It can happen. I set up a similar system (the first wireless MMDS Internet outside of the US) in Lagos, Nigeria this past year. This year it will roll out in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Enugu.
If the market is there, this technology will come. I'm already talking to people in Kenya, Mauritius, and Venezuela about setting up similar systems.
http://www.hybrid.com/ - These guys made the first reliable (non-DOCSYS) MMDS Internet system. It has it's faults and it's annoyances, but it's the only proven platform out there right now. Hey- it's head end equipment runs FreeBSD, so you've got to love it..:-)
Anyone out there who wants more information about offering wireless high-speed broadband Internet services send me an email.
It's already run on Slashdot that none of the movies would be released on DVD until ALL of them were out. Lucas said it after TPM came out. Then he's going to release all of them on DVD.
Besides, I really don't care if I _ever_ see TPM on DVD. Jar Jar Binks was bad enough in the theatre. Like I really want to see him in my home..:-/
Getting the word out won't do any good. Anyone with $.02 of brain will know better than to invest in them.
What _WILL_ do good is to get the SEC onto them. This last press release, while it may not be wholly untrue, is worded in such a way as to make it appear that they have a $500,000 check from a real customer, instead of (what might be) a deal to sell $500,000 of their software. And then there's their carbon-copied Red Hat S1.
I imagine that there are some red flags on their SEC file anyway, but it would be good if we could make sure they're aware of this. LinuxOne going public will be a black eye for the Linux and Open Source communities in the mind of the business world.
Is there anyone here who knows more about SEC policy in regards to pre-IPO publicity and regulations about a company's S1 filing? Anyone know a way to get the SEC's attention?
Down at the bottom of the page there are details of their 'complete E-Mail Marketing Package complete with 27,000,000 Fresh E-Mail Addresses" and an "excellent Shareware Stealth E-Mailing program".
Considering Linux One's business plan so far, maybe this is how they're going to promote themselves.
It's easy to do , depending on the ISP equipment. I'm in Lagos Nigeria right now working on a wireless ISP setup. We're using equipment from Hybrid. The client 'modem' connects to your computer via ethernet- if your computer talks TCP/IP and has an Ethernet port, you can use this equipment.
Hybrid makes 'wireless cable modems' that use MMDS cable systems to provide Internet access.
ORBS is a joke. The RBL/MAPS and DUL are the blacklists most people use. If you're trying to send mail to someone who's ISP is using ORBS, they're missing out on LOTS of legitimate email.
For example, smtp2|smtp3|smtp5 aren't open relays. So why are they listed in ORBS? ORBS is not very well administered and has many legitimate systems listed for no other reason than ORBS doesn't like someone at the site that's being blocked.
It's a very customer oriented policy. They're keeping spammers from abusing the network.
Tom probably can't make exceptions. AFAIK, the port blocking is done on a network wide basis in the core routers.
I have several friends that are relaying mail outside of MindSpring using another server that has it's MTA running on an off port. I imagine you could also use QMTP if you're running Qmail to relay to an external system.
Really, using MindSpring's server as a relay point makes the most sense. If your message can't be delivered on the first try, MindSpring's server can keep trying to deliver it while your home system is disconnected. Besides, many mail systems won't accept mail directly from servers that live on an ISP's dialup network if they're using the DUL.
Many administrators (not all of which are active in the anti-spam community can't find a reason to ever accept mail from a dialup IP address and will drop it. I've seen mail bounces because of that before.
I'd bet that greater than 98% of all mail coming direct from ISP dialup IP ranges is spam. It's the only way spammers can really spam effectively anymore- most ISPs have monitors on their mail servers that alert them if someone is sending more than, say, 1000 messages a minute or something like that. Spam software is now getting around that by sending the mail directly from the dialup system.
Until you've worked at an ISP and had to fight spammers firsthand you'll never really understand this. As annoying as port 25 blocking is, it's the 'wave of the future' for ISPs (some backbone providers even block port 25 from all hosts except their customer's mail servers!)
You may not like it. It might piss you off. But that's the way it is. Welcome to the modern Internet, where spamming a**holes are causing us more and more inconveniences every day.
> Ummm... no, not from what I know about > Scientology. I'd say Sky is exactly the sort of > person who is a *bad* representation of > Scientology, and in fact I don't think he should > be even considered a Scientologist.
Why is he a bad representation of Scientology? Should he start talking about Xenu in press conferences? Should he start referring to the folks at AOL as SPs? Should all new employees be hooked to an E-Meter? Thetan scanners on the office front door?
Yes, but reasonable admins don't use ORBS anyway. ORBS has a history of unreasonableness and blocking mail servers out of spite (blocking them because the ORBS admins didn't like the person running them, not because they were a relay).
More importantly, the MindSpring dialup IP ranges are listed in the DUL, so many, many mail servers won't accept mail from people on dialup connections anyway (unless you relay through your ISP's mail server).
MindSpring's engineering staff has more clue than most other ISPs combined..:-)
I understand that you'd like ISPs to send out a postcard or an email to every user whenever they make a change, but that's not practical..
Let's look at what would happen.
1) MindSpring sends out a postcard or an email to every customer reading:
------------------------------------------------ -- | Attention Customers: As of the first of next | | month we will be blocking outgoing TCP | | connections on port 25. You will need to add | | mail.mindspring.com as a smarthost in your | | MTA configuration to continue to send outgoing | | mail. | ------------------------------------------------ --
2) Now, I don't know how many of you have worked at an ISP before, and I don't know how many of you have ever had to deal with your average ISP user, but out of the million-or-so customers MS has, let's estimate that a full 90% of their customers are people without the knowledge to know what port 25 is, what an MTA is, etc. Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of people getting these notices and panicing? Tech support queues would shoot through the roof as support engineers had to explain in great detail to customers that the change doesn't affect them at all.
3) Another large percentage of users would get ticked off that they're getting a steady stream of emails and postcards from MindSpring announcing every change of service.
MindSpring tells users that important announcements will be posted on their web page and in mindspring.announce. If you don't want to read it, than that's your problem, but it's there in the account information you got in the mail when you signed up. If you want to get an email when something changes, then use URL Minder or something to monitor the news webpage and email you when something changes.
MindSpring offers cable modem service in some cities. They're about to roll out ADSL service in the next few weeks.
I see ISPs as a commodity. In '92-'93 your ISP really mattered. There were lots of ISPs floating around out there. Many were run by clueless people who were out for a fast buck. Their users were plagued with spotty service, lost email, busy signals, etc.
Nowadays it really doesn't matter what ISP you use. As far as I'm concerned, an ISP is something that gives you IP connectivity. It doesn't matter who I get it from. If I get busy signals or poor connections to my ISP, I can go elsewhere. I can get an email alias or a webmail account so my address won't change when I move around.
The only time an ISP really matters is if you need a static IP (which are hard to come by these days) or some other special service that you can easily get from a small local ISP.
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.
I don't think that using CDMA to get connectivity to land is going to get around the various governments. I'm consulting on an ISP setup in Nigeria, and I can tell you that the communications ministry makes you get a permit for everything involved with communications signals- whether you're sending _or_ recieving. For example, a satellite dish requires a permit.
Besides- how will the wireless signal get from the fiber link to land? I can't imagine that they're going to build offshore platforms for transmission equipment. They're most likely going to bring the fiber onland at each landing point and connect in to a local provider.
Once the fiber is on land, the national providers might well use wireless technologies to provide connectivity- most African countries use microwave relays.
Slashdot Mirror
It can happen. I set up a similar system (the
:-)
first wireless MMDS Internet outside of the US)
in Lagos, Nigeria this past year. This year it
will roll out in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and
Enugu.
If the market is there, this technology will come.
I'm already talking to people in Kenya, Mauritius,
and Venezuela about setting up similar systems.
http://www.hybrid.com/ - These guys made the first
reliable (non-DOCSYS) MMDS Internet system. It has
it's faults and it's annoyances, but it's the only
proven platform out there right now. Hey- it's
head end equipment runs FreeBSD, so you've got to
love it..
Anyone out there who wants more information about
offering wireless high-speed broadband Internet
services send me an email.
Robbie
robbie@shorty.com
It's already run on Slashdot that none of the movies would be released on DVD until ALL of them were out. Lucas said it after TPM came out. Then he's going to release all of them on DVD.
:-/
Besides, I really don't care if I _ever_ see TPM on DVD. Jar Jar Binks was bad enough in the theatre. Like I really want to see him in my home..
Robbie
Getting the word out won't do any good. Anyone with $.02 of brain will know better than to invest in them.
What _WILL_ do good is to get the SEC onto them. This last press release, while it may not be wholly untrue, is worded in such a way as to make it appear that they have a $500,000 check from a real customer, instead of (what might be) a deal to sell $500,000 of their software. And then there's their carbon-copied Red Hat S1.
I imagine that there are some red flags on their SEC file anyway, but it would be good if we could make sure they're aware of this. LinuxOne going public will be a black eye for the Linux and Open Source communities in the mind of the business world.
Is there anyone here who knows more about SEC policy in regards to pre-IPO publicity and regulations about a company's S1 filing? Anyone know a way to get the SEC's attention?
Robbie
-Complete Internet Marketing Kit CD-ROM"
Down at the bottom of the page there are details of their 'complete E-Mail Marketing Package complete with 27,000,000 Fresh E-Mail Addresses" and an "excellent Shareware Stealth E-Mailing program".
Considering Linux One's business plan so far, maybe this is how they're going to promote themselves.
Robbie
It's easy to do , depending on the ISP equipment. I'm in
Lagos Nigeria right now working on a wireless ISP setup.
We're using equipment from Hybrid. The client 'modem'
connects to your computer via ethernet- if your computer talks TCP/IP and has an Ethernet port, you
can use this equipment.
Hybrid makes 'wireless cable modems' that use MMDS cable systems to
provide Internet access.
Robbie
ORBS is a joke. The RBL/MAPS and DUL are the blacklists most people use. If you're trying to send mail to someone who's ISP is using ORBS, they're missing out on LOTS of legitimate email.
For example, smtp2|smtp3|smtp5 aren't open relays.
So why are they listed in ORBS? ORBS is not very well administered and has many legitimate systems listed for no other reason than ORBS doesn't like someone at the site that's being blocked.
It's a very customer oriented policy. They're keeping spammers from abusing the network.
Robbie
Tom probably can't make exceptions. AFAIK, the port blocking is done on a network wide basis in the core routers.
I have several friends that are relaying mail outside of MindSpring using another server that has it's MTA running on an off port. I imagine you could also use QMTP if you're running Qmail to relay to an external system.
Really, using MindSpring's server as a relay point makes the most sense. If your message can't be delivered on the first try, MindSpring's server can keep trying to deliver it while your home system is disconnected. Besides, many mail systems won't accept mail directly from servers that live on an ISP's dialup network if they're using the DUL.
Many administrators (not all of which are active in the anti-spam community can't find a reason to ever accept mail from a dialup IP address and will drop it. I've seen mail bounces because of that before.
I'd bet that greater than 98% of all mail coming direct from ISP dialup IP ranges is spam. It's the only way spammers can really spam effectively anymore- most ISPs have monitors on their mail servers that alert them if someone is sending more than, say, 1000 messages a minute or something like that. Spam software is now getting around that by sending the mail directly from the dialup system.
Until you've worked at an ISP and had to fight spammers firsthand you'll never really understand this. As annoying as port 25 blocking is, it's the 'wave of the future' for ISPs (some backbone providers even block port 25 from all hosts except their customer's mail servers!)
You may not like it. It might piss you off. But that's the way it is. Welcome to the modern Internet, where spamming a**holes are causing us more and more inconveniences every day.
Robbie
> Ummm... no, not from what I know about
> Scientology. I'd say Sky is exactly the sort of
> person who is a *bad* representation of
> Scientology, and in fact I don't think he should
> be even considered a Scientologist.
Why is he a bad representation of Scientology? Should he start talking about Xenu in press conferences? Should he start referring to the folks at AOL as SPs? Should all new employees be hooked to an E-Meter? Thetan scanners on the office front door?
Robbie
(Xenu loves you!)
Yes, but reasonable admins don't use ORBS anyway. ORBS has a history of unreasonableness and blocking mail servers out of spite (blocking them because the ORBS admins didn't like the person running them, not because they were a relay).
More importantly, the MindSpring dialup IP ranges are listed in the DUL, so many, many mail servers won't accept mail from people on dialup connections anyway (unless you relay through your ISP's mail server).
MindSpring's engineering staff has more clue than
most other ISPs combined..
Robbie
Holy cow. I had forgotten about the nudie pics.. :-) Robbie (wonder if Greenman reads slashdot? Hi Green!)
I understand that you'd like ISPs to send out a postcard or an email to every user whenever they make a change, but that's not practical..
Let's look at what would happen.
1) MindSpring sends out a postcard or an email to every customer reading:
-----------------------------------------------
| Attention Customers: As of the first of next |
| month we will be blocking outgoing TCP |
| connections on port 25. You will need to add |
| mail.mindspring.com as a smarthost in your |
| MTA configuration to continue to send outgoing |
| mail. |
-----------------------------------------------
2) Now, I don't know how many of you have worked at an ISP before, and I don't know how many of you have ever had to deal with your average ISP user, but out of the million-or-so customers MS has, let's estimate that a full 90% of their customers are people without the knowledge to know what port 25 is, what an MTA is, etc. Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of people getting these notices and panicing? Tech support queues would shoot through the roof as support engineers had to explain in great detail to customers that the change doesn't affect them at all.
3) Another large percentage of users would get ticked off that they're getting a steady stream of emails and postcards from MindSpring announcing every change of service.
MindSpring tells users that important announcements will be posted on their web page and in mindspring.announce. If you don't want to read it, than that's your problem, but it's there in the account information you got in the mail when you signed up. If you want to get an email when something changes, then use URL Minder or something to monitor the news webpage and email you when something changes.
Robbie
MindSpring offers cable modem service in some cities. They're about to roll out ADSL service in the next few weeks.
I see ISPs as a commodity. In '92-'93 your ISP really mattered. There were lots of ISPs floating around out there. Many were run by clueless people who were out for a fast buck. Their users were plagued with spotty service, lost email, busy signals, etc.
Nowadays it really doesn't matter what ISP you use. As far as I'm concerned, an ISP is something that gives you IP connectivity. It doesn't matter who I get it from. If I get busy signals or poor connections to my ISP, I can go elsewhere. I can get an email alias or a webmail account so my address won't change when I move around.
The only time an ISP really matters is if you need a static IP (which are hard to come by these days) or some other special service that you can easily get from a small local ISP.
Robbie
(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
I don't think that using CDMA to get connectivity to land is going to get around the various governments. I'm consulting on an ISP setup in Nigeria, and I can tell you that the communications ministry makes you get a permit for everything involved with communications signals- whether you're sending _or_ recieving. For example, a satellite dish requires a permit.
Besides- how will the wireless signal get from the fiber link to land? I can't imagine that they're going to build offshore platforms for transmission equipment. They're most likely going to bring the fiber onland at each landing point and connect in to a local provider.
Once the fiber is on land, the national providers might well use wireless technologies to provide connectivity- most African countries use microwave relays.
Robbie
Agreed. A geek is a nerd with social skills.
-R