On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:15:04 -0400, Larry wrote:

Skype In, with your own phone number, is $US28/YEAR...a princely sum most
can't afford. Your Skype In number doesn't HAVE to be where you live,
either!

Larry, if you wouldn't mind, can you tell us again about your Skype
telephone device?

Vonage sucks. They're in such trouble that Circuit City has a Vonage
interconnect device that they are selling for $50...WITH A $100
REBATE! I think you have to enslave yourself to Vonage for a couple of
years to get the rebate or we would have been rippin' off CC for $50
by the carload...(c;

Vonage is GREAT. I replaced my two telco lines with same via Vonage -
kept my numbers I've had for years and which are in a dozen work
industry directories and a zillion business cards passed out over the
years. I plug my fax machine and any other telephone equipment right in.
No need to have a pc or laptop running. I can access voicemail by phone,
by web, or even have it emailed to me. I can have different outgoing
messages for different times. If I'm on the run I can set the lines to
fwd to another number, or even "hunt" me one by one. Or ring several
numbers at once.

All for a shade over $30 a month, TOTAL, every conceivable option
included. I couldn't even get one line with no features on a regular
Telco for that.

And nobody needs to buy any hardware or deal with any rebates as Vonage
supplies the router/adapter for free. Always has.

Vonage is GREAT!

"krj" wrote

Yes, There is a downside that you don't see. Down island the cost to
connect at the internet cafe's is sometimes $6.00 for the first 10 minutes
and $1.00/min after that.
krj

Depends on where you are and your "web ethics". ;-) A number of restaurants
and bars in the BVI, SXM and StV&G have found that free wifi is a big
drawing card. Most offer free wifi or the first half hour free if you order
something. Many marinas offer free wifi with slip rent and as a last resort
several operations offer multiple hotspots aimed out into anchorages for $50
to $60/week. BVIWifi is really cool. They run ten 500mw hotspots scattered
around the BVI. With a decent antenna and a 200mw adapter you can connect
from up to a couple of miles away.

There is also a growing number of unsecured APs sprouting up all over the
islands. Last week in a 2 mile drive along Ridge Road in Tortola my Net
Stumbler discovered over 50 unsecured APs with usable signal. Seems like
every villa is installing an access point and just leaving them up even when
the place is vacant. Not saying you should constantly piggyback on an AP
uninvited but if you really need to make a call it is possible almost
anywhere.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"Glenn Ashmore" wrote in
news
There is also a growing number of unsecured APs sprouting up all over
the islands. Last week in a 2 mile drive along Ridge Road in Tortola
my Net Stumbler discovered over 50 unsecured APs with usable signal.
Seems like every villa is installing an access point and just leaving
them up even when the place is vacant. Not saying you should
constantly piggyback on an AP uninvited but if you really need to make
a call it is possible almost anywhere.



While I'm very proud of all of you who feel guilty in some way of using
someone else's wifi, I don't think you need be. If they don't want you
to use it, they simply WEP protect it, which is like locking your house
to keep the public from using your bathroom. The serious hacker is going
to use your WEP-protected wifi, anyway, and that's where to draw the
line.

My wifi is open to the public. Many of the boys in the barracks at CAFB
are using my bandwidth because I put the wifi hotspot 50' up the tree
outside in an inverted plastic bucket to increase range with a high-
powered hotspot and high gain, space diversity antennas. They, in turn,
have built Pringle's can 2400 Mhz antennas and stuck them on the roof.
If I need my bandwidth I simply unplug that open router from the main
router while I need it. If there's an attack, and there has been, I
leave it offline for a week or two until the attacker gives up.

Anyone leaving an open wifi port is, as far as I know, leaving his wifi
as an open hotspot, a public service to the rest of us. You should leave
yours open so anyone needing bandwidth can get it within a half block of
your house, unless it becomes a bandwidth hog from someone abusing your
good deed. If everyone did this, everyone with wifi would benefit as
there would be so much bandwidth across a city there would be no need of
companies selling bandwidth, sucking the blood of all of us. How stupid
it is we all live like hermits protecting our turf with sticks.

As a side benefit of the open wifi hotspot, government bureaucrats hell
bent on tracking every byte from you to anywhere now have a problem.
"Your honor, a direct connection from this person's IP address to
timbucktoo.com was noted by our government spy computers many times over
the last 12 months."....the prosecuting bureaucrat explains with that
goddamned smirk on his face. "Ladies and Gentlemen of the JURY, Mr.
Soandso has, as a public service, an open wifi hotspot accessable by
anyone who is within radio range of his home. It could have been anyone
connecting to his free hotspot that connected his IP to timbucktoo.com,
so what the government bureaucrats have recorded in their snooping means
nothing." Would you convict him? Of course not...which is why
government snoopers are terrified of open wifi hotspots rendering their
snooping useless to prosecute.....(c; You become an internet provider,
which puts you under the same protection laws as Comcast and Bell$outh,
unresponsible for what flows through your system you're providing free.

It's why the FCC doesn't allow you to have a 25 watt wifi router with a 5
mile range.....(c; It's about "control", same as always.

Using anyone's open wifi hotspot is NOT a sin-of-the-flesh.....Help
yourself. Use mine SSID W4CSC



--
-- (shameless tagline) --
If you're sending someone some Styrofoam,
what do you pack it in?

Don White wrote in
:

Larry wrote:
snip..

BTW, your computer will run 24/7/365 for about 30 years between
failures....at full power. The servers do all the time. Mine hasn't
been shut down in years! I wear out the keyboard, first. A priest
also told me it was NOT a serious sin to leave it running, even
downloading....


Don't you blasheme!


"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been 22 years since my last
confession and these are my sins." (Lay Z-fold tractor paper list up on
the little shelf where the priest can see it and start reading the list.)

"I left my computer on running Skype all year."

"I left my wifi hotspot open 24/7 so anyone can use my bandwidth for
free, hoping they will leave theirs open so I can use theirs when I'm by
their house for free."

"I slept with 2,847 horny teenage girls I wasn't married to and had a
great time." (At this point, ignore the cries of anguish from behind the
screen and go on reading....)......(c;

(Let him get his own teenagers.)

--
-- (shameless tagline) --
If you're sending someone some Styrofoam,
what do you pack it in?

Larry wrote:
Wayne.B wrote in
:


Larry, if you wouldn't mind, can you tell us again about your Skype
telephone device?





You don't need any "device", except a mic of some kind and some speakers
hooked to a computer to use Skype. Skype is simply a piece of Windows
software. *Your only requirement is a Win XP PC*, or now since Skype for
Mobile was coded a Windows CE or later (mine is Windows Mobile 5.01) PDA.
As most notebook/laptop computers run WinXP, they all run Skype's main
software as good as they do at home.

snip...

Ah ha! I'm still running Windows 98. No Skype until I upgrade.

Larry wrote:
....

While I'm very proud of all of you who feel guilty in some way of using
someone else's wifi, I don't think you need be. If they don't want you
to use it, they simply WEP protect it, which is like locking your house
to keep the public from using your bathroom.

So, whenever you need to go to the bathroom, you just try a nearby
house to see if its unlocked? Why don't you just add an outhouse?

On the WiFi issue, I've been skeptical in the past, but my migrant
liveaboard friends said that on their current trip south (from Nova
Scotia, now somewhere around NJ) they've had almost continuous WiFi
connections using an antenna they hoist up. These are folks who would
typically anchor out, away from the crowds. They said their biggest
problem is too many signals, all with the default SSID's.

One odd problem they have is they can't get two computers to share one
feed. They ended up getting a second antenna.

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 16:41:04 -0400, Jeff wrote:

Wifi access on the water continues to improve very rapidly. Amost all
major marinas and harbors, even in the Bahamas, have some sort of wifi
service, some free, some not. Glenn Ashmore also reports good wifi
availability in the BVI and USVI.

One odd problem they have is they can't get two computers to share one
feed. They ended up getting a second antenna.

It can be done, either with a router, or Windows Internet Connection
Sharing (ICS). It may take some minor networking proficiency. There
are sometimes IP conflicts between the wifi client and the router if
they both use the same defaults. It's usually easy enough to change
the settings once you recognize the problem.

Jeff wrote in news:PPydne-q9vd_89_YnZ2dnUVZ_v-
:

So, whenever you need to go to the bathroom, you just try a nearby
house to see if its unlocked? Why don't you just add an outhouse?



Your being a little absurd, of course.....



--
-- (shameless tagline) --
If you're sending someone some Styrofoam,
what do you pack it in?

On Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:05:09 -0400, Larry wrote:

Is there a downside you can see I don't?....(c;
I can think of 2 main reasons why I don't use it.

1. If Don is on a cable, Skype software may identify his connection as a
supernode, thus Don's $50/mnth bandwidth is used to route calls for Skype,
not that they let Don know that that's what could happen nor does Skype
reimburse Don for the use of a service that Don is paying for.
2. Proprietary software/encryption/protocols that according to the
head-honcho at Skype "will not pass OpenSource auditing for security".