Here is the treasurer's report on Cyberspace Communications, Inc. finances
through May 31st, 2004.
Beginning Balance $4,515.12
Credits $330.00 Member contributions
$1.42 Interest on our savings account
------------
$331.42
Debits $84.43 Pumpkin Rent for June
$61.02 Electricity for May
$91.03 Phone Bill
$135.00 DSL April 15 through May 15
$60.00 Refund of dues (see below)
$6.65 Paypal fees (income = $186)
------------
$438.13
Ending Balance $4,408.41
Our current balance breaks down as follows:
$4,161.87 General Fund
$163.99 Silly Hat Fund
$60.00 Spare Parts Fund
$22.55 Infrastructure Fund
The money is distributed like this:
$1,030.59 Checking account
$3,377.82 Savings account earning 0.55% interest annually
We had no new members in May. We are currently at 80 members, 70 of
whom are paid through at least June 15th. (The others expired recently
and are in a grace period.)
Notes:
- A user sent us money in April but then declined to provide ID.
So we refunded him $60 in May, by request.
- Our monthly rent increased on the first of June, from $80.41 to $84.43.
Thanks to everyone who contributed in May:
robh, seeker, kip, jared, ea, dpc, and trh.
If you or your institution would like to become a member of Grex, it
only costs $6/month or $60/year. Send money to:
Cyberspace Communications
P. O. Box 4432
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432
If you pay by cash or money order, please include a photocopy of some
form of ID. I can't add you to the rolls without ID. (If you pay
with a personal check that has your name pre-printed on it, we
consider that a good enough ID.) Type !support or see
http://www.cyberspace.org/member.html for more info.
31 responses total.
the ID rule is stupid.
I agree.
Then you both must be blissful.
I tend to agree with Soup and Phil, so I guess I'm "blissful" as well. I assume the ID is for providing proof that the person paying is actually the person joining. So? If someone wants to wants to use my name to sign me up, and it's not costing me anything, who cares? Cyberspace gets their money, I get a membership and the person paying gets warm fuzzies for being so generous. Sounds win-win to me.
Greg, here my the standard answer. There are two reasons Grex requires ID from its members: 1. While we are very comfortable allowing anonymous users access to Grex, we are not comfortable unleashing them on the rest of the Internet. It would be irresponsible of the Grex administration to allow people we can't identify to telnet through Grex to other systems, so we require ID from everyone we allow to do that. 2. Cyberspace Communications is required by the state of Michigan to maintain an up-to-date list of members. Implied in this requirement is that we make sure no two memberships are held by the same person. So we require ID to connect accounts with real people and make sure no one has the ability to vote twice in Grex elections.
Sounds reasonable to me.
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Who audits #2 and validates the identification provided by membership applicants?
Re #7: During the brief period in 2000 when we accepted Credit cards as ID, we had a number of chargebacks as a result of people who used stolen credit cards to try to gain access to Grex. The obvious implication of that, and the fact that we have had almost none since, is that there are people who would like to use Grex's internet services for nefarious purposes, but the barrier of providing ID prevents them from doing so. My understanding is that the difference between a corporation organized on a "membership" basis and one organized on a "stock" basis is that memberships are one-per-person, and shares need not be. If you've got a reference to a decision saying that some membership corporations allow people to hold more than one membership, and that that's not in conflict with state law, please cite it. (Of course that doesn't mean Grex's policy isn't still firmly one-membership-per-person. *That* was firmly decided in discussion here in coop, which discussion didn't reference state law at all.)
If the people are good enough to obtain stolen credit card numbers, then surely they are good enough to obtain stolen ID.
The evidence seems clear that a lot more people are willing to use stolen credit cards than are willing to send Grex fake ID.
Name one member other than yourself who didn't use fake ID when he signed up for Grex.
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jp2 - 2 words - forget it!
Yes; forget about the fact that Cyberspace Communications of GreX is losing money because people like you continue to enforce a rule which has shown to be both antiquated and stupid.
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Re #13: Do most people have cable and DSL connections in Indonesia, or India, or Bulgaria? I won't argue that Grex's connection has been stable lately, but I question the assertion that you can get the services Grex reserves for members for free elsewhere on the net. Can you name a site that lets unverified people sign on for free and telnet through? (I don't really know if such exists, so I'm really asking, not posturing.) I also don't know exactly what Michigan law says about multiple memberships. Can you cite a Michigan corporation which is organized on a membership basis and allows one person to hold more than one membership? There is copious documentation of the discussion on Grex of the question of whether we should allow people to hold multiple memberships. I've pointed it out to you before. If you'd like to open the topic up for discussion again, you should enter an item.
Look at it this way: M-Net has unverified memberships that can access the network for not much more than Grex charges, but no-one uses it to run BNC or whatever. Also keep in mind that the less likely it is someone has access to cheap always-on Internet connections, like less likely it is that he'll be able to pay Grex enough.
Yeah, Grex should take the money, babysit, and axe the dolts in their vast spare time. Then, they can eventually spend some of that time in court. I fail to see why ID is a problem, since only the account/borg-type will be seeing it.
I spent a few hours last night deleting eggdrop and psyBNC from several accounts. No, they don't work here, yes, we tell people up front that they won't work here, but still people bring them over and build them. And then we delete them.
#17 of 20: by Mark A Conger (aruba) on Sun, Jun 13, 2004 (00:09): Re #13: Do most people have cable and DSL connections in Indonesia, or India, or Bulgaria? I won't argue that Grex's connection has been stable lately, but I question the assertion that you can get the services Grex reserves for members for free elsewhere on the net. Can you name a site that lets unverified people sign on for free and telnet through? (I don't really know if such exists, so I'm really asking, not posturing.) There are plenty of folks using cablemodems throughout Bulgaria. And yes, you can get an account at freenet.am without verification and use it to telnet elsewhere. There are many telnet sites. Why is that being brought up? I have a few questions: Who manages the birthday program now that popcorn is off staff? Has the router I sent to Grex been flashed for SDSL and installed yet? Who is handling that?
The birthday program is being managed by whichever staff member notices something needing to be done. Kip is working with/on the modem you donated. I've not heard a recent progress report.
HI< ALL! I"M PRETTY!
I guess tod is the resident bulgarian?
re #22 Thanks Joe. I've not heard from staff if they were able to add me to the birthday database nor if the donated modem was given an SDSL flash yet. Just asking.
The Armenian freenet which Tod mentions does claim to give free telnet (though you are required to agree to their terms of use and give a name, address, and phone number). However, I couldn't get their account creation system to work, so I couldn't confirm that I could really telnet out.
Use account name carpet and password hagopian. ;-)
AHAHA'A YEAH"' THEY DO
In #25, tod asks about the state of the DSL modem he donated. The modem was discussed at last night's staff meeting: Kip has succeeded in updating the firmware, but he really thinks the problem is the cable, not the modem. STeve noted that we use a substantial length of cable in less-than-optimal space between the edge of the building and the modem, so trouble-shooting wiring problems is not easy.
What would it take to get an electrician out there to re-wire the run? (Thanks for the update!)
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: