She began with a favourable attitude toward educational computing but came reluctantly to the conclusion that computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture.
So, if I understand this correctly, she is upset because computers are supposedly edging their way into the monopoly on stifling creativity and damaging posture (remember those crappy chairs and desks when you were a kid?) that schools currently hold? --- seumas.com
Modern society in general discourages study, reflection, and observation.
As James Glieck points out in Faster, we used to wait weeks between lettered discussions and conversations -- even in professional fields. With the advent of typewriters and the enhancement of the postal service, this was reduced to days. Still, days of contemplation and reflection are good. You have time to think about things before you comment on them or reply to them, while waiting for a response.
In this instantaneous age, you have seconds, minutes or hours. I fire an email off to a customer, student or friend and can often receive an immediate response. Not much thought there. Or, if there is a lot of thought, certainly not much pause for reflection and contemplation before hitting the send button. We would consider minutes to be sufficient time for thinking these days.
Political polls are the same. What used to be a matter of days and weeks to form opinions now is, literally, seconds. Ten seconds after a politician says something, it is regurgitated on the news in sound-bites and immediately, opinions which have not been codified and split-second polls are returned and broadcast. Shazam -- you now have material to form your ill-understood opinion on.
Let's not just blame this on computers and the internet -- or short attention spans of children. Processing of information has grown greater than exponentially. If we're going to blame anything, blame TV Dinners, 22-minute news-casts, 10 second commercial jingles and minute-rice. --- seumas.com
Computers are an awesome learning tool. So are DVD players and, when I was in middle school -- laser discs.
The problem is that teachers and schools often forget that you actually have to structure some sort of educational plan around them. You can't throw a kid in front of a PC, DVD, library of educational laser discs, like their parents do with the television, and expect them to gain anything from it.
The benefit to the Internet, specifically, is that a student can expedite their gathering of information. If a student is given a chance to learn not only at their own pace, but in their own reas of interest, chances are they can make great use of the technology. Whoring the technology as a just another expensive piece of equipment to teach typing on -- or sitting kids in front of them and telling them "learn about birds" is rediculous and counter-productive.
Yet, this is how teachers taught when I was in school. This is how I see many teachers teach, today. --- seumas.com
Everything is going good this week, we get to hear a little about this, a new news item about that, and boom, we get more one-sided crap with no research involved at all. It just doesn't fit. Maybe we could have the left hand side of the web page list all of Katz' new rough drafts. I have no problem with that. If Slashdot owners want him writing about... 'stuff', they can, just put him in his own article section. I'd just rather see news items in the main section.
Hm. Perhaps Katz could pay each Slashdot reader for enduring his drafts before he goes off and makes a buck off of them? *grin*.
The complaint about people who get an auto +2 or Katz getting to post whatever he wants should check themselves. You don't get a +2 for sitting around and never contributing. You get a +2 for commenting, posting -- and having other people find your comments interesting enough to moderate up. Same with Katz. He's posted enough good stuff to warrent a sort of "hey, you write it, we'll post it" line on Slashdot. I have no problem with that whatsoever. He certainly doesn't seem to abuse this, since he holds back to a submission or two per week.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with Katz posting his articles on Slashdot as he does. He seems to avergae one or two pieces per week, which is about what one would expect from a syndicated columnist.
I'll grant you that it sort of sucks when you read the major typos and awful grammar. It makes you wonder how interested he actually is in presenting the topic at hand -- at least, to the crowd here.
All in all, though, it usually produces some interesting conversations, aside from these Katz-related threads. I'd rather have him posting on the off-chance that I'll find something I really dig, than not. (I only read about half of his articles all the way through, and maybe half of those are interesting enough to really delve into posting something in reply).
How would people feel of ESR or RMS were writing up weekly columns on here, though? I wonder if the feeling would grow to be the same apparent disgust or if people would fall all over themselves... Just wondering.
As far as your idea about a "katz" section -- I think that would be great. I'd love a Katz slashbox, just like Your Rights Online has. I trust the Emmette and Rob and Hemos and the rest enough to know when a Katz article is big enough to require full front-page real-estate, so he wouldn't be forever and always relegated to the limbo of the right side of the page. --- seumas.com
I've even heard of this guy on the internet who saves all of his urine, freezes it and then will sell it to you, in a little bag you can hide on your person with a little hose that you can uncap at the right moment to fill that little bottle for the test.
Man, if you're addiction requires that you resort to another man's pee... *shudder*.
- Yo, whassup with that 'redundant' mark on my first post? Man, I tell you, ever since Slashdot hired these Moderator's from the ex-Microsoft-Intern pool, things have gone down-hill here. --- seumas.com
Just what are these Jon Katz articles supposed to be about?
Ooooh, about . . . 1,200 to 3,500 words. Give or take a rant and depending on how many geeks are afflicted in each story.
Sorry Jon!
You know, I really think Jon gets too much shit for what he does. People need to lighten up. His articles and comments are attacked, not because of their content or relavence, but because some time long ago, a few people were grossly critical of an article or two and Katz bashing became the cool thing to do.
If Katz were that worthless, everyone would have bannished his articles from their displays, via Slashdot preferences. The fact that they linger around to read everything he ever writes (even if they claim it's just for a good laugh), says a lot. --- seumas.com
Well, considering that Congress held a session regarding Echelon (if I recall?)... I would tend to say it more than likely exists. The last people to know are those that are being spied upon (aka: the American population itself).
I'd like to see all of the patriotic American nationalists that we have in this country, flying their red white and blue on their pick-up trucks and snapping at any two-bit 'hippy' that dares suggest America isn't the greatest nation in the world, react to having every bit of communication recorded and played back to them, from their email and letters to their phone calls.
And - damn it, I'm going to pimp this book again. DATABASE NATION by Simson Garfinkel. This book should be read by every geek, grocery clerk, grandmother, businessman and government official. While it is not the most in-depth book, it is the best brush with which to paint a general over-view of the demise of privacy to those who are otherwise completely oblivious to it. --- seumas.com
This reminds me of this movie from the 80's about these giant rats that take over an entire town (the size of small dogs). If I recall, a massive flood eventually kills them all off. Which is probably worse, because who wants a town full of giant dead decaying rats?
Of course, keep in mind that the breakthrough here is altering the growth/size -- that they're mice is purely incidental. --- seumas.com
Hm. I don't recall such standards in the first wave of 28.8 -- then again, I didn't exactly go grubbing through dozens of brands, either.
Heh. The tech support people who had to explain to dopey customers what performing a flash upgrade ment, have my sympathy.
I really just wish we could throw modems into a giant sea of circuit boards and serial ports and leap forward to global sattelite connections. Ho hum, a few more years...? --- seumas.com
Yes, modern modems. But this was the first 56k I'd purchased and it was (I believe) the first one Zoom released. This was before there was much of a consensus for compression as far as I can tell.
Also, back with 28.8k modems, there were numerous compression methods you could choose from, depending on the manufacturer. This meant that your USR may connect (excuse me, transfer an equivalent amount of data) at 115kbps, but if you connected it to say, a Zoom, Cardinal, Cobra, yadda yadda yadda, it would probably transfer at 28.8k -- if it would even connect (I'm not sure what happened if you tried to enable compression and then connect with a modem that couldn't understand that compression method. I think it just resorted to a standard mode?).
You're right, that compression doesn't matter much when you're transfering ARC'd files or JPG's, but back in the day when more people were online with their favorite BBS than the Internet, the speed would have been nice. There was nothing like playing BRE, LORD or TW2002 on a slow modem (or worse, a noisey line -- when line noise used to actually show up as cryptic characters on your screen before dropping the unpleaseent [NO CARRIER] on your lap), watching the ANSI images literally crawling acrossed yoru screen... well, it sucked! --- seumas.com
Well, since all technologies sink to their lowest common denomonator before becoming wide-spread, I suppose some of the most popular uses for these microbots will be:
Have a urinalysis test coming up, before that next big job interview? Pop a capsule full of microbots and they'll soon be hard at work in your bladder and blood stream, anihalating all traces of THC!
Liver damage from too much boozing? -- No more! Our new microbots will keep a constant vigil on one of your most precious organs, regenerating and rebuilding its structure day and night!
Having trouble keeping an erection? Fear no more, as our new series of microbots work diligently to construct a rock-solid fiber-structure within your penis (degradable over time and reabsorbed into your blood system). Just swallow a few thousand of these suckers and you'll be ready to party in no time!
Need to exact revenge on some slob who has made your life miserable? Just slip a few million of these suckers into the unsuspecting cretin's drink and wait for the screams of pain as they, literally, tear your victim a new asshole!
The phrase Desktop Biofactories was mentioned in the article, but I didn't really see any expansion on that in it. Just what is a desktop biofactory?
In my mind, I've conjured up this surreal image of some guy sipping a bear while an army of microbots construct a new liver for him, in a cooler on his desktop, next to his PC... --- seumas.com
I bet the telco's put up a pretty big fight over this. They gain nothing from providing faster access over analog lines. Instead, they'd rather you switch over to one of their slick DSL lines, for a slightly higher fee...
One thing I'm a bit curious about is this 'v42bis reccomendation'. I've never heard of this, and as far as I know, only v32 is currently supported or used.
Anyone know more information about it?
You know, I'm not so sure service providers are going to like the 'hold' feature that allows you to take an incoming call without disconnecting your network activity. Just what they need, someone taking up their network connection while they spend an hour talking to Aunt Beatrice... --- seumas.com
Machine to machine? What are you talking about? You mean, modem to modem? What brand? As I explained above, when I was goofing around with modem to modem connections from work to home, I was enabling the provided compression methods. My real connect was likely 33k (or pretty damned close).
If you were getting a literal 40k+ connection, you were probably not connecting from (or maybe to) a standard modem? If you're using anything but an analog connection from one machine, you probably weren't connecting directly to your other modem. In fact.. I'm not even sure how you could connect if it were from an ISDN or other service to a modem...? --- seumas.com
You can enable compression methods when connecting (not sure if this works if the modems are not matched-brands -- probably, as long as they support the same compression algorithms).
Granted, this is a bit of a cheat, but my theory was that if I could connect at a sufficient speed modem-to-modem over analog lines, then my ISP connection should be similary successful, regardless of the compression (connection itself was still at or near 33k).
The ZOOM offered at least a couple methods of compression, but I had never used it before, so I stuck with one and gave it a shot. Effectively, you could enable full compression and transfer at 115k. The same amount of data is being sent and received, of course -- but my main point is that if I can do a modem to modem connect with full compression and find better performance, why can something similar not be approached with my ISP? Especially if we're both using the same modems? (I have no idea of your average ISP actually enables such connections - they may not).
My experience with this is pretty shallow and I've not heard much from people regarding using the compression techniques available with their modems, even back when such a thing would have been extremely beneficial. I'm curious to know if this was a feature manufacturers packed in that was largely overlooked by users and never taken advantage of, or not. Of course, not useful for an ISP in general (and I'm going out on a bit of a whim) but for relatively closed systems still requiring such a connection, I would think it would be to one's best interest to implement this, no? --- seumas.com
Ah, this is typically true -- however, the people I'm speaking specifically of are not your run-of-the-mill home user. They are tech professionals (many colleagues) who would rather cut off their right arm than stoop to a Winmodem.
Poor lines are often the case, too. But to test this theory, I tried connecting to another machine of mine 40 miles across town, running the same modem (at the time, a Zoom 56kFlex) and made it consistantly at 44k. Not great, but a huge jump from the 31.2k I'd been connecting to the ISP at.
Granted, there is the possibility that the ISP's lines were poor, too -- but what ISP would set up shop in an area of town without testing the quality of their lines first?! --- seumas.com
In the heyday, USR and Cardinals were pretty high-quality stuff. Now it seems to be the land of Diamond. I've had poor connections with every ISP I've used (never below 28.8k of course) but the last one used Diamond Supra-Expresses. So I dished out a couple hundred bucks and bought a 56k external Supra-Express v.90.
I connected fine, for three days. Then my connections dropped to around 32k, consistantly. Upon further investigation, I found out that the ISP had dumped all of their Supra's for a cheaper set of Zoom's.
But no connection was ever as poor as what I have now, while waiting for DSL. I expected to have kick-ass connections and bandwidth available in Silicon Valley. I mean, if you can't get reliable connections there.. well, where the hell can you?
Of course, you can -- just not over PacBell's lines. You have to get DSL, which is what everyone and their grandmother have around here -- as long as you have the patience to wait. --- seumas.com
Ninety percent of the dial-ups I've used in the last three years have connected at 31200bps or lower, with 56k modems (modems on both ends utilizing either Flex or x2).
Dozens of people have complained to me over the last year or two, about their inability to connect to their 56k account at anything higher than 19200bps. That's 19200bps! I haven't seen connections like that since late in 1994!
It's only become worse. I'm still waiting for my DSL and the company that is providing it offered free dial-up service until my DSL is actually installed and running. Only problem? I can't actually connect to a single one of their dial-up numbers. After a flurry of handshaking and choking on signals, both modems give up and I'm left with the recorded voice of the operating piping through my computer, telling me that if I'd like to make a call, perhaps I should hang up and try again.
As long as dial-up providers keep implementing cheap modems to so they can claim "20,000 modems -- no busy signals!", connections will still be poor. Clinging to a v.92 standard is fine, but a lame-duck modem is still a lame-duck modem. --- seumas.com
You certainly have a point and in the NetSlave caste, these would be the GoldDiggers.
I've never seen any office-romances, unless they already existed before the office. That is, the only romantic relationships I've seen were ones in which both people knew and dated/married each other before the job presented itself.
I'm not sure how much office-romance stuff goes on elsewhere in society, but it seems to be low here. Of course, the low number of women is probably one aspect of it (although there are still a lot of them).
Further, I personally am not sure I would want a 'geek girl' as my lover. An intelligent girl, but not a techie. I have enough technical stuff in my life. I'd prefer someone who is perhaps a literary professional, an artist -- anything, just not someone who sits in a dark room drinking Mt Dew and coding like mad.
Not that I don't find myself the least bit attracted to girls with a very technical profile. I've worked with some very ambitious and intelligent girls that I found insanely attractive. Nonetheless, I'd prefer not to pair-up with someone who is inclined to hop online and check Slashdot two minutes after having sex.
Geek relationships are really wierd, anyway. I know couples who sit five feet from one another at home, but tend to speak through AIM or ICQ rather than talk. Or who tend to argue the finer points of object oriented perl.
This suddenly makes me wonder what a techno-geek version of 9-1/2 Weeks would be... I envision an attractive woman writing C++ comments on her lover's body -- or maybe some goofy guy dangling pizza-cheese from his lips to his girlfrield, laying on the floor... *shudder*... make it stop...! --- seumas.com
You're absolutely correct, except they were interviewing high school girls. 16, 17, 18 years of age. That does seem to be the group that they questioned, when you take in all of their other answers to questions. The problem is very obviously not that these girls (at least the sob-story ones indicated in this article) are not given the oppertunities (hell, they're in a high school computer class, learning programming aren't they? When I was in highschool, comptuers were for learning how to type).
The problem is the attitudes. "Oh, that's so much work" and "oh, you have to like, be exact and stuff..." -- boo hoo.
``It's tough work getting it to work exactly correctly and it's frustrating because one misspelled word and you can't get it to work,''
Referring to Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, she added, ``I say let him have it all, let him do it all.''
That's the spirit! Let someone else do the work. After all, who wants to be like, all detailed and stuff. I mean, at least when you're at Burger King, the only important thing is that you squirt some mustard on the burger. Nobody cares where or how much!
'`I don't want to take computer science.... Just looking at it, all the programming and these funny-looking things on the paper. It (takes) so much stuff to do one thing on the computer.''
I'm having flashbacks to the Barbie Doll that used to say "Math is soooo hard! - let's go shopping!"
``The reason why you see more men doing computer stuff is that girls are more ambitious than that. My parents always say, 'Do something with computers,' because it is stable and stuff, but a lot (of people) don't want to be at a desk from 9 to 5.''
Oh my god. I actually laughed out loud at this last statement. "More ambitious"... What, like being the next Britney Spears or Ricki Lake?! And you have to love the "be at a desk from 9 to 5". I'm not sure about everyone here, but most of the people I know, including myself, are at their "desk" probably at least double that. Further, how can you be looking for an "ambitious" career, where you only have to work under eight hours a day?!
It's nice to know that all of us out here who are making wads of cash -- many without formal educations (or even highschool educations) are lacking ambition.
I would tend to agree, but if a person's gripe is that they don't like the kind of people they'd have to work with, then it should not be presented as if they are being the short straw.
Whether or not women are actually paid less than men for the exact same amount, quality and length of work and whether or not they are encouraged to participate and enter that workforce -- they are at least understandable qualms to have. If they are valid, then I have sympathy for those people who are slighted by the way things are.
If, on the other hand, the problem is that they don't like the type of people they would have to work with, then my answer is "Tough shit. Go work somewhere else.". --- seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
So, if I understand this correctly, she is upset because computers are supposedly edging their way into the monopoly on stifling creativity and damaging posture (remember those crappy chairs and desks when you were a kid?) that schools currently hold?
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seumas.com
As James Glieck points out in Faster, we used to wait weeks between lettered discussions and conversations -- even in professional fields. With the advent of typewriters and the enhancement of the postal service, this was reduced to days. Still, days of contemplation and reflection are good. You have time to think about things before you comment on them or reply to them, while waiting for a response.
In this instantaneous age, you have seconds, minutes or hours. I fire an email off to a customer, student or friend and can often receive an immediate response. Not much thought there. Or, if there is a lot of thought, certainly not much pause for reflection and contemplation before hitting the send button. We would consider minutes to be sufficient time for thinking these days.
Political polls are the same. What used to be a matter of days and weeks to form opinions now is, literally, seconds. Ten seconds after a politician says something, it is regurgitated on the news in sound-bites and immediately, opinions which have not been codified and split-second polls are returned and broadcast. Shazam -- you now have material to form your ill-understood opinion on.
Let's not just blame this on computers and the internet -- or short attention spans of children. Processing of information has grown greater than exponentially. If we're going to blame anything, blame TV Dinners, 22-minute news-casts, 10 second commercial jingles and minute-rice.
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seumas.com
The problem is that teachers and schools often forget that you actually have to structure some sort of educational plan around them. You can't throw a kid in front of a PC, DVD, library of educational laser discs, like their parents do with the television, and expect them to gain anything from it.
The benefit to the Internet, specifically, is that a student can expedite their gathering of information. If a student is given a chance to learn not only at their own pace, but in their own reas of interest, chances are they can make great use of the technology. Whoring the technology as a just another expensive piece of equipment to teach typing on -- or sitting kids in front of them and telling them "learn about birds" is rediculous and counter-productive.
Yet, this is how teachers taught when I was in school. This is how I see many teachers teach, today.
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seumas.com
Hm. Perhaps Katz could pay each Slashdot reader for enduring his drafts before he goes off and makes a buck off of them? *grin*.
The complaint about people who get an auto +2 or Katz getting to post whatever he wants should check themselves. You don't get a +2 for sitting around and never contributing. You get a +2 for commenting, posting -- and having other people find your comments interesting enough to moderate up. Same with Katz. He's posted enough good stuff to warrent a sort of "hey, you write it, we'll post it" line on Slashdot. I have no problem with that whatsoever. He certainly doesn't seem to abuse this, since he holds back to a submission or two per week.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with Katz posting his articles on Slashdot as he does. He seems to avergae one or two pieces per week, which is about what one would expect from a syndicated columnist.
I'll grant you that it sort of sucks when you read the major typos and awful grammar. It makes you wonder how interested he actually is in presenting the topic at hand -- at least, to the crowd here.
All in all, though, it usually produces some interesting conversations, aside from these Katz-related threads. I'd rather have him posting on the off-chance that I'll find something I really dig, than not. (I only read about half of his articles all the way through, and maybe half of those are interesting enough to really delve into posting something in reply).
How would people feel of ESR or RMS were writing up weekly columns on here, though? I wonder if the feeling would grow to be the same apparent disgust or if people would fall all over themselves... Just wondering.
As far as your idea about a "katz" section -- I think that would be great. I'd love a Katz slashbox, just like Your Rights Online has. I trust the Emmette and Rob and Hemos and the rest enough to know when a Katz article is big enough to require full front-page real-estate, so he wouldn't be forever and always relegated to the limbo of the right side of the page.
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seumas.com
Man, if you're addiction requires that you resort to another man's pee... *shudder*.
- Yo, whassup with that 'redundant' mark on my first post? Man, I tell you, ever since Slashdot hired these Moderator's from the ex-Microsoft-Intern pool, things have gone down-hill here.
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seumas.com
Ooooh, about . . . 1,200 to 3,500 words. Give or take a rant and depending on how many geeks are afflicted in each story.
Sorry Jon!
You know, I really think Jon gets too much shit for what he does. People need to lighten up. His articles and comments are attacked, not because of their content or relavence, but because some time long ago, a few people were grossly critical of an article or two and Katz bashing became the cool thing to do.
If Katz were that worthless, everyone would have bannished his articles from their displays, via Slashdot preferences. The fact that they linger around to read everything he ever writes (even if they claim it's just for a good laugh), says a lot.
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seumas.com
I'd like to see all of the patriotic American nationalists that we have in this country, flying their red white and blue on their pick-up trucks and snapping at any two-bit 'hippy' that dares suggest America isn't the greatest nation in the world, react to having every bit of communication recorded and played back to them, from their email and letters to their phone calls.
And - damn it, I'm going to pimp this book again. DATABASE NATION by Simson Garfinkel. This book should be read by every geek, grocery clerk, grandmother, businessman and government official. While it is not the most in-depth book, it is the best brush with which to paint a general over-view of the demise of privacy to those who are otherwise completely oblivious to it.
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seumas.com
Well, since it is Australia, perhaps they're looking for something to fend off Dingos. ;)
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seumas.com
Of course, keep in mind that the breakthrough here is altering the growth/size -- that they're mice is purely incidental.
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seumas.com
Heh. The tech support people who had to explain to dopey customers what performing a flash upgrade ment, have my sympathy.
I really just wish we could throw modems into a giant sea of circuit boards and serial ports and leap forward to global sattelite connections. Ho hum, a few more years...?
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seumas.com
But this technology is eons away from being deployed for anything useful. And by then, they'll likely no longer require tethering.
At least, that's my take.
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seumas.com
Also, back with 28.8k modems, there were numerous compression methods you could choose from, depending on the manufacturer. This meant that your USR may connect (excuse me, transfer an equivalent amount of data) at 115kbps, but if you connected it to say, a Zoom, Cardinal, Cobra, yadda yadda yadda, it would probably transfer at 28.8k -- if it would even connect (I'm not sure what happened if you tried to enable compression and then connect with a modem that couldn't understand that compression method. I think it just resorted to a standard mode?).
You're right, that compression doesn't matter much when you're transfering ARC'd files or JPG's, but back in the day when more people were online with their favorite BBS than the Internet, the speed would have been nice. There was nothing like playing BRE, LORD or TW2002 on a slow modem (or worse, a noisey line -- when line noise used to actually show up as cryptic characters on your screen before dropping the unpleaseent [NO CARRIER] on your lap), watching the ANSI images literally crawling acrossed yoru screen... well, it sucked!
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seumas.com
I mean sipping a beer, of course. I don't think we condone bear-sipping in this country.
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seumas.com
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seumas.com
In my mind, I've conjured up this surreal image of some guy sipping a bear while an army of microbots construct a new liver for him, in a cooler on his desktop, next to his PC...
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seumas.com
One thing I'm a bit curious about is this 'v42bis reccomendation'. I've never heard of this, and as far as I know, only v32 is currently supported or used.
Anyone know more information about it?
You know, I'm not so sure service providers are going to like the 'hold' feature that allows you to take an incoming call without disconnecting your network activity. Just what they need, someone taking up their network connection while they spend an hour talking to Aunt Beatrice...
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seumas.com
If you were getting a literal 40k+ connection, you were probably not connecting from (or maybe to) a standard modem? If you're using anything but an analog connection from one machine, you probably weren't connecting directly to your other modem. In fact.. I'm not even sure how you could connect if it were from an ISDN or other service to a modem...?
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seumas.com
Granted, this is a bit of a cheat, but my theory was that if I could connect at a sufficient speed modem-to-modem over analog lines, then my ISP connection should be similary successful, regardless of the compression (connection itself was still at or near 33k).
The ZOOM offered at least a couple methods of compression, but I had never used it before, so I stuck with one and gave it a shot. Effectively, you could enable full compression and transfer at 115k. The same amount of data is being sent and received, of course -- but my main point is that if I can do a modem to modem connect with full compression and find better performance, why can something similar not be approached with my ISP? Especially if we're both using the same modems? (I have no idea of your average ISP actually enables such connections - they may not).
My experience with this is pretty shallow and I've not heard much from people regarding using the compression techniques available with their modems, even back when such a thing would have been extremely beneficial. I'm curious to know if this was a feature manufacturers packed in that was largely overlooked by users and never taken advantage of, or not. Of course, not useful for an ISP in general (and I'm going out on a bit of a whim) but for relatively closed systems still requiring such a connection, I would think it would be to one's best interest to implement this, no?
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seumas.com
Poor lines are often the case, too. But to test this theory, I tried connecting to another machine of mine 40 miles across town, running the same modem (at the time, a Zoom 56kFlex) and made it consistantly at 44k. Not great, but a huge jump from the 31.2k I'd been connecting to the ISP at.
Granted, there is the possibility that the ISP's lines were poor, too -- but what ISP would set up shop in an area of town without testing the quality of their lines first?!
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seumas.com
I connected fine, for three days. Then my connections dropped to around 32k, consistantly. Upon further investigation, I found out that the ISP had dumped all of their Supra's for a cheaper set of Zoom's.
But no connection was ever as poor as what I have now, while waiting for DSL. I expected to have kick-ass connections and bandwidth available in Silicon Valley. I mean, if you can't get reliable connections there.. well, where the hell can you?
Of course, you can -- just not over PacBell's lines. You have to get DSL, which is what everyone and their grandmother have around here -- as long as you have the patience to wait.
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seumas.com
Ironic, no?
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seumas.com
Dozens of people have complained to me over the last year or two, about their inability to connect to their 56k account at anything higher than 19200bps. That's 19200bps! I haven't seen connections like that since late in 1994!
It's only become worse. I'm still waiting for my DSL and the company that is providing it offered free dial-up service until my DSL is actually installed and running. Only problem? I can't actually connect to a single one of their dial-up numbers. After a flurry of handshaking and choking on signals, both modems give up and I'm left with the recorded voice of the operating piping through my computer, telling me that if I'd like to make a call, perhaps I should hang up and try again.
As long as dial-up providers keep implementing cheap modems to so they can claim "20,000 modems -- no busy signals!", connections will still be poor. Clinging to a v.92 standard is fine, but a lame-duck modem is still a lame-duck modem.
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seumas.com
I've never seen any office-romances, unless they already existed before the office. That is, the only romantic relationships I've seen were ones in which both people knew and dated/married each other before the job presented itself.
I'm not sure how much office-romance stuff goes on elsewhere in society, but it seems to be low here. Of course, the low number of women is probably one aspect of it (although there are still a lot of them).
Further, I personally am not sure I would want a 'geek girl' as my lover. An intelligent girl, but not a techie. I have enough technical stuff in my life. I'd prefer someone who is perhaps a literary professional, an artist -- anything, just not someone who sits in a dark room drinking Mt Dew and coding like mad.
Not that I don't find myself the least bit attracted to girls with a very technical profile. I've worked with some very ambitious and intelligent girls that I found insanely attractive. Nonetheless, I'd prefer not to pair-up with someone who is inclined to hop online and check Slashdot two minutes after having sex.
Geek relationships are really wierd, anyway. I know couples who sit five feet from one another at home, but tend to speak through AIM or ICQ rather than talk. Or who tend to argue the finer points of object oriented perl.
This suddenly makes me wonder what a techno-geek version of 9-1/2 Weeks would be... I envision an attractive woman writing C++ comments on her lover's body -- or maybe some goofy guy dangling pizza-cheese from his lips to his girlfrield, laying on the floor... *shudder*... make it stop...!
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seumas.com
The problem is the attitudes. "Oh, that's so much work" and "oh, you have to like, be exact and stuff..." -- boo hoo.
``It's tough work getting it to work exactly correctly and it's frustrating because one misspelled word and you can't get it to work,''
Referring to Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, she added, ``I say let him have it all, let him do it all.''
That's the spirit! Let someone else do the work. After all, who wants to be like, all detailed and stuff. I mean, at least when you're at Burger King, the only important thing is that you squirt some mustard on the burger. Nobody cares where or how much!
'`I don't want to take computer science. ... Just looking at it, all the programming and these funny-looking things on the paper. It (takes) so much stuff to do one thing on the computer.''
I'm having flashbacks to the Barbie Doll that used to say "Math is soooo hard! - let's go shopping!"
``The reason why you see more men doing computer stuff is that girls are more ambitious than that. My parents always say, 'Do something with computers,' because it is stable and stuff, but a lot (of people) don't want to be at a desk from 9 to 5.''
Oh my god. I actually laughed out loud at this last statement. "More ambitious"... What, like being the next Britney Spears or Ricki Lake?! And you have to love the "be at a desk from 9 to 5". I'm not sure about everyone here, but most of the people I know, including myself, are at their "desk" probably at least double that. Further, how can you be looking for an "ambitious" career, where you only have to work under eight hours a day?!
It's nice to know that all of us out here who are making wads of cash -- many without formal educations (or even highschool educations) are lacking ambition.
So, like -- ohmygod!
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seumas.com
Whether or not women are actually paid less than men for the exact same amount, quality and length of work and whether or not they are encouraged to participate and enter that workforce -- they are at least understandable qualms to have. If they are valid, then I have sympathy for those people who are slighted by the way things are.
If, on the other hand, the problem is that they don't like the type of people they would have to work with, then my answer is "Tough shit. Go work somewhere else.".
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seumas.com