Common Sense 4 Common People

FireWire 1.6 Gbps and 3.2 Gbps announced by DAP Technology!

Last week I told you about the forthcoming news on 1.6 Gbps and 3.2 Gbps FireWire.

Now, here is the official press release from DAP Technology!!!

Have fun!
Dimitris Staikos

FireWire moving forward

Two weeks ago I visited the Vision Show 2009 exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany.

Two very important things happened there with regards to FireWire (IEEE 1394) technology.

1. DAP Technology made a demo of their S1600/S3200 solution. That's 1.6Gbps and 3.2Gbps respectively. It worked fine over 10m standard FireWire cables.
   The demo was semi-public and DAP will make a relevant press release within the next days.
2. Two companies demonstrated their S800-over-Coax cable solutions, using the S800 coax transceivers of Eqcologic.

They are both great news for FireWire, because they show that FireWire is still moving forward.

Have Fun!
Dimitris

The Internet says...

Today I was walking the streets of downtown Stuttgart in Germany and of all things possible, I was looking for a post office. I was given some directions by some friendly local, but I still couldn't find it. So I asked another passerby for assistance.

He didn't know, but he immediately popped out his cell phone and told me "Let me check on the Internet". I don't know why, but I felt that this event transitioned me into a whole new era. Most likely because it was the first time in my life that a completely random passerby would access the Internet in order to offer me the assistance I was looking for.

What amazed me even more was the way he formulated his reply soon after:

"The Internet says it's on Marienstrasse 19".

Have Fun!
Dimitris Staikos

PS: Beware of what the Internet says... The post office wasn't there ;-)

DELAY command implemented as batch file

Hi

I always had a strange fascination about batch files in Windows. I like automation, but for some reason I don't like using an elephant gun (Perl, Powershell) to shoot a mosquito. Plus I like the automation stuff to work on any PC, without having to install anything new. The Windows shell commands look totally crippled, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

Too much power management can kill you

QUIZ
You can tell that something is wrong when:

1. Something that usually takes half an hour is not finished after 5 hours OR
2. Yet another piece of technology is functioning in unintended ways.

A couple of days ago I read a tip about 4 mistakes that can kill VM performance.
#4 was: The default power option of Windows Server 2008 upon installation is set to "Balanced".
Sure as hell it was set to Balanced, so I corrected that one.
But tonight something else happened that was related to power management.
A backup to network folder was taking far too long.
How nice... One more problem to solve...
I check the network utilization and see that it was 100%.
Now that's a bit unusual... Just a bit...
I take a better look and what do I see?
Link Speed 10Mbps!!!!!
Excuse me??? Where did that come from?
To cut a long story short, the Intel network adapters came with a default setting that made them reduce the link speed if the machine is idle. The machine was certainly not idle, but still the link speed was reduced... go figure.
I deactivated the setting and got back my 1Gbps with a healthy 30% utilization and my backup was finished in the next 10 minutes.

That's why I say too much power management will kill you...

Have Fun!
Dimitris Staikos

Irrational By Design

Compared to the average person I would probably rank as a pretty experienced computer user. This unfortunately means (and that’s not Windows specific) that I am often expected to take irrational actions in order to produce the desired outcome. Lately, more often than not, the desired outcome falls under the label "Troubleshoot a Digital Misfortune".

There is a small problem with semantics here, as the concept of Expected Irrational Behavior that Leads to a Desired Outcome is a self-destructing concept. Have many people repeat any behavior often enough for long enough and in the end it will be considered rational... Or maybe not? I don’t know. I am confused here...

To make matters even worse, obviously any of these irrational behaviors is really only seemingly irrational. Somewhere under the hood there is a good reason why it works, but as far as I am concerned as long as we don’t know that reason the behavior remains irrational. And even when we know the reasons, all too often we get the "this behavior is by design" disclaimer. It should really say that "this behavior is by irrational design".

Keyboard Fetish

I am in nirvana...

I am in an ecstasy...

I have walked the path of no return...

Finally, after all my computing years, my never ending quest for Promised Land has come to an end. I have solved my most important and longest standing hardware problem ever.

I found THE keyboard: Topre RealForce 103.

I know, I know, why am I bugging you over such an ugly piece of crap? If you are one of those fancy developer types that like curvy aerodynamic keyboards, with dedicated buttons for Media Player, Outlook and oh yeah CALC.EXE, that's OK with me. But I like my keyboard the old fashioned style, it is so much faster to use, everything is just where it's supposed to be.

And what about Topre RealForce? Well, try it out and you will understand, that is if you can find it in a store near you :-) I can't describe this experience in words... It just feels soooo right...

Is it worth $228 (I got it around $200)???

I used to ask myself the same question for all other keyboards that came my way all those years and the answer was always NO NO NO, no matter what their price tag was. But now, for the first time I can answer with a YES.

Oh by the way, I got the white one, I don't like black keyboards :-P

Click click click click...

Have Fun!

Dimitris Staikos

Search is sick, Bing is the cure

Oh dear...

This article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31084838/ is titled "Microsoft ads say search is sick, Bing is the cure". Cute...

But, didn't anyone tell them that the Chinese word "bìng" (病), which is pronounced with the 4th tone, very similar to the English pronounciation of bing, means "sick" or "to get sick"???

More than 1 billion people, people that seem to believe in things like lucky numbers and "bad" sounds, people that feel that the number 4 is unlucky because it sounds like "death", these people say "wǒ bìng le" (我病了) and they mean "I am SICK". And MS hopes to make bing a new verb for searching and have them type in www.bing.com every now and then to do their searches?

Oh dear... I think I need another drink...

Firewire Expert Blog

Hi everyone,

Some weeks ago I posted a link to some Firewire informational videos. Now there is an insiders' blog about the history and business decisions that affected Firewire's development, written by the man himself, James Snider the Executive Director of the 1394 Trade Association. Jeff Cat is just a nickname that James is using. In an act of shameless promotion I would say that I think it is worth your time to check it out.

Oh, and here's the link: Firewire Expert Blog

Have fun!

Dimitris

Firewire Informational Videos

Hi all,

The 1394 Trade Association (www.1394ta.org) recently started a series of Firewire informational videos on YouTube. These are like "video FAQs", not full fledged tutorials. However, these videos are not made by "self-proclaimed" experts but by the 1394 Trade Association, so you are guaranteed that what you will see and hear is accurate.

Surely the 1394 Trade Association has "promoting 1394 technology" in its mission statement, but it is not a marketing organization. These videos are not marketing material, but answers to common questions about Firewire.

You can check them out at: http://www.youtube.com/user/FireWireExpert

Currently there are only a few, but if there is enough traffic then the 1394TA will decide to invest more time and money on this approach. Surely enough, you can understand that it takes much more time to prepare a video FAQ than typing in 20 lines of text on some web page.

Also don't hesitate to email them your questions, if you happen to have any.

Have fun,

Dimitris Staikos