I was the only female (and very obviously female - read that as busty and not fat) in the comp sci division. After consistently getting the highest grade in all my core classes, my favorite instructor and I got investigated to see if I was actually doing the work or performing some other way. My own boyfriend started the uproar after he stole pieces of my code and didn't get the same grade. Somehow he missed the objective to write everything with the least lines of code. It was obvious he had programmed in BASIC a lot. A whole hell of a lot. That afternoon, he then became the first person I dumped via e-mail.
"If people can't search the Web they call the IT department, so the IT department makes sure HTTP is always working. We have engineered the hell out of it."
Well, um...the answer to this is actually no. When they call us, the users normally have a problem with DHCP or a corrupted TCP/IP stack if they're running some version of Windows. I can't recall http ever being broken. I've had entire machines crash, a router go down, and of course leased lines die before but the protocol break? No. I've seen things not configured properly but the protocol did not break.
HTTP works for what it was designed to do. It was to be a simple protocol meant for quick transfers of TEXT. Client machine makes a request. Server responds. Connection ends. How many companies actually run an FTP server anymore? For MS, the Windows update runs completely on HTTP and scans your computer to see what you have installed. Their FTP server contains almost nothing and you must download patches via HTTP.
I'm all for another protocol to do all the interactive content. This also scares me though cause I'm thinking of Oracle's dream of Internet Appliances and someone else owning all the software and you do subscriptionware. I don't mind subcribing to a website like books24x7 or oreilly but subcribing to my software? And someone else holding my data? No. This sounds like another ploy to do that. And let me guess, it will work best on WebTV.
What I don't want to see is the MS weed mentality touching a new protocol during its infancy. Or... then I think about it and wonder what life would be like if MS would take all its windows users to their MSN and we can have the internet back. I kinda like that idea.
admittedly phones aren't a basic right currently. I think they should be. When I was 15, my parents got a divorce. My father cut the phone line and it took a couple of days to get the service started again. In that time, our garage caught fire. The closest neighbor I had was a mile away. That is when I thought phones should be a basic right. Maybe not extra features, but I needed to call 911 and couldn't.
This is the very reason that rural communities were a priority for phone access. Most cell phone companies don't guarantee that they will be available in case of an emergency and urge you to always have a land line.
I grew up in a very rural area and our local county gave tax breaks to a company that wanted to start a local ISP back in 1995. There were certain conditions like free accounts for all the schools in the county and cheaper rates for the "Economic Development Zone." The phone company ran the ISP (my former employer) out of business in 1998 when they saw how much money could be made. I can see encouraging companies to provide dialup in more remote areas but on a local, even state level, but not federal.
I'm not an elitist. Far from it actually. The first time I saw the nonsense about the digital divide I was furious. Just another way for the government to spend my money on something that people will vandalize and not care for. If you don't work for it, you don't value it.
I'm sorry but computers are not a necessity. I see Internet Access like I do Cable. Its nice but you don't need it to survive. I work for a local ISP and I sure as hell don't want the government getting involved in how we do our pricing/marketing/etc. And if I had to help every idiot on the planet I wouldn't do this job. Computers knowledge doesn't seem to correspond to income level. I've even met Cisco Engineers who were stumped by a dialup connection. I've had problems with every ethnic group out there. Foreign born and made in America. Age has some importance but not much. At least older people listen to you and will talk to you!! The only group I can swear seems to have NO brain at all are liberal arts majors still in college. These are the same people screaming for internet access for all because they feel guilty that they can afford it.
I grew up poor. I'm not afraid to talk about that. And my only access to computers (Macs and Apple IIs) was at school until 1992 when my engineer uncle gave us his 1981 IBM PC after he bought a 386. It was upgraded as much as you could. We had a 300 baud modem that we used to call the local bbs and did email with it. I did all my high school math assignments on the computer by writing the programs in basic. This was allowed as you had to know how the formula worked in order to write the program for it. I just had to submit the program with my homework and one problem done by hand. My parents saved up and bought a 486 almost 2 years later. The relic was given to a friend of mine who was also in a bad financial place. He's now a Computer Animator and finished school a few years ago. Apparently the computer was better for him than me cause I'm still working through school.;)
If a private, non-profit were to start up and refurbish old computers and give them away, I'd definately volunteer my time/money/effort for them. Just don't use my tax dollars to fix something that not only isn't broken but doesn't exist.
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I was the only female (and very obviously female - read that as busty and not fat) in the comp sci division. After consistently getting the highest grade in all my core classes, my favorite instructor and I got investigated to see if I was actually doing the work or performing some other way. My own boyfriend started the uproar after he stole pieces of my code and didn't get the same grade. Somehow he missed the objective to write everything with the least lines of code. It was obvious he had programmed in BASIC a lot. A whole hell of a lot. That afternoon, he then became the first person I dumped via e-mail.
"If people can't search the Web they call the IT department, so the IT department makes sure HTTP is always working. We have engineered the hell out of it."
Well, um...the answer to this is actually no. When they call us, the users normally have a problem with DHCP or a corrupted TCP/IP stack if they're running some version of Windows. I can't recall http ever being broken. I've had entire machines crash, a router go down, and of course leased lines die before but the protocol break? No. I've seen things not configured properly but the protocol did not break.
HTTP works for what it was designed to do. It was to be a simple protocol meant for quick transfers of TEXT. Client machine makes a request. Server responds. Connection ends. How many companies actually run an FTP server anymore? For MS, the Windows update runs completely on HTTP and scans your computer to see what you have installed. Their FTP server contains almost nothing and you must download patches via HTTP.
I'm all for another protocol to do all the interactive content. This also scares me though cause I'm thinking of Oracle's dream of Internet Appliances and someone else owning all the software and you do subscriptionware. I don't mind subcribing to a website like books24x7 or oreilly but subcribing to my software? And someone else holding my data? No. This sounds like another ploy to do that. And let me guess, it will work best on WebTV.
What I don't want to see is the MS weed mentality touching a new protocol during its infancy. Or... then I think about it and wonder what life would be like if MS would take all its windows users to their MSN and we can have the internet back. I kinda like that idea.
This is the very reason that rural communities were a priority for phone access. Most cell phone companies don't guarantee that they will be available in case of an emergency and urge you to always have a land line.
I grew up in a very rural area and our local county gave tax breaks to a company that wanted to start a local ISP back in 1995. There were certain conditions like free accounts for all the schools in the county and cheaper rates for the "Economic Development Zone." The phone company ran the ISP (my former employer) out of business in 1998 when they saw how much money could be made. I can see encouraging companies to provide dialup in more remote areas but on a local, even state level, but not federal.
I'm not an elitist. Far from it actually. The first time I saw the nonsense about the digital divide I was furious. Just another way for the government to spend my money on something that people will vandalize and not care for. If you don't work for it, you don't value it.
;)
I'm sorry but computers are not a necessity. I see Internet Access like I do Cable. Its nice but you don't need it to survive. I work for a local ISP and I sure as hell don't want the government getting involved in how we do our pricing/marketing/etc. And if I had to help every idiot on the planet I wouldn't do this job. Computers knowledge doesn't seem to correspond to income level. I've even met Cisco Engineers who were stumped by a dialup connection. I've had problems with every ethnic group out there. Foreign born and made in America. Age has some importance but not much. At least older people listen to you and will talk to you!! The only group I can swear seems to have NO brain at all are liberal arts majors still in college. These are the same people screaming for internet access for all because they feel guilty that they can afford it.
I grew up poor. I'm not afraid to talk about that. And my only access to computers (Macs and Apple IIs) was at school until 1992 when my engineer uncle gave us his 1981 IBM PC after he bought a 386. It was upgraded as much as you could. We had a 300 baud modem that we used to call the local bbs and did email with it. I did all my high school math assignments on the computer by writing the programs in basic. This was allowed as you had to know how the formula worked in order to write the program for it. I just had to submit the program with my homework and one problem done by hand. My parents saved up and bought a 486 almost 2 years later. The relic was given to a friend of mine who was also in a bad financial place. He's now a Computer Animator and finished school a few years ago. Apparently the computer was better for him than me cause I'm still working through school.
If a private, non-profit were to start up and refurbish old computers and give them away, I'd definately volunteer my time/money/effort for them. Just don't use my tax dollars to fix something that not only isn't broken but doesn't exist.