Wayne Chirnside wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

WC> Yeah it is incredible. Technical reports I've looked at claim DSL
WC> can by using new techniques be increased in bandwidth from 5 - 50
WC> times though it does require you be within n thousand feet of the
WC> phone company or an optical fiber substation. I believe the
WC> articles said the last three thousand feet could be copper.

RJT> I wonder how long it's gonna take before they bring the fiber to the
RJT> house?

WC> From the article quite a long time because of the expense involved. 
WC> The article said using the last 3K feet of copper would make costs 
WC> practical.

It ain't that expensive to run fiber,  what's expensive is switching it, 
which they are having a hard time doing these days.  I ran across an
article some time back,  can't remember where,  or if I even still have it,
 called "Dark Fiber" that talked a lot about this stuff.  They
still want to be "the phone company",  and won't ever get over
it,  I guess,  the mindset is just too ingrained.  That's one of the
reasons I'd never consider using them as an ISP.

RJT> Those things you see on some of the tv shows really get me (CSI comes
RJT> to mind for example),  where they have a bit of video,  and
"zoom in"
RJT> over and over again until they get what they want out of it.  Must be
RJT> using some kinda "infinite-resolution" imaging technology
there,  or
RJT> something...   :-)

WC> MIT and NASA both have done a great deal on this as well as others.

RJT> Yeah,  but they're not being realistic with the technology.  Not at
RJT> all.  The example I'm thinking of involved a bit of surveillance video,
RJT>  which is below standard video quality to begin with.

WC> The media around here reported that much of this is because 
WC> business owners don't change tapes or maintain the VCR.

Oh?  Even still,  they're going to be recording at the slowest speed, 
which doesn't make for real high image quality...

RJT> Except that I haven't gotten the whole way through the install yet.
RJT> The machine locks up solid...   I had this problem once before with
RJT> this board, and with different ram,  and trying a different cpu,  so I
RJT> can probably rule out the ram and the cpu.  I'm not sure which box it
RJT> was in,  so the power supply is *possible*,  but I'm thinking it's
RJT> something on the board.  Locks it up solid,  it does.  The last time I
RJT> couldn't even get it to toggle the numlock on the keyboard.

WC> Stable release, compatable hardware?

Sure.  It's Slackware 8.1,  same as I'm running on the other box,  which I
haven't had any problems with in that regard,  and the hardware is pretty
comparable,  both boards being VX chipset,  both about the same speed CPU
(one a K6-200,  the other a P200).  I'll see if I can't get around to
swapping some stuff around this weekend,  maybe.

WC> RE: Malware.

RJT> Seems to me you could pull it down with linux and still not have to
RJT> worry about too much...   It doesn't _run_ things that show up in mail,
RJT>  at least.  And most of that stuff seems to be aimed at the windoze
RJT> platform anyhow.

WC> re: malware

WC> That's my feeling as well as after rebate the price is enough to 
WC> cover difference between the more expensive RAM sticks here to run
WC> the latest and greatest Linux.

RJT> They want to sell you expensive software to help deal with the holes
RJT> that are in other expensive software that you're running...    Right.

WC> Why don't ISP's burn anti-virus and worm software into a PROM and
WC> screen traffic for this malicious code? For the price they charge 
WC> you'd think they could offer a clean product.

They are not there to deal with content,  only with providing the
connection,  which is as it should be.  Although some folks are trying to
change that...

There was an excellent article in an older issue of Boardwatch,  that I
probably still have around here someplace.  It talked about two different
court cases involving large "providers",  I *think* that one of
them was Cubby vs. Compuserve,  and am not sure about the other one,  but
the outfit in the case may have been Prodigy,  or Genie,  or something.

Anyhow,  in the one case they won,  because the provider claimed to only be
providing the services of transporting people's information around.  The
other case was lost because they claimed to have control over content and
therefore amounted to "a publisher" in the legal sense,  and were
therefore responsible for _ALL_ of it.

These days we have the music industry trying to twist arms with
legislatures so that ISPs can be responsible for "people downloading
pirated MP3 files".  I don't know how they can pre-judge that the
files are illegal -- I have a perfect right to make an MP3 out of a
recording that I own,  just like I'd have the right to take an LP and copy
it on to tape so I could play it in the car.

A typical windoze user might want a provider to look at content and filter
out binary information containing viruses.  A firm that was writing
anti-virus software and who was getting "samples" mailed to them
(I've seen that happen) would not find such a service particularly useful, 
or desirable.

And having anybody upstream of the end user having any control whatsoever
over content opens a whole big legal can of worms,  one that I'd rather not
see opened,  because we don't have a big enough can to put them back into. 
There'd be no stopping it,  as is amply evidenced by the government's
behavior in other areas.  They've been chomping at the bit for a long time
to gain some sort of control over "the 'net",  and I suspect that
the big push to get all the schools wired up has some connection with this.
 I guess we'll see.

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