Must be. I would go for software engineering or knowledge engineering or system analysis, fault detection/prevention, security. Web development is just one thing were you can use all these ideas.
You should not really bother if the loss of income over these 2-3 years is it worth to go the university. As I understand your post, your job sucks big time. So you want a better job. Most certainly you will get more money with a MSc than with a BSc but the money is not the main reason to educate yourself. If you become a software developer or even an software engineer you get a job with many different facets. You have definitely more options and this allows you to switch jobs if they become boring. And still you can use your new expertise and knowledge in different contexts. From my point: Software engineering is really nice, because every project is different. You have to work with different clients and learn their lines of thought. You also learn how their business works and how they think their business works which is not always the same.
I would say: if you could finance it, go the university and get an MSc.
Is 2mbit still broadband? Normal people have 6 mbit ADSL lines in their homes and this is the lower end. Ok in some regions they only get 4mbit out of it. But 2mbit is a very small broadband connection. In cities they go up to 16, 30, 100 mbit. So when implementing fiber optics in the countryside they should aim for 2gbit instead. By 2012 this would be more appropriate then 2mbit. 3 years ago people used 768kbit and this was the upperclass today 6/4 mbit is the lowest value. However, in some regions they only get 768kbit. but when you ever worked with such a line you know calling that broadband is a lie. and by 2012 2mbit will be nothing like broadband.
And by the way. The privatized telcoms all over the world so they get cheaper prices and they got them. Ok they do not invest in the infrastructure and press the last out of the old stuff they got paid by the public. How could they ever think that a commercial company would act in the best interest of the public? Now they have to fix it with taxes. How stupid is that? Take back the infrastructure intpu public hands.
Who needs roads when there is no gasoline to power your car? And don't think the electric car is an alternative, we will be out of copper very soon and there is no real replacement available. In the light of these facts the removal of roads is only consequent.
Technicians = {(X,Y) | \forall X \in Company \wedge \forall Y \in Company-Technology}
However, a technician is a person who comprises a subset Technicians, were the subset is bigger then 10. The rest are bad paid personnels which is laid of at the first sign of trouble. I say that not out of disrespect for technicians, it is just the way how things are. You are not an engineer when you know certain technologies. An engineer needs to know the basic concepts behind all these technologies. And a X certified Y engineer is not an engineer. Engineers have an engineering degree like M Sc, M Eng (or similar degrees). Bachelors are mostly half engineers, but already more educated then X certified Y engineers. This still does not mean that I think low of them. This is just a statement about their educational level. A lower degree does not make you a less valuable person.
Software engineering is a part of computer science. Everyone who thinks computer science is only formal methods is totally wrong. Its like saying theoretical physics is physics but experimental physics is something else than physics. Computer science has a core based on formal methods. This core comprises logic, turing machines, grammars, L-systems, petri nets, my-recursion all the other thinky stuff. Most of that stuff was borrowed from other disciplines. Languages were borrowed from Noam Chomsky and the linguists, the Turing machine was developmed by A. turing a mathematician, L-Systems comes from biology, logic from philosophy.
Around this nice set of formal methods, we computer scientists developed different ways to use them to solve real world problems. our job is to develop tools and methods to process data and information. We do this with formal methods. However, to find out what the information is and what we shall do with it, we have to ask the user. This is requirement engineering. therefore we make interviews, give out questionnaires and read literature of other disciplines. So interview techniques, questionnaires, and text analysis become part of our discipline's tool-set as well.
And the development of software is a complex process. Therefore we thought it might be helpful to use the shoes we made for other for ourselves. This is also part of software engineering. And therefore it is part of computer science.
In the EU monopolies and market dominant companies are controlled by regulation agencies. These agencies ensure that the market still works even if a company gained dominance. They do this in the telecommunication sector, so big telcos like Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom have to open their nets. The same applies to electricity companies and of course to Microsoft, as they have a dominant position in the software sector.
In a function market situation, there would be no need to regulate MS. However, today they can corner the market. You either play by their rules or you don' t play. This dominance eradicates the positive effects of a market based economy. Therefore the EU has to act and regulate them.
It is always time to standardize in the Linux domain. However, it is impossible to implement a standard as long as people have different opinions on a subject. What these company guys do not understand is the free nature of Open Source. Free means everyone can do what they want. And as long as not a significant group wants a particular standard, it will not be a standard.
yes it would be great if we could agree on one toolkit. And yes it would be cool if it would be cross platform, easy to use, and available for all programming languages (because we want that freedom). And yes GTK is very old school in design. It inherits features from Motif. It would be nice to have a Swing like composition model (e.g. GroupLayout) without the speed problems of Swing.
But I find it interesting what he finds so problematic with audio systems. He could use Phonon when he is writing with QT or gstreamer with GTK and QT. As it looks like he is using GTK gstreamer would be fine. It also work in KDE. And there is a HIG available especially for Gnome applications. Yes KDE does not have something similar. So instead of wining, he should encourage the KDE team to adopt the Gnome HIG or support a unifying HIG for both platforms.
The problem for Adobe can easily be fixed. Release the source code. This would allow us to fix the other issues the flash-plugin has.
The things which lead to the actual economic meltdown are system inherit features of our economic system. The system requires exponential growth. This leads to exponential resource usage, and requires exponential consuming. However, this model doesn't work with a finite amount of resources or consuming. And even if more and more people adopt western consumer levels, this happens gradually in a more linear way.
With the economy it is like a plant. It growth in spring until it served its final purpose, then it dies again.
So maybe it might be a better idea to change the system in way so that the economy serves us and not we serve the economy.
First, that guy thinks that people are stealing Sony Picture films. This is wrong. They are copying them. And therefore they are not paying him money.
Second, we live in the information age. Well, that guy at Sony picture doesn't, but we do. So this new age brings several changes. They are not allways compatible with old school Kapitalism and it is not compatible with closed things. Because closed means lack of information.
There have been areas in the past age economy where "closed" didn't work. This was for instance the sciences. Sciences work best when open, which mean if things get published other people can use it. But even here is total openess coming and publishers are screaming, because scientists think of Open Access.
So I think this guy from Sony Pictures should think about a way how movies could produced in an open way instead of complaining, that the old style is gone.
Okay, so at the point of the big bang, the entire universe was concentrated into a single point of matter.
At some point in the past the big bang occurred and matter and energy expanded from this single point at the speed of light or near it, as best we can tell. The matter and light were traveling away from the point of orgin, at the highest possible speed, the speed of light which we say is a constant and is the max attainable speed by anything, ever.
No you are wrong. Not the matter and energy traveled away from a point in space. The space expanded. I know the phrase "Big Bang" implies an explosion, but it was no explosion it was an expansion. An expansion of space. Therefore nothing traveled. And space can theoretically expand faster than the speed of light.
Well they are not mindless automatons. And they need stable OS which they can adapt to their needs. And their should be no usage restriction. So they only can use free OS.
I know it is not the most reliable source for English, but http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spacecraft says that both forms are correct you may write spacecrafts as well as spacecraft.
By the way when all (or at least a large group) people who speak some sort of English start to use words differetly then this becomes the standard.
It is like the s indicating genitive case in German. For example it was "Toms Buchladen" (TomÂs Bookshop) and nowadays you can also write "Tom's Bookshop" which I find completely dumb.
And languages are changing all the time, which is good because we use it for communication and so we adapt it to our needs. In this case a plural s is allways a better solution to indicate a plural form than nothing. So I think the s is a good invention.
Well the Windows start button, which also leads correctly to the shutdown/restart button, which allows you to install a real OS and then you can really work.
Excuse me. The Windows UI is the most inconsistent GUI available. And it didn't change from XP to Vista. They are still a lot of inconsistencies in the UI. Gnome on the other hand is more consistent. And opertations you can perform in the UI work everywhere in the same way. And the directory structure is not obfucated by the file manager (explorer).
I can understand your frustration. However, I won buy a Blackberry when they cannot provide Linux support. I want to use equipment which follows open standards so I can switch technology providers easily.
Also I have seen Blackberrys, however I cannot see why they are so popular in the US. Ok they had smartphone features before others had them. But now?
Also it looks like, that using Blackberry and Linux together is becoming more easily. This article from 2007 is much easier to follow http://www.linux.com/feature/123251 However, support for Linux is not at its best. So sell the not so smart blackberry and get the same service from another provider.
He wants to have faster hardware, more RAM, more CPU power and hopefully more runtime. This is understandable, because otherwise W7 won run on it. And he wants to have bigger screens. And even with more expensive hardware and W7, he wants to be cheaper than other brands.
The is very ambitious. However, he will fail. 1. Netbooks are not about bigger screens (unless he is copying OLPC-2, which would mean through out the keyboard for a second screen) Netbooks are about mobility. 2. 50-100$ price cut for a Linux machine compared to W7 makes almost 25-30% of the overall price for a Netbook. So this is a significant part of the pricing. People will go for 25-30% less. Especially in a not so friendly economic environment. 3. W7 is so different compared to Win XP, so that people have to relearn a lot. So there is no difference to a good Linux distribution. And in addition. People are useing different user interfaces on their different gadgets. So Linux on a Netbook is no difference to Linux on a smartphone. Oh look some of these "Analysts" already claimed that Google Android will be on Netbooks.
So when Linux has no future on Netbooks, then Android has no future too. Or are they really thinking that are two different things.
The most interesting part is, that Lenovo is obviously for searching ways to drop Linux support for their Notbooks. Or that not all parts of the company want to pursue Linux business.
First, we have elections in Europe and in Germany this year. Second, Germany is governed by a coalition of the two bigger parties (it is called great coalition, however the meaning is more like big coalition). So if any of those politicians who are part of this big coalition says something it is related to the government. However, this does not mean that hey have a consensus on that issue. And before they do not have a consens on the subject nothing will happen.
Some of this coalition want to ban guns in households, other want to have better locks at the doors for weapon lockers. Others want these guns only available at shooting clubs and their firing range. And others want to prohibit paintball.
An official of the German police said that this is ridiculous and that they would never be able to enforce it, because you would have to control every forrest and those playing cops and robbers with toy guns can go free, but the paintballs have to be confiscated.
What the politicians really try to do with this bullshit is, to make sure nobody asks why these school shooters pull the trigger.
Right now engineers develop so called smart fabs, which are able to produce different types of products based on similar concepts. They are very popular in the automobile industry. So you can build on the same process line a VW Golf and a Audi A8 at the same time.
I guess something similar will happen to the chip factories. This would be a step in the right direction for many companies selling gadgets like smartphones, netbooks, navigation systems etc.
This would allow them to integrate all functions on one chip.
I guess it is a little bit like FOSS. First it is developed by a group of geeks who have fun doing such things. Even though they cannot compete with anybody on any term. Then after a while, it becomes good enough for other geeks, so they use it. And even if it is only to show their independence from EVIL companies. And after two decades they provide a VGA chip, which is good enough for the average user. Yes the gamers will use then still really expensive hardware from EVIL companies, but other organisation will use cheap hardware designed by the open hardware community. IBM, Intel, AMD will support them and will have founded the Open Hardware Development Labs.
This is bullshit. Just because a commerical website is banning this fine party does not mean anything beside that StudiVZ is bad. However, StudiVZ is the worst possible choice you can make if you are looking for a social network. Their security model is more or less fake security.
If you haven't left StudiVZ and their other VZ services, then leave now.
It was 1994. I was using OS/2 on my machine at that time. At university we had DEC Ultrix ans OSF and so I configured my OS/2 in a way so it would look similar to those machines (xeyes,xbiff etc). Then a friend told me that there was something new available, a slackware distribution lying around on the universities FTP server. So I got there with 50 floppies and copied images.
These Ultirx machines were a real mess, because copying to a floppy was always successful and errors were suppressed. And a quick verify would not reread the floppy. So you had to remove the floppy fill another and then go back and do the check.
But after a week I had a working linux at home and was able to have the exact same feeling. I could use gcc and there was really documentation available for everything. LaTeX, emacs all in their nativ environment. And yes it was able to use this new thing called internet via modem. It was cool.
My flat mate envied me because his WfW was not so good at it. Especially when he saw that I can use my computer as a gateway for his machine. However, he didn't switch to Linux, which was very strange for a computer science student in those days. All the good guys tried it out and the wimps didn't.;-)
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centuari were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
And yes, people tried to talk about important things on the net, like router setups and the best bars in New Zealand even though they never left their country. But nowadays every jerk is able to surf the web. It is a tragedy.
Slashdot Mirror
Must be. I would go for software engineering or knowledge engineering or system analysis, fault detection/prevention, security. Web development is just one thing were you can use all these ideas.
You should not really bother if the loss of income over these 2-3 years is it worth to go the university. As I understand your post, your job sucks big time. So you want a better job. Most certainly you will get more money with a MSc than with a BSc but the money is not the main reason to educate yourself. If you become a software developer or even an software engineer you get a job with many different facets. You have definitely more options and this allows you to switch jobs if they become boring. And still you can use your new expertise and knowledge in different contexts. From my point: Software engineering is really nice, because every project is different. You have to work with different clients and learn their lines of thought. You also learn how their business works and how they think their business works which is not always the same.
I would say: if you could finance it, go the university and get an MSc.
Is 2mbit still broadband? Normal people have 6 mbit ADSL lines in their homes and this is the lower end. Ok in some regions they only get 4mbit out of it. But 2mbit is a very small broadband connection. In cities they go up to 16, 30, 100 mbit. So when implementing fiber optics in the countryside they should aim for 2gbit instead. By 2012 this would be more appropriate then 2mbit. 3 years ago people used 768kbit and this was the upperclass today 6/4 mbit is the lowest value. However, in some regions they only get 768kbit. but when you ever worked with such a line you know calling that broadband is a lie. and by 2012 2mbit will be nothing like broadband.
And by the way. The privatized telcoms all over the world so they get cheaper prices and they got them. Ok they do not invest in the infrastructure and press the last out of the old stuff they got paid by the public. How could they ever think that a commercial company would act in the best interest of the public? Now they have to fix it with taxes. How stupid is that? Take back the infrastructure intpu public hands.
Who needs roads when there is no gasoline to power your car? And don't think the electric car is an alternative, we will be out of copper very soon and there is no real replacement available. In the light of these facts the removal of roads is only consequent.
You need to get at least 0.5% to get money from the state. approx 7 cent per vote. The total results can be found here: http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/europawahlen/EU_BUND_09/ergebnisse/bundesergebnisse/b_tabelle_99.html
This is what the previous poster wanted to say.
Technicians = {(X,Y) | \forall X \in Company \wedge \forall Y \in Company-Technology}
However, a technician is a person who comprises a subset Technicians, were the subset is bigger then 10. The rest are bad paid personnels which is laid of at the first sign of trouble. I say that not out of disrespect for technicians, it is just the way how things are. You are not an engineer when you know certain technologies. An engineer needs to know the basic concepts behind all these technologies. And a X certified Y engineer is not an engineer. Engineers have an engineering degree like M Sc, M Eng (or similar degrees). Bachelors are mostly half engineers, but already more educated then X certified Y engineers. This still does not mean that I think low of them. This is just a statement about their educational level. A lower degree does not make you a less valuable person.
Software engineering is a part of computer science. Everyone who thinks computer science is only formal methods is totally wrong. Its like saying theoretical physics is physics but experimental physics is something else than physics. Computer science has a core based on formal methods. This core comprises logic, turing machines, grammars, L-systems, petri nets, my-recursion all the other thinky stuff. Most of that stuff was borrowed from other disciplines. Languages were borrowed from Noam Chomsky and the linguists, the Turing machine was developmed by A. turing a mathematician, L-Systems comes from biology, logic from philosophy.
Around this nice set of formal methods, we computer scientists developed different ways to use them to solve real world problems. our job is to develop tools and methods to process data and information. We do this with formal methods. However, to find out what the information is and what we shall do with it, we have to ask the user. This is requirement engineering. therefore we make interviews, give out questionnaires and read literature of other disciplines. So interview techniques, questionnaires, and text analysis become part of our discipline's tool-set as well.
And the development of software is a complex process. Therefore we thought it might be helpful to use the shoes we made for other for ourselves. This is also part of software engineering. And therefore it is part of computer science.
In the EU monopolies and market dominant companies are controlled by regulation agencies. These agencies ensure that the market still works even if a company gained dominance. They do this in the telecommunication sector, so big telcos like Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom have to open their nets. The same applies to electricity companies and of course to Microsoft, as they have a dominant position in the software sector.
In a function market situation, there would be no need to regulate MS. However, today they can corner the market. You either play by their rules or you don' t play. This dominance eradicates the positive effects of a market based economy. Therefore the EU has to act and regulate them.
It is always time to standardize in the Linux domain. However, it is impossible to implement a standard as long as people have different opinions on a subject. What these company guys do not understand is the free nature of Open Source. Free means everyone can do what they want. And as long as not a significant group wants a particular standard, it will not be a standard.
yes it would be great if we could agree on one toolkit. And yes it would be cool if it would be cross platform, easy to use, and available for all programming languages (because we want that freedom). And yes GTK is very old school in design. It inherits features from Motif. It would be nice to have a Swing like composition model (e.g. GroupLayout) without the speed problems of Swing.
But I find it interesting what he finds so problematic with audio systems. He could use Phonon when he is writing with QT or gstreamer with GTK and QT. As it looks like he is using GTK gstreamer would be fine. It also work in KDE. And there is a HIG available especially for Gnome applications. Yes KDE does not have something similar. So instead of wining, he should encourage the KDE team to adopt the Gnome HIG or support a unifying HIG for both platforms.
The problem for Adobe can easily be fixed. Release the source code. This would allow us to fix the other issues the flash-plugin has.
The things which lead to the actual economic meltdown are system inherit features of our economic system. The system requires exponential growth. This leads to exponential resource usage, and requires exponential consuming. However, this model doesn't work with a finite amount of resources or consuming. And even if more and more people adopt western consumer levels, this happens gradually in a more linear way.
With the economy it is like a plant. It growth in spring until it served its final purpose, then it dies again.
So maybe it might be a better idea to change the system in way so that the economy serves us and not we serve the economy.
First, that guy thinks that people are stealing Sony Picture films. This is wrong. They are copying them. And therefore they are not paying him money.
Second, we live in the information age. Well, that guy at Sony picture doesn't, but we do. So this new age brings several changes. They are not allways compatible with old school Kapitalism and it is not compatible with closed things. Because closed means lack of information.
There have been areas in the past age economy where "closed" didn't work. This was for instance the sciences. Sciences work best when open, which mean if things get published other people can use it. But even here is total openess coming and publishers are screaming, because scientists think of Open Access.
So I think this guy from Sony Pictures should think about a way how movies could produced in an open way instead of complaining, that the old style is gone.
Okay, so at the point of the big bang, the entire universe was concentrated into a single point of matter.
At some point in the past the big bang occurred and matter and energy expanded from this single point at the speed of light or near it, as best we can tell. The matter and light were traveling away from the point of orgin, at the highest possible speed, the speed of light which we say is a constant and is the max attainable speed by anything, ever.
No you are wrong. Not the matter and energy traveled away from a point in space. The space expanded. I know the phrase "Big Bang" implies an explosion, but it was no explosion it was an expansion. An expansion of space. Therefore nothing traveled. And space can theoretically expand faster than the speed of light.
Well they are not mindless automatons. And they need stable OS which they can adapt to their needs. And their should be no usage restriction. So they only can use free OS.
I know it is not the most reliable source for English, but http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spacecraft says that both forms are correct you may write spacecrafts as well as spacecraft.
By the way when all (or at least a large group) people who speak some sort of English start to use words differetly then this becomes the standard.
It is like the s indicating genitive case in German. For example it was "Toms Buchladen" (TomÂs Bookshop) and nowadays you can also write "Tom's Bookshop" which I find completely dumb.
And languages are changing all the time, which is good because we use it for communication and so we adapt it to our needs. In this case a plural s is allways a better solution to indicate a plural form than nothing. So I think the s is a good invention.
Well the Windows start button, which also leads correctly to the shutdown/restart button, which allows you to install a real OS and then you can really work.
Excuse me. The Windows UI is the most inconsistent GUI available. And it didn't change from XP to Vista. They are still a lot of inconsistencies in the UI. Gnome on the other hand is more consistent. And opertations you can perform in the UI work everywhere in the same way. And the directory structure is not obfucated by the file manager (explorer).
I can understand your frustration. However, I won buy a Blackberry when they cannot provide Linux support. I want to use equipment which follows open standards so I can switch technology providers easily.
Also I have seen Blackberrys, however I cannot see why they are so popular in the US. Ok they had smartphone features before others had them. But now?
Also it looks like, that using Blackberry and Linux together is becoming more easily. This article from 2007 is much easier to follow http://www.linux.com/feature/123251 However, support for Linux is not at its best. So sell the not so smart blackberry and get the same service from another provider.
He wants to have faster hardware, more RAM, more CPU power and hopefully more runtime. This is understandable, because otherwise W7 won run on it. And he wants to have bigger screens. And even with more expensive hardware and W7, he wants to be cheaper than other brands.
The is very ambitious. However, he will fail.
1. Netbooks are not about bigger screens (unless he is copying OLPC-2, which would mean through out the keyboard for a second screen) Netbooks are about mobility.
2. 50-100$ price cut for a Linux machine compared to W7 makes almost 25-30% of the overall price for a Netbook. So this is a significant part of the pricing. People will go for 25-30% less. Especially in a not so friendly economic environment.
3. W7 is so different compared to Win XP, so that people have to relearn a lot. So there is no difference to a good Linux distribution. And in addition. People are useing different user interfaces on their different gadgets. So Linux on a Netbook is no difference to Linux on a smartphone. Oh look some of these "Analysts" already claimed that Google Android will be on Netbooks.
So when Linux has no future on Netbooks, then Android has no future too. Or are they really thinking that are two different things.
The most interesting part is, that Lenovo is obviously for searching ways to drop Linux support for their Notbooks. Or that not all parts of the company want to pursue Linux business.
You are so right. :-D How could I overlooked that fact? All these anglicism in German today ... it makes understanding politics very difficult.
First, we have elections in Europe and in Germany this year. Second, Germany is governed by a coalition of the two bigger parties (it is called great coalition, however the meaning is more like big coalition). So if any of those politicians who are part of this big coalition says something it is related to the government. However, this does not mean that hey have a consensus on that issue. And before they do not have a consens on the subject nothing will happen.
Some of this coalition want to ban guns in households, other want to have better locks at the doors for weapon lockers. Others want these guns only available at shooting clubs and their firing range. And others want to prohibit paintball.
An official of the German police said that this is ridiculous and that they would never be able to enforce it, because you would have to control every forrest and those playing cops and robbers with toy guns can go free, but the paintballs have to be confiscated.
What the politicians really try to do with this bullshit is, to make sure nobody asks why these school shooters pull the trigger.
Right now engineers develop so called smart fabs, which are able to produce different types of products based on similar concepts. They are very popular in the automobile industry. So you can build on the same process line a VW Golf and a Audi A8 at the same time.
I guess something similar will happen to the chip factories. This would be a step in the right direction for many companies selling gadgets like smartphones, netbooks, navigation systems etc.
This would allow them to integrate all functions on one chip.
I guess it is a little bit like FOSS. First it is developed by a group of geeks who have fun doing such things. Even though they cannot compete with anybody on any term. Then after a while, it becomes good enough for other geeks, so they use it. And even if it is only to show their independence from EVIL companies. And after two decades they provide a VGA chip, which is good enough for the average user. Yes the gamers will use then still really expensive hardware from EVIL companies, but other organisation will use cheap hardware designed by the open hardware community. IBM, Intel, AMD will support them and will have founded the Open Hardware Development Labs.
This is bullshit. Just because a commerical website is banning this fine party does not mean anything beside that StudiVZ is bad. However, StudiVZ is the worst possible choice you can make if you are looking for a social network. Their security model is more or less fake security.
If you haven't left StudiVZ and their other VZ services, then leave now.
It is either Ensign Expendable or Lieutenant Cannonfodder. But I'm not quite sure.
It was 1994. I was using OS/2 on my machine at that time. At university we had DEC Ultrix ans OSF and so I configured my OS/2 in a way so it would look similar to those machines (xeyes,xbiff etc). Then a friend told me that there was something new available, a slackware distribution lying around on the universities FTP server. So I got there with 50 floppies and copied images.
These Ultirx machines were a real mess, because copying to a floppy was always successful and errors were suppressed. And a quick verify would not reread the floppy. So you had to remove the floppy fill another and then go back and do the check.
But after a week I had a working linux at home and was able to have the exact same feeling. I could use gcc and there was really documentation available for everything. LaTeX, emacs all in their nativ environment. And yes it was able to use this new thing called internet via modem. It was cool.
My flat mate envied me because his WfW was not so good at it. Especially when he saw that I can use my computer as a gateway for his machine. However, he didn't switch to Linux, which was very strange for a computer science student in those days. All the good guys tried it out and the wimps didn't. ;-)
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centuari were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
And yes, people tried to talk about important things on the net, like router setups and the best bars in New Zealand even though they never left their country. But nowadays every jerk is able to surf the web. It is a tragedy.