What the hell is a private enterprise?

Chapter 498 Handheld Computer
The first attempt to stake out Hans's reconnaissance drones ultimately ended in failure.

The special forces team and equipment, assembled with tremendous effort, suffered through a night in the scorching rainforest without even seeing a glimpse of an airplane.

The empire also activated several radar stations near Bassin, but found nothing unusual.

Could it be that our assumptions about drones were wrong, and that they are actually just consumables?

Mark provided his own answer:

"Our enemies are very cunning. They probably won't send the planes back the way they came to collect the film. After all, the Amazon rainforest is so vast, who knows where there might be a secret base hidden?"

Building a large base might be difficult, but a few small outposts to collect airdropped film pods are really insignificant. The Lost Empire probably took a lot of Zeiss technical data, so a few cameras are still a reasonable waste.

Hunter frowned suspiciously after hearing this:
"If that's the case, what's the point of us doing this? Film recycling bins can be found anywhere, and a few Hans can do the job in rubber boats. There's no way we can catch them."

"Of course there are. The fact that drones are still flying out from area C2 proves that Hans's secret base does exist."

"But that's too hard to find. The reconnaissance satellites only show pure rainforest and nothing else. Hans is very talented at building bunkers, and even infrared cameras can't detect anything unusual."

We've conducted a thorough search of Zone C2, and even the surrounding areas; what's left are terrains that are simply impossible to find.

"Then let's go to the impossible. Nothing is impossible."

Mark tried his best to persuade Hunter:

"If we station a small squad and hold out for at least half a month, the enemy will definitely take further action."

……

Yeprini Denies All Sensitive Technology Transactions

"Recently, a report from the Imperial Think Tank revealed that India is actively researching mushroom-shaped facilities and is about to conduct atmospheric explosion experiments in violation of international consensus. It is rumored that they have received technical support and expert assistance from the Xiong family and directly points to General Yeprini, the leader of the secret arms sales agreement..."

Tang Wen closed the newspaper. Although he didn't know if his third brother's matter had happened in the original timeline, it wasn't unexpected.

After all, developing a nuclear missile requires a massive amount of electricity, and in this age of satellites, there's nowhere to hide it. Besides, what about India's level of secrecy...?

It's not surprising that Russia is implicated. A lot of information was later uncovered in the original timeline. In addition to the fact that India took advantage of the collapse of the alliance to recruit a group of technical personnel, many nuclear institutions were also doing business on their own.

But what about his relationship with Yeprini?
Tang Wen had never heard of this person; he was probably just a speck of dust in the vast expanse of history.

"boom!"

The roar of the 356mm naval gun made his hand tremble and he almost dropped the newspaper. It turned out that the climax of the promotional video was being filmed a few kilometers off the coast, and the smoke rising after the naval gun fired could be clearly seen.

Old Zhang, standing next to Tang Wen, watched intently through his binoculars for a while before putting them down and jokingly looking at the newspaper in Tang Wen's hand:
"Didn't you say that newspapers are too one-sided? Why don't you use BBS?"

"The conditions don't allow it."

Tang Wen was even more discouraged upon hearing this. Let alone casually shooting short videos, the mobile internet hadn't even been born yet, and it would be at least five years before you could browse the web on your phone.

Having experienced the information explosion era, his biggest feeling upon returning to the 90s was the lack of information flow. Often, he preferred browsing BBS forums to observe the world more clearly. Now, let alone mobile internet, even laptops are more for show than practical use. Constantly pulling out a small screen to browse posts is basically... eh?

Tang Wen suddenly thought of something:
Handheld computer.

It's the kind of gadget that a truant, introverted genius hacker kid pulls out in an early American sci-fi movie. It looks a bit like an NDS game console, about the same size as a later large-screen mobile phone, and it can be folded. When unfolded, one side has buttons and the other side has a TFT black and white screen.

They run on DOS or early versions of Windows, and can be used for writing code, playing games, or even drawing CAD diagrams.

Later, there were also high-end candybar versions with full-color touchscreens (stylus), but that didn't happen until around 2000.

But this technology ultimately failed to take off. The outdated communication technology couldn't provide rich content, the poor display quality was terrible, and DOS or early Windows were not as difficult to use as future smartphones, which anyone could learn in a few days.

In fact, as soon as feature phones and MMS gained momentum in the early 2000s, handheld computers immediately died out.

But it was 1997, and the market for handheld computers was doing well. Tang Wendu often saw TV commercials, but he just ignored them without any interest.

But handheld computers feel a bit like mobile computers. As long as a mobile computer can easily connect to the internet... um.

Although most households still rely on telephone lines for internet access, with bandwidth that is even smaller than that of Baidu Cloud, it was actually sufficient for early text-based web pages.

The remaining issue to be resolved is wireless internet access. Mobile communication technology is too cumbersome to solve in a short time, but there is an emerging technology with enormous potential:
Wi-Fi
……

"According to the patent and journal results we found, the latest IEEE standard for WIFI, issued in June, has a peak rate of about 1 to 2 Mbps and a theoretical maximum download speed of 256 KB per second."

Song Nan numbly handed over the documents, knowing in her heart that her boss was about to come up with another crazy idea to burn money.

Tang Wen took it and glanced at it casually. From the meager information, he knew that WIFI was just starting out and had only taken the first step.

相反是有线网进步迅速，去年他还在用32K过渡到56K，后来企业专线提升到了10Mps（实际5到6Mbps），但下半年思科就在预热，宣称将带来支持100Mbps（实际90到95Mbps）的企业级以太专线交换机。

In comparison, Wi-Fi is incredibly slow, but there are reasons for that:
When IEEE was developing the WIFI standard, most of the radio frequency bands involved military and public facilities. They could only find solutions in the frequency bands with the most interference and the fewest regulations, and finally came up with the 2.4G frequency band communication technology.

Unfortunately, WIFI is a key project that IEEE has been promoting for many years and has government backing, otherwise Tang Wenzhen would have liked to acquire it immediately.

However, there is no need to consider patent issues at present.

In front of Tang Wen were a bunch of handheld computers from many well-known brands such as HP, Compal, Philips, Casio, and Apple. Some were DOS, some were Windows, and some were other systems, but they were all equally primitive to use, not only tiring to the eyes but also very tiring to operate.

He suddenly remembered that Zhao Hande had gone to the Koreans to buy an LCD screen production line, and perhaps he could think of a way to solve the interactivity problem.

Then, while Song Nan waited anxiously, he finally made his request:
"Let's think of a way to embed a network card in the handheld computer and then use WIFI."

Song Nan looked up in surprise:

"President, modern handheld computers can also dial up to the internet, and all of these you bought can do that. Not many people use Wi-Fi yet."

Tang Wen: "Then you go ahead and do it, and the goal is to cover the Goose City area and provide at least a practical downlink speed of 128K."

(End of this chapter)