You clearly did not live in the world of watching two teens on computers in the same room hold two entirely different conversations out-loud and over AIM.

56k was also unidirectional, you had to have special hardware on the other side to send at 56k downstream. The upstream was 33.6kbps I think, and that was in ideal conditions.

The special hardware was actually just a DSP at the ISP end. The big difference was before 56k modems, we had multiple analog lines coming into the ISP. We had to upgrade to digital service (DS1 or ISDN PRI) and break out the 64k digital channels to separate DSPs.

The economical way to do that was integrated RAS systems like the Livingston Portmaster, Cisco 5x00 seriers, or Ascend Max. Those would take the aggregated digital line, break out the channels, hold multiple DSPs on multiple boards, and have an Ethernet (or sometimes another DS1 or DS3 for more direct uplink) with all those parts communicating inside the same chassis. In theory, though, you could break out the line in one piece of hardware and then have a bunch of firmware modems.

The asymmetry of 56k standards was 2:1, so if you got a 56k6 link (the best you could get in theory IIRC) your upload rate would be ~28k3. In my expereience the best you would get in real world use was ~48k (so 48kbpd down, 24kbps up), and 42k (so 21k up) was the most I could guarantee would be stable (baring in mind “unstable” meant the link might completely drop randomly, not that there would be a blip here-or-there and all would be well again PDQ afterwards) for a significant length of time.

To get 33k6 up (or even just 28k8 - some ISPs had banks of modems that supported one the 56k6 standards but would not support more than 28k8 symmetric) you needed to force your modem to connect using the older symmetric standards.

Trackpad != trackpoint. The track point is the little eraser nub pointer embedded into the keyboard. Many thinkpad enthusiasts disable the trackpad entirely.

The doctors offices want none of it. It's all FoodTV and HGN.

There is no utility in pissing off 75% of your customers. I'm thrilled that my kid's doctor doesn't even allow patients that aren't vaccine schedule compliant.

Doctors should never deny patients.

They can take precautions & insist on proper treatments, of course.

It’s this attitude that’s led to us being in this mess. Don’t want to listen to the doctor about basic medical advice? Don’t go to that doctor.

Being medically stupid isn't a protected class. You can refuse service to anyone you want to otherwise. It's not an ER, it's a Pediatrician, and they value not endangering their other patients who actually follow medical advice.

I'm in Hell (FL), so more "professional offices" than not have Fox on.

Also, we are pushing hard to make sure kids aren't vaccinated at a state level it seems.

I wish I didn't have so much extended family in the area that I'd be moving away from if I left.

I firewall my TV from my Printer just so they don't get any ideas.

If its not in the middle east it's just a sparkling police action.

RC Cola, this is your moment to shine.

All software is more hacked together than we want to admit.

I can remember at least one incident when someone on the bus from SF to campus was actually watching porn on their laptop. IDK if they were torrenting it at home or at work, but there were many emails about not streaming content on the shuttle bus WiFi.

hydroxyapatite is a mineral like your tooth, that's how it supports remineralization.

It's actually great stuff and works wonders for tooth sensitivity above and beyond fluoride shellac. I also order it from the more civilized world.

BioMin is available in the US and is similar, but I don't find it works better and I don't like that it doesn't have fluoride. (I live in an area without fluoride in the water)

Biomin F does have fluoride, but you need to import it.