Line costs
I was pleased to read that the BT monopoly on local phone calls may finally be ending. As an American who spends a good deal of time in the UK, I am appalled by the telephone charges here for internet access. At home, I spend about £10 a month for unlimited local calling, which includes access, plus about another £15 for my provider. Here, the provider may be free, but monthly phone charges run over £150.
US government figures show that the ongoing American prosperity, in the face of a recession almost everywhere else, is due to the internet. British people are losing out not only economically, but socially and culturally.
For example, at the University of California, Riverside, where I am a professor, we have made a major commitment to online instruction. My own department recently began an online course in screenwriting, taught by Judy Burns, a distinguished Emmy-Award winner.
We wanted students at our sister institution, Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, Kent, to take part. We discovered to our horror that students here would have to pay about £14 a week to access the virtual classroom, putting it out of the reach of most of them.
Britain, once far ahead of us in Distance Learning, now lags far behind.
Richard Hornby
London SW5
Table talk
Romilly Bowden's suggestion that putting everything on a website into one big table is a bad idea (Feedback, July 15) is not accurate.
I use tables with mixed text and thumbnails on my website (as does every major site on the web) and the table and text load first, the pictures when they come through. I've always thought that the phenomenon described occurred when people don't specify the size of the pictures that they are using in pixels causing the browser to wait until it knows their size before bringing them up on screen.
Beginners should, in my view, use tables a lot. They compensate for HTML's rather poor formatting possibilities and let you do a lot more with your content. Too many sites are long text blocks interspersed with images, no interest at all.
Chris Lynas
c15546@bristol.ac.uk
Twin call
Twin readers may have been intrigued by the account given by the identical twin Margaret Westheim (Can one and one make one? July 8) of the many distinct differences she had observed in the behaviour and personality of her identical twin.
Would other identical twin members or pairs who share her experience, please contact Dr Arnold Feinstein at 6 Chalcot Gardens, London NW3 4YB (telephone 0171 722 3688).
Dr Arnold Feinstein
London
Cuba.com
What a great article (Internet Si, Yanqui No! July 22). What with www.easyeverything.com using Che Guevara in their advertising campaign, Cuba and its internet friends must be having an impact.
For the last four years the Cuba Solidarity Campaign has been sending thousands of computers to the island, many of which can be seen in the "free access Computer Clubs" referred to in your article.
Readers may want to help with the 'real revolution' or just find out more about Cuba and the world of Cuba on the net. There are a number of UK based sites dealing with Cuba and solidarity. All have excellent links to worldwide Cuba sites:
Cuba Solidarity Website
www.poptel.org.uk/cuba-solidarity
Cuba on line shopping www.cubaconnect.co.uk
Oxford based campaign Trade Union based solidarity www.salud.org.uk
Rob Miller
London N7 7QG
More information about the Kulturserver project can be found at www.kulturserver.de
Jules Marshall
Amsterdam
