Oh, looks like I forgot one. "Can't wrap their text at 70 columns."
I'm feeling nice, I'll wrap it for you. But just this time.
> Well, its called "franchise internet services"... Someone with no clue
> can now open up an ISP and made 5% of the profit, and do all the work.
> And some people actually think they are going to make real money with
> it. Now, I haven't seen any high-end networking products being sold on
> QVC yet (like I actually turn on my TV or something).
Heh... Right. I don't even try to fool myself. I'm not in this business
to make money... At least not right now. Most secretaries make more than
the people around here. :) An ISP isn't some get rich quick scheme, its
lots of hard work, and a descently steep learning curve. Demanding that
things be easy isn't being realistic.
> Some of us are up to our necks making our systems better. Yesterday I
> went out and bought new CPUs for all my 486 servers (jumped them to
> 5x86/160s), which ran me about $300 for 6 systems, and about 6 hours of
> tweaking the NT systems to peak performace on these processors. I
Highly commendable.
> could have put that money into getting some programmer to write a
"Getting some programmer" Humm... Ok, maybe I'm just assuming a little
too much, but shouldn't your sysasmin be at least somewhat famillar with C
and Perl and stuff like that? It doesn't take very much to write
something that works. (Correct solutions will require more time etc...)
> no-multiple-accounts stuff, and probibly screw someting up on purpose or
> on accident and put a security hole bigger than my belt-buckle in it.
Heh... He said 'hole'. Heh, heh. (Actually, I've yet to backdoor my
radiusd, but you're right, it would be easy to mess it up big time.)
> If it were all just EEs and high-end programmers that were ISPs, there
> wouldn't be internet access anywhere outside of major cities. The
> profit level out in the sticks isn't as high, and where I may be happy
> with $30,000 year (or hell at this point for me, no profit), that
> programmer is used to making $100+k per year, and they aren't about to
> give that up and move out of there.
You're not hitting up the right audience. I'm sure your local community
college has some wiz kids that would be thrilled to work for you. The
high schools probably have 4 or 5 people that would be willing to work for
minimum wage just to work for an ISP.
> So, back up and think about what you are saying. We need to quit
> quarreling amongst ourselves and look at the big picture.... We all
> want features added to the Portmaster, and we all have the threat of the
> elimination of
> the small ISP.
Well, I think I'm working for a small ISP. 72 lines is small in my book.
Any competent sysadmin should be able to kludge something together to
prevent multiple logins if its such a big problem. At least a kludge can
hold you over until Livingston gets around to adding that feature, no?
> Hell, I want the portmaster to come with a 21" monitor, and play Duke
> Nukem 3D at 800x600 resolution full screen and full motion, for the
> same price, but it AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN..
You need to read misc.forsale.computers.monitors a bit more carefully.
We've picked up several 19" Mitsubishis for ~$600. :)
> So, there
Indeed.
| Matthew N. Dodd | winter@jurai.net | http://www.jurai.net/~winter |
| Technical Manager | mdodd@intersurf.net | http://www.intersurf.net |
| InterSurf Online | "Welcome to the net Sir, would you like a handbasket?"|