Timothy
Parker Consulting Incorporated
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Questions and Answers, Part 11 Q: I’ve been using XML instead
of HTML for my Web site. I understand there is no standard for XML yet, and this
may cause problems. Is this true? A: XML (Extensible Markup
Language) is much more powerful than HTML but there is no single standard for
XML currently adopted. There are a
bunch of organizations trying to set XML standards, but they sometimes seem to
be at loggerheads. Essentially, the
main players in the XML standards game are W3C (World Wide Web Consortium),
Oasis (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards),
RosettaNet, ISO, and VoiceXML. VoiceXML is a group of industry players including
IBM, Lucent, Motorola, and AT&T and they want to set standards for XML
wireless transfers. W3C was the developer of XML and sees itself as the best
candidate to dictate the standards. Naturally,
everyone else disagrees. Finally, Microsoft enters the picture with Biztalk.org,
a consortium led my Microsoft that wants to standardize XML to their own
requirements. Who will win?
I can’t guess. Q: I’ve seen lots of
information about broadcasting full-screen digital video over a Web site.
Is the technology good enough to do high-resolution video yet?
I’ve seen the old, grainy, small-picture videos, and they just don’t
do it properly. A: There’s actually two parts
to the answer. First, yes, there is
technology good enough to broadcast high-resolution video over the Internet.
And second, most people won’t be able to use it because of the high
bandwidth demands that accompany the technology.
The issue is easy enough to understand.
A typical television signal requires a lot of bandwidth to broadcast.
Sending an uncompressed TV-quality signal over an LAN or Internet would
be difficult because of the huge amount of data required. However, compression
techniques can save a lot of bandwidth, albeit at a price in terms of picture
quality. The compromise depends on
the codec (compression-decompression) algorithm used. DVDs use the MPEG-2 codec and most people can’t see the
effects of compression on a DVD video (you can see the compression effects a
little more clearly if you compare to a laserdisc, for example, where there is
no compression). MPEG-2 video can be broadcast over the Internet, but again
there’s a high data rate to worry about.
MPEG-2 is possible over a dedicated LAN, though.
For the Internet, we need even more compression, and that brings in all
kinds of compression algorithms and their effects, almost all degrading the
picture noticeably. However, assuming an end-user had a high-speed Internet
connection, it would be possible to receive full-screen video with a reasonable
quality picture (certainly much better than the old videos you refer to).
There’s no chance with a slow (128kbps or lower) connection, though.
There’s just not enough data to provide a decent picture without
artifacts. Q: There’s a radio show I love
listening to in the US. I have an
office down there, and I want to send the audio over the Internet from there to
my office here in Canada. Is this possible? A: Technically, yes.
Audio has a fairly low data rate compared to video, and compression
techniques allow reasonable audio quality to be sent with surprisingly low
requirements. (MP3 audio, for
example, is good quality with a low data rate.)
You could connect your radio through your computer (either into the
existing sound card’s input or use a built-in radio tuner, and send a data
stream to yourself in Canada using any number of streaming audio solutions such
as those from Real Networks (RealAudio). There may be a bigger issue, though:
it’s illegal to rebroadcast a copyright signal, and the regulating bodies in
the US apparently are aggressive about enforcing these regulations. How this
would play out in your situation I can’t guess. Q: My PC’s clock is not
accurate enough (it drifts a few seconds every day).
Can I get a new clock? A: The clock in your PC is
usually a hardware function on a chip, although some have software-controlled
timers. If you really want your
clock to be accurate and you have a connection to the Internet, use any of the
shareware or freeware utilities that synchronize with the standard clock signals
broadcast in Canada and the US. One
utility I’ve used is called “worldtimeclock” and it allows you to synch
with many different standard clocks easily. It can be downloaded at many
shareware sites. Q: We replaced a half dozen old
80486 PCs with new ones. Is there
anything useful that can be done with the old machines or are they destined to
be landfill? A: There are dozens (if not hundreds) of organizations that would be happy to accept older, working PCs. Some of these organizations use the PCs here in Canada for schools and other targets, while some send them overseas. To find one close to you, use a Web search engine and look for keywords like “donor” and “pc” with your city name. Alternatively, check with the local school boards, Salvation Army, and other charitable organizations. Many will pick up the old PCs for you. |
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