I just called Telecom Italia and ordered an upgrade of my 1.2Mbps ADSL subscription to 4Mbps (Alice 4 Mega), for only 3€ more than what I am paying now: about 40€ instead of 37€. I'm sure there are some countries where you can get such bandwidth for less, but this is Italy after all. Considering that I went from 64Kbps ISDN to 640Kbps ADSL, then to 1.2Mbps ADSL and now 4Mbps, all for about the same price and in a few years, there's really nothing to complain about. Four megabits is actually twice as much as I get at the office!
They said that it will take 3-4 days for the upgrade to be effective. Also, they weren't sure if the modem will need upgrading. If that is the case, I'm afraid they will bring me an USB-only modem, which I have no use for. When I started this subscription, I asked specifically for an Ethernet modem, and of course when they installed the line they brought an USB one, which was immediately sent back to be substituted. Since that mistake took a few days to fix, I sure hope it's not happening again this time.
Published by ugo on April 1, 2005
in web.
When I was posting my opinion on the WordPress Affair yesterday, I was a bit afraid I was going to say something embarrassing. After all, the issue involves things like money, feelings, trust and reputation. You have to be careful, show some tolerance and avoid the easy path of outrage and indignation. Add to that the fact that it was 2 AM, which does not help with clarity of mind.
Anyway, I was relieved this morning when I read David Weinberger's opinion on the issue, which is pretty much similar to mine (emphasis mine):
We're all human. But I don't think the problem is that WordPress made some money. It's the fact that link farms make one of our tools, Google, less useful. And it's the lack of transparency.
[…] So, IMO, WordPress made a mistake. The mistake definitely wasn't making money. It was making money in a way that works against the interests of the Web community. As Shelley says, that doesn't make the WordPress code any worse, and I may switch from Movable Type to WordPress at some point. Forgiveness is totally in order. Yet the abrading of joy does matter.
WordPress code is indeed quite good. Well, at least judging from how well it works: I never looked at the source code itself. So much that I am seriously considering switching this blog — and possibly also this one, while this one is already on it — to WordPress.
When I do, I might also consider doing a donation, given that the ads I have here are starting to bring in a little money. Since I was the first to invoke transparency, I will reveal that “a little money” means about $60 in the last month.
Published by ugo on April 1, 2005
in web.
Looks like Google has given two nice presents to us Gmail users. Rich text editing:
And growing disk space. Continuously growing in small increments, actually:
You are currently using 28 MB (2%) of your 1178 MB.
You are currently using 28 MB (2%) of your 1179 MB.
…
Now, if they started giving access to Gmail via IMAP, I might just drop all my other mailboxes and use Gmail exclusively. Sorry but POP just doesn't cut it for me.
