Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!djm
From: djm@etive.ed.ac.uk (D Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Electronic Newspapers
Message-ID: <1950@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 6 May 89 12:47:51 GMT
References: <8905031352.AA16555@mica.berkeley.edu> <174@marvin.moncam.co.uk> <491@atlas.tegra.UUCP>
Reply-To: djm@etive.ed.ac.uk (D Murphy)
Organization: Edinburgh University Chemistry Dept.
Lines: 61

In article <491@atlas.tegra.UUCP> vail@tegra.UUCP (Johnathan Vail) writes:
>
> [ ]
>
>The monochrome Sun 3/60 I am on now is adequate for decent rendering
>and it is by no means state of the art.  Imagine your HDTV station
>reading the news with color images and video clips in various windows,
>stereo sound and all.  Interactive.
>
>This is possible today.  Imagine what will happen tomorrow.
>
> [ ]
> _____
>|     | Johnathan Vail | tegra!N1DXG@ulowell.edu
>|Tegra| (508) 663-7435 | N1DXG@145.110-,145.270-,444.2+,448.625-
> -----

This is the sort of comment which gets me really annoyed ! I agree 
entirely - I think it is a fantastic idea. But I live in the UK and
the useless bunch of creeps who run the telecom system can't provide the
necessary comms. Much has been promised over the years but precious little
is ever delivered.

By the way - one of my favourite ideas is running a game like `Elite'
(dunno if everyone has heard of this - it is a space trader/pirate type
thing) played with multi-user access so participants can team up or
fight against each other. Sort of thing which would make a huge amount
of money very quickly then get banned.

On a more serious note - how about a completely cable TV broadcast system -
I can envisage this pretty much ensuring reception quality no matter what
the atmospherics, and also (not sure about this one) be more efficient in
terms of the amount of energy required to reach a given number of receivers.
Also, getting TV off the air waves would free up a fair amount of space
for other applications (something which is getting in increasingly short
supply). Local distribution centres would eliminate the case of the
relf-righteous who complain that `unsuitable' programming is broadcast
in a form that everyone can receive - since software blocks could easily
be put in place (and, of course, create a generation of 8 year old hackers
who can patch lines through to their homes to watch `Emmanuelle' and the
like :-)).

BUT it is all pie unless and until we get the comms. This is what comes of
relying on someone else.


Murff....

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D.J. Murphy
Chemistry Dept.
Univ. of Edinburgh

  "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work,
    I want to achieve it through not dying."

                                            Woody Allen