Community Sets Up Their Own DSL

Thrazzle Throne writes "The folks in rural Ruby Ranch got tired of lame dial-up server. They fought the phone company for use of their un-used lines and installed their own Dsl service. Very cool read."

Re:And they're down for the count

[American AC in Paris]

Wow. A small group of dedicated individuals fights the Telcoms, wins, and gets their own homebrew DSP ISP up and running.

Slashdot comes along, posts the story, and within seconds they're /.ed into oblivion.

Now isn't that just the nicest way to start off your small CO-OP ISP--a deluge of traffic from marginally interested geeks who'll forget all about you in 48 hours.

Editors et al, are you even considering the impact you have on these sites? You'll forgive me for being cynical, but the reasons [slashdot.org] you give for not caching smacks of "don't want to deal with it" rather than "genuinely concerned about the effect we have". (Wait six hours for breaking news [slashdot.org]? Heaven forfend...)

Slashdot, you're like a bad concert. You come into town unannounced, make downtown completely inaccessible for a day, and leave the next morning without so much as packing out your mess. Take some responsability for the social impact of the Slashdot Effect. Pursue a solution. It is important.

Bureaucracy

[m_evanchik]

From their FAQ, it really sounds like the biggest obstacle was the lack of cooperation from Qwest.

The Phone companies forget that they are public utilities. They are given certain privileges, not least of which is monopoly power, not so that they can turn a profit, but so that their service can do good for the community. The profit motive is just an incidental factor to encourage them to invest in providing that service.

Hats off to Ruby Ranch for having the moxie to get the thing done. I wish I could get 1.5Mbit SDSL for $60/month.

Re:And they're down for the count

[sehryan]

I definitely agree with your post. What I find ammusing is this little line from /. reply about why they don't cache...

I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?

Let me see...wait 6 hours for a "breaking" story, or wait 6 hours (or more) while the server in question gets back on its feet, having to rely on nothing but the article summary on /. which we all know is usually completely blown out of proportion or just plain wrong. Yeah, you're right CmdrTaco, not caching links is better!