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ArticlesYeah, But


January 1997 / Bits / Yeah, But
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

September 17, 1996, and the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) starts its autumn by filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. So what? Another day, another company bites the big one.

Yeah, but NPTN ( http://www.ntnp.org ) was the tallest tree in t he Free-Net forest. NPTN was leading the way in creating community-run systems that let people get free access to the Internet.

Today anyone can hook up to the Internet for as little as $15 a month; so who cares?

Yeah, but in rural areas, Internet service providers can be hard to find. Free-Nets give people from Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Community Network ( http://highlander.cbnet.ns.ca ) to Montana's Big Sky Telegraph ( http://macsky.bigsky.dillon.mt.us ) a chance to keep up with the rest of us. Urban sites let people whose computer equipment consists of a discarded XT and a 2400-bps modem hook onto the Net. The Free-Net march may continue, but with the flagship gone, the entire movement has been shaken. NPTN reminded us that the Internet is about people, rich and poor, city and country, communicating.


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Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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