Word: modems
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Here's how it works. Say you have a Wi-Fi-compatible wireless network at home. Your desktop PC is connected to the Internet via a cable modem, and you have a wireless connection from your PC to a laptop. You can move around with your laptop from room to room, even take it out to the backyard swimming pool, and still connect wirelessly to your network, as well as to the great Net beyond. Your connection between the laptop and PC is fast, about 11 Mbps, the same speed as the Ethernet networks businesses use to interconnect their computers...
...Already a cult figure among geeks for his Dilbert comic strip about office life in a high-tech world, cartoonist Scott Adams has decided to capitalize on his fame by creating the Dilberito. It's an all-in-one microwaveable meal-in-a-pocket aimed at the laptop-and-modem crowd. Bland but basically edible, the Dilberito comes in four flavors, all vegetarian and all stuffed with vitamins and protein. Is the Dilberito for everyone? "Some people care about efficiency," Adams says. "Some people don't. We'll get them last...
...embrace new media. But after viewing last Monday's debut of Behind the Scenes at That '70s Show--billed by producer Carsey-Werner as "the first-ever weekly Internet streaming series for a network show" (whew!)--it made sense. The jumpy video, the garbled audio (over a 56.6K modem), the thrown-together interviews with the Fox hit's stars--the infant days of TV must have been like this. It was enough to make one nostalgic for today...
Right, but you have to be careful what you download. Any fool--or charlatan--with a telephone, modem and computer can create a decent-looking website. Result: an epidemic of Internet snake oil, featuring discredited cancer "cures" like laetrile staging a comeback, $200 "second opinions" with more disclaimers than a sky-diving class, and incompetent "diagnoses" from self-styled "professors" and "academicians" at $50 or so a pop. What's next? An e-auction site for an appendectomy or laser eye surgery...
...settled on the Motorola StarTac 7860 ($240). I decided to buy it partly because it's the latest in Motorola's venerable line of lightweight (4.4 oz.), pocket-size flip phones. But what really sold me was the fact that this phone could double as a 14.4-bps modem--I could string a cable between it and my laptop and surf the Net or send and receive e-mail on its bigger screen using my normal jquit@well.com account...