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Re: [LUG] .bad apple.

 

 On 28/03/2013 19:33, Simon Avery wrote:
<Snip most of your reply that I agree with, or at least appreciate you
understand why you've made choices>

[1] Who remembers when an ISP account meant connection, email, usenet and
webspace?  Seems we're getting less for more money these days
Um, my isp still provides email, webhosting and usenet.
Fair point.. regarding email I meant hosted themselves, not farmed out to a third party.
Although I don't know why... Email, as already discussed. Plenty of
choice out there, and as linux users we are all familiar that we can
run mail servers ourselves for free.

Webhosting - domains are cheap and having a
isp.net.uk/users/username/zyx/~user url isn't that attractive if you
want to give it out. And again, you can host that yourself on your
linux box if traffic isn't scary.
As you've probably noticed with my email address, I do have my own domain.with webhosting and email. I particularly like the flexibility to bin any address that starts attracting large amounts of spam as I can then simply notify any service that address is linked to of the replacement.
Usenet. I recall a discussion in 1996 at an isp I worked at where they
were already dropping binary groups because they made up over 80% of
traffic, and I can only imagine it's even higher now. And even then,
the non-binaries were often the hangout of spammers, cross-posting
politickers and hate mongers. That negativity drove groups to forums
and now, more so to Facebook.

But seriously, more for less? ADSL is very cheap imo, certainly
considering the use I get out of it. It's also very reliable. Go back
a few years and remember a penny a minute dialup charges (and higher
before that), and I had ISDN home highway. £80 a month for 64kbit in
about 2002 (and call charges, two call charges if I wanted 128kbit)
and at least once a year it would stop working entirely, taking up to
a month to get repaired.   Now I can pay as little as £20 for over
20mbit of always-on low latency and nearly always working connection.

So yeah, I disagree with your statement. I think we've very well
served and we've just grown to take some amazing things for granted.

Kids today don't know they're born... etc etc, grump grump. :)
*lol* I remember my Programme Director in university saying that to me. He'd apparently forgotten I was a mature student, which I reminded him of with the reply 'Who are you calling a kid? I'm three years older than you!' :)

I think my 'more for less' comment was probably remembering last time Virginmedia itemised the services on my bill - they stopped doing that a while ago. Back then I had a 10Mb connection for £37 pm when they were touting half that to new customers (and that was the price after the introductory period). It seems there is no loyalty left anymore - I've been with them nearly 14 years and when I last asked they stuck rigidly to their 'New customers only' policy. I dread to think what they're stinging me for the 60Mb they've upgraded me to now - allegedly at no extra cost, but then I don't know what I'm being charged now.

Oh yes, the other point was they deleted my email account with them because I hadn't used it to send mail for a while. Never mind the fact I'm paying them for it, and I was receiving mail on it that was being forwarded to my domain.

Sorry I think I'm ranting now :)
(And if you want more of the same, talk to me about PC hardware prices!)
You mean the fact you can't build a PC for the price they're slinging them out for now? I don't think you can for the same specification, that's for sure, in fact I had this discussion with the editor of one of the PC mags recently and we agreed the only people building their PCs these days are enthusiasts and (probably) gamers who want a very specific spec.

Julian

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