The Internet
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Moved here because it’s not really relevant to firmware…
Compared to a 14k4-28k8 modem, it probably was a superhighway. Yes, I know 33k6 and 56k modems exist, but you’d have trouble getting those to sync on many regular phone lines, even after talking to an actual engineer to fiddle the AGC settings (or knowing thy secret incantation to do it yourself).
Don’t be too sure. Wasn’t somebody fairly recently granted trademark rights to the smiley, despite decades of prior art? (but it’s prior art in the rest of the world so we’ll ignore it) France was late to the internet game anyway. Partly because of the already widespread use of Minitel (which never managed to progress much beyond 1200/75!) and partly because of weird laws that rendered encryption by individuals illegal which was problematic for things like SSL. Eventually they realised it was a lost battle and so the internet boom also started in France. Though Minitel kept on going until June 2012. It actually lasted longer than most payphones! |
David J. Ruck (33) 1629 posts |
My 56K modem would never sync at more than 44K, ISDN wasn’t that much of a step up unless you could afford a bonded 128K connection. I had to wait until the first ASDL which was 512KB down – now that was fast – images appeared complete in a second or two, rather than a few minutes watching each line come down. Kind of ruined the anticipation for certain types of images ;-) |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
ARM chips with all the pins visible? |
James Pankhurst (8374) 126 posts |
Oh, very true. Near instant connects, unlikely to be interrupted by some trying to natter, just seems an awful term given how fast things are now.
Only 2 things I remember about France and internet technology, SSL being limited to 40bit, when everyone else was on 128bit, and them making up French words for things and insisting people use them, like courrielle instead of email as loan words aren’t French enough. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Don’t times change. From my landline I can call most places on earth (that aren’t despotic hellholes) and mobile phones in the EU/UK/US/🍁 for free.
Yay for resumable Zmodem (on systems that supported it), as you just knew when somebody yelled “what’s that infernal racket” that your modem lights were going to blink in a most pitiful way followed by most of them going out. That was Not Good.
To be fair, the original Bush Internet box suffered from a similar affliction. Governments were weird about encryption back then, though I rather suspect that PGP made the point that “cat’s out of the bag and you can’t stop it”.
That’s usually the Académie Française that are the appointed guardians and defenders of the French language. At least it isn’t Québec, they are so gung ho on French being French that their stop signs say “Arrêt” because “Stop” is too English. Even the actual French aren’t quite that bad. Although I must confess that I did have a small rant at work when our internal Facebook-mini said something like “Céline à liké cet message”. That was then followed by amusement as French people are often far too literal for British snarkiness 2 and wanted to assure me that there is, in fact, a perfectly good French word… We have “sandwichs” (no ‘e’, that bothers me more than it ought to) and “weekend” (often shortened to “week”) and all sorts of loan words (including “hula hoop” but not said anything like you’d recognise) in contemporary speech. The correct word for an email is indeed “courriel”, but most people just say “mél” or “e-mél” (pronounced just like the English equivalent). Easiest way to start a war in France? Ask a question about some obscure little bit of the language (like what’s the difference between “deuxième” and “seconde” 3) and watch the sparks fly. ;) 1 Whatever the price it was eye wateringly expensive. 2 Which is most of my humour (you know, ‘cos I’m British). I said to my boss just this afternoon that if they slowed down the misbehaving machine any more it would start running in reverse. Nobody understood. Instead I was told that the machine doesn’t have the ability to run in reverse 4 and if it did all sorts of things would break 5. 3 Technically, one means “the second of two” and the other means “the second of several (more than two)”. There appear to be exceptions, and that’s where the arguments begin. 4 Actually it’s a bunch of computer controlled three phase motors so, yeah, it probably could run in reverse. 5 That happens anyway. Oh, wait, was I being snarky again? Oops. |
Grahame Parish (436) 480 posts |
Do the French kids use “comme” every few words in every sentence, like? |
Chris Mahoney (1684) 2165 posts |
Well, since we’re talking about language (in a thread titled “The Internet”, naturally), this is as good a place as any to mention something I was just pondering earlier this morning. I wanted to write a sentence referring to the language spoken by orcs, as in the fantasy creatures. In English, most languages are named after countries, and are therefore proper nouns with a capital letter (French, Japanese, etc.) Others, like Latin and Mandarin, have no obvious connection but they still get the capital letter. Meanwhile, Tolkien used “elvish” with a small E, and the OED also uses this form (both for the language and the adjective). Tolkien also used “orcish” with a small O, but the OED doesn’t have an entry for it. The sentence I was trying to write wasn’t in reference to Tolkienesque orcs specifically, but I couldn’t decide whether to use a capital O or not. So, to paraphrase:
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Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
I wouldn’t know, I don’t have a French kid… I think a fairly common verbal tic is something called verlan, I’ve already had a younger woman greet me with “jourbon”. There might be a fair bit more I’ve missed as French is hard enough the right way around. ;) |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
This is Aldershot. Thread titles are polite suggestions.
Yes, because the name of a language is a proper noun. Or if you’d like to hear it from smarter people than me… clause c: |
GavinWraith (26) 1563 posts |
I knew Larry Trask who wrote this. He came to my house to play Mah Jongg. |
James Pankhurst (8374) 126 posts |
Not to mention that their very existence means Canadian immigration wants to know how well you speak French, even if you have every intention of pretending Quebec doesn’t exist. |
Chris Mahoney (1684) 2165 posts |
It’s been a few days, but…
I’m not sure where I got this from (maybe a random Internet search), because I just looked in my printed copy of FOTR and there’s “Elvish” with a capital E staring at me.
I’m well aware :) |