Date   : Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:52:23 +0100
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: [OT] Who'da thought...

On 18/11/2010 10:22, Rob wrote:

> I started off on 300bps - a Maplin Modem, built from a kit.

Whoo! :-)


> hulking bit of kit that had individual cards for each circuit.

The old office PBX was like that. The replacement was a single chip and 
a heap of relays.


> Full duplex, though, or bond two channels and get 128Kbps !

aka "pony up twice, b*tch".


> Given an inch each side, that's nearly 800 /miles/ of shelf space ...!

More scarily, think of the power distribution grid.


> Ah, long gone are the times when state-of-the-art "computers" were a
> hobby.  Now it's only those of us harking back to the old ones that
> are interested in the insides.

This is, I think, part of my fondness of the Beeb. It is powerful enough 
to offer itself even these days, but simple enough to understand.


> (windows PCs) are right on the cusp of the "it's not working right,
> throw it away and get a new one" category.

Indeed. That'd be my only option if my eeePC gave up. I could buy a new 
one for as much as it would cost a tech to get the thing open, never 
mind fault-finding. Anything more than "duff keyboard" and "duff LCD" 
(replacements on eBay), there's no point trying...


> - a Chrome OS Tablet could be chucked when it fails, buy a new one,
> log back in with your ID and password, and carry on without losing
> anything..

...except any hope in hell of privacy. We live in a world where 
Americans legislate the ability to access and archive any data passing 
through their country (and the British government has, in the past, set 
up contracts with US companies and shipped massive amounts of personal 
data stateside - didn't the DVLA do this?). We also live in a world 
where the British legislate that you HAVE to turn over encryption keys 
on demand, it'll be an interesting test case when a file is held but the 
key is unknown. It'll also be interesting given *some* hidden-partition 
programs leave effectively no trace of having a partition present... so 
is there or isn't there?
This coupled with half-assed attempts to trace and monitor users based 
upon their IP address alone [*] and so many sites want to push Flash 
media for the use of the hidden cookies.
This isn't even counting legal implications of loss or leak. What 
country/jurisdiction is the cloud in? What happens if you store content 
legal for you, but not legal where the host is? What rights do you have 
to know and/or control where this data goes? And note that any competent 
cloud provider will maintain backups, so a file deleted is no longer 
really erased, just not there. [same goes for your own backups to DVD-R, 
but you have some measure of control over those]

But, well, the masses tend to be "ooooh, shiny!".



Best wishes,

Rick.

* - with my internet being flakey right now, take a wild guess at how
     many IP addresses I get assigned in the course of a day. Kinda makes
     me want to go download Avatar or something just to give the
     copyright watchers an epic panic over "200 people in Brittany
     suddenly download...."

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...
 >> TO PRIVATE MAIL ME, REMOVE [BBC-Micro] FROM SUBJECT <<