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Nyx Net provides twenty-four local (Denver metro area, now with local access for Longmont) dial-up lines, most of them currently supporting up to 33.6kbps. Our log-in machines are also available via telnet, and most of our users access their accounts that way. We provide shell accounts, email, access to the web through Lynx, personal webpages, and a complete and uncensored newsfeed. Graphical browsers, SLIP, PPP, and similar services are not supported because our resources could not keep up with the demand that would generate and still be able to provide an acceptable level of service--our goal is not to compete with full-service GUI-intensive commercial ISPs, but to provide complete and free access to news, email, and the web to the community and to users worldwide who might otherwise not have access to the net and all its resources, information, and services.
Even if you have an account through a commercial provider, feel free to sign up for a Nyx account--besides getting a "backup account," you'll get a stable email address that'll continue to work even if you change your commercial provider, move, or it goes out of business, and we have no fees or charges. Nyx is happy to accept tax-deductable contributions, but they're not required. If you're mostly using it to forward mail or otherwise not using it often, be sure to log in at least once a month so your account doesn't get aged off.
For almost fifteen years now, I've been in the habit of collecting, rehabilitating, and distributing semi-obsolete, discarded, or cheap computer hardware. Initially, this meant dumb terminals and 300 baud modems (usually acoustic couplers). That probably sounds unimaginably primitive to most computer users today, but it did the job, and I think being able to access the world of electronic communications at all was enough to make a difference in at least a few people's lives over the years.
Nowadays, by the time you've managed to separate your new computer from its packing material, it's already halfway down the short road to obsolescence--even if it was state-of-the-art last week, by sometime next week there will probably be some new software out that needs more memory and a faster processor just to be able to show its beautifully drawn "starting up" singing-and-dancing logo on your screen. In recent years, I've been finding leftover computer parts dirt cheap at garage sales and, with the speed that the resale value of a computer plummets these days, being able to donate--and deduct--your old computer can be a very attractive option. We can use parts, too--especially modems, monitors, memory, and hard drives--as well as software and manuals.
It seemed a natural extension of my own informal and small-scale "connect the world" program and Nyx's "free public access" goals to start distributing computers that could be hooked up to the net and educating people in their use. We now have additional volunteers to help assemble, configure, and test computers for this purpose, and volunteers to help people get them set up and learn how to use them.
The budgets for Nyx's operation and the Nyx outreach program are kept entirely separate; no funds or equipment from one are used to support the other. Norwest Bank recently donated a stack of 486 computers as they were phasing them out; Nyx users have donated a variety of computers, computer parts, and software; and I continue to collect what I can from garage sales and from companies I work with. We're currently working with United Cerebral Palsy and other groups for the disabled and disadvantaged to place the computers we put together where we hope they'll do some good.
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