Internet vending machines sell Web access in five minute increments

Originally published at: Internet vending machines sell Web access in five minute increments | Boing Boing

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Time until a Windows XP machine is pwnd by Internet access = < 5 minutes.

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Is this not just an “internet cafe”? not knowing how that price fits in the average budget, this seems otherwise reasonable to me.

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I wonder what kinds of connections these ‘kiosks’ have. It would really suck if they are something not much faster than dialup, but then the users are being charged by the minute. If the user is going to heavy websites with lots of unoptimized image or video content or a bunch of ads that hog bandwidth, that would also suck. But I’m sure the provider of these units operates a proxy server so that it speeds things up for those sites which are heavily visited.

Think of the gaping privacy holes that abound for the poor users, too.

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If you were an adult in the early 2000s, especially in a major city like NY you will recall things like this in a lot of coffee shops and delis/bodegas. In 2000, before I had a computer (and for several years after that before I got a portable laptop or iPhone that I could bring with me) of my own Id either go to the library or a coffee shop where you signed up on a sheet for a limited amount of time on one of the computers in the seating area (anyone remember Alt.coffee on ave A?)

Update: my friend who ran that place (in Manhattan) said they charged 10 bucks an hour. 2.50 for 15 minutes in the early 2000s.

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Five minutes should be enough for anyb

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Did you know that cigarettes in the US are often sold individually as “loosies” illegally in lower income neighborhoods?

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a bar i often hung out in after work when i lived in estes park in the early 90s sold “loosies” and over half the patrons smoked in the bar. it was a few years later that the “no smoking” areas started in restaurants and clubs and the thought that smoking would be completely forbidden in such places was a distant apparition that almost no one expected to become a reality.

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