[rescue] OT: Linux and USB on Intel

[Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 02:56:19PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Sunday, April 20, 2003, at 02:49 PM, David Passmore wrote:
> but I'm not sure that I agree with it entirely.  Windows, in my 
> opinion, has damaged the computer industry (and the science) possibly 
> irreparably by teaching people that computer failures are "normal" and 
> that computers "just do that" and that it's "ok" to need to reboot 
> constantly.  This, and its associated cost in terms of support, lost 
> work, and lost time, I believe is a much larger problem.

Definitely have to agree about that.  Read up on the early history of
Univac, or read about PARC, or whatnot.  Engineering was truly
engineering with a capital E.  Now it's "flail around until it works
most of the time and looks good".

Does your George Foreman grill "just do that"?  Your toaster?  Your
fridge (about the same number of moving parts)?  Yet the service
interval for a fridge is like, 20 years.  A good toaster lasts many
years.

Forbes magazine has an article on Xilinx and how FPGAs are being used
for tasks that Pentiums/SPARCs/PPC etc. are not suited for.  I am not
the only guy who remembers that the PARC Alto, Symbolics LISPM etc
were microcoded, am I? (not exactly the same as FPGAs, but...)
 
--P