[PLUG] Starband blues...

[Michael Robinson]

I really hate winproxy and starbands anti Linux anti Mac focus.

A company I'm trying to help, Micron Laser off wagon way near 26 and 
Cornelius, wants to run rsync to update a directory on two 2000 servers
that are supposed to have the same data.  If this data is wrong it could cost
Micron thousands of dollars as they do laser work on printed circuit boards
under contract and have to eat their mistakes.  The datum are Lumonics etc.
files that the machines actually run.  Merix is letting the shop play with one
of their machines for free and has provided real time drivers for Linux where
my brother has put together a debian machine and ported these drivers to 
the 2.4 kernel.  Great, right?!?  Almost, the stupid
Starband 360 satellite modem and winproxy aren't Linux friendly :-\  

I've been plugging away at google, but any link to how to make starband 360 
work under Linux seems broken and I haven't been able to find any information 
on any other two way satellite alternative that actually routes properly.
Also, I doubt there's any way for Micron to sell the Starband 360 to switch
to another satellite.  I have found sites that say efforts to get the 
information to do the compression that is needed for writing starband 360 
Linux drivers have failed.  A number of other sites say that there is 
no chance this is going to change.  There's some word that wine may 
get starband to work on a Linux router, but I don't know if this would allow 
substituting say netfilter with masquerading for winproxy.  I wonder if dns 
requests and rsync can go out on a starband 360 satellite or if that is 
impossible.

Is there any way to get dselect, wget, ftp, anything other than opera with
proxy set to work through starband 360?

My brother thinks cygwin is the answer, but I really doubt it.  I don't like 
the idea of having to come up with a custom proxy program on Windows
2000 to catch the dns, ftp, http, etc. queries of Linux machines that are
not expecting a proxy.  Linux wants dns and that seems broken with
winproxy.

Why is starband forcing or trying to force businesses and others to stick
with Windows?  What is the danger of their compression algorithm being
available to the general public so that someone can write a Linux driver?
Couldn't they have placed the compression in the modem and made the
starband 360 an ordinary router friendly to any machine that speaks 
tcp/ip?  Processors are so cheap these days.

Are there any Linux friendly two way satellite alternatives covering the
area where Cornelius Pass and Highway 26 meet?

     --  Michael