Hard News: Fibre Coming Soon! Ish ...
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difference between an old room sized mainframe and the latest Macbook Pro
That would be a factor of:
100,000 on disk (10MB vs 1TB)
50,000 on CPU MIPS
10,000 on cost (the other way, obviously)Fibre would be 50x faster than copper, max.
In terms of actual utility, I'm not sure on mainframes, but old-style offices probably got as much work done on an early 80's Wang word processoras we do today on the latest kit. Modern docs are prettier (and you have to have pretty documents to keep up with the competition) but I'm not sure they actually add value.
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Definitely valid points, I guess I think there will be a critical mass speed above which point there will be a big leap in the kinds of things you can do. Kind of like how it's not really worth it to use YouTube on dial up but you take it for granted at higher speeds. The difference in service is incremental but the utility is completely different in terms of the application.
Another idea is your entire data hard drive being on the net (secure, encrypted, redundant etc), mountable from anywhere, on any device.
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Rich, it's so true. People tend to think that because bandwidth is something computers use that it's undergone the same kind of massive exponential explosion in power. It has not, and there is no reason why it should.
There is no analogy between cramming smaller and smaller components capable of finer and finer storage and more and more computation using less and less power, to any kind of ability to do that with data transmission. The amazing breakthrough of fiber optic cable is not something that we should expect to be repeated every couple of years, any more than we should expect any amazing breakthroughs in roading technology. The path to building bigger roads that can transmit more and more traffic is relatively well understood and stable. Costs come down as technology improves, but nowhere near as fast.
So waiting forever for fiber because we already have waited forever, in the hope that something better will come along, or the belief that it must, is akin to waiting for an alternative to existing transport technology, and not building any roads.
What has increased rapidly has been the demand for internet services. And it continues to grow. What we currently have servicing us is really bloody poor by comparison to most developed nations. It constantly sickens me how much I pay for how little data I get, when I talk to any of my colleagues anywhere else in the world. It really is an embarrassment.
In summary, do it already.
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Perhaps I should make clear that in agreeing with Rich that bandwidth has not tracked other IT technology jumps, I don't conclude that it's not worth having more. Quite the opposite, I'm saying that because the technology is stable, there is absolutely no point in waiting any longer for it, other than to pump the copper monopoly all that cash instead, and suck on crap service. No thanks.
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In terms of actual utility, I'm not sure on mainframes, but old-style offices probably got as much work done on an early 80's Wang word processoras we do today on the latest kit. Modern docs are prettier (and you have to have pretty documents to keep up with the competition) but I'm not sure they actually add value.
You've picked on the thing that hasn't changed that much - basic text. The old mainframe would have only been capable of doing basic word processing, database, maths, simple programmes, email, telnet, maybe ftp.
The difference between the utility of the macbook and mainframe is video, youtube, facebook, every company having a website, amazon.com, data projectors, email attachments, dvds, video conferencing, photoshop etc etc. Our world is changed because of the difference between those two computers. 'We' didn't build the first gui interfaces, or indeed the first internet structures, with those things in mind, they came as a result of the computers and the network that we now have.
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