From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jul 17 07:24:21 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA09120 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 17 Jul 1996 07:24:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from etinc.com ([204.141.95.6]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id HAA09115 for ; Wed, 17 Jul 1996 07:24:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dialup-usr11.etinc.com (dialup-usr11.etinc.com [204.141.95.132]) by etinc.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id KAA23687; Wed, 17 Jul 1996 10:29:06 -0400 Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 10:29:06 -0400 Message-Id: <199607171429.KAA23687@etinc.com> X-Sender: dennis@etinc.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 2.0.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" From: dennis@etinc.com (Dennis) Subject: Re: mitsumi CD-ROM Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk M. VanLoon writes... >>With every purchase, a good consumer makes a value judgement. Frankly >>I get more utility out of 5 PCs than I do with 1 of whatever you recommend... >>particularly when its my money. > >Well, when you consider that most of the stuff that is dirt cheap is >only dirt cheap because everyone got on that bandwagon and made it >dirt cheap by buying that stuff in mega quantities, you're kind of >shooting yourself in the foot. If you could have gotten SCSI to >achieve "critical mass" among the masses instead of IDE, it would >probably be cheaper right now (if IDE even existed after such a >thing). > >Sure there's a balance. Maybe you just plain get more utility out of >a higher quantity of cheaper stuff. But on the other stand, sometimes >taking a stand for The Right Cause may actually help lead the clueless >masses in the right direction. Of course, only sometimes... it takes >a lot of convincing to convince the masses that you know better than >the used car salesman who works down at Circuit City now, and tried to >sell them that PeeCee with the IDE modem. "Knowing better" isnt the issue. I have countless PCs in my lab, and only my servers have SCSI. I dont need scsi for most of what I do, and to pay $30 extra for it would be a waste, $150 or $200 is a mega waste When I load a linux distrubution (I download FreeBSD), I slap on a cheap IDE CDROM, load it up, and then put it back on the shelf. I dont have to worry about whether the brand of SCSI controller i have is supported, or shared memory, or I/O or anything else. I also "know" that hand-tailored clothing is better and last longer than "mass-produced" clothing, but I dont wear suits very often and I'm quite happy buying jeans from a discount Levi's distributor. To no-doubt spurn another wide-eyed debate among the academics, I also dont want a bus-mastering controller stealing the bus from my more-critical communications in a router-system where disk functions are secondary. dennis