[TAG] ISP email goes down in flames

[Jimmy O'Regan]

Adam Engel wrote:

> I have heard/read that certain cities are caving in to Cable/Comm 
> interests and "illegalizing" or discouraging small dial-up network 
> access.  That was the impetus for my original question -- spurred on by 
> your first message.  How can anyone argue for giving away "space" to one 
> interest over the other, "eminent domain?"   I'm on broad-band by 
> "default:" my wife is a designer who also teaches computer animation, so 
> she needs the fat pipe for work.  I, on the other hand, seldom send out 
> an article that  can't be handled over Pine or any other text-based 
> mailer, and most of the sites I read are text-based and well within the 
> capacities of Lynx.   True,  it's quicker to download applications and 
> source material over DSL, but  it's not like I can't work on other 
> things while I'm downloading a file.   In short, I didn't even 
> understand the "need" for universal broadband until I left my text-based 
> world and saw the types of graphic-heavy site designs being pushed over 
> the mainstream -- most mainstream newspapers, for instance, as well as 
> "alternatives" offer video and audio clips as if they were TV news 
> broadcasts rather than web sites.  Well and good, but not at the expense 
> of the choice for cheap, low-bandwidth access for those who want it.   

At the expense of choice? Huh?

You're talking about newspapers /augmenting/ their normal content with 
audio and video; that doesn't make being able to view this content a 
requirement.

> I'm gonna have to do some serious reading/research to get up to speed 
> with the current situation since I appear to be living in the late 90s 
> -- using a 1998 Dell Inspiron running kernel 2.4 on SuSE 9.0 (I'm still 
> "wowed" by KDE 3.1x and Gnome 2.4x though I appear to be "outdated."  I 
> never thought I'd feel such "pressure" to upgrade  a Linux system).  

What pressure? What are you talking about? Is it that you want to 
install an app, but it says you need a newer version of KDE/GNOME/whatever?

> Regardless, I'm no neo-Luddite, but when Big Telecomm tells me to get 
> big, get fast -- fast, my reaction is to proceed with caution. 
> 
> For  instance, in addition to my seven-year-old Linux box, I have a 
> two-year-old iBook G4 running  Mac OSX system 10.3.7 (Panther, 
> "upgraded" gradually from 10.3 outta the box).   Though I only use Aqua 
> for work (text based) and even there I use Open Office, Abiword, 
> Firefox, and Thunderbird, spending most of my time in Darwin (I found 
> Enlightenment to be the best winmanager to run "rootless," allowing me 
> access to both X and the main Mac GUI apps etc.)  subtle hints are in 
> the air that it's time for me to "upgrade" to 10.4 (Tiger) if I know 
> what's good for me.  Why?   Most Darwin tools are GNU utils.   Do I need 
> to pay $120 to "upgrade" to free software?   "Open Source" indeed.   

If you only want to upgrade the GNU utilities, just upgrade them. You 
can upgrade any of the Darwin apps for free, if you want to, they're 
"open source" (FSVO open source[1])

There's more in Mac OS X than those tools, that's what most Mac users 
are interested in upgrading.

[1] The APSL is an obnoxious licence; some groups (such as Debian) don't 
feel it's sufficiently free.