Of course, AT&T wasn’t the company that ended up bringing us most of the tech predicted in the “You Will” ads. But it did bring that tablet device to market. It’s called the EO Personal Communicator 440, and while not the first mass-manufactured tablet computer — that honor goes to the GRiDPad, a device sold by Radio Shack’s corporate parent Tandy — the EO is generally considered one of the first tablets with mobile connectivity. Released by AT&T in 1993, not long after the telecom giant bought a majority stake in its maker EO, it was a tantalizing glance into the future.
Any article on the EO is an article I will post – I’m a simple man – but that website’s fonts and font colours give me a headache.
The article said it was the only commercial item that ever used AT&T’s Hobbit CPU but Be Inc’s BeBox had that as well. It is as hard to find as the EO but it was sold to the public.
Nope. BeBox only used the Hobbit in the development phase. Every finished and sold BeBox used PowerPC – Two 603 CPUs for the dual 66MHz model, and two 603e CPU for the dual 133MHz model.
That sounds suspicious…
Has anybody ever sent a fax successfully? The blazing performance of dial-up coupled with the legendary simplicity of printing doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.
Sent loads back in the day. You’ve never experienced spam like fax spam. Coming into work on a Monday to find a whole roll of expensive thermal paper wasted during the weekend and important faxes either jammed in the system or never received because of the flood of crap that had come in and filled the fax machine’s memory.
“Has anybody ever sent a fax successfully?”
Yes, there are still a number of businesses with older users that are holdouts for old technology. The VOIP connections most telephone service providers use don’t provide a good enough quality for multi-page transmissions, so it should still die out soon.
Some business still use FAX for legal matters.
javiercero1,
Not just businesses, FAX is still used almost exclusively by doctors / medical practices that don’t have access to a common document repository and many government agencies. I hear from relatives that their policy prohibits them from using internet email and requiring faxes, even though faxes have no security. The problem with email is that while security is possible (even extremely strong security with GPG), it often isn’t secure by default. Although at least you get a verbose auditing trail in every email. With a FAX nothing should really be trusted because it can all be fabricated. If policy makers wanted to, they could eliminate insecure faxes and promote secure email in one swoop.
For the topic; Atari was working on a tablet in the early 90s. Too bad they ran out of money….
As far as Faxes, they are still more secure than email.
leech,
I disagree. Traditional fax lines aren’t encrypted. None whatsoever. Anyone who taps the wire can obtain it’s contents. And anyone can send a fax claiming to be from anywhere.
SMTP as originally conceived is equally insecure, however it has been extended to support TLS encryption for both client to server and server to server communications. A business that requires emails to be secure CAN enforce TLS and CAN enforce SSL certificate validity today, which would give it the same security of HTTPS. This is obviously far more secure than faxing.
Of course, this narrative overlooks a major gotcha for secure SMTP today: TLS encryption isn’t mandatory and most email admins do not enforce it. As a result, the encryption is merely opportunistic. Opportunistic encryption is not very secure (although it is technically more secure than an unencrypted FAX).
The main obstacle to enforcing TLS security for emails is the network effect. Company A has little incentive to turn on enforcement until companies B-Z have set up their servers with valid certificates, which they haven’t done. What’s needed is an industry-wide event (maybe a regulation covering HIPAA or some such) to install email server certificates for phase 1, and to enforce email server certificates for phase 2 (effectively deprecating plaintext emails). This way all emails between medical providers would be secure.
This would turn the network effect upside down since providers who failed to implement phase 1 would not be able to receive secure emails after phase 2. The network effect would then encourage the stragglers to implement email security.
Another even more secure email option today is GPG, which provides end to end signatures and encryption even across untrusted servers. All these options are more secure than faxing and we can do them with today’s technology, it’s just a matter of making it happen. Despite the fact that faxing has no digital security whatsoever, it may retain its defacto-standard role for a long time yet.
Very true. When my brother needed cataract surgery, nearly every step was handled using FAXes. I was rather surprised. At least the doctor himself was using one of those computer FAX boards that receives a FAX and builds an image file from it instead of printing it directly. Saves a lot on paper, and no chance of jamming or running out of paper… unless they let the drive fill up.