The Spirit of the Web

<font face="Tahoma"> <blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">QUOTE OF THE DAY (From IT Web 05/05/04)

The ultimate recognition:

"I accept this as an endorsement of the spirit of the Web; of building it in a decentralised way; of making best efforts to keep it open and fair; and of ensuring its fundamental technologies are available to all for broad use and innovation, and without having to pay licensing fees."

- Tim Berners-Lee, the technologist who added hyperlinking capabilities to the Internet to create the World Wide Web in 1990 and is being knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth for his "services to the global development of the Internet". (AP)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Seems we've a long way to go in SA, with the costs incurred when involved in marginal amounts of internet access (email and web surfing - not even ADSL, I'm referring to dial-up access).

Until these costs come down to something most people can afford, we will not see the benefits to this country that can (and would) be provided, and innovation will stumble behind.

I do often wonder whether certain big business in SA have not taken the humble attitude Tim Berners-Lee seems to display? This website is, to them, a reminder!</font id="Tahoma">

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Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
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If Telkom invented the Hyperlink, they would probably charge 80cents per click or some other form of financial torture. If I'm not completely mistaken I think a very long time ago they actually did this with Beltel? (It was some service you could get for your tv) you had to pay money for each page you viewed. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You are correct in that you had to pay per page view and for anything that you downloaded. If I recall correctly it was something crazy like R5 for 100k. This was still in the days of 2400 modems so it took a while to get that 100k [] I can't recall if it was available via TV, I used a PC.

I had the misfortune to work on the Beltel system at my first company... A company forgotten by time and a telephone line which I swear could have been laid last century, were all part of the daily stress endured.
The 1200 baud modem was a real joke, not to mention the random characters which appeared on the monitor due to line interference. Frequent disconnections and unexplainable software behaviour (due to the poor quality line) added to the frustrations.
Error checking you ask? I don't think Beltel supported it, but I don't think it would have made any difference. Telkom checked the line repeatedly but said that the exchange was mechincal, which was the cause of our trouble.

I also remember the interference characters though I didn't get disconnected too often. They eventually supported error correction when they upgraded to 9600 (woohoo!) []

1200 baud... hehe, when Beltel was first launched it was 75 baud up and 300 baud down []

yep the thinking here was.. that no1 could type faster than 75bps so there would never be a need for a higher upload speed. I still have one of those modems in a box in my garage *wonders if it has antique value [?]*

And to think my cellphone connects at 144 kbps. Man, we've come a long way, but we're yet a long way aways....

<font color="blue"><b>The clock is ticking................... <i>1,174 kb/s</i> - I brake for no one</b></font id="blue">
http://home.cogeco.ca/~johannj/net_stuff/cogeco.jpg