Re: DICE II Firewire Driver Settings

Soundhaspriority wrote:

The market and the user have adjusted to each other in an interesting way. The market has sold this proposition to the user: "We will provide you with rapid innovation, and you, in return, will help us make it work, because, if we had to wait to sell it until it was perfect, we couldn't afford to do it at a price you could afford."

That's a pretty good statement of the way I see it. But I think that part of the problem (and this certainly applies to recording gear and, until very recently, houses) is that people have been sold on the idea that what used to be too expensive for individuals is now well within their means. What they don't get for the low cost, however, is the experience of a manufacturer who figures out all the quirks and bulids the gear so that it will be trouble-free when used properly (by an experienced user). What business do we have messing with the inner workings of computers anyway? <g>

And come to think of it, Mike, did you grow up with Bill Cosby's "TV pliers" on top of the TV? The one used when the tuner knob fell off? I did. And all the flakey contacts in the tuner? And all the leaky caps and gassy tubes? And NTSC (never-the-same-color)? TVs were terrible! I think they make modern computers look good.

I don't remember TV pliers, but the last TV set that I had which had a mechanical tuner had knobs good enough so that they didn't break. My present TV is from about 1982. It doesn't look very good any more, though a digital converter did improve it in some respects (and break it in others). I suppose I'll replace it when it dies, but it may never dies.

There are completely different rules for mission critical, and medical devices. There are pacemakers, and there are robots specialized to brain surgery. A single servo mis-swipe could kill an individual, yet these incredibly complicated machines have been engineered so as to make a such a failure unlikely. The price of the machinery is astronomical.

And still, occasionally, it screws up. I haven't heard of any operational tragedies with surgical equipment that wasn't operator error, but pacemakers get recalled now and then when they discover a problem. A friend of mine's wife wanted to have Lasik eye surgery, and my friend, a very good engineer, told her to ask the surgeon what sort of software reliability design methods and testing were used on the equipment.

Someday, perhaps, the pace of innovation will slow. Then they may try to sell computers on the basis of reliability.

It's possible to buy a highly reliable computer, but Windows is still Windows (yeah, I know, I should just bag it and run Linux) and Firewire is still Firewire. I did observe at this Fall's AES show that the balance seemed to be tilting away from low cost products and there were more higher cost products on display. Maybe I'll see all the cheap stuff at the NAMM show and it will only be a dream.



--
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