The saga continues.
Dec. 18th, 2004 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsApparently, one of the geeks at Drizzle decided that I was "hacking" or something, and in the course of about five minutes I slowly found all of my services cut off. First my password was cut out, then my ssh access was denied, and now I can't even get my email. And now their ssh server is denying all contact from my IP address.
All I was trying to do was determine the parameters of their NNTP service, which apparently is a low-speed corporate offering from newsfeeds.com. I don't mind them changing news servers, but the level of service I was getting from them changed in mid-stream, and I do object to them touting this as some amazing improvement when, in fact, it's a drop in performance of 80% and you're not allowed multiple streams, as they have a six-stream limit with newsfeeds.com. Anyone who uses mozilla knows that mozilla always establishes two streams anyway, one for maintenence and one for actual contact, so the maximum number of users they could have reading Usenet at any given time was three if they were using a modern newsreader. Since I was almost always at least one of those users (I'm pretty much connected to Usenet 24/7), I bet they thought my running multiple streamers was excessive and cut me off.
I don't see anything in their terms of service or any of their conditions about the permissions by which I access Usenet, and I'm annoyed that this has all happened Saturday morning, they don't have support staff working on weekends, and nobody has called me. The sweet irony is that in an hour or less the script on my website, to which I now have no access, will update and this complaint will be publicly visible on drizzle itself. Snerk.
So now I'm looking for an alternative. Anyone got one?
In the meantime, you can email me at elf.sternberg@speakeasy.net if you need to get in touch with me.
All I was trying to do was determine the parameters of their NNTP service, which apparently is a low-speed corporate offering from newsfeeds.com. I don't mind them changing news servers, but the level of service I was getting from them changed in mid-stream, and I do object to them touting this as some amazing improvement when, in fact, it's a drop in performance of 80% and you're not allowed multiple streams, as they have a six-stream limit with newsfeeds.com. Anyone who uses mozilla knows that mozilla always establishes two streams anyway, one for maintenence and one for actual contact, so the maximum number of users they could have reading Usenet at any given time was three if they were using a modern newsreader. Since I was almost always at least one of those users (I'm pretty much connected to Usenet 24/7), I bet they thought my running multiple streamers was excessive and cut me off.
I don't see anything in their terms of service or any of their conditions about the permissions by which I access Usenet, and I'm annoyed that this has all happened Saturday morning, they don't have support staff working on weekends, and nobody has called me. The sweet irony is that in an hour or less the script on my website, to which I now have no access, will update and this complaint will be publicly visible on drizzle itself. Snerk.
So now I'm looking for an alternative. Anyone got one?
In the meantime, you can email me at elf.sternberg@speakeasy.net if you need to get in touch with me.
Other providers
Date: 2004-12-18 10:58 pm (UTC)They seem to be devolving into an AOL-style "the internet is only what you see in a web browser" type of provider, the bastards.
Correspondingly, I haven't really used Usenet in about two years. I miss it, but I don't miss the signal-to-noise ratio -- which I can only fear has grown worse. I've occasionally thought about buying a Giganews (http://www.giganews.com) account, but that involves bleeding more money for something I've weaned myself from, so I've never followed through.
When I first moved to this state, I used Blarg (http://www.blarg.net/). They rocked. They got me DSL when Verizon said my address wasn't serviceable. They explicitly stated "unlimited transfer" on my 768 kilobit line. (That included Usenet, if I remember correctly.) They included dial-up access in the account, no extra charge. They ran and supported Linux. I could get a live, friendly geek on the phone without having to go through an operator.
God, I hated to give them up. But when I moved, a cable modem was the only faster-than-dialup option available.
I miss Blarg. They were friendly. And that is such a rare trait in a company these days.
Bryan.