Small ISPs must do more than internet service
to survive. Depending on the market, the business
is in a one-stop shop, some place businesses can
go for EVERYTHING, networking, computers,
web design, internet service, everything. With this business model, you are more likely to succeed. The money is in the business market,
but if you can't provide broadband to your business customers, then you won't have many.
There are smaller business that still use dial-up, (especially in small town markets).
Cable doesn't really count here, since it's
not really desirable for most business use.
At the very least, you have to do ISDN, which
would involve having all or some of your modem
pool be ISDN primes. Unfortunately, with this
same business model, you must have the people who can DO all of these things, and people to support them. Tech support is always the worst ongoing
problem.
Gee, I've never thought of IM programs
as anything other than glorified IRC. Mirc
allows private file swapping as well with DCC, as well as chatting and private chatting. So, in this
respect, they should be going after IRC and every
instant messenger out there. Good luck with that.
When are they going to realize that this technology is out and has been for a long time...
It would be best to use it rather than to beat it.::shrug:: As far as all of these being an internet service, technically, they would apply,
I suppose, although the *traditional* definition
has been that an ISP is a service that gives you
ACCESS to the internet. Theoretically, these services do NOT give access, you must already have the access to get these services. Is Hotmail an ISP, or an *e-mail* provider? I would say an e-mail provider. I still think that the same rules could apply to these services, though. And the authorities wanting to stop certain activities should have to do what others have to do with ISPs..identify the law being broken and who broke it, and subpoena for records showing the activity of the ONE person. But, they know they can't do that, so if they can bully them into filtering or blocking certain activity, then they get their way. Otherwise, the only way they should be able to stop any activity like this is
to go through all the legal channels, one use at a time. Not even the RIAA has that much time or money. They are spending WAAAAYYY more money on this fight than they were supposedly 'losing'
through file sharing. Considering my music purchases in the last two years, they've made money on me through file sharing. It's all a matter of control. They don't have it, and they want it back, but it's already gone, I'm afraid.
We have a box on each end right now. Basically,
they install the alarm circuit between your house
and the ISP office. We use special routers
(point to point dsl routers) from one company but I know that you can use others. Basically, you plug in it, and it works. Both sides of the equipment we use is rather costly,
which is why it's for business use rather than
home users (who tend to be cheap here). The ISP can get a rack that cuts equipment costs a bit
per user, rather than getting one box for each
customer sitting in your noc. I don't know how
this would work with a regular DSL modem, that isn't something we have really tried. These boxes
we have cost about 450 a piece, and they are made
specifically for point-to-point DSL. If the ISP places an alarm circuit order, they can usually give you an idea of the looplength, but there is really no guarantee with this. In some places,
this is your only shot at providing or getting DSL.
It's called an 'alarm circuit'. We use them
in this small town to provide dsl to businesses,
although we have had no problems thus far with
the circuits. Only thing is, you have to be
strict on distance, since the phone company
doesn't 'officially' tell you loop length, and if
if the alarm circuit goes through a second CO,
goodbye dsl. It goes through equipment that takes
out the charge needed for the dsl. It actually
is the only solution for us here in the boonies,
and so far has been reliable for us.
Cable is as bad the bells! They come in and
undersell their service, claiming to have
choices for ISP's, yet already have the
choices picked, all national providers they
are in bed with, and don't give any local
competition the option of using the cable
lines in an area. A local DSL provider can't
compete with cable prices that are being purposely undercut. When they drive all competition under, someday they will be able
to charge what they want, I am afraid. We aren't
even trying to sell DSL to residential users
at this point, knowing there is no point
since cable will be here within the month.
We are going for business users, as it's the
only way to provide DSL and stay alive in
smaller markets, and the DSL we are providing
is point-to-point with Net to Net boxes. CLEC costs are much to high. The good thing is, we get higher speeds that way. Having been burned by one DSL provider, we weren't about to do it again, so we are doing it ourselves. The truly sad thing is,
people here want broadband, but they don't even
want to pay cable rates to get it. You WILL still
see a handful of companies providing most of the
broadband, be they cable or phone companies, and history has shown the service with these companies
is mostly crap. The future is not looking great,
but we all knew it would happen eventually.
You have just on the reason why I am a *former*
teacher. Kids and parents both always find
something to blame for everything. My kid isn't
learning because you aren't teaching him. NO,
your kid isn't learning because you don't see that
his homework is getting done, and let him run around with gang losers who tell him that getting
good grades is a bad thing, so he goofs off and
causes trouble in my classroom. You're picking on my son because he's (insert ethnic background here), I told him he didn't have to listen to a racist. NO, your son gets in a trouble because he won't do his work, swears in class, and disrupts
my class on a daily basis, not to mention threatening me with violence. It's insane. The parents are the one who should feel the brunt of this blame, when it was apparent from the police reports that these kids had free reigh in their
households. The parents obviously had never set foot in these children's rooms nor gave them the time of day. As a teacher, I may have noticed
kids being teased, kids being ostracized, etc,
but man, that has ALWAYS happened. I was tormented
as a kid, and there has ALWAYS been a school
bully. It's just that now, it has become fashionable to retaliate with violence of a more
permanent nature. These kids had no value for
human life, and they didn't lose that value from
video games. It could have long time exposure to
movies, tv, games, AND a lack of parental guidance, but who really knows. It isn't just kids
going postal, remembering where we even got the
phrase 'going postal'. Adults are doing it to.
It isn't because guns are legal, because they have
always been legal in this country, so there is something else. My dad was raised around guns,
and hunted for food, then fought in a war for
pete's sake, but that doesn't make him want to
go postal on K-Mart. The family unit in this country is probably to blame for a lot of today's problems when it comes to kids. Too many kids
are raising themselves, and doing it badly.
They also have bad role models, their parents,
to learn from. It isn't just single parent
households either. Perhaps that contributes, but
not in the Columbine case. In fact, I see a case
of this happening right in my own family. I have a cousin who just bought a house and moved out
of parents' house with her son. Before, there were always people home, and he was a reasonably good kid. Suddenly, he's a latchkey kid, and
within two months he's on probation, which then
escalates from there, until last week when
he hit someone and was charged with battery. Perhaps this kid would have still gotten in trouble, but I don't think he would have if he
wasn't doing as he pleased.
This point is interesting, considering I
talk to customers EVERYDAY who are switching
FROM free services and coming to use our
paid service. It's called reliability, good
tech support, and getting what you pay for.
Not to mention that so many free services are
going under left and right. In our area alone
I believe they are down to two free providers
that have local numbers. Quite a drop from
a year ago. Almost every customer we lost to
a free service has come back within 6 months.
Re:Another warning against Linux certification
on
Linuxgruven Deorbits
·
· Score: 1
I beg to differ with this. Certificates, and sometimes even diplomas, don't mean squat. I know someone with a degree in the computer field who can't do a darn thing that he claims to know how to do. Me, with world experience and self-taught
(in the computer area at least) am much more
competent this this guy. And then he bitches when
he isn't allowed to do certain tasks..he's not
very competent and we all know it. He shows no
inclination to learn anything on his own, either. While I have a library of books and reference manuals to help myself, he wants it all given to him on a platter. I admit, when I have exhausted my book and online resources, I ask the sys admin,
but he doesn't even *try* to learn anything on his own. It's very frustrating. I am tired of
getting blamed by him for being competent and having more 'privileges' when I work my butt
to get the knowledge I have. Luckily, my boss knows the real value of self-taught people,
and recognizes someone who is willing to do what it takes to get the knowledge they need to get the job done, and rewards for that.
There are crappy ISPs out there. However, you can't blame it all on ISPs. I work for a local small one. We have around 500 users dialed in at peak distributed over three T-1's with caching, we are hooked directly to the CO with DS3 fiber optics. There is one word for users' connection
troubles: telco. We live in the boondocks where
we are the only ones using fiber because we paid a fortune to do it, the rest of the place is on copper, with multiplexers, etc, all over the place because they don't want to lay more cable or switch to fiber yet. People can hear each others conversations on the phone lines because of the line crossing, and noise bleeding. Yet, these same people blame US for their connection problems. I am always up front with these people about the telco, and the telco is being investigated by the regulatory commission, but nothing is going to change anytime soon, I'm afraid. I now have a permanent bias against telcos, especially when they tell people their line is fine, and yet I can HEAR the eletrical hum on their line over their voices. I know that hum isn't coming from our fiber, that's for sure.
Of course, winmodem being standard in most name-brand computers has also been the bain of my existence. I was shopping at our local Staples and was talking to one of the workers there, and told him that if he recommended one of those cheap things to people that live in this town, he
should burn in hell forever. I was half-kidding.
In this small town, there are THREE local
ISP's, all thriving. Now ours has more growth
than the others, because we are the newest
(five years old) and we keep up with the best
equipment, have DS3 fiber connections to the
phone company that the others don't have, plus
we have worked hard to maintain that small
town feeling. Of course, we do computer
sales and service as well, plus consulting,
web design, etc. The oldest one in town is owned
by a local phone company that thought they could make some cash starting a tech support farm
where they could provide support for other small
ISPs in the region and provide 24x7 tech support
by doing so. Guess what happened when they started using an automated phone system, and people had to go through several menus just to get to a human? We gained alot of customers.
I truly think that markets such as smaller towns
are places where mom&pops can thrive. A good example right now is the fact that AOL & Compuserve share local numbers for this area, and
people have to try for literally *hours* to get online. We have had so many AOL/Compuserve switchovers in the last month, it was incredible.
Big companies don't care about little markets,
and people in little markets like the feeling that
the smaller ISP cares about their business, and will take the extra step to help them. They like calling here and knowing the people that they are talking to. So, it really depends on the market.
I would choose mom&pop any day over a national ISP, I was a customer at this one for four years, and that's how I got a job here.
Good grief, some of our customers would be broke
with an arrangement like that! I talk to many
of our dial-up customers on a *weekly* basis,
some of them even more frequently. It has nothing
to do with our internet service, it has to do
with most of them not knowing how to use the
freaking computer. *Many* local ISP customers
get MORE than their monies worth of the paltry
17.95/month fee just in tech support alone, at least from our service. Plus the fact that we
keep a 5 to 1 user/modem ratio, so no busies:-)
I still think there is a place for paid ISPs and free ones. We get customers everyday who switch to our service because their free one is busy all of the/they can't get help/the local number went out of door/the ads/etc. I wouldn't pay for a service like AOL, to be honest, but a good provider is worth the money.
Much of the problem is that the places that
NEED wireless can't get it yet. Rural areas
have no option of cable or DSL, heck, even
smaller towns have little or no options of
either cable or DSL. We offer DSL in a smaller
market to about half the city proper, when it's
the REST of the county that desperately wants
other options because Ameritech's lines here
are really horrible in the outer areas. These are
the people calling about DSL, not the ones that
live within the service. The ones that live within
the service area have decent dialup connections, it's the ones outside that have to deal with 24K
connections and are so desperate for a faster connection that they are willing to pay higher prices for DSL or wireless, but they can't get it where they live. If other wireless companies focused on the lesser market in some areas, they
may do better. These people don't have options
and WILL pay more for the service.
Ooh, big disagreement there. I am using Homesite
to create pages and check the code, and N6 is doing some pretty funky things. I have been surfing with it since I installed it, and many
pages look strange in it, and it crashes alot,
it's slower, and images load unreliably. I say that because the images will load, and with a
refresh some will, some won't, and with another
refresh the results will change. This was released
WAY too soon, IMO. I will keep this to check
browser compatibility, but frankly, I am not sure
I will use it. Of course, on my Linux machine,
I will probably have to use it. Despite my
general opinion of Micro$oft, their browser is
good, perhaps it's because it is the one thing
they give away freely;-)
We use it on our mail server, and my mailbox can attest to how well it works. (I got an alert for each one stopped) Our customers are grateful, and we have gotten customers from other local ISP's because of it. When they send a virus, through our mailfilter, we stop it and then they get a message with tips on getting clean. Some
of the ISP's in the area have been very UNhelpful to their own customers,and when when they call
us, they usually end up switching:-)
I live in a small town, and there is a shortage
in these types of areas mainly because of the pay.
Of course, it costs much less to live in a place
like this, and you can live really well on less.
We're looking for a system admin to replace one
who wants to leave, and the pickings are slim, most likely because no one wants to live in this hell hole even if less money DOES go farther. I know I could get paid more for my knowledge in another town, but I would also be paying out more to live there, so there is a trade-off. Smaller towns are good places to go if you want a different atmosphere, and are willing to take
a pay cut, but you must do the research as to the
cost of living in the area. I have a friend in the Chicago area that makes 7-10K more than I do,
but after you factor in her rent vs mine, car insurance because of the area, and prices in general, we are at the same income level. My money goes MUCH farther than hers. We sat and figured it out one day, it was quite amazing.
So, the availability of tech jobs depends on where you are willing to live, I personally believe.
Re:No one deserves "tips" just for DOING THEIR JOB
on
The Virtual Tip Jar
·
· Score: 1
I'm sorry, but *I* tip at least *20%*. I wouldn't
want their job, and I go to a restaurant so as
NOT to have to serve myself. I appreciate the fact
that they are waiting on me, and all I have to do is sit there. The fact that I know what they really make helps. Just because it's someone's
job doesn't mean that they don't either want
to be compensated well for it, and having been
a waitress before, I *did* feel good when someone gave me a larger than usual tip. It wasn't just the money (although I wasn't complaining..that was tuition money). When you are too lazy to get in the car and pick up your pizza, or too tired
to cook for yourself, it's well worth my 20%
to get the extra service. My pizza place's
delivery drivers fight over who delivers *our*
pizzas, and we get better service because they know us. And the tips are what do it. I'm happy,
they're happy.
The owner of the ISP where I work would close the doors before he let the FBI put a box in that did active filtering. Infact, I think he would close the doors even it did *passive* filtering. Handing over our logs when handed a court order is one thing, but giving them access to everything going in and out? No way. He'd tell them what they could do with themselves and shut down the Internet part of the business. This is line that shouldn't be crossed. If they *really* want information of this sort, they can get it without the box. And you are correct, that type of active filtering would slow down traffic, to what extent would depend on the box itself.
I agree with all of the above. We recently were slapped with a subpeona in a child pornography case. We are a small ISP in a small town, if we had nothing to give the police, it would have been very bad for business in this small town. The only time ANY info about any customer is given out is by subpoena, and it's happened twice since I started at this ISP. Some may cry that it's a violation of their freedom, but people pay to use a service that WE provide, on our equipment, and ISP's need to be able to protect themselves against things you might do 'in their name'. Our owner takes it quite personally when a user does illegal things on our service toting our e-mail address, etc. Granted, the logs we keep do not delve too much into someone's actual activity. Unless a user has static IP, it's nearly impossible to even see what webpages are being looked at in the logs on the cache machine. Sure, if I went to see what dynamic IP was assigned to a person at a specific time, then went to the cache logs to see what matches of the IP within the specific time frame there were, I could probably see, but it's too much trouble to even attempt without a court order involved. Radius logfiles in particular are very useful in terms of technical support. We can see why people get disconnected, etc, and we do have caller ID on all of our modems, and have caught people who were using other peoples' accounts, etc. with it. When someone calls and says that they can't get online, and we see that they are already logged in, but the phone number matches little Timmy's best friend's house, and that's where little Timmy is right now, parents get a tad upset;-) The same people that would complain that these things are invasions will most likely be *helped* by these records at some point in the future.
Using pine to read my e-mail, even from my Windows machine, I was not affected by the virus itself. However, I am directly affected when you take into account that I am the one who must go into users e-mail boxes and remove these things before the user downloads them. I am affected when we have to search for virus filtering programs that won't bog down the mail server because users are too naive and will open anything and everything that is sent to them. I am affected when our office is flooded with calls ABOUT the virus, machines beinging brought in to get cleaned, etc. ANY security holes or exploits in any widespread software is going to directly affect anyone who has to deal with customers who use these products. So, those of us who do have to deal with these customers, whether we like it or not, have an interest in seeing that these types of security problems are fixed or at the very least prevented as much as possible, not just snickering about how superior we are because WE didn't get it. I may not have gotten the virus, but I sure as heck had to deal with the fallout. I may not love Micro$oft, but I have an interest in seeing them improve their product, and an interest in seeing more consumer awareness when it comes to security issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Small ISPs must do more than internet service to survive. Depending on the market, the business is in a one-stop shop, some place businesses can go for EVERYTHING, networking, computers, web design, internet service, everything. With this business model, you are more likely to succeed. The money is in the business market, but if you can't provide broadband to your business customers, then you won't have many. There are smaller business that still use dial-up, (especially in small town markets). Cable doesn't really count here, since it's not really desirable for most business use. At the very least, you have to do ISDN, which would involve having all or some of your modem pool be ISDN primes. Unfortunately, with this same business model, you must have the people who can DO all of these things, and people to support them. Tech support is always the worst ongoing problem.
Gee, I've never thought of IM programs as anything other than glorified IRC. Mirc allows private file swapping as well with DCC, as well as chatting and private chatting. So, in this respect, they should be going after IRC and every instant messenger out there. Good luck with that. When are they going to realize that this technology is out and has been for a long time... It would be best to use it rather than to beat it. ::shrug:: As far as all of these being an internet service, technically, they would apply,
I suppose, although the *traditional* definition
has been that an ISP is a service that gives you
ACCESS to the internet. Theoretically, these services do NOT give access, you must already have the access to get these services. Is Hotmail an ISP, or an *e-mail* provider? I would say an e-mail provider. I still think that the same rules could apply to these services, though. And the authorities wanting to stop certain activities should have to do what others have to do with ISPs..identify the law being broken and who broke it, and subpoena for records showing the activity of the ONE person. But, they know they can't do that, so if they can bully them into filtering or blocking certain activity, then they get their way. Otherwise, the only way they should be able to stop any activity like this is
to go through all the legal channels, one use at a time. Not even the RIAA has that much time or money. They are spending WAAAAYYY more money on this fight than they were supposedly 'losing'
through file sharing. Considering my music purchases in the last two years, they've made money on me through file sharing. It's all a matter of control. They don't have it, and they want it back, but it's already gone, I'm afraid.
We have a box on each end right now. Basically, they install the alarm circuit between your house and the ISP office. We use special routers (point to point dsl routers) from one company but I know that you can use others. Basically, you plug in it, and it works. Both sides of the equipment we use is rather costly, which is why it's for business use rather than home users (who tend to be cheap here). The ISP can get a rack that cuts equipment costs a bit per user, rather than getting one box for each customer sitting in your noc. I don't know how this would work with a regular DSL modem, that isn't something we have really tried. These boxes we have cost about 450 a piece, and they are made specifically for point-to-point DSL. If the ISP places an alarm circuit order, they can usually give you an idea of the looplength, but there is really no guarantee with this. In some places, this is your only shot at providing or getting DSL.
It's called an 'alarm circuit'. We use them in this small town to provide dsl to businesses, although we have had no problems thus far with the circuits. Only thing is, you have to be strict on distance, since the phone company doesn't 'officially' tell you loop length, and if if the alarm circuit goes through a second CO, goodbye dsl. It goes through equipment that takes out the charge needed for the dsl. It actually is the only solution for us here in the boonies, and so far has been reliable for us.
Cable is as bad the bells! They come in and undersell their service, claiming to have choices for ISP's, yet already have the choices picked, all national providers they are in bed with, and don't give any local competition the option of using the cable lines in an area. A local DSL provider can't compete with cable prices that are being purposely undercut. When they drive all competition under, someday they will be able to charge what they want, I am afraid. We aren't even trying to sell DSL to residential users at this point, knowing there is no point since cable will be here within the month. We are going for business users, as it's the only way to provide DSL and stay alive in smaller markets, and the DSL we are providing is point-to-point with Net to Net boxes. CLEC costs are much to high. The good thing is, we get higher speeds that way. Having been burned by one DSL provider, we weren't about to do it again, so we are doing it ourselves. The truly sad thing is, people here want broadband, but they don't even want to pay cable rates to get it. You WILL still see a handful of companies providing most of the broadband, be they cable or phone companies, and history has shown the service with these companies is mostly crap. The future is not looking great, but we all knew it would happen eventually.
You have just on the reason why I am a *former* teacher. Kids and parents both always find something to blame for everything. My kid isn't learning because you aren't teaching him. NO, your kid isn't learning because you don't see that his homework is getting done, and let him run around with gang losers who tell him that getting good grades is a bad thing, so he goofs off and causes trouble in my classroom. You're picking on my son because he's (insert ethnic background here), I told him he didn't have to listen to a racist. NO, your son gets in a trouble because he won't do his work, swears in class, and disrupts my class on a daily basis, not to mention threatening me with violence. It's insane. The parents are the one who should feel the brunt of this blame, when it was apparent from the police reports that these kids had free reigh in their households. The parents obviously had never set foot in these children's rooms nor gave them the time of day. As a teacher, I may have noticed kids being teased, kids being ostracized, etc, but man, that has ALWAYS happened. I was tormented as a kid, and there has ALWAYS been a school bully. It's just that now, it has become fashionable to retaliate with violence of a more permanent nature. These kids had no value for human life, and they didn't lose that value from video games. It could have long time exposure to movies, tv, games, AND a lack of parental guidance, but who really knows. It isn't just kids going postal, remembering where we even got the phrase 'going postal'. Adults are doing it to. It isn't because guns are legal, because they have always been legal in this country, so there is something else. My dad was raised around guns, and hunted for food, then fought in a war for pete's sake, but that doesn't make him want to go postal on K-Mart. The family unit in this country is probably to blame for a lot of today's problems when it comes to kids. Too many kids are raising themselves, and doing it badly. They also have bad role models, their parents, to learn from. It isn't just single parent households either. Perhaps that contributes, but not in the Columbine case. In fact, I see a case of this happening right in my own family. I have a cousin who just bought a house and moved out of parents' house with her son. Before, there were always people home, and he was a reasonably good kid. Suddenly, he's a latchkey kid, and within two months he's on probation, which then escalates from there, until last week when he hit someone and was charged with battery. Perhaps this kid would have still gotten in trouble, but I don't think he would have if he wasn't doing as he pleased.
This point is interesting, considering I talk to customers EVERYDAY who are switching FROM free services and coming to use our paid service. It's called reliability, good tech support, and getting what you pay for. Not to mention that so many free services are going under left and right. In our area alone I believe they are down to two free providers that have local numbers. Quite a drop from a year ago. Almost every customer we lost to a free service has come back within 6 months.
I beg to differ with this. Certificates, and sometimes even diplomas, don't mean squat. I know someone with a degree in the computer field who can't do a darn thing that he claims to know how to do. Me, with world experience and self-taught (in the computer area at least) am much more competent this this guy. And then he bitches when he isn't allowed to do certain tasks..he's not very competent and we all know it. He shows no inclination to learn anything on his own, either. While I have a library of books and reference manuals to help myself, he wants it all given to him on a platter. I admit, when I have exhausted my book and online resources, I ask the sys admin, but he doesn't even *try* to learn anything on his own. It's very frustrating. I am tired of getting blamed by him for being competent and having more 'privileges' when I work my butt to get the knowledge I have. Luckily, my boss knows the real value of self-taught people, and recognizes someone who is willing to do what it takes to get the knowledge they need to get the job done, and rewards for that.
There are crappy ISPs out there. However, you can't blame it all on ISPs. I work for a local small one. We have around 500 users dialed in at peak distributed over three T-1's with caching, we are hooked directly to the CO with DS3 fiber optics. There is one word for users' connection troubles: telco. We live in the boondocks where we are the only ones using fiber because we paid a fortune to do it, the rest of the place is on copper, with multiplexers, etc, all over the place because they don't want to lay more cable or switch to fiber yet. People can hear each others conversations on the phone lines because of the line crossing, and noise bleeding. Yet, these same people blame US for their connection problems. I am always up front with these people about the telco, and the telco is being investigated by the regulatory commission, but nothing is going to change anytime soon, I'm afraid. I now have a permanent bias against telcos, especially when they tell people their line is fine, and yet I can HEAR the eletrical hum on their line over their voices. I know that hum isn't coming from our fiber, that's for sure. Of course, winmodem being standard in most name-brand computers has also been the bain of my existence. I was shopping at our local Staples and was talking to one of the workers there, and told him that if he recommended one of those cheap things to people that live in this town, he should burn in hell forever. I was half-kidding.
In this small town, there are THREE local ISP's, all thriving. Now ours has more growth than the others, because we are the newest (five years old) and we keep up with the best equipment, have DS3 fiber connections to the phone company that the others don't have, plus we have worked hard to maintain that small town feeling. Of course, we do computer sales and service as well, plus consulting, web design, etc. The oldest one in town is owned by a local phone company that thought they could make some cash starting a tech support farm where they could provide support for other small ISPs in the region and provide 24x7 tech support by doing so. Guess what happened when they started using an automated phone system, and people had to go through several menus just to get to a human? We gained alot of customers. I truly think that markets such as smaller towns are places where mom&pops can thrive. A good example right now is the fact that AOL & Compuserve share local numbers for this area, and people have to try for literally *hours* to get online. We have had so many AOL/Compuserve switchovers in the last month, it was incredible. Big companies don't care about little markets, and people in little markets like the feeling that the smaller ISP cares about their business, and will take the extra step to help them. They like calling here and knowing the people that they are talking to. So, it really depends on the market. I would choose mom&pop any day over a national ISP, I was a customer at this one for four years, and that's how I got a job here.
Good grief, some of our customers would be broke with an arrangement like that! I talk to many of our dial-up customers on a *weekly* basis, some of them even more frequently. It has nothing to do with our internet service, it has to do with most of them not knowing how to use the freaking computer. *Many* local ISP customers get MORE than their monies worth of the paltry 17.95/month fee just in tech support alone, at least from our service. Plus the fact that we keep a 5 to 1 user/modem ratio, so no busies :-)
I still think there is a place for paid ISPs and free ones. We get customers everyday who switch to our service because their free one is busy all of the/they can't get help/the local number went out of door/the ads/etc. I wouldn't pay for a service like AOL, to be honest, but a good provider is worth the money.
Much of the problem is that the places that NEED wireless can't get it yet. Rural areas have no option of cable or DSL, heck, even smaller towns have little or no options of either cable or DSL. We offer DSL in a smaller market to about half the city proper, when it's the REST of the county that desperately wants other options because Ameritech's lines here are really horrible in the outer areas. These are the people calling about DSL, not the ones that live within the service. The ones that live within the service area have decent dialup connections, it's the ones outside that have to deal with 24K connections and are so desperate for a faster connection that they are willing to pay higher prices for DSL or wireless, but they can't get it where they live. If other wireless companies focused on the lesser market in some areas, they may do better. These people don't have options and WILL pay more for the service.
Ooh, big disagreement there. I am using Homesite to create pages and check the code, and N6 is doing some pretty funky things. I have been surfing with it since I installed it, and many pages look strange in it, and it crashes alot, it's slower, and images load unreliably. I say that because the images will load, and with a refresh some will, some won't, and with another refresh the results will change. This was released WAY too soon, IMO. I will keep this to check browser compatibility, but frankly, I am not sure I will use it. Of course, on my Linux machine, I will probably have to use it. Despite my general opinion of Micro$oft, their browser is good, perhaps it's because it is the one thing they give away freely ;-)
We use it on our mail server, and my mailbox can attest to how well it works. (I got an alert for each one stopped) Our customers are grateful, and we have gotten customers from other local ISP's because of it. When they send a virus, through our mailfilter, we stop it and then they get a message with tips on getting clean. Some of the ISP's in the area have been very UNhelpful to their own customers,and when when they call us, they usually end up switching :-)
I live in a small town, and there is a shortage in these types of areas mainly because of the pay. Of course, it costs much less to live in a place like this, and you can live really well on less. We're looking for a system admin to replace one who wants to leave, and the pickings are slim, most likely because no one wants to live in this hell hole even if less money DOES go farther. I know I could get paid more for my knowledge in another town, but I would also be paying out more to live there, so there is a trade-off. Smaller towns are good places to go if you want a different atmosphere, and are willing to take a pay cut, but you must do the research as to the cost of living in the area. I have a friend in the Chicago area that makes 7-10K more than I do, but after you factor in her rent vs mine, car insurance because of the area, and prices in general, we are at the same income level. My money goes MUCH farther than hers. We sat and figured it out one day, it was quite amazing. So, the availability of tech jobs depends on where you are willing to live, I personally believe.
I'm sorry, but *I* tip at least *20%*. I wouldn't want their job, and I go to a restaurant so as NOT to have to serve myself. I appreciate the fact that they are waiting on me, and all I have to do is sit there. The fact that I know what they really make helps. Just because it's someone's job doesn't mean that they don't either want to be compensated well for it, and having been a waitress before, I *did* feel good when someone gave me a larger than usual tip. It wasn't just the money (although I wasn't complaining..that was tuition money). When you are too lazy to get in the car and pick up your pizza, or too tired to cook for yourself, it's well worth my 20% to get the extra service. My pizza place's delivery drivers fight over who delivers *our* pizzas, and we get better service because they know us. And the tips are what do it. I'm happy, they're happy.
The owner of the ISP where I work would close the doors before he let the FBI put a box in that did active filtering. Infact, I think he would close the doors even it did *passive* filtering. Handing over our logs when handed a court order is one thing, but giving them access to everything going in and out? No way. He'd tell them what they could do with themselves and shut down the Internet part of the business. This is line that shouldn't be crossed. If they *really* want information of this sort, they can get it without the box. And you are correct, that type of active filtering would slow down traffic, to what extent would depend on the box itself.
I agree with all of the above. We recently were slapped with a subpeona in a child pornography case. We are a small ISP in a small town, if we had nothing to give the police, it would have been very bad for business in this small town. The only time ANY info about any customer is given out is by subpoena, and it's happened twice since I started at this ISP. Some may cry that it's a violation of their freedom, but people pay to use a service that WE provide, on our equipment, and ISP's need to be able to protect themselves against things you might do 'in their name'. Our owner takes it quite personally when a user does illegal things on our service toting our e-mail address, etc. Granted, the logs we keep do not delve too much into someone's actual activity. Unless a user has static IP, it's nearly impossible to even see what webpages are being looked at in the logs on the cache machine. Sure, if I went to see what dynamic IP was assigned to a person at a specific time, then went to the cache logs to see what matches of the IP within the specific time frame there were, I could probably see, but it's too much trouble to even attempt without a court order involved. Radius logfiles in particular are very useful in terms of technical support. We can see why people get disconnected, etc, and we do have caller ID on all of our modems, and have caught people who were using other peoples' accounts, etc. with it. When someone calls and says that they can't get online, and we see that they are already logged in, but the phone number matches little Timmy's best friend's house, and that's where little Timmy is right now, parents get a tad upset ;-) The same people that would complain that these things are invasions will most likely be *helped* by these records at some point in the future.
Using pine to read my e-mail, even from my Windows machine, I was not affected by the virus itself. However, I am directly affected when you take into account that I am the one who must go into users e-mail boxes and remove these things before the user downloads them. I am affected when we have to search for virus filtering programs that won't bog down the mail server because users are too naive and will open anything and everything that is sent to them. I am affected when our office is flooded with calls ABOUT the virus, machines beinging brought in to get cleaned, etc. ANY security holes or exploits in any widespread software is going to directly affect anyone who has to deal with customers who use these products. So, those of us who do have to deal with these customers, whether we like it or not, have an interest in seeing that these types of security problems are fixed or at the very least prevented as much as possible, not just snickering about how superior we are because WE didn't get it. I may not have gotten the virus, but I sure as heck had to deal with the fallout. I may not love Micro$oft, but I have an interest in seeing them improve their product, and an interest in seeing more consumer awareness when it comes to security issues.