🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep12.145239.13719@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> aburt@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (Andrew Burt) writes:
>>is an asymetric 1200/75 baud.
>>Some Minitel terminals support 80x24 but there's no way around the internal
>>modem. France Telecom plans a second generation "high-performance" terminal
>>working at a blazing 4800 bps. Wheee.
>
>Jan, are you listening?  
>
I'm listening, and I knew this all before. Think about it. If you try and
make something cheaper, you cut it back. In the case of modems,
who can type faster then 75 baud anyway. Receiveing at 1200, sending at 75.
Makes sense (at the time).
As for the 4800 I hadn't heard of that.

>Kimon, could you give us more details?  How do people feel about it in
>France:  How do the technical people feel, who know the maximum potential?
>And how to the common folks feel?  Also, are the common folks as likely
>as US folks to have, e.g., a 386 with ms-windows on it?  (Last I heard,
>about 1/3 of households had computers, and I'm sure a high percentage of
>them have at least seen something like ms-windows; of the 2/3 that don't
>have computers, many use them at work or have at least seen ms-windows.
>I'm no fan of windows, but I'd take that any day over videotex!)
>
As for the public: anywhere you see a 1-800 number in the US you would see a
videotex access code in france (signs on the side of the road, ads on TV..).

As for computers, the figures you quoted are higher than the ones I had heard.
And that also leaves the question what do they do with it.
Besides it is unfair to compare windows or mac or X to videotex. It
wasn't designed to be an operating system. You can run a videotex
emulator on ANY of them, without noticing anything bad. There are
emulators free of charge out there for Mac and PC (I have them both),
and maybe you want to program one for X?

I reiterate: People on the net (andrew in particular) are too narrowly focused
on the net. They have learned to live with it. Most people don't.
Most people don't and don't have the high expectations as we do (see Prodigy).

I would like to see the net and netnews and email more widespread than
it is, and I think Andrew is doing a fabulous job bringing it
to people via nyx (and I wish you the best for the future.. I like
your dream), but that doesn't mean everything else has to live by
such high standards as imposed by us net-people.

-- 
 Jan Vilhuber            | Internet: jvilhube@du.edu or jvilhube@[130.253.1.4]
 (The skydivin' Bass)      | Bitnet  : jvilhube@DUCAIR
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