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Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on May 3, 2000. All rights reserved.
Computer Fest: DSL Evangelism
E-mail: MelindaSherwood@princetoninfo.com
Get him talking about DSL, and Jeff Waldhuter,
director of network services at Bell Atlantic, grows impassioned and
patriotic. “I will tell you that the nation is already wired for
broadband,” he says. “Copper wire terminates at every business
and every home in the U.S. We have used less than 1 percent of the
carrying capacity. By placing some smart electronics — DSL —
at each end, we can turn your ordinary telephone line from a garden
hose to a fire hose in terms of its ability to deliver data.”
Waldhuter keynotes this year’s Trenton Computer Festival on Saturday,
May 6, at 2:35 p.m. The two-day festival, held at the New Jersey Convention
Center in Edison, includes speakers on just about every topic imaginable.
For detailed program listings, admission prices, and directions, visit
the festival’s website at www.tcf-nj.org or call 800-631-0062.
Waldhuter, who calls himself a DSL evangelist, was trained as an engineer
at Columbia, Class of 1975, and started out as a researcher in Bell
Labs, where he helped develop the ISDN standard. The exponential growth
in today’s economy, he says, is the result of the technological groundwork
that has been laid in the past 20 years. “We’ve seen wonderful
growth in the economy, and yet we’ve seen extremely low inflation,
and you can scratch your head and say what could we attribute to that,
and I would say it’s technology,” he says. “You now have one
person with a computer, whereas you had five people before with pen
and paper.”
The next frontier for the technological revolution is the home —
telecommuting — says Waldhuter. “Some corporations like Ford
were giving away free PCs,” he says. “The benefit is that
if you’re in the service industry, you have to constantly stay in
touch with your employees.”
When DSL is in everyone’s home, Waldhuter paints a picture of a much
more egalitarian and eco-friendly society. “With full capability
at home, so that you’re telecommuting one or two days a week, just
imagine the savings on the environment, and increasing my efficiency
to the employer,” he says. “In the education arena, you could
possibly envision this generation getting a degree from a consortium
of universities because you could basically sit in on any classroom
in any university. This makes it affordable as well as creating equality.
It will help hopefully to eliminate the digital divide.
“There are a lot of new areas that are yet to be discovered,”
he adds. “The analogy I might use is, if we go back a hundred
years to the electrification of the U.S., we pooled wires to light
the house. But look at what we do today — we use it to cook, refrigerate,
and entertain. In other words, once we can get enough of this capability
out to the mass market it will force innovation.”
Other highlights of the Trenton Computer Festival:
Saturday, May 6
A “Knowledge Management” workshop for small
business owners, 10:15 a.m., with Chris Roberts of Keynote Software
Inc. (See U.S. 1, April 26.)
Ndo Osias will teach a course on “The Right Databasefor Your Growing Business” at 11:20 a.m. The workshop will addressvarious database technologies, including SQL Server, Sybase AdaptiveServe, and Oracle8/8i, as well as strategies for choosing which vendorto use based on cost, time for implementation and future growth potential.Also at 11:20 a.m., Paul Shuch, executive director of the Searchfor Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) League, talks on “DistributedProcessing Goes Galactic.”Libraries of the Future is the topic for Drexel University’sZelda Provenzano at 12:25 p.m.Forum on the Future of Computing at 12:25 p.m. with moderatorAllen Katz , a professor of electrical engineering at the Collegeof New Jersey, founder and president of Linearizer Technology, co-founderof the Trenton Computer Festival, and co-director of this year’s festival.Doug Dixon and John Posdamer , both of the SarnoffCenter, present “Computer Graphics Theater” at 12:25 p.m.Sunday, May 7I need the latest and greatest’, `My old 75 MHz is doingjust fine, Thank You!’, and `The software doesn’t change,’ are threestatements all guaranteed to be wrong a majority of the time,” writesWayne Kaplan, a computer and software manger at a Fortune 50company, who teaches “Common Dilemmas and Misconceptions of ComputerPurchasers,” a course for beginners at 11:40 a.m. “With technologychanging rapidly and being hyped even more rapidly, it is hard toknow where truth lies,” he continues. The presentation will consider”some of the popular misconceptions and widely held beliefs onPC capabilities and use. Some prognostication and prediction on wheretechnology is headed will also be discussed. Interactive questionsand discussions will be invited, encouraged, cajoled, and provoked.””Entry Level Careers in the IT Industry” will be discussedby Kevin Bowen , an account manager at C-Shell Inc., at 10:30a.m. Topics will include entry certifications, finding the right job,expectations, location, business type, goals, resources (newspapers,Internet, recruiters, etc.), resume writing and interviewing, andsalary potential.At 11:40 a.m., Paul Bergsman , author and small businessowner, will teach a course based on his book, “Controlling TheWorld With Your PC.” He will use live demonstrations to show howthe computer can control real world devices in you home, classroom,and work place. The live demonstrations utilize a PC to control lights,motors, and even the kitchen coffee pot. Other circuits will demonstratehow the computer can input temperature, motion, stress, and pressurefor data logging and analysis.”You can harness this power without ever opening the computer’shood,” he writes. “Every project interfaces through the computer’sparallel printer port. Almost every computer, save Mac, provides accessto a Centronics type parallel printer port. Most people do not realizethat the printer port can input, as well as output, data. Every computerlanguage contains commands to communicate with the printer port. Thatmeans the circuits, and related software, are very portable. Circuitsyou construct for an IBM machine, will work just as well on a Tandy,Packard Bell, or Dell machine!”Bergsman will follow up that demonstration with “How toBuild a Walking Robot” at 2 p.m. This is the second year for abrainstorming and information-exchange by people interested in constructinga walking robot. Participants are encouraged to bring their “works-in-progress”to show-and-tell with the group.An Introduction to Free Software and Unix-like Systemswill be held at 12:40 p.m. “Not long ago, computer programs weregenerally available for studying, copying and (as a result) for improvement,”writes Michael Smith , a philosopher, computer consultant, andsecretary and newsletter editor of Unigroup of New York (editor@unigroup.org),who instructs the course.”The Free Software Movement maintains that tradition, and hasprovided high quality software and the means for worldwide use anddevelopment of software,” writes Smith.”We will sketch the history of Free Software to the present, whenboth its complete GNU/Linux and Berkeley (BSD) systems and their isolatableparts (such as emacs, gcc and Perl) enjoy famous (deserved) popularity.Freedom always requires ongoing battle and such has been the casewith freedom in computing, too.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
