Oh yeah, installation and modem were free after rebate, and my first month was free, so I had been surfing at high speed for a month+ before I ever paid them a nickle. I don't normally plug a company or product this enthusiastically, but I gotta give credit where credit is due. I would recommend Speakeasy if their service is available in your area. I swear I have no relationship to them besides being a satisfied customer.
After USWest/Qwest gave me three different and inconsistant answers as to why their circuit to my house wasn't viable for ADSL, even though I was ~12000 feet from the CO, I got suspicious. I went to Speakeasy's web-site, plugged in my address, and got a response saying ADSL was (most likely) doable at my crib. I called Speakeasy and asked what they thought of USWest's assesment, and they said USWest was basically just making a guess. They let me put in an order with no credit card info - just my name and address. In about ten days they had a USWest dispatch to my house. I think all he did was run a new line from the telephone pole to my phone box, but I wasn't home, and I had never looked at the line going to my phone box before so I don't really know. Anyway, about two weeks after that, Speakeasy had their tech (contracted locally) out to deliver the modem and turn up the circuit. An hour later I had DSL.
That was in November, and I've yet to have a significant outage. I'm paying $60/Mo for a static IP, the ISP's blessing for any legal activity I want to host, and 280-640kbs with 128 minimum garanteed. I consistently get 350-500kbs (down), as measured by a couple of different raw bandwidth monitors. I only get 128kbs up, but for the 10(?) people a week that hit my web-server, that's no problem. The price is about $10 more than I would pay for comparable service from USWest, but I've never had to mess with them, which is worth it to me. Besides, they couldn't make it happen, and Speakeasy could.
So this leaves me with just a few questions:
1) What did the USWest tech do?
2) What did Speakeasy say to USWest to get them to do whatever they did?
3) Why did USWest tell me their copper couldn't be made to work, when clearly it could? In other words, why didn't they want my money when I wanted to give it to them?
4) Have others found that their experience is better when using a 3rd party ISP than when using the ILEC for the ISP?
Let me preface my comment by emphasizing that I don't care if someone I don't know wants to work in porn, watch porn, have porn for breakfast, or whatever - he or she is welcome to do so. This is totally not about my opinion regarding whether those things are right or wrong (although I do have one).
Anyway, everyone seems to be implying that there is nothing wrong with this trend, and that tech workers moving to the Porn industry are making a great choice, but consider this:
Sooner or later, the current economic slowdown will turn around and tech workers will have lots of options in more traditional fields again. My opinion is that those who go to work in the porn industry now, will find their resumes are significantly tainted should they ever decide they want to go back to a more mainstream employer. I know some people will say the world is more enlightened, and companies aren't all stodgy and traditional anymore, so they wouldn't discriminate against a candidate with an employment history that included, say Hustler, but they're kidding themselves if they think traditional companies would choose the ex-hustler candidate over someone else if all other qualifications were more or less equal. If I got laid off, I think I would beat the bushes a little harder, consider moving to a non-saturated region, and do whatever else I had to do to avoid closing future doors for myself.
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Oh yeah, installation and modem were free after rebate, and my first month was free, so I had been surfing at high speed for a month+ before I ever paid them a nickle. I don't normally plug a company or product this enthusiastically, but I gotta give credit where credit is due. I would recommend Speakeasy if their service is available in your area. I swear I have no relationship to them besides being a satisfied customer.
That was in November, and I've yet to have a significant outage. I'm paying $60/Mo for a static IP, the ISP's blessing for any legal activity I want to host, and 280-640kbs with 128 minimum garanteed. I consistently get 350-500kbs (down), as measured by a couple of different raw bandwidth monitors. I only get 128kbs up, but for the 10(?) people a week that hit my web-server, that's no problem. The price is about $10 more than I would pay for comparable service from USWest, but I've never had to mess with them, which is worth it to me. Besides, they couldn't make it happen, and Speakeasy could.
So this leaves me with just a few questions:
1) What did the USWest tech do?
2) What did Speakeasy say to USWest to get them to do whatever they did?
3) Why did USWest tell me their copper couldn't be made to work, when clearly it could? In other words, why didn't they want my money when I wanted to give it to them?
4) Have others found that their experience is better when using a 3rd party ISP than when using the ILEC for the ISP?
Let me preface my comment by emphasizing that I don't care if someone I don't know wants to work in porn, watch porn, have porn for breakfast, or whatever - he or she is welcome to do so. This is totally not about my opinion regarding whether those things are right or wrong (although I do have one).
Anyway, everyone seems to be implying that there is nothing wrong with this trend, and that tech workers moving to the Porn industry are making a great choice, but consider this:
Sooner or later, the current economic slowdown will turn around and tech workers will have lots of options in more traditional fields again. My opinion is that those who go to work in the porn industry now, will find their resumes are significantly tainted should they ever decide they want to go back to a more mainstream employer. I know some people will say the world is more enlightened, and companies aren't all stodgy and traditional anymore, so they wouldn't discriminate against a candidate with an employment history that included, say Hustler, but they're kidding themselves if they think traditional companies would choose the ex-hustler candidate over someone else if all other qualifications were more or less equal. If I got laid off, I think I would beat the bushes a little harder, consider moving to a non-saturated region, and do whatever else I had to do to avoid closing future doors for myself.
Seemingy intelligent people???