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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!haven!uvaarpa!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!meissner
From: meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor
Keywords: desktop metaphor, graphical interfaces, computing environments
Message-ID: <2643@xyzzy.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 89 01:17:20 GMT
References: <4362@pitt.UUCP> <257@gloom.UUCP> <82702@sun.uucp> <8939@ut-emx.UUCP> <3504@geaclib.UUCP> <18640@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner)
Organization: Data General (Languages @ Research Triangle Park, NC.)
Lines: 34

In article <18640@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> c60a-2di@e260-1c.berkeley.edu (The
Cybermat Rider) writes:

| On the other hand, you're VERY LIKELY (in an office environment) to have
| DOZENS of computers sitting in one room.  You could insist that the computer
| companies concerned make their keyboards "tunable", but I doubt many people
| would like to fiddle around with recessed potientiometers on the bottoms of
| their keyboards, trying to adjust their transmission frequencies to avoid
| interefering with other keyboards in the vicinity.

I guess I don't understand this comment at all.  Think of as an
ethernet -- each device in ethernet has a unique 48 bit address
(addresses are sold in 2**24 bit chunks to companies, by a global
network number czar -- IEEE I think).  When a device (ie, keyboard or
host), communicates, it puts it's serial number in the packet sent
off, and if there is a collision, the packet is resent.  Above that,
there are various means to broadcast, and to map logical network ID's
to the physical hardware ID's.  Like in ethernet, each device would
contain some PROM that gives this unique address.  Various techniques
have been worked out to do real networking via radio (see the Aloha
network references, and also Phil Karn's work with TCP/IP over ham
radio).

| I think there may be problems regarding FCC clearance as well, but I'm not
| an expert in that field, so I'll leave it to those in the know to enlighten
| us all further.  Suffice it to say that the problems encountered with many
| RF transmitters within a small space renders this idea somewhat impractical.

Part of the radio spectrum is reserved for RF devices in an
unregulated fashion and is used for cordless phones and such.
-- 
Michael Meissner, Data General.

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