Word: dial
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...might rightly ask: How much does all this free stuff cost? In the case of PCs, some firms, like InterSquid and PeoplePC, provide quality computers that come with multiyear contracts requiring the user to sign for dial-up Internet access at somewhat pricey rates--a deal many consumers might regret when high-speed Internet access becomes widely available. AltaVista, a free Internet service provider, runs a narrow, scrolling banner across your screen that requires you to click through--interact with the ad--every hour...
...parking lot, at the keg party or across the chess board, the events surrounding the game make the occasion such a festival. It's an opportunity for people who wouldn't otherwise be somewhere near center-stage to shine, in the band, on the radio dial, wherever. For that, The Game is, indeed, worth caring for, worth going to, and maybe even worth rooting...
...strengths of surfing via cable is that you're online 24 hours a day and don't have to disconnect every time you want to order Chinese food. But that can also be a weakness, because your IP address (the ZIP code of the Internet) doesn't change. Dial-up users like me who are still crawling along at 56K get moved to a different IP address every time we log on. We may be slower, but we're harder to find...
...sure, dial-up users get hit by Trojans too. But all the extra bandwidth provided by cable modems makes hackers salivate. If you've hooked up a microphone, the remote-access hacker can listen to your conversations in real-time. If you own one of those little monitor-top video cameras, he can watch you like Big Brother...
...wireless connectivity to the Net is still in its infancy. Even with its problems, I can see how this modem might be perfect for certain users. I loved the feeling of simply turning on my laptop, shoving in the modem and being online without having to wait for a dial tone. (The Merlin is "hot swappable," which means you don't have to reboot your machine to use it.) If I were always on the road, traveling among big cities, it would be terrific never again to have to reconfigure my laptop's dial-up connections. It's also swell...