On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 22:51 -0700, Thomas Vecchione wrote: > > Yeah it's unfortunate. Maybe the rise of these cheap knockoffs is what > > drove a company like Creative, who were one of the first to open their > > drivers in the mid 1990s, to their current position of not releasing any > > hardware specs or Linux drivers at all. > > Well truth be told, not much has changed quality wise since then;) Ok I > jest some, but I dont really find creative to be all that great anymore > myself. Not even a big fan of the EMU line;) > Oh, it sure has changed - it's gone down the shitter. Creative's new stuff is garbage compared to the SBLive! which IMHO was a brilliant piece of hardware. I wouldn't know about the EMU line because it can't be used with Linux. > But that has little to do with your point I suppose. I agree things > like that above happening are quite unfortunate, though sometimes I > wonder if there was a bit more to it than just that in their case. > The trend since then has been to make cheap junk cheaper every year and move as much logic as possible into the driver which makes supporting Linux more work with each generation of devices. It's not just PC hardware, it's the whole damn economy. For example new houses are bigger and more expensive than ever but they're basically made of cardboard. Where they used to use 2x4s for interior walls they use 2x2s now. In 10 years they'll be twice as big, 5x more expensive, and made out of paper. Economists call it "improving efficiency", engineers call it "cutting corners". The economists seem to have won. Yes, I'm a little bitter about the whole thing ;-) Lee
