[ossig] TM Net User Group Klang Valley

[Colin Charles]

Dr Molly Cheah wrote:

> As most of you may already know, the last of the TM Net User Group for 
> Klang Valley was formed on 15th September 2006. All the other user 
> groups have 5 SIGS and Klang Valley has the 6th SIG on OSS and Digital 
> Divide. The idea is that since TM Net is the largest ISP in the country, 
> it is important that services and products provided by TM Net must be 
> accessable to users of OSS. I am heading this SIG and would like to 
> welcome suggestions and proposals for any specific programmes for TM 
> Net's management's consideration. Please also provide feedback 
> particularly related to "problems" faced by Linux or other OSS's users 
> of TM Net's services and products. Anyone who would like to participate 

So, Streamyx is a standard PPPoE connection and it "just works" with 
most modern Linux distributions. In fact, configuring it is done via the 
GUI for Fedora/RHEL and even Ubuntu (I'd presume similar for SuSE and 
all other popular distributions). I think there are no problems there, 
so to speak

Their support is another question altogether. When my line was down (and 
this happens about once every month, in /each/ of my houses), and I call 
their support line, they refuse to support me because they don't know 
what this Linux thing is. Please get them educated. Please inform them 
that I know what I'm speaking about, and I know the problem is on /their 
side/ and not on my side. In the last few months I spent in Malaysia, I 
must have become a rather hostile customer, as I had to shuttle between 
different locations just to get working Internet. And their time to 
'fix' a problem is 48 *working* hours (yes, thats 6 freaking days - I 
left KL with one of my homes Internet in a non-working condition, good 
thing when I returned a few months later, all was hunky dory)

One thing TMNet can start doing, to mitigate having all this bandwidth 
use, is to provide an OSS mirror locally. AsiaOSC generally does a good 
job, but their mirror is sparse, and last I checked, they lacked enough 
space possibly. And its on the Jaring network, so it /may be/ slower for 
Streamyx users. Besides, TMNet Streamyx traffic to TMNet should cost 
tmnet nothing... Look into PlanetMirror or mirror.optus.net for 
inspiration. Bonus points for providing rsync access, and also keep the 
bloody thing updated /daily/

> *New Technology*
> 
> Leader: Ray Mohan Raj
> 
> ray at oregontel.com <mailto:ray at oregontel.com>
> 
> *OSS** and Digital Divide*
> 
> Leader: Dr Molly Cheah
> 
> drcheah at pc.jaring.my <mailto:drcheah at pc.jaring.my>

And adding to Aizat's post about the OLPC, which won't assume that 
people (children) are going to be jacked into a Streamyx modem, but will 
require WiFi mesh networks.

When will there be more WiFi everywhere? Even in rural areas? At more 
affordable/cheaper/free rates?

I don't know if the TMNet User Group can have that much influence, or if 
the OLPC even plays a significant (if any) role. Sole reason being 
Malaysians (schools, provided by the Ministry of Education) seem to be 
rich enough to afford PCs, but money's just mis-allocated. Tax payer 
dollars (erm, ringgit) should be spent on giving computing education to 
students, with an open platform, not getting into illicit deals with 
proprietary vendors (even if its given away for cheap), or doing arcane 
things like building places of worship

	hope this helps!