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Re: Wlug Digest, Vol 7, Issue 11
by Thumper 20 May '04

20 May '04

Since I have no good things to say about Comcast/ATT, I refuse to say anything about that rotten, thieving company that will never get any more of my business. On the other hand I have many good things to say about RCN. Fast, not bound to specific MAC address, great uptime, IP addresses don't change very often... Grass is much greener on the RCN side of the fence. At least from my vantage point. > > I have Comcast (AT&T Broadband) in southern NH and have nothing but > > good things to say about them. In the 3 years I had them, I think I > > can count the number of outages on 1 hand and they were always very > > brief. > > > > > > > > > I've heard nothing but overwhelming complaints about Comcast. I have had > > > email contact with dozens of municipalities who use Comcast for Internet > > > service. Things like "weeks without service" is a common theme. I can't > > > remember hearing anything good about them. > > > > > > - Rob > > >

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RE: [Wlug] Comcast experiences Plug for Speakeasy.net
by Keller, Tim 19 May '04

19 May '04

Does anybody on the WLUG list use Vonage? I constantly see banner ads for them, but I don't know anybody who uses them. Later, Tim. "I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov -----Original Message----- From: Josh Huber [mailto:huber@alum.wpi.edu] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:41 AM To: wlug(a)mail.wlug.org Subject: Re: [Wlug] Comcast experiences Plug for Speakeasy.net Mike Frysinger <vapier(a)gentoo.org> writes: > the trouble is that if everyone has a cellphone and thus the local > line never gets used, you have to add $30 to the price of dsl since > that's how much a local line will run you -mike Check for the no long distance, local metered plans. I had this (before I canceled my phone line) and it cost $10 from verizon. After the excessive taxes and fees, it came out to around $16, if I recall. All outgoing calls cost money, so you really only want to do this if you don't use the phone for voice... -- Josh Huber _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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RE: [Wlug] Charter experiences? -was:Comcast experiences ?
by Martin, Eric 19 May '04

19 May '04

Um...what package did you have with Verizon / Charter? Last I checked, verizon was 49.99, and Charter only adds on $35 to your cable bill if you already have any form of cable (or it costs an extra 10 or 11 if you don't)...Granted those are base rates, but...'sides, buy the bridge, you can get one from Best Buy for $60 or less if you get rebates.... Eric -----Original Message----- From: Baris Hasdemir [mailto:penguen@hasdemir.com] Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2004 10:22 AM To: WLUG Subject: Re: [Wlug] Charter experiences? -was:Comcast experiences ? On Sun, 2004-05-16 at 03:04, Mike Frysinger wrote: > i was talking with a guy who claimed comcast provided great cable > service in > worcester and was basically way better than anything dsl could offer (i use > speakeasy myself and love it). seeing as how he is a non-computer person, i > took his opinion with a large grain of salt ... > > it did get me wondering though as ive never used comcast in worcester > myself, > just in holden (and it sucked a lot), how have other people got along with > comcast here ? looking for the standard fare, speeds/tech support/response > times/etc... > -mike > I did not like Charter's service very much when I switched to it from Verizon DSL. Charter charges ~10 dollars more than Verizon DSL including a rent for cable modem but they gave us 2Mbits (I Think they're now giving 3Mbits) Besides the higher bandwidth, most of the time especially in the evenings I experienced latencies, if it's the right word to use. For example, I click on an ordinary link, wait for sometime and *then* it finally starts loading which is fast, of course. So I got back to Verizon again. I have 1.5Mbits and I'm fine enough. Regarding the customer support, all I can say is they did not refund anything when I canceled my subscription in 20 days. Neither the installation fee(although I had to do it myself, since there was no working version of windows) nor usage fee. baris _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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Comcast experiences ?
by Mike Frysinger 19 May '04

19 May '04

i was talking with a guy who claimed comcast provided great cable service in worcester and was basically way better than anything dsl could offer (i use speakeasy myself and love it). seeing as how he is a non-computer person, i took his opinion with a large grain of salt ... it did get me wondering though as ive never used comcast in worcester myself, just in holden (and it sucked a lot), how have other people got along with comcast here ? looking for the standard fare, speeds/tech support/response times/etc... -mike

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RE: [Wlug] Comcast experiences ?
by Hemstreet, Jeffrey L (Jeffrey) 19 May '04

19 May '04

I have & like Charter... I had the same MAC problem 0->O when they typed it in. I've had less than 6 outages at an average of about day each time over the past 3 years. Tech support can take forever to get to since you call into level 1 and they ask the "is your PC plugged into the modem?" questions, but the second-level support is pretty good. Speed is good. 768K base service, but some people are getting 1.5-2 in areas that aren't limited. (My loop is pretty busy, but I still get a good connection.) jeff -----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces(a)mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf Of Martin, Eric Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:07 AM To: 'Worcester Linux Users Group' Subject: RE: [Wlug] Comcast experiences ? Charter's not too bad here...Sometimes their tech support is bad (but who's isn't) eg took me a week or 2 to convice them that they wrote my MAC for my bridge wrong, and that was why I couldn't get on the net...As far as speed I think it's fine. Agree? Disagree? -----Original Message----- From: Mike Frysinger [mailto:vapier@gentoo.org] Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2004 3:06 AM To: wlug(a)wlug.org Subject: Re: [Wlug] Comcast experiences ? err, replace every occurence of 'comcast' with 'charter' :) -mike _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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RE: [Wlug] Comcast experiences ?
by Martin, Eric 19 May '04

19 May '04

Charter's not too bad here...Sometimes their tech support is bad (but who's isn't) eg took me a week or 2 to convice them that they wrote my MAC for my bridge wrong, and that was why I couldn't get on the net...As far as speed I think it's fine. Agree? Disagree? -----Original Message----- From: Mike Frysinger [mailto:vapier@gentoo.org] Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2004 3:06 AM To: wlug(a)wlug.org Subject: Re: [Wlug] Comcast experiences ? err, replace every occurence of 'comcast' with 'charter' :) -mike _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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RE: [Wlug] SuSE 9.1
by Martin, Eric 19 May '04

19 May '04

Yeah, I ran 2.6.(can't remember patch) on my laptop for a while, and `ifconfig eth0' worked fine...One cool thing is that 2.6 did get pcmcia working, although it ran dog slow with some stuff...maybe I had to recompile a bunch of apps? I'll post a few when I get to play with 2.6 again Eric -----Original Message----- From: mike(a)beakerware.net [mailto:mike@beakerware.net] Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2004 10:11 PM To: Andy Stewart Cc: Worcester Linux Users Group Subject: Re: [Wlug] SuSE 9.1 > 7) The network devices are a little weird in 2.6. There isn't an > "ifup eth0" > or "ifup eth1" like there used to be. On my system, its "ifup > eth-id-00:00:00:00:00:00" (fill in your MAC address). Once its up and you > see it with ifconfig, the "standard" ifdown command works as always. While I'm not 100% familiar with SuSE, does your network interface appear if you do an 'ifconfig -a' before an ifup is issued? I think its a SuSE thing, not a 2.6 thing your seeing, maybe because SuSE doesn't load the network card module until an 'ifup' is done? -mike _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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Reminder: Upcoming WLUG Meeting
by Andy Stewart 17 May '04

17 May '04

Hi Everybody, Its that time again...time for our monthly WLUG meeting, which will be on Wednesday, May 19th at 7:00 PM in the usual place (see website for directions). At this meeting, our own Tim Keller will give a talk which he describes thus: ---start Tim--- Here's the title. Creating and Rendering 3D Objects in Linux using OSS tools. Here's the blurb. I'll be giving a general talk about some of the open source tools that are currently available on linux and using them to create 3D objects, scenes and animations. I'll show the pros, cons, cool features and short comings of these non commercial products. ---end Tim--- After the meeting, we'll go out for food & drink. I'm wondering if we want Mexican this month. We can decide at the meeting. See ya later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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SuSE 9.1
by Andy Stewart 16 May '04

16 May '04

HI everybody, I've received my copy of SuSE 9.1 and I've gotten it installed on my laptop. Here are my thoughts so far. 0) SuSE 9.1 comes on 2 double-sided DVDs and 5 CDs. There are 64 and 32-bit versions, so one must used the proper side of the DVD. 1) It took 2 hours to upgrade from SuSE 9.0 to SuSE 9.1 on my 1 GHz Sony Vaio laptop using the DVD. That seemed long to me. 2) It uses the 2.6.4 kernel. One new feature of that kernel caused me some temporary grief since I didn't understand what it was doing. The "subfs" filesystem type is used for removeable media. The user doesn't need to mount any CD or floppy, just put in the medium and reference it with "ls /media/ floppy" or whatever. The operating system figures out that the medium isn't mounted, mounts it, carries out your wish, and then unmounts it. Sometimes, I find this a bit annoying, but perhaps I'm just not yet used to it. 3) The ACPI power management on my laptop now actually works! Well, it works for the root user, anyway (kpowersave). I actually got about 45 minutes on a battery (instead of 10). The PCMCIA wireless card really suck the life out of the battery when used! I'm diving into the code to figure out why kpowersave won't work for J-random-user. There's probably some executable that needs setuid root or some such. I suspect I can be more agressive about power saving to get close to 60 minutes out of it. 4) I said "bye-bye" to the ide-scsi module, especially after reading some notes about Linus' opinion of that module and the author of cdrecord. Things work fine without it. 5) Sound works great after one simple command. 6) I got wireless, grub, the printer, the hard wired network, and even (I think) the onboard modem working very easily. I've never had the onboard modem working previously. 7) The network devices are a little weird in 2.6. There isn't an "ifup eth0" or "ifup eth1" like there used to be. On my system, its "ifup eth-id-00:00:00:00:00:00" (fill in your MAC address). Once its up and you see it with ifconfig, the "standard" ifdown command works as always. 8) SuSE 9.1 comes with KDE 3.2.1, with which I haven't yet played. Thunderstorm coming....singing of for now....... -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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Ftp & Samba questions
by Marc Hughes 13 May '04

13 May '04

Here's 2 quick questions. If I set up samba to be a domain controller. Can clients not participating in the domain still log in? What FTP server do you suggest for internal use that's low-load (5 max clients at a time) and low-maintenance? -Marc

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