July 1st came and went and with it my annual dues notices. I donate
to support a wide variety of SDF's services, MetaARPA of course, but
also VPN, VOIP and dialup. I've been a dialup member for a while, I
joined SDF in 2007 so it was 2008 or so. For all of those years
through this one, I lived in a house in New England with copper
phone lines, so dialup made sense as a backup internet for power
outages. I also used it while traveling, for example in Vermont
where cell service was spotty and the internet unrelaible. But I"ve
recently relocated to Quebec - no copper phone lines where I am,
power is reliable, internet is also quite reliable (but expensive,
at least moreso than I was used to in the US). Anyway, I was sad to
do so, but I finally cancelled my dialup membership, I just don't
see a need for it anymore. During any extended power outage (a
couple of days or more), I would not have a phone line anyway, since
it is provided via the cable line. I also don't travel as much, but
even when I do, most everywhere has decent wireless internet now.
