Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> >    In the long term,it's a good investment,as any PC you have only needs an
> > ethernet card to allow it on the internet,something very handy when FTPing
> > those slackware files.DSL lite is generally available for 19.00$ or less a
> > mo.If you ever get DSL,let me know,I'll help you set it up.God knows I did
> > it for a living long enough...........lol.
>
> A problem with DSL is that we go on the internet from three addresses and I 
> doubt any DSL provider would give us three connections for the same price. 
> If they did, I could then get a cell phone for cheaper than three land phone 
> lines.  Some day the house we have been building since 1986 may get done.  I 
> got the last party line in town there (cheap and unshared).

You might want to consider wireless, too. There are plenty of unsecured 
wireless networks popping up all over the place. If you have a neighbor 
you're on friendly terms with, you might ask if you can share their 
connection for a few bucks a month. If you have an older Pentium laptop, 
and a supported wireless card (I'm using an old Orinoco that has no 
encryption capablities and is supported by every Linux I've tried it with) 
you can get a wireless network sniffing program called "Kismet." That 
let's you detect wireless networks, the channels they use. ssid's and 
whether they're using encryption. You might find there's a wireless 
network already within range of one or more of your locations.

On that note, I think wireless is going to get more and more prevalent. 
Already there are community networks springing up in various places that 
cover significant distance and even allow roaming. There a Linux project 
geared toward producing a distro that specifically sets up the nodes of 
such a community network. I'd think your area would be pretty ripe for 
this sort of thing.

James