Welcome to the Fiberhood 132
cpfeifer writes "According to this article in the Washington Post, high-end subdivisions are running fiber-optic cable to each house and rolling the cost of broadband, digital cable and local phone service into the home owners association cost. Apparantly home pre-wired for broadband have a better resale value and higher demand in the market."
Re:How long have we been asking for this? (Score:2)
So you're still waiting.
Re:How long have we been asking for this? (Score:2)
Fiber means shit, if the telco does nothing with it.
Most people live in areas where they can get high-speed Internet access, the problem is the Telcos/Cablecos do not want to spend the money! Man, I hate reading this crap about high speed bandwidth options, there is no options, you get what your local companies give you. Most of us get squat.
This can be seen... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's one thing.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, I guess this is part of the reason I'd never live in one of these "communities."
Re:It's one thing.. (Score:3, Informative)
the service terms:
http://www.openband.net/pdf_files/Interne
Note the part about how they reserve the right to
collect info on your browsing habits.
And of course even though that have all this acces
you still can't host any services.
Lack of competition? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lack of competition? (Score:1)
--
Re:Lack of competition? (Score:2)
Re:Lack of competition? (Score:1)
What seems to be happening right now is either the first util to go in gets the market share, or the management group decides what is thought of as the best service (usually based mostly on price or sales pitch).
The only problem with a MIX is there is a good possibility that one service may have something you want, but some other service may have something else you want (IE: VOD on one network, really high quality data access on the other).
vision of the future (Score:1)
Shhh! (Score:2)
Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1)
Give me a new house, smartly wired with high quality cat-5, and a well designed termination closet. I'll add an 802.11[a|b|g] access point or three and its looking like a dream setup to me.
I can get an entire switched ethernet setup for a fraction of the price it will cost me to get the ATM switches and nics for this place!
Fiber has a theoretical bandwidth in the Gbps if not Tbps range. This seems like overkill for all my Quake, P0rn, and recipe archival needs.
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:2)
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1)
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:2)
The orginal post suggestted that fiber was overkill, and I'd have to agree. A fully switched 100MBPS network with 802.1a WAP in the house and 1 DSL or even cable modem pipe up to the house would do fine. Right now I work in a building setup like this, except with a T1 to the home office, and it supports >100 people.
Though your certainly right. I might pay to get fiber into the house, depending on cost, but take it from there myself.
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1)
My cable modem at home (Time warner) is good but I like to come in to work on sundays so I can have the T1 all for myself. You know how long it takes to download the three ISOs for RedHat 7.3 on a T1? 5 hours. I would do it on my cable modem, but that would take more than 24 hours.
And heck, people are going to be getting DVD and HDTV content via broadband. They'd better get T1 level each.
And yes, if I had had the options to have fiber in my condo, I would definitely have ponied up 10 grand more. If I stay 5 years, that's $2,000 a year, or $166 a month. For faster than T1? Heck, count me in.
Remember, there are people that make more money the faster their connection to the net. I would make $500 a month more per month utilizing that connection.
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:2)
You make a good point, and certainly if it makes economic sense for me I'd get the fiber. However:
1. I work for an R&D organization so it isn't just a 100 people browsing the web & emailing, it's mostly engineers moving schematics, board designs, code, & binaries between us & contractors, customers, & other company sites.
2. I downloaded the RedHat 7.3 ISOs on my cable modem at home (Comcast) in about 5 hours. That's after they started capping rates.
Considering the comments you've made, I'll certainly investigate & compare my options carefully before deciding the route to go.
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1, Informative)
Well here's a few reasons why they went with the ATM of Fibre solution:
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:3, Informative)
Pulte Homes built a new 52 home developement here in Santa Clara, CA and contracted to FiberRide to handle connecting them to the internet. Each house is wired inside with cat 5 to each room. The houses are then connected to a central data center by fiber. This data center houses a Ciena optical switch which is directly connected to the internet.
Bandwidth is rate-limited at the data center and each house gets as much symetrical bandwith as the owners are willing to pay for. $29/month gets you 200kps. I'm not sure about the upper limit, but I think it's in the 8MB/ps range.
The initial cost of installing the cable runs and the data center is included with the purchase price of the house just like other utilites. FiberRide has wired a number of other new communities using the same layout and they have several competitors which are in essentially the same business.
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:2)
Anyway, I wish my neighborhood did something like that. We had a hard enough time trying to get AT&T to put in regular cable TV, let alone cable internet (and this is in a middle- to high-end Dallas suburb).
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1)
Now I suspect the service you get from a local data center is a LOT better than you get from Pac Bell, and of course your house is wired already, but still, speed-wise, that ain't good enough. The 8Mbps sounds good, but what does that cost? $1,500 a month?
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1)
Static IP's are $5/month a pop
When it comes to what you do with the bandwidth, we currently just ask that it's legal.
ATM is dead (Score:2)
Re:ATM is dead (Score:1, Interesting)
Now if you want interoperability 10Gbit Ethernet is the only way to go simply as its the only group of standards to have IEEE defined long haul optics and physical layer. Cost will be $100,000 for the optics, $30,000 for the chassis, another $10,000 for the software (assuming foundry, extreme or cisco switch is used) throw in maybe another $30,000 for the fans and psu's and your sorted. Total cost $170,000 per node.
Now who says there's not life in ATM for the next few years considering ATM NIC's can be had for under $1000.
Re:Marketing Over Practicality (Score:1)
The company did some Cat 5 wiring for me as part of the install and the couple of computers in the house plug into a NAT box.
You wouldn't believe how fast those Microsoft Service Packs download!
Why Fiber? Because AT&T Broadband couldn't deliver me a dedicated 10 Mbps (in both directions) in their wildest dreams. You think you can get by with less, but when I was a kid, those guys with 2400 baud modems were on the bleeding edge! Then it was 9600, then 28.8k. Now I've got 10 Mbps and wonder if they'll be swapping out my home demarcation unit for one that delivers 100 Mbps instead in a couple of years.
Hey, at least it's an option for me!
Look at Korea (Score:5, Informative)
to be honest... (Score:2)
Bah, the UK can really suck sometimes
Re:to be honest... (Score:2)
Bah, the UK can really suck sometimes
The wonders of free market economics. Blame Thatcher. In just fifteen years the UK has become the country with the worst rail and health systems in Europe. I read in the papers today (I don't live in the UK) that the UK is now 'de-privitising' the rail system. What an expensive experiment Thatcherism has turned out to be.
Whilst I'm ranting about the UK, here's a funny thing. Apparently most people in the UK think that the Euro is a "rip-off" and will result in higher prices for Brits if they enter. And this is the country where almost everything is more expensive than the rest of Europe! People travel to France to buy wine and Germany to buy cars, because they're so expensive in the UK!
Ok rant over. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about the UK. It's just that some things look weird when you're on the outside.
Re:to be honest... (Score:1)
Yeah, and on the inside too
Don't even get me started on the states though.. at the end of the day everywhere has its problems. I just felt like ranting about mine here just happen to be broadband-related.
Re:to be honest... (Score:2)
Careful! You'll be branded a hippy liberal eurotrash socialist communist America-hating appeaser (or some combination of those) if you say negative things about the good old US of A!
Re:to be honest... (Score:1)
Now, I am certainly no free-market zealot, but the fact is that when your tax rates keep rising in order to keep public servics available to all, at some point more and more people make the decision to stop working and to just live off the free public services. This of course, in the long run, means that government revenues are not as high as they need to be, and taxes have to be raised again, in a negative cycle.
On the whole, the British economy today is far better than the German or French economies - and quite the opposite was true when Thatcher came to power. I'd say Britain has done something right. Clearly the majority of voters feel so, as it's been Thatcher, Major (Tory), and Blair (Labour emulating Tory policies) since 1980.
Re:to be honest... (Score:2)
Well, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree. I think Tony Blairs policys are extremely different to Thatchers - his 'third way' which balances free market economics and the social contract. Personally I think he's got it (mostly) right. If you think 'Blairism' is like 'Thatcherism' then you have a very bad memory!
Re:to be honest... (Score:2)
Dear Anonymous,
Wow. What brought that on? I am not a communist, I'm not sure what gave you that idea. Nor am I anti-American, but juding by your anonymous tirade you would like to turn me into one!
costs lots o $ (Score:2)
Sounds Like a mess, but probibly worth it.
56-70Mbps? (Score:5, Interesting)
While the maximum throughput can easily be that fast, the total bandwidth they are getting through those lines can't be more than usual 10-30Kbps/user in most of shared systems. They pay $135/mo for that plus digital cable TV + phone, but phone and cable TV are dirt cheap, so they pay $60-80/mo for the network connection -- comparable with high-end DSL, but this is a shared environment, it's supposed to be cheaper just because they buy the bandwidth for everyone at once. And what are the limitations -- can they run servers, do they have mandatory proxies on that?
Also $100/mo just to "maintain" security and web-controlled sprinklers is insane -- those things are just devices, they run themselves, why the monthly fee?
I doubt that good HOA (if it's HOA maintaining that and not just some company that is getting a hefty profit from that) will jack up the fees that much.
Re:56-70Mbps? (Score:1)
No you can not run a server at least according to
the Openband T&Cs I see at:
http://www.openband.net/pdf_files/Internet_t_an
Re:56-70Mbps? (Score:2)
It's easy to make an over-expensive setup (that the users will pay for), then charge them for it through the nose (including mandatory service package) yet make sure that their actual use will be the same as with half-decent DSL (so you just buy piddly T-1 for each 80-100 users, with actual cost per user at most $15 and call it broadband).
Re:56-70Mbps? (Score:2)
Have you ever tripped over a sprinker head? It happens. When it does, who replaces it?
A security alarm is great, but wouldn't it be better if a security officer actually came out to your house and tried to catch the burglar if you weren't home? A judge here recently ruled that police have no right to enter your home if the front door is open and the burglar alarm is sounding, unless they get your permission first, but someone working for a security company you're paying a monthly fee to would clearly be able to do that.
(Hopefully the ruling I mentioned will be overturned; in the mean time local police departments have said they will continue to do their jobs instead of just driving away like the judge seems to think they should.)
Re:56-70Mbps? (Score:2)
Have you ever tripped over a sprinker head? It happens. When it does, who replaces it?
Whoever I'll call from a company that does sprinklers repair. I don't think that $100/mo is a package that both "web-enables" sprinklers and gives an owner free repairs while "not web-enabled" owners have to pay for repairs.
A security alarm is great, but wouldn't it be better if a security officer actually came out to your house and tried to catch the burglar if you weren't home?
Remote monitoring of security systems is a separate service, and it doesn't cost $100/mo either.
Re:56-70Mbps? (Score:1)
House had contraband in it. House had alarm go off. Cops go in and see drugs. Owners move to suppress evidence, citing entry without warrant, no probable cause, etc & therefore contraband evidence cannot be used at trial. Cops say that alarm was an "invitation" to entry so they didn't need a warrant & therefore could use contraband evidence against Owners. Judge agrees with Owners, evidence thrown out.
If the above was what happened in the case you are talking about, then all it means is that, sure, the cops can go in, but if they find evidence of illegal activity, it cannot be used in court. Such a ruling would in no way prevent cops from entering to stop a criminal -- it would just keep them from busting the owners.
Re:56-70Mbps? (Score:1)
Could be too restrictive (Score:1)
Re:Could be too restrictive (Score:1)
However, in the case of the fiber connection, unless you're setting up a viewscreen in the front yard so everyone can see what web sites you're surfing, none of your neighbors should ever know what you're doing, so it can't lower property values, and therefore should not be included in a list of "prohibited activities".
Kierthos
Yes (Score:2)
The good news is that your neighbors are likely a lot of ignorent baffons when it comes to technology, so the few people who (a) are tech savy and (b) are willing to contribute the effort to the neighborhood could exercise enough power to prevent bandwidth caps. Hopefully these people would be honest enough to bill the extra bandwidth to the right people.
Anyway, the classical home owners association nazis are not a major threat here. Assuming they actually vote on things you should be able to manage things like cost quite effectivly. Heck, I say do this for phone lines too and cut your monthly phone bill in half. The real risk here is that the developer would maintain significant control over the homeowners. You could end up paying more for internet if the developer was taking a cut off the monthly service.. or taking a kickback for forcing the development to stay with a specific provider.
Re:Yes (Score:1)
Actually, no, there aren't really any rules concerning running a proxy (at least in the US). In fact, there aren't really any rules concerning anything in home owner associations, or the Internet, or FTTH.
It may not be fair, but home owner's associations do tend to have a lot of say in how your house looks and what you can and can't do. The usual answer is "take it or leave it." And, since you singned the contract when you moved in, that is usually just fine.
What needs to happen is a total decoupling of content and infrastructure. There is no reason for my ISP to provide me e-mail, news access, etc. It takes resources away from what they seem to want to do, which is to run a network, and they don't seem to do it very well, either. Yet, I use it and pay for it. If they would let me drop their e-mail and news access for a reduction in the monthly rate, I would find some other provider for these services (or, better yet, just set up my own server).
Re:Could be too restrictive (Score:1)
You are a bitch to the developers, they pack houses in like sardines (sp?) so you have no choice but to see your 27 closest neighbors. If you had some space for a yard and some trees it should not matter what fucking color your mailbox is. They even limit your shrubbery, I'd would not be surprised if they start banning cars older then 10 years from your driveway. Here in the DC suburbs the housing market is still kicking. I pitty the new owners of the nice $600K 3000ft2 houses on a 3500ft2 lots. Don't have cable? Walk out on the beautiful backdeck of your sunroom and look around, I'm sure you can see at least 15 of your neighbors tv's.
I'm sure some people enjoy this lifestyle and in some areas of the country it is unavoidable. In the DC area there is tons of land in 5 or 10 acre pieces that would be cheaper and better then the prefab subdivision choice.
Fiber to the door is plain silly (Score:2)
Not to mention, given that cable providers are going to metered bandwidth on measly 1.5mbps connections, DOCSIS cable modems provide MORE than enough bandwidth for the forseeable future. (That's maxes of 45mbps non-shared down and 11mbps shared up.) But soon enough you won't even be allowed to use that at peak all the time, at least not without paying a lot more money, to the point where you might as well get your own T1, which is... you guessed it, carried over copper.
Want to do me a favor when you wire my home? Run a LOT of copper, and a couple chunks of coax. The fiber would be cute but I doubt I'll ever need fiber to my door, and more to the point, I doubt anyone will ever provide me anything via fiber which wouldn't be better (and more cheaply) provided over copper.
Re:Fiber to the door is plain silly (Score:5, Interesting)
No it isn't Re:Fiber to the door is plain silly (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget these houses could be there for the next 50 years or more. Are you saying they will not want more than 1 Gigabit per second, over the entire life of the building?
-Ian
Re:Fiber to the door is plain silly (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think many people live less then 100m from the phone office
why do you need fiber? Do you actually anticipate having more than a gigabit of traffic to your house? It costs too much to terminate the stuff. People who buy a house just because it has fiber are missing out on reality.
Does anyone anticipate ever having more then 640k of ram? Think about how long a home is going to be around.
Re:Fiber to the door is plain silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural Gas Company to Rule Them All (Score:2)
They have to bury their pipes anyway. It's dead easy to also run fiber at the same time. Goodbye telco. Add in some efficient fuel cells for electricity, and the power companies are toast. Heck, they could do damage to auto gas stations by figuring out how to refuel electric cars.
What I particularly like about this scheme is that power poles would disappear. What an eyesore they are!
(well, i can dream, anyway...)
Re:Natural Gas Company to Rule Them All (Score:1)
Re:Natural Gas Company to Rule Them All (Score:1)
Interesting you should bring that up - there have actually been a few R&D projects at the natural gas utility in Southern California trying to figure out how to run fiber THROUGH the natural gas pipes. Wild, huh?
This is a good/bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)
These developers just assume that they HAVE to do it, or that no one will buy their homes without PacBell/AT&T service (insert your appropriate local monopoly here). This couldn't be further from the truth. One of the deciding factors in choosing where I lived was the availablility of CHOICE. Note I said choice, not alternate carriers.
What happens if you only have an alternative carrier who runs only fiber to the home, and then setups a boilerplate EULA with terms that you don't agree to? The monopolies have to get permission from the Public Utilities Commission before they change any of the long standing rules and regulations. And, in theory, if they tried to do something devious, like charging you extra for modem versus voice calls (which they tried) we can cry loudly to the PUC and get it defeated (which fortunately we did or the Internet might not have grown at the rate that it did).
The best thing a developer could do is lay smurf tubes all over the place and then leasing them to whatever provider is interested in setting up service. Then, fill one set of tubes with fiber infrastructer and lease that to whoever wants to provide service (be it data, video, VoIP, whatever) over that fiber. Free open access to whoever wants it. Heck, the local monopolies might even use one of their business-class subdivisions to provide those kinda of services to home level consumers for once. They might even do it at a price consumers can afford.
But the point is you need choice. Where I live, we have fiber to the home service. But the company went bankrupt and it now my fiber to the home service is being run by the company who purchased them. So far, nothing has changed, but I'm glad that just in case they decide to do somethign stupid...I can always come crawling back to the local monopolies because this development just happens to have wiring for both.
- JoeShmoe
.
Re:This is a good/bad thing (Score:2)
Re:This is a good/bad thing (Score:2)
improved motivation for broadband deployment (Score:2)
People have complained already "lack of competition." Hello? With access to Cable Internet as well as DSL? It's simple for business people to understand that when there are obvious options, and obvious interest in the product, it's an obvious market zone to install services if they aren't already present. The only possible reason I could imagine they [cable and DSL] wouldn't want to enter that market is that the competition would drive prices lower and they wouldn't make "as much" money. Eventually, demand for the service at a reasonable and acceptable price will be met. This is just another step in that direction.
The new digital divide (Score:2)
Seen it, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to go this route and are building a new home, make sure you DEMAND that your home is at least framed in 2x6s (2x10 is optimal, IMHO) and covered in strong plywood. If I were the homeowner, I wouldn't be happy to know that someone can break into my home with a super soaker and a pocket knife...
Be careful which builder you choose, and make sure you supervise the construction at every step. Otherwise, the resale value won't be shit, fiber or not. Just another case of buyer beware...
Now, let's see how many ACs flame me because they know better. Seems to be a curse of mine lately...
Re:Seen it, but... (Score:2)
And the fact that 2x6 is considered the bare minimum for framing is the sad part. Also, if you tr4y to surpervise the building in such a development I don't think you get a better home, all you see is all the drunks, criminals and amateurs who have ovverrun these mega developments. And yes, I know that there are honest trademen, but they quickly get away from the Ryland and toll bros as quickly as possible and work on projects that aren't going to nickle and dime them into poor quality work.
Chrisd
Re:Seen it, but... (Score:2)
True story... (OT to say the least) (Score:3, Interesting)
One night, he was out hitting golfballs into the riverbed (yeah, the clue that the development is built in a riverbed in the Phoenix area, where flashfloods are a rarity during monsoon season - no clues here) from his backyard - when he hit one and it hit a fence post...
Bounced off the fencepost (and missed him) and hit the house! Went THROUGH the wall, clean through - leaving a golf-ball sized hole, damage on the inside of the house (golf ball bouncing around). There was nothing in between the stucco on the outside and the drywall on the inside - just insulation and some styrofoam board!
My wife and I, well - we bought a home made from block, in an established neighborhood. Our house is much older (going on 30 years), but it has better construction, looks nice, great neighborhood, and best of all...
NO DAMN HOA!
Lesson from telco/cable cos (Score:2, Insightful)
Fortunately, the majority of our roads are not toll roads and they are not controlled by private monopolists. Our information links need to meet these same standards. Municipal or customer ownership of the last mile and a carrier-neutral colo are musts for progress.
PS. Connect our schools and libraries first.
100 Mbps at home (Score:1)
As usual, I'll post the URL to the page where my parent's 100 Mbps FTTH project is described.
It has been slashdotted before (it could stand the load, thanks to http://www.acc.umu.se [acc.umu.se]) and have had over 70 000 visitors (not all unique).
Anyway, the page is at http://www.acc.umu.se/~tfytbk/mattgrand [acc.umu.se] and on the page in my signature.
"Telemarketing consultant" in such a home??? (Score:1)
Emily Kemp, a telemarketing consultant who works out of her home, said she and her husband moved from a non-wired townhouse in another part of Broadlands to the wired Southern Walk neighborhood for space reasons...
"Telemarketing Consultant" and really good Internet connection
Re:"Telemarketing consultant" in such a home??? (Score:2)
Er... (Score:1)
What is a surprise is that it doesn't appear to be just geeks who dig this stuff.
Never mind the article.. (Score:2)
Re:Never mind the article.. (Score:2)
Shit.
Re:Never mind the article.. (Score:1)
It kicks ass. Its everything FTTH was supposed to be. I'd heard the pipe dreams about how FTTH was gonna change my life and how everything would be reliable and just work -- guess what -- it does.
A Kipfer Joint? Feh! (Score:1)
And since nobody else will likely be able to bury anything in that neighborhood, they'll be stuck with them for POTS and Internet access. Verizon may suck at a lot of things, but they're real good at making sure you have a dial tone when you need to call 911 in the middle of the night. (Fortunately, they can't restrict DBS dishes, so at least there's an escape route for TV.)
Fiber's Good? (Score:1)
So, I've got fiber. Yea. Big whoop. What does this matter? How can I turn this situation around without going broke?
-sig
Re:Fiber's Good? (Score:2)
Slow reporting (Score:1)
The price was great! $30/month for one single static IP. Not DHCP! If you wanted more than one, they provided awesome deals. $27/month for two and even less if u wanted more.
Each town home had its own Fiber to 10base hub. Yeah I know it's only 10base, but hey, I was still getting 100KBps (not bits)on many IRC dcc bots
When I graduated from VT in 2000, and moved up to Northern Virginia (some dubbed the silicon valley of the East Coast) much to my surprise cable modem was not a common thing, and when I asked around about ppl putting in fiber into the home, all the builders gave me the strangest look.
Go hokies!
Avery Ranch - Austin Texas (Score:1)
I can upgrade to a fast-ethernet link for another $100/month. As far as I know, there are no restrictions on the kind of servers I can run on the net. This is unlike TimeWarner which has all kinds of restrictions.
Re:Avery Ranch - Austin Texas (Score:1)
Service? Well, there have been two outages since I've had them (nearly a year) and both were repaired within 24 (one was a fiber cut, other a failed switch).
Speed? Easily comparable (and usually better than) cablemodem or DSL service. I have seen as high as 6mbit/sec substained (over the course of a 100meg download), but 1.5-2.0mbit/sec is more the norm.
I've got no complaints.
Are there any fiber co-ops? (Score:2)
Re:Are there any fiber co-ops? (Score:1)
Broad band needs to be priced in the $25 per month range to make it really take off fast.
Assosication?!?! (Score:1)
So what are these associations going to do with my internet access? It will be too expensive, manditory, slow, controlled, serverless to the extreme, with an EULA that will be so restrictive you can't get it out of the envelope it came in.
Oh well, I hope I am being pedantic and paranoid.
-Tom
is it just me (Score:1)
Wobblypop (Score:2)
The law says your primary telephone service needs to have a full time backup in times of emergency and otherwise shouldn't be going down like a drunken prom date. If you look up many fiber provider's terms of service you'll notice you HAVE to pay for supplimentary copper lines from a regular phone company to meet said requirements. Are these fiber lines going to have backup generators and all that redundant fanciness or will these home owners need trditional copper lines?
No thanks, I'll pass (Score:1)
Palo Alto Fiberhood update/questions (Score:1)
if video and 2nd voice line are seen as necessities to make the dollar equations come out right, does that force the choice away from ethernet-over-fiber?
Re:This might be a bad thing. (Score:2)
I have the opposite view: More broadband spread around everywhere, even though currently in "upscale" areas is a Good Thing(tm). The trend only needs to start somewhere... if they can make it viable (and all the neighbor's kids aren't running 0-day warez fests) then more power to them.
Re:This might be a bad thing. (Score:1)
There are plenty of Mensa's around the world
(I think you should have added another possibility:
All my posts get modded down when I write I'm a Mensa member
)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:This might be a bad thing. (Score:1)
I took it for a joke, a call to 'downmod', the first time I read it.
As for your journal, I think may be you're right not to open it... it's true that some people are vandals and would ruin it.
So let me ask you here what I would have asked in your journal if it were open:
Not that I do that, but what's wrong with
Is it a habit in the US to do that? I never saw that and would not care if it happened...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This might be a bad thing. (Score:1)
What is a journal good for if people can't discuss your opinions?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)