Saturday, September 15, 2012

Can't connect to WiFi?!

The other day at the gym, the T.V. was on BNN channel and they were discussing Apple's iphone 5.  The two news reporters were impressed by the gadget's features; while expressing their fondness for various features of the phone they kept incorrectly interchanging Internet with WiFi.  
Internet is not the same as WiFi!
It is incorrect to say we [cannot] connect to WiFi.  We can connect to Internet, a group of computers connected together, via WiFi, technology that allows any computer with wireless network interface controller to connect to another through radio frequency and without using any wire.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Digital History

I am having second thoughts.  I am still interested in learning about the discoveries and inventions of the 21st century and relating them to those of the past two centuries.  But I am afraid it may require spending many hours sitting in front of the computer.  And I already exceed the healthy limit of  using a computer. 
History as I know it, written in books and shelved in libraries, doesn't exist any more.  In my local library, which has a large collection of books covering many areas of science and technology, I could only find two books relevant to the invention I wanted to write about, the World Wide Web, one of which was written for kids.

I dread googling.  I anticipate more than 100+ pages of information and no matter how much I narrow the search, I still will have many pages to go through to find authentic information.  A few years back I heard encyclopedia stopped publishing the hard copy of version of the book.  That's a pity!  I wonder if I can find what I am looking for in the digital version of encyclopedia, and I wonder if accessing this information is free of charge.  Wikipedia is another place.  Unfortunately, my list ends here.  I guess as I look for information I will develop a knack for searching for information in the 21st century.