This is not accurate. There are many VPS's which are cheaper, many of which have much greater capacity for the money. Some are fly-by-night scams. Others have several years of stability with good support. Check forums and VPS review sites to find the best match.
That said, I have nothing against prgmr or linode and would use them if I needed a super-reliable VPS. (My main VPS is Linode, my secondary is with Kerplunc Hosting)
I want to get one for me but I don't want to get rammed in the ass when I realize it is not enough and need to upgrade to at least 1GB.
I see I can get 1GB RAM at prgmr.com for the same $20
" Good Afternoon,
At approx 12:10pm, we lost communications with some of our equipment in our Newark, NJ location. Upon investigation, it was discovered that equipment located in the cross connect area had lost power. Customers may have noticed degraded internet service for about 2-5 minutes while routers propagated through alternative providers. As of 12:23pm, power has been restored in the Newark, NJ site. We are still investigating the cause of the problem."
They do have pretty graphs, though!
(Hint: Check jlintz's comment above.)
Quote attributed to VeriSign's iDefense security lab in http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/01/researchers-ide...
If I was breaking into computers "off the clock", I'd probably look to just-a-CC# no-questions-asked hosting providers (probably overseas) as my staging ground. This is something new. Commodity virtualized VPS systems like Slicehost are an awfully convenient way to launder attacks.
It's only been in the last couple years that VM slices have been so quick and easy to buy.
If you can figure out a cut-out way to pay for the server time then there isn't much anyone can do to track it without getting on the ground and forcing local police forces into at least trying to make some headway.
So in effect it is kinda the same as it used to be (overseas, no questions providers) but instead of the servers being the overseas bit it is just the payment (and I guess they rely on the fact intrusion is hard to detect, unlike say spam, coupled with the sheer number of people buying instances daily now).
(our stuff led to Eastern Europe so it is unrelated - but the principle is similar).
