response 26 of 48:

May 17 05:13 UTC 1995

No, like in ham radio.  What sort of radio would I need to listen to that?

response 28 of 48:

May 17 10:13 UTC 1995

An event as momentous as this proposed expedition deserves nothing
less than real-time coverage. We will have to modify srw's vehicle
quickly to add the antennae, and of course the dish for satellite
links along the route. Don't worry srw, we will fix the holes
after the trip.

response 30 of 48:

May 18 04:03 UTC 1995

  Re 20, I grabbed a couple articles from the MichNet help screens and 
stuck them in /u/ajax/michnet (type !more /u/ajax/michnet to read them).
One is an interview in the MichNet News with Jeff Ogden about the changes,
and the other is a brief what/why about the changes.  

response 32 of 48:

May 19 17:14 UTC 1995

  Btw, I think Merit's Ann Arbor's faster "Which Host?" dial-ups (998-1303
and 998-1304) may have been retired today.  Both are mostly busy, but once
I got a noisy connection to 1304, and it said the service had been
discontinued, gave other "Host:" numbers to call, then hung up.  Their
1200 baud dial-up (763-6520) is still working, however (ooh yay! :-).

response 34 of 48:

May 19 23:02 UTC 1995

I think my first 1200bps modem cost around $500...

I used the 2400 baud Merit node in Ann Arbor (998-1302)
yesterday, and it worked fine.

response 36 of 48:

May 20 11:54 UTC 1995

(I have yet to get either 28.8 number to connect at 28.8 with my modem.)

response 38 of 48:

May 21 10:43 UTC 1995

(No line noise that I'm aware of.  Have used the same line with other
modems without problems for years.  (I've now successfully connected at
26.4, btw...))

response 40 of 48:

May 22 13:10 UTC 1995

  Merit's 1200 line (763-6520) is slated for removal today, and their 2400
(998-1303) is due for removal by week's end (I think).  For more info on
planned changes in AA & Detroit areas, see "/u/ajax/michnet.changes".
 
  I've heard that Michnet will be charging $35/month for access ($10/month
for students).  Does anyone know what "access" includes?  Is it unlimited
connections to Michnet hosts like we've had in the past, or does it provide
rationed telnet or PPP or something?

response 42 of 48:

May 24 21:30 UTC 1995

Meeting... oh yeah -- meeting report!

Steve Andre, Arnold Barr, Steve Weiss, and I went to the Lansing meeting.
We met people from about 10 other freenet-type places.  (The ones I
can name off the top of my head are: Greater Detroit Freenet, Grand
Rapids Freenet, Arbornet, Edu-net(?), and the Gennessee Freenet.)  Several
Merit people were also present: Jeff Ogden, John Vollbrecht, and Betty Van
Dam.  In the morning, the Merit people talked about the upcoming service
changes.  They talked about how our organizations can continue to have
Merit connectivity by either supplying modems or buying tokens.  They gave
us a *lot* of paper describing service changes, Merit, and other stuff; I
haven't read it all yet.  The Merit people also talked about how
individuals can buy Merit access for $35 a month, or $10 a month if you're
somehow affiliated with K-12 education.

In the afternoon, we went around the room as sort of a freenet roundtable
meeting.  It was interesting to compare the different systems.  It didn't
seem to matter what kind of hardware anybody's system was running on,
everybody needed to move to something more powerful because their system
was loaded to capacity.  This was true on the lowliest little systems right
on up to the SPARC 20 that the Greater Detroit Free-Net (GDFN) runs on.
The free-nets run on an impressive variety of hardware, everything from Suns
to Apple computers.  People had made different tradeoffs between openness
and censorship, between freedom and corporate largesse.  For example, the
GDFN gets its hardware and its room space from the millitary, which means
it's got an amazing computer and great net connectivity, but the millitary
tells them not to carry certain newsgroups, nor unrestricted outbound
telnet, nor IRC.  Systems ranged in completion from two systems that are
still collecting hardware and stuff in preparation for opening, to systems
that run in sort of a test mode, to systems that see hundreds of users
every day.  Several of the systems have paid administrators; they seem to
earn their keep by bringing in lots of new users.  The GDFN raises funds by
preassigning user IDs, then selling "vanity" user IDs for $50 apiece.
One system administrator said it was very useful to get on public access TV
and talk about the freenet -- she said that for 2 or 3 months after her TV
appearance, whenever she went into a store people said "There's the Freenet
lady!"  She said more people watch public access TV than you realize.

Fundraising and publicity idea for the day: When the system is about to hold
a fundraiser, send out press releases to tell the world about it!

As a group, people agreed the meeting was useful.  We collected people's
e-mail addresses and agreed to meet again in 3 months.  Karl Brose of the
GDFN is going to start an e-mail mailing list for freenet administrators.

response 44 of 48:

May 26 00:58 UTC 1995

Valerie only missed the Great Lakes Freenet (Battle Creek) and the
Capitol City Freenet (Lansing, still getting organized).

response 46 of 48:

May 26 19:10 UTC 1995

Get <x> For Now?

response 48 of 48:

May 31 05:29 UTC 1995

        Popcorn- thanks!