🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear lagged Australian net user,

I've been using the net for around 6 years now and in that
time I've seen the link from Australia to the rest of the
world grow  steadily worse.   This is regardless of the 
occasional inceases in capacity.  The introduction of WWW
brought tears to my eyes as thousands of net 'tards now had 
a tool which they could understand and plunder bandwidth with.
Media-hype on the amusingly named 'Information Superhighway' 
has gathered net 'tards from far and wide and now the link
has ground to a virtual halt.

Now WWW showing up 10 years ahead of its time has hurt, but
I just heard something on the radio that has me flinching
bigtime.  Apparently a Web tool has been released that allows
real-time transfer of sampled sound.  ie Simulates a digital
phone line.  The radio announcer happily chirped that
international calls using this tool would be free and of
higher quality (Guess he means better S/N) than conventional
international calls.  

This wouldn't work to well as I'm guessing that real-time
8-bit digital speech transmission would require at least 
52KB/s constantly.  This when you're doing well to get a 
constant 1b/s out of Aus.  However, this won't stop the 
'tards from continually trying and as such a WWW Phone will
guarantee that even if Aus aquired 20 T3 links out we'd still 
be lagged to a standstill.

Has anyone heard any firm news on this unsettlling
development in net tools?

Dave Elliot
delliot@fenner9.anu.edu.au