|
Sunday, October 7, 2001
Previous topic
|
Next topic
|
|
 Sunday, October 7, 2001
started 10/7/2001; 1:38:31 AM - last post 10/7/2001; 1:21:35 PM
|
|
Doc Searls - Sunday, October 7, 2001 
10/7/2001; 5:38:31 AM (reads: 3153, responses: 2)
|
|
Keeping up 
| | I'm heading out. Keep up at any of the links on the right, including Saltire, which seems highly current. |
What's China up to?
| | While news of the war proceeds as planned through the mainstream channels, DEBKA has this headline: China Moves Muslim Troops into Afghanistan to Support Taliban and Bin Laden Against US Assault. You have to scroll waaay down before you get to the story, which is in the right column. The suggested reason? To counteract a dreaded U.S.-Russian alliance. |
| | DEBKA is based in Israel and the work of some highly energetic and connected journalists there. I have no way of checking their facts or their interpretations. Troop movement seems credible, since China borders Afghanistan on the Tibetan frontier. |
| | It does seem that China has been relatively absent from all the news talk about alliance-building. But I can't see any upside to a Chinese alliance with the Taliban. |
| | Anybody know more about this? |
| | And can somebody please help DEBKA bring some kind of useful design sense to their site? It's hideous. To make getting to today's stories a little easier, here's a link to the frame that matters. |
Penultimania
| | While Dave's the #2 Dave at Google, guess who's the #2 Doc? And guess what else? Our parents named us both David. |
Cox at Lunch
| | Cox@Home isn't working again. This time when I call tech support, the outgoing message says "the CoxAtHome system is experienceing problems." Not just this town or that one. The message also says CoxAtHome has no idea when things will be fixed. |
| | This really sucks. I really need to get on the Net at faster than dial-up speeds. I'm researching all kinds of stuff, and dial-up doesn't cut it. |
| | In the three years I had DSL back in Woodside, I don't think the link itself ever went down. There were other problems (mostly due to unerelated power outages at our house), but not with the link. Cox@Home has amazing speed when it works. I've experienced none of the slowdown that some of the DSL sellers have been FUDding about. Zero. The speed is always amazingly high. But man, it does crap out a lot. |
| | Enough. I'm going to bed. |
discuss
|
|
Glenn Fleishman - Re: Cox and wireless
10/7/2001; 3:45:43 PM (reads: 424, responses: 1)
|
|
|
Doc, maybe it's time to band together with a bunch of neighbors, find a good high point that you can all see, and install a reliable old T1 line or frame relay T1? You can then install some point-to-point sectional antennas and get reliable service.
In rural areas, like the coast of Maine and some towns in New Zealand, they're using this for long-haul: 10 to 30 miles, just like you'd normally use copper. But it's also a pretty decent reality for cities without a density of tall buildings. Better yet, convince a local ISP to start it up. The startup costs can be high, in the thousands, but you would wind up with ostensibly reliable service.
The cable thing I never believed in. The cable companies kept saying, you'll always have enough bandwidth (until we decided to throttle it to 128 kbps upstream rather than just do intelligent filtering to block unauthorized servers); we can add channels to add bandwidth (yeah, right, like they don't fight to their last breath to preserve the revenue or viewership from channels even on digital cable systems); even if your neighbors all jump on board, we'll have bandwidth (already disproven); it's secure (wrong from the start); we run operations 24x7, so you won't experience that phone company style downtime (yeah, right).
My DSL service at home and at work has functioned at about 99.999% uptime. At home, a year or so ago, I'd suffer from day-long outages. They eventually solved that. I was down for a few days in winter this year because of a card failure at the central office that was tricky to troubleshoot (it showed me as up, but data wouldn't transmit). Work DSL has been virtually 100% uptime since mid-1999.
discuss
|
|
Doc Searls - Re: Cox and wireless
10/7/2001; 5:21:35 PM (reads: 529, responses: 0)
|
|
|
That's a great idea. I had great service from the T-1 when I had an office here from March through August. I got that right off the ISP's backbone (the ISP was my landlord). And the guy who owns the ISP is a friend. I think we shouldn't have much trouble coming up with something. I'll call him and shoot for a lunch soon.
Credit where due: CoxAtHome is always fast, and we live in a neighborhood with a lot of people who are also subscribers. I check the bandwidth often. Right now I'm on a laptop hooked up over an 802.11b wireless router/hub with three other computers on it. It justclocked (cutting and pasting from the other browser window)... 2886(down)/286(up) kbps. I'm not fond of asymmetrical speeds, but the 286kbps number is close to three times what I got over my old IDSL line (the best I could get at the old place, and probably the best I can get in DSL here, more than 3 miles from the nearest phone company switch.
But... this shared T1 idea is a really good one. Thanks!
discuss
|
|
|
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
