My internet connection is very flaky here in Greece. I used to have access to a shared wifi hotspot a few days ago that suddenly stopped working, so I am now with a prepaid 5 Euro internet connection called “net” (20 hours of connectivity per month). Apparently, to make that working with our Ubuntu Linux laptop (IBM T23) and the “martian” winmodem driver, I needed to install GnomePPP (gnome-networking doesn’t stay connected), enable its “stupid mode” option (whatever the hell that is), and remove all default init strings. Only then it connects correctly and stays connected. Hopefully this will help some users.