Yup; the Internet is screwed up.
Jeroen van Aart
jeroen at mompl.net
Wed Jun 22 19:48:25 UTC 2011
Steven Bellovin wrote:
> When I was in grad school, the director of the computer center (remember
> those) felt that there was no need for 1200 bps modems -- 300 bps was
> fine, since no one could read the scrolling output any faster than that
> anyway.
>
> Right now, I'm running an rsync job to back up my laptop's hard drive to my
> office. I hope it finishes before I leave today for Denver.
I understand the sentiment, but the comparison is flawed in my opinion.
The speeds back then were barely any faster than you could type, I know
all too well the horrors of 1200/75 baud connectivity.
Luckily nowadays now it's about getting your dvd torrent downloaded in 2
minutes, vs. 20 minutes, or 2 hours. Or your whole disk backed up before
your flight leaves. You're now able to back it up online to begin with.
The thing here is that I talk about *necessity*. Once connectivity has
reached a certain speed threshold having increased speed generally
starts leaning towards *would be nice* instead of *must*.
And so far the examples people gave are almost all more in the realm of
luxury problems than problems that hinder your life in fundamental ways.
If you have a 100 mbps broadband connection and your toddlers are
slowing down your video conference call with your boss by watching the
newest Dexter (hah!). Then your *need* can be easily satisfied by
telling your toddlers to cut the crap for a while. Sure it'd be nice if
your toddlers could watch Dexter kill another victim whilst you were
having a smooth video conference talk with your boss, but it's not
necessary.
Greetings,
Jeroen
--
http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
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