I found UML to be very awkward. It seemed most people would adopt it because it sounded good in a "best practices" way, but, in practice, it didn't get used very effectively. Class diagrams can be useful, for example, but, unless everyone in the room understands what the different styles of arrows mean, their usefulness can be severely limited. I also found the "actors" style of thinking never really penetrated my skull, for some reason.
The #1 biggest thing that bothered me, however, is that UML sets up whole analysis phases to be literally thrown away. Why spend the effort to make nice-looking use cases when they basically get thrown away? Isn't that what white boards are for? More extensive requirements are hard to express in pictures, anyway.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the power companies. That's a third entrenched infrastructure that could plausibly cary IP and VoIP and TV-o-IP. Add a national wireless carrier--cell towers--and that could be even a fourth competitor. Stock analyists will probably go grey trying to forecast the winner.
I don't know if it's a matter of their costs dropping with economies of scale or to compete with the cable companies rolling out their own...
With cable companies beginning to offer voice, and with phone companies supposedly starting to offer TV service, the next few years of pricing will be very interesting. DSL proved that the phone company's lines are still useful, so it's basically a case of one entrenched infrastructure battling it out with another entrenched infrastructure. We will probably win either way (features vs. cost), so I'll just sit back and watch.
I always found it ironic that, at one time, modems supposedly had a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2400 baud or 9600 baud (can't remember exactly) over phone lines, but, here, my broadband connection is getting hundreds of Kb/s over that same phone line.
He first just grabbed the first pair of RCA cables that he could find. The projector kept resyncing with the YPrPb inputs. Despite soomeone else's refusal to accept it, I told him to pull out some video monster cables. Once he did that, it eliminated the resyncing.
The problem wasn't with the original quality of those RCA cables, it was that they were probably physically broken from age or abuse. The fact that the working cables were Brand Name cables is irrelevant, because any current flowing would work better than none.
I'd challenge anyone to put $500 cables and $25 cables against lamp cord and really be able to tell a difference in the sound, with the cables being the only variable.
I had to argue with my father trying to convince him that the cheap RCA cables we already had back at home would be perfectly capable of communicated a digital signal the 5 inches between the DVD player and the receiver.
This is 100% true, but the only thing I would ever pay more for is gold-plated connectors to avoid corrosion. Fortunately, one doesn't have to spend much money to get gold-plated connectors, because the amount of gold involved is tiny.
Slashdot Mirror
If we need a KVM it's typically to get into the BIOS....
Ah, the pleasures of OpenBoot PROM and a serial cable...
Lots of ppl stop using solaris cause of this.
Solaris will be Open Source in a month or so. Enjoy.
They're much better at dealing with music.
What if I sing?
I found UML to be very awkward. It seemed most people would adopt it because it sounded good in a "best practices" way, but, in practice, it didn't get used very effectively. Class diagrams can be useful, for example, but, unless everyone in the room understands what the different styles of arrows mean, their usefulness can be severely limited. I also found the "actors" style of thinking never really penetrated my skull, for some reason.
The #1 biggest thing that bothered me, however, is that UML sets up whole analysis phases to be literally thrown away. Why spend the effort to make nice-looking use cases when they basically get thrown away? Isn't that what white boards are for? More extensive requirements are hard to express in pictures, anyway.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the power companies. That's a third entrenched infrastructure that could plausibly cary IP and VoIP and TV-o-IP. Add a national wireless carrier--cell towers--and that could be even a fourth competitor. Stock analyists will probably go grey trying to forecast the winner.
I don't know if it's a matter of their costs dropping with economies of scale or to compete with the cable companies rolling out their own...
With cable companies beginning to offer voice, and with phone companies supposedly starting to offer TV service, the next few years of pricing will be very interesting. DSL proved that the phone company's lines are still useful, so it's basically a case of one entrenched infrastructure battling it out with another entrenched infrastructure. We will probably win either way (features vs. cost), so I'll just sit back and watch.
Telephony over TCP/IP over phone line
I always found it ironic that, at one time, modems supposedly had a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 2400 baud or 9600 baud (can't remember exactly) over phone lines, but, here, my broadband connection is getting hundreds of Kb/s over that same phone line.
He first just grabbed the first pair of RCA cables that he could find. The projector kept resyncing with the YPrPb inputs. Despite soomeone else's refusal to accept it, I told him to pull out some video monster cables. Once he did that, it eliminated the resyncing. The problem wasn't with the original quality of those RCA cables, it was that they were probably physically broken from age or abuse. The fact that the working cables were Brand Name cables is irrelevant, because any current flowing would work better than none. I'd challenge anyone to put $500 cables and $25 cables against lamp cord and really be able to tell a difference in the sound, with the cables being the only variable.
I had to argue with my father trying to convince him that the cheap RCA cables we already had back at home would be perfectly capable of communicated a digital signal the 5 inches between the DVD player and the receiver. This is 100% true, but the only thing I would ever pay more for is gold-plated connectors to avoid corrosion. Fortunately, one doesn't have to spend much money to get gold-plated connectors, because the amount of gold involved is tiny.