"many intranet connections are less than 1000 ft from the router. so now the chip could be used for intranet connections too. since most people have office phone, they can share the same line for data too and no need to worry about laying lots of ethernet cable."
Sounds like a job for VoIP. (Voice over IP.)
I am at work at the moment and there is a single cat5e cable coming from the jack up onto my desk which plugs into a Cisco 7910 IP Phone. Another cat5e runs from the phone to the computer. I think that that's a more efficient use of resources than actually having to have a copper line for every phone.
" 150Mbit ?! They'd better bundle the modems with 200Gb harddrives."
I'd prefer that they bundled it with a gigabit ethernet card.
Re:Where is my last generation Broadband?
on
150 Mbit/s DSL.
·
· Score: 1
"Living with "just" 190k/sec would be heaven to anyone living in a rural area. If you're really more desperate for bandwidth, invest in a T1/T3/OC3/OC48."
Hell yeah. Where I live, I am lucky to get 28.8. People down the road are lucky of they get a 21.6 conection. There is no ADSL or cable. Satellite, even 2-way satellite, is terrible since for the 2-way servie you are limited in the number of outbound conncetions. For deluxe packages you get something like 35 connections. I use more than that for a single bittorrent downlaod.
To combat this problem I am considering starting a business and getting a large pipe (ATM, T3, etc) pulled in and selling broadband via wireless technology to the people in my area.
"Yeah, the last company I worked for considered Access work, "student worker" dispoable cruft that might be used to teach students a few useful things about the business but never for anything real."
I'm not THAT far down on the food chain;-) I saw my own work go into the real production environment on more than one occasion.
And thanks for your comments about postgresql (sp?) and mysql, I will look into it!
"Anyone who is savvy enough to write SQL statments is already using a real database. The people who use Access are the ones who aren't able to, or won't, learn SQL."
Not so. I don't really know how to use those graphical query builders in MS Access. I learned basic SQL (initally) by going to SQLCourse.com and doing free tutorials for 20 minutes. And because of that I always just write the raw SQL in Access. It has gotten to the point where many of the queries I write cannot be displayed in the query builder becaue they have joins that are too complex to show.
Now after that, I started at another job where I was submitting queries to a high end Solaris System (SF12K) running a Sybase DB and that's where I became a lot more hard core and truly learned SQL.
So is Access only for people who don't know SQL? I think not. It's more like a training ground. Access to a real DB is like Turbo Pascal to C.
"The Calc program not only converted everything from Office, but the HTML is CLEAN and NO hidden data slips into it."
I think that the HTML export is the best feature of OpenOffice. The HTML exporting in MSOffice is just downright terrible. Try saving a very simple word document in HTML and look at the piles of code it generates, often is some sort of vector language that only IE reads properly.
In contrast, I can load that document in OpenOffice, export to HTML and the HTML is actually decent.
"You think SMS spam is bad, soon we'll see voice spam. Yes, it's already illegal within most countries to call somebody to play a recording, but the price of the telecom infrastructure is getting low enough to make it productive to do from overseas."
It has already started. I was over at my friend's place in Toronto a few days ago and the phone rang. He picked it up and there was a recording in Chinese (Mandarin) advertising high speed internet. (My friend is from Asia and understands this language.) He said that they do a search in the phone book for common Asian last names (and his is *very* common) and then let loose the recordings. It is unpleasant.
"No offence but in most countries people are trying to figure out what Americas cellphone companies are trying to accomplish, cause they just dont seem to know what they are doing."
As far as I can tell, it seems that US phone companies have not yet realised that offering the customer a service that they want to pay for and building profitable business model are somehow related.
I see it in many business models: The music industry, the movie industry, large ISPs, cable TV service, landline phone service and so on. I think the problem is bigger than mobile phone companies. Companies have become bloated and complacent, and if normal market pressures prevailed, these companies would be forced to evolve or go extinct. But because of stupid decisions by the FCC and the buying out of government, competition is eradicated and the bloat continues. It does not look good, and I do not see it getting better any time soon. Just my two cents. (CDN$1.47)
"This is why junk faxes are illegal in Canada (don't know about the US)."
Sure they're illegal, but if I wanted to start up a junk fax business, all I have to do is have a valid unsubscribe method and then I can fax all I want. If you work at a big company (like I do) you'll very commonly see 'legal junk faxes' from staffing or office supply companies come through. Most people will not go to the time to read the instructions and instead just toss the fax in the garbage.
"Only in the USA does one have to pay to receive an SMS."
And canada too, if the SMS is not sent from a phone. (i.e. someone sent it from a computer.) And I think Fido still charges 10c per incomnig and outgoing SMS. But then SMS spam is *very* rare here too.
"In Europe the person *sending* the SMS message pays. This seems like a pretty effective way to stop spam as well!"
In Canada...
When SMS was first introduced, the pricing was VERY stupid: It was free to send but 10c to receive. (The marketers wanted to be able to say that it was free to send a text message, thinking that that would make it catch on faster.) But mobile phone spam is quite rare over here.
Now they have smartened up a little: Sending from a phone costs 10c, and receiving is free or remains at 10c depending on which provider you use.
THE CATCH is that if you send from a PC to a phone, the phone user pays 10c. So basically if I bombard you with 10 SMS messages sent from my PC, I've instantly cost you $1.00 at no cost to myself. Thank goodness I've never received an SMS spam, and this is after having an SMS capable phone for 2 years.
The unheralded benefit of this is that you can easily quantify the money lost to SMS spam if you pay 10c to receive. People might be satisfied enough to just delete SMS spam in Europe, but if it ever caught on here, there's a much greater chance of having legislation that bans SMS spam than there would be on the other shore of the pond.
Just a few days ago, I installed Quark (on a Windows 2000 machine) that was destined to be on the desk of a desktop publishing person at the company where I work. Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat (full version,) Illustrator and a bunch of others were to be installed as well.
The Quark software is incredibly anal. The installation forces you to enter piles of personal information, employment information, details about your company, and so on. You can't opt out. And along with the installation CD, it comes with a couple of FLOPPIES! Near the end of the installation it wants the first one and copies some files from it, and then it wants the second one. It writes your registation information onto the second disk and who knows what other information about your computer, products installed, etc. onto it and expects you to mail it to Quark. And then it wants the first disk again and refuses to continue until you let it WRITE to it. Bah, I made a copy of the first disk and let it write to that.
And then when you start up the program, it incessantly bothers you about wanting to send the registration information over the internet.
This is the most annoying, invasive installation I have ever come across. I yes, I have installed Microsoft Windows. If I ever have to buy software for myself for desktop publishing, Quark will be at the BOTTOM of the list.
(Note: I have run across more annoying installations than this, but none of them were as invasive.)
"Perhaps you should pay for it and you wouldn't have that problem. $30 bucks is probably $30 more than most people here are accustomed to paying for software, but in my opinion it's worth it."
Or you could just get UltimateZIP which is basically a freeware winzip clone. (Note: Try not to get the newest version because the new one show this floating banner.)
"Also I have trackball problems, those damn right-handed-facist at logitic refuse to make a mouse that has 2+ buttons, and a scroll, for lefties. Damnit."
Are you aware that there are plenty if 'ambidexterous' mice out there with scroll wheels? Sitting on my desk right now is a Logitech M-BJ58 which has 2 buttons, a scroll wheel, optical tracking and it's not optimised for either handedness. I appears to be the same as this mouse.
"Because our language is written left-to-right, left-handed people tend to require much more time to write than right handed people do (and I should know because I am one). Does this mean that we should require all left-handed people to start writing with their right hands?"
Are you aware that in past decades, at least in North America, the schools FORCED all students to write with their right hands even if they were left handed? Supposedly it had to do with the "Power in Your Right Hand" type of thinking.
This one time when I was in high school, I was in the band playing the music at commencement. (Note: I think it has a different name in the USA. It's where the grads return, dess in the gowns at 'plaster hats' and get their diplomas and such.)
I was at home preparing to go to the school and set up with the ensemble. I was quite calm since I was all dressed, had everything in order and would leave in plenty of time. Then about 5 mintues before I had to leave, I rememberd, "Oh shit! We're supposed to wear ties!" I did not know how to tie one, and my folks weren't home so I couldn't get them to do it.
OK, so I quickly got online googled for how to tie a tie and found some instructions! After 3 tries and 15 minutes later, the tie was ties. And I was not unreasonably late to commencement.
So I guess invention and skills are siblings.
(Note: the previous line is a reference to the saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention.")
"What really freaks me out, though, is the number of teenagers who have probably never tied shoelaces. Young kids wear slip-ons and shoes with velcro straps."
You could say the same thing about analogue clocks. Most folks still in grade school probably don't know how to read one.
Unpleasant. I rarely use my 'pointer' finger on the mouse any more because it hurts too much. I substitute my middle and 'ring' finger for the right and left buttons respectively.
"AIM is destroying another MORE important part of writing. Grammar, sentence structure, and spelling."
Agreed. I think that some of the worst sins of netspeak involve using one netspeak word for many real words:
"Hey, when r we going 2 hand in r report?"
In real English, that translates into:
"Hey, when are we going to hand in our report?"
Notice that "r" was being substituted for both "are" and "our" respectively. It's little things like this that erode youngsters' and even adults' understanding of grammar and spelling.
Even without netspeak, people have enough trouble with its/it's, their/there/they're and your/you're.
Admittedly, I'm a grammar and spelling nazi but I can't help think that IM is destroying cursive writing (which is not necessarily bad) AND spelling/grammar (which is certainly bad!)
I learned cursive writing in the regular Canadian school system. Back in my grade 4-6 days I was always getting bad marks on cursive writing so my parents requested that the school give me extra exercises on that subject. As a result, I developed very legible, artful cursive writing. It's many years later now and I'm in university (Engineering), but if I pick up a nice Sanford Uni-Ball Vision Micro pen, I can still do it.
I am also a serious user of typing. As a side effect of learning the alphabet through computer games (thanks to a techie dad), I learned to type before I learned to do regular printing in grade 1. Another side effect was that early on, I could type the alphabet but not know how to pronounce any of the letters. Even as I was learning to write cursively, I could type much more rapidly and accurately than people twice my age: 30 wpm by age 6, 50 wpm by age 12, now 100+ wpm in university (assuming I'm in the groove where I can think at 100 wpm.)
Why I prefer Cursive:
Cursive writing is more of an artform to me as well as a tool to enforce certain frames of mind. If I am in a class that requires right brain thought (typically anything that requires critical thought in relation to someone else's non-technical writing) I will use the cursive. It helps keep me in the right-brained frame of mind. My thoughts flow onto the page. When I write something in cursive, it's flowing onto a piece of paper from my pen. It's written there in stone and you can't erase it. (No, white-out does not count.) What I have written there is a reflection of myself that is expressed through words and the physical characteristics of what I have put down onto the paper. Because cursive is like art, a lot more thought goes into what I stroke down onto the paper. It makes me think at a higher level and use my brain more effectively.
And Now The Case For Typing:
Typing is incredibly useful to me because of its utility and flexibility. As the girl in the article mentioned, you can easily fix mistakes with a backspace ( or ^H;-). The main benefit of typing is that whatever you create is infinitely replicable. If your dog eats your homework, you print off another copy. It can be instantly formatted, transmitted, stored, replicated, processed and so on. The difference between handwriting and typing is like the difference between a Band's Live Performance and the CD. You can't perfectly duplicate that piece of paper with your personal pen strokes on it. But you can copy that OpenOffice file to a web server. (And yes, I do use OO.org.)
The main thing that you lose with typing is the separation of personal effort from the results of that effort. You don't see the emotion and streaks of ink on your word processor. It's the difference between sending a "Blue Mountain E-Card" where you personally wrote the greeting for someone's birthday, and sending a Personally Written Hallmark Card with the same greeting. The effort and thoughtfulness comes through with physical card but not the e-card.
The Moral of the Story. (According To Me, Anyway.)
I say that the typing separates emotion/effort from content but with the added value of making something highly utilitarian. You can't replicate the paper, but that makes it all the more precious.
I say that the purposes for writing and typing do not entirely overlap, and thus neither will cancel out the other any time soon.
"Which begs the question... why is telephone service more expensive in rural areas?"
I am not 100% sure, but I believe it's because there's more analogue equipment involved and this it is harder to maintain, harder to remotel administer and so on. I live in a rural area and because of all this analogue sh~t I can only get 28.8 dialup. Too bad cable and ADSL are not available. (Fortunately I am temporarily living in a big city for business purposes and I have 1.5 Mb cable from Rogers. It's not in the USA so the FCC does not have hold here.)
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a job for VoIP. (Voice over IP.)
I am at work at the moment and there is a single cat5e cable coming from the jack up onto my desk which plugs into a Cisco 7910 IP Phone. Another cat5e runs from the phone to the computer. I think that that's a more efficient use of resources than actually having to have a copper line for every phone.
I'd prefer that they bundled it with a gigabit ethernet card.
Hell yeah. Where I live, I am lucky to get 28.8. People down the road are lucky of they get a 21.6 conection. There is no ADSL or cable. Satellite, even 2-way satellite, is terrible since for the 2-way servie you are limited in the number of outbound conncetions. For deluxe packages you get something like 35 connections. I use more than that for a single bittorrent downlaod.
To combat this problem I am considering starting a business and getting a large pipe (ATM, T3, etc) pulled in and selling broadband via wireless technology to the people in my area.
I'm not THAT far down on the food chain ;-) I saw my own work go into the real production environment on more than one occasion.
And thanks for your comments about postgresql (sp?) and mysql, I will look into it!
Not so. I don't really know how to use those graphical query builders in MS Access. I learned basic SQL (initally) by going to SQLCourse.com and doing free tutorials for 20 minutes. And because of that I always just write the raw SQL in Access. It has gotten to the point where many of the queries I write cannot be displayed in the query builder becaue they have joins that are too complex to show.
Now after that, I started at another job where I was submitting queries to a high end Solaris System (SF12K) running a Sybase DB and that's where I became a lot more hard core and truly learned SQL.
So is Access only for people who don't know SQL? I think not. It's more like a training ground. Access to a real DB is like Turbo Pascal to C.
I am aware that MS Access stinks, although as a student I take what I can get and have made some decent money programming Access applications.
Can you please suggest some alternatives to Access that work on win32? This is a genuine question, not a troll.
I think that the HTML export is the best feature of OpenOffice. The HTML exporting in MSOffice is just downright terrible. Try saving a very simple word document in HTML and look at the piles of code it generates, often is some sort of vector language that only IE reads properly.
In contrast, I can load that document in OpenOffice, export to HTML and the HTML is actually decent.
It has already started. I was over at my friend's place in Toronto a few days ago and the phone rang. He picked it up and there was a recording in Chinese (Mandarin) advertising high speed internet. (My friend is from Asia and understands this language.) He said that they do a search in the phone book for common Asian last names (and his is *very* common) and then let loose the recordings. It is unpleasant.
As far as I can tell, it seems that US phone companies have not yet realised that offering the customer a service that they want to pay for and building profitable business model are somehow related.
I see it in many business models: The music industry, the movie industry, large ISPs, cable TV service, landline phone service and so on. I think the problem is bigger than mobile phone companies. Companies have become bloated and complacent, and if normal market pressures prevailed, these companies would be forced to evolve or go extinct. But because of stupid decisions by the FCC and the buying out of government, competition is eradicated and the bloat continues. It does not look good, and I do not see it getting better any time soon. Just my two cents. (CDN$1.47)
Sure they're illegal, but if I wanted to start up a junk fax business, all I have to do is have a valid unsubscribe method and then I can fax all I want. If you work at a big company (like I do) you'll very commonly see 'legal junk faxes' from staffing or office supply companies come through. Most people will not go to the time to read the instructions and instead just toss the fax in the garbage.
And canada too, if the SMS is not sent from a phone. (i.e. someone sent it from a computer.) And I think Fido still charges 10c per incomnig and outgoing SMS. But then SMS spam is *very* rare here too.
In Canada...
When SMS was first introduced, the pricing was VERY stupid: It was free to send but 10c to receive. (The marketers wanted to be able to say that it was free to send a text message, thinking that that would make it catch on faster.) But mobile phone spam is quite rare over here.
Now they have smartened up a little: Sending from a phone costs 10c, and receiving is free or remains at 10c depending on which provider you use.
THE CATCH is that if you send from a PC to a phone, the phone user pays 10c. So basically if I bombard you with 10 SMS messages sent from my PC, I've instantly cost you $1.00 at no cost to myself. Thank goodness I've never received an SMS spam, and this is after having an SMS capable phone for 2 years.
The unheralded benefit of this is that you can easily quantify the money lost to SMS spam if you pay 10c to receive. People might be satisfied enough to just delete SMS spam in Europe, but if it ever caught on here, there's a much greater chance of having legislation that bans SMS spam than there would be on the other shore of the pond.
The Quark software is incredibly anal. The installation forces you to enter piles of personal information, employment information, details about your company, and so on. You can't opt out. And along with the installation CD, it comes with a couple of FLOPPIES! Near the end of the installation it wants the first one and copies some files from it, and then it wants the second one. It writes your registation information onto the second disk and who knows what other information about your computer, products installed, etc. onto it and expects you to mail it to Quark. And then it wants the first disk again and refuses to continue until you let it WRITE to it. Bah, I made a copy of the first disk and let it write to that.
And then when you start up the program, it incessantly bothers you about wanting to send the registration information over the internet.
This is the most annoying, invasive installation I have ever come across. I yes, I have installed Microsoft Windows. If I ever have to buy software for myself for desktop publishing, Quark will be at the BOTTOM of the list.
(Note: I have run across more annoying installations than this, but none of them were as invasive.)
Or you could just get UltimateZIP which is basically a freeware winzip clone. (Note: Try not to get the newest version because the new one show this floating banner.)
If you look up information about carpal tunnel, you'll find that repetitive actions *in cold environments* is a known factor.
Are you aware that there are plenty if 'ambidexterous' mice out there with scroll wheels? Sitting on my desk right now is a Logitech M-BJ58 which has 2 buttons, a scroll wheel, optical tracking and it's not optimised for either handedness. I appears to be the same as this mouse.
Are you aware that in past decades, at least in North America, the schools FORCED all students to write with their right hands even if they were left handed? Supposedly it had to do with the "Power in Your Right Hand" type of thinking.
Only in emergencies ;-)
This one time when I was in high school, I was in the band playing the music at commencement. (Note: I think it has a different name in the USA. It's where the grads return, dess in the gowns at 'plaster hats' and get their diplomas and such.)
I was at home preparing to go to the school and set up with the ensemble. I was quite calm since I was all dressed, had everything in order and would leave in plenty of time. Then about 5 mintues before I had to leave, I rememberd, "Oh shit! We're supposed to wear ties!" I did not know how to tie one, and my folks weren't home so I couldn't get them to do it.
OK, so I quickly got online googled for how to tie a tie and found some instructions! After 3 tries and 15 minutes later, the tie was ties. And I was not unreasonably late to commencement.
So I guess invention and skills are siblings.
(Note: the previous line is a reference to the saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention.")
You could say the same thing about analogue clocks. Most folks still in grade school probably don't know how to read one.
And then there's pulse dial rotary phones ...
Now that you mention it, I did overdo it by a large margin on that point ;-)
Unpleasant. I rarely use my 'pointer' finger on the mouse any more because it hurts too much. I substitute my middle and 'ring' finger for the right and left buttons respectively.
Agreed. I think that some of the worst sins of netspeak involve using one netspeak word for many real words:
"Hey, when r we going 2 hand in r report?"
In real English, that translates into:
"Hey, when are we going to hand in our report?"
Notice that "r" was being substituted for both "are" and "our" respectively. It's little things like this that erode youngsters' and even adults' understanding of grammar and spelling.
Even without netspeak, people have enough trouble with its/it's, their/there/they're and your/you're.
Admittedly, I'm a grammar and spelling nazi but I can't help think that IM is destroying cursive writing (which is not necessarily bad) AND spelling/grammar (which is certainly bad!)
I learned cursive writing in the regular Canadian school system. Back in my grade 4-6 days I was always getting bad marks on cursive writing so my parents requested that the school give me extra exercises on that subject. As a result, I developed very legible, artful cursive writing. It's many years later now and I'm in university (Engineering), but if I pick up a nice Sanford Uni-Ball Vision Micro pen, I can still do it.
I am also a serious user of typing. As a side effect of learning the alphabet through computer games (thanks to a techie dad), I learned to type before I learned to do regular printing in grade 1. Another side effect was that early on, I could type the alphabet but not know how to pronounce any of the letters. Even as I was learning to write cursively, I could type much more rapidly and accurately than people twice my age: 30 wpm by age 6, 50 wpm by age 12, now 100+ wpm in university (assuming I'm in the groove where I can think at 100 wpm.)
Why I prefer Cursive:
Cursive writing is more of an artform to me as well as a tool to enforce certain frames of mind. If I am in a class that requires right brain thought (typically anything that requires critical thought in relation to someone else's non-technical writing) I will use the cursive. It helps keep me in the right-brained frame of mind. My thoughts flow onto the page. When I write something in cursive, it's flowing onto a piece of paper from my pen. It's written there in stone and you can't erase it. (No, white-out does not count.) What I have written there is a reflection of myself that is expressed through words and the physical characteristics of what I have put down onto the paper. Because cursive is like art, a lot more thought goes into what I stroke down onto the paper. It makes me think at a higher level and use my brain more effectively.
And Now The Case For Typing:
Typing is incredibly useful to me because of its utility and flexibility. As the girl in the article mentioned, you can easily fix mistakes with a backspace ( or ^H ;-). The main benefit of typing is that whatever you create is infinitely replicable. If your dog eats your homework, you print off another copy. It can be instantly formatted, transmitted, stored, replicated, processed and so on. The difference between handwriting and typing is like the difference between a Band's Live Performance and the CD. You can't perfectly duplicate that piece of paper with your personal pen strokes on it. But you can copy that OpenOffice file to a web server. (And yes, I do use OO.org.)
The main thing that you lose with typing is the separation of personal effort from the results of that effort. You don't see the emotion and streaks of ink on your word processor. It's the difference between sending a "Blue Mountain E-Card" where you personally wrote the greeting for someone's birthday, and sending a Personally Written Hallmark Card with the same greeting. The effort and thoughtfulness comes through with physical card but not the e-card.
The Moral of the Story. (According To Me, Anyway.)
I say that the typing separates emotion/effort from content but with the added value of making something highly utilitarian. You can't replicate the paper, but that makes it all the more precious.
I say that the purposes for writing and typing do not entirely overlap, and thus neither will cancel out the other any time soon.
Hey, thanks for answering my e-mail. I finally found the bitrate limiting option, and it works pretty well too ;-)
I am not 100% sure, but I believe it's because there's more analogue equipment involved and this it is harder to maintain, harder to remotel administer and so on. I live in a rural area and because of all this analogue sh~t I can only get 28.8 dialup. Too bad cable and ADSL are not available. (Fortunately I am temporarily living in a big city for business purposes and I have 1.5 Mb cable from Rogers. It's not in the USA so the FCC does not have hold here.)