begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 02:34:04PM -0800: > Stewart Stremler wrote: >> I've never been impressed with anything that has billed itself plug-and-play. > > I don't know, I haven't had to fiddle with IRQ's or dip switches on any > of my hardware purchases in a number of years. I would say things have > improved immensely thanks to plug and play.
I've had hardware that didn't require me to fiddle with IRQs or set dip switches -- before "Plug-and-Play" came along... and I _have_ had to mess about with manually setting IRQs on PnP machines, although these days if that is required, I simply abandon the project entirely. The _concept_ of plugging something in and having it Just Work is a wonderful idea -- but it takes good engineers laying out a decent specification for the appropriate interfaces, not retrofitting an autoconfiguration system back over a nasty interface. (One of the reasons I like Java is that it's portable without having to resort to autoconf/automake and #ifdef-filled source files. Like security, portability is something that's best designed in from the start, not retrofitted after the fact.) So it's not that I dislike plugging in some device and having it do the right thing... it's when you have to proclaim that's what you do as if it's something special that engages my ire. And because it's basically advertising hype, I instinctively disbelieve it. Thus the "billed as" wording. -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
