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This article first appeared in the January 1999 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
It must be a sign I'm a Web veteran because I can remember when Web pages were mostly text and the Web was used for information rather than entertainment. I can see the difference between then and now when I watch my third grade daughter use the Web. Her preferrred destination is the Disney site (www.disney.com), which is loaded with megabytes of fancy graphics and Java-based arcade games--as well as over-the-top promotions of the big Disney movie du jour.
Just a couple of years ago an online amusement park like the Disney site wouldn't have been possible because most of us were using 19.2 or 28.8 Kbps modems. All those eye-popping graphics and big Java programs would have taken so long to download that any self-respecting eight-year-old would have died from boredom. Even now, with connections in excess of 40 Kbps, she impatiently waits for Java games like Simba Eats Bambi to download.
It's only going to get worse.
Just coming into their own are Internet long distance telephone calls, streaming audio and video and MP3 on demand. Any one of these cries for more speed than a 56 Kbps modem can deliver. Your Internet connection can't be too fast.
Help is on the way.
In Jefferson County, the local cable television provider, InterMedia (www.intermedialou.com), has been working for several years to convert their system over to fiber optic cabling. The main benefit most customers saw in this was that the old coaxial cabling was able to carry at most 50 channels, while the new fiber optic system can carry as many as 125 channels. But, there's nothing saying some of that bandwidth can't be used for other types of information. High speed Internet access is one of them.
InterMedia has teamed up with @Home (www.home.net), one of several companies specializing in providing Internet service through cable systems. Their goal is to provide cable Internet access everywhere in Jefferson county by the end of 1999.
Converting a cable television system into a wide area computer network is a daunting job. Cable television systems are designed to send data out, not get it back. For the last few months, @Home has been installing and testing communications equipment in several InterMedia sites around the county.
Current plans call for a January rollout in the Okalona area followed by the Westport, Valley Station and Billtown areas in the second quarter of this year. The downtown Louisville and northwest areas of the county will follow by the end of summer.
A cable Internet connection is indeed much faster than a standard modem connection. The InterMedia setup allows for download speeds of 3 Mbps, which is about 60 times the download speed of the fastest modem, and one-third the speed of a direct Ethernet connection. Upload speeds are 128 Kbps, about four times the upload speed of the best modem.
The connection to your computer is through a gateway box, often called a "cable modem," although, strictly speaking, it is not a modem. One side of the box connects to the cable coming into your house and the other side has an Ethernet connection to plug into an Ethernet card on your computer, or a hub. To make sure your signal is clean, the installer will split a fresh line from the cable connection on the outside of your house to the cable modem.
The @Home installation includes their own software bundle, but any standard Internet software will work. They recommend a Macintosh with at least a 603e processor, 32 MB of RAM and 50 MB of free drive space. The minimum system they support must have a 601 processor, 24 MB of RAM and 50 MB of free drive space. Any machine must be running Mac OS 7.6.1 or newer with Open Transport.
Of course, speed costs money. The monthly cost for unlimited usage will be $39.95 with a cable modem rental included, or $29.95, if you buy your own cable modem. This monthly charge is added to your normal cable bill. Installation charges will be $149.95, if they have to provide an Ethernet card for your computer, and $99.95, if they don't.
Other cable companies in the Louisville area are also getting ready to jump on the Internet. Marcus Cable in New Albany has their system in very limited testing right now, and are unwilling to say when it might become available. Instead of @Home, they have chosen HSA Corporation (www.hsanet.net) to manage their Internet offerings.
Potpourri
Being the first issue of the new year, the Editor has asked all the serfs working in the trenches to make New Years resolutions. New Years resolutions are easy to make; I've made the standard resolution to lose weight dozens of times, and I'll make it again this year. Anyone who's met me has seen how well that one has worked out. But, thinking about resolutions for the coming year has led me to think about the last year instead.
Last January, Apple was a beleaguered company, considered down for the count by most PC pundits. As the storm continued in the press, and its market share and stock price continued to erode, any number of companies were rumored to be buying Apple. Microsoft was on the top of the world and Bill Gates consistently ranked as one of the most admired men in this country.
What a difference a year makes!
The iMac has taken the PC world by storm. For the first time Apple is actually seeing a significant number of Windows users switching to Macs. Market share is growing and Apple stock has strongly rebounded. Microsoft is taking a pounding in the courts and the press. A significant part of the population thinks Bill Gates took lessons from John D. Rockefeller. Steve Jobs is being bandied about as a possibility for Time magazine's Man of the Year.
A year from now the pendulum may have swung back. My resolution is to not worry about it because I can't do anything about it anyway.
On December 7, Apple released an updater to turn your Mac OS 8.5 into version 8.5.1. The update is basically a bug fix release, and Apple is recommending that everyone running version 8.5 should apply the upgrade.
There are no new features, except for a couple of new Sherlock plug-ins. Some of the bugs fixed include patches for the ADB manager so some dongles and joysticks work again, a memory leak in AppleScript has been plugged, and Open Transport 2.0.2, which solves a conflict with CD readers on some G3 Macintoshes.
Probably the most important upgrade is Drive Setup 1.6.2 which fixes a rare problem where partitions on hard drives could be trashed. Unfortunately the installer for 8.5.1 does not automatically launch the new drive setup to update drives. The update has to be done separately.
The update can be downloaded from Apple's support web site (http://www.apple.com/support). It will also be available on CD from Apple in January.
On November 18, Judge Ronald Whyte of the U.S. District Court in San Jose ruled that Microsoft should change its Java implementation to more strictly adhere to the specifications defined by Sun Microsystems. A few days later, Microsoft announced it was no longer going to distribute its Java with Internet Explorer for the Macintosh.
Contrary to some reports in the press, this came as no big surprise. Months earlier Microsoft and Apple had announced their intentions to concentrate on Apple's Macintosh Runtime for Java 2.0 (http://www.apple.com/macos/java/) as the primary Macintosh Java. MRJ 2.0 is faster and more stable than the Java included with Explorer, and the 2.1 beta which is being beta tested is much faster.
Persistent net-rumors are that Netscape is going to remove its slow and clunky Java from a future version of Navigator in favor of MRJ 2.1.
After taking some time to get their act together, Network Associates has finally begun to post regular Virex updates to their web site. First, they posted an upgrade from version 5.8 to version 5.9 (http://www.drsolomon.com/download/index.cfm). They have also had a several virus definition file updates (ftp://ftp.nai.com/pub/antivirus/datfiles/virex/). Then, they posted the beta version of the next Virex for anyone to test (http://beta.mcafee.com/virex/). But, all is still not well with Virex.
There are several well-documented bugs in Virex 5.9 which the beta documentation does not address. Those few programs using the new navigation services in Mac OS 8.5 can freeze when opened. Also, AppleShare IP 6.0 servers on G3 machines have freeze-up problems. An apparent workaround in both cases is to disable "Scan files when opened" in the Virex control panel. There are also conflict problems with the new StuffIt SpaceSaver 5.0.
Have you ever been annoyed that the Finder thinks 11 should come before 2 or aa should come before b when it arranges files in alphabetical order? A few days ago I stumbled across a free extension called Natural Order which teaches the Finder and a few other programs how to properly arrange things. You can find it at http://www.macdownload.com.
Art Software Group Meeting
GoLive, the Web Design Tool of choice for many Mac users, will be featured at the January 23 meeting of the Art Software Group. Also included will be Quark, featuring their new Quarkimedia version for Macintosh. The meeting will be held 1-4 P.M. in their new location in the CompUSA store, 825 Hurstborne Lane. For more information, email Artsoftgrp@aol.com.
Louisville Computer Society
Jim Hines, Advertising Technology Manager for The Courier Journal will be the speaker at the January 26 meeting of the Louisville Computer Society. He writes "I plan to talk about The C-J being one of Louisville's best-kept Macintosh secrets, in that without Apple technologies we could not publish The C-J. We depend on Macs for all phases production as well as promotion and marketing and network management. Integration of Macintoshes into the IBM world (the administrative offices use only IBM) and the difficulties therein."
The regular meeting time and place for the LCS has been changed! The meetings will be on the fourth Tuesday evening of every month at 7:00 P.M. in The Pitt Academy, 4605 Poplar Level Road. This location is at the intersection of Poplar Level Road and Gilmore Lane, 1.2 miles south of the Watterson Expressway. For more information, see their web site at http://www.aye.net/~lcs, or email LCS@aye.net.
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