Ethernet is CSMA/CD. There's no way to absolutely guarantee bandwidth to any particular device, and as the number of devices goes up, collisions will get more frequent and glitches worse. 64 channels of 48kbps mono audio is little enough traffic that they'll probably get away with it most of the time, but still... Given the goals of pinpoint synchronization and low latency, you'd have thought they'd choose a more appropriate physical layer.
What they should have done is use Firewire, which can offer guaranteed bandwidth with guaranteed latency using isochronous transfer. Except, of course, someone's already done that.
Looks like Gibson has not only reinvented the wheel, they've also made it hexagonal.
How many people are complaining about too many hits?
Well, speaking personally, I don't want people arriving at my web site unless they're actually looking for the content that's on it. That's because I pay for bandwidth.
I also know plenty of people who have web sites for their friends, but have ended up being pestered by online perverts after they ended up in search engine listings.
Books have used the same "interface" for centuries. We tried stone tablets, then scrolls, then settled on the book. Who's to say that computer interfaces haven't arrived at a similar place of relative stability, where there isn't a big leap to be made?
Sure, there will always be innovations, the computer equivalents of pop-up books and scratch-and-sniff, but why does everyone assume that there must be some new revolution that will render today's interface obsolete?
Like so many of the problems with the web, this is one that was thought about by Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu, and solved.
Precisely because of the problem of defining what counts as a "page" in hypertext, Xanadu used micropayments based on amount of data. Clearly you'd need different micropayment scaling factors for images, text and audio, but apart from that I think it's workable.
Would I pay? Depends on the site. BBC news, yes. MSNBC, no -- I wouldn't even read that for free.
I was working for a small company who wanted a nice, reliable Internet connection, e-mail and (later) a web presence. I had written software on UNIX and hacked on MINIX, and was comfortable with TCP/IP, so I volunteered to get everything up and running. I demonstrated that I could do that and keep the system ticking over reliably, so I became the sysadmin.
I'm not a sysadmin any more. I probably wouldn't do well going back into that line of work, because I have fairly fixed and somewhat controversial opinions about how to run a system. Such as: (1) No sendmail on any box I run. (2) No NFS on any box I run. (3) Quotas for everybody, even me. (4) vi as default editor, tcsh as default shell.
(No, I am not interested in discussing those opinions.)
I don't buy it. My DVR tells me exactly what network the show was on in the list of recorded shows, and on a pop-up box when I start it playing. If I forget what network I'm watching, I can push one button on the remote and it'll remind me.
The on-screen logos are redundant. Movie companies don't use on-screen logos, do they? (In fact, on-screen logos are one of the reasons I refuse to watch movies on TV.)
I work for Big Blue, and developers aren't forced to use locked down machines for development work. Only production systems are locked down.
To be honest, I wish things were a little more locked down. We've had a few incidents with irresponsible software installation on development servers...
Then again, I'm the kind of person who quotas myself on my own Linux box. I'm an ex-sysadmin, which probably explains it...
There's nothing particularly fancy about the layout of my web site. A couple of columns and some buttons top and bottom, that's it.
I don't care about your animated GIFs.
My web site doesn't contain any animated GIFs, except the badge for the browser upgrade project -- which you don't see unless you have an obsolete browser. In fact, that's the only GIF on the site.
I don't care about your eye candy.
So turn off images. The site'll still work fine, except the forthcoming photography section. In fact, the site works fine in Lynx if you prefer to browse from a command line.
I don't care about your exact positioning "needs".
My site doesn't need exact positioning. You can read it using any style sheet you want, and lay everything out to your personal taste.
I don't care about your midi sound effects.
I don't care about your Java "enhancements".
I don't care about your Flash animation.
My site doesn't contain any MIDI sound effects, Java applets or Flash animations. It also doesn't use any JavaScript or ActiveX.
I don't care about your ego.
Ah, I see... supporting open standards is an ego trip, is it? I guess we should all go back to proprietary Netscape-only HTML.
Really, yours is one of the most clueless rants I've seen in a while. What's egocentric about making a site that's accessible to the blind and visually impaired, or those who choose not to use my suggested layout?
I give you a choice about how you want to see (or hear) my site. The old non-standard ways of constructing web sites didn't give you that choice. If that's egocentric, let's have more ego on the web.
The WTO treaties which gave us many of these vicious copyright laws also absolutely prohibit the creation of artificial barriers to free trade and free import/export between countries.
It seems to me that CSS is precisely that -- an artificial barrier erected to prevent people from being able to import and export DVDs between countries. It was created so that the movie companies could fix prices and control distribution. What I'd like to see is someone take the movie companies to court for breach of WTO import/export regulations.
Specifically, the Carmody hypertext system, built in 1968/69, had keyboard-driven navigation of hyperlinks. There's a good description in Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib", published 1974 or so. There's so much prior art on this one it's laughable.
Microsoft didn't create Flight Simulator; they bought it from SubLogic, then killed the Mac version. They've made a few tweaks to it, but these days other companies like Laminar Research are way ahead of MS in flight sim technology.
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Ethernet is CSMA/CD. There's no way to absolutely guarantee bandwidth to any particular device, and as the number of devices goes up, collisions will get more frequent and glitches worse. 64 channels of 48kbps mono audio is little enough traffic that they'll probably get away with it most of the time, but still... Given the goals of pinpoint synchronization and low latency, you'd have thought they'd choose a more appropriate physical layer.
What they should have done is use Firewire, which can offer guaranteed bandwidth with guaranteed latency using isochronous transfer. Except, of course, someone's already done that.
Looks like Gibson has not only reinvented the wheel, they've also made it hexagonal.
There are plenty of forwarding services that'll give you a lifetime e-mail address and web URL. You don't need to be remotely technical.
What I want to see MST3Ked is "Jesus", the video those Christians down south were sending to everyone as part of their "Jesus Video Project".
How many people are complaining about too many hits?
Well, speaking personally, I don't want people arriving at my web site unless they're actually looking for the content that's on it. That's because I pay for bandwidth.
I also know plenty of people who have web sites for their friends, but have ended up being pestered by online perverts after they ended up in search engine listings.
Books have used the same "interface" for centuries. We tried stone tablets, then scrolls, then settled on the book. Who's to say that computer interfaces haven't arrived at a similar place of relative stability, where there isn't a big leap to be made?
Sure, there will always be innovations, the computer equivalents of pop-up books and scratch-and-sniff, but why does everyone assume that there must be some new revolution that will render today's interface obsolete?
Microsoft gave $1m to the Republican Party. End of story.
Oops, looks like I forgot to take my anti-cynicism tablets this morning.
Like so many of the problems with the web, this is one that was thought about by Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu, and solved.
Precisely because of the problem of defining what counts as a "page" in hypertext, Xanadu used micropayments based on amount of data. Clearly you'd need different micropayment scaling factors for images, text and audio, but apart from that I think it's workable.
Would I pay? Depends on the site. BBC news, yes. MSNBC, no -- I wouldn't even read that for free.
I was working for a small company who wanted a nice, reliable Internet connection, e-mail and (later) a web presence. I had written software on UNIX and hacked on MINIX, and was comfortable with TCP/IP, so I volunteered to get everything up and running. I demonstrated that I could do that and keep the system ticking over reliably, so I became the sysadmin.
I'm not a sysadmin any more. I probably wouldn't do well going back into that line of work, because I have fairly fixed and somewhat controversial opinions about how to run a system. Such as: (1) No sendmail on any box I run. (2) No NFS on any box I run. (3) Quotas for everybody, even me. (4) vi as default editor, tcsh as default shell.
(No, I am not interested in discussing those opinions.)
Take a black permanent marker with you, and write
FUCK YOU
COMDEX
NAZIS
on the bag after you've turned it inside out.
I don't buy it. My DVR tells me exactly what network the show was on in the list of recorded shows, and on a pop-up box when I start it playing. If I forget what network I'm watching, I can push one button on the remote and it'll remind me.
The on-screen logos are redundant. Movie companies don't use on-screen logos, do they? (In fact, on-screen logos are one of the reasons I refuse to watch movies on TV.)
My web site is written to web standards circa 1996. That's why it looks like garbage in Netscape 4.
I wholeheartedly support blocking Netscape 4 from accessing web sites; it's just too badly broken.
I work for Big Blue, and developers aren't forced to use locked down machines for development work. Only production systems are locked down.
To be honest, I wish things were a little more locked down. We've had a few incidents with irresponsible software installation on development servers...
Then again, I'm the kind of person who quotas myself on my own Linux box. I'm an ex-sysadmin, which probably explains it...
I don't care about your fancy layout.
There's nothing particularly fancy about the layout of my web site. A couple of columns and some buttons top and bottom, that's it.
I don't care about your animated GIFs.
My web site doesn't contain any animated GIFs, except the badge for the browser upgrade project -- which you don't see unless you have an obsolete browser. In fact, that's the only GIF on the site.
I don't care about your eye candy.
So turn off images. The site'll still work fine, except the forthcoming photography section. In fact, the site works fine in Lynx if you prefer to browse from a command line.
I don't care about your exact positioning "needs".
My site doesn't need exact positioning. You can read it using any style sheet you want, and lay everything out to your personal taste.
I don't care about your midi sound effects. I don't care about your Java "enhancements". I don't care about your Flash animation.
My site doesn't contain any MIDI sound effects, Java applets or Flash animations. It also doesn't use any JavaScript or ActiveX.
I don't care about your ego.
Ah, I see... supporting open standards is an ego trip, is it? I guess we should all go back to proprietary Netscape-only HTML.
Really, yours is one of the most clueless rants I've seen in a while. What's egocentric about making a site that's accessible to the blind and visually impaired, or those who choose not to use my suggested layout?
I give you a choice about how you want to see (or hear) my site. The old non-standard ways of constructing web sites didn't give you that choice. If that's egocentric, let's have more ego on the web.
There's now an Excite story confirming that Sega Japan is abandoning Dreamcast.
Dreamcast was built around Windows CE, so I say "Good riddance". Now all we have to do is kill off Xbox.
One thing that's been puzzling me for a while:
The WTO treaties which gave us many of these vicious copyright laws also absolutely prohibit the creation of artificial barriers to free trade and free import/export between countries.
It seems to me that CSS is precisely that -- an artificial barrier erected to prevent people from being able to import and export DVDs between countries. It was created so that the movie companies could fix prices and control distribution. What I'd like to see is someone take the movie companies to court for breach of WTO import/export regulations.
Specifically, the Carmody hypertext system, built in 1968/69, had keyboard-driven navigation of hyperlinks. There's a good description in Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib", published 1974 or so. There's so much prior art on this one it's laughable.
Dreamcast runs Windows CE. Sega Rally 2 is a WinCE application. You've already been assimilated, why not buy an X-Box too?
Microsoft didn't create Flight Simulator; they bought it from SubLogic, then killed the Mac version. They've made a few tweaks to it, but these days other companies like Laminar Research are way ahead of MS in flight sim technology.
There are already PlayStation ports of dozens of classic games, including most of the Williams, Namco and Atari offerings.