Word: modem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seems like a no-brainer. Call waiting has been around for more than a decade, so why does it slip into a coma when I'm surfing the Web on my home computer and a friend tries to call me on the same line? After all, a modem connection is just another phone call. But for all our high-tech wizardry, my friends still get a busy signal even if I'm just deleting junk e-mail or downloading a song. I may get a little drowsy at the keyboard, but I can still multitask--if only my PC will...
...could a single student from Helsinki hobble together a few thousand lines of code that turned into Linux, an operating system with millions of users currently being shipped on IBM and Compaq PC's? The only real barriers to entry in the operating systems market are a mind, a modem and, arguably, a garage...
...Illinois computer lab gave him what amounted to $100 million worth of free computer time. Hart, son of a Shakespeare professor and a mathematician, decided to harness the new technology to humanistic ends by posting a copy of the Declaration of Independence that anyone with a computer and a modem could read for free...
Hackers like an easy target, and computers hooked up to cable modems are potentially the lowest-hanging fruit of all. Especially if they're running Windows. For reasons known only to itself, Microsoft makes its operating system default to friendly mode, entirely open to network sharing. This means when you hook your brand-new PC up to your brand-new cable modem, you unwittingly become a node on a massive network whose members can come and look around your hard drive, perhaps download your financial records...
...even better news is that cable-modem providers like Road Runner (partly owned by Time Warner, parent company of this magazine) and Excite@Home are working on bigger and better firewalls to help stop snooping. Since they're twice as fast as DSL phone lines, cable modems are worth the risk. They will never be hackproof, but they should be a lot safer by the time my next birthday rolls around. This year, I'll have to settle for socks again...