Daily Archives: March 8, 2005

What’s in Dave Barry’s bag?

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Gizmodo asked Dave Barry what he carries in his bag. Here’s part of his reply:

The main thing I carry in my gadget bag is about 28 different power converters. I don’t know what they’re all for: Some of them date back to the early 1990s. But if I ever need to recharge a notebook computer that I no longer own, I am READY.

[…]

My phone is a Treo 600. It’s a bit too big, but I like that it syncs easily with my computers, and it has everything in it — contacts, calendars, email, and a really, really bad camera, which I call “The CrapCam.” I take pictures on it and post them to my blog, mainly because the quality of the photos enrages the blog readers and causes them to rant in an entertaining manner. I’m thinking of getting the Treo 650, which apparently has a better screen. But it also has a better camera, and I don’t know that I’m prepared to get rid of the CrapCam.

In accordance with federal law, I also have an iPod. It has 15G of memory, which is at least 14G more than I actually need, since I realize in my old age that I really only like something like nine songs. I have Bose noise-canceling headphones, which are wonderful on planes. The plane could make an emergency landing in the ocean, and those of us with Bose noise-canceling headphones wouldn’t notice until squid swam past our seats.

Quote of the day

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“You can only offer democracy to people. You can’t force it down their throats”.

Former US Secretary of State Madaleine Albright, speaking on BBC radio 4 this morning.

So who really wrote MS-DOS?

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A new twist on an old story. The pivot is that Microsoft’s fortunes were originally founded on MS-DOS, the operating system the company produced for the IBM PC and its clones in 1981. The irony is that when IBM came calling to buy an operating system, Microsoft didn’t have one, but Bill Gates went round the corner to Seattle Computer Products, which had written a DOS for the Intel 8086 chip that was to power the new PC, and bought it outright for a piffling sum (I think it was $50k). It was called Seattle Computing Products DOS. One of the great stories in the industry is that the IBM guys had called first at Digital research, Gary Kildall’s company in California, which had produced the first real microcomputer operating system (CP/M) to see if he was interested in developing a 16-bit version for the PC. But when the suits called, Kildall was out flying his plane and his wife (who answered the door) refused to sign the Non Disclosure Agreement that the IBM guys insisted on before they would open the conversation.

So we have two ironies: 1. How Kildall missed the chance to hit the big time; and 2. How the brass-necked Gates, who didn’t have an operating system, acquired one double-quick and sold it to IBM while retaining the right to sell it to other computer manfacturers.

But there is a third strand, which is the question of how Seattle Computer Products DOS came to be written. In his book, They made America, Harry Evans told the story about Kildall and Gates and the Seattle DOS which he described as a “slapdash clone” and “rip-off” of Kildall’s CP/M operating system. Now Tim Paterson, the software’s main author, has sued Evans and his publisher (Random House) for defamation. Evans says he will vigorously contest the case. Stand by for the public laundering of some very interesting dirty linen.

Intel goes for wireless mesh

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ZD Net is reporting that Intel has unveiled its first proposals for 802.11s, a new mesh wireless networking standard.

Although mesh networks are already in use for very large deployments in cities such as Taipei, and in some industry sectors, none of the systems interoperate or are suitable for domestic or office environments, [Steve] Conner [Intel’s wireless guru] claimed. The 802.11s group, which met for the first time in July 2004, has just issued its first call for proposals, and Intel is keen for the new standard to cover domestic and small business environments.

Intel’s proposals build on top of existing standards, such as 802.11a/b/g wireless transmission protocols and 802.11i security, and is compatible with them. It adds extra functions to allow wireless nodes to discover each other, authenticate and establish connections, and to work out the most efficient route for a particular task. This includes the concept of quality of service, so a broadband video stream might take a different route across a home environment than a Web connection, to achieve higher bandwidth. This level of self-configuration and environmental awareness not only creates efficient wireless networks, Conner said, but automates the entire process of installation and reconfiguration.