Costly choice
The assumption that rich media portals will be the key driver for broadband take-up (Online, October 25) demonstrates a naive belief in the inevitability of convergence.
Just as toasters and kettles have not combined into integrated breakfast-making machines, televisions and computers remain separate. The PC is primarily a tool for creating and editing content. Although a broadband-enabled PC is capable of receiving rich media content, most users prefer to watch movies on a conventional television. Rich media works best when it is short, simple and places low demands on both end user and content provider.
The real impetus for broadband take-up is not top-down delivery from media monoliths, but the benefits gained by the home user in having a fast and stable information conduit. Broadband-enabled users cite rapid access to conventional websites, reliability of connection, and fast software downloads as principle benefits of switching. Furthermore, as the furore over Napster and the popularity of Morpheus, Gnutella et al has demonstrated, peer-to-peer file distribution systems are beating the media giants at their own game.
Jonathan Kay
shoes@clara.co.uk
Yet another article about the low take-up of broadband in the UK. Yet another article claiming this won't improve without better content. Yet another article that fails to acknowledge it is the cost of telephone calls that are the chief factor in depressing internet usage.
Joseph Nicholas
Online replies: There is no extra charge for data calls with broadband data connections such as ADSL and cable modems.
Cut the image
With regard to Rachel Holdsworth's letter (Feedback, October 25), the popular perception of programmers is ill informed. Programmers are not all the nerdy geeks of popular culture! We do not work on our own. We work in teams. Nerds are not good at teamwork. Nerds tend not to make good programmers. Any worthwhile activity requires "intense interest in getting abstract ideas to work", and the more abstract the ideas, the more crucial it is to have good communication skills. So many people with these skills are put off joining the ranks of programmers due to these misconceptions.
People migrate to more "people-oriented" positions because they are less demanding.
Jolyon Wright
Limiting ideas
The email from Holly Larson did not refer to the school she attends which she says encourages science yet only has one-seventh of her year studying chemistry and physics. She does not comment on access to careers advice. If the advice is well founded, with links to industry, I am sure her friends would have a clearer understanding of the world of engineering. It is a world not just of "gadgets" that range from the microprocessor to the jet airliner, from the communication satellite to the mobile phone.
Engineering is about creating gadgets in the real world and of managing the people and infrastructures involved in all the processes. Being a professional engineer is a challenge requiring not just mathematical skills, a sound understanding of the sciences of physics and chem istry, but also management skills, communication skills and imagination. Computer skills are vital in everything engineers do nowadays.
Limiting one's horizons to designing web sites might be satisfying for a year but with the skills she has, engineering can provide a rich, well-rewarded and varied career far beyond the limited world of gadgets and web sites. I suggest she seeks information from the professional mechanical, electrical, aeronautical and civil engineering institutions such as the I.E.E., I.Mech.E., R.Ae.S and I.C.E.
John G Steel
Re Holly Larson's comment "I want to design websites, but I would never go into computer programming or software design." If you can't program, you will never be able to do more than one page per website. How else will you be able to program the link to another page? I would never consider employing a junior web designer unless they could program in at least ASP and Javascript. If you can't program, you will be what is called a graphic designer.
Tom Potts
Curly issues
Your article on the replacement of HTML with Curl only briefly mentions cost. A read of Curl's website reveals the following: "Our license fees are $0.0005 per kilobyte of Curl code executed on a client device. This includes Curl applets, packages and scripts; but does not include data or images. We only charge content owners or publishers, not end users." Surely this raises questions about the viability of a long-term replacement to HTML being a technology with a licence fee structure of publisher pays-per-view?
Paul Anderson
paul.anderson@nottingham.ac.uk
BT bites back
I note that Colin Barnden (Hurry up, BT, Feedback, October 25) is the IT manager of a small company in Northamptonshire and, while this letter is being written in a private capacity, I am in fact a small employee of a large company that operates nationwide and is called BT.
Letters such as Colin's offer little that is constructive to any debate, being, as they are, just unpleasant snipes. He sees nothing worthy of any praise about BT having enabled "just about every local exchange around", but whinges because we have not yet enabled his. Our realities are harsh and commercial, not virtual and instant.
Should he not be pleased that an OAP can surf? And doesn't he reserve any criticism for NTL [the cable TV company], which seems totally uninterested in his situation?
I am glad that through "extreme effort" he has managed to track down someone to look into the situation. Well done, Colin. Hard work will only make you stronger.
Laurence Moore
