Verizon FiOS Ads Are Making Me Nuts!! Please Help

[Jim Becker]

I was going to tell a story about downloading text in olden days at 300 baud and being able to read it as it streamed in, but I'm sure there's somebody out there who can beat that story because they relied on the pony express for their letters, so I won't.

Hey...I used to sell 300 baud modems and it was a big deal when the 1200 baud versions came out. $$$$, too!

[Dennis Peacock]

Sure glad you didnt tell that story or I would have told of my smokesignals /drum beating days back in the day.....got alot of exercize when mom called ..that woman can talk forever

Oh my gosh...!!! ROFL!!!!!!! Reminds me of when my mom calls.

[Dennis Peacock]

Hey, I know about yacking over a modem. It was cool to be at 1200 baud, UNTIL I got my 2400 baud modem. Compuserve at 2400 baud and all text screens..no graphics.

I also used to write COBOL programs on IBM key punch cards too. Ah.!!! Those were the days....until an operator drops a box of cards that made up your computer program!!!!

[Jim Becker]

I also used to write COBOL programs on IBM key punch cards too. Ah.!!! Those were the days....until an operator drops a box of cards that made up your computer program!!!!

Yea, we used those cards at Penn State for our PL1 programming course (required for business majors - this was about 1977 or so)...and I couldn't blame the dropped deck on some other "operator"...

[Steven Wilson]

300 baud ? That’s fast. I go back to using 110 baud teletype machines with built in punch tape reader/writer. My first FORTRAN programs were to make fun pictures on punch tape writers. Ah, the fun I had using a spare UPI teletype machine to log into a local PDP-03 and play Star Trek.

I also fondly remember punch cards. Of course all of you would get your punch card deck in order and then run the cards through the punch machine to put a sort order on them so that in case you dropped the deck a sorter could put them in order for you?

I remember a cheap Geophysics Prof who would scrounge old equipment. I and another grad student got the task of converting a digitizing tablet from outputting punch cards to outputting an RS-232 signal as well as punch cards.

This same prof would make sure that all of his gravity measurements (primarily California) were entered on punch cards for safe keeping. He had millions of them. Anyhow, the computing center one day had accidentally erased the tapes of his gravity data, basically a complete set of all gravity measurements taken in California by anyone (it was very complete) - something like 30 years of work. So he had the data center install an old punch card reader (decommissioned the year before) and then pay to have a few semi truck loads of punch cards delivered to the datacenter for processing (he had them stored in Quonset huts in the desert). It was funny watching the Universities data center having to process and rebuild all this data. It took a few months but he recovered about 99% of the data.

[Bob Childress]

Well, if we're going to play Good Old Days I started out learning how to wire the bakelite boards in those sorters and punch machines to get them to do stuff (1965). We used sets of two-pin connectors and the holes in the bakelite corresponded to all possible hollerith punches in the cards.

Then too, recall that programming forms were sent to Keypunch and then every card was "re-punched" by a Verifier on a different machine (QC ). Oh, and the computer took up a room the size of a small house with under-floor air conditioning and had a whopping 64K of memory.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

QAM stands for "quadrature amplitude modulation," the format by which digital [COLOR=#3399CC ! important][COLOR=#3399CC ! important]cable [COLOR=#3399CC ! important]channels[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] are encoded and transmitted via cable.

Google is your friend.

[John Schreiber]

I also used to write COBOL programs on IBM key punch cards

My first actual "contact" with a computer was filling out punch cards with a #2 pencil. I think those cards were limited to 20 columns per line.

Anybody else remember the first hard drives? Big enough to hold the operating system, (CPM) some programs (WordStar, VisaCalc) and even data all at the same time and about the same size as a large format tower.

[John Shuk]

Jim,

Thank you for this!!! I can finally put my mind at ease.

I've been trying to get FiOS for the last few months. Last time, they claimed they couldn't get the wire from the box on one side of the house to the other without doing a new trench on the other side of my driveway. I'm hoping this time will do the trick....

Jack

Homes with buried service wires have proven to be troublesome for us (Verizon). Not everyone wants to dig up a portion of the yard to lay the cable in. So if you are building a new house put in a conduit for your television and telephone cables to reach the house in!

[John Shuk]

I'm going to talk to somebody about getting Jim Becker hired as a Verizon spokesman. Let James Earl Jones take a short break.

[John Shuk]

Matt,

I would love to be able to convert the SMC server to FIOS. With that kind of bandwidth we could do streaming video, larger pictures and a host of other cool services.

Some Day.......................

.

Keith,
I think they are doing work in your general vicinity. Stuff is being made ready for sale very quickly these days.

[Keith Outten]

John,

Good News!

As soon as FIOS is offered in Gloucester County we want it and I would be glad to bury the conduit from the pole to my shop myself.

.

[Jim Becker]

I'm going to talk to somebody about getting Jim Becker hired as a Verizon spokesman.

I don't think I have the "voice" for it...

Yea, well...after my conversation yesterday with a very nice fellow from the community service dept of VZ, I'm going to be going on the war-path with my township. (Yes, the same one that is making me nuts with my building permit) It seems that said township wants too many things that all the surrounding townships didn't need, so VZ completely stopped the build-out last year...I have fiber on my poles, but it isn't going to get lit any time soon. They even had the brass ones to want "franchise fees" on the Internet service...something that is not even legal, as far as I know.

A carefully worded letter to the township is already in progress...

And kudos to VZ...I sent a brief email to the man and a day later I get a direct phone call with informative conversation about the issue as well as some nice chat about how we are both pleased that our mutual employers are working together these days on some profitable things.