Technically what you said makes sense, however some serious security issues are surfacing lately regarding ATM. I'm speaking here without knowing much at all about ATM per se, but it seems to me anytime you connect two pipes together and "let it flow", you're loosing control over the flowing data. I assume circuit switching inherently means that you're not examining the actual data itself. However, in order to implement packet-level security, I don't see any way around working at the individual packet level, which implies packet switching. If the ATM security issues are related to its circuit switching aspects, maybe circuit switching itself is suspect from a security standpoint.
OK, I get it. In that case, this seems like less news than it appears to be, because it applies to a fairly obscure part of the market. A general purpose optical packet switch would seriously be news. I don't see why they don't use TI's quasi-nanotech DLP chip technology for circuit switching like this--it would seem an ideal application, at least superficially.
In that case, this can't be more than an interim solution then. From my humble knowledge of the subject matter, in the long term I believe circuit switching is giving way to packet switching on a grand scale, certainly on the backbones. It simply makes much more efficient use of the pipe. Then again, if they've poured money into this, there must be a market for it, so I'll be still.
Hundreds of times a second? Please, we're moving to optical because of the bandwidth. Communications at the speed of light (in glass or plastic). We're talking multi-gigabits per second. And we want to switch packets at that speed with switches that can switch hundreds of times a second? Who can ponder the packet sizes required; megabytes to be sure.
Sorry, but switches that require the physical motion of sizeable amounts matter don't cut it for optical communications. If they were talking about nanotechnology, that might be another thing. But as it stands, this must be a warm-up for an April Fool's joke.
Yeah, it should be first.last.identifying.marks@hammburch.de, which should be much more unique. Or even better, allocate GUIDs to all citizens, that'll definitely fix it. Or list the last five ancestor's last names in order.
>> Now when did I do that? > To refresh your memory: "except X is an > admission of failure of sorts" Of course I > suppose my failure to master the english > language at my tender age of 3 kept me from > understanding that you meant "we'll have to > wait and see what happens when it hits the > market"
That's not at all what is meant by that phrase. What it means is that its current OS track was doomed and they needed a fresh platform. They admitted that the old OS was finished by releasing a new one. You don't abandon a product when you have a winner.
Don't panic, you just have to spend a bit of time in Comprehension 101, that's all. And please don't give me the old run around of "that wasn't obvious from what you said."
>> Regarding multitasking, I believe we're still >> talking cooperative there. > Wait are you talking about MacOS or Win98? > They both are subject to this shortcoming.
While I hate defending Windows in any shape or form, in the spirit of fairness, I must correct you there. Provided you run ONLY 32-bit apps, Win9x multitasks preemptively, and quite well at that. And that's hardly a caveat, since I haven't run 16-bit apps for many years. There are still 16-bit DLLs around in some apps thunking away, but that's more the exception. Our company writes exclusively 32-bit apps, and they multitask very nicely, even on Win9x.
> All I know is that I reboot maybe once or twice > a day as opposed to Win9x when I was rebooting > 4 or 5 times.
I rest my case, you reboot at least once a day. More often than not, Win9x crashes due to misbehaved drivers, since they run in privileged mode. This is a problem and should not be excused. However, Intel users on average also use many more peripherals than Mac users, increasing the likelihood of bad drivers. They also run on very unpredictable hardware, while Macs always come from Apple. Many Mac users live an entire Mac life without using any third party peripherals. Video, sound, storage are all built-in with Apple drivers, which have been pretty well debuggeed. However, with the emergence of USB that is going to change. Mac users are going to finally experience the wealth of peripherals (sort of) that Intel users have enjoyed, along with the pitfalls of shoddy drivers cooked up at the last minute. From what I hear, that's already starting to happen.
Incidentally, we should compare apples to apples, and oranges to oranges. Let's pick the top OS of each camp, which would be NT (and now W2K) and not Win9x. I ran NT 4.0 for years, and for the last few months I've used Windows 2000 exclusively. I never reboot my machine, except to add new hardware. I never turn it off either, and it sits on a UPS. I have uptimes of weeks, sometimes months. And I use it very heavily as a development machine. Depending on what I work on, I might once in a while get a lockup--buggy TCP/IP socket apps are the best way to bring down NT. Then again, not even Linux can claim rock-solid stability under heavy debugging. While my experience might not be echoed by everyone, once you've settled on good hardware and stable drivers, NT can be very solid as a workstation. As a server, that's another story.
> Not really, but, this is the same situation for > Win9x going to Win NT.
Not at all. There's no difference between 32-bit applications written for Win9x and NT. It's the same binary. The one exception are NT services, which aren't supported on Win9x, but those aren't end-user apps. You're making a sweeping assumption there in the hope to equalize the two platforms, but that's simply not the case.
> Well you can use the other 9 for counting all > the apps CURRENTLY written for Win2K.
W2K is Win NT, period. While the driver model has been changed and many user interface modifications were made, it's still the same NT kernel underneath. Any NT app is a W2K app. There's no such thing as a W2K app per se, other than possibly ones taking advantage of some new UI features, or the new Active Directory or middleware features.
> But you are forgetting the thousands of UNIX > apps that will compile and run on OS X already.
What you don't seem to get is that OS X then simply becomes a me-too. The only difference between X and any other BSD-based Unix will then be that Apple provides you with a neat software emulator that lets you run all your old Mac software. It's simply a piece of software that makes it look like OS X can run Mac binaries, which of course it can't any more than NT or Linux. If Apple so chose, they could also provide the emulator for Linux or NT, but of course they won't.
I admire the skill with which Apple is pulling the wool over its devotee's eyes. They're totally marginalizing the fact that they're switching to a completely new, unproven platform. Their user base might at this moment as well move over to BeOS, Linux, or even Windows 2000, and the difference would be the same. It's a platform switch, and anything goes. Mac users simply stick with Apple because of the warm fuzzy feeling that gives them, the particular look of the Apple hardware, and a certain Pavlovian conditioning. Anything else is just fairy dust.
It's ironic that I would defend Windows this way, and frankly the Mac is the only thing I would ever defend it against. Even more ironically, I do use a platform that's eerily Mac-like in look and feel, as well as usability: my trusty Palm Pilot. And even there I start to feel confined.
> MacOS currently is a tradeoff, as anyone > will admit many aspects are dated.
That's precisely what I claimed, nothing more, nothing less. It's DATED. If you like reading between the lines, extrapolate some real meaning.
> The multitasking isn't great [...] > I'm pretty much doing a few things at a time.
Golly for you, and shame for us who would like to do a couple more things. So what you're saying, basically, is that my criticisms was well founded, but I'm clueless regardless. Hmmm...
>...if you feel there is only one app for OSX...
Huh? Far from it, I heard there were over twenty. And once they finish the Pops ports, they'll go quite well with the Cocoa ones.
> yes, OSX is different, but if you look at > Steve Jobs history, he likes to make surprises.
Yeah, no kidding. Like "now we're going to write it, now we won't".
> There's no way in hell he's given the general > public all the details 6 months before release.
Quite possibly because he has no clue? I guess you were still waiting for Rhapsody until recently. Take heart, X is definitely GOING to happen!
>...before you start calling it a failure...
Now when did I do that?
>...and thus is different from the outdated one you hate...
Hate? That would mean I care. More like contempt and ridicule. Or maybe bored indifference.
>...you forgot to bash the lack of a floppy drive.
That's what made me guess 14 or so. While your grasp of syntax and grammar is quite remarkable, your semantics are less so.
OK, I'll bite. The Mac OS can mainly be considered the best OS by people upgrading from a TV remote. In that case, the level of flexibility and power is absolutely mindboggling.
Apple is getting way too much credit for usability. As someone mentioned, what's with the one-button mouse? The notion of TWO is not that hard to grasp, especially for Americans--a two party system, GOOD and EVIL, BLACK and WHITE. One-fingered people are few and far between. I guess COMMAND-clicks must be a special masochistic treat enjoyed only by the most rarefied Mac connesseurs. I still have memories of the earliest Macs that had no cursor keys on the keyboard--navigating a document REQUIRED the mouse. And the Mac was still considered a usability wonder.
Other UI oddities: while the MacOS is purported to multitask nowadays, task switching is still somewhat of an afterthought. The whole UI with the top menu bar and Desk Accessory and Finder menus is strictly single-task oriented. The 3D-fication of the GUI is still somewhat at a Win3.1 level, with some gadgets sporting drop shadows, others still living in Flatland.
Regarding multitasking, I believe we're still talking cooperative there. Even if they grafted some preemptive capabilities in, the vast majority of apps live in me-only-me land. Reports of incredible uptimes counted in days should be consumed with caution--the Mac is still a happy crashbox, as any heavy Photoshop user must oblige.
Presented with all these shortcoming, Mac advocates will knee-jerk with the new X. All fine and well, except X is an admission of failure of sorts, because it pretty much throws everything old out. And the apps written for X can be counted on all the fingers required for a Mac mouse.
Making an LDAP daemon part of the system would make a lot of sense. At its heart it's really just a generic hierarchical information storage system. It could then be used by all applications to store settings. It could also be used to replace the archaic security files on Linux. Using LDAP would give you a nice single entry point to all settings, and make it cross-platform compatible to boot.
Note: just because Microsoft is using LDAP in W2K for security doesn't in any way lessen its appeal. A lot of people outside the MS camp consider LDAP to be A Good Thing(TM). Using it would also make the settings file formats immaterial, though would of course not preclude XML in any way.
Regarding the lone gunmen, what a bunch of weenies. What exactly is their appeal? They suffer from a severe case of misplaced hero worship (whatever the name of that guy that got his head chopped off was). If there's one thing about techno nerds, they never admit there's anyone better than them. Their hero universe consists of exactly one--themselves. It's all part of that "expert" arrogance, maybe shameful, but true. The whole hero worship notion is a fiction of the great masses to somehow bring us down to their level in an effort to humanize us. He, he, he...
Every other phrase spoken was a cliche. And Mulder as the computer expert ("texture-wrap it!")? Come on! He's every girl's equivalent of a wet dream, bu he's not techno expert! Just a pretty boy really.
I'm sick and tired of computer technology in movies. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of X-Files. I used to hate it in the early days, then it kind of got interesting when they worked hard on the alien conspiracy stuff (around the time of the movie), then it slacked off again. Bait-and-disappoint, that's what the show is about. They tantalize you with some great ideas, then throw you some bones, only to leave you hanging without any real explanation whatsoever. The truth is out there--if only the producers knew what it was.
I have (quite) a few of the IBM Wireless Entry cards, and I'm hooking them into my Ethernet network via a Windows machine. He, he, it's a 386SX with 8M and a 120M HD running Win95, without a case--strapped the whole mobo, PS and PCMCIA card reader to a wooden board on a shelf.
I'm running Win95 because there never were any working Linux drivers for the IBM cards. With DUN 1.2 and later Win95 can do IP forwarding between Ethernet cards (only! won't work with TokenRing etc, I've tried it). Takes the machine a good 40 seconds to boot, but since the bridging is all it's doing, the 386 is plenty, and it's rock solid. Cost? $10 for the PS, $70 for the card reader (2 years ago). What self-respecting geek doesn't have a closet-full of 386 and 486 boards, so there's no cost there.
It's lucky that Win95 can forward IP, otherwise there would be no joy with a lot of the wireless cards out there. Few have Linux drivers, and fewer still publish the specs.
That's exactly the kind of ranting that makes the whole debate so meaningless and inconsequential to 99.9999997% of the programming population. My eyes rolled over and my mouth uttered "whatever!" after the first paragraph. Those ruminations are so abstract and contrived that most people are simply bored. You should have become a psychiatrist and devoted your life to meditating over the differences between the Jungian and Freudian schools of thought. They're definitely more grounded in reality than the FS/OS drivel.
Note: I'm not being hostile here. Just explaining why so many people don't give a shit.
> As someone else already pointed out in this > thread, there's firewire chips for around $5
That figure seems to be somewhat anecdotal. I'd like to see some facts backing it up. AFAIK the slowest-speed node on Firewire is still 100 Mbps, which is a lot of bandwidth for a lowly micro. OTOH a low-speed USB node of 1.5 Mbps can be implemented completely with an 8051 or less. That's why you start seeing a proliferation of cheap USB devices--many are low speed, don't require a 12 Mbps chipset, and can be implemented with a micro that might be doing all the other work as well. Because, frankly, even complete USB chipsets aren't that cheap.
> Why is it that no one really used mice (which > have been around since the 60's) until the Mac > not only came standard with them, but > *required* their use?
You're mixing issues. First you're talking about forcing OEMs to adopt a technology, then you're talking about forcing users to use a technology. It's much harder to force an OEM to embrace a new "standard" than it is to simply include it in the device and not give the user a choice--especially if you're the sole supplier and there are no alternatives, as in Apple's case. You're making Apple sound like the savvy saint they're definitely not.
About $30, or even less if you shop around. You'll find that most of the cost of Firewire IS in the chipset--a high-speed microcontroller is simply more expensive than a low-speed one. You always pay for MHz, whether in CPUs or micros. Besides, the Firewire protocol is more complex, so there's even more computing power required in each node.
From the DASA web site, the parent company of Dornier Satellite Systems, which was the co-creator of the radar:
"Up to now, the best global database has provided only every 1,000 meters a point with an accuracy of 100 meters in height. The SRTM sensors will provide every 30 meters a point surveyed with an accuracy of 6 meters in height. "
Slashdot Mirror
Technically what you said makes sense, however some serious security issues are surfacing lately regarding ATM. I'm speaking here without knowing much at all about ATM per se, but it seems to me anytime you connect two pipes together and "let it flow", you're loosing control over the flowing data. I assume circuit switching inherently means that you're not examining the actual data itself. However, in order to implement packet-level security, I don't see any way around working at the individual packet level, which implies packet switching. If the ATM security issues are related to its circuit switching aspects, maybe circuit switching itself is suspect from a security standpoint.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
OK, I get it. In that case, this seems like less news than it appears to be, because it applies to a fairly obscure part of the market. A general purpose optical packet switch would seriously be news. I don't see why they don't use TI's quasi-nanotech DLP chip technology for circuit switching like this--it would seem an ideal application, at least superficially.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
In that case, this can't be more than an interim solution then. From my humble knowledge of the subject matter, in the long term I believe circuit switching is giving way to packet switching on a grand scale, certainly on the backbones. It simply makes much more efficient use of the pipe. Then again, if they've poured money into this, there must be a market for it, so I'll be still.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Hundreds of times a second? Please, we're moving to optical because of the bandwidth. Communications at the speed of light (in glass or plastic). We're talking multi-gigabits per second. And we want to switch packets at that speed with switches that can switch hundreds of times a second? Who can ponder the packet sizes required; megabytes to be sure.
Sorry, but switches that require the physical motion of sizeable amounts matter don't cut it for optical communications. If they were talking about nanotechnology, that might be another thing. But as it stands, this must be a warm-up for an April Fool's joke.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
And some smoke!
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Yeah, it should be first.last.identifying.marks@hammburch.de, which should be much more unique. Or even better, allocate GUIDs to all citizens, that'll definitely fix it. Or list the last five ancestor's last names in order.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Heh, I like the play on your name there. Mine, there's not much you can do with.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
>> Now when did I do that?
> To refresh your memory: "except X is an
> admission of failure of sorts" Of course I
> suppose my failure to master the english
> language at my tender age of 3 kept me from
> understanding that you meant "we'll have to
> wait and see what happens when it hits the
> market"
That's not at all what is meant by that phrase. What it means is that its current OS track was doomed and they needed a fresh platform. They admitted that the old OS was finished by releasing a new one. You don't abandon a product when you have a winner.
Don't panic, you just have to spend a bit of time in Comprehension 101, that's all. And please don't give me the old run around of "that wasn't obvious from what you said."
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
>> Regarding multitasking, I believe we're still
>> talking cooperative there.
> Wait are you talking about MacOS or Win98?
> They both are subject to this shortcoming.
While I hate defending Windows in any shape or form, in the spirit of fairness, I must correct you there. Provided you run ONLY 32-bit apps, Win9x multitasks preemptively, and quite well at that. And that's hardly a caveat, since I haven't run 16-bit apps for many years. There are still 16-bit DLLs around in some apps thunking away, but that's more the exception. Our company writes exclusively 32-bit apps, and they multitask very nicely, even on Win9x.
> All I know is that I reboot maybe once or twice
> a day as opposed to Win9x when I was rebooting
> 4 or 5 times.
I rest my case, you reboot at least once a day. More often than not, Win9x crashes due to misbehaved drivers, since they run in privileged mode. This is a problem and should not be excused. However, Intel users on average also use many more peripherals than Mac users, increasing the likelihood of bad drivers. They also run on very unpredictable hardware, while Macs always come from Apple. Many Mac users live an entire Mac life without using any third party peripherals. Video, sound, storage are all built-in with Apple drivers, which have been pretty well debuggeed. However, with the emergence of USB that is going to change. Mac users are going to finally experience the wealth of peripherals (sort of) that Intel users have enjoyed, along with the pitfalls of shoddy drivers cooked up at the last minute. From what I hear, that's already starting to happen.
Incidentally, we should compare apples to apples, and oranges to oranges. Let's pick the top OS of each camp, which would be NT (and now W2K) and not Win9x. I ran NT 4.0 for years, and for the last few months I've used Windows 2000 exclusively. I never reboot my machine, except to add new hardware. I never turn it off either, and it sits on a UPS. I have uptimes of weeks, sometimes months. And I use it very heavily as a development machine. Depending on what I work on, I might once in a while get a lockup--buggy TCP/IP socket apps are the best way to bring down NT. Then again, not even Linux can claim rock-solid stability under heavy debugging. While my experience might not be echoed by everyone, once you've settled on good hardware and stable drivers, NT can be very solid as a workstation. As a server, that's another story.
> Not really, but, this is the same situation for
> Win9x going to Win NT.
Not at all. There's no difference between 32-bit applications written for Win9x and NT. It's the same binary. The one exception are NT services, which aren't supported on Win9x, but those aren't end-user apps. You're making a sweeping assumption there in the hope to equalize the two platforms, but that's simply not the case.
> Well you can use the other 9 for counting all
> the apps CURRENTLY written for Win2K.
W2K is Win NT, period. While the driver model has been changed and many user interface modifications were made, it's still the same NT kernel underneath. Any NT app is a W2K app. There's no such thing as a W2K app per se, other than possibly ones taking advantage of some new UI features, or the new Active Directory or middleware features.
> But you are forgetting the thousands of UNIX
> apps that will compile and run on OS X already.
What you don't seem to get is that OS X then simply becomes a me-too. The only difference between X and any other BSD-based Unix will then be that Apple provides you with a neat software emulator that lets you run all your old Mac software. It's simply a piece of software that makes it look like OS X can run Mac binaries, which of course it can't any more than NT or Linux. If Apple so chose, they could also provide the emulator for Linux or NT, but of course they won't.
I admire the skill with which Apple is pulling the wool over its devotee's eyes. They're totally marginalizing the fact that they're switching to a completely new, unproven platform. Their user base might at this moment as well move over to BeOS, Linux, or even Windows 2000, and the difference would be the same. It's a platform switch, and anything goes. Mac users simply stick with Apple because of the warm fuzzy feeling that gives them, the particular look of the Apple hardware, and a certain Pavlovian conditioning. Anything else is just fairy dust.
It's ironic that I would defend Windows this way, and frankly the Mac is the only thing I would ever defend it against. Even more ironically, I do use a platform that's eerily Mac-like in look and feel, as well as usability: my trusty Palm Pilot. And even there I start to feel confined.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
And you (sir?) are obviously...14?
...if you feel there is only one app for OSX...
...before you start calling it a failure...
...and thus is different from the outdated one you hate...
...you forgot to bash the lack of a floppy drive.
> MacOS currently is a tradeoff, as anyone
> will admit many aspects are dated.
That's precisely what I claimed, nothing more, nothing less. It's DATED. If you like reading between the lines, extrapolate some real meaning.
> The multitasking isn't great [...]
> I'm pretty much doing a few things at a time.
Golly for you, and shame for us who would like to do a couple more things. So what you're saying, basically, is that my criticisms was well founded, but I'm clueless regardless. Hmmm...
>
Huh? Far from it, I heard there were over twenty. And once they finish the Pops ports, they'll go quite well with the Cocoa ones.
> yes, OSX is different, but if you look at
> Steve Jobs history, he likes to make surprises.
Yeah, no kidding. Like "now we're going to write it, now we won't".
> There's no way in hell he's given the general
> public all the details 6 months before release.
Quite possibly because he has no clue? I guess you were still waiting for Rhapsody until recently. Take heart, X is definitely GOING to happen!
>
Now when did I do that?
>
Hate? That would mean I care. More like contempt and ridicule. Or maybe bored indifference.
>
That's what made me guess 14 or so. While your grasp of syntax and grammar is quite remarkable, your semantics are less so.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
OK, I'll bite. The Mac OS can mainly be considered the best OS by people upgrading from a TV remote. In that case, the level of flexibility and power is absolutely mindboggling.
Apple is getting way too much credit for usability. As someone mentioned, what's with the one-button mouse? The notion of TWO is not that hard to grasp, especially for Americans--a two party system, GOOD and EVIL, BLACK and WHITE. One-fingered people are few and far between. I guess COMMAND-clicks must be a special masochistic treat enjoyed only by the most rarefied Mac connesseurs. I still have memories of the earliest Macs that had no cursor keys on the keyboard--navigating a document REQUIRED the mouse. And the Mac was still considered a usability wonder.
Other UI oddities: while the MacOS is purported to multitask nowadays, task switching is still somewhat of an afterthought. The whole UI with the top menu bar and Desk Accessory and Finder menus is strictly single-task oriented. The 3D-fication of the GUI is still somewhat at a Win3.1 level, with some gadgets sporting drop shadows, others still living in Flatland.
Regarding multitasking, I believe we're still talking cooperative there. Even if they grafted some preemptive capabilities in, the vast majority of apps live in me-only-me land. Reports of incredible uptimes counted in days should be consumed with caution--the Mac is still a happy crashbox, as any heavy Photoshop user must oblige.
Presented with all these shortcoming, Mac advocates will knee-jerk with the new X. All fine and well, except X is an admission of failure of sorts, because it pretty much throws everything old out. And the apps written for X can be counted on all the fingers required for a Mac mouse.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Making an LDAP daemon part of the system would make a lot of sense. At its heart it's really just a generic hierarchical information storage system. It could then be used by all applications to store settings. It could also be used to replace the archaic security files on Linux. Using LDAP would give you a nice single entry point to all settings, and make it cross-platform compatible to boot.
Note: just because Microsoft is using LDAP in W2K for security doesn't in any way lessen its appeal. A lot of people outside the MS camp consider LDAP to be A Good Thing(TM). Using it would also make the settings file formats immaterial, though would of course not preclude XML in any way.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Regarding the lone gunmen, what a bunch of weenies. What exactly is their appeal? They suffer from a severe case of misplaced hero worship (whatever the name of that guy that got his head chopped off was). If there's one thing about techno nerds, they never admit there's anyone better than them. Their hero universe consists of exactly one--themselves. It's all part of that "expert" arrogance, maybe shameful, but true. The whole hero worship notion is a fiction of the great masses to somehow bring us down to their level in an effort to humanize us. He, he, he...
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Every other phrase spoken was a cliche. And Mulder as the computer expert ("texture-wrap it!")? Come on! He's every girl's equivalent of a wet dream, bu he's not techno expert! Just a pretty boy really.
I'm sick and tired of computer technology in movies. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of X-Files. I used to hate it in the early days, then it kind of got interesting when they worked hard on the alien conspiracy stuff (around the time of the movie), then it slacked off again. Bait-and-disappoint, that's what the show is about. They tantalize you with some great ideas, then throw you some bones, only to leave you hanging without any real explanation whatsoever. The truth is out there--if only the producers knew what it was.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
I have (quite) a few of the IBM Wireless Entry cards, and I'm hooking them into my Ethernet network via a Windows machine. He, he, it's a 386SX with 8M and a 120M HD running Win95, without a case--strapped the whole mobo, PS and PCMCIA card reader to a wooden board on a shelf.
I'm running Win95 because there never were any working Linux drivers for the IBM cards. With DUN 1.2 and later Win95 can do IP forwarding between Ethernet cards (only! won't work with TokenRing etc, I've tried it). Takes the machine a good 40 seconds to boot, but since the bridging is all it's doing, the 386 is plenty, and it's rock solid. Cost? $10 for the PS, $70 for the card reader (2 years ago). What self-respecting geek doesn't have a closet-full of 386 and 486 boards, so there's no cost there.
It's lucky that Win95 can forward IP, otherwise there would be no joy with a lot of the wireless cards out there. Few have Linux drivers, and fewer still publish the specs.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Yeah, once in a while I get a kick from reading http://www.spiegel.de through Babelfish. The simplistic translation can be side splitting.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
That's "Es ist nicht einfach, grün zu sein", or "It is not easy green to be".
Remember, to paraphrase Mark Twain, you dive into a German sentence and emerge with the verb in your mouth at the other end.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
That's exactly the kind of ranting that makes the whole debate so meaningless and inconsequential to 99.9999997% of the programming population. My eyes rolled over and my mouth uttered "whatever!" after the first paragraph. Those ruminations are so abstract and contrived that most people are simply bored. You should have become a psychiatrist and devoted your life to meditating over the differences between the Jungian and Freudian schools of thought. They're definitely more grounded in reality than the FS/OS drivel.
Note: I'm not being hostile here. Just explaining why so many people don't give a shit.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Oh, come on now! There are plenty of catchier choices than HAVi, no matter how equally silly:
HAVnet, AVnet, AVlink, AuViNet, AyeVeeLink, GadgetString, SnobNet, shall I go on? Better not!
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
> As someone else already pointed out in this
> thread, there's firewire chips for around $5
That figure seems to be somewhat anecdotal. I'd like to see some facts backing it up. AFAIK the slowest-speed node on Firewire is still 100 Mbps, which is a lot of bandwidth for a lowly micro. OTOH a low-speed USB node of 1.5 Mbps can be implemented completely with an 8051 or less. That's why you start seeing a proliferation of cheap USB devices--many are low speed, don't require a 12 Mbps chipset, and can be implemented with a micro that might be doing all the other work as well. Because, frankly, even complete USB chipsets aren't that cheap.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Yeah, HAVi looks really cool. I want it now! But what's with that acronym? Sounds like shit.
"Have I"...
-got a nice device for you!
-got enough money to afford it?
-got any sense to come up with a better name?
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
> For firewire disks?
All two of them? The bastards!
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
> Why is it that no one really used mice (which
> have been around since the 60's) until the Mac
> not only came standard with them, but
> *required* their use?
You're mixing issues. First you're talking about forcing OEMs to adopt a technology, then you're talking about forcing users to use a technology. It's much harder to force an OEM to embrace a new "standard" than it is to simply include it in the device and not give the user a choice--especially if you're the sole supplier and there are no alternatives, as in Apple's case. You're making Apple sound like the savvy saint they're definitely not.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
> How much does a add on USB board cost, then?
About $30, or even less if you shop around. You'll find that most of the cost of Firewire IS in the chipset--a high-speed microcontroller is simply more expensive than a low-speed one. You always pay for MHz, whether in CPUs or micros. Besides, the Firewire protocol is more complex, so there's even more computing power required in each node.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
From the DASA web site, the parent company of Dornier Satellite Systems, which was the co-creator of the radar:
"Up to now, the best global database has provided only every 1,000 meters a point with an accuracy of 100 meters in height. The SRTM sensors will provide every 30 meters a point surveyed with an accuracy of 6 meters in height. "
Uwe Wolfgang Radu