Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 22:08:00 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: davids@webmaster.com (David Schwartz) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" Message-ID: <199911222208.PAA00846@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <000401bf352f$0504f810$021d85d1@youwant.to> from "David Schwartz" at Nov 22, 99 01:17:45 pm
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> What I'm talking > about is lock in to an inferior technology in the presence of a superior > technology (one that's indisputably superior in the range of 20% or more). > > > I can cite many examples of either, if you would clarify what it is > > you are talking about. > > I'm talking about tipping or network affects locking us into an inferior > technology. And the reason I don't think examples will be found is quite > simple -- even though discarding compatability is painful, as soon as it's > profitable, we find a way to do it. > > We aren't still stuck using 8 bit computers, are we? No, we are stuck using 8MHz 16 bit I/O busses, incapable of identifying all of the devices you plug into them, and incapable of doing bys mastering into your full memory address space. You might have an argument against inferior technologies after the last ISA card is dead and buried, but don't bet on it: I can't run arbitrary speeds between different PCI slots yet, either. Also, look at PCMCIA: other standards were available, but it is on an ENPIC by ENPIC basis whether or not hot plug is supported, and in most cases where it's not, OS vendors are unwilling to do the necessary work to make it robust in spite of that (c.f. FreeBSD, any Microsoft OS, etc.). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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