TJ, I think I read too quickly, then answered too hastily. It was hot in cyberspace, or more precisely, in the cave-like room with about 17 people in it, along with matching computers all churning out heat, with a portable airconditioning unit which was fighting a losing battle, with the door open constantly [pipes delivering the hot air out and a fan blowing the cooler air in].
I preferred it to the normal air-conditioning system of too cold, such that I need to put on some more clothes. In Canada, in buildings, it was too cold in summer, and too hot in winter [that was 1976, so perhaps they have changed their cultural norms in regard to indoor air temperature over the last 30 years, which flashed by far too quickly].
Where and how should one access cyberspace? The question is still asked by some Luddites, "Why should one access cyberspace?" They think they don't need it, but like a Neanderthal contemplating a calculator, they ask why on Earth one would need such a thing. Many inventions seem unnecessary to many people until the inevitable cultural shift to a better way of life drags them kicking and screaming out of their mud huts into the modern world, or be left behind. Mostly it's left behind as old geezers usually don't even bother trying to pick up the new-fangled ideas. They just get old and fade away and die.
Watch the young ones to see the coming cultural shift. The young are obsessed with mobile cyberphones and cyberspace in general. Rightly so.
It's far more important than the industrial revolution which swamped the world and led directly to the British Empire heyday. The industrial revolution replaced muscles. Even animals have muscles. They don't have brains. In the 19th century, it was a sensible economic question whether to use a donkey or a human to do some work. The cyberspace revolution is about replacing brains. Brains are where the real economic action is. Muscles lift rocks. Brains lift rockets.
The cyberspace revolution is a brains revolution. Everyone, including you, you old Luddite, will need it. They will need it now and they will need it fast and they will need it cheap. They will get all three. And they'll get it where they want it. They will demand it. They might have revolutions over it. Without it, they will remain much like donkeys. Which is a good way of life for donkeys.
Unfortunately for them, not everyone will be able to join in. Since it is a brains revolution, those with brains will be best placed to benefit. Unfortunately for even them, cyberspace itself will increasingly replace human brains, which will form not much more than data input assistants [if they are good enough to take part].
People will install webcams, transducers, dig dirt, lay fibre, bolt things together and generally do the 3D manual manipulations which cyberspace finds difficult. The donkey work so to speak. Cyberspace will do the rest. No human brains needed. Or allowed. Like flying the Space Shuttles back to Earth. [They are allowed to play with a steering wheel, which largely ignores them].
Whoa Mqurice. You are way off track. Got the bit between your donkey teeth and rushing off to the end-game of the cyberspace revolution.
Back to TJ's barge.
Back to GPRS and Orange's <I am accessing the internet now using my gprs-enabled gsm pda, and when needed, as I did about 22 hours ago to off-load my paper gold at some number like 14% undeserved gain, I do so via the boat owner's pc and its Orange serviced all-one-can-use gsm internet broadband card (effectively at adsl speed, or so I was told).>
I mentioned to you that Nokia has apparently been illicitly using QCOM technology to enable GPRS. Legal proceedings are underway to get them to cease and desist, or pay up. Which has enormous implications, largely ignored.
But in my drooling excitement to explain that, I ignored the boat owner's connection which enabled your profits. You obviously paid for the boat owner's connection, bundled with your other costs, or separately.
If the boat owner was using GPRS, he will have an insufferably slow connection. It's possible he is using EDGE, which is faster. But most likely he was using a W-CDMA connection which is the nearest thing to ADSL speed in the 3GSM world [though it's untrue really to make that claim as W-CDMA is still much slower than ADSL].
GSM is absolutely not broadband. GPRS is absolutely not broadband. EDGE is absolutely not broadband. But W-CDMA is nearing a legitimate use of the word, though not really. When they bring out HSDPA, then it will be broadband. But data rates are racing up, so even that "broad" will seem narrow soon enough.
W-CDMA is absolutely not GSM. The air interface is the main issue in wireless [pretty much by definition as the rest is the wired part and can't be called wireless]. GSM back end hardware, and the fibre around the world, the switches and other icky electronic stuff to process what the CDMA part delivers is still "GSM" to a greater or lesser extent. But the air interface has no relationship whatsoever with GSM.
Calling it 3GSM or 3G does not mean that GSM gets nearer than the bottom of a base station. The heavy lifting in the 3GSM/UMTS/W-CDMA/3G wireless space is done by CDMA, which is QCOM technology. Phragmented photons are not particularly heavy, so it's more magical incantations in Fourier-land than industrial revolution donkey work being done.
The upshot of it is that you paid me royalties for your sale of gold. Would you like a shovel with your banking transaction? Selling shovels to gold miners has always been a profitable enterprise. Often more profitable than the miners' efforts.
I am so glad you joined the CDMA world, traded, enjoyed and lived. And ironically in France, the land from which some of my ancestors fled when the thick-headed and violent Prussians sought to profit from eons-old chimpoid alpha male tribal territorial conquest in hunter-gatherer exploding population wealth-seeking invasion of Alsace, in eastern France, cornering my infant grandmother and great grandmother and father in the siege of Paris, from which they escaped, fleeing to New Zealand on a long and desperate voyage, which claimed lives through disease and bad luck.
Great grandma's grandson then returned to France in 1915 to fight the bastards again. Then, another grandson, my father, went to fight the bastards again in 1940. In your neck of the woods, the Japanese were rolled back into their cage too and given a lesson they haven't yet forgotten. China shows signs of wanting to learn the lessons [which seem to have to be given to megalomaniacs who continually pop up around the world and make headway until stopped]. But I won't get sidetracked.
My ancestors cleared the way for you and me to cruise happily around France enjoying freedom, food, fun, family and friends, enabled by The Five Financial Factors For Freedom; learn, work, save, invest, spend, [wisely].
If they were alive today, I'm sure they'd be delighted to see Ai Li and Hayes learning the ways of the world in the lands they too enjoyed and helped defend against the monsters of the world. With the stage set, TJ's expertise and efforts using phragmented photons supplied by Mqurice enabled him to deliver the financial wherewithal. Beautiful.
I am sure that most people on this planet want what you have. That means mobile cyberspace, using CDMA and OFDM, with a lot of help from QCOM.
Thank you for your payment TJ, which is received with a very great deal of pleasure. Wait until you use HSDPA and later, OFDM, also by QCOM of course, you'll love it. You will think of GSM as being like a slide rule and book of seven figure logarithms, using avoirdupois weights and measures, compared with a calculator and the metric system [except that you are too young to know the feeling].
Now, off to the baguette shop and Shopi to hunter-gather some supplies for yet another hot and sunny day. I shall use your payment.
I have had continuous hot and sunny since 17 May. Maybe there have been 3 days which weren't [I can't remember them] and the infrequent thunderstorms which last minutes are fun, if they do their thing properly, though they usually miss me, damn it.
What a lovely day. TJ has joined the CDMA world.
Mqurice
PS: Later ... I have now scoffed some very delicious baguette [gros version] loaded with fresh comestibles. Maybe I have died and gone to heaven. It's not hot enough for hell - only 32 degrees Celsius [again].
I asked earlier, where and how should cyberspace be accessed. Because I'm a bucket of wet chemistry, I find it annoying to have to carry electronic gadgets. I
would like to be able to have nodes everywhere so I don't need to lug around batteries, screens and electronic gizzardry. With tests of iris, fingerprint, voice, PIN, together with a reaction test and perhaps knowledge test, I think cyberspace could very quickly identify me. Even a quick DNA scan wouldn't be too difficult with the gadgets now available.
After identifying me, cyberspace would leap to my assistance through whatever devices I select. Maybe it would be a plasma screen in a living room. Or maybe a short wireless link to a voice-only Earcell [TM] which I would wear when out for a walk. When finished with the Earcell I'd return it in good condition to the nearest cyberbank of gadgets. Actually, I expect an Earcell would be a personal gadget always with one. But this sort of device, a notebook computer, could be available all over the place, for casual reference anywhere, anytime.
There shouldn't be a need for you to take your own mainframe on a cruise in France, apart from the damn AZERTY business and having to write one's name Mqurice. Rome wasn't built in a day and roaming won't be either. But things are well under way. |
