I work in a restaurant. I owned one for a while, too. I can tell you, there are those that want the stuff. The company I had taking mine away, at first, charged me to do so. Another company approached and said they'd charge less, they got into a bidding war with each other. Ended up having it done for free. At the time, I believe it was going into C4 production. Now, at the restaurant I work at, the gentlemen who delivers our mushrooms takes it, and actually PAYS us for it (in the form of an extra box of mushrooms; product we'd use anyway). They use it to keep their 'cave' system at ideal temps, we get free product and free removal of something we have no use for. Win/Win.

I still just don't 'get it'. What, exactly, is the big deal with Facebook? What purpose does it serve? If I want to publish information about myself, I just see it as easier to do my own website. Facebook == Geocities for idiots who can't learn a smattering of HTML, in my book.

I live in a rural area here in South Central Wisconsin. Cable stops 2 miles away, DSL is a good 20 miles away. I looked into satellite, and the prices are VERY cost prohibitive.

AllTel recently launched an EVDO service. The setup was a snap, Motorola MotoRAZR V3m phone, USB cable, and about 5 min of tinkering in linux, and I was online at a very respectible 400k/100k connection, with around 90-100ms latency.

Having said this, it doesn't make it easy to do a whole network this way. I did some research, and found a solution to that as well. Kyrocera offers a router (the KR1) that has both a simple USB port on it, and a spot for an EV-DO PCMCIA card. Quite literally, it would be plug 'n go, and an AllTel tier2 rep even said it works great for them at the office.

Best of all, the plan is already decent for cell phone service (4 people are on my plan, and I pay $100/month in total, and have more minutes than I know what to do with).

I've been hobbling along at 26.4kbps for quite a long time. It's very nice to finally get out of the stoneage :)