[rescue] Slightly OT: ?Bad Cap Saga

[der Mouse]

>> I am.  I find parallel ports very useful for driving random digital
>> electronics.  I've built some three or four circuits designed to be
>> driven off a parallel port, and it was a good deal easier than doing
>> the corresponding thing with a serial port would have been.
> Ok, so you expect Joe Consumer to pay for a port that you use for
> experimenting?

Who said anything about Joe Consumer?  Restoring missing contenxt,

>>> I'm a bit saddened by missing serial, but I am not at all sad about
>>> missing parallel.
>> I am.  [...as above...]

I can miss something, and be saddened by its loss, regardless of how
useful anyone else may or may not find it, surely?

> I don't even think you can buy a NEW parallel port printer, why
> should 99.99999999% of the people buying computers pay for the
> ability to plug in a printer they can't buy?

(1) One in 1e10?  I'm quite sure more than 0.1ppb of computer
purchasers have a use for parallel ports.  0.1ppb of the people in the
world today is...well, I don't think we've hit 10e9 people yet, so
.1ppb is under one person even if every last person on the planet were
a computer buyer.

I don't know sales figures, but I'd guess that even more than 0.1ppb of
all computer sales - all _new_ computer sales, even - are to buyers
with a use for a parallel port.

(2)(a) They can buy such printers, just not new.
(2)(b) Because the same port is useful to plug in other things.

(3) Again, so what?  I'm not saying mass-market computers should bring
it back (for any value of "should").  I'm saying only that I miss it
and am saddened by its absence.

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