The dark ages
Your article - Ninety billion dollar mistake (Online, August 23) - gave a contradictory and regressive view of the future of mass communications. The pipes may be dark at the moment, but what if we get effective high speed unlimited access? Would we in the UK not utilise our browsers more, instead of the "Oh gosh, I've browsed for 20 minutes, I'd better hang up now as it's mid-afternoon" mentality that now precludes full-scale use of the internet? If more of us had high-speed unlimited access, I am sure the transatlantic pipes would glow slightly.

And the comments from AT&T's Odlyzko were just laughably dross. Contrarian? Certainly. Valid commentator? I think not. Quote: "Content is not King." So does he just appreciate the programming? I think he must be a Flash advocate. Oh dear.

But judging by the way BT is handling our communications future, we may be back in the dark ages pretty soon. I live in a well-off part of a well-off city, Bristol, and I have heard from a BT engineer that he "thinks somebody in north Bristol has ADSL." Boding well it is not. And Telewest does not acknowledge our postcode, so cannot do anything.
Will Hitchings
will@willsworks.demon.co.uk

Busting out
Cathy Foley's comments (Second Sight, August 30) on SETI@Home and the similar CancerBusters projects in her article on P2P applications were informative and accurate on all counts but one: these aren't P2P applications at all.

They are distributed computing. The results of a SETI or CancerBusters work unit are not shared with other client machines in the project, as they would be in a P2P network: they are returned directly to the project's central server.
Adam Williamson
aw280@cam.ac.uk

Thrills 'n' spills
What a disappointing feature by Tim Guest (Working the Web, August 30). Quite apart from giving the impression that the term "graphic novels" is something new, he failed to mention highly regarded and better-known sites (to comics fans, at least). Can I recommend a visit to Steve Conley's award-winning Astounding Space Thrills strip, the first to make something of a success of disseminating three frame "newspaper" strips directly to readers by email?

It should also be noted that Alan Moore might be under-represented online because, like author Harlan Ellison, he does not use the internet.

There are other talents out there far more versed in the web - as a visit to any of the major comics hub sites on the web would have revealed, such as ComicNet or Digital Webbing.

As if to add final insult to injury, there is not even a link to the Guardian's Doonesbury strip, even though Gary Trudeau's creation at least is mentioned.
John Freeman
jfree@dircon.co.uk