Who Am I?

2011-03-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

Who am I?
I am a consumer of the internet. I have had an online presence since the early 80's starting with modems and BBSes. I even had a CompuServe account for my Radio Shack Color Computer. My first ISP was back in '92 when the World Wide Web was just a single paragraph in a 500+ page book about the internet. I have had internet access ever since.

I was a subscriber to AT&T WorldNet.
I was the first person in my apartment complex to get AT&T DSL when it first became available.
I was the first person in my apartment complex to get AT&T Uverse with internet when it became available.
Every time a faster tier became available I was quick to upgrade. 3Mb, 6Mb, 12Mb, 18Mb, 24Mb!

As I said, I am a consumer of the Internet. I have done almost so much over the Internet. From running a few sites, using it to make phone calls, watching video, listening to streaming music or radio stations from my home town, I even controlled treasure hunting robots via remote control. I watched the rise and fall of so many internet start-ups, saw the birth of Google and watched AltaVista die.

I have had so many internet aware devices that I can't even count them. From portable game systems, robot dogs, media players, clock radios, phones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, TVs, game consoles, toys, Etc.

I live online and now AT&T wants me live a more conservative life. AT&T is already selling me internet at designated speed levels based on megabits per second. If you just want a little bit at a time you can buy 1.5Mbps of you want a lot you can buy up to 25Mbps. I'm totally fine with this. But now they want to tell me that no matter what speed I want the Internet delivered they will only let me have a certain number of bytes delivered to my home. Now the Internet is not like electricity, AT&T does not have to generate it. It's not a resource like water or gas. There is no risk of running out of Internet. So why does AT&T even care how much I use? Stay tuned.

Live free or die on the Internet!

Welcome to the end.

2011-03-31T19:58:00.000-07:00

On May 2nd of 2011, the internet as we know it will be dead. The mighty AT&T has decided that instead of giving it's customers what they pay for, they will dictate your online actions through the use of capping your internet usage.

Want to stream HD movies from Nextflix? Fine but you can only watch X number of movies!
Want to Skype call Grandma? Fine but you can only talk for X number of minutes!
Want to buy games from PSN, Xbox Live, Steam? Fine but only buy a few because you may go over!
Want to use a streaming game service like OnLive? Not on our network Mister!
Want to use an online backup like Carbonite? You may have to wait a month to restore you data!
Want to start using the Cloud?
Want to sling a TV you recorded to your laptop?
Want to use Apple TV or Roku?
Like to watch video online?
Want to legally use the internet however you see fit? Build a time machine because those days are over!

So I plan to use this blog to document my experience with the death of the internet. If you are in the same situation I encourage you to start a blog as well, only don't include any pictures or graphics because you may exceed your allowance.

Remember, live free or die even on the Internet!

Bandwidth Caps Suck

Who Am I?

Welcome to the end.