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  1. Re:I know what I'd get rid of... on Improving Computer Form Factors? · · Score: 1

    Intel had 1394 on their chipset roadmap with parts like the i820, whose channel based design is ideal for isochronous data. Microsoft had OK support in the NT os; you could write drivers which implemented part of the 1394 address space, and so write drivers for 1394 parts with ease.

    -Apple wanted $1 per firewire port royalty. On a system with 2 external ports plus say six internal (2x HDD, Cd, DVD, floppy/spare) and the royalties on the parts it was looking like $10/12 on the PC, plus extra on external parts like printers and stuff.

    Which is way too much. Intel's USB2 story was a good get-out clause: "we'll add USB2 at existing Si costs', but it came later. MS were (and are) happy with 1394, and even though intel prefer PC centric designs like USB, both MS and Intel want the PC to be the centre of the wired home, and 1394 could do this, especially if roll out across business pcs brought costs down.

    The thing is, you cant argue that stifling PC design actually hurt apple; asking for silly royalties did make sense for them. It just hurts the rest of us. Firewire is a nice bus, I have run TCP over it and it flies: 50 Mbit/s over the same wire running TV off a satellite dish; it would transform laptop and PDA docking; etc, but it is languishing in the consumer space even though the desktop and laptop chipsets could add it easily (Ti do the laptop chip)

  2. Re:I know what I'd get rid of... on Improving Computer Form Factors? · · Score: 1

    Firewire does have enough power to replace the IDE and SCSI cables; if the chipset went on to every mainboard and the cost of a 1394 HDD matched that of IDE then you could just have a row of bays (called DeviceBay BTW) which took front loading disks, CDR, whatever; chain the cable out the front for your camcorder and out the back for your printer *and* for your high speed home network running TCP over 1394 at 400 mbits/sec.

    Why hasnt this come to pass. Well, apples demands for a $ per 1394 port had a lot to do with killing 1394 momentum and legitimizing USB2 and S-ATA as an alternative, but none of these have the consumer electronics or peer-to-peer nature. Mind you, nor do they have a DMCA approved block on implementing promiscuous mode in the 1394 Si, which is mandatory in all OHCI chipsets

    -Steve

    Yes, I have worked for a PC vendor. For once I do know roughly what I am talking about.

  3. Re:IIS isn't going anywhere on Apache 2.0 vs. IIS · · Score: 1

    IIS are being hosed on security. .NET server (that's XP advanced server really) will also export COM+ object as SOAP services, which is another recipie for security configuration disasters, but I guess this time things will be disabled.

    There is a complete rewrite of IIS in the works, still native win32, but done 'properly'; maybe it wont even have to run as administrator no more. Who knows, maybe IIS6.0 will use the apache codebase to achieve the performance, security and reliability milestones, though I doubt MS would do the sensible thing there.

  4. Re:It's part of .NET on Apache 2.0 vs. IIS · · Score: 1

    I think you could support .NET pages (like .ASPX and .ASMX files) under apache2.0 on win32. IIS isn't .NET aware after all; it just has some new filters to hand off various requests to ASPX, ASMX execution engines.

    If that was implemented (simplest would be cgi-bin handoff to .NET code); even the CGI-bin could be .net exe, then you could go IIS free and still run .net webapps. And lets face it, if you have to expose webapp to the rest of the world, which server would you rather use?

  5. What about maintenance? on Can China Pull An India? · · Score: 1

    This was a good summary, but you left out 'keeping an existing app alive'.

    We are handing off maintenance of a software product to india at the moment; we have some of their engineers flying out to spend time with us to learn their way round the system, and from a few weeks on they will be dealing with support/maintenance issues with our team only being called in when there is something they dont understand.

    For this to succeed we have to have designed maintanable software (design docs, doc comments, doxygen &c), and we and management have to invest time and effort in getting the handoff working.

    One nice feature about working with India is that English is pretty much the second language to all the educated folk there (its one of the official government tongues), so language differences are not as hard as they could otherwise be. We all have different accents and other communication difficulties, but written stuff can be easily and consistently understood by both.

  6. What wiress data do they collect? Location? on Qwest Plan Stirs Protest Over Privacy · · Score: 1, Funny

    What exactly is the wireless data that Qwest is collecting and passing on? All they say is "information about wireless services", but that could include facts like "Mr L's cellphone was moving through the I-5 cells at 90 mph" which they could sell to everyone from WA highway patrol to BMW; and they could use the cell location information to see where the caller is and sell that to marketing weasels for directed selling. There is no need for E911 resolution for many marketing purposes, and the regular pings between handset and base stations will give them intermittent location info even when you dont make calls.

    "It's like a police state, only you pay $49.95 a month on a family plan to be part of it"

    -Steve

    disclaimer. I dont have a qwest mobile; I did after they took over USWest, but I dumped that service for verizons prepay for which I gave my UK address. So that little vendor may fall foul of the EU privacy laws if they do stuff with my data.

  7. Re:this is obviously a hoax on Qwest Plan Stirs Protest Over Privacy · · Score: 0

    Bad news, I have the printed copy from qwest in my hand. It came in last week and I ran to the desktop to opt out, thinking it was just another abuse of privacy a country with no EU-style data protection laws. Glad to see the rest of the country is now upset.

    If you want, I can scan it and stick it up on a web page somewhere as approximate proof of legitimacy.

  8. Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage on Ogg Vorbis RC3 Released · · Score: 0

    It should be possible to add it to existing PDAs that implement the decoding in s/w... maybe the Windows version of the codec would port to PocketPC. That would be something to do in my copious free time, if I had any.

  9. why did they have to come up with a new symbol? on The Euro · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I know it is the first new currency for ages, but why did they have to invent a new currency symbol which isnt on US keyboards, older european keyboards or existing fonts installed on systems and printers.

    There are umpteen little symbols on the normal keyboard, and they could have used a few letters as they have done in the past "SFr", "DM" to give us "e$" or something like [e500] that would even avoid all those mime encoding errors you get with UK pounds where £ maps to %163 and the currency value gets screwed up.

    sigh.

    -stv

  10. Re:Possible Problems on The Quest for the Spin Transistor · · Score: 1

    well, it would give you notebooks with instant wakeup and zero static power consumption; that would be cool. Or You could rip out all your main memory server side and have a persistent in memory database.

    It all depends on cost and capacity. Never underestimate the ability for existing technology to catch up by the time some advanced technology comes to market, or the willingness of DRAM vendors to lose billions of $ selling their product at a loss.

  11. Re:BBC is a Socialst organization. Ogg makes sense on BBC Testing Ogg Vorbis Streaming · · Score: 1

    Maybe, but they covered all those unhealty-isms in blackadder so well that it is well worth the money. The rest of the world has to make do with the DVD compilation.

    (a british citizen who doesnt pay the tv tax on account of being abroad)

  12. Re:The internet != WWW on Reaching Unsanctioned TLDs With A Plug-In · · Score: 1

    I agree with the second paragraph, but need to correct the first one, at least on Windows. Any app that uses the (somewhat braindead) wininet API to fetch URLs can be extended with new URL schemes fairly easily. Napster does this with their nap: URI scheme. So you could do a patch for most winapps that used HTTP tunneling as a communication scheme.