majority of the mobile users are in prepaid (iirc, around 90% of the users are prepaid - but i'm in the minority.) this solves the billing issues as people just add value to their account available at almost everywhere. the telcos are happy as you can put value of around USD 0.40 (PHP 25) at the minimum to charge up your account. here also, you can also request for a collect text or collect call service for mobile phones. you can even pass on your credit to other users. this can be a way to do that so you can budget your costs.
for kids here, the carriers have plans for them. they have locator service to track the mobile phone of kids. and of course, useless downloads of games, ringtones, etc. these tied to a primary account (parents can control i think the limit of the supplementary account.)
imho, majority of the traffic probably are not very substantive - they use sms to pass on jokes, love notes, and chat. in addition, they download ringtones, callback, logos, and other stuff.
i have tried using ad-aware and spybot in a machine and recently the beta version of microsoft's anti-spyware. i had problems with spybot with regards to the removal of spyware files. it is able to remove them but the next time it scans the system, the same type of spyware is again installed in the computer. microsoft's anti-spyware was able to remove the files and didn't show up after in spybot. i was quite impressed with it.
why is it difficult to increase the speed of the drive? can more than one head be placed so the drive will perform like a raid0 subsystem? can an entire static head be placed throughout the radius of the platter and can read all tracks simultaneously?
1. increased use of oss in enterprise environments
2. the perception that oss is from an "amateur" community is removed
3. people will have someone to "trust" with regards to an application
some bad things i can think of:
1. they can corner certain apps with certifications and leave others out that can affect development
2. will they have enough resources to test every oss around? if not, then it would be unfair
3. they can use the certification process to promote their own developed or preferred applications leaving the competition out
my thoughts, and the list will continue. but i do hope that this will focus on the good part and a step in the right direction.
firefox is not enterprise friendly. there is even no msi installer to be deployed in the corporate intranet (official from mozilla.) there is no available group policy object for firefox that can be integrated with active directory. so they have not yet thought of actually deploying it in big corporate environments.
in our country (philippines), our government purchased lots of "smart" traffic light systems and installed them on major intersections in manila. the problem is that the traffic lights i believe has a hard time adapting to our traffic situation.
what our current traffic management head did is to disable the traffic lights and close intersections on a streth of road. instead u turn slots were placed around every kilometer. traffic eased up because cars do not stop on intersections anymore. there is a continuous flow of traffic.
a very no-tech way of easing the traffic. i would hope that they actually increase the number of roads where they do that. (but i think the problem is space on the road for the u turn slots.)
there are servers with more than 8 pci buses but they will be the very high end ones. if you'll be purchasing those, i guess it will cost even more buying them than buying a cisco or juniper gear. my context for that one is an off the shelf server that can easily be bought.
i won't see it affect cisco our other high end manufacturers such as juniper.
the main problem here is the hardware. the fastest pci slot right now is pcix-533 and will support 4GB/sec of transfer which is similar to pcie x16. the high end switches or routers have multiple slots and current servers doesn't even have enough pci buses to compare it with the router. for example, an 8 slot router should have a chipset that has 8 buses.
second, i have yet to see(?) any line cards in pcix or pcie that has ports such as 4 x 10gbe, 4 x stm-64/oc192c, 1 x oc768c available for a regular server.
although there are currently no hardware available, i am all for this. not everyone will need these very high end systems. smaller institutions will be able to use regular servers for route processing and this will be the advantage. not all will need interfaces of 10gbe up.
my thoughts is that aside from the software, they should be able to create standards for the hardware to be able to easy interoperate and integrate with the software.
i am just wondering if multicore will increase the performance of the games? does it work like the nvidia sli? i am not sure about games today if they can be fully multithreaded (if so, please do point it out). will they run let say geometric calculations on a core and ai engine on another core, etc.? just a thought because there may be a reduction of performance for single threaded apps if they would increase the total performance of the chip but decrease the performance per core.
making p2p illegal is like making the internet illegal? i mean the internet now does transfer files to one another whether be it html, gif, jpg, mp3, wmv, etc. my question would be what is the differentiating factor for this case?
that there should be an official msi installation from mozilla.
and if you could create adm files for group policy in active directory, then we can customize firefox like ie (from proxy settings, etc.)
the target is mainly consumers, but if corporate would start adopting firefox, then sites will become standard to firefox and users at home will use firefox as it is used in the office.
talking about platforms, they should release an official msi installer for enterprise deployment on microsoft deployment. how can you get critical mass when you just target home users. if enterprise would start deploying apps such as firefox, then people at home will use it as it is what they are used to in the office. isn't this a simple thing to do (i'm sorry but i'm not a programmer/developer. if i was, i would probably contribute to them to make the official msi binaries!) maybe they can ask support from installshield for a licensed copy? or may be ad they will be using for the new york times can be used instead? i guess that will be better.
for some of you reading, they are already hacks that release a format in msi. but i wouldn't want to depend on this on the long term especially if we are going to deploy this en masse. more work to do guys. it's like from the saying "so near yet so far." with all the publicity lately in oss in general, it seems that everybody is interested. but a good product alone does not translate into a general adoption. the critical path of proprietary -> oss migration is not being addressed. it's like saying that you have created the most fuel efficient car but requires a fuel that cannot be bought easily by the regular consumers.
imho, i say that most new installations are starting to use oss. but it is still difficult to 'convert' the proprietary to oss still i think due to the lack of migration tools and support in oss. remember, if big corporations start adopting oss in their systems, the consumers will follow. so target the enterprise first!
they should create a msi installation image for mass deployment! they should spend money creating that package instead of placing it on an add and they will get more conversions. we have hundreds of computers just waiting for a switch to firefox. though there are some msi installations created by 3rd party, i would like it come from the team. they should also be able to integrate it to group policy in windows.
using multi monitors increases productivity. but i don't think in the sense that you are watching a movie in one of the screens. for me, i am using a dual monitor setup. since we use the terminals for our noc opererations, it increases the number of windows a person is able to see at a time. it is very much easier to look at status and diagnose problems. in fact, we are upgrading to a triple screen 17" lcd display (our budget was not able to reach a 4x17" display:( the matrox mms is quite expensive and bigger lcd monitor >17" is even more expensive!
you can use the drives in blade servers. instead of putting in the standard ide notebook drives, you put in scsi drives that will fit in the same blade system. we're not very comfortable with the ide drives (but it just serves as a trash storage as of now) due to the speed. we do everything in fc for now.
i think the mozilla guys should be able to create a package (msi) so corporate users will be able to install the software in an automated fashion thereby allowing the total migration of browser in one go.
in my scenario, i would love moving the browser from ie to firefox (especially after the jpeg flaw and other critical flaws lately.) however, my problem is mass deployment of the browser throughout the microsoft active directory domain. first off, users do not have privileged rights so create a script after they have logged on will not be possible. also, users are only allowed to execute limited files, thus the installation will also fail. we do not have sms or other tools installed for mass installation (we are dependent on msi packages) because it is expensive to purchase these software for our current use (maybe in the future when we get more money.)
searching, i found some hacks but it is not very straight forward and i do anticipate to experience problems with deployment. once this happens, corporate users will be able to start migrating en masse to firefox.
but in our corporate scenario, the usb device is now the weakest link.
the network is isolated from the internet and ports and secured through mac and 802.1x security. computers cannot be just plugged in.
computers should only be able to login using smart cards.
the computer is now the weakest link especially the usb devices. we woudn't want to disable the usb for other devices such as mouse, printers, etc. but we would want to disable the use of usb for mass storage device.
i would like to ask if there is a version available that is in msi extenstion? this will allow us to automatically distribute the firefox browsers through the domain and run in our permitted list and disabling internet explorer.
it is not just the the processor per se but the entire platform. intel has a very good platform for their itanium (sr870bn4 and sr870bh2.)
we have a pair of them and it works wonders. the system is very good design that the entire system is very easy to service (swap everything from pci boards, memory boards, processors, management, etc.) and of course good in the reliability and stability side.
the primary feature is reliability, manageability, and servicability. speed is secondary in these systems.
for opterons, their processors are good but i am still doubting on the entire platform (but it is slowly fading away.) i coudn't just buy a server because it is fast without much consideration into servicability, stability and manageability of the system.
by combining the xeon and itanium2 product lines, they will be able to increase these factors more. the resources will now be bigger to validate in the two configurations and design will be much simplified. for example, if an oem manufacturer creates an fc hba, testing will be much faster and better. there may be a separate software code base for the xeon and itanium2. i have seen lots of good plans from intel (though some are still plans but some of them are maturing and i can't say them due to nda.)
in operating a datacenter, this will have huge benefits. if we will get spares, we will only get field replacable units (fru) for the server and we can practically interchange components with our system. this is cost saving but the greater advantage is allowing us to quickly place a server only due to faulty components as they are standardized. in the future, we can have a same server board and all components and spare cpus. aside from hardware efficiency, it will be better for management. the management system will not have to deal with different type of systems. faster fault detection and resolution without much overhead costs of purchasing all the enterprise products. and when deploying new applications, you can have your own internal validation for hardware and software knowing that you will have the same configuration throughout.
by doing this, intel stands to create better platforms realizing from the strengths of both processor architecture. hopefully they will be able to deliver it and even better as planned.
:)
john
and to amd's demise right now, Microsoft just delayed their release of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP for x86-64 to mid 2005.
craig barett also created a memo on improving on engineering efficiencies in intel. he doesn't like what's happening right now.
our government already taxes wifi but you will need to also register if you wish to use wifi for outdoors and other commercial purposes and you will pay for it.
pretty bad though. the government agency that allocates frequencies gave the 2.4ghz band to an electric utility company. they use that frequency for their monitoring (scada.)
people pay the price for government's mistake in our case.
*note* we are using gsm as mobile standard so cdma type phones may not be application in this discussion.
1. i am not surprised that they will be relasing a lot of models this year. probably it will be a model something like xx10 xx15 xx20 xx25 xx30. all featuring the same system with different casings, or different software features. the problem with this is that it is difficult to choose phones with only one feature compared to a competitor with feature rich phones. for example, you either choose a colored screen, one with flashlight, one with fm radio, one with camera, one with bluetooth.
2. nokia phones are expensive and devalue quickly. in our country, turn over for phones are very quick (i've been using 4 different mobile phones for the last 2 years and plan on upgrading to sonyericsson p910 - i've used p800 and using p900 now.) the problem is that nokia phones are sold at a high price initially but quickly goes down. the phone cannot be sold at a reasonable price. compare this with sonyericsson t68 that lost just around 60% of its face value years ago (probably around 3 at least.) with nokia phones, the prices go down at around 50% in just a few months (not talking about half a year here!) people get pissed and they just buy other phones. i am not afraid of selling my existing p900 at a huge loss.
3. quality of phones. the old ones are good but i think the new ones are not of good quality. nokia phones sold in our country had problems with the lcd screens in different models. the solution is to change the screen which is quite expensive (considering the price of the phone has been devalued.) many new phones are of better quality. take for example my previous p800 where it is full of scratches as it fell and fell. the same with my p900 - hasn't failed me yet. i'm quite impressed with how they handle falls (as in around > 1 meter from the ground that is hard.) being a smartphone with a big and touch sensitive screen , i haven't had problems. compare this with my old nokia that i have to replace the lcd around twice already.
4. lastly, i think that the competitors just release better phones (both features and design.) back when nokia was dominant, they was no design and feature for other mobile phones that was even close. all were yucky (bulky, expensive and featureless.) but now, the others have innovated and introduced lots of new features and nokia didn't quite catch up. now this is a problem for them. as a sidenote, i watched in discovery channel about a documentary of samsung. i'm amazed on how they design mobile phones including their turn over time for design to market in only 6 months (they claim it is half of their nearest competitors!)
anyway, this is a problem with nokia and may only be limited to them. other manufacturers are enjoying growth. it's now quite interesting to see the market on who will dominate (but i guess it will be samsung overtaking them in a year's time.) i'll be waiting for the mobile phone wars. probably new features and designs will be accelerated and, of course, consumers will be able to benefit. though japan is enjoying the cool features, i can't wait for my phone to have wifi capabilities for seamless roaming and camera of at least 2 megapixels.:)
this can be very bad to the internet as routing tables will grow and stability will be affected.
imagine, if the ip addresses are being broadcast and withdrawn as a user logs in (for example a broadband or narrowband connection) - all the routers in the world will go crazy and overloaded. i don't think even the new cisco crs will be able to handle the load.
but at the end, i'll say, if the network is below/24 prefix, chances are, they will not be able to reach the global internet as majority of tier 1 providers filter the prefix. so at the end, it will be the big ones that will get to be visible from the internet. my suggestion is that providers now increase the minimum prefix to/23 to reduce the size of the routing table of currently nearing 140,000 routes! (i find it very weird that for example, a network has a/20 routes, they advertise 16/24 all pointing to the same destination, if only there was a monitoring software that reads the bgp and sends the noc of each notifications of aggregation.)
there are physical differences in the manufacturing of the drives.
1. the surface disk are different from ide and in scsi. the scsi drives are much reflective than the ide drives. though i am not sure if this affects reliability.
2. the size of the platter (diameter) is much smaller in scsi than in ide. probably this will help them achieve a higher rpm than the ide counterparts.
3. the head movement is much sturdier in scsi (probably attributed to more better magnets.) i find it much difficult to move the heads in scsi than in ide.
4. there are more chips underneath the scsi drive than in ide. however, this does not tell much. but in fc drives, there are 2 dsp chips, one that handle internal drive functions like motor and head, while the other handle io host requests making them much faster!
5. scsi drives have higher mtbf. though this may not be much the only guage for quality but scsi drives are much better in quality.
didn't the us require that aol open its protocols in aim due to the merger with timewarner? assuming it is opened (which i think right now it isn't,) then other clients may be using the same functionality probably as free service.
Slashdot Mirror
for kids here, the carriers have plans for them. they have locator service to track the mobile phone of kids. and of course, useless downloads of games, ringtones, etc. these tied to a primary account (parents can control i think the limit of the supplementary account.)
imho, majority of the traffic probably are not very substantive - they use sms to pass on jokes, love notes, and chat. in addition, they download ringtones, callback, logos, and other stuff.
i have tried using ad-aware and spybot in a machine and recently the beta version of microsoft's anti-spyware. i had problems with spybot with regards to the removal of spyware files. it is able to remove them but the next time it scans the system, the same type of spyware is again installed in the computer. microsoft's anti-spyware was able to remove the files and didn't show up after in spybot. i was quite impressed with it.
why is it difficult to increase the speed of the drive? can more than one head be placed so the drive will perform like a raid0 subsystem? can an entire static head be placed throughout the radius of the platter and can read all tracks simultaneously?
1. increased use of oss in enterprise environments
2. the perception that oss is from an "amateur" community is removed
3. people will have someone to "trust" with regards to an application
some bad things i can think of:
1. they can corner certain apps with certifications and leave others out that can affect development
2. will they have enough resources to test every oss around? if not, then it would be unfair
3. they can use the certification process to promote their own developed or preferred applications leaving the competition out
my thoughts, and the list will continue. but i do hope that this will focus on the good part and a step in the right direction.
firefox is not enterprise friendly. there is even no msi installer to be deployed in the corporate intranet (official from mozilla.) there is no available group policy object for firefox that can be integrated with active directory. so they have not yet thought of actually deploying it in big corporate environments.
what our current traffic management head did is to disable the traffic lights and close intersections on a streth of road. instead u turn slots were placed around every kilometer. traffic eased up because cars do not stop on intersections anymore. there is a continuous flow of traffic.
a very no-tech way of easing the traffic. i would hope that they actually increase the number of roads where they do that. (but i think the problem is space on the road for the u turn slots.)
there are servers with more than 8 pci buses but they will be the very high end ones. if you'll be purchasing those, i guess it will cost even more buying them than buying a cisco or juniper gear. my context for that one is an off the shelf server that can easily be bought.
the main problem here is the hardware. the fastest pci slot right now is pcix-533 and will support 4GB/sec of transfer which is similar to pcie x16. the high end switches or routers have multiple slots and current servers doesn't even have enough pci buses to compare it with the router. for example, an 8 slot router should have a chipset that has 8 buses.
second, i have yet to see(?) any line cards in pcix or pcie that has ports such as 4 x 10gbe, 4 x stm-64/oc192c, 1 x oc768c available for a regular server.
although there are currently no hardware available, i am all for this. not everyone will need these very high end systems. smaller institutions will be able to use regular servers for route processing and this will be the advantage. not all will need interfaces of 10gbe up.
my thoughts is that aside from the software, they should be able to create standards for the hardware to be able to easy interoperate and integrate with the software.
i am just wondering if multicore will increase the performance of the games? does it work like the nvidia sli? i am not sure about games today if they can be fully multithreaded (if so, please do point it out). will they run let say geometric calculations on a core and ai engine on another core, etc.? just a thought because there may be a reduction of performance for single threaded apps if they would increase the total performance of the chip but decrease the performance per core.
making p2p illegal is like making the internet illegal? i mean the internet now does transfer files to one another whether be it html, gif, jpg, mp3, wmv, etc. my question would be what is the differentiating factor for this case?
and if you could create adm files for group policy in active directory, then we can customize firefox like ie (from proxy settings, etc.)
the target is mainly consumers, but if corporate would start adopting firefox, then sites will become standard to firefox and users at home will use firefox as it is used in the office.
for some of you reading, they are already hacks that release a format in msi. but i wouldn't want to depend on this on the long term especially if we are going to deploy this en masse. more work to do guys. it's like from the saying "so near yet so far." with all the publicity lately in oss in general, it seems that everybody is interested. but a good product alone does not translate into a general adoption. the critical path of proprietary -> oss migration is not being addressed. it's like saying that you have created the most fuel efficient car but requires a fuel that cannot be bought easily by the regular consumers.
imho, i say that most new installations are starting to use oss. but it is still difficult to 'convert' the proprietary to oss still i think due to the lack of migration tools and support in oss. remember, if big corporations start adopting oss in their systems, the consumers will follow. so target the enterprise first!
they should create a msi installation image for mass deployment! they should spend money creating that package instead of placing it on an add and they will get more conversions. we have hundreds of computers just waiting for a switch to firefox. though there are some msi installations created by 3rd party, i would like it come from the team. they should also be able to integrate it to group policy in windows.
using multi monitors increases productivity. but i don't think in the sense that you are watching a movie in one of the screens. for me, i am using a dual monitor setup. since we use the terminals for our noc opererations, it increases the number of windows a person is able to see at a time. it is very much easier to look at status and diagnose problems. in fact, we are upgrading to a triple screen 17" lcd display (our budget was not able to reach a 4x17" display :( the matrox mms is quite expensive and bigger lcd monitor >17" is even more expensive!
though it may not be totally be connected with the topic:
are you throwing money way more than what is being protected?
you can use the drives in blade servers. instead of putting in the standard ide notebook drives, you put in scsi drives that will fit in the same blade system. we're not very comfortable with the ide drives (but it just serves as a trash storage as of now) due to the speed. we do everything in fc for now.
in my scenario, i would love moving the browser from ie to firefox (especially after the jpeg flaw and other critical flaws lately.) however, my problem is mass deployment of the browser throughout the microsoft active directory domain. first off, users do not have privileged rights so create a script after they have logged on will not be possible. also, users are only allowed to execute limited files, thus the installation will also fail. we do not have sms or other tools installed for mass installation (we are dependent on msi packages) because it is expensive to purchase these software for our current use (maybe in the future when we get more money.)
searching, i found some hacks but it is not very straight forward and i do anticipate to experience problems with deployment. once this happens, corporate users will be able to start migrating en masse to firefox.
the network is isolated from the internet and ports and secured through mac and 802.1x security. computers cannot be just plugged in.
computers should only be able to login using smart cards.
the computer is now the weakest link especially the usb devices. we woudn't want to disable the usb for other devices such as mouse, printers, etc. but we would want to disable the use of usb for mass storage device.
i would like to ask if there is a version available that is in msi extenstion? this will allow us to automatically distribute the firefox browsers through the domain and run in our permitted list and disabling internet explorer.
we have a pair of them and it works wonders. the system is very good design that the entire system is very easy to service (swap everything from pci boards, memory boards, processors, management, etc.) and of course good in the reliability and stability side.
the primary feature is reliability, manageability, and servicability. speed is secondary in these systems.
for opterons, their processors are good but i am still doubting on the entire platform (but it is slowly fading away.) i coudn't just buy a server because it is fast without much consideration into servicability, stability and manageability of the system.
by combining the xeon and itanium2 product lines, they will be able to increase these factors more. the resources will now be bigger to validate in the two configurations and design will be much simplified. for example, if an oem manufacturer creates an fc hba, testing will be much faster and better. there may be a separate software code base for the xeon and itanium2. i have seen lots of good plans from intel (though some are still plans but some of them are maturing and i can't say them due to nda.)
in operating a datacenter, this will have huge benefits. if we will get spares, we will only get field replacable units (fru) for the server and we can practically interchange components with our system. this is cost saving but the greater advantage is allowing us to quickly place a server only due to faulty components as they are standardized. in the future, we can have a same server board and all components and spare cpus. aside from hardware efficiency, it will be better for management. the management system will not have to deal with different type of systems. faster fault detection and resolution without much overhead costs of purchasing all the enterprise products. and when deploying new applications, you can have your own internal validation for hardware and software knowing that you will have the same configuration throughout.
by doing this, intel stands to create better platforms realizing from the strengths of both processor architecture. hopefully they will be able to deliver it and even better as planned.
john
and to amd's demise right now, Microsoft just delayed their release of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP for x86-64 to mid 2005.
craig barett also created a memo on improving on engineering efficiencies in intel. he doesn't like what's happening right now.
pretty bad though. the government agency that allocates frequencies gave the 2.4ghz band to an electric utility company. they use that frequency for their monitoring (scada.)
people pay the price for government's mistake in our case.
1. i am not surprised that they will be relasing a lot of models this year. probably it will be a model something like xx10 xx15 xx20 xx25 xx30. all featuring the same system with different casings, or different software features. the problem with this is that it is difficult to choose phones with only one feature compared to a competitor with feature rich phones. for example, you either choose a colored screen, one with flashlight, one with fm radio, one with camera, one with bluetooth.
2. nokia phones are expensive and devalue quickly. in our country, turn over for phones are very quick (i've been using 4 different mobile phones for the last 2 years and plan on upgrading to sonyericsson p910 - i've used p800 and using p900 now.) the problem is that nokia phones are sold at a high price initially but quickly goes down. the phone cannot be sold at a reasonable price. compare this with sonyericsson t68 that lost just around 60% of its face value years ago (probably around 3 at least.) with nokia phones, the prices go down at around 50% in just a few months (not talking about half a year here!) people get pissed and they just buy other phones. i am not afraid of selling my existing p900 at a huge loss.
3. quality of phones. the old ones are good but i think the new ones are not of good quality. nokia phones sold in our country had problems with the lcd screens in different models. the solution is to change the screen which is quite expensive (considering the price of the phone has been devalued.) many new phones are of better quality. take for example my previous p800 where it is full of scratches as it fell and fell. the same with my p900 - hasn't failed me yet. i'm quite impressed with how they handle falls (as in around > 1 meter from the ground that is hard.) being a smartphone with a big and touch sensitive screen , i haven't had problems. compare this with my old nokia that i have to replace the lcd around twice already.
4. lastly, i think that the competitors just release better phones (both features and design.) back when nokia was dominant, they was no design and feature for other mobile phones that was even close. all were yucky (bulky, expensive and featureless.) but now, the others have innovated and introduced lots of new features and nokia didn't quite catch up. now this is a problem for them. as a sidenote, i watched in discovery channel about a documentary of samsung. i'm amazed on how they design mobile phones including their turn over time for design to market in only 6 months (they claim it is half of their nearest competitors!)
anyway, this is a problem with nokia and may only be limited to them. other manufacturers are enjoying growth. it's now quite interesting to see the market on who will dominate (but i guess it will be samsung overtaking them in a year's time.) i'll be waiting for the mobile phone wars. probably new features and designs will be accelerated and, of course, consumers will be able to benefit. though japan is enjoying the cool features, i can't wait for my phone to have wifi capabilities for seamless roaming and camera of at least 2 megapixels. :)
imagine, if the ip addresses are being broadcast and withdrawn as a user logs in (for example a broadband or narrowband connection) - all the routers in the world will go crazy and overloaded. i don't think even the new cisco crs will be able to handle the load.
but at the end, i'll say, if the network is below
1. the surface disk are different from ide and in scsi. the scsi drives are much reflective than the ide drives. though i am not sure if this affects reliability.
2. the size of the platter (diameter) is much smaller in scsi than in ide. probably this will help them achieve a higher rpm than the ide counterparts.
3. the head movement is much sturdier in scsi (probably attributed to more better magnets.) i find it much difficult to move the heads in scsi than in ide.
4. there are more chips underneath the scsi drive than in ide. however, this does not tell much. but in fc drives, there are 2 dsp chips, one that handle internal drive functions like motor and head, while the other handle io host requests making them much faster!
5. scsi drives have higher mtbf. though this may not be much the only guage for quality but scsi drives are much better in quality.
didn't the us require that aol open its protocols in aim due to the merger with timewarner? assuming it is opened (which i think right now it isn't,) then other clients may be using the same functionality probably as free service.