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newsletter://mv.com
April/May 1995
Note: text copies of all issues of the monthly newsletter can be found on
mv in the public archive; look in /pub/mv/inews. They're also in the
online menu!
Salem node
Our Salem node is up and running with 28.8Kb modems, and can be
reached at 890-6387. This provides local dialing access for surrounding
areas including Hampstead, Atkinson, Pelham, Windham, and Lawrence, MA. In
addition, we expect to be providing an access number in Lawrence soon. If
you are a SLIP or PPP user in the Salem area and are currently using the
Nashua number, but would prefer to dial in through Salem, please contact us
to make the change.
Changes at our Dover location
Within the next couple of weeks our equipment in Dover will be moved --
but not very far. Currently our Dover node is located in the offices of
Egg Clearinghouse, Incorporated, through the gracious cooperation of Wayne
Clapper. We will be moving to our own office area one floor down (still in
the ECI building), where we expect to be able to provide onsite demonstra-
tions and introductory Internet sessions. Once the move is completed we
will be adding more phone lines to this facility.
Modems and hunt groups
We had reported last time that in Litchfield we had to create a second
hunt group, starting at 424-6195, because we had reached the current limit
of number of lines that NYNEX could give us in a single hunt group. NYNEX
did, as promised, improve the hunt group capacity, and we were able to
recombine the hunt groups. There is no longer any reason to call this
second number which was provided only as an interim number.
During April we learned of a serious modem backorder situation: our
outstanding orders were suddenly put on a 4-6 week delay, which stretched
into several months and has still not cleared, though we have been given
word that at least one order will ship soon. During this time we used up
nearly all of our spare modems in expansions; we have also ordered and
deployed some other brands on a trial basis - but that process, too, has
been affected by backorder situations with other vendors. It looks like
V.34 modems are extremely popular items, and manufacturers are having a
hard time keeping up.
New outages newsgroup and mailing list
We've set up a new Usenet newsgroup, mv.info.outages, in which we are
posting outage events. These postings include information about planned MV
downtime (e.g. for upgrades), and reports of outages at MV or elsewhere
that are significant enough to be of general interest. Although this is
intended mainly to be a broadcast forum, feedback and questions in the
group itself are welcome.
We've also set up a parallel mailing list, mv-outages, to which the
same outage notices are mailed. (Any feedback will not be sent to this
list: this is a broadcast-only list.) To subscribe to the list, send a
mail message to majordomo@lists.mv.net with any subject, and with the text
subscribe mv-outages in the body of the message.
Communications Decency Act passes Senate
Last time, we mentioned a little bit about pending legislation in the
US Congress intended to "clean up the Internet." The Senate bill, proposed
by Senator Exon and later cosponsored by Senator Coats, was successfully
attached to the telecommunications reform bill by a 84-to-16 vote in June.
Both NH Senators (Gregg and Smith) voted for the attachment, in spite of
what both of their offices reported beforehand as significant telephone
opposition from constituents, who instead recommended support for an alter-
native bill that would require study and more careful solutions to problems
found. The telecommunications reform bill itself was passed by an even
wider margin. The fight over similar pieces of legislation will now move
over to the House.
A casual observer might wonder what is wrong with wanting to clean up
the Internet, especially with a lot of media focus these days that portrays
the Internet as a kind of electronic Combat Zone, where no child is safe
from predatory adults, and in which no parent can control their childrens'
access to obscene material. While the media is certainly overdoing it,
probably because of lack of familiarity with the Internet both on the part
of reporters and on the majority of their audience (not to mention the
quest for ratings), there are indeed some legitimate concerns. But the
Exon/Coats style of legislation uses these concerns to some very wrong
ends: including prohibitions on "indecency" (even in conversation between
adults), and enacting far-reaching and chilling penalties on innocent par-
ties. What's more, it removes the responsibility for your choice of con-
tent from one that is between you, your children, and the marketplace of
technology, and places it instead at the Federal level. House Speaker
Gingrich had it right when he said of the Exon/Coats amendment:
"It is clearly a violation of free speech and it's a violation of the
right of adults to communicate with each other. I don't agree with it
and I don't think it is a serious way to discuss a serious issue,
which is, how do you maintain the right of free speech for adults
while also protecting children in a medium which is available to both?
That's also frankly a problem with television and radio, and it's
something that we have to wrestle with in a calm and mature way as a
society. I think by offering a very badly thought out and not very
productive amendment, if anything, that put the debate back a step."
By packaging bad legislation with an anti-obscenity label, the pro-
ponents of this legislation are using a tough tactic: after all, what
Congressman wants to be seen as voting for obscenity? One hope is to show
our representatives that we can see beyond that shallow tactic, and that
voting for the right thing is better than voting for the right image. You
can learn more about staying abreast of these issues by visiting the home
page of EFNH (Electronic Frontiers New Hampshire) at http://www.efnh.org.
(Netscape users note: this page changes frequently, and if your copy of
netscape already has it in its cache, you are likely not to get a later
copy of the page - use the "refresh" option to get a new page).
MV Support hours
Our hours for telephone and email support are slightly different than
what we reported last time. The hours are:
Monday through Friday: 8:30AM to 11:30PM
Saturday: 10AM to 6PM
Billing
Billing is still behind. This month we're doing a double bill, cover-
ing the months of March and April. As we said last time, we're in the pro-
cess of revamping and streamlining our billing system. Please bear with us
in the meantime: next cycle will also also be a double bill.
One thing that users can do to help us out: please put your account
number or site name (depending on type of account) on your payment.
Without it, your payment might be miscredited. It also slows us down to
have to look up this information each time.
MV Communications, Inc. (603) 429-2223