As an IT Techi guy living in Iran for the past 6 years here's what we used to have and what we have now: 6 years ago if you wanted access you had to apply to an ISP, with a copy of your "birth certificate" and address, work address, parent's phone number, 2-3 guys addresses and birth certificate serial numbers, a lot of money and a signature that accepted all their stupid terms. Internet access was through 2 methods: Hourly or Per Kilobyte. You'd opt for the second method if you only chatted, and chose first if you used the web more.
After a couple of years things became more sensible. You could buy cards, scratch off and find the password, then call up teh now 56K E1 number and get online. No more filling forms. Speeds were 56K theoritical, 45K actual, and actual throughput was something around 28.8 - 33.6 even though the "Bandwidth" was 45K. This fooled a lot of people into forking out more money for "E1" lines.
After a couple of years (2 years ago) a few major ISP's started advertising for DSL. I live in Tehran, the capital and we have something around 30 telecommunications centers, each covering an area of Tehran. Of 30 or so telecommunications areas, even today, only a handful offer digital lines, (DSL) so internet for your average guy is still through 56K (so it's called) dialup. The telecommunications authority (the main one that controls the 30 or so smaller branches) keeps saying we're going to have digital lines soon, but 2 years on and there are around 5 or 6 areas (mainly in central town where the offices are) that offer DSL. Even then, they offer 128K connection at stupid prices, speeds are capped, sites are banned, and you have download limits of something around 1 GB/month. Some, like Datak (www.datak-telecom.com) offer unlimited downloads and speeds of up to 256K. It actually starts from 64K. So for all of you who think 128K is too little. Hey: less than 1% of internet users have access to DSL ! What is the government talking about ?!!!
But if you can play a CD in a CD-Player, then surely you could connect the Line-Out to Line-In of the PC sound card and use a sound app (such as Cool Edit) to record.
You're not supposed to convert your current collection of Mp3s to oggs. you're supposed to convert newly ripped WAVs of your favourite music to OGG. I have a good set of headphones and I can "notice" the superior quality of OGGs in 128kbit compared to Mp3s. I don't mind a 1/2 sec load time vs. higher quality of music for 3 or 4 minutes (or howeverlong the music is).
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As an IT Techi guy living in Iran for the past 6 years here's what we used to have and what we have now: 6 years ago if you wanted access you had to apply to an ISP, with a copy of your "birth certificate" and address, work address, parent's phone number, 2-3 guys addresses and birth certificate serial numbers, a lot of money and a signature that accepted all their stupid terms.
Internet access was through 2 methods: Hourly or Per Kilobyte. You'd opt for the second method if you only chatted, and chose first if you used the web more.
After a couple of years things became more sensible. You could buy cards, scratch off and find the password, then call up teh now 56K E1 number and get online. No more filling forms.
Speeds were 56K theoritical, 45K actual, and actual throughput was something around 28.8 - 33.6 even though the "Bandwidth" was 45K. This fooled a lot of people into forking out more money for "E1" lines.
After a couple of years (2 years ago) a few major ISP's started advertising for DSL. I live in Tehran, the capital and we have something around 30 telecommunications centers, each covering an area of Tehran. Of 30 or so telecommunications areas, even today, only a handful offer digital lines, (DSL) so internet for your average guy is still through 56K (so it's called) dialup. The telecommunications authority (the main one that controls the 30 or so smaller branches) keeps saying we're going to have digital lines soon, but 2 years on and there are around 5 or 6 areas (mainly in central town where the offices are) that offer DSL. Even then, they offer 128K connection at stupid prices, speeds are capped, sites are banned, and you have download limits of something around 1 GB/month. Some, like Datak (www.datak-telecom.com) offer unlimited downloads and speeds of up to 256K. It actually starts from 64K. So for all of you who think 128K is too little. Hey: less than 1% of internet users have access to DSL ! What is the government talking about ?!!!
Tehran - Iran
Excuse me, am I missing something here ?
But if you can play a CD in a CD-Player, then surely you could connect the Line-Out to Line-In of the PC sound card and use a sound app (such as Cool Edit) to record.
You could ALWAYS do that.
You're not supposed to convert your current collection of Mp3s to oggs. you're supposed to convert newly ripped WAVs of your favourite music to OGG. I have a good set of headphones and I can "notice" the superior quality of OGGs in 128kbit compared to Mp3s. I don't mind a 1/2 sec load time vs. higher quality of music for 3 or 4 minutes (or howeverlong the music is).
Wait for it, Vorbis Ogg WILL BE the future.
-amir