>
> >   Hey,
> >
> > Quoting Ben Lutgens <blutgens at sistina.com>:
> >
> > > And what praytell would you use a shell service for? Personally I
> > > prefer just opening up an xterm and doing my work on a machine I am
> > > responsible for, but that's just me.
> >
> > Sometimes you want to check connectivity to your own systems from a remote
> > system. Or at least that's what I needed an external shell for.

And sometimes that's the only access you have until you get your linux
box/domain/etc fully up and running ;)

Personally I use my (paid) shell account for:

mail, webdesign, taking notes in classes, compiling class projects under
*nix environment [note - the classes I'm taking are through St. Paul Tech
- I wasn't given *nix shell access through school since they were
predominantly teaching via Visual C++/Borland JBuilder/etc], testing for
connectivity/debugging issues from outside our LAN from work.

*shrug* it's more than useful - it's the way I do a LOT of stuff, it's
used on a daily basis. and it's nicely portable :) I catch a lot of flack
from one of my housemates because I prefer text based computing to GUI
based stuff for normal day to day stuff. He feels I should come out of the
stone age and wake up to technology *laugh* - *shrug* I use GUI stuff for
the most part as well, but for mail, for irc, for little pidly stuff, I'd
rather use a command prompt. Shell access gives me that, and when I can
get dyndns set up with my domain name, and get our network in gear at
home, then I won't need the paid account, I'll be able to use my home box.

though as someone else pointed out, having a shell from outside would be
beneficial for connectivity testing.

Take care,
Liz

-- 
Imagination is intelligence having fun...
e-mail:  kethry at winternet.com
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