Moore’s Law has to date been dead on as far as chip development goes, but should the focus of development be directed elsewhere? If you look at the most complex computing device on the planet, the human brain, it is not a single “device” that is focused on a single task before moving on to the next one. It is a discreet set of components, each of which is specifically suited to a different type of task.

If this approach was taken with computer and chip design, I think it would produce more efficient systems with uniquely designed modules providing the support and functions required by the specific software running on that system. This way the system’s resources are focused on performing the current set of tasks in the most efficient way, thus requiring more modest components for a specific system or user. This also means less heat, noise, size and hopefully cost.

This approach is already starting to appear with multi-core processors allowing multiple tasks to be executed simultaneously and graphics cards which take it much further in the right direction with things like T&L, it just isn’t far enough.

You could take it one step further, producing systems with chips which could be programmed during use and then later re-programmed for a new task. This way a piece of software could be written with instructions on how to program the rest of the system to fully utilise all the resources available to maximise its productivity. Maybe there’s some mileage in this theory, or maybe it’s all crap. I have got a stinking hangover and am watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith while trying to think about PC design so who knows.

In the past I’ve usually taken projects and sat down with the MD to spec them up and finally sat down to write the code. This was the approach for pretty much every website or program I’ve done (including the software this blog used to be run on) as it gives us much greater control over the visual characteristics and the features of the stuff we produce. Another reason is that some of the sites we’ve done have been suites of sites, such as Find Locally which just aren’t compatible with existing bits of software and need to be custom from stage 1.

Recently though, we’ve been working on projects that lend themselves quite well to being run on open source solutions. I therefore decided to give it a go and set up one of our retail sites, Erogenicity, to run off OScommerce and then see how difficult it would be to modify it to our unique requirements. As it turned out, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be so I decided to take the plunge and reduce maintenance time on some of our existing projects (such as running all our blogs on Wordpress), as well as reducing development time on new stuff.

So far there haven’t been any problems so from now on I’ll be checking for any open source solutions I can utilise before sitting down to weeks of coding. I’ll also be looking for any missing features so I could possibly write an extension/contribution and give something back to the community!

For months before Vista was released, all anyone was talking about was how much it had been delayed and how Microsoft should be doing more to meet the release date with all the components of the OS it promised. Well, they eventually got it shipped with most of the components and now, a few months after the release date, nobody seems to be rushing to get the upgrade. Why is that if everyone was so anxious for it to be finished?

Personally I think it’s because there’s nothing too much wrong with XP. Being an IT professional, I can manage to keep the various virus and malware nasties out of my networks and that means that we end up with a stable operating system on every machine. Yes, there may be a whole raft of new features that could increase productivity, security and other various buzzwords that keep upper management happy, but if I was given the budget for an upgrade to Vista for every box on the network, I think I would rather put it into tools and equipment to reduce spam and viruses on the network, beef up wireless connectivity and security, increase backup and system imaging… etc, etc.

So, no upgrades then? Nah, I’ll give it a few months to see what happens with it in terms of security and if everything seems to be going well, I’ll shove a copy on my home desktop to see what’s what. As far as the office goes, I think I’ll give it a miss and just wait until the actual boxes need replacing and if they’re pre-loaded with Vista, great. If not, we’ll stick with XP. Or maybe Fedora Core?