Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Saturday 22 February 1997, 8:00 AM
Rupert Goodwins' Weekend Diary
Now here's a funny thing. While browsing through some American magazines, I spot that there's an American company called Monorail. This is about a year old; it's composed of ex-Compaq people and it has one of the more intriguing launches of the last couple of years. The Monorail computer is an obelisk with a 75MHz K5 processor, 16Mb of RAM, a built-in 640 x 480 colour LCD display, quad-speed CD-ROM drive and 33.6kbps modem
Saturday 15 February 1997, 8:00 AM
Rupert Goodwins' Weekend Diary
Three small flaws: one, the link software doesn't seem to work. I spend an hour getting COMMS ERROR messages from the watch, which is supposed to pick up data from flashing bars on the monitor. While this looks just like a ZX81 loading, it works even less well
Saturday 1 February 1997, 8:00 AM
Rupert Goodwins' Diary (or, A Week With Bill)
One likes to have one's routine in the morning: get up, put kettle on, wash, grab email, leave for office. Not today. I've been using MSN as my access provider at home; it was exceptionally fast (less so now they have 100,000 users), reliable and didn't have any nasty habits. Sure got one now, though: "Incorrect Information Specified", it says, just before it should dial.. Useful, huh?
Five days later, I still can't tell you what Incorrect Information Specified means. It doesn't mean the telephone number, user account or password is wrong, or that some odd modem's been configured. Despite a lot of swearing and cold coffee, my MSN account remains in abeyance. I've switched to Compuserve. It's fine.
Gah.
Tuesday
Now and again, I make a mistake (Nurse! Smelling salts for the fainting multitudes!). One such, I suspect, is getting a friend online with AOL. It's not been reliable lately, as recorded in diaries passim: today I see the CompuServe advert that got played during the Superbowl. It was a blank screen, with repeated dial tone
Five days later, I still can't tell you what Incorrect Information Specified means. It doesn't mean the telephone number, user account or password is wrong, or that some odd modem's been configured. Despite a lot of swearing and cold coffee, my MSN account remains in abeyance. I've switched to Compuserve. It's fine.
Gah.
Tuesday
Now and again, I make a mistake (Nurse! Smelling salts for the fainting multitudes!). One such, I suspect, is getting a friend online with AOL. It's not been reliable lately, as recorded in diaries passim: today I see the CompuServe advert that got played during the Superbowl. It was a blank screen, with repeated dial tone
