Its official: Say goodbye to ALL printed game manuals..

[Guest]

Hey Jon,Thats an interesting point. You might think about setting up some sort of wireless co-operative with a group of neighbors (if you don't live way out in the outback that is :-)). There are a lot of these popping up in the States and Canada. Basically, if you can find somewhere in your relative neighborhood that *can* be hooked up to broadband, you setup two or three users with them. Then those users setup WiFi network nodes (802.11b or the faster but expensive 11a) and broadcast the internet connection to the rest of the co-op. Some users at the edge of the wireless network setup repeaters to extend its reach. As the co-op grows and more people are added (or more bandwidth needed), you simply add more nodes to the original feed.By setting up a co-op like this, many people can share connections between each other - specially those who might not have access to them to begin with. It of course depends upon the rules and regulations of the service providers down there and the availability of access *somewhere* in your region. Even when ISP's balk however, court action, at least here in North America, has so far upheld the legality of running a co-op - as long as it is non-profit. I'm not sure what the laws are like down there, but it might be something to check into. While the speed isn't as great as a non-shared connection, if managed properly it can be damn close. Initial setup is somewhat expensive as well, but if you spread the cost around to enough people, it ends up being cheaper than individual access in the long run. And hey, its wireless, so you can watch the dingoes (or Shelia's ;-)) out on the back porch while chatting to us on AVSIM... :-) At the least, serious talk of doing such just might light a fire under the providers to step on the gas a bit - and keep prices reasonable.Take care,Elrondhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/Boycott-RIAA.gif]"A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle."[/font://http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/B...cle."[/b][/font://http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/B...cle."[/b][/font

[Guest JonP01]

That is an interesting suggestion. Here in Oz the telecommunications industry is highly regulated (as I am sure it is in other countries as well). The Government still has 51% ownership of Telstra, Australia's largest comms provider, but total privatisation of Telstra has been on the political agenda for quite some time. Telstra is openly commmitted to extending broadband coverage so that, to quote the catchphrase, it will be within everyone's reach - physically and economically. A significant benchmark upon which the decision to privatise rests, is the improvement of service availability to "the bush". But of course here in Oz nearly all of us live in coastal regions well away from bush. I live in what would be deemed a "coastal" region (let's define that as within 60 nm of a coastline - it's a *wide* country), but then again not exactly right near the city neon lights either :-lol. Apparently one reason the broadband infrastructure is not available yet is that I live in a fairly new area, where the oldest house is only 5 years old. My house was only built late last year and according to Telstra uses a different phone technology to older areas (something about pair gain fibre-optics). This, Telstra says, explains why ADSL is 12 - 18 months away, as they do not yet have the required telephone exchange technology to accommodate ADSL where I live. It's a work-in-progress. It still doesn't explain the lack of a cable infrastructure though. One of the principal ideas behind these new "modern" estates is that all the comms infrastructure is supposed available from day one. Compare that to where I lived as a kid and where my mother continues to live. That house was built in 1965 and we had the telephone connected a while later in around 1967 (you had to wait between 12 months and two years back then for a telephone service). She now has the option of dial-up, ADSL, cable and satellite. Tough choice.Not to take anything away from where I live (it's a great area), but you wouldn't (or maybe you would) believe the general lack of computer savvy that exists in the community. Only one of my neighbours has even used the internet. Only a very small proportion of my acquaintances use the internet privately. Your suggestion sounds great, but as you might visualise, I can't help thinking that at present it would might be like trying to sell sand bags in the desert :-lolThe problem with satellite at the moment is that only the one-way option is reasonably priced. So you still need to use your ISDN 56k dial-up connection for uploading. The full two way option is completely unaffordable, at least for myself and 99% of the population. Of course the big advantage with ADSL is that it uses the phone line without interfering with it's ability to transmit voice data. The bandwidth is theorectically around 60% that of cable's peak bandwidth. ADSL would still, however, be adequate for multimedia I would expect.So Elrond, if we could just more people in Oz actually interested in the Internet to start with, things would improve significantly and with quite some haste!

[Tabs 2,790]

I can think of two games I've bought in the past two months that have very thorough manuals, yet came in the new smaller packaging. One is without a doubt Warcraft III, which had a very lengthy printed manual - the other is IL-2 Sturmovik. I personaly like the smaller boxes, however I do feel that prices should have been lowered on most games accordingly...