off. It is far more inefficient to fsck with the Windows networking set up than to do it in your own little box in a self contained manner. A satellite modem with an ethernet port is a much better idea, yet again in my opinion. For starters support is rather trivial, instead of needing to rely on Windows to work properly which is a lot to ask, they only need to really maintain their own software. All the network stack customizations and proxying tricks to let the network run on a high latency connection would be relatively simple to maintain on something like VxWorks or some other embedded system. All the end user would need is an ethernet port which in available on a huge percentage of systems, including every Mac made since the iMac.

At the time I was looking at DirectWay about when I was looking for boradband and was picking up a DirecTV system anyways the only satellite modem options were USB. Had I been able to plug it into my Ethernet hub I probably would have bought the service. For a long time I lived out of reach of both cable and DSL and my telephone line choked data down at a staggering 24kbit/s. Now I have a cable modem plugged into my router which is plugged into my hub. I think there's plenty of Linux/Mac/Whatever users who also would have signed up for their service a long time ago and thus been locked into satellite instead of opting for cable or DSL. I think Hughes dropped the ball with DirectWay, it had a major opening even in metropolitan areas before the massive cable internet rollouts of the past two years. Not only could they have likely increased their customer base but they could have also lowered their costs by not relying on Windows hacks in order to get their systems to work right.

Re:Again?

[ek_adam]

How about the people in rural locations who don't have any other options available?

My father lives in northern Maine. He has a 56k modem, that can barely get 24k on his phone line. No cable available. Positively no DSL, he's about 15 miles from the central office.

Reasonably priced satellite service would be great.

Re:Again?

[Golias]

First, it's not quite so easy to provide technical support for more than one environment.

Except "Windows" is not exactly one environment, is it? A product like this probably already has customers on 98, NT4, ME, Win2000, and XP, perhaps more, and apart from similar-looking GUI's, the differences (particularilly between 98/ME and NT) are pretty vast, when it comes to what's likely to break for any given app.

Re:Again?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Yeah, well. Being in QA and tech support means we only see the downsides. And we have to take the Dev's word for how hard things are (when they often complain to just get us off their backs).

We don't see shipping/sales bonuses. That's why we're not the ones that do the product design.

Re:Again?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Less than a satellite modem with built-in USB, more than likely.

And way less than that plus custom windows network drivers, supporting software, etc.

Re:Again?

[BitGeek]

Yeah-- they only count computers sold in a given year. People then take that number and call it the total addressable market. This ignores the fact that the average mac is kept around twice as long as the average PC.

Furthermore, Gartner counts every computer sold with windows as a windows sale, and every sale of windows software as another windows sale-- so many computers which ship with windows and are then upgraded to another version of windows are counted twice.

Furthermore, they count all computers sold with windows that are installed in a datacenter or otherwise have Linux installed as windows sales-- inflating the windows numbers and deflating the linux numbers.

They don't do ANY RESEARCH into the actual operating system installed on customers computers.

Nor do they account for the fact that many computers are bought for data centers or for business use that does not involve customer use. The business market and the consumer markets are quite different-- when you talk about selling software into a market, you're talking about the consumer market (unless you're talking business software). The huge distortion causes by counting computers that live in closets and computer rooms as addressable for software sales is very erronous-- nobody installs word or a movie editing package on these machines.

Basically, their numbers are made up.

Re:Again?

[BitGeek]

OH, I forgot another issue with their numbers: They dont' count mac sales.

Yep.

When they say Macs have "%3" of the market, they are saying that macs make up %3 of the x86 market-- that is companies that sell x86 boxes or distribute them, also often care apple hardware and report that to them. But they don't count sales made via mac mail order companies, local mac dealers, the apple retail stores or the apple online store.

In other words, the ignore all the mac sales channels and only count sales thru x86 sales channesl as mac channels. Thus not counting most mac sales.

(I'm sure there are irregularities in how they count linux and other unix on pc hardware sales as well.)

Re:Again?

[BitGeek]

I didn't say that was the market share-- I don't know the market share. but Gartner and IDC don't either.

I'm saying by thier published numbers, if you account for the way they collect data, then THEY are saying the mac market is %15-%20 of the consumer internet accessing market.

By the way, almost all mac browsers report to be PCs-- googles stats are pointless. After getting told you cant' use a website because you aren't running IE, (even when you are) people switch and report themselves as PCs.

Re:Again?

[BitGeek]

If you had experience working for software developers, I wouldn't need to substantiate the assertion.

But it is my experience, and I've a long history with various software companies.

I've seen profitable products killed because they were mac products (while the PC product was loosing money) and the company eventually goes out of business, etc.

Most marketing people working for software companies are newbies. There are few experienced marketers, and even then they tend to have a herd mentality.

Re:Again?

[Lars T.]

Interesting that you chose Amazon.com to prove the insignificance of Macs: Top-Selling Desktop Computers @ Amazon

Why would Mac users need fast internet anyway?

[realmolo]

I thought they were all too busy making Quicktime movies of their trip to the Volvo dealer, and ripping Yanni CDs to play on their iPod while they wait at the coffee shop for their Shitsu to get it's nails manicured, sipping latte's. You know, Thinking Differently.

Re:Why would Mac users need fast internet anyway?

[commodoresloat]

They spend hours--nay--days getting their virtual desktop decorated just right. They agonize over which screen wallpaper to use.

Heh, you must mean linux users. Remember, Mac users aren't allowed to tweak their UIs anymore.

Re:Why would Mac users need fast internet anyway?

[rxchurch]

I use my mac to come home and make music and edit video after a long week of smacking around linux/sunos/microsloth/ios machines around.

When I come home, i don't really feel like spending half my night recompiling the latest kernel.

I just want to make music and video.
After I eat my sushi, of course.

Re:Why would Mac users need fast internet anyway?

[Chemical]

No kidding. My piece-of-shit Dell Optiplex GX1 at work (with a whopping 350Mhz PII) is running W2k and has been up since Aug 23, 40 days straight without so much as a hiccup. Prior to that it had been up for about 60 days but had to be rebooted after some asshole installed some software that required a reboot.

Of course the only reason I don't reboot is because I am running ProgressQuest all the time and I don't want to lose my place. My charater, Captain Dingleberry is currently ranked 196 out of 39600 players. I was pissed when that guy rebooted my PC and I come back 2 days later to discover that ProgressQuest had been shut down.

Doesn't Apple have an investment in Earthlink?

[jlower]

They did anyway. That would seem to make a conspiracy less likely.

It's not about the cost to *develop* the software

[mbessey]

The main barrier to providing a service like this for the Mac, or for Linux, Solaris, BeOS, or whatever, isn't the cost to develop the software, it's the cost of supporting users on another platform.

Every time someone calls with a question, it costs the company money. The quicker you can answer their question and get them off the phone, the better. This means minimizing the number of different systems your support folks have to be trained for.

-Mark

The real cost is maintenance

[iiioxx]

It's not the initial development of drivers and an application interface that is such the expense for the ISP. It is the ongoing support of an additional platform. By adding Mac support for your product, you've just doubled your ongoing testing and debug workload. It is also an additional platform for which they will have to provide user support. They either have to train their existing help desk staff to resolve both Windows and Mac problems, or they have to hire a special "Mac staff" and create a separate help desk to support that userbase.

In the realm of mass market computing, the majority rules. Most companies can't afford to expend the budget to gain a small fraction of a platform that only makes up 5% of the industry as a whole. Remember, it's not like EVERY Mac user will start using the product just because they support the Mac. So, why would a company spend even 2% of their R&D budget to get 1% of a 5% market (if they're lucky).

I tried to like get the satellite to work.....like

[Typingsux]

on my Mac.... Then all of a sudden beep beep beep beep beep beep
Unhhhhh?

Mac users should be able to have sucky service too

[usurper_ii]

I work for a dealer and we tested DirecPC through Pegasus (Pegasus Express was the offical name). It sucked. When talking to people that had satellite Net...about four out of five hated it. (I never could figure out why that one person said theirs was working so good when the other people had nothing but trouble). In the end, we never sold it because we were afraid it would make more people mad than anything else.

By all means, though, Mac usuers should be able to get pissed off just like us PC users...

Usurper_ii

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

it requires buying expensive...hardware

Expensive hardware? You mean like the Mac you're trying to get online with?

Most Mac Users Probably on Broadband

[Shuh]

It looks like satellite internet is one of those wonky markets that doesn't make any sense except to those people trying to pinch pennies or get ahead where there isn't broadband already available. That being said, most Mac users are used to paying for superior service and probably already have ADSL/cable internet access anyway... It's kind of like whining about a lack of USB-2 drivers on the Mac when Firewire has already been there for the past 4 years both faster and better...

Re:Most Mac Users Probably on Broadband

[Shuh]

What I am going to dispute is the fact that you state that Firewire is faster than USB-2 (as you put it.) It is not. I won't dispute the 'better' part, but Firewire (as currently available) is 400Mbps, and USB 2.0 (a.k.a USB High Speed) is 480Mbps.

You need to read some real-world comparisons between USB 2.0 and Firewire. Firewire always wins.

The 'specs' are only on paper. And USB-2 doesn't come anywhere close to a theoretical 480Mbps, much less 400Mbps, which you would expect now in the beta-stages of USB-2. And I said "beta" in the sense that this product has been released as a product for you to beta-test... unofficially. (Another "subjective" argument, based on the fact of the performance disparity.)

Re:Most Mac Users Probably on Broadband

[Shuh]

The articles I looked at on the relative performance were these:

mobilecomputing

toms hardware

Why Satellite?

[MidnightBrewer]

I'm living in Osaka, Japan right now, and the biggest hurdle the technology-savvy Japanese have to face in the telecommunications field is geography: Japan is 70% mountains.

Their solution? Wireless internet. Give your user a wireless internet card, then connect the receiver to a fiber-optic network offering 100Mbps. Works with Windows as well as OS 9 and OS X.

Currently, ADSL alone in Japan offers 12Mbps, for a slightly cheaper price than in the states.

Re:Earthlink Satellite is USB only: why?

[chill]

Most computers come with USB ports. Most home computers do NOT come with ethernet jacks as standard.

Most satellite Internet providers use a form of header-rewrite on the packets, routing everything back to your PC through their NOC. It makes for difficulties in setting up direct-to-router connections.

I think the answer is pretty obvious

[strictnein]

It is market share plain and simple.

First off, you have the very small market share that Mac users represent. About 1-3% (right?)

Then you have to factor in what percentage of the Mac users live in or near major metropolitan areas. I would argue that number is probably near 90% of the total Mac users (a number I am pulling out of my ass, but I just don't think there are a ton of Mac users in the rural US, which is where the Sat. companies are focusing).

So, you have a possible market that makes up maybe .1 - .3% of the total computer users in the US.
Hell, even if my numbers are a little bit off, the total market share for Mac users in rural areas can't be more than 1% of all internet users.

So, if the software costs $100k to write, and then another $5k - $10k / year (/month?) to support, plus retraining all (or many) of your support/install personel to use the Macs, is it really worth it?

I personally don't think I would do it if I ran the company.

But whatever... hmmm... the linux router seems to having problems... wonder if throwing it out the window will solve it

Technical issues

[rochlin]

I think it's worth mentioning a couple technical points that have been overlooked by people considering using a PC as a bridge between the satellite receiver and the Mac.

I set up a PC system (with win2k) purely as a bridge. The satellite reciever uses USB (this is from Pegasus-DirecPC-Hughes - now acquired by Earthlink). Pegasus and DirecPC provide proprietary Windows only drivers to deal with the USB network-satellite connection. That's issue #1. That means using Linux or (as suggested in the "comment" link in the oringal post) a simple router won't fly.

Issue 2: Optimizing the Window size for the ethernet connections --
The fact is, the TCP/IP conneciton to the satellite (high bandwidth - extremely high latency) needs different rwin settings to optimize the connection than the simple pc->mac LAN connection. So far as I can figure, Windows lets you choose one setting for all NICs (in this case the USB satellite connection is a NIC).

Issue 3 - you need some kind of 3rd party NAT/Bridge software like Sygate to share the connection with the Mac. The built in (to Win2k, 98) Internet connection software won't work because it can't bridge different subnets. The USB conneciton is on a different subnet vs. a regular NIC. I don't think it can be configured otherwise. WinXP might fix that.

Bottom line: You need a PC with Windows to share the satellite with the Mac and even then the Mac will have inferior service vs. the directly connected PC. So a satellite service supporting Macs would be nice :)

Re:Technical issues

[redgekko]

I've shared several DIRECWAY systems out to Macs using ICS on 98se and 2000, but not without problems with the "acceleration" software that is the client side of the crc spoofing tech used to compensate for latency. I haven't tried XP yet.

Basically, sustained downloads perform great on both server and clients, but individual images on webpages seem to only load one at a time, as if only one socket connection is being made at a time to the server to download them. Running multiple simutaneous sustained downloads also seem to suffer, but not as bad has normal http page element traffic.

If anyone knows what causes this or how to solve the problem without 3rd party software (SatServ seems to work great), I would greatly appreciate it!

Re:Technical issues

[rochlin]

That satserv.com site is interesting, but I didn't see any software. What 3rd party software exactly are you talking about?? Thanks! (PS - interesting that you could share using ICS. Tried it and it didn't work - I thought because the DirecPC driver was assigning a different subnet than the ICS software was assigning to the 2nd NIC - but it must be somethign else).

As a junk hardware collector...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I have both the DirecPC pci card, and the usb modem version. I'm not capable of reverse engineering these myself, but anyone that is, is welcome to mine. I could probably even spare an 18" dish+LNB.

I mean, every time we wait for these fuckers, we end up losing. Maybe you need to decide to write it yourself? It's the only way to be sure it's done right.

PS Anyone that knows the pinout for the power on the DirecPC usb modem (mini-din 8), could you send it to me? I know it's gotta have 14v for the lnb power, in addition to 5v, but last time I tried to deduce this from looking at the pcb, it took me a day and I still fried the device.

Re:As a junk hardware collector...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Screw that. They wouldn't know how to install it with my dish anyway, a Toroidal 90. It takes more than a little skill to align the LNB's.

Besides, who says we have to subscribe to the service to be able to do interesting things?

well maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe its because Hughes, like most other companies,
know better than to get in bed with mac users. they
tend to be the most pushy, clueless, demanding,
ignorant and zealous user community out there ..
always some screwed up issue .. and all for what?
for the meager bucket-drop dollars from the pockets
of people for whom the concept of more than one
mouse button is overly taxing.

(mac linux users are excluded from this rant)

Re:well maybe

[interstellar_donkey]

You'll probably be modded down for saying that, but your right. I long ago conceded the fact that Macs were at the very least as good as PCs (in some areas), but Mac users are a whole different story.

I worked the phones in tech support for quite some time for a major ISP. I hated having to get mac calls. Not because they were difficult to troubleshoot; macs are surprisingly easy to fix when there are network issues, and I always liked that.

But the users, as a general rule, were much much worse then PC users. The worst were the imac users. I have dozens of theories about why this is, but the only one I can come up with is mac users simply don't invest the time needed to really understand their own computers, or at least the time needed to properly opperate a PC, but instead just want everything to work right. When it doesn't it's the fault of whoever is on the other end of the phone.

This is not a bash of macs. Macs are so easy to troubleshoot, the computer literate mac user rarely needs to call tech support, so the support folks just get the worst of the worst.

Re:well maybe

[BWJones]

The worst were the imac users. I have dozens of theories about why this is, but the only one I can come up with is mac users simply don't invest the time needed to really understand their own computers, or at least the time needed to properly opperate a PC, but instead just want everything to work right.

And just what is wrong with this? I personally tend to push the limits of my computers in many ways and know the ins and outs of hardware and software, but my mother and my grandmother just want to be able to get email, surf the web and get photos and movies of the kids and grandkids. I would never dream of purchasing either one of them a Linux box or a Windows box. Rather I have always defaulted to the Macintosh because they don't have to spend time configuring settings. Macs just work.

The other cool thing about this is that OS X works for both my grandmother (It just works and is easy to use) and me (I can compile lots of data visualization apps originally written for our SGI's, crunch data in the background, use my workstation as a server, surf the web, run the latest versions of Photoshop and Office, listen to 40GB of music on iTunes and have the best system wide text anti aliasing ever on a computer all on one machine and all at the same time.

Cool.

Re:well maybe

[interstellar_donkey]

And just what is wrong with this? I personally tend to push the limits of my computers in many ways and know the ins and outs of hardware and software, but my mother and my grandmother just want to be able to get email, surf the web and get photos and movies of the kids and grandkids.

There is nothing wrong with that. And if you don't quite understand your computer, you should by all means call tech support.

But the problem is mac users, again as a general rule, are just plain rude.

"Ok. in the upper left hand corner of your screen, you should see a little apple. I want you to click on that"

"There is no little apple in the corner"

"There should be, look again"

"I'm telling you, there is no little apple"

"I'm sure it's there. Take your time."

"I'm not some idiot. If there was an apple, I'd tell you"

(... continues for 15 minutes).

"Sir, I hate to say this, but I can't help you. I want to help you, but I just can't. If you don't see a little apple, either you have a different kind of computer or there is something seriously wrong with yours that we don't have the resources to fix"

"fine. I'll go into the den and turn the damn thing on"

This is not some rare funny story... this is typical of the mentality of a mac user who calls tech support.

Again, I'm not saying mac users are dumb, but the ones who use the support resources of a company, at least in my experience, sure the heck are.

Re:well maybe

[interstellar_donkey]

That's not really true. I was given accolades for my sympathy and empathy at work. Even with mac users.

I did my best to be kind and helpful regardless of if I knew the user was lying to me (I'm not in frount of my computer was a common one with mac users).

And yes, there ARE pc users who are like that too, but again, in my expereince, there is a much higher percentage of mac users who are more interested in being right then being helped.

This has nothing to do with being a newbie. If you don't know how to use a computer, there is nothing wrong with asking for help, espically when it's from someone who is paid to help you.

On the other hand, the person on the other end of the phone is in fact a person. If he or she is good at what they do, they will do everything they can to help you and treat you as a person. And if they are really good, they will still try to treat you as a person even when you are a compleate prick to them.

So, let me rephrase this. As a percentage of people who call tech support, mac users have more assholes.

Re:well maybe

[foobar104]

I have dozens of theories about why this is, but the only one I can come up with is mac users simply don't invest the time needed to really understand their own computers, or at least the time needed to properly opperate a PC, but instead just want everything to work right. When it doesn't it's the fault of whoever is on the other end of the phone.

I don't agree with your language here. You say Mac users don't "invest" the time "necessary." I think a more accurate way of saying it is that Mac users don't have to waste time learning about the internal workings of their computers. Macs, for the most part, just take care of themselves.

And, speaking as a moderately well educated and informed Mac user, when it doesn't work it is absolutely the fault of the person on the other end of the phone. I moved into my current home this summer, and decided to try AT&T's cable modem service. The required that I install some software on my computer-- an iBook, at that time-- before I could use my cable modem. I installed it, and it proceeded to send my computer into absolute shitfits. For some reason, it created a new logical network device with its own IP settings, and royally hosed my routing table. Evidently (as I discovered after literally tens of hours on the phone) they had never tested the software on a computer with more than one active network interface. When I installed it on my computer, which had both Ethernet and AirPort active, everything went to hell.

This was absolutely the fault of the vendor. They provided me with software that had not been adequately tested. Hell the default configuration of a Mac with an AirPort card is to have both ports active in the "Automatic" configuration. To think that AT&T would ship software without testing it on a machine with AirPort astounds me. Running it once under OS 9 on the Power Mac 7600 in the back room does not qualify as quality control, guys.

Naturally, I let the various people on the other end of the phone have it, then demanded a full refund, and fired them. They're lucky I'm not trying to bill them for the time I wasted on that fool's errand.

Anyway, back to the point: it absolutely was AT&T's fault. If it doesn't work under circumstances in which a reasonable person should expect it to work, it's the vendor's fault, and they should take responsibility for fixing it.

Starband

[moosesocks]

The last time I checked, The Starband satelitte service was compatible with linux - if it works on linux, surely a port to OSX would be easy. (I believe it also worked with linksys routers - if not, one could simply use an ancient PC with USB and ethernet as a router)

Irony is Ironic That Way

[fm6]

I cannot understand why Hughes and the other providers would refuse to spend the relatively few dollars necessary to develop a couple of device drivers and glue libraries. Time after time, the vendors have said, 'it's coming,' but it never does, and the promise eventually goes away.

Now you know how I felt when Apple kept postponning the Windows version of the Newton development kit. Drastically increasing the pool of Newton developers probably wouldn't have saved the product, but you never know. It certainly would have done more to increase the customer base than Hughes would by adding Mac support.

Re:It's not about the cost to *develop* the softwa

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Every time someone calls with a question, it costs the company money. The quicker you can answer their question and get them off the phone, the better. This means minimizing the number of different systems your support folks have to be trained for.

So have the bulk of them trained for the bulk operating system, a few trained for each little one, and TRANSFER THE CALL if you get one for a little opsys. We are talking NETWORK companies, right?

Heck - I bet the little guys would put up with a half-day delay and callback - and be grateful they could buy your stuff at all. YOU get to schedule the calls, rather than fielding them when they arrive - increasing the efficiency of the little-opsys helpers.

pulling ot: satellite usenet

[LinuxHam]

Since we're thinking about satellite and Internet in this discussion, I've been wanting to ask what satellite usenet options are out there.

In particular, I've been interested in a feed that pumps through something like a configurable cable modem or cable box that just jams articles over ethernet via the NNTP protocol to an NNTP server you specify. Then, any old NNTP server can be dual-homed between the sat and your LAN, and you just better hope you have lots and lots of disk.

Any takers?

I'm not sure I agree...

[tkrotchko]

2) I think Window size is settable by device. Otherwise, there's no way you could route between say, a token ring card and an ethernet card (something that I'm certain can be done).

3) You're probably right except that home networks don't have different subnets. Or I should say, there's no good reason to have multiple subnets.

I think the primary problem with 2-way satellite service is that latency is so high that for the common things home users do (open up their home page of http://www.msn.com) its likely to be no faster than a dial-up connection.

Re:I'm not sure I agree...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

192.168.1.x is my main ethernet segment.
192.168.5.x is my main arcnet segment.
192.168.6.x is my token ring segment.
192.168.7.x is my IP over localtalk tunnel segment.
192.168.8.x is my ATM/LANE segment.
192.168.9.x is my FDDI segment.
192.168.10.x is reserved for my IP-over-HIPPI segment.
192.168.11.x will be my 100mps token ring segment, should I ever find a MAU for it.
192.168.3.x contains various slip/ppp serial connections, including the tivo.
10.x.x.x is a cute little VPN I'm building for shits and giggles.

And since I don't feel like pouring through the rest of my custom init scripts, I won't even bother to look up the other segments that I have. Then again, maybe I should get rid of them all, because...

Or I should say, there's no good reason to have multiple subnets.

BTW, if you mean routing IP between eth and tr, then yes, it's simple. Bridging though, is probably impossible via software.

Re:I'm not sure I agree...

[rochlin]

Window size is protocol specific, so being able to route between network interfaces using separate windows sizes doesn't say anything about being able to set an ethernet tcp/ip parameter differently on two different NICs. If anyone knows how to assign different windows sizes to different NICs on Win2k ...??? that'd be interestin'.

i was once forced to use a sat connection....

[eecue]

when we moved to our new location we had a telecom problem and had to resort to a satellite connection. it wasn't so bad for just downloads.. you can get about 1.5 megs... but when you have 40 sales people using a tcp based service where every keypress took 2-4 seconds to give results... let's just say people were bitching. not to mention the 5-6 seconds it can take outlook to connect to the exchange server and show an email message... so if you don't care about slower latency than a bad 9600 baud modem connection than go with satellite. i would recomend using it as a very last resort. try doing a wireless connection to a friend who has cable or dsl... you can get a couple of wap11s and make a nice little bridge.. btw... does anyone know how to detect a wap11 bridge without a wap11? -eek

Your answer: Real soon.

[Guppy06]

According to DirecWay's FAQ bot thingie, they will be selling the DW4020 to consumers "fall of 2002" (read: "any day now").

The DW4020 is pretty much the standard DW4000 satellite modem boxen they currently sell, except it includes a third boxen that eliminates the need for a USB connection and presents 4 Fast Ethernet ports. Supposedly you'll also be able to buy this box separately to upgrade your existing DW4000.

Now the only question is when EarthLink will lower their monthly satellite service fees to match DirecWay through DirecTV. I just dropped BellSouth in favor of EarthLink this past June and I'm not interested in changing ISPs yet again so soon.

But it IS economically viable to ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

How many times can we go over this same point? It's the same for Linux and Mac, it's just not economically viable to develop software for something used by less than 5% of the computing masses.

Let's phrase this another way:

How much would a company pay for ADVERTISING to get a 5% increase in sales? (And thus a MUCH greater than 5% improvement in profits, since the development is already amortized.)

Now if that same amount bought you the development of an incremental feature (i.e. a Linux or Mac driver) that enables another 5% of the market to use your product, it's the same case. (Actually, if you're currently addressing 90% of the potential market and the new segment is an incremental 5% you're adding 5%/90% or about 5.6%).

But wait, it's better ...

Suppose that you're currently splitting the market evenly with one other competitor. If YOU do it and HE doesn't, that 5.55% about doubles to 11.1%. With an even split among three competitors the first mover gets about a 16.7% bump in potential sales (and more in profit), and so on.

With something like networking you have a small number of competitors but MAJOR lock-in. First mover gets the prize and KEEPS it. With something (like a device) with more competitors and less lock-in you may not keep it, but you get a BIG boost until your competition wises up.

But WAIT! You don't HAVE to develop it yourself! Publish enough of the interoperability specs and - at least for Linux - SOMEONE ELSE will do it FOR you! You get the benefits and do only a tiny fraction of the work.

Your work consists mostly editing your internal documents into an externally-releasable one that will enable a developer without giving away your trade-secret farm. But don't get too paranoid: Your competitors are ALREADY reverse-engineering you. You should have your critrical IP already locked up in patent-pending, which will keep your competition at bay if you publish more than you intended. Meanwhile, better specs mean better and sooner community software to enable your sales.

Network operators might have some issues with security - but that's already been addressed elsewhere. (Bottom line is that the black hats will get you anyhow if you're already BADLY broken, regardless of whether you publish, while if you're reasonably secure (i.e. only a little flakey) the exposure will get the white hats on your side and you'll probably increase your lead in the arms race.)

Re:But it IS economically viable to ...

[RAMMS EIN]

Wow....wait a minute here. I think you've seen too much /. math.
``Now if that same amount bought you the development of an incremental feature (i.e. a Linux or Mac driver) that enables another 5% of the market to use your product, it's the same case.''
No, it's not. The increase you gain through advertising means that 5% of the people ARE using your product. The 5% you get from porting your software indicates the number of people that COULD use your product. In the first case, actual sales improve rather drastically, the increase from porting will at most be equal to this.If before advertising 5% of the people were using your software, the ad campaign has increased sales by 100%. The same is achieved with porting ONLY if ALL people who can use the port (5% of all users) ARE USING IT. This is highly unlikely (not 100% of Windows users want sattelite Internet, so it would be unreasonable to assume (without further data) that 100% of Mac|Linux users would).

``Suppose that you're currently splitting the market evenly with one other competitor. If YOU do it and HE doesn't, that 5.55% about doubles to 11.1%. With an even split among three competitors the first mover gets about a 16.7% bump in potential sales (and more in profit), and so on.''
OK, I see what you're doing here. You have assumed that 100% is all people who want sattelite Internet. Then, if 90% of those people use Windows, and do in fact have sattelite access, and 5% use your new target platform, and all of those are going to use your software, you are right. However, these are a lot of assumptions to make. First of all, who says that 90% of those people are using Windows? This may be true for the total desktop market, but sattelite Internet is not only desktop market, nor is it _all_ of the desktop market. It's a different market, although it overlaps a bit.
Then, not all people who _want_ sattelite access, _have_ sattelite access. Allright, maybe your 100% is all people who _would_ have sattelite access if software were available on their platform. OK. That also kind of removes my third objection, cause if these people are going to use software as soon as it comes available, and you port first (FP = First Port), then they are _all_ going to use your software. However, adoption of your software is going to take time, and your competitors might join you in the meantime and port their software as well...

All in all, your reasoning is based upon assumptions that do not hold. Porting your software to a platform with 5% market share is more likely to increase your sales by 5% of your current sales than it is likely to increase your sales by 5% of _all_ sales. Try to keep in mind _what_ these percentages are of. I hope this post is more or less comprehensible, I just woke up after a long night...

Re:But it IS economically viable to ...

[Sycraft-fu]

You are basing your argument on an invalid assumption: That all 5% of Mac users would get this service, if it were made available. This is totally false.

Most people neither want nor need satalite internet service, they either have a better form of high speed access (and basically anything would qualify as better, satalite service is super high latency) like DSL, cable modem, wireless, etc, or they are happy with their dialup. I am willing to bet the percentage of people that want this service is well below 1% of internet users, but pretend it is 1% for argument's sake.

Now given that Mac users are going to be distributed roughly the same geographically as PC users (which determines need for alternative high speed access). But again, let's assume more are willing to get it, double in fact, so 2% of all internet using Mac users.

So, we take 5% of the market, and multiply it by 2%. That's 0.1%. So realistically you are looking at an ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM increase of 0.1%, and probably much less than that. Now to get that you have to develop the software, do some advertising (to let people know it's not on the Mac), and add support staff for the Mac side.

See why it's probably not worth their time?

Re:But it IS economically viable to ...

[Lumpy]

But WAIT! You don't HAVE to develop it yourself! Publish enough of the interoperability specs and - at least for Linux - SOMEONE ELSE will do it FOR you! You get the benefits and do only a tiny fraction of the work.

Your work consists mostly editing your internal documents into an externally-releasable one that will enable a developer without giving away your trade-secret farm. But don't get too paranoid: Your competitors are ALREADY reverse-engineering you. You should have your critrical IP already locked up in patent-pending, which will keep your competition at bay if you publish more than you intended. Meanwhile, better specs mean better and sooner community software to enable your sales.


This is great, logical and sound thinking....

something that no CEO or Board of directors on this planet is capable of as it requires not only having deep insight and a great business mind... but also be more mature than a room full of 5 year olds...

you sir, need to start a business and run it... you will become very rich.

Re:But it IS economically viable to ...

[Golias]

You are basing your argument on an invalid assumption: That all 5% of Mac users would get this service, if it were made available. This is totally false.

Holy shit! How many poeple on /. are making this same, simple math error! If you people are actually working as programmers, I fear for the world.

He's not assuming that all Mac users are going to use the service. He's only making the reasonable assumption that roughly the same proportion of Mac users will use it.

Let's break it down to small-ish numbers so you can understand.

Let's take a pool of 19,000 PC users, and 1,000 Mac users.
In other words, our Mac users are 5% of the total.
Now lets say that product x has 1 percent market penetration with our PC group.
That means they have 190 customers.
Now, suppose the add Mac support, and pick up only 1 percent of our Mac users
That means they have 10 new customers.
That's about a 5.26% increase.

See, you do not need to get all of the 5% of Mac users to get a 5% increase in sales. Do you get it now, or do you need to higher a math tutor outside of school hours?

Re:But it IS economically viable to ...

[Lars T.]

Increase of 0.1% of all internet users. 5% more potential users. For writing a little driver. Not counting the fact that you would be the only shark in the small pond.

Just for arguments sake (and using your numbers), let's say there are 10 providers of this service, with about equal share. That means that you only have 10% of the 1% of internet users as customers. IOW you double the number of your user if you act fast.

No different than any other non-cross-platformies

[MatrixCubed]

Laziness and lack of research. Same reason why stuff isn't ported to other platforms (Linux mainly)... because the marketers don't understand there IS a market across user platforms (Windows, Linux, Macintosh) for most software and hardware.

It likely boils down to a small group of Mac non-users legislating that "there is not enough of a market to compensate for its expenditure".

gung-ho?

[autopr0n]

I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied.

Yeah, just like all the other people who don't do mac ports of their software. All bullied, yup.

Seriously though, the market for satilite internet isn't really all that big, you think they figure that maybe most mac users are urban and don't need it?

Re:It's not about the cost to *develop* the softwa

[Drishmung]

So don't 'support' the users. This is not the same as not allowing them.

I've worked with an ISP that had this very policy. If you ran Win9x and IE, the help desk would assist you. If you ran anything else---you are on your own. Anything else included Win/NT, Win2k etc.. Just the lowest common denominator 'consumer' systems were supported. BUT, all the documentation on what you needed was available. If you ran *nix/Mac you were assumed to be clueful enough to deal.

Do this, and the only cost is the drivers. Maybe not trivial, maybe. So open source them. Let someone else write them for you. Your profit is not in the IP held in these drivers---which are just a means to an end---namely getting more customers online.

Not only that, maybe the drivers will be better than the in-house ones. Being open source, you can benefit from that, roll them back into your Win drivers, provide better service, equals happier customers, equals more---and more profitable---customers.

Copyright pending of course... :)

[BMonger]

Can the Apple service be called.... *opens the envelope*...

"i in the Sky"

ah-hahahaha! *this is the sound of one man laughing*

BTW I only own a flat panel iMac so don't be too mad at me...

Don't forget path packet size discovery...

[raehl]

Or whatever the hell you really call it.

The satelite drivers are written to keep the high-bandwidth pipe full (i.e. you can put a lot of data in the air before it gets to the satalite and back.) Since various networks that carry TCP/IP (Etehrnet, ATM, etc) are based on different optimal packet sizes, so oyu generally probe your connection to figure out the what link is going to split your packets into the smallest size and then just send packets of that size.

I'd suspect that's why the Mac on a PC performs a lot worse than the PC in general - the ethernet packets that get sent to the PC probably get passed on as-is instead of reassembled into larger packets for the satalite link.

One huge packet with one header is obviously more efficient than one huge packet made up of lotsa smaller packets each with their own header.

then all of a sudden

[commodoresloat]

....I got hit with a twenty-two pound block of ice from the sky.

Need custom stack, do it in hardware/firmware!

[aquarian]

A couple of people have posted saying a custom TCP/IP stack is needed. Well, then, do it in the sattelite receiver, in the hardware and firmware! Proprietary secrets would be safe within the box, and the damned thing would actually work! Plug and play- no drivers, no tech support calls. Give us our ethernet, dammit!

Betcha this would be cheaper than creating and supporting software, too. They have to make the receiver/modem box anyway- so stick a router chip in there, and be done with it.

We can provide Mac support *if* demand is there.

[schnell]

The company I work for, Spacenet, is the second-largest business satellite ISP out there. We serve *business* customers who have large and small multiple (5-5000+) locations (retailers, food service, energy, financial, services, etc.).

If you have a *business* meeting these criteria and are looking for satellite connectivity that supports Macs, send e-mail to me and I can push for Mac compatibility if there is significant demand.

Don't just say there is no corporate satellite ISP support for Macs and do nothing about it ... if you can genuinely justify large multi-site Mac satellite network support, I can help make it happen.

As a BSD guru-turned-Mac-guru myself, I would love to help this but I do need the numbers to prove it. Right now, we have almost zero requests for this, but an influx of REAL potential customers asking for this could make it happen. I would really, really like to make this available, but I can't do it by telling our MS-oriented development guys to do it without visible justification.

This isn't some random spam for business, this is a real request from a company's senior marketing staff to help build demand and make this happen. In your e-mail, please describe your multi-site business and its needs, and I can use this info to get Mac support for Spacenet's services.

Simple

[Perdo]

Buy an old x86 box, install windows 98 SE or better and use internet connection shareing. Shouldn't cost more than $50 for a crap box with windows still on it.

Power consumption will become a cost issue so you might try a mini-itx box, which will only suck about 25 watts, but up front cost will be higher, on the order of $200 for a complete system.

You paid $2500 for your mac and around $500 for the satellite install what is another 200 bucks?

If you want the service, you have to solve the problem yourself. The bonus is, you can have as many computers using the connection as you want without paying the satellite company's per seat fee.

The only problem with satellite besides the cost is latency worse than a phone modem. your signal has to travel at least 46,000 miles round trip to a geosynch bird over the equator from the southernmost parts of the US. That's a 500ms ping time minimum.

So, running a mac on satellite is no problem technically if you consider an extra 200 bucks for installation fees independent of what your provider is charging.

The only time you will really notice the 500ms lag is in a game and, well, you are using a mac so that shouldn't be a problem either.

Direcway 4020...

[aquarian]

Well, I just found out some more. I guess they're doing it already. Here's the new unit:

http://www.skycasters.com/4020.htm

I bet this is a shot in the arm for sattelite services. Too bad it took them so long to figure this out.

That exactly what my company does

[Srin Tuar]

It more of a commercial service than a residential one, but we do exactly what you describe: the custom TCP acceleration is in the embedded box itself. (Although the real heavy lifting is done by a linux box on the ISP side)

We test with mostly Linux and Win2k, but apples should work fine over regular ethernet. Ne special software is needed to run a client site. Just plug and play (It also does DHCP and DNS-caching)

Look at http://idirect.net/

Its a pretty good programming gig, I get to work with gcc/cvs/all my favorites.

jmaiorana at idirect.net

Re:A real life "switch" story

[Karma Sink]

But it worked all right on the Dell running Win 98 SE? Just plug and play?

Honestly, 80% of problems with Macs running classic OSes are due to skankware being flung all over the system. Put some memory in that machine, and install OS X. Trust me... it's a world of difference, especially with modern devices like Digital Cameras...

Apple should launch their own satellite

[Ilan Volow]

Apple should launch their own satellite from the mothership. Apple has a mothership, you ask? Of course they do. Do you honestly believe the story that the $400 million that Steve Jobs spent buying out next NeXT really went towards million dollar NeXT Cubes and $50,000 toilet seats?

Re:Again? - yay!

[Lumpy]

I really hope you arent' a creative troll and that you will actually read your responses.

first off, why doesnt the sattelite boxes have their connection to the consumer equipment be ethernet like everyone else (cable/DSL)? your commercial equiupment does.. this eliminates 99.997% of all compatability issues and I can even use my Cromemco Model II Miniframe computer with it! you no longer have to support the computer/os just your equipment and a simple TCP/IP config of the box that YOU CAN CONTROL.

Re:you won't be reading this

[foobar104]

Many people who call in for help have a concern that the ISP cannot address.

The one thing that a customer must never hear from a technical support person is, "I can't help you with that." This is practically the textbook definition of customer service.

I'd kind of like to know how you managed to 'fire' them, though.

See, AT&T worked (at that time) for me. I was paying them every month to provide me with a service. No euphemisms are necessary here; I didn't "cancel my service," I didn't "opt out of my contract." I fucking fired them, right there on the spot. I told them, in essence, to clean out their office (i.e., to get their CPE out of my wiring closet) and get out.

This, also, is a fundamental tenet of customer service: the vendor (them) is employed by and works for the customer (me). The customer is the boss, and the vendor-- and all the vendor's staff, including and especially front-line customer support-- are employees of the customer. When they forget this, and say things like "I can't help you with that," I fire them and hire somebody else.

Re:Something I understand even less

[torgosan]

OT: Had I not used my last mod-point earlier this would get a "Troll" easily.

Regardless of the above poster's bigotry, what I see [and no, I'm not a satellite user] is an opportunity, a challenge - a chance to do some digging and question asking, as Untimely Ripp'd has done. Geez but it seems like so many people would rather rip someone else's choice of platform instead of offering up some helpful comments.Whatever happened to digging and scrounging for a solution?

No, YOUR math is wrong - here's why...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You are basing your argument on an invalid assumption: That all 5% of Mac users would get this service, if it were made available. This is totally false.

No, I'm not assuming that. In the sole-provider case I'm assuming you get the same percentage of adopters among Mac (or whatever) users as you got among Windoze users.

In the multiple provider case I'm assuming that you end up with the same fraction of Mac users adopting the TYPE OF SERVICE/DEVICE as Windows users.

For instance - if the product is satellite networking I'm assuming the same fraction of Mac users as Windows users would buy it - IF the Mac users could get it at all.

That's a MUCH easer case than your strawman.

Re:Bulls**T

[spitzak]

Say "we don't provide technical support for Linux" and hang up. Problem solved.

Somehow most of the broadband and DSL providers manage to connect to Linux without having anybody in tech support able to answer questions, so this is NOT a reason.

Re:HA

[spitzak]

The dish contains a transmitter able to reach a sattellite in orbit? Does the FCC know about this?

Re:Bulls**T

[spitzak]

I suspect not offering service at all to Linux is worse than refusing tech support, so I can't understand this argument.

I realize there are other very legitimate reasons for not offering the Linux version (ie it takes work to implement it) but this tech-support excuse does not make sense. There are plenty of compainies that do exactly what I suggest and the Linux crowds are not after them, in fact they often praise them for offering anything at all!

The Answer to the Question

[bill_mcgonigle]

Among lots of whining and complaining and technical explainations for why this can't work, I found this link burried in the comments. It seems to be the actual answer to the Ask Slashdot question.

DirecWay DW4020:

HNS' DW4020 is a self-hosted network terminal that provides a broadband Ethernet LAN interface to Windows, UNIX®, MAC, and other platforms using IP protocol. The terminal passes IP data packets to and from any IP device on the LAN in the same manner as an IP router. The HNS' DW4020 contains an integrated 4 port hub/switch which provides a direct Ethernet interface to four different devices. It is anticipated that one or more Postal kiosks could connect directly to the HNS' DW4020 via an Ethernet cable, without the need for hubs, routers or dial-up modems.

The HNS' DW4020 system consists of an elliptical satellite antenna less than one meter in size, associated outdoor electronics, and the indoor equipment that attaches to Customer workstations. Alaskan locations may require larger antenna sizing.

To place an order or receive more information about the HNS' DW4020 contact customer service.