Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 20, 2003 (Previously Published)
Section: Viewpoints

The continuing saga of Cyberwings hosting took a very curious turn this week. As we discussed in the previous piece on Cyberwings hosting, you'll know that the company's main collection of servers were down. This was due to an issue with their service provider Lightship. No one knows why Lightship discontinued service to Cyberwings, but it is known that the Cyberwings customers who have data there won't be able to get their data unless Cyberwings works out the issues with Lightship.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 20, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

Cyberwings is a hosting company based in Maine that has been operating for close to a year now. They started off as a very rock solid company, but seem to be suffering. Suffering the pains of growth or the pains of inexperience or the pains of business gone bad? No one knows and finding out the truth has been as hard as cracking an ancient lobster's shell.

My personal 6 month experience with Cyberwings began in January of this year. I found the need for additional hosting capacity to handle sites I was developing. My rock steady normal host, Hosting Matters, was a bit expensive for the playing around I wanted to do. They are the gold standard in virtual hosting, but I didn't need gold standard. I needed cheap.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: View Points

I'd like to start by saying "welcome" to the new members of the zealot community, the Linux supporters! Yes, this hardy group of folks join their legendary companions from the Mac and OS/2 camps in forming a new defition of zealot. Based on the mail I received Linux zealots are a notch above Mac zealots, but lag behind the OS/2 zealots.

I did respond to each and every one of the letters I got which were coherent. Some of the authors wanted me to perform animal acts which are illegal in all states but Arkansas, so I decided not to respond to them.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

Why oh why do people always think that something free can overtake something that costs money? If that were the case we'd all use freeware and a company named Microsoft wouldn't exist.

This lunacy is really starting to develop into a frenzied mob mentality with the popularity of Linux. Yes, Linux is a pretty cool operating system. Yes, it does do certain things well. Yes, it will never become mainstream.

Ok, I said it. Linux is DOA when it comes to integrating it into the real world life of computer users. Geek network administrators in Fortune 1000 companies yearning for the free range days are implementing Linux as e-mail servers, print servers, firewalls and even more. I don't know if this is a generation of new technical people wanting to emulate the old hands in the business, but it is not a big deal in the overall scheme of things. All it takes in one of these installations is a bug or unanticipated issue with the Linux installation and management will truly find out what user supported software means ... no company to back up the product.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: January 11, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

I was Persona NonGrata or however that legal term goes . . .

It all started about 1:00am a week ago. I was happily cruising around the net, reading and answering e-mail and working on the 100th issue of my ezine. All of the sudden my ISDN connection disconnected and I lost my connection.

No big deal, I tried to dial back into my ISP and was told I couldn't logon successfully. I've seen this before, so I rebooted and retried. Same error. Over and over and over again I tried with no luck. I decided to go to bed and try it in the morning.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: View Points

Some of you may think I am still without DSL. Nope. I had it installed from day one. Thanks for your notes of support, though.

I have found a sense of community at DSLReports, http://www.dslreports.com, which is a great site for learning about DSL. They have specific mailing lists for each DSL provider. This provides a great sense of community, as you can talk with others about issues, features, etc.

Well, on with the story . . .

OK, so if you tuned in last week you heard about my install date saga with DSL. The hardware install went ok, but alas, we weren't getting an Internet connection. We were getting a network connections, but when you tried to browse or ping onto an outside network you got nothing.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

I've had a 128K ISDN connection for the last two years. It's dial-up and costs me $110.00 a month. Add a $49.95 a month ISP fee for unlimited access and you have $159.95 per month. For the last six months I have seen the cable and DSL ads tout their fast service.

Intrigued, I did more research. With cable I found that the speeds were blazing and the price was low, but the downsides were just too great for me. For one, I had to share this bandwidth with those in my neighborhood. See, cable is like one big local area network. The more people on, the less your bandwidth goes. Second, I didn't like the fact others could see the traffic going across the network. Yep, leave it to some young geek to take a sniffer or something to the connection and read packets. Third, I really hate my cable company. I mean I hate them. My cable is sort of reliable, but the customer service is absolutley horrible. I could imagine my cable going out for 48 hours along with my internet access. I'd go through withdrawl.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

Ok, who has seen Yahoo!'s stock rise to $120 a share? Show of hands will be fine. That many? Is this insane or what? Don't get me wrong. I love Yahoo! It is my primary search engine when I know what I am looking for specifically like a company or government agency. (I use HotBot for those things like software drivers, etc.) Come on, though. The price is asinine. I read an article that described that if you look at the outstanding shares of Yahoo! and then look at the amount of shares traded you could make an argument that each outstanding share in play was traded four times during the week. No one was buying it to hold they were buying it to make money.

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

Two things happened lately to convince me the end of the golden age of PCs is near: Batman and Robin and Microsoft devouring WebTV.

Yes, I am a big Batman fan. Been to every premiere and actually think Michael Keaton was the last great Batman. It was with much anticipation I looked forward to last Friday. My lovely wife had bought two tickets for Batman and Robin as a Father's Day gift. As the days grew near I heard more and more about the movie. Roger Ebert eluded to the point of my commentary when he said, "My prescription for the series remains unchanged: scale down. We don't need to see $2 million on the screen every single minute."

Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: February 8,. 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

I love the Internet. I love being connected to the Internet. I am an Internet Freak. There. I admit it. Yes, I am an Internet Freak!

Part of being an Internet freak is using the Internet in ways other people use conventional items. Take newspapers. Never read them. I get all my news on-line, including local news. Take communicating with friends and family. Some pick up the phone and call, while I e-mail. Take the radio. The radio? Yes, the radio!