David Wihl

If you were to log in, you'd be able to get more information on your fellow community member.

/bboard postings

• February 3, 2005: Response to Cirrus SRV
• February 3, 2005: Response to DA40 Reliability
• December 22, 2009: Response to Best EFB Solution
• March 31, 2010: Response to High altitude flight planning

Static Page Comments

• February 15, 2008, on Internet Software Patents:

  While the Old-timers accurately foresaw much of todayıs common technology, they missed the boat in two important areas: user interface, and implications of Mooreıs law. Even as late as the early 80ıs Ken Olsen and the brain trust at DEC didnıt think that there would be a computer in every home ı that was certainly fringe thought in the 60ıs. I used the Minitel system when I lived in France ı91-ı94 and while it was useful, the tiny text screen at low speed has no comparison to the utility of say, Google Maps. Minitel can be used a couple of hours a week to accomplish a practical need like ordering a train ticket, not hours per day to read, communicate, interact, and publish. The ability to interact visually makes such a dramatic in improvement in human productivity. Contrast the iPhone practicality to the green screen 3270 user interface. 60ıs computing was about processing large amounts of data, with the rare exception about making computers personal, portable, connected and interactive...

• February 4, 2009, on Verizon FiOS Versus Comcast:

  I'll second or third or fourth the previous comments about replacing the ActionTec which is FiOS's Achilles Heel. I use a SonicWall firewall / router appliance that provides reasonably trustworthy security (including virus scanning), WiFi, DHCP, etc. The ActionTec is then behind the Sonicwall just for the set top boxes, on an isolated segment from other network traffic. The main reason to drop the ActionTec is security, not speed. I spent a bunch of time turning off ports and disabling Wifi, yet the SSID was still broadcast. A quick view of the Sonicwall logs will quickly tell you how frequently these home routers are interrogated by unwanted parties - like hourly if not more frequently. Verizon's customer service is way better than my experiences with Comcast. You can call at 5am and actually get a human who knows something about DNS.

• July 12, 2010, on Web Operations:

  It's amazing to me how many CompSci graduates have not taken a DBMS course, or if they have still can't accurately describe the different types of Joins and when they would be used. Forget about a networking / security class. It's equally amazing that in 2010, it is still really hard to build a reliable, secure, flexible, easy to manage web site.

• November 10, 2010, on Video Editing Tablet:

  Why would animoto remove the need for editing and input from the user? Personally, I tried animoto several times and was consistently disappointed with the default rendering. The idea is good but the implementation is weak. Compared with a tablet or other personal device, uploads and downloads to a cloud based service are slow. Imagine one hour of HD video, or 12 GB... To order to prevent animoto from slapping their branding on my personal videos, I'd need the $249/yr Pro package, which would be more expensive than a tablet over two years.

• March 3, 2011, on iPhone versus Android:

  Re: Real-time Operating Systems. The upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook uses QNX, a RTOS. However, that doesn't keep from it being a piece of crap for development purposes. [I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jamie's narrative on many fronts. It expressed well the frustration of developing on RIM both technically and organizationally. It was yet another example of the power of an individual blog post that goes viral. And it shows the futility of one committed RIM employee, Tyler Lessard, in the face of a dysfunctional organization. The post and responses could be made in a Michael Crichton novel.]