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#190
Originally Posted by johnkzin View Post
In the mountains in between there are tons of nooks and crannies where there will simply never be wireless coverage. And, yet, people live in those nooks and crannies (one of my IT coworkers, for example). What if you're stuck in one of those canyons, with one of the many luddite mountain folk, and you need to use your device? (like the example I gave, where you need to use a landline to make a call, and you have no connectivity options at all for your handset)

With _YOUR_ convergence device, you're screwed. No addressbook, no local notes store, etc.

With _MY_ convergence device, I'm fine. I can ask to use their landline real quick (just because they're luddites doesn't mean they're jerks), and everything is great.
Actually, I live in a very mountainous place, too. All the little "nook and cranny" 400-person towns have high speed Internet now (just in the last 5 years). A weird thing is happening; in nook-and-cranny places where you can't get cell phone reception, you can find open wi-fi APs. My co-worker told me of a story where he was camping and he couldn't get cell phone reception. He was walking the dog and he discovered that his N810 picked up an AP from a cottage nearby. The old guy in the cottage came out and asked him what he was doing, and he told him he was checking his e-mail on the guy's Internet. The guy said, "Ahh, so that's why people keep parking in front of my house and just sitting there."

Originally Posted by johnkzin View Post
After all, X-terminals, Javastations, Thin-Clients, and their like have yet to displace low-end computers. The balance between these two perspectives is a constant ebb and flow, I'll give you that. But neither ever eliminates the other.
Nah, thin clients were a bit of a dead end. You definitely want all the computing power you can stuff into your device.

Originally Posted by johnkzin View Post
So, you're talking about idealistic pie in the sky theoretical convergence, and I'm talking about here-and-now practical convergence. (which isn't actually a criticism on my part, I often talk about that kind of "theoretical/idealistic/as-it-should-be" type of technology as well, but as Mahan pointed out wrt naval warfare, if you don't keep yourself fully immersed in both the theoretical and the practical, you're going to have problems .... practical beats theoretical, but the balance beats the pants off of both of them)
Agreed.

As for here-and-now can-be-done convergence, I still want a little bluetooth module that ties my tablet to some kind of high-speed data network. It should be the size of my Holux M1000 and it should come as part of a $40/month unlimited data plan. Is that so hard?

Technologically, no. Politically, yes.
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