Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Thursday 12 April 2001, 4:47 PM
Rupert Goodwins' diary
Wednesday 11/04/2001
Oh, no! Microsoft is using its position of power to squelch the opposition again! By saying it won't support USB 2.0 but will support Firewire, it's once again ruining the free market and forcing its own view of the world on everyone.
Good.
We do not need yet another badly-implemented, over-complex and totally unnecessary high speed communications protocol causing us all pain and misery for years. Hell, USB 1.1 is barely at the point where it can be considered a healthy, no-pain option: just add a four-port hub to your system and try to untangle the device driver misery when things go wrong. And while Firewire has yet to really get out there and prove itself -- what can you say about a protocol where everyone involved calls it different names? -- it is at least out of the cradle and there working in the real world.
USB 2.0 is a purely political, industry-led invention. Nobody's crying out for it. Nobody wants the sheer unadulterated diabolic agony of living through the hardware, OS, driver and peripheral manufacturers' learning curves. Well done, Microsoft. Good on yer.
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