Miguel De Anda <miguel@thedeanda.com> wrote:
> Cichlidiot wrote:

>> Miguel De Anda <miguel@thedeanda.com> wrote:
>>> You could do the bit torrent and and just leave your computer on until
>>> the weekend... you should have them by then and you would also be lending
>>> us your spare bandwidth, everybody wins!
>>
>> Actually, I couldn't. The tech support people at my ISP are just
>> knowledgable enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be considered good.
>> The service contract explicitly states that service will be terminated if
>> they detect viruses or illegal filesharing from your machine. They do have
>> enough knowledge to put up some monitoring tools to watch for such.
>> Unfortunately, they don't really distinguish legit filesharing from
>> illegit, they just pull the line. I really don't have the time to a) have
>> my line disconnected and b) be explaining to them why the traffic was
>> legit. The later is a particularly distasteful prospect because I'm pretty
>> sure they won't understand the concept of legitimate filesharing to
>> distribute free software (they've been pretty dim whenever I've mentioned
>> I'm running Linux when there's a network issue). I suppose I should
>> "thank" RIIA and MPA for this, as this clause was new to the contracts
>> when renewal came up last fall.

> OMG! that's just wrong. I'm assuming you don't have any alternatives right?
> I'm stuck with cable and I've had it for about 2 months now, and I liked
> when I had dsl better but I can't get that now. Its either cable or dial-up
> for me.

Well, it's a shared T1 line with very few network hogs for $20 a month
through my apartment complex. Now, there is cable modem service in this
town, except the cable company rolled it out without sufficient
infrastructure to support it, so now they're frantically replacing the
whole wiring in the town. Translation: slow before, intermitant outages
now. Not really worth paying more than twice per month for such service.
My former roommates tried DSL, and with as much as they muttered about
downtime and lag, it also doesn't seem worth the cost.

It all boils down to this. Cost vs benefit ratio before last year's
renewal tilted greatly towards sticking with the complex's Internet
access; particularly since the contract does not outlaw servers, so I can
run my MUD on my machine. With the new "file sharing" clause, all it
really impedes with is BitTorrent and I'm patient enough to wait for my
subscription disks, so it still isn't worth paying double or more for
cable or DSL, which could have similar clauses as well. What I really
should have done is taken up the part-time tech support job for the
complex when it came up during winter. Then I'd have the "inside edge" as
it were and could have more time to explain these concepts, or at least
put my machine on the "ignore" list in the monitoring tools, heh.