Linked in previous, worth a reprint.
I was a more lively writer back then, before the holocaust used up my gumption. Note the mention of public “health”, which looks weird now that public “health” has morphed into public imprisonment and strangulation. I haven’t changed my attitude toward vax. I still know that vax is a good and necessary life-saver for some types of virus. The monsters turned it upside down, but the original purpose still stands as a historical monument to a former profession.
The description of the HTML web’s lost opportunity still stands. The web was designed by NSA to serve Deepstate’s purposes. If it had been designed by Bell before the breakup, it would be tremendously superior. Bell had 100 years of experience in forming secure networks.
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Writing this piece about the good points of Systems led to a memory….
A well-organized utility requires an immune system to protect it from viruses, hackers and free riders. Electric utilities and city water utilities have strong immune systems; the Bell landline system was the best of all until its 1980’s breakup.
The internet fails miserably. You have to pay a separate anti-virus company for your security, or do without. Think public health: when many of the users are unvaccinated, the risk is vastly higher for everyone else.
Really a missed opportunity. Most people would have been willing to pay more for a net with built-in universal security. Would be faster and cheaper overall.
Back in my ham radio days I had a run-in with Ma Bell’s immune system. I rigged up a rather nice ham shack in a chicken coop behind the parents’ house, and ran an underground cable from the Bell entrance box to a non-standard phone in the shack. (Not as pretty as the Strowger phone that Polistra is using, but equally non-standard!)
After I’d been using the improper extension for a few weeks, we received a visit from the phone company. Since I was a kid, they didn’t do anything legalistic, just forced me to disconnect the whole setup.
Wasn’t a happy experience at the time, but looking back on it from a wrinkly perspective, I’m glad they had the facilities to detect and reject my ‘hacking’.
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Polistra's Mill 