Journey to USB 3.0 - SUPERSPEED

Remember when the USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard first came out? It was pretty sweet wasn't it. The first thing I remember it coming out for, at least the first thing I used it for, was the mouse, ball mouse to be specific. Introduced first in 1996 from collaboration between Intel, Compaq, Microsoft, Digital, IBM, NEC, and Northern Telecom. The device is used with a variety of devices including: Ethernet adapters, modems, serial port adapters, keyboards, mice, joysticks, digital cameras, printers, USB flash drives, memory card readers, media players, external drives, hubs, webcams, Wi-Fi adapters, and bluetooth adapters. The list is quite long and doesn't even cover all uses.

The architecture of USB has an asymmetric design. Which enables you to connect a root of devices (up to 127) from one port. The device will host a other devices and operate in a round robin fashion to orchestrate data between devices.

First there was Low Speed USB 1.0 which rate was 1.5 Mbit/s. It is intended primarily to save cost in low-bandwidth devices such as keyboards, mice, and joysticks. Also to smooth out the multitude of device specific ports previously used on the rear of computer towers.

Second came USB 1.1 nicknamed Full Speed. At a data rate of 12 Mbits/s. Which basically is faster and becomes the standard for hub speed.

Then comes High Speed USB 2.0. Which has a data rate of 480 Mbit/s or 60 MB/s, which is a great leap of improvement for speed. Devices using this standard are backwards compatible to previous standards if connecting a 2.0 device to a 1.1 computer. Original specifications were released April 27, 2000. Many changes and alterations were modified or added in the USB 2.0 over the next several years. These changes consisted of a variety including: mini-B, USB on-the-go, microUSB, power link, and microB.

USB is very common and versatile and the durability is hard to beat. The hardest trouble an inexperienced USB user would run into is which direction it plugs in. Although one hard push the wrong way and it soon becomes apparent that you may want to turn it around.

As of November 17, 2008 specifications for USB 3.0 have been released. The standard, nicknamed SuperSpeed boasts power and performance improvements while maintaining backward compatibility. With controllers expected in mid summer the USB product rollout is anticipated for 2010. The first devices to incorporate the standard will most likely be external hard drives, media players, flash drives, and cameras.

Data rate of SuperSpeed prides a 5.0 Gb/s with simultaneous bi-direction data flow(dual-bus). Features a six wire design, using four wires for dual-simplex SuperSpeed data path and the other two wires for half-duplex differential signaling used by previous USB standards. Another feature is packets are sent asynchronously to only devices meant for the packet. Compared to previous standards, in which packets were directed to all devices.

In summary, USB 3.0 products are basically already the shit, even if they're not even out yet.

Kodak Krap

It seems as if I have uncovered a Kodak secret (it was for me anyways). The terms of service have changed as of March 13th for their online storage site: kodakgallery.com formally known as Ofoto. While this affects previous users who were told it was totally free, and new members. There is a notice on the site at the bottom right of the main page, so it's warning isn't totally secret.

Now on to the actual changes. There is a mandatory minimum purchase of 4.99 a year for users. While users with more than 2 GB of disk space used must spend at least 19.99 a year. You ask what are the penalties? I quote: "If you do not meet the applicable minimum purchase requirement, your photos may be deleted." Now be careful, you can't rush this purchase and think everything is fine. You must ensure your purchase is in your "Kodak Imaging Network" cart and not another cart from a 3rd party meshed with Kodak services (ex: photostamps).

Thats not all folks, you better log on once every two months, because they may delete your account. Aww, so nice of them. They also delete your videos thirty days after you upload them, period.

If I convinced you to sign up... have fun.

Novell NetWare

Novell is a company operating all around the world that has its corporate office in Massachusetts. The company specializes in business solutions in the data center, security and identity, resource management, workgroup, and desktop spaces. Their high profile customers include, Wal-mart, Audi, the New York City Transit, and the State of California.

NetWare is an NOS (network operating system) that runs on level 2 of the open systems interconnection. This system runs on anything from a personal computer to a mainframe computer. There have been several versions of NetWare and the current version is six, which utilizes enhanced printing, file, and directory services. The printing services are unique, providing access through a browser, through a downloaded plug in, to view and print network files from any device securely. Also any printer can be used as a network printer to anyone with authorized access. In addition to that, Netware will also list printer physical location and printer properties and features.

As far as file access goes, you can basicly take a computer out of the box with Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, or Linux... plug it into the network and immediately start accessing the files off the Netware server. All this is done without any client software. Netware is proud of its use of capitalizing on the best use of each OS platform.

Netware also uses simple user management that control configurations from one single point changing configurations on each server under it. This enables a one time update without going to each server and updating settings separately. Another tool of Netware is built in utilities that offer a decent range of services. One of these tools is Remote Manager to allow administrators access to change configurations from any connected computer with an internet browser. These options are vast and are only limited to the server based applications. Servers may also be restarted, shut down, or reset through the same remote tool.

File management with the Netware system has an outstanding list of features, without even listing half of them. One of my favorites is the ability to compress storage volumes after a set time without use. Meaning your storage would increase with after a longer period of use. It also features the standards of US Green Book File Security standard, which I guess means you can delete a file and someone can never find it, no matter what file recovery system is used. The last file management feature I'll mention is the ability to use the same file space as another network user, instead of having separate volumes set aside.

One more feature is the open ended use of the network. Meaning Novell has open, free use for developers to create their own custom programs maximizing tool and features most used on their network.

Not a Police RAID

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Which is basically using multiple hard drives for fast storage and transfer of data.This often improves data reliability, volume size, and maybe some performance improvements as well.

There are many types of RAID configurations. Which is how it is setup to work, meaning one RAID is not necessarily the same as another RAID setup. The first one is called RAID 0 (sometimes referred to as Striped) which splits the data into fragments on different disks to give more performance boost to the user. Although, this is faster, but it doesn't use error checking. So if that particular drive fails... all data on that drive is lost.

RAID 1 is different. The information that is written on disk 1 is the same information that is automatically written to disk two, assuming you only have two disks. This can be done with more than two disk drives. This is often referred to as mirroring. As the exact same data is mirrored on the second drive. This provides a strong backup if one drive fails.

RAID 2 is like the Holy Grail of RAID is uses a controller in charge of two disks to write data in exactly the same rate as the other disk. This is not really in use today.

Next, RAID 3 uses a combination of mirroring and striping, per say. It isn't an exact combination of the two, but more like a mesh. RAID 3 utilizes four hard drives which three of them are used in a striping fashion then the forth drive is a combination of the three combined. This setup uses byte level striping which spreads that data across the drives like in RAID 0. That fourth disk is the parity disk which is a collaboration of the other disks data and checks for errors using parity, even and odd based.

RAID 4 also uses a parity disk (the collaboration disk from above), but it is different in that it uses block level striping. This is much like RAID 3 minus the type of striping. The striping is just done on a higher level. RAID 5 uses a parity disk that is split between the drives. Meaning there is no single dedicated parity disk. The "parity disk" is actually spread out with in the disk drives. But works the same way. The disk works in a block level parity and if one block fails then the combination of the data is formed back together with the remaining blocks.

RAID 6 is overall the same as RAID 5 but utilizes two "parity drives", although, still split up between the multiple drives. Note this setup will require one more disk drive than assumed needed for the same data volume as if needed for RAID 5.

There are also several other types of RAID which all need to use a controller to manage the transfer and reformation of data. Those other examples are not standard and I will not mention them in this text. Two types are software and hardware. The software RAID will use your operating system to coordinate the transfer and allocation of data. The hardware type will use the software inside the hardware to do the same thing. Overall, hardware RAID is more beneficial because of free usage that isn't boggled down.

One thing to keep in mind is that the smallest drive you use that is all you can use for mirroring, and for striping it is two times your smallest drive. So for example you have a one GB drive and an 8 GB drive you want to set up in RAID 1 all the data you can put on is one GB.

Pandora Radio

Well, I'm back, from a slight hiatus, refreshed and ready to write.

Pandora Radio is by no means new, and although the newest feature came out last year (iPhone App) it's still worthly of mentioning. This software is simply great and often overlooked. Yes, there's no music video's but still come on; thats hardly an argument.

There are some alternatives too if you have something against Pandora. Such as Slacker, Seeqpod, Last.fm, Musicovery, and Blogmusik.net. These all have their respective features and you should check them out.

Oh, and the two artists I type in and listen to most are TooL and Incubus.

Presidential Disconnect

Tonight I read an interesting article the New York Times published on the 15th. It was about President elect Obama having to give up use of his blackberry. Which is viewed as a prized possession for him, and I have no doubt that is, in fact, true reliable information. I realized tonight I have never really thought about the presidential duties from that aspect... Having to give up your simplest personal freedoms and choices to protect the security on one's home country. It wasn't to hard at all to understand. Having freely given up a great deal of my rights to serve in the Marine Corps. It is interesting though, how most of the world might not see minor things like this that make a great impact on those affected. The article mentions how his emails would be printed out and read without using a computer himself to check his own email.

The article also points out current President Bush's response to his semi-forced abandonment of personal email, requesting to cease all personal correspondence via email.

Source: NYTimes

5MP Cell Camera for T-Mobile

Motorola and Kodak teamed together to come up with the Motozine ZN5 which is build by Motorola, but uses Kodak's Perfect Touch technology to produce 5 MegaPixels with clearer, brighter colors. The phone is 99 US dollars with a 2 year service agreement. Features:

• Display: 2.4" 240x320 262k TFT
• 5-megapixel camera, autofocus, Xenon flash
• 350 MB onboard memory; up to 4 GB optional expandable memory holds up to 3,000 images
• Capture and edit modes: panorama, grayscale, sepia, negative, reddish, greenish, blueish
• Digital viewfinder
• 3.5 mm headset jack
• WiFi enabled/WLAN: 802.11 b/g/i
• FM Radio
• Kodak Easyshare Software included

The best feature is the 5MP camera with the convenience of WiFi, although that's my opinion. Do you know of any cell phones with those features... for 99 bucks?

Pictures and information: motorola.com