You can steal pairs for extra circuits, and we did here for a long time, but we finally had to stop because we had so many problems. It was worse on circuits with phones. The science may back you up, my experience backs me up.
Well, my experience dictates otherwise. If you were having problems with using extra pairs, you were probably not using Cat 5 or doing something else funny.
A lot of phones (like Merlin Legends) need 4 wires for the phone since one pair provides power and the other pair provides the voice circuit. You could probably make a 10/100 work with one of these, but you'd have a pinout clusterfuck and the coloring'd be wrong. W/O, G, W/G, O was how we did 'em on 3,4,5,6 of a RJ45.
Well, any time you wire you have to be careful. Besides, I wasn't talking about PBX/digital/whatever phonesystem. I was talking about analog POTS, which causes no complications on the wiring [as long as it is single line...].
No... It is just fine. I have a number of runs where I use two connections, also ones where I have the ethernet and telephone using the same wire, and there is no significant difference in performance. This was the INTENDED purpose of using 8 wire configuration [one ethernet+one line POTS]. In fact, you'll notice that ethernet uses wires 1,2,3,6? If you wire up the center wires correctly, you should be able to plug a standard 6 conductor phone in the RJ45 [a 4 conductor connection will fit, but may jiggle], and the middle two wires [4,5] will work just fine. Plus if some moron plugs in a phone to the wrong jack it won't harm the ethernet.
Crosstalk in decent [Cat 5 and higher] cable is basically a non-issue. Since all the pairs are twisted, they have very good immunity to inductive interference [take a e-mag course]. Unless you do something stupid, like wrap it around your Tesla coil or something, it probably won't be a problem.
The only reasonable argument against using two connections over one wire is if one wire goes bad [a kink or break in the line], you can switch to another pair.
Actually, the real reason not to charge per byte is the argument over responsibility for charges. If you were required to pay per megabyte, then the cable company would have to log everything that came in/went out, IN IT'S ENTIRETY. In otherwords: wiretap every byte going in/out and record it to disk.
Why? DDoS, Code Red, , ping flood, spam, ads, mail they send you, etc, etc, etc. They would have to be able to audit every byte to have such a system be enforcable. They couldn't get away with charging for bandwidth consumption due to virii that aren't even on your computer, and likewise for any connection you don't initiate. Even the ones you do initiate, data is often sent back that you don't want/didn't ask for [spam]. They can't charge you for that data.
As with all cases, there are IDs. Whether or not you set them depends on the devices. Good ol' parallel SCSI has SCAM, which works like ass-but exists. FC has automatic ID generation, which also sometimes breaks [or is just plain strange], so people fall back to manual IDs.
Plain ol' SCSI also has hot plugging, but like all standards, you'll probably get a glitch in whatever is going on when you do it [unless you are using a FC switch, hotplugging into a loop could be messy]. I don't know how FC and 1394 handle discovery, but SCSI does require the initiator [ie: the host adapter] to check things out to find new devices [polling].
Anyway, the problem with hot-plug behavior is an OS problem or a power problem. I've worked on drives doing mass formats and updates doing ALL the plugging hot. I rarely had problems. Most of those problems were when I was stupid and plugged in a drive without a good power supply. The momentary dip in power sometimes locks the machine.
There is also the issue he takes with interoperability. Single Ended and LVD work fine together [mostly, although there are plenty of examples of USB devices that implement the same standard that don't play together]. It is only HVD that fries stuff. Since HVD appears completely dead now, I don't consider it to be mainstream SCSI, and hardly a valid avenue of criticism.
1. Resistance? Look at how many people downloaded SETI. Many people will jump at the chance to join such a system. Only, of course, if the network is trusted [do you know SETI isn't spying on you?].
2. Games needing real-time response... One of the foundations of this thesis is that you have a massively powerful machine, and the system delegates tasks as appropriate. Of course real time operations will have to be executed locally, but imagine if the AI on your strategy game could tap into the resources of computers around it...
3. Trusting publicly networked machines. People do this today: it's called an ATM. Although not on the same scope as all your documents on fine French cuisine, and the porn you downloaded last night; no one, but no one wants anyone tampering with their money. Yet most of us patently trust these networks to be secure. It is, as always, a matter of coming up with a way of doing this that is reasonable.
4. A valid point, but think of the many people who do jobs that are far less peer-interaction oriented, such as technical support. Most people would like to think that the person who is supposed to be helping them isn't ironing their clothes whilst solving our problem, but as with any telecommuting scenario: as long as it doesn't interfere with their normal operation, there is no reason to resist it.
5. Creeping Communism: in such a system, if properly designed, there is a fundamental shift in the way the OS operates. The machine has resources that are shared not only among its hosting user(s), but among other machines on the network. This could be well done with a minimalist core operating system that only handles delegating CPU/Memory/hard disk resources. Something more like a microkernel. Of course, as with communism, it sounds great on paper. The reality is that very few processes really benefit from this distributed nature. In these cases, specifically designed programs are generally more than adequate, and very effective at solving these problems [SETI, et al].
Don't get me wrong, I have as much contempt for Microsoft as any self respecting geek. I firmly believe that Microsoft is the wrong company to have in charge of such a system, because they do not pass the trust test that I heavily lean on with the ATM analogy.
But such a system, where all the resources are shared among the participating machines, could be very useful for corporations with large datastores. By having the computers working together, it may be possible to remove the need for a single massive server to house all the company's data. Of course, if it wasn't done right, it would massively complicate the offline storage issue.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't complete reuse of the byproducts essentially impossible?
Think about the energy transfer for a moment: I react fuel with O2, getting oxygenated byproducts and energy. This energy is, from the chemistry perspective, coming from the base energy levels of the oxygen atom(s). You react the components, and the internal energy of the atoms in the system decreases, releasing heat energy, radiant energy, etc [in an exothermic reaction].
So, I then use some of this energy to make something move, and manage to reclaim 100% of the excess heat energy somehow [ignoring the fact that this is impossible]. I am still missing the energy I used to do work [moving the robot around in this case]. So I do not have the energy to unreact all the waste products for reuse. So, in order to make such a system work, you would also need a supply of another reactant to allow you to keep the net energy lower after you unreact the primary reactant.
However, in this case you would probably have been better off just reacting with this "additional" reactant in the first place as it is a simpler system, and you can't get that 100% efficient reclaimation.
If you still don't get it, think conservation of energy. You can't react something, use that energy to do work, not reclaim energy from the work [ok if you did, you didn't do any net work], and unreact your reactants putting everything back the way it was before. That would be a source of perpetual free energy.
So in essence, you couldn't create a system which takes one cycle's worth of air, and reuses it entirely for each cycle. At least not if the system did any work. So you would still need a supply of oxygen [given, it may be a reduced supply if you can get a sustainable partial unreaction going to recycle part of the products back into reactants].
SCSI is meant to be hot pluggable, it is in the standard. There are some rules you have to follow depending on the hardware's ability to handle the extra load on the power and SCSI bus. Plus the operating system/adapter card have to look for new devices periodically, lest the device just sits there undiscovered. Read it at www.t10.org.
The Microsoft 16bit client provided on the WTS CD works marvelously under Wine. The 32 bit, I've never gotten to work, although I haven't tried with newer builds of Wine.
Essentially a Nd:YAG laser has a rod of material made of a structure of the above elements. This rod is pumped with energy [typically via an arc-lamp], and lases typically in the 1080nm range [somewhere infrared, I'm not certain on the exact wavelength, so don't jump me]. Nd:YAG's were used quite commonly for medical procedures before solid state ones became more common [ie: cheaper].
Now, before someone screams: "I HAVE A GREEN YAG!" The commerically available YAG's are[were] typically run through a KTP [Potassium-Titanium-Phosphate] crystal. This crystal had the effect of doubling the wavelength [two 1080 photons -> one 540 photon].
Great, now not only will I find these hanging from the walls of people with bad taste, I'll have to put up with it at every geek that I know's dwelling...
The one and sole reason to not have one phone number. Telemarketers would NEVER get off your back unless you were changing it periodically anyway. Sure, you can always check the caller ID, screen calls with your answering machine, but at least half of those are legitimate calls from people with either blocked numbers or screwy phone systems. Some areas now have the option to put a anti-telemarketer message on your line, but that costs $10/month.
Anyway, if you were willing to change your number more frequently, you could benefit from an expanded number space by making it more difficult to keep a current number. But if the situation were like that, then a telemarketer's association would form that would pool together current numbers from various sources (utility companies are notorious for getting you on "The List"), possibly in some sort of online database. No matter what you do, you're doomed to be interrupted. Add that to death and taxes.
I have used Linx Technologies modules for a few designs, and have been happy with their performance. Linx is primarily aimed at OEMs, so you won't find a lot of finished products on their site. However, they do have an eval board that has a DB9 RS232 connection [more or less give it power, and you can have simplex communication]. For your specific application, you'd probably need something mildly custom made, unless your sensors speak RS232. In either event, their eval boards would get you started.
Just because Gore won by that large of a margin in NYC is no evidence that the Electoral College is more fair. One city can and always will be able to choose the president. In the case of Florida, the vote could have made the whole election go either way in a large city such as Miami. It is just a situation that you can't avoid, popular or electoral.
I will grant the idea behind what you are saying: that the Electoral College buffers the influence of simply campaining strongly in one area, or a few areas. But ultimately, either system [popular or electoral] is flawed in that they are both subject to abuse. Remember, all a candidate really needs is a weak plurality in 12 states to win the election under the electoral system.
All they need is a strong majority in surprisingly few to win with strong third parties in a popular vote. A common example is the idea of a Southern Secessionist party. If they could garner 80% or more of the vote in the South with high voter turnout, with the rest of the parties evenly divvying the North; in a popular vote, the Secessionists would win handily, and just the South would decide the fate of the nation. That is hardly fair either.
If we decrease the kinetic energy of the moon, then the moon would crash into the Earth, not drift away. This would tend to make the tidal effects greater due to the closer proximity of the Moon to the planet. But the fundamental argument you make is correct. If we tap energy from the Moon's tidal effects, then the moon would be doing work with its gravitational field [without getting into the details of who is doing work on whom], and the system would inherently would have to lose gravitational potential. I believe however, the primary source of energy for this type of power would be the much more frequent periodic forces of normal weather-based waves. Tidal forces are generally slow, and would therefore probably require very large arrays of these generators to make a significant amount of power. Regular weather pattern waves though, are far more frequent and rapid.
For a more intuitive way of thinking of this, obviously bringing up/down the water in the column once a day is far less energy than bringing it up and down thousands of times in a day. There are more issues (most generators generate more power with greater speed, etc), but the frequency is what it all boils down to.
The pi/2 problem is related to my original post. Unless you can guarantee this, Nyquist's theorem does not hold. A simple example is if your sampling occured at the zero cross for a sampfreq/2 sine wave. This would register as a signal amplitude of zero, not whatever it really was. No amount of mathematical justification can take away this fact. If you don't know the correct amplitude, you don't know anything about the wave. The only possible work around would be to have a dragging amplitude maximum locator, but then you would have to be continuously adapting your sampling phase, and this becomes ridiculous.
Nyquist's theorem states that the highest frequency that can be represented is one half the sampling rate. This is obvious because you must be able to detect at least a peak and a valley of the sound wave.
Nyquist's theorem does not imply, however, that the representation of the maximum [or near maximum] frequencies will be highly accurate as far as the shape of the wave form is concerned. At and around 1/2 sampling freqency, the wave forms become basically nothing but square waves [alternating between a single high, and a single low point]. In order to deal with this, some sound decoders will attempt to interpolate the waves, but they cannot reproduce the original sound accurately. This is why higher sampling frequencies ARE relevent to higher audio fidelity. Higher bit resolutions are arguable though...
If you read the full text of the bill, it also contains provisions such as:
(c) It shall be unlawful for an exhibitor or the exhibitor's employee to allow a minor under sixteen (16) years of age who is subject to the compulsory school attendance laws of the state and who is not accompanied by the minor's parent, guardian or custodian to operate an amusement machine in the exhibitor's place of business between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on a day when such minor's school is in session.
Effectively making it aiding and abetting to allow an unsupervised kid to play ANY video game during normal school hours. [ignoring the fact that schools have half days/days off, and not all at the same time, making this law difficult for employees to really patrol]
Now, the problem I have with this is not so superficial. I used to work at an arcade doing repair [I was in high school, and had early dismissal, getting me out before noon], and I know I saw my fair share of kids where I worked that should have been in school. Most of them were completely unsupervised [ie: their parents were no where to be seen... EVER]. When asked about this, their story changed every time, although their theme was generally the same: "My parents don't care if I'm here."
You might call me naive for generally believing this point, but even if they didn't know that their parents didn't care, the mere fact that they are at the arcade instead of school on a regular basis is a testament to that.
Schools already take attendance, and if a child doesn't show, they call the parents. If the child is skipping, then the parents are generally aware of it (and if they are not, that is the school's fault). At this point, if the kid is habitually skipping, then the parent is the problem, and the school has a legal responsibility to intervene.
Now, one could argue that under these circumstances, I should have contacted the police, or some other authority to report that this kid was suffering from a limited form of neglect. Perhaps now, I would [at the time, I was younger, and never really thought about it]. But that is really beyond this discussion, because the law makes no requirements for reporting violating children, only kicking them out.
Actually, you can't run things directly from flash. I have a TRG, and have talked at length with TRG about this, and it is a common misconception about AutoCF. AutoCF provides a kind of alias to programs that are in your CF card. The alias is accessible just like any other program from the applications screen, BUT when you "run" the program, it is copied out of CF an into the Palm's main memory. When the program terminates, it is removed from main memory to free that space back up, leaving the original intact on the CF. All databases must be left in RAM as AutoCF doesn't seem to support the same dynamic relocation of.pdb's. Again, AutoCF does not map the CF memory directly into the Palm's main memory, and does not give you boundless memory to use for one application. You are still limited by the available RAM on the device.
One thing that doesn't seem to be addressed in the news item is binary compatibility. Palm has an enormous library of software that is compiled and matured on the Dragonball MCU. For the most part, this software is written in some form of C, so should be cross-compilable, but will require motivating anyone with closed source to recompile [in the very least].
Less obvious is how they are going to keep all of that straight. Hopefully they will[have] develop[ed] some kind of binary signing standard so that people who unwittingly download the Dragonball version don't install it on their ARM version [or vice versa]. I seriously doubt the two are that binary compatible... In some cases, the CPU may see that it has been handed an invalid opcode, and will branch out to a handler (if that has been implemented... that is a design subtlety that I know that I wouldn't normally worry about), but there are only so many opcodes, and there are bound to be overlap.
Anyway, the point being: trying to execute binary code for the wrong archetecture would probably have rather catastophic results. Does anyone know if there already exists a mechanism that could handle this in the Palm? I'm not aware of how application loading occurs on the platform.
Besides, I won't buy one until I can play FreeCell on it...
Not too long ago, I was charged with the duty of coming up with a wireless solution for a company I worked for. If I remember correctly: assuming that the transceiver complies with regulations for power output/interference after modification, there is a clause that allows hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers to not have to officially certify equipment as long as they take "reasonable steps" to make sure that the transceiver is compliant.
On the other hand, I am not entirely certain of the requirements of ISM band equipment. There may be an exclusion clause for this particular band, but I can't be sure without re-reading the code. Further, the modified equipment might violate the regulations on power output (as often times different antennae will). Again, if I remember correctly, the FCC measures its power output based on the maximum output per unit surface area the signal traverses, so if you condense all the power output of an Airport down into a square centimeter [a gross exaggeration], it will almost definitely violate code.
Again, not a valid analogy. The best one I can think of would be a crack or change in configuration that would allow a greater number of users or features in software you already legally possessed. As per my original post, the downloading of firmware is what the specific rights issue at hand is.
I have to admit, that is even better yet of an analogy.
And giving an opinion is invalid because? It is through learned discourse that the advancement of knowledge is perpetuated.
Allow me to elaborate. The point was not to question your right to state your opinion. It was the lack of sufficient evidence to support such a radical position. If "learned discourse" is to be practiced, then you must at least state some reason for your position.
I didn't think they were particularly vague. If progress is defined as the advancement of knowledge and prosperity for the citizens in a democracy, then anything which slows the adoption of technologies that will advance that society by definition "stifles" progress. If progress is defined by the protection of artificial scarcity in order to benefit mainly elite interests, then the status quo is working fine.
For starters, there is not probably even one reader of slashdot that really lives in a democracy. US citizens live in a representative republic. NOT a democracy. True democracy is subject to the tyranny of the masses. And I, myself, am proud of the fact that we don't live in a society where every average idiot has the ability to directly influence public policy.
But that is an irrelevant issue of semantics. The point is well taken that progress is the "advancement... for citizens", but you are making this into an issue that it is not [the point I am trying to make].
FAIR is the key word....I prefer the concept that brought us such minor advancements like... as much as I would like to see growth of commerce, I don't believe it should go un-tempered. My pet peeve that relates to the topic at hand, is the use of forced scarcity (i.e. denying greater functionality of technology by crippling a product in order to create an artificial price barrier) as a tool to maximize profits, where greater advancement of technology and greater efficiency of commerce would be more beneficial. [spelling out]
Fair enough. The point here is your perspective. You see a company selling a fundamentally similar product for two different prices and cry foul. You seem to believe that Promise is screwing over their customers by charging either too much for one product, and/or not enough for another. I agree with you, that companies purposefully holding back technology in the interests of profits is not a good thing for continued technological growth. But they simply aren't doing that.
If you need it spelled out for you, you would get greater deployment of technology if it were more affordable. This technology could be used to further progress. You would more than likely make more money in the long run because you would be shipping more units, and you would save on less duplication of design/engineering/manufacturing/marketing/support . Some good examples that immediately come to mind are, Long-Distance Phone Calls, Computers, Commercial Software & Cellular.
Affordable technology only works as a philosophy if it is affordable for the manufacturers as well. Yes, it doesn't cost Promise twice as much to produce the actual board for the RAIDversion, but it does cost them more to develop it.
Once manufacturers stopped chasing margin percentage, and switched to margin dollars, it became more profitable for them, and the citizenry benefited by the ability to afford the advancements.
I find it would be hard for you to back this up with numbers. Retailers are suffering MASSIVELYdue to the cut-throat margins. When you just look at dollar margins, you aren't taking into account infrastructure (the reason why margins are so highly valued). You need people/equipment to move around/sell your product, and margin percentage is simply a more practical way to look at it [from the sales manager's perspective]. Dollar margins are only significant when these are taken into account. Blaming this [at all] on margin percentages is a gross oversimplification.
Now, what I think you really meant was gross/net profit.
What other cards offer the same functionality as the IDE RAID card in a similar price range to the Non-RAIDed card?? (I haven't looked in a while, but Promise seemed to have the most ubiquity)
On IDE-RAID, possibly the only manufacturer (I believe there are some starting to emerge though). But for RAIDin general, there are hundreds of companies that offer RAIDdevices.
... collusion would be much worse. But just as collusion is one form of an artificial price barrier, so is this.
That is a matter of perspective.
"They just are charging a fair price for a product that gives more functionality than one of their other products. Would you think it would be fair for [going back to my "asinine" analogies] say Ford to charge you as much for a 4cyl Mustang as for the 5.0 version? "
Again, fairness. What is the cost to Ford for the bigger engine? There is physically more material. There would be greater engineering work to account for heat, weight, fuel efficiency, safety. Would it require different tooling and molds? Would it require different assembly runs, etc...? These are very real physical costs. What I am talking about is when you design a product from the get-go to include a set a features, and then cripple some of those features in order to differentiate price, when there isn't a commensurate decrease in manufacturing cost.
"When you get right down to it, that car doesn't cost much more to manufacture either [in fact, essentially no more]. The difference is the amount of engineering time that went into designing that higher performance engine."
I don't know what your background is, but I actually know someone who engineers cars, and as per above there are real costs above and beyond engineering. The other factor is your market. The reason for different engines in your mustang example is that some people want the look and feel of the car, without the added fuel & insurance costs. I have yet to hear anyone say "No I just refuse to pay that extra $5 because I don't foresee myself ever needing RAID functionality in my host adapter, so I will not be purchasing that product". (I have seen people be cheap, but even the cheap people I know wouldn't go to that extreme)
This is the contradiction that Ihave been referring to. You see, think about it. What is the difference between ford engineers designing a 5.0 engine, and Promise's engineers designing a RAID card? You seem to claim in this situation [the car] it is justified, but not in the situation with Promise's RAIDcard. Why? [the lack of justification I am talking about]. From a gross materials standpoint, the difference between the 4cyl and 5.0 engine is marginal [a couple of pounds of metal]. The difference in production costs is there [different molds/different machining processes], but not NEARLYin the amount of the difference of the price of the car (which is SEVERALthousand dollars). Now, no; Ido not have a direct view of what Ford's manufacturing processes are. But Ialso am a realist. There is no way that the price difference in the 5.0 is PURELYindicative of the difference in manufacturing costs. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that they know people will pay the extra money to be able to step on the gas and feel their internal organs float up a bit.
Now, you didn't explicitly state that you think the 5.0 is overpriced, but you seem to imply some kind of fairness in this pricing scenario. Do you believe it is fair to charge more for a RAID controller than a non-RAID controller?
[thinly veiled cross flames cut]
Actually I think the abdication of responsibility is what's ruining things. What I disapprove of are attempts by people with the Neo-Conservative agenda to attempt to ruin my social democracy by gutting it of its values with threats of capital flight.
By all means, some examples...
I'm not some fresh out of Philosophy 101 Marxist.
Well, with some of the comments you've made, I'd beg to differ </jk>
You're living a pipe dream if you think this is a "Free Market".
I don't believe that Istated we are in a free market. Only something about you implying something about it.
But unlike those who think the answer is to dismantle all regulation, I have come to the conclusion that the greater threat is from what is now being termed "Corporate Welfare" or from what are becoming De-Facto monopolies and oligopolies.
Deregulation, as it has been called, has been responsble for some of the greatest end-user benefits in recent times. Rather than have [essentially] government sanctioned monopolies on utilities and services [power, cable, long distance], the effect has been to allow a "free market" [cautiously used]. Kill them all, let God sort them out [metaphorically speaking].
Now, Idon't support all deregulation. Companies run amuck are the worst kind of "free market" side effects. But the question is how you deal with the term "corporate welfare." My experience is that very few things that are termed corporate welfare promote monopoly. For example. In a nearby area, tax abatements are given to a company to build a large facillity in town. This is often termed corporate welfare by its opponents. But in NOway does this stifle competition because it is not distributed in a biased fashion [unless there is some form of corruption going on, which should be dealt with accordingly]. The oligopoly statement, I must assume, implies a form of back-pocketing of government and business. And, I am sure it happens. People are corrupt. This kind of thing happens. But instead of banning governments from being able to institute programs to encourage business, Iwould rather support VERYstrict penalties for corruption [long, uncommutable jail terms, fines, etc].
Any power can be abused. The solution is not to take them away, but to make sure they are used honorably.
Before you just write this off as a loony political rant, one of the methods that is used to exert control is as per my original post the use of artificial market barriers. What incentive is there for me to make a more functional product to service a market, when all it will take to bankrupt me is for my competitor to un-cripple their product? This reduces consumer choice, which slows the advancement of technology, which stifles progress.
Ok. So you think that this is what will happen when someone else releases an IDE-RAID device... I find that difficult to believe. Besides, if you cannot produce an equivalent product at an equivalent market price, that is not the constituent producers fault. Besides even that, what you must then propose as an alternative is governmental review of designs to make sure that no company is doing such a thing. This is clearly not an acceptable solution.
...what I can tell you is that in the long run companies are better off reducing productions costs and increasing volume.
The problem with this philosophy is that it does not take into account maximum market capitalization. There is a hard upper limit on volume. If you can't produce/sell a product at a price with a respective volume, and ATLEAST break even, there is no reason to produce it. Yes, there are circumstances where this is appropriate, but there are also limits to be taken into account.
"Rather than waste any more of my time picking apart your completely incoherent argument,"
I'll leave it to others to speculate in public the reasons.
"I'll just let the truly educated readers decide for themselves."
Indeed.
Without Malice,
I don't think that the term asinine can be used "without malice..."
Maybe my analogies weren't the greatest, but that doesn't invalidate my position [perhaps a better analogy yet would be downloading a crack that turns demo software into commercial software]. You haven't really said anything in your entire response other than vaguely stating your opinion of the way things should be. And even then all you have really said is some vague and completely unsupported claims that these practices stifle progress.
What it boils down to is that you [flames aside] actually think that a company doesn't have the right to charge a fair price for their product. It isn't like Promise has a monopoly on RAID devices. It isn't like this is price fixing. They just are charging a fair price for a product that gives more functionality than one of their other products. Would you think it would be fair for [going back to my "asinine" analogies] say Ford to charge you as much for a 4cyl Mustang as for the 5.0 version? When you get right down to it, that car doesn't cost much more to manufacture either [in fact, essentially no more]. The difference is the amount of engineering time that went into designing that higher performance engine. The problem is that there are a lot of idiots out there that don't seem to get that one simple point. They just ignore it and spout off some irrelavent fodder about how the "Free market economists are ruining everything"
Companies charge more for certain product not ONLY because they can but ALSO because they want to recoup their costs.
Rather than waste any more of my time picking apart your completely incoherent argument, I'll just let the truly educated readers decide for themselves.
People don't seem to grasp that companies like Promise PAID some engineer(s) (people like you, that read slashdot, maybe even have a stuffed penguin or two at home) to make these products. Just because they also made it cheap for them to produce doesn't make it right for you to short change them. Sure it isn't costing them money, but then again, in theory, neither is software piracy. This is NO different.
This controller is not some open-source project that none of the programmers ever expected to get cash for. This is a company that you are giving plenty of reasons to guard their designs with as much tenacity as they can muster [ie: screw open-source linux support].
Why does the fact that you have to pick up a soldering iron make this any different from you buying games off the shelf, burning copies, and then using a shrink wrap machine to return them in "original" shrink wrap?
Perhaps a better analogy would be buying a 4cyl Mustang and then stealing an engine out of one of the dealer's 5.0's and putting it in your car. I mean, the 5.0 was just sitting there out in the open for you to get at... just like the firmware...
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You can steal pairs for extra circuits, and we did here for a long time, but we finally had to stop because we had so many problems. It was worse on circuits with phones. The science may back you up, my experience backs me up.
Well, my experience dictates otherwise. If you were having problems with using extra pairs, you were probably not using Cat 5 or doing something else funny.
A lot of phones (like Merlin Legends) need 4 wires for the phone since one pair provides power and the other pair provides the voice circuit. You could probably make a 10/100 work with one of these, but you'd have a pinout clusterfuck and the coloring'd be wrong. W/O, G, W/G, O was how we did 'em on 3,4,5,6 of a RJ45.
Well, any time you wire you have to be careful. Besides, I wasn't talking about PBX/digital/whatever phonesystem. I was talking about analog POTS, which causes no complications on the wiring [as long as it is single line...].
No... It is just fine. I have a number of runs where I use two connections, also ones where I have the ethernet and telephone using the same wire, and there is no significant difference in performance. This was the INTENDED purpose of using 8 wire configuration [one ethernet+one line POTS]. In fact, you'll notice that ethernet uses wires 1,2,3,6? If you wire up the center wires correctly, you should be able to plug a standard 6 conductor phone in the RJ45 [a 4 conductor connection will fit, but may jiggle], and the middle two wires [4,5] will work just fine. Plus if some moron plugs in a phone to the wrong jack it won't harm the ethernet.
Crosstalk in decent [Cat 5 and higher] cable is basically a non-issue. Since all the pairs are twisted, they have very good immunity to inductive interference [take a e-mag course]. Unless you do something stupid, like wrap it around your Tesla coil or something, it probably won't be a problem.
The only reasonable argument against using two connections over one wire is if one wire goes bad [a kink or break in the line], you can switch to another pair.
Actually, the real reason not to charge per byte is the argument over responsibility for charges. If you were required to pay per megabyte, then the cable company would have to log everything that came in/went out, IN IT'S ENTIRETY. In otherwords: wiretap every byte going in/out and record it to disk.
Why? DDoS, Code Red, , ping flood, spam, ads, mail they send you, etc, etc, etc. They would have to be able to audit every byte to have such a system be enforcable. They couldn't get away with charging for bandwidth consumption due to virii that aren't even on your computer, and likewise for any connection you don't initiate. Even the ones you do initiate, data is often sent back that you don't want/didn't ask for [spam]. They can't charge you for that data.
As with all cases, there are IDs. Whether or not you set them depends on the devices. Good ol' parallel SCSI has SCAM, which works like ass-but exists. FC has automatic ID generation, which also sometimes breaks [or is just plain strange], so people fall back to manual IDs.
Plain ol' SCSI also has hot plugging, but like all standards, you'll probably get a glitch in whatever is going on when you do it [unless you are using a FC switch, hotplugging into a loop could be messy]. I don't know how FC and 1394 handle discovery, but SCSI does require the initiator [ie: the host adapter] to check things out to find new devices [polling].
Anyway, the problem with hot-plug behavior is an OS problem or a power problem. I've worked on drives doing mass formats and updates doing ALL the plugging hot. I rarely had problems. Most of those problems were when I was stupid and plugged in a drive without a good power supply. The momentary dip in power sometimes locks the machine.
There is also the issue he takes with interoperability. Single Ended and LVD work fine together [mostly, although there are plenty of examples of USB devices that implement the same standard that don't play together]. It is only HVD that fries stuff. Since HVD appears completely dead now, I don't consider it to be mainstream SCSI, and hardly a valid avenue of criticism.
Just a few counter points to consider:
1. Resistance? Look at how many people downloaded SETI. Many people will jump at the chance to join such a system. Only, of course, if the network is trusted [do you know SETI isn't spying on you?].
2. Games needing real-time response... One of the foundations of this thesis is that you have a massively powerful machine, and the system delegates tasks as appropriate. Of course real time operations will have to be executed locally, but imagine if the AI on your strategy game could tap into the resources of computers around it...
3. Trusting publicly networked machines. People do this today: it's called an ATM. Although not on the same scope as all your documents on fine French cuisine, and the porn you downloaded last night; no one, but no one wants anyone tampering with their money. Yet most of us patently trust these networks to be secure. It is, as always, a matter of coming up with a way of doing this that is reasonable.
4. A valid point, but think of the many people who do jobs that are far less peer-interaction oriented, such as technical support. Most people would like to think that the person who is supposed to be helping them isn't ironing their clothes whilst solving our problem, but as with any telecommuting scenario: as long as it doesn't interfere with their normal operation, there is no reason to resist it.
5. Creeping Communism: in such a system, if properly designed, there is a fundamental shift in the way the OS operates. The machine has resources that are shared not only among its hosting user(s), but among other machines on the network. This could be well done with a minimalist core operating system that only handles delegating CPU/Memory/hard disk resources. Something more like a microkernel. Of course, as with communism, it sounds great on paper. The reality is that very few processes really benefit from this distributed nature. In these cases, specifically designed programs are generally more than adequate, and very effective at solving these problems [SETI, et al].
Don't get me wrong, I have as much contempt for Microsoft as any self respecting geek. I firmly believe that Microsoft is the wrong company to have in charge of such a system, because they do not pass the trust test that I heavily lean on with the ATM analogy.
But such a system, where all the resources are shared among the participating machines, could be very useful for corporations with large datastores. By having the computers working together, it may be possible to remove the need for a single massive server to house all the company's data. Of course, if it wasn't done right, it would massively complicate the offline storage issue.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't complete reuse of the byproducts essentially impossible?
Think about the energy transfer for a moment: I react fuel with O2, getting oxygenated byproducts and energy. This energy is, from the chemistry perspective, coming from the base energy levels of the oxygen atom(s). You react the components, and the internal energy of the atoms in the system decreases, releasing heat energy, radiant energy, etc [in an exothermic reaction].
So, I then use some of this energy to make something move, and manage to reclaim 100% of the excess heat energy somehow [ignoring the fact that this is impossible]. I am still missing the energy I used to do work [moving the robot around in this case]. So I do not have the energy to unreact all the waste products for reuse. So, in order to make such a system work, you would also need a supply of another reactant to allow you to keep the net energy lower after you unreact the primary reactant.
However, in this case you would probably have been better off just reacting with this "additional" reactant in the first place as it is a simpler system, and you can't get that 100% efficient reclaimation.
If you still don't get it, think conservation of energy. You can't react something, use that energy to do work, not reclaim energy from the work [ok if you did, you didn't do any net work], and unreact your reactants putting everything back the way it was before. That would be a source of perpetual free energy.
So in essence, you couldn't create a system which takes one cycle's worth of air, and reuses it entirely for each cycle. At least not if the system did any work. So you would still need a supply of oxygen [given, it may be a reduced supply if you can get a sustainable partial unreaction going to recycle part of the products back into reactants].
SCSI is meant to be hot pluggable, it is in the standard. There are some rules you have to follow depending on the hardware's ability to handle the extra load on the power and SCSI bus. Plus the operating system/adapter card have to look for new devices periodically, lest the device just sits there undiscovered. Read it at www.t10.org.
The Microsoft 16bit client provided on the WTS CD works marvelously under Wine. The 32 bit, I've never gotten to work, although I haven't tried with newer builds of Wine.
I need to proof read more carefully. KTP doubles the *frequency*, not the wavelength [the illustration is correct though]
Nd:YAG means Neodymnium, Yttrium Aluminum Gem.
Essentially a Nd:YAG laser has a rod of material made of a structure of the above elements. This rod is pumped with energy [typically via an arc-lamp], and lases typically in the 1080nm range [somewhere infrared, I'm not certain on the exact wavelength, so don't jump me]. Nd:YAG's were used quite commonly for medical procedures before solid state ones became more common [ie: cheaper].
Now, before someone screams: "I HAVE A GREEN YAG!" The commerically available YAG's are[were] typically run through a KTP [Potassium-Titanium-Phosphate] crystal. This crystal had the effect of doubling the wavelength [two 1080 photons -> one 540 photon].
Great, now not only will I find these hanging from the walls of people with bad taste, I'll have to put up with it at every geek that I know's dwelling...
Thanks.... really....
The one and sole reason to not have one phone number. Telemarketers would NEVER get off your back unless you were changing it periodically anyway. Sure, you can always check the caller ID, screen calls with your answering machine, but at least half of those are legitimate calls from people with either blocked numbers or screwy phone systems. Some areas now have the option to put a anti-telemarketer message on your line, but that costs $10/month.
Anyway, if you were willing to change your number more frequently, you could benefit from an expanded number space by making it more difficult to keep a current number. But if the situation were like that, then a telemarketer's association would form that would pool together current numbers from various sources (utility companies are notorious for getting you on "The List"), possibly in some sort of online database. No matter what you do, you're doomed to be interrupted. Add that to death and taxes.
I have used Linx Technologies modules for a few designs, and have been happy with their performance. Linx is primarily aimed at OEMs, so you won't find a lot of finished products on their site. However, they do have an eval board that has a DB9 RS232 connection [more or less give it power, and you can have simplex communication]. For your specific application, you'd probably need something mildly custom made, unless your sensors speak RS232. In either event, their eval boards would get you started.
Just because Gore won by that large of a margin in NYC is no evidence that the Electoral College is more fair. One city can and always will be able to choose the president. In the case of Florida, the vote could have made the whole election go either way in a large city such as Miami. It is just a situation that you can't avoid, popular or electoral.
I will grant the idea behind what you are saying: that the Electoral College buffers the influence of simply campaining strongly in one area, or a few areas. But ultimately, either system [popular or electoral] is flawed in that they are both subject to abuse. Remember, all a candidate really needs is a weak plurality in 12 states to win the election under the electoral system.
All they need is a strong majority in surprisingly few to win with strong third parties in a popular vote. A common example is the idea of a Southern Secessionist party. If they could garner 80% or more of the vote in the South with high voter turnout, with the rest of the parties evenly divvying the North; in a popular vote, the Secessionists would win handily, and just the South would decide the fate of the nation. That is hardly fair either.
If we decrease the kinetic energy of the moon, then the moon would crash into the Earth, not drift away. This would tend to make the tidal effects greater due to the closer proximity of the Moon to the planet. But the fundamental argument you make is correct. If we tap energy from the Moon's tidal effects, then the moon would be doing work with its gravitational field [without getting into the details of who is doing work on whom], and the system would inherently would have to lose gravitational potential. I believe however, the primary source of energy for this type of power would be the much more frequent periodic forces of normal weather-based waves. Tidal forces are generally slow, and would therefore probably require very large arrays of these generators to make a significant amount of power. Regular weather pattern waves though, are far more frequent and rapid.
For a more intuitive way of thinking of this, obviously bringing up/down the water in the column once a day is far less energy than bringing it up and down thousands of times in a day. There are more issues (most generators generate more power with greater speed, etc), but the frequency is what it all boils down to.
The pi/2 problem is related to my original post. Unless you can guarantee this, Nyquist's theorem does not hold. A simple example is if your sampling occured at the zero cross for a sampfreq/2 sine wave. This would register as a signal amplitude of zero, not whatever it really was. No amount of mathematical justification can take away this fact. If you don't know the correct amplitude, you don't know anything about the wave. The only possible work around would be to have a dragging amplitude maximum locator, but then you would have to be continuously adapting your sampling phase, and this becomes ridiculous.
Nyquist's theorem states that the highest frequency that can be represented is one half the sampling rate. This is obvious because you must be able to detect at least a peak and a valley of the sound wave.
Nyquist's theorem does not imply, however, that the representation of the maximum [or near maximum] frequencies will be highly accurate as far as the shape of the wave form is concerned. At and around 1/2 sampling freqency, the wave forms become basically nothing but square waves [alternating between a single high, and a single low point]. In order to deal with this, some sound decoders will attempt to interpolate the waves, but they cannot reproduce the original sound accurately. This is why higher sampling frequencies ARE relevent to higher audio fidelity. Higher bit resolutions are arguable though...
If you read the full text of the bill, it also contains provisions such as:
(c) It shall be unlawful for an exhibitor or the exhibitor's employee to allow a minor under sixteen (16) years of age who is subject to the compulsory school attendance laws of the state and who is not accompanied by the minor's parent, guardian or custodian to operate an amusement machine in the exhibitor's place of business between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on a day when such minor's school is in session.
Effectively making it aiding and abetting to allow an unsupervised kid to play ANY video game during normal school hours. [ignoring the fact that schools have half days/days off, and not all at the same time, making this law difficult for employees to really patrol]
Now, the problem I have with this is not so superficial. I used to work at an arcade doing repair [I was in high school, and had early dismissal, getting me out before noon], and I know I saw my fair share of kids where I worked that should have been in school. Most of them were completely unsupervised [ie: their parents were no where to be seen... EVER]. When asked about this, their story changed every time, although their theme was generally the same: "My parents don't care if I'm here."
You might call me naive for generally believing this point, but even if they didn't know that their parents didn't care, the mere fact that they are at the arcade instead of school on a regular basis is a testament to that.
Schools already take attendance, and if a child doesn't show, they call the parents. If the child is skipping, then the parents are generally aware of it (and if they are not, that is the school's fault). At this point, if the kid is habitually skipping, then the parent is the problem, and the school has a legal responsibility to intervene.
Now, one could argue that under these circumstances, I should have contacted the police, or some other authority to report that this kid was suffering from a limited form of neglect. Perhaps now, I would [at the time, I was younger, and never really thought about it]. But that is really beyond this discussion, because the law makes no requirements for reporting violating children, only kicking them out.
Minor correction of myself, the .pdb relocation is read only, but it too, copies the DB into RAM.
Actually, you can't run things directly from flash. I have a TRG, and have talked at length with TRG about this, and it is a common misconception about AutoCF. AutoCF provides a kind of alias to programs that are in your CF card. The alias is accessible just like any other program from the applications screen, BUT when you "run" the program, it is copied out of CF an into the Palm's main memory. When the program terminates, it is removed from main memory to free that space back up, leaving the original intact on the CF. All databases must be left in RAM as AutoCF doesn't seem to support the same dynamic relocation of .pdb's. Again, AutoCF does not map the CF memory directly into the Palm's main memory, and does not give you boundless memory to use for one application. You are still limited by the available RAM on the device.
Dave
One thing that doesn't seem to be addressed in the news item is binary compatibility. Palm has an enormous library of software that is compiled and matured on the Dragonball MCU. For the most part, this software is written in some form of C, so should be cross-compilable, but will require motivating anyone with closed source to recompile [in the very least].
Less obvious is how they are going to keep all of that straight. Hopefully they will[have] develop[ed] some kind of binary signing standard so that people who unwittingly download the Dragonball version don't install it on their ARM version [or vice versa]. I seriously doubt the two are that binary compatible... In some cases, the CPU may see that it has been handed an invalid opcode, and will branch out to a handler (if that has been implemented... that is a design subtlety that I know that I wouldn't normally worry about), but there are only so many opcodes, and there are bound to be overlap.
Anyway, the point being: trying to execute binary code for the wrong archetecture would probably have rather catastophic results. Does anyone know if there already exists a mechanism that could handle this in the Palm? I'm not aware of how application loading occurs on the platform.
Besides, I won't buy one until I can play FreeCell on it...
Not too long ago, I was charged with the duty of coming up with a wireless solution for a company I worked for. If I remember correctly: assuming that the transceiver complies with regulations for power output/interference after modification, there is a clause that allows hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers to not have to officially certify equipment as long as they take "reasonable steps" to make sure that the transceiver is compliant.
On the other hand, I am not entirely certain of the requirements of ISM band equipment. There may be an exclusion clause for this particular band, but I can't be sure without re-reading the code. Further, the modified equipment might violate the regulations on power output (as often times different antennae will). Again, if I remember correctly, the FCC measures its power output based on the maximum output per unit surface area the signal traverses, so if you condense all the power output of an Airport down into a square centimeter [a gross exaggeration], it will almost definitely violate code.
I have to admit, that is even better yet of an analogy.
And giving an opinion is invalid because? It is through learned discourse that the advancement of knowledge is perpetuated.
Allow me to elaborate. The point was not to question your right to state your opinion. It was the lack of sufficient evidence to support such a radical position. If "learned discourse" is to be practiced, then you must at least state some reason for your position.
I didn't think they were particularly vague. If progress is defined as the advancement of knowledge and prosperity for the citizens in a democracy, then anything which slows the adoption of technologies that will advance that society by definition "stifles" progress. If progress is defined by the protection of artificial scarcity in order to benefit mainly elite interests, then the status quo is working fine.
For starters, there is not probably even one reader of slashdot that really lives in a democracy. US citizens live in a representative republic. NOT a democracy. True democracy is subject to the tyranny of the masses. And I, myself, am proud of the fact that we don't live in a society where every average idiot has the ability to directly influence public policy.
But that is an irrelevant issue of semantics. The point is well taken that progress is the "advancement ... for citizens", but you are making this into an issue that it is not [the point I am trying to make].
FAIR is the key word. ...I prefer the concept that brought us such minor advancements like ... as much as I would like to see growth of commerce, I don't believe it should go un-tempered. My pet peeve that relates to the topic at hand, is the use of forced scarcity (i.e. denying greater functionality of technology by crippling a product in order to create an artificial price barrier) as a tool to maximize profits, where greater advancement of technology and greater efficiency of commerce would be more beneficial. [spelling out]
Fair enough. The point here is your perspective. You see a company selling a fundamentally similar product for two different prices and cry foul. You seem to believe that Promise is screwing over their customers by charging either too much for one product, and/or not enough for another. I agree with you, that companies purposefully holding back technology in the interests of profits is not a good thing for continued technological growth. But they simply aren't doing that.
If you need it spelled out for you, you would get greater deployment of technology if it were more affordable. This technology could be used to further progress. You would more than likely make more money in the long run because you would be shipping more units, and you would save on less duplication of design/engineering/manufacturing/marketing/support . Some good examples that immediately come to mind are, Long-Distance Phone Calls, Computers, Commercial Software & Cellular.
Affordable technology only works as a philosophy if it is affordable for the manufacturers as well. Yes, it doesn't cost Promise twice as much to produce the actual board for the RAIDversion, but it does cost them more to develop it.
Once manufacturers stopped chasing margin percentage, and switched to margin dollars, it became more profitable for them, and the citizenry benefited by the ability to afford the advancements.
I find it would be hard for you to back this up with numbers. Retailers are suffering MASSIVELYdue to the cut-throat margins. When you just look at dollar margins, you aren't taking into account infrastructure (the reason why margins are so highly valued). You need people/equipment to move around/sell your product, and margin percentage is simply a more practical way to look at it [from the sales manager's perspective]. Dollar margins are only significant when these are taken into account. Blaming this [at all] on margin percentages is a gross oversimplification.
Now, what I think you really meant was gross/net profit.
What other cards offer the same functionality as the IDE RAID card in a similar price range to the Non-RAIDed card?? (I haven't looked in a while, but Promise seemed to have the most ubiquity)
On IDE-RAID, possibly the only manufacturer (I believe there are some starting to emerge though). But for RAIDin general, there are hundreds of companies that offer RAIDdevices.
That is a matter of perspective.
"They just are charging a fair price for a product that gives more functionality than one of their other products. Would you think it would be fair for [going back to my "asinine" analogies] say Ford to charge you as much for a 4cyl Mustang as for the 5.0 version? "
Again, fairness. What is the cost to Ford for the bigger engine? There is physically more material. There would be greater engineering work to account for heat, weight, fuel efficiency, safety. Would it require different tooling and molds? Would it require different assembly runs, etc...? These are very real physical costs. What I am talking about is when you design a product from the get-go to include a set a features, and then cripple some of those features in order to differentiate price, when there isn't a commensurate decrease in manufacturing cost.
"When you get right down to it, that car doesn't cost much more to manufacture either [in fact, essentially no more]. The difference is the amount of engineering time that went into designing that higher performance engine."
I don't know what your background is, but I actually know someone who engineers cars, and as per above there are real costs above and beyond engineering. The other factor is your market. The reason for different engines in your mustang example is that some people want the look and feel of the car, without the added fuel & insurance costs. I have yet to hear anyone say "No I just refuse to pay that extra $5 because I don't foresee myself ever needing RAID functionality in my host adapter, so I will not be purchasing that product". (I have seen people be cheap, but even the cheap people I know wouldn't go to that extreme)
This is the contradiction that Ihave been referring to. You see, think about it. What is the difference between ford engineers designing a 5.0 engine, and Promise's engineers designing a RAID card? You seem to claim in this situation [the car] it is justified, but not in the situation with Promise's RAIDcard. Why? [the lack of justification I am talking about]. From a gross materials standpoint, the difference between the 4cyl and 5.0 engine is marginal [a couple of pounds of metal]. The difference in production costs is there [different molds/different machining processes], but not NEARLYin the amount of the difference of the price of the car (which is SEVERALthousand dollars). Now, no; Ido not have a direct view of what Ford's manufacturing processes are. But Ialso am a realist. There is no way that the price difference in the 5.0 is PURELYindicative of the difference in manufacturing costs. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that they know people will pay the extra money to be able to step on the gas and feel their internal organs float up a bit.
Now, you didn't explicitly state that you think the 5.0 is overpriced, but you seem to imply some kind of fairness in this pricing scenario. Do you believe it is fair to charge more for a RAID controller than a non-RAID controller?
[thinly veiled cross flames cut]
Actually I think the abdication of responsibility is what's ruining things. What I disapprove of are attempts by people with the Neo-Conservative agenda to attempt to ruin my social democracy by gutting it of its values with threats of capital flight.
By all means, some examples...
I'm not some fresh out of Philosophy 101 Marxist.
Well, with some of the comments you've made, I'd beg to differ </jk>
You're living a pipe dream if you think this is a "Free Market".
I don't believe that Istated we are in a free market. Only something about you implying something about it.
But unlike those who think the answer is to dismantle all regulation, I have come to the conclusion that the greater threat is from what is now being termed "Corporate Welfare" or from what are becoming De-Facto monopolies and oligopolies.
Deregulation, as it has been called, has been responsble for some of the greatest end-user benefits in recent times. Rather than have [essentially] government sanctioned monopolies on utilities and services [power, cable, long distance], the effect has been to allow a "free market" [cautiously used]. Kill them all, let God sort them out [metaphorically speaking].
Now, Idon't support all deregulation. Companies run amuck are the worst kind of "free market" side effects. But the question is how you deal with the term "corporate welfare." My experience is that very few things that are termed corporate welfare promote monopoly. For example. In a nearby area, tax abatements are given to a company to build a large facillity in town. This is often termed corporate welfare by its opponents. But in NOway does this stifle competition because it is not distributed in a biased fashion [unless there is some form of corruption going on, which should be dealt with accordingly]. The oligopoly statement, I must assume, implies a form of back-pocketing of government and business. And, I am sure it happens. People are corrupt. This kind of thing happens. But instead of banning governments from being able to institute programs to encourage business, Iwould rather support VERYstrict penalties for corruption [long, uncommutable jail terms, fines, etc].
Any power can be abused. The solution is not to take them away, but to make sure they are used honorably.
Before you just write this off as a loony political rant, one of the methods that is used to exert control is as per my original post the use of artificial market barriers. What incentive is there for me to make a more functional product to service a market, when all it will take to bankrupt me is for my competitor to un-cripple their product? This reduces consumer choice, which slows the advancement of technology, which stifles progress.
Ok. So you think that this is what will happen when someone else releases an IDE-RAID device... I find that difficult to believe. Besides, if you cannot produce an equivalent product at an equivalent market price, that is not the constituent producers fault. Besides even that, what you must then propose as an alternative is governmental review of designs to make sure that no company is doing such a thing. This is clearly not an acceptable solution.
The problem with this philosophy is that it does not take into account maximum market capitalization. There is a hard upper limit on volume. If you can't produce/sell a product at a price with a respective volume, and ATLEAST break even, there is no reason to produce it. Yes, there are circumstances where this is appropriate, but there are also limits to be taken into account.
"Rather than waste any more of my time picking apart your completely incoherent argument,"
I'll leave it to others to speculate in public the reasons.
"I'll just let the truly educated readers decide for themselves."
Indeed.
Without Malice,
I don't think that the term asinine can be used "without malice..."
-Dave
You call my argument asinine?
Maybe my analogies weren't the greatest, but that doesn't invalidate my position [perhaps a better analogy yet would be downloading a crack that turns demo software into commercial software]. You haven't really said anything in your entire response other than vaguely stating your opinion of the way things should be. And even then all you have really said is some vague and completely unsupported claims that these practices stifle progress.
What it boils down to is that you [flames aside] actually think that a company doesn't have the right to charge a fair price for their product. It isn't like Promise has a monopoly on RAID devices. It isn't like this is price fixing. They just are charging a fair price for a product that gives more functionality than one of their other products. Would you think it would be fair for [going back to my "asinine" analogies] say Ford to charge you as much for a 4cyl Mustang as for the 5.0 version? When you get right down to it, that car doesn't cost much more to manufacture either [in fact, essentially no more]. The difference is the amount of engineering time that went into designing that higher performance engine. The problem is that there are a lot of idiots out there that don't seem to get that one simple point. They just ignore it and spout off some irrelavent fodder about how the "Free market economists are ruining everything"
Companies charge more for certain product not ONLY because they can but ALSO because they want to recoup their costs.
Rather than waste any more of my time picking apart your completely incoherent argument, I'll just let the truly educated readers decide for themselves.
Sounds like classic anti-IP dither.
People don't seem to grasp that companies like Promise PAID some engineer(s) (people like you, that read slashdot, maybe even have a stuffed penguin or two at home) to make these products. Just because they also made it cheap for them to produce doesn't make it right for you to short change them. Sure it isn't costing them money, but then again, in theory, neither is software piracy. This is NO different.
This controller is not some open-source project that none of the programmers ever expected to get cash for. This is a company that you are giving plenty of reasons to guard their designs with as much tenacity as they can muster [ie: screw open-source linux support].
Why does the fact that you have to pick up a soldering iron make this any different from you buying games off the shelf, burning copies, and then using a shrink wrap machine to return them in "original" shrink wrap?
Perhaps a better analogy would be buying a 4cyl Mustang and then stealing an engine out of one of the dealer's 5.0's and putting it in your car. I mean, the 5.0 was just sitting there out in the open for you to get at... just like the firmware...