While it's in Mansfield it may be worth the drive. They have a fairly decent selection of components, LCDs, etc. The place is like the way Rat Shack was in the '80s. We used to have one here in Wooster but they closed up unfortunately. They are a bit pricey though.
Since when can the government not monitor landlines? The idea of security on landlines is an illusion. If you need good security I'd use IPSec over it. They'll be able to capture all the data they want but what good would it do them... unless of course they can break the encryption.
Is ISDN still ridiculously overpriced in your area? Here it went to $25/mo for 128k unmetered which was most certainly a step in the right direction from the telco. I suspect this wireless service (if implemented) will cost an arm and a leg. I'm sure they will bill by the minute like always.
I definitely agree with you on the fixed IP and the stupid restrictions. That's why I won't ever have cable or support any ISP who doesn't act decently. You're not being unreasonable. It's not unreasonable to use the bandwidth you purchase per month, and it's not unreasonable to do with it whatever the hell you damn well please.
I'm not sure if they still make portable datalogging gear but I have a couple dozen or so of their portable dot matrix printers (4x4x2" run from batteries) and they're pretty decent.
Ok, someone breaks the encryption on DVD. Now the purchaser of this DVD disc can watch other things on the disc, big deal. If you don't want someone watching something without paying for it THEN DON'T PUT IT ON THE DAMN DISC! Personally I think the industry has gone way overboard. People pirate CDs and VHS and it hasn't hurt them, and niether will pirating DVD. By trying to sue the people who cracked DVD they are only enraging more people which in turn will have no qualms about pirating their works, myself included.
Then get a SCSI disk. I'd never trust an IDE for anything mission critical. I have SCSI disks that are over 13 years old and still work fine and do not have a grown defect list. For decent storage space and good reliability I'd recommend a Seagate 23GB or 47GB full height 5.25" drive. You really can't beat 5.25" SCSIs in terms of reliability. Sure they're expensive, but what do you want? A drive that lasts 2 years or one that lasts for 10?
Don't forget about your printer. Security ratings have been denied because a 'W' sounded different than a 'Y'.
To see some pictures of a real TEMPEST shielded PC take a look at some of the old IBM PC/XTs they have at http://www.meco.org. Last Friday I saw a pretty rare SPARCstation. It was a TEMPEST shielded SPARCstation 2. Really heavy machine and a bit larger than a normal SPARCstation 2 due to the shielding. The floppy and power switch were located behind a 1/4" solid aluminum door on the front panel. It was used by the Navy. Maybe next time I'll pick it up and take some pictures. The thing has got to be a rarity.
I don't know about you but I'd want to run Sendmail because I hate using ISP mailboxes because of the extreme lack of control (ie-stopping lame spammers). Really though, cable modem access is going to suck until there is competition in this market, which there should be. I really see these cablemodem policies to be an abuse of monopoly power because where else can you go to get high speed access as cheap? All I want from my cable co. is bandwidth, not service, if they can't provide that then they can burn in hell. Here in my town we have what I call expensive RoadRunner. It's $60/mo for 128k up/256k down and there's a bit of port filtering plus you only get one dynamic IP. Looks like I'll have to find another method of high speed access. The potential for this highspeed access is in a box below my desk -- a shitload of WaveLAN cards. Short of that I'll have to wait on DSL, or for there to be fair competition in the cable internet industy.
Indeed, I have continuous speech recognition software for my SPARCstation(s). It only runs under SunOS/Solaris and NT unfortunately. I can't remember the name of it off hand, but I discovered it while searching through some of the speech synthesis sites. If you've got SunOS or Solaris it's interesting to play with and would work OK for a bit of home/whatever automation.
The most damning thing against cablemodems is that one company has a monopoly over the service. A great many of them abuse this by doing things like forcing users to use web proxies (such as midsouth.rr.com). I only know of one cablemodem service that seems to be run by a group of people who have any sort of intelligence. That being lvcablemodem(.com). You can get blocks of static IPs from them and they don't care if you run servers (within reason I'm sure). I would rather use ISDN than cable simply because there is at least some competition for decent service. I don't know of any ISPs in my area (except maybe one) who filter, deny servers, etc for ISDN users. So until I see something that isn't garbage like most cable providers offerings it's not worth my time. I'll stick with the analog modem and go with xDSL when it becomes availble.
Why bother paying for the cable box at all? There are plenty behind the cable co. in their trash dumpster. It's how I got my collection of boxes, and pissed off the cable company at the same time. There, I killed two birds with one stone.
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While it's in Mansfield it may be worth the drive. They have a fairly decent selection of components, LCDs, etc. The place is like the way Rat Shack was in the '80s. We used to have one here in Wooster but they closed up unfortunately. They are a bit pricey though.
Well personal privacy is marooned on a distant planet it seems therefore maroon is an appropriate color here.
Since when can the government not monitor landlines? The idea of security on landlines is an illusion. If you need good security I'd use IPSec over it. They'll be able to capture all the data they want but what good would it do them... unless of course they can break the encryption.
Is ISDN still ridiculously overpriced in your area? Here it went to $25/mo for 128k unmetered which was most certainly a step in the right direction from the telco. I suspect this wireless service (if implemented) will cost an arm and a leg. I'm sure they will bill by the minute like always.
I definitely agree with you on the fixed IP and the stupid restrictions. That's why I won't ever have cable or support any ISP who doesn't act decently. You're not being unreasonable. It's not unreasonable to use the bandwidth you purchase per month, and it's not unreasonable to do with it whatever the hell you damn well please.
I'm not sure if they still make portable datalogging gear but I have a couple dozen or so of their portable dot matrix printers (4x4x2" run from batteries) and they're pretty decent.
Ok, someone breaks the encryption on DVD. Now the purchaser of this DVD disc can watch other things on the disc, big deal. If you don't want someone watching something without paying for it THEN DON'T PUT IT ON THE DAMN DISC! Personally I think the industry has gone way overboard. People pirate CDs and VHS and it hasn't hurt them, and niether will pirating DVD. By trying to sue the people who cracked DVD they are only enraging more people which in turn will have no qualms about pirating their works, myself included.
Then get a SCSI disk. I'd never trust an IDE for anything mission critical. I have SCSI disks that are over 13 years old and still work fine and do not have a grown defect list. For decent storage space and good reliability I'd recommend a Seagate 23GB or 47GB full height 5.25" drive. You really can't beat 5.25" SCSIs in terms of reliability. Sure they're expensive, but what do you want? A drive that lasts 2 years or one that lasts for 10?
Don't forget about your printer. Security ratings have been denied because a 'W' sounded different than a 'Y'.
To see some pictures of a real TEMPEST shielded PC take a look at some of the old IBM PC/XTs they have at http://www.meco.org. Last Friday I saw a pretty rare SPARCstation. It was a TEMPEST shielded SPARCstation 2. Really heavy machine and a bit larger than a normal SPARCstation 2 due to the shielding. The floppy and power switch were located behind a 1/4" solid aluminum door on the front panel. It was used by the Navy. Maybe next time I'll pick it up and take some pictures. The thing has got to be a rarity.
I don't know about you but I'd want to run Sendmail because I hate using ISP mailboxes because of the extreme lack of control (ie-stopping lame spammers). Really though, cable modem access is going to suck until there is competition in this market, which there should be. I really see these cablemodem policies to be an abuse of monopoly power because where else can you go to get high speed access as cheap? All I want from my cable co. is bandwidth, not service, if they can't provide that then they can burn in hell. Here in my town we have what I call expensive RoadRunner. It's $60/mo for 128k up/256k down and there's a bit of port filtering plus you only get one dynamic IP. Looks like I'll have to find another method of high speed access. The potential for this highspeed access is in a box below my desk -- a shitload of WaveLAN cards. Short of that I'll have to wait on DSL, or for there to be fair competition in the cable internet industy.
Indeed, I have continuous speech recognition software for my SPARCstation(s). It only runs under SunOS/Solaris and NT unfortunately. I can't remember the name of it off hand, but I discovered it while searching through some of the speech synthesis sites. If you've got SunOS or Solaris it's interesting to play with and would work OK for a bit of home/whatever automation.
The most damning thing against cablemodems is that one company has a monopoly over the service. A great many of them abuse this by doing things like forcing users to use web proxies (such as midsouth.rr.com). I only know of one cablemodem service that seems to be run by a group of people who have any sort of intelligence. That being lvcablemodem(.com). You can get blocks of static IPs from them and they don't care if you run servers (within reason I'm sure). I would rather use ISDN than cable simply because there is at least some competition for decent service. I don't know of any ISPs in my area (except maybe one) who filter, deny servers, etc for ISDN users. So until I see something that isn't garbage like most cable providers offerings it's not worth my time. I'll stick with the analog modem and go with xDSL when it becomes availble.
Why bother paying for the cable box at all? There are plenty behind the cable co. in their trash dumpster. It's how I got my collection of boxes, and pissed off the cable company at the same time. There, I killed two birds with one stone.