[ale] Re: [ale-expo] other demos

[R I Feigenblatt]

>	Another good fringe package that should be highlighted is the
>	X10(?) stuff. This is a package that interfaces to home automation
>	controllers. I believe there is even an GUI interface and a dialup
>	daemon that lets you do stuff remotely. Let see Win-95/NT do
>	something like that!

Sorry to disappoint you Steve. Greg Riker, who last May Day gave an interesting
talk before the Building Industry Association (representing about 1,000 member
firms in the residential and commercial building industry) became Director of
Future Home Technology at Microsoft four years ago next month.

A year before Greg gave his talk, Microsoft helped co-found the LonMark
Interoperability Association. About 2,000 firms worldwide are developing
products based on LonWorks technology, an open technology for networking
gadgets. LonWorks has a longtime rival in the so-called Consumer Electronics
Bus, and to a lesser extent in the now-ancient, more fidgety X-10 technology
which I use at our homestead (I'm a cheap sod.)

By the way, metro Atlanta (actually Smyrna?) is home to one of the principal
home automation mail-order firms in the US. They've had Windows-based X-10
automation software for a long time.

>	But perhaps I am just being too much of a fanatic. :-)

Nope, just a wee bit too parochial. ;-)

Ron Feigenblatt

P.S. Microsoft and HP have sucessfully worked together on a number of projects.
More people should understand we live in an age of "coopertition" as one sage
(Andy Grove?) has phrased it, where parties cooperate on some things, and
compete
on others. The friend vs. enemy paradigm is often too constraining. One
multinational
with which I'd worked was starting up a $100+ milllion joint venture with
another
multinational it had just prevailed against in a lawsuit for industrial
ESPIONAGE,
with awarded damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars.