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CHAOS MANOR MAIL

A SELECTION

MAIL 79 December 13-19, 1999

REFRESH/RELOAD EARLY AND OFTEN!

CLICK ON THE BLIMP TO SEND MAIL TO ME

The current page will always have the name currentmail.html and may be bookmarked. For previous weeks, go to the MAIL HOME PAGE.

Fair warning: some of those previous weeks can take a minute plus to download. After Mail 10, though, they're tamed down a bit.

IF YOU SEND MAIL it may be published; if you want it private SAY SO AT THE TOP of the mail. I try to respect confidences, but there is only me, and this is Chaos Manor. If you want a mail address other than the one from which you sent the mail to appear, PUT THAT AT THE END OF THE LETTER as a signature.

PLEASE DO NOT USE DEEP INDENTATION INCLUDING LAYERS OF BLOCK QUOTES IN MAIL. TABS in mail will also do deep indentations. Use with care or not at all.

I try to answer mail, but mostly I can't get to all of it. I read it all, although not always the instant it comes in. I do have books to write too...  I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft who slowly starved to death while answering fan mail. 

If you want to send mail that will be published, you don't have to use the formatting instructions you will find when you click here but it will make my life simpler, and your chances of being published better..

This week:
Monday -- Tuesday -- Wednesday -- Thursday -- Friday -- Saturday -- Sunday

Current Mail

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Aaargh.
•  
• Deploying Windows 2000 Con
  • Pro
•  
• The Fighting Steel game
• A physician's lament
• A Big Moon ALERT
• Eating crow
  • For the humor impaired
  • Crows protected because of Mexico
• Onk?
• Security bug in Mac OS
• BEOS
• Patching Office 97 (don't)
• RealAudio
  • solved
• Languages
• Digital Movies?

Monday, 

The common rule is that waiting until everything is downloaded to display anything happens when the browser must download complete images so as to allocate space whereas displaying text while the images download happens when the image size is specified and the browser allocates a box and goes on with the text, then fills in the box later. This wait/allocate and go on can be generalized but images tend to be the slowest things.

I have not looked at the site critically in some time, it is really good enough and fairly mature from this side though the process like all processes may be improved over time; perhaps the mail has more and varied animated gifs.

Clark

The reason why Mail loads slower than View is because View is formatted with each day as a separate table. Mail is formatted as one huge table for the entire week. The browser defers displaying the contents of any table until it has all of it; otherwise, it would have to reformat the table continuously as the page downloads.

So, the simple solution to the problem posed in yesterday's Mail is to reformat mail such that each day is its own table. You must also make sure there is no large table encompassing all the smaller tables or your work will be in vain.

- Robert

Aha!

Dr Pournelle,

On Monday, 13 Dec, 1999, you wrote...

The internet is driving me crazy, but so is the telephone system. There are no human beings left in the world, and the illusion of higher productivity is just that: half the people in the world are sitting with a dead telephone in one ear, and half of those are simultaneously staring at blank screens waiting for something to happen. I hate it. I have GOT to get DSL...

I feel you should remember that like any 'good' business, you are a victim of cost offloading. The company you are on hold for will do two thiings to raise or keep its profits. one is to get you to start buying the product, and the other is to reduce their costs. If you sit on hold, (even at bulk long-distance rates of probably around .03 or .04 per minute multiplied by the ratio of people on hold to the number of staffers in the call centre ), you are costing them less than having sufficient staff for peak periods, them costing 12 to 15$ per hour. Labour laws here in Canada prevent scheduling people for one or two hours; or they will not normally accept to work small amounts like that (I normally would not). If the whole group of people is paid for the whole shift, ; I imagine that they are similar where your call center is located.

A corollary of the above is that the business will do the absolute minimum to keep you buying it's product. If you keep using that service, they will continue to downgrade the costs to the point where profit is maximized without losing too many customers. Unfortunately, a side effect is to render their customer relationships fragile to the point where if an alternative is available even at a higher cost (as you so aptly put it, "I have got to get DSL") you will jump at the chance to jump ship.

(many) Doctors and other businesses have been doing this for years, treating their customers like cattle who can wait, while they schedule us too closely packed to handle. Having a waiting line costs them nothing, while having to sit around waiting for patients to show up cost them billable time.

Fortunately, not all business conform to this model. I usually choose those that provide better service when I have the choice. I hope you get the choice soon enough.

As RAH said, "When the fox gnaws, smile."

Best Regards,

Bill Wilkinson Montréal, QC

All true, of course. One of the zillion reasons why I am not as happy about the move to unrestricted free trade and "every business must compete world wide." With airlines, I would be willing to pay 10% more for a seat a little wider and slightly less harried flight attendants. Most people apparently won't pay anything extra at all not to be stuffed into a cattle car hurtling at Mach .5 while the cabin air input is turned down to save a few dollars. We all get colds. If we go to the government people scream we are interfering with the free market.

Yet sometimes the only way to get any quality of service is for the government to MAKE EVERYONE PROVIDE IT; that way it's not in the cost competition, and we get a chance at minimum service. Making them do better cabin air ventilation is one such item. Giving us wider seats is another, but that hasn't happened yet. I can think of no worse punishment than to make the officers of the airlines ride in their airplanes weekly back there with the rest of us.

Same with telephones. 

Welcome to the Brave New World where Service is a Slogan!

I can tell you why a lot of network admins will not be in a hurry to deploy Win2K.

Do you know that MS recently released SP6 &; SP6a for NT4? Look on their site at the long list of bug-fixes it incorporates. They are hurrying to release Win2K, while NT4 is still far from being "perfect".

A cautious admin will look at the increased code-line count in the new version &; *expect* this latest effort to be riddled with bugs. Its been reported that significant problems are still being found by the beta testers, but MS say its too late to disrupt their release schedule, so the fixes will have to wait for SP1.

For use on a client machine, the initial release of Win2K may be just good enough. Users expect Windows to crash or flake-out regularly. It no longer comes as a surprise. Its probably safe enough to give the novelty-crazed their new toy.

A network admin who risks installing an almost inevitably part-baked offering on a production server better have his CV up to date.

-- Tony Dyson //To reply, remove "no_spam_" from my address//

Good point. Thanks. But I do point out that a lot of people seem to get good use out of Windows.

There are several reasons for waiting a bit until deploying Win2K, not the least of which is the switch from a domain-based model to a directory services model. Directory services offer a much more scalable and flexible object-management schema (users, servers, shares, print-queues, email addresses, etc. being objects). At the same time, if one hasn't before dealt with directory services, it can take a while for the mind to wrap around the concept; quite a bit of planning must go into a projected Win2K/Active Directory in order to expect a successful and useful deployment.

And the prospective deployment model ought to be tested exhaustively in a pilot environment prior to deployment. This is not specific to Microsoft products, but rather to any application, OS, or NOS which is going into production. Microsoft products are no more or less buggy than any other products I've dealt with in my 14 years of LAN/WAN systems engineering; I can point to any *NIX out there, including Solaris and Linux, and note the innumerable patches and bug-fixes for those platforms, some of them rushed out the door by the responsible party in question in order to fix extremely serious security and/or performance problems.

Ask anyone who deals with *NIX about the various types of buffer-overflow exploits and DoS attacks which can be launched against it, depending upon flavor, revision, patch-level, system service revisions, etc. If you don't want to have to deal with bugs and bug-fixes from time to time, then you simply shouldn't deal with computers, period.

By the same token, nothing made by human hands - especially software - will ever be 'perfect'. While the original SP6 did indeed contain a rather glaring bug, as Mr. Dyson points out, 'any systems administrator worth his salt' will test -any- fix or new version of -anything-, much less a NOS patch, before applying it to a production system. As I've stated before, I have clients running large-scale NT systems doing everything from file-and-print up to very large and fast transactional databases, and performing quite well. Same with *NIX. Same with NetWare, for that matter, though it's weak on the database side of things since NT has taken off.

Win2K will be welcomed in many quarters - after the initial investment in planning and training time, Active Directory will (just as StreetTalk did in VINES and NDS did in NetWare) allow for a much more flexible administration of the NOS/OS/application infrastructure. No, it won't be perfect, and yes, there will be problems, but no more than (and by comparison, much less than) most any other vendor's product I can name.

Roland Dobbins

Precisely. For those who don't know, Mr. Dobbins maintains his expertise by spending more time than I would believe reading newsgroups and downloading fixes and files. Of course he has a T1 into his house... For more on Win2k see below.

Dear Jerry,

Just read your latest column (Dec 13th) in which you mentioned you will be reviewing Dragon Systems, NaturallySpeaking software next month.

This past weekend I installed version 4, Preferred, and I am using it to dictate this e-mail from within Microsoft's Outlook Express. To say that I'm impressed, is an understatement. After approximately one-hour of training, I would say the accuracy is in the high 90s.

I have found, that you do get varying results when used with different programs. It appears to be most accurate running within the NaturallySpeaking document window. The biggest problem I have, is wanting to call the computer "Hal" for some strange reason.

I look forward to your review of the mobile, NaturallySpeaking version in next months column. Please be sure to include details about the hardware interface between the recorder and PC.

Thanks for the many columns you have written over the past years and for all the times your insight and product reviews have kept me out of trouble.

Thank you,

Bob Sosenko

You're welcome. I am particularly fond of the way it lets you give it documents which it goes through to find unfamiliar words. I've been feeding mine a lot of my BYTE articles.

Tuesday, December 14, 1999

My head exploded. See you tomorrow.

Hi, Your remarks on Win2k were right on target. I've been running RC1 for the last ~2 months and have been pleased with it. I use it as my main workstation for ordering parts for networks and pc's, researching computer info, and just general net browsing. We have a mixed environment of NT and Novell, no problems connecting to either side. I finally rebooted after a month to change my sound card to a SB16 from an opti931 (which doesn't run under NT. It takes getting used to going to control panel to access the administrative tools and the new feel of MMC. I'm just now finally feeling as comfortable with the whole layout as I am with NT 4. NT 4 comes second nature and I noticed I was stumbling to find services and the other inner workings (disk admin, user management, services, network protocols, etc.) I enjoy your articles and books. Have a Merry Christmas.

P. Ellerd RN, MCSE

I have found some of the interface different and the part about Network Neighborhood is positively perverse, but in general it works very well for me, and I love having a Device Manager in NT. For a different view see above.

Greetings and salutations:

First, I would like to do the usual fan thing. Having been a fan of Larry Niven's since I discovered _Ringworld_, I of course ran across your collaborations, and have found them to be wonderful. I'm a programmer with engineering tendencies, so I like any work that expands paradigms. I discovered your online column a couple weeks ago, and have been reading that as well.

Your online column reminds me of my own exploits, actually. I don't have quite as many toys as you do, but the ones I build are always causing me problems. Which brings me to why I wanted to write: I was reading your Nov 15 column, and saw the problems you were having with SSI's Fighting Steel, the naval warship game. I bought this when it first came out, and had similar problems getting it to run on my TNT card. I tried updating my drivers to no avail, and in desperation, _attempted_ to flash my bios. When I actually did the flashing, the screen became corrupted, and after five minutes, I had no choice but to reboot. Of course, my system had lost its video. To make a long story short, I went out the next day, bought a Voodoo3-2000, and have never had a problem running a game since. Fighting Steel ran flawlessly, so I tend to think it was an incompatibility between Nvidia (either drivers or hardware) and the game. I have video corruption problems in one program (an image editing app) using the V3, but I think that's a problem with the software, not the voodoo card.

In any case, Fighting Steel isn't a great game. I played until the "Oh, cool!" factor wore off and haven't really looked at it since. I like tactics and strategy, but there was just something about that game that didn't "click".

>>>>>>>>> Nathan

Nathan Walker Software Engineer Chapman Instruments (716) 424-1380 x40 FAX: (716) 424-2142 Email: nwalker@chapinst.com

Thanks. I expect you're right, it was the ATI video cards (in both cases as I recall) that hosed the Fighting Steel. I'll try it another time but I am in no hurry. Thanks.

Mr. Willkinson comments in an earlier message... "Doctors and other businesses have been doing this for years, treating their customers like cattle who can wait, while they schedule us too closely packed to handle. Having a waiting line costs them nothing, while having to sit around waiting for patients to show up cost them billable time."

Were it only so simple. I'm not interested in a beard pulling contest with Mr. Willkinson, but most physicians I know (sample size I know fairly well is on the order of 600) try to schedule people at reasonable intervals. I schedule a new visit at 60 minutes and a revisit at 20 to 30 minutes. I'm not a primary doc so I've some liberty in my ability to schedule. Of course, about 20% of my patients are late, I've emergencies, people need more time, people bring their families with them to be seen at the same visit etc, etc, etc. I'd love to find some system that would enable me to maximize my billable time and my time at home. I'd suggest that about 99% of the physicians I know would pay a huge sum for such a wonderful system. Scheduling too tightly doesn't work at all. Of course, I can't comment on the airlines or phone companies. I quite willing to believe THEY are horrid villains.

Mark Huth mhuth@internetcds.com mhuth@mcpc.com

For the record, I have yet to meet a doctor who deliberately plays the kinds of games Mr. Wilkinson describes. On the other hand, I do think the medical profession needlessly resists employment of expert systems to have a computer catch potential errors.

UNUSUAL MOON ON DECEMBER 22nd

This year will be the first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22, commonly called the first day of Winter. Since a full moon on the winter solstice will occur in conjunction with a lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth), the moon will appear about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in its elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Because the Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at this time of the year than in the summer, sunlight striking the moon is about 7% stronger making it brighter. Furthermore, this will be the closest perigee of the Moon to date since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. If the weather is clear and there is a snow cover where you live, it is believed that even car headlights will be superfluous.

On December 21st. 1866 the Lakota Sioux took advantage of this combination of occurrences and staged a devastating retaliatory ambush on soldiers in the Wyoming Territory.

In laymen's terms it will be a super bright full moon, much more than the usual AND it hasn't happened this way for 133 years!

Our ancestors 133 years ago saw this. Our descendants 100 or so years from now will see this again.

Remember this will happen December 22, 1999..... Pray for a clear night!

Okay, maybe this won't be life altering, but it should be worth taking a moment of time to look at the biggest brightest moon ever.

Sir Thad [thadco@bigfoot.com]

A point of clarification on Win2k, and also some possibly interesting bits.

The behavior of the Network desktop shortcut that replaces the Network Neighborhood does seem annoying at first. By now though you've probably learned that it adapts to you. This results in stuff that you actually navigate to on your lan now showing up as a sort of automatic shortcut in there. I used to have to set something up like it by hand, love this more.

I'm using NT RC2 server as my primary desktop and development system. I've been using NT 4 server for a couple years now as my desktop (need it due to product development demands, more convenient than running 2 machines constantly, and a damn sight quieter). I've been happy enough with it that I actually switched my wife over to RC2 today.

For her install we chose Japanese as the primary language and English as an additional support. Works wonderfully. Much better than it was before running either Japanese Win 95 or NT 4. Easier for me to administer, and all her stuff works great. Rock solid stable too, which is more than I've ever been able to say for the 95/98 incarnations.

It looks to me like this is the finest piece of work MS has ever turned out, and it is certainly their best OS effort to date. From a developer standpoint I wish the entire world would switch over tomorrow, it would make my life a whole lot easier.

Oh yea, and all the games I play (not that there are many) work just fine in Win2k. Any developer who releases a game these days (since NT4 SP3) that won't work on NT is either lazy or an amateur.

-J

Joe Pantuso NeoWorx Inc.

Thanks. My problem is that we change the net configuration a lot, and it adapts to the wrong things. But that's a minor annoyance and I too look forward to Win 2k with considerable glee.

From: Edward Hume <ehume@pshrink.com> Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 11:47:05 -0500 

Subj: Serving Suggestion 

According to the Knight-Ridder News Service, the inscription on the metal bands used by the U.S. Department of the Interior to tag migratory birds has been changed. The bands use to bear the address of the Washington Biological Survey, abbreviated: Wash. Biol. Surv. Until the agency received the following letter from a camper: "Dear Sirs,

While camping last week I shot one of your birds. I think it was a crow. I followed the cooking instructions on the leg tag and I want to tell you it was horrible."

The bands are now marked Fish and Wildlife Service.

But apparently you can't do anything here...

-----Original Message----- From: ROBERT RUDZKI [mailto:rasterho@pacbell.net] Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 11:31 PM To: Taylor at Home; RBT; jerryp@jerrypournelle.com Cc: Amber Subject: The Doctor falls for an obvious urban legend again even if it takesplace in the South...

This is a screamer, crows are protected migratory birds and the Department of the Interior bands and tracks them?

What next, grackles and magpies are also banded and tracked instead of killed by the millions as pests?

That 'camper' is also a 'farmer' in Georgia, Arkansaw, Alabama, etc, when you do a search on Yahoo! and who would ever interpret alphanumeric codes on a bird's metal leg band as cooking instructions?

I think the postal abbreviation for Washington is WA and has been since 1963...

In California, it is the Department of Fish and Game, I still am not sure what the State of Washington has to do with Federal migratory bird counts...

I don't think Washington, DC has a Fish and Wildlife Service although they have a thriving population of criminals that could use some shooting over.

Robert Rudzki rasterho@pacbell.net http://home.pacbell.net/rasterho "When the BATF declares a particular cartridge or gun to be "non-sporting' and thus not importable, can they quote the relevant text of the 2nd Amendment that applies?"

Great heavens, you take everything seriously? Of course it wasn't anything more than a joke.  Crows aren't migratory, and aren't protected anywhere I know of. When I was a lad we used to shoot one or two and hang the carcass on a pole to warn the others; crows are very good at following a planter and removing the corn seeds about as fast as you can place them. I don't recall many crows in the state of Washington when I lived there. Magpies, yes, in plenty.

Good grief.

For those who aren't humor impaired, I thought it was funny. Perhaps not.

I do not usually post press releases but this one seemed interesting. I know nothing that isn't in the press release

 : Xpress Press tm News Agency <MichaelKoenig@XpressPress.com

> Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 12:58:38 -0500 

Subj: SkipClass.com: Students find, buy, sell, trade textbooks online 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SkipClass.com promises to make college more affordable for all students and their parents

Atlanta, GA -- December 2, 1999 /Xpress Press/ -- SkipClass.com is a new free web service that lets college students nationwide find, buy, sell or trade textbooks directly with each other. College bookstores, online textbook sellers and other middlemen are completely eliminated allowing students and their parents to save as much as 80% off the cost of textbooks bought through traditional methods.

"I found wasting hundreds of dollars every semester at the college bookstore the worst part about college. When I talked to my college buddies and their parents I found out that they all felt the same way. With the cost of attending college escalating every year, I decided to do something about it," said Tony Pham, a twenty year old student and founder of SkipClass.com

College students visiting the new web site at www.skipclass.com can post a book, find a textbook and buy, sell or trade directly with other students at the same college or any of more than 3600 colleges nationwide without paying a fee or commission to anybody.

BookWatch is another convenient service you'll find. It alerts you automatically as soon as any textbook you specify becomes available through SkipClass.com. There is also a classifieds area where any student can post any item for sale or exchange directly with other college students without paying for the ad or any other fees many others charge. The service is completely free. Free personals and chat areas are available for students to meet and make new friends or stay in touch. The site has a clean, student friendly interface. It is very easy to navigate and does not require annoying registration or passwords to remember.

A free Student Auction, free email, free homepage hosting, free Movies, Concerts and Restaurant Guides and other services will soon be added to make SkipClass.com the preferred and only free national student resource and college student community destination point.

SkipClass.com is currently developing relationships with several national sponsors like Dell, (Nasdaq:DELL), American Express, (NYSE:AXP), VISA, Auto-By-Tel, (Nasdaq:ABTL) Bank Of America, (NYSE:BAC) First Union, (NYSE:FTU) GM (NYSE:GM) and Ford (NYSE:F) who want to capture a bigger share of the $120 billion students spend annually on goods and services. They will be offering discounted brand name products and services directly to college students visiting www.skipclass.com . This sponsorship will help keep SkipClass.com a free service to all college students.

For further information, visit www.skipclass.com or email Tony at tony@skipclass.com 

Contact: Tony Pham Email: Tony@SkipClass.com  

Web site: http://www.skipclass.com  Phone: 770-934-0880

:END Attention journalists: Change of mail address or beat assignment may be directed to <media@XpressPress.com >. XPN makes no representation as to the accuracy of information transmitted herein. Full-text versions of releases are available at our searchable archives located online at: http://www.XpressPress.com/search 

Jerry,

I am a hunter, and I too had previously heard the urban legend on the leg band recipe cooking crows, and was properly amused.

You were right, when we were kids crows were vermin and shot regularily. Along about 1970 or so some fed bureaucrats added them to a migratory bird treaty, and they gained federal protection from that. This is one of those things that had no notice or review until after the fact and it was cast in concrete.

jim dodd

Onk? Now I am astonished. I hadn't for a moment supposed that crows were a protected species. They are amazing birds, and if you are not a farmer you might get to like them: there are many here in Studio City, and they tend to live in small nuclear families, not great honking flocks as they did when I was a kid: adaptive behavior. Then about 6 in the evening they ALL gather in one or another place, never seems to be the same place twice running, for what I can only call a Crow Convention. This happens at least once a week and sometimes more often. They fill some trees, hundreds of crows, and they chatter and caw for a while and then disperse.  I wonder that they talk about.

They will often chase hawks away from the flatlands but they are smart enough to avoid the hawks in the park above where there are thermals and the hawks can easily get above them. Crows can't glide or ride thermals and have to flap hard to gain altitude unlike hawks.

Of course for sheer spunk the Mocking Birds which are cousins to the crows are the champions, chasing hawks, crows, blue jays, cats, dogs, and small children away from their territory.  Mocking birds are less social than crows, and I never seen them gather into flocks, but they will all come to the aid of a mocking bird attacking a crow or a hawk. Or a cat.

There are lots of Corvus birds beyond the common crow some endangered as well as some regulations that speak only of Crows (Corvus) [ The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulations, 50 CFR Chapter 1 20.1 speak to the hunting of "migratory game birds, and crows."]so that Crows count as migratory (some do some don't even for the common crow) and taking the common crow is regulated just as taking game is regulated. The crow is not currently unprotected as vermin. Of course in the South when you were growing up the local crows did not migrate and were appropriately treated as nuisances on the farm.

A dead horse in the field and an owl decoy or several is traditional. The Winchester factory people used to do this every year in Kansas, where some of the crows from Canada winter over, to wring out current and proposed production shotguns.

I go along with the saying that if people were birds few would be smart enough to be crows.

http://cuvc.bio.cornell.edu/mcgowan/crowinfo.htm is a first rate source for more detail.

Clark 

I can't disagree with your observation. I like crows so long as I am not planting corn...

And then on a more serious note:

When I was involved in Hunter Education we agonized about students who did not or perhaps would not read. Students who for whatever reason had not learned in school came to Hunter Safety Classes well motivated and learned letter perfect. When even shooting crows and coyotes is bounded by regulations that change every year passing a student who absorbs this year's rules letter perfect but won't read next year's is worrisome. Not so much for the animal population which will mostly do O.K. but for the student who will risk prosecution through ignorance. Incidentally for the people I worked with the passing requirement was not a score on any test but would I feel safe hunting with this child? In almost every case the answer was I would feel much safer with this child in the fields and forests than I would with his parents.

Certainly the students are perfectly capable of learning, as Mrs. Pournelle's Reading Program demonstrates so nicely as well, but they don't.

Tragic that a hunting license and peer approval should be ample motivation but a job hunting license is not. Perhaps trophy animals are more visible than trophy jobs.

Clark 

Most people in the space biz are, in one way or another, a product of Robert Heinlein's (or Asimov, or Clarke...). Not me. I'm a product of Fletcher Pratt's. (And Willy Ley.)

I've only ever read one "adult" book of Pratt's (his one volume history of the American Civil War), but for some reason, the first bunch of books that I ever read, back in first grade, were a series of young adult books co-written by Pratt and Ley -- books on why space, and how space.

I was already hooked before reading these books, but this series (I have copies!) was my first real introduction to the actual underlying scientific and technical rationales, as well as the larger, philosophical issues, too.

Running into Clarke and Heinlein two years later only served to reinforce the work that Pratt and Ley had already done.

So I say, God bless Fletcher Pratt, and Willy Ley, too. Two men who did yeoman work in their time, and who are unfairly forgotten now.

Tim Kyger

Fletcher Pratt and Harold Lamb both had great influence over me. And Pratt's Battles That Changed History, which is apparently for real to be republished next month, is the best one-volume history of western civilization I ever saw.

I had the honor to be Willy Ley's successor as science editor and columnist for Galaxy Science Fiction a lifetime ago. Willy died a few months before Apollo. If there's any justice they let him be there when the Eagle landed.

If you'll tell me where, I'll fix it. I don't always get to do as much proof reading as I should, and while my brain knows that it's is always a contraction for 'it is', my fingers don't always know it. But to be strict, surely I used it incorrectly as a possessive?

And after looking for a long time and not finding it, I discover that the usage is in someone else's letter, not mine. While I do correct glaring errors in mail before I post it, I don't always go over every letter word by word. I'll go fix this one just to have it done, but it wasn't mine. It also was an improper usage as a POSSESSIVE, not as an adjective. Please, if you want to pick on my grammar, at least do me the courtesy of correcting something I wrote. I do not and will not guarantee to grammatical integrity of every letter I post.

Jerry, Just got this from Bugnet. Looks like the push for Macs to be enterprise machines has a bit of a nasty hitch.

Excerpt from Bugnet email:

Mac OS 9 allows users to log out of the OS without terminating server connections. Anyone able to log into the client machine will then have access to the previous user's network connections.

Tracy

tracy@nemontel.net

Thanks. Easily fixed, I presume, but one wants to be aware of that.

Jerry I have enjoyed your webb site so very much. I have been a BYTE reader since 1981 and waited each month for your contributions to the magazine.

I've been at the game ( computers ) for almost 20 years now and have just installed BeOs last week.

You really need to take a look at it. The worst problem is applications at present. However, there are some and they are OK.

Please give it a try. I've fought the windows thing since 1990 and for the last 4 years have been trying each new release of Linux.

My feelings about Linux is much as yours are, not ready for the masses. Just installed Caldera's last issue, ver 2.3 and it's close but not yet.

I'm using Linux "Red Hat" for a web server at my work place, along with NT4 and Win2000 server and professional.

I haven't been as excited over a system since my first MAC experiance.

Please try, and let us know your thoughts.

Carl Sanders

Thanks for the kind words. Eric Pobirs is very fond of BEOS and I intend to put it up next in a dual boot machine as soon as I get just a little more settled with Linux. The lack of applications has held BEOS back but I am told it is a very good environment in which to develop applications, so perhaps that will change soon. Thanks. I'll get to it soon enough...

Long essay from Steve Stirling on Free Trade over in AltMail.

One never knows the consequences of an action. I posted what I thought was a funny story, was berated for my errors, and now have learned more about government and crows than I ever suspected I would.

So to be fair, here from the original berator:

Subject: Re: The Doctor falls for an obvious urban legend again even if it takes place in the South..

Well, I heard that everything on the Internet must be true and when I can debunk something I find, I feel I have accomplished something.

Sorry, I didn't know you had a sense of humor... Now Chris Ward, that man is funny...

Regards,

Robert

ROBERT RUDZKI [rasterho@pacbell.net]

Jerry, A minor point on crows being protected. It really wasn't our idea, and crows are still considered vermin pretty much everywhere in America, but in Mexico they are considered a much more valuable bird. Crows actually do migrate to an extent, and it was part of a deal with Mexico to have crows protected here.

Nevermind the fact that here the crow is a very destructive bird that eats an amazing amount of corn seed and ripe grain. Flocks of crows can also be a hazard to aircraft, but because Mexico wanted them protected, we have to put up with ever increasing numbers.

When I was a kid there was actually a bounty on crows, and our country school award prizes to the student who brought in the most crow's feet. Alas, times change.

James A. Ritchie

There may have been a bounty on them in Tennessee when I was a lad, but mostly we tried to drive them away. Not easily done. They're smart and persistent. But we did find that shooting a couple of them and hanging the carcass on a pole was much more effective than a scarecrow. I confess that now that I live in a city I have become rather fond of the crows, and since they don't live in huge flocks it's possible to get to know some of them as individuals, like the big old lone male who inhabits the big pine down the street, and the four who live up in the park above us and who like to "play hawk" when there is enough wind to have a big updraft at the cliff edge. But I can't imagine them being protected.

Office 97 Updates Part III

The latest saga in Microsoft updates is that having released SR1a and SR2a and SR1b and SR2b patches for Office 97, Microsoft has seemingly thrown in the towel. Since it still remains essentially impossible to patch Office 97 to SR2 level in many (if not most) instances, you can now call an 800 number and get the actual software package, pre-patched to SR2, if you own the unpatched version. I discovered this after my _second_ attempt to perform the upgrade at a client's site using the SR1b and SR2b patches from Microsoft's website. Since there was no meaningful solution in the Knowledgebase, I started searching usenet using DejaNews. I discovered a plethora of irate posts originating from Australia to Germany and all points between, complaining of the inability to patch installed Office 97, as well as the cryptic and obtuse error messages and the useless "fixes" in the Knowledgebase. To give you an idea of Microsoft's embarassment, if you order the Small Business Server upgrade from 4.0 to 4.5, they make you pay $7.00 shipping and handling, but there's _no_ shipping charge for the Office 97 SR2 full install!

At this point, it has taken me long to upgrade a small number of PCs to Office 97 SR2 than it probably took for them to install the entire network, including cabling....

Christopher C. Morton cmorton@newsguy.com

I missed all that. I found Office 97 unusable when it first came out, and stayed with Office 95 until Office 97 SR2 came out. I have never installed 97-1 except the one time when I decided I didn't care enough for whatever it did new that I would put up with its problems. On the other hand, I used SR2 on many systems and have it some places still; I think Niven is using SR2 of 97 to this day. I a coming to the conclusion that Office 2000 is worth upgrading to, but many will find 97 SR2 good enough...

So far have we come. I offer the following press release as an example that the world has gone mad.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Sally Riedel, (877) 629-8724

Don't Bet on Y2K to Save You From a Sexual Harassment Suit

How to Keep Your Holiday Party Sexual Harassment Free

December 15, 1999 - Phoenix, AZ

The world may end on December 31, but you better not count on it. If you act inappropriately at your company's holiday party, you might find yourself waking up with more than a hangover to ring in the New Year. A sexual harassment lawsuit will sober you up faster than a pot of black coffee and a cold shower.

In this age of tough sexual harassment and employment discrimination laws, Corpedia.com, the leading Internet-based training company, proudly announces its annual Top Ten Tips to keep the lawsuit "Grinch" from stealing your company party's holiday cheer.

1. Keep Santa in line. Don't allow your employees to sit on his lap. The local Rent-a-Santa probably doesn't conduct background checks.

2. Watch the holiday "Cheers." Keep a close eye on alcohol consumption and inebriated employees. If necessary, arrange for transportation. The price for cab fares is far better than the cost of a negligence lawsuit due to a drunk-driving employee.

3. Assign designated "party watchers." Make sure they're sticklers (like those accounting types) who will be strict on excessive drinking or other inappropriate behavior.

4. Don't ignore feisty holiday spirit. Overly romantic displays of affections can be a serious matter.

5. Watch the reindeer games. Discourage activities that invite touching or personal revelations. This includes the all-time party favorite "The Rumba Line."

6. Encourage employees to bring their significant others. Their presence discourages intra-office flirting and almost always ensures your workers are good little boys and girls.

7. Monitor any gift giving. Discourage the exchange of offensive or inappropriate gifts that have sexual or romantic overtones.

8. Start and end the party early. This can keep "God rest ye merry gentlemen" from becoming "Bob, arrest these merry gentlemen!"

9. Lock up the copy machine. Blotchy copying problems may be the least of your worries if daring employees get their hands on it.

10. And lastly, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER hang mistletoe at the office party.

Happy Holidays from Corpedia.com - the leading Internet-based training company!

Corpedia is based in Phoenix, AZ and offers interactive, Internet-based, Internet linked products in legal basics; management, communications, and professional success skills; workplace safety; and sales and management qualities. The company's website is http://www.corpedia.com.

-30-

I have had some problems with Real Audio (see view). There is considerable response

I've used Real Player for quite some time, but I always use the free version. They always have a slightly less capable, but free version you can download. Of late, they have made the links to the location where you can download it obscure, but it's there.

I have occasionally had congestion trouble, but not as a matter of routine. When I have had the problem, it seems to have been more a matter of server overload than network congestions. There are, however, days when you just can't get anything.

I'd recommend you download the free version, fiddle with that, and then if you decide you want something in the pay version upgrade later.

Real Player G2 (final version): http://proforma.real.com/real/player/g2player.html?src=991217realhome

_1,nav,991217choice&;lang=en&;dc=122012191218 

(I had to break the line above)

Real Player 7 (Beta) http://proforma.real.com/real/player/player.html?src=991217realhome_1,nav,991217choice&;dc=122012191218 

Scott Kitterman kitterma@erols.com

In fact I was able to find my serial number and reinstall the paid for version, but it isn't working. After many minutes I still have "net congestion, buffering" which is an uninteresting way to spend time.

And Robert Bruce Thompson says

> RealAudio has got some problems.

No kidding. I've never heard one of your broadcasts. I've never even tried, because it would require installing the RA player, and I refuse to do that. In the past RA has caused numerous conflicts on my systems. Also, I refuse to use products from that company because of their underhanded attempt to violate their users' privacy. Granted, they are not the only such company, but not using their products isn't much of a sacrifice.

I'd like to listen to your broadcasts, but not at the expense of installing RA. Why cannot BYTE make the broadcasts available as MP3s in addition to (or instead of) RA? They could use 64 k/s compression on a mono source, which is perfectly adequate for reproducing voices and yields relatively small files.

-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com

I have no answer to his final question because I try to stay as far from business as I can. They pay me to do the broadcasts, which are pretty good. Probably "they" don't do that because BYTE.COM isn't a very big operation; we have editors and writers, but there is not a lot of production staff. And I don't know how you get revenue from broadcast files; I presume the TechWeb system does have a way to pay us for what we are doing.

Hi, Jerry.

I saw your comment about downloading ReadAudio files.

"Earthlink says they can do DSL here. So does Pac Bel. We will see Monday. But the Real Player thing seems to me to be a big fraud. Maybe once a month I actually get a broadcast. Is there something I can install that will take its own sweet time to download the stuff, buffer it, and play it? Is there a setting I am doing wrong? I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but I can't even hear my own broadcasts most of the time. This is silly. Clearly SOMEONE is able to listen to this stuff, but is it only those with fast connections?"

You can get reasonably good RealAudio over a 56K modem link if all you want is audio, if you have a good ISP with a good network, and if the RealAudio server you are connecting to isn't overloaded. Forget about video over a modem link -- it's technically possible but in reality it probably won't work well. But you shouldn't have a problem with audio although the quality won't be great.

However, there are a couple of programs that you can use to download RealAudio files. One is called X-FileGet. It was developed as shareware and works OK for the older pre-G2 RealAudio files and services, but unfortunately is pretty much useless for most current feeds. It was bought and is now being developed as StreamBox VCR. See http://www.streambox.com/Products/X-FileGet/index.asp. You can download X-FileGet 1.0 and sign up for the StreamBox VCR beta program, which is the only way you can get the new version at the moment. I have it and it does work pretty well, although it is very clearly a beta with some glitches and missing features.

There is also a driver that will intercept the input from the RealAudio feed to your sound card and save it as a WAV file. I don't have a link for it to give you, unfortunately but I have seen a writeup on it. The main disadvantage is that a .WAV file of a RealAudio feed would be huge and it doesn't save video.

Your best bet is probably to sign up for the StreamBox VCR beta program.

Good luck with DSL. I got cable modem access a few months ago and I can't imagine having to go back to dialup. It's not as fast as DSL but it is plenty good enough.

Regards and thanks for the web site and the great books. I'm very much looking forward to The Burning City and the next Jannisaries book.

Best Keith

-- Keith Soltys ksoltys@home.com http://members.home.com/ksoltys/

Thanks. What you are really telling me is "not yet" and "get DSL", I think. Real Audio must serve someone, but one begins to wonder, who?

Jerry,

To add my two bits to the fray of Realplayer. I am able to receive your broadcast on Realplayer 7 basic with few problems. It slows during peak periods, but I just checked a couple minutes ago (Sunday, 1:45 P.M.) and it was fast and clear, no buffering at all. I didn't do anything special, just allowed the defaults to setup. I'm using a external Diamond Suprasonic 33.6 modem, due to the reasons mentioned below. I prefer external modems, because you can see what is happening on the front panel, and because if something hangs, you can often power down the modem without shutting down your whole system, albeit, since I have been running Windows 98, this very rarely, if ever, happens any more. In fact, as I type this, I realize I haven't had to do this for a really long time.

I am at the end of a very slow pipe. Out in this area of Montana, the only ISP available is a subsidiary of the local telco, which is a small rural telephone cooperative. The only connection provided is a 33.6KBPS connection, which I have never achieved. I usually connect at 31.2KBPS, but sometimes (when it really hot, really cold, rainy or windy) it drops to 26.4KBPS. I live in the country, about 3.5 miles from the telco exchange where the local router to the ISP exists. There are several modems connected to the router, and from there a 56K pipe ties to a network access point out in western Montana...Great Falls, I think. Anyway, the connection is worse as you get farther from the exchange, with some customers dropping to 16.8 on regular connections. We have some customers still on old equipment, who have multiplexers on their line who cannot get over 12 KBPS. It will probably be years before they are upgraded, too.

Another option. Have you tried Windows Media Player? I am on version 6.4, and have had good luck with it, and it appears to be completely compatible with Realplayer and MP3 files.

I suspect though, that your problem, if not in settings of the Realplayer program, has to do with the ISP's throughput relative to the modems you are connecting on. Have you asked them about streaming throughput? I know the equipment may be optimized for this, or for downloads. Another problem is modem compatibility. Try a different brand of modem. I had a friend whose Diamond Supra Express just could not connect reliably with the ISP's (different than mine) Livingston Modem rack. The ISP did some upgrades to make it work, and his connection has been quite reliable since.

You probably know all this, as you have some real experts in the area helping you, and I am just repeating old knowledge, but it is what my situation is.

Thanks, Tracy

tracy@nemontel.net

I had about concluded that the problem was the server, but now I wonder if it isn't just local traffic, with Earthlink the major culprit. And then came:

Real Player (free version components all in the version 6 range - lots of components in the full list too) works for me when the source is: Listen to Jerry Pournelle reminiscing http://media.cmpnet.com/radio/byte/19990228_pournelle_j/19990228_pournelle_j_288.ram  about how the Chaos Manor column started. I am not equipped at home to try the: Also available at ISDN Speed http://media.cmpnet.com/radio/byte/19990228_pournelle_j/19990228_pournelle_j_isdn.ram  runs 7:28. The audio streams on a 56K telephone line modem connecting in the high 40's. Starts quickly and plays completely. The sound quality is decent AM radio voices perfectly recognizable and of course quite distinctive. When the source is Techweb Multimedia something breaks often enough that I don't try to make it work. My gut feeling has been that things fail in passing the information around in what is after all a fairly complex process. Download then play as suggested elsewhere is a more robust system but demands a more robust system. I have been quite pleased with Real Player and Real Jukebox. I do check for component upgrades quite often in between new version releases; there are lots of pieces. On the other hand I have refused their kind offers to be the default player for this, that and the other thing and to include plug-ins that do things I don't do. Peg Bracken once said in effect to beware the solutions to problems you don't have. Don't know why I file serial numbers by writing them on CD's instead of 3X5 cards when I often don't actually use the files from the CD but I do it that way.

Clark E. Myers e-mail at: ClarkEMyers@msn.com 

and some other mail. It turns out that one must tweak things a lot if you have a netserver, but once you do, it works better than ever. Those without netservers won't have the problem I had but may have other problems. Anyway, see view for more.

> Is there any rival to Microsoft in languages now?

As with so many things, the answer is Yes and No.

Visual Studio includes (amongst other things) Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual J (Java).

The main rival to Visual Basic is Delphi from Borland/Inprise/Whatever they call themselves now. Delphi is Visual Pascal, rather than Visual Basic, but Visual Basic is more like Pascal than Basic anyway.

Both of these are excellent tools. Visual Basic dominates the market for very small systems. For larger, enterprise, systems, Delphi has a reasonable market share. At the top end of the market, these tools also compete with Sybase's Powerbuilder.

Visual C++ has most of the C++ market. Borland's C++ Builder is a good tool, particularly for enterprise apps, but it trails a little in performance. IBM, Sybase and Symantec all had good C++ products, but it seems that they have discontinued them in the last year or so (at least in Australia).

The Java market is the really thriving one. There are dozens of competitors to Visual J, inclusing tools from Borland, Sybase, IBM and Symantec. There is one complication in comparing these tools. All of the tools, except the Microsoft one, produce portable apps which can run on a variety of systems. While the Microsoft tool *can* do that, it doesn't by default - and it's not clear from the documentation how to do it.

The complication is this: the non-portable apps from Microsoft are significantly faster than the portable ones. So a programmer must choose between a fast app which only runs under Windows, and a slower one which runs (more or less) everywhere.

That's the subject of some legal action (if I recall correctly).

Regards

Michael Smith --  Michael Smith emmenjay@zip.com.au Emmenjay Consulting Pty Ltd http://www.zip.com.au/~emmenjay/

Just when you've made it foolproof, along comes a better class of fool.

Thanks. Yes, I know about Delphi, which is very good, and as you say, Visual Basic is more Pascal than BASIC anyway. 

The real question on the JAVA Apps is, are Microsoft's portable apps slower than anyone else's? And are other people's as fast as the Microsoft non-portable? And finally, does anyone else make "Windows Only" apps and if so are they as fast as Microsoft's "Windows only"? You see where I am headed. (Continued next week.)

The following isn't precisely a letter, but it goes here as well as anywhere. It raises interesting points:

Dear Jerry,

This is the 48th of my newsletters. Sometimes you come along the perfect commentary that cannot be improved on. My comments here are to underscore the relevance of the original material to the subjects covered in the Telirati newsletters. It is wonderful to come across this kind of thing: a person so steeped in his business that insights like those quoted herein are immediately seen to be on the mark. It is also informative to see a movie critic, when so many people of his ilk can get away with a superficial understanding of their subject matter, demonstrate an understanding that spans from the highest peaks of opinionated commentary down to, literally, the sooty works in the projection booth.

I found a link to this piece on Slashdot, a site long counted among the Really Useful ones I link to. Here is the original story in the Chicago Sun Times: http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/maxi12.html

Enjoy:

Home page: http://www.phonezone.com/telirati The forums: http://www.phonezone.com/telirati/forum.htm The "about" page: http://www.phonezone.com/telirati/about Really useful links: http://www.phonezone.com/telirati/links

Best regards, -Zigurd Mednieks Zigurd_Mednieks@msn.com

Telirati Newsletter #48: What Roger Ebert Can Teach Us About Telephony

What can a movie critic, a fat man in a tweed jacket, teach us about telephony? A lot, as you will see. Telephony, because it is so widely used, is about what people want, much the same as making and showing movies. In a recent column, Roger Ebert, a noted movie critic, takes his gaze away from the screen and looks into the projection booth. There he finds digital cinema technology trying to make an unwise leap and landing under the wheels of the juggernaut of refined existing systems:

(From Ebert's column) I have seen the future of the cinema, and it is not digital. No matter what you've read, the movie theater of the future will not use digital video projectors, and it will not beam the signal down from satellites. It will use film, and the film will be right there in the theater with you.

Then there is the hype:

(From Ebert's column) But how good is digital projection? I saw it demonstrated in May at the Cannes Film Festival, and have read reports of those who've attended the custom "Phantom Menace" installations. A system offered by Hughes is not very persuasive, the witnesses say, but the Texas Instruments system is better; reviews range from "85 percent as good as a real movie" to "about as good." The special effects in "Phantom Menace" looked especially sharp, viewers said, and there's a reason: They were computer-generated in the first place, so they arrived at the screen without stepping down a generation to film. And because they depicted imaginary places, it was impossible to judge them on the basis of how we know the real world looks.

For all the hype, "about as good" is about as good as reviews get. Remind you of anything? Like how H.323 and most other forms of IP telephony is "about as good" as normal switched-circuit telephony? "About as good" should ring alarm bells to management and investors. Nobody wants to get a new technology that is about as good as the old one. In one case, we have a digital cinema technology that delivers less resolution than film, in the case of telephony, a technology that could deliver better phone calls, but generally doesn't, because of poor choices in product formulation.

In the case of cinema, what is going to keep digital projection at bay?

(From Ebert's column) "Dijection" offers a wonderful new prospect, if it's for real. But it's not the only possible future. Far from the boardrooms of Texas Instruments, which has unlimited financial resources and wants to grab the world movie distribution market, there is an alternative film-based projection system that is much cheaper than digital, uses existing technology and (hold onto your hats) is not "about as good" as existing film, but, its inventors claim, 500 percent better. That is not a misprint. This system is called MaxiVision48. I have seen it demonstrated. It produces a picture so breathtakingly clear it is like 3-D in reverse: like looking through an open window into the real world. Motion is shown without the jumpiness and blurring of existing film projection, details are sharper, and our eyes are bathed in visual persuasion.

Is Ebert describing something like IMAX? No. IMAX has its own problems. The system he describes is a relatively simple and quite inexpensive optimization of 35mm film projection:

(From Ebert's column) Without getting into labyrinthine technical explanations, here is how MaxiVision48 works: It can project film at 48 frames per second, twice the existing 24-fps rate. That provides a picture of startling clarity. At 48 frames, it uses 50 percent more film than at present. But MV48 also has an "economy mode"... MV48 uses a new system to pull the film past the projector bulb without any jitter or bounce... MV48 completely eliminates the jiggle that all current films experience as they dance past the projector bulb. Watching it, I was startled to see how rock solid the picture was, and how that added to clarity... The result: "We figure it's 500 percent better than existing film or the Texas Instruments video projection system, take your choice," Goodhill (the inventor) told me.

Unfortunately for the digital cinema equipment providers, this refinement is startlingly inexpensive:

(From Ebert's column) It is also a lot cheaper, because it retrofits existing projectors, uses the original lamp housings and doesn't involve installing high-tech computer equipment. MaxiVision's business plan calls for leasing the projectors at $280 a month, but if you wanted to buy one, it would cost you about $10,000. Estimates for the Texas Instruments digital projector range from $110,000 to $150,000 per screen.

In this, we see reflected other aspects of how the new telephony is actually unfolding, in contrast with some predictions. Instead of the telephone infrastructure (and incumbent operators) being replaced, they are being refined. Fully IP-based infrastructures may be on the way, but solutions that focus on true network operator needs are likely to do quite well until IP calls are not just "nearly as good" or even "just as good," but will likely be dominant until anyone offering an alternative technology delivers along with it phone calls that are really better.

Well, more expensive and not better seldom beats cheaper and better, but this is not the most interesting part of the comparison. The really interesting part is the fact that the refinement trumps the new technology by offering a higher quality expeience to the viewer. The system's inventors seem to grasp the needs of the people making the pictures, which is how they arrived at a system that delivers something superior to every point in the value chain: a superior tool to the cinematographer, an economical system to the cimema operator, and a visibly better result to the customer buying the ticket:

(From Ebert's column) One advantage of a film print is that the director and cinematographer can "time" the print to be sure the colors and visual elements are right. In a digital theater, the projectionist would be free to adjust the color, tint and contrast according to his whims. Since many projectionists do not even know how to properly frame a picture or set the correct lamp brightness, this is a frightening prospect... We saw a scene that had been shot for Goodhill by another cameraman who likes the system, Steven Poster, vice president of the American Society of Cinematographers. Poster deliberately assembled a scene filled with technical pitfalls for traditional film and video systems: We see actor Peter Billingsley walking toward the camera, wearing a patterned shirt. He is passed by another guy, wearing a T-shirt with something written on it. The camera tilts down as Billingsley picks up a hose to water a lawn. The camera continues to move past a white picket fence. In the background, a truck drives out of a parking lot. Not great art, but great headaches for cinematographers, who know that picket fences will seem to "flutter" if panned too quickly, that water droplets will blur, and that the sign on the side of a moving truck cannot be read. All true in the old systems. With MV48, we could read the writing on the shirt, see every picket in the fence, see the drops of water as if in real life and read the side of the truck. Case closed.

This is a devastating case. Simpler, better, cheaper, more compatible. By now you may be thinking "In film, I can see the advantages, literally. But what do you do once you have delivered a full-rate voice telephone call?" And this question is at the crux of why alternative telephone technologies have had such little impact on sales of telephone equipment. Has nobody asked if you (or, more importantly, the customer) would want a better phone call? The very term "full rate" inspires a lack of inspiration. Why go to all the trouble of digital phones, network interfaces, complicated protocol stacks, powerful servers, abundant bandwidth, and the imposition of QoS on a network that mostly spells c-h-a-o-s when all that is delivered at the end is a full-rate phone call, perhaps not even, and almost always with marginal to poor latency?

Can we do better? Why yes. And this answer is not even an outre suggestion, it is right under our noses, at least if we are familiar with ISDN or ATM. "High quality voice" is an ISDN service. It bears reminding that ISDN means Integrated Services Digital Network, integrating the definition of services into the definition of the network. We only need support a long-defined service in order to provide to users voice quality that is more like broadcast-quality audio than a phone call. ATM is even more flexible, allowing us to trade off network bandwidth for signal processing horsepower in situations where that is appropriate. H.323 and IP telephony on 100Mb networks would easily afford the bandwidth. Yet we are stuck with systems that deliver a product that is "almost as good" as the decades-old systems they want to replace. Unlikely.

But can such attention to a quality experience by the user find powerful allies? In film, it can:

(From Ebert's column) The big film companies such as Kodak and Fuji should like the system, since it will help them sell more film. The directors who love celluloid, like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, should know about MV48. And there are other applications. Retail outlets use "video walls" to create atmosphere. Rainforest Cafes could put you in the jungle. NikeTown could put you on the court with Michael Jordan. No more million-dollar walls of video screens, but a $10,000 projector and a wall-sized picture.

What about telephony? Both IP telephony and voice-over-ATM systems have the prospect of delivering a truly better product, in audio quality, in call information, in lightning-quick connection, in integration with PC and Palm-based information, in the richness and friendliness of voice interface. Why use bells and tones and buzzes when you can explain things to the user and offer alternatives? Still, makers of new-style systems seem to think their work is done when it is "almost as good as" phone calls delivered over the very first, and now decades-old electronic exchanges.

Are the developers of new telephony systems stupid? No, they are merely tired. By the time they have gotten their products to work, with their investors breathing down their necks, they are happy to have something that will satisfy a specification and a business plan, rather than make a customer say "Wow!" But if you really want success, you won't stop until you have something that is really remarkable, not just respectable.

Moreover, the best way to come to an understanding of how to assemble the right set of capabilities into a system that delights not only the end-customer, but every hand along the value chain to that end-customer is to develop as integrated a view of your pursuit as Roger Ebert and the inventors of the MV48 projector have of cinema. Without the ability to translate artistic need, viewing delight, and cameraman's craft, all the way down into the engineering detail of how film is pulled through a projector, they would have produced something only prosaic, incremental, and only a half-step improvement in one place in the value chain. Similarly, without the ability to integrate knowledge of users, network operators, and all levels of system design and implementation, just having the ambition to produce a great telephony product won't get you to actually have one in the end.

Copyright 1999 Zigurd Mednieks. May be reproduced and redistributed with attribution and this notice intact.

My question is, is this right? I think bits is bits, and digital rules: digital is subject to Moore's law, and if today's digital projectors are too expensive tomorrow's won't be. Comments invited. (See next week.)