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Earthlink and Mindspring Merge
bee writes "Yet another ISP merger-- Earthlink and Mindspring this time. The new company will keep the Earthlink name, and will apparently be the 2nd largest ISP in the country. Yahoo has the story here." Together, they'll have over 3 million members. Not exactly AOL, but enough to have some serious clout in the ISP business.
Remus, I often tell people that, given the choice between something like a cablemodem on my end and
/. readers, I would not worry about the shell accounts going away any time soon. MindSpring is not known for doing things that
a saturated network at the provider's, and a
28.8 dialup to a unix host which is on a fat pipe,
I'll take dialup every time. Because I can move data from the network-at-large to my shell very,
very fast by comparison to any low-cost broadband.
Also, if you would compare the sheer throughput of
say, Zmodem, to say, FTP, you will see that the old tech has some perks.
I should probably mention that I am a former Netcom, MindSpring, and I suppose soon-to-be Earthlink employee. And I've been a Netcom shell account user since 1994.
I mention the value of the shell accounts every chance I get. I cannot speak for the company but just between you and me and the 10E9
other
generate widespread customer dissatisfaction, and
everybody who'd consider such a thing knows what
kind of roasting it would get us.
However, it's not written in stone that it shall be SunOS4 forever.
How do you feel about Digital?
PS: I repeat, I don't speak for MindSpring or EarthLink or anybody else but me.
PPS: I'm just a little worker bee, so don't
send me a bunch of questions! I don't know either.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You need a small local ISP. One that is able to know you on a first name basis, and that understands *your* needs as a customer.
Otherwise, when you want to let friends telnet into your box, or ftp stuff, or whatever, what'll you do when it's blocked? A local ISP can be accomodating.
Of course, with a local ISP it's harder to just up and change ISP's because you feel some sort of loyalty for being (one of) their longest customers. Oh well, as long is they are responsive, it's better then a national ISP.
-Brent--
Well, in that case you don't need much. Just find some ISP that has nodes everywhere you'll be and has good rates.
-Brent--
i went from having half way descent service as a netcom customer to be a second class citizen of the mindspring empire ... now what?? am i do be a non person as a part of this new juggernaught?? might as well get an aol account. think those aol disks im using to prop up the short leg of the kitchen table are still any good??
use Signature::Witty;
I just felt a need to chuckle, and a good way to do that is to make fun of oneself publically. :)
I've been a Netcom shell user for almost 6 years. I got on the internet well before this multimedia-access 'fad', and just as NCSA was debuting some unlikely scientific tool called Mosaic to browse something that didn't exist yet called the World Wide Web. My shell account has served me through flamewars, mailbombings, death threats, linx searches, gopher queries, and lately convoluted telnet sessions and downloads.
Why the hell am I still here? :)
I moved away from my Netcom POP in 98, turning my major presence on the net into a telnet-only wrestling match for productivity. Mindspring bought us out, making the ever-present worries that shell account were about to become extinct a real danger. Now Earthlink wades in, merging with Mindspring in what -- to a shell user -- might best be described as an end-of-the-world safeword-optional orgy on a bed of leather and stock options. The chance of Earthlink maintaining shell accounts is miniscule. We've gone from being the technocapable rulers of the internet to being an unwanted red-haired step-stepchild who is being sent to an ever-shrinking corner.
Yes, I'm enamored of the pseudonym 'Remus Shepherd', and the simple address remus@netcom.com is a nugget of gold nowadays. But even this nerdish dinosaur can make out the writing on the wall by now. There must be shell accounts out there somewhere, and for my purposes they're still superior to anything that has the potential to display a banner ad. Time to put my data into a carpetbag, and surf into a new home.
Oh I'm staying here, of course. Too stubborn not to. I will deactivate my shell account when Earthlink turns off the telnet access to it...not one second before. I may or may not use the account as much, but I'll be here until the network crashes down around me and every power cord is yanked free. $20 per month is a pittance...we're talking sentimentalism, here. Not to mention the best damn productivity tool on the net, even if 'modern' ISPs decry it as ancient and unweildy. They can't even keep their companies from being bought out in rapid succession -- what do they really know? :)
Just in case I'm not the last one to go -- will someone please remember to turn off the lights? :)
Remus Shepherd (remus@netcom.com)
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
This bizarre thing about EarthLink is that they won one of the first ISP vs. spammer court battles in 1997 against Cyber Promotions. Maybe they got tired of going to court? I don't receive much spam coming from an EL address, but your mileage obviously varies. Most of the spam I get comes from my Web hosting provider's "partners," not any particular set of ISP accounts.
"...the 2nd largest ISP in the country."?
Hmmmm, interesting. I wonder how many
I don't mean to complain - I'm just having a bad day
Party Time: Excellent
"Just be sure not to use MLPPP with their services... They will disconnect your account as a "Level A" offence... In the same category as Spam and mailboming... " This is not true. If you would like more info, contact me. Rob Biggs MindSpring Support Phoenix biggsrob@mindspring.net
(Disclaimer- I no longer work at MindSpring)
It took me a while to figure out what was going on with the merger- I hadn't seen a real merger before. Most other 'mergers' are one company buying out another one. This is the real thing- they're forming a new company and then merging both of the existing ones into it.
From MindSpring's press release, it looks like things go like this: MindSpring changes it's name, gets bigger, and gains an officer.
As one of the first MindSpring employees, it's sad to see the name change. Especially since MindSpring's name stands for quality as one of the best ISPs in the country, and EarthLink's name stands for spam and Scientologists. But the merger is good news all around- the new EarthLink will be big enough to take on almost any challenge that comes along. Users don't have to worry about someone like AT&T or another Big Ugly Company buying them out.
It doesn't look like there will be that many changes apart from the name change- Charles and Mike will be in charge of the new company, one of ELNK's officers will stay on as an officer, and Sky Dayton will step down from management and have a seat on the board. The company's headquarters will be at MindSpring's offices in Atlanta.
As for the comments about MindSpring and how their aquisitions have gone (especially Netcom), Netcom hasn't gone very well, but that's not really MindSpring's fault. Netcom's systems were pretty screwed up, and MindSpring has had their hands full trying to quickly bring Netcom subscribers off of what could be thought of as a sinking ship.
Some things weren't communicated very well, but that was only because of the urgent need to get people off of the equipment at Netcom.
I worked at MindSpring for almost four years, and I can say that I've never worked with a more talented group of people. The people they've got in their Engineering department are amazing. Their upper management (McQuary) is excellent. No matter what mistakes they've made, they're a company that's going places, whether they're called MindSpring or Earthlink.
Robbie
-- Comtrends!
It's to prevent spam. Ah, that wonderful catch-22. You can complain about spam but the only way to *deal* with it is to prevent everyone from running their own smtp server.
And now, even if the ISP doesn't block the smtp port, it really doesn't matter because large e-mail services, bigfoot.com, juno.com, and others are using MAPS the Mail Abuse Prevention System. So mail is blocked from dynamic IP's anyways :-(
Freedom with spam, or no spam with no freedom? I think I'll take the spam.
They still advertise "unrestricted" net access but that's pretty damn restrictive if you ask me.I think "unrestricted" refers to web filters and newsgroups. Not ports.
-Brent -Brent--
Oh, you can't tell me they passed up the opportunity to rename it Mindlink. Earthspring however, would have made them sound all wet.
Move along nothing to see here, just another Mindlinker.
Rip
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
I've been wondering about bringing this up on Slashdot, but I suppose this is an appropriate time.
First a little background. My significant other is an upper level tech support representative at Earthlink's main site in Pasadena. I apologize for posting anonymously but I want to prevent reprisals. If anyone would like to contact me privately
The way Earthlink's dial-up service works is this. They have their own POPs (Points of Presence) which are relatively inexpensive to run. They also lease POPs from three major providers, UUNet, PSInet, and Level 3. In level of quality and cost it goes roughly like UUNet, PSINet, Earthlink, Level 3. The cost of time on a UUNet POP is quite expensive, to the point that any user that uses UUNet for an average amount of time per month generates expenses in excess of the monthly user subscriber fee.
Earthlink has tried several methods to reduce use of UUNet POPs. Tier 1 tech support agents are told to never give out UUNet numbers. Earthlink employees are not allowed to use UUNet POPs for personal use. However, there are many users for whom UUNet is the only available number, and many more for whom it is the only reliable number.
After some management shakeups in tech support, a "Tier 3" team has been created, with some of the better techs at Earthlink, who were promised higher pay (which they got). What they did not know was that they would be forced to call up customers who use UUNet POPs and lie to them, tell them that they are logged in twice (which violates the usage agreement) and that their account will be cancelled. They cannot tell them the truth, that they are using expensive POPs, in fact users are not supposed to know that Earthlink leases POPs at all. This activity may or may not be illegal, and if investigated probably only middle management or worse, tech support agents, would take the fall. I feel that it is at the very least unethical and should be known.
What protections are available to whistle blowers in cases such as this? Does anyone know if this kind of activity is widespread in ISPs?