New solutions that enable you to use your home's existing electrical AC wiring to connect computers, TVs, and other communications devices have arrived, and some vendors are predicting faster, Ethernet-like speeds for 1997. The idea is that instead of running new wires through your house to network a printer, TV, and/or modem, you connect these devices using transmitter/receiver combinations that plug into your electrical outlets. Then, to network a PC, TV, or printer, you simply plug it into an AC outlet.
) is working on even-faster AC network solutions. The company says that, through compression techniques and by building a controller chip with improved algorithms that reduce noise in electrical currents, it has built an adapter that supports network connections that operate at about 100 Kbps through electrical outlets. By the end of the year, Wyse hopes to ac
hieve speeds of 10 Mbps.
Wyse addresses security concerns with a scheme that requires security numbers for each authorized user. It isn't possible to send information across distributor transformers, so the current applications target the home and small office. Wyse's first products in this category will work with the company's Winterm thin-client devices. Look for other announcements of this type as more companies deliver easy and inexpensive networked computing solutions to the home.
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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