You are correct that very often the "good-enough" technology relies (and this dependence can be based on the historical development, - it is not alway the everyday dependence) on the achievements of the high-end technology. (To add to your list: quite a few consumer devices are based on the device principles originally developed for military needs.)
Let me disagree with a few of your examples. As far as I know, in many countries in Europe, what is known as "pay as you go" is the prevailing model of cell-phone usage. So, they don't need to piggy-back on the month-to-month paid plans (which was the original setting in the US). In my opinion, MP3 would not be a valid comparison to AM radio, but it so loose anyway that there is no need to argue about it. Igor Mon Oct 19 09:38:47 CDT 2009 P. J. Alling wrote: They miss a lot of things. There's a sometimes just good enough works because superior exists. A lot of these examples couldn't exist if a higher end alternative didn't exist. Something like the predator can only fly where it's operators have undisputed control of the air. Skype only exists because a very high end infrastructure exists for it to piggyback on top of. They didn't mention the success of cheap pay as you go Cell phones, (which only work were the infrastructure for more expensive phones exist anyway). Then there are the things that never went away. MP3 is the rebirth of AM radio quality music. Finally anybody want to compare the features of a low end Kodak "easy load" super 8 camera to the fliip. For the available technology they are about the same complexity and I dare say would give equivalent results. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
