Re: Drivers, Upgrades and SW design (was Re: Dedicated Z-wave sites?)

["Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:o8idncuA36h9nwbYnZ2dnUVZ_vmqnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxx
> It seemed to me from the discussion about I-Pods and other devices on the
> CQ
> site that CQ has at least *some* of the same issues with drivers that
> nearly
> everyone else has.  It's not a slam against CQ, it's just what I consider
> a
> SW development fact of life.  Often, one can divine where to "hook" into a
> program or device without having that program or device's source code.
> We've seen protocols reverse engineered right under our very eyes here in
> CHA.  However, unless those protocols are in a manufacturer-sanctioned
> document, there's always a danger in writing an interface that "appears to
> work" with, let's say, the current generation of I-Pods.  It may not work
> with any new ones.

The problem we have with your arguments is that you continue to state the
obvious (of course when you connect too things together there's a possiblity
that it won't work and you'll have to figure it out) and act as if this is
the end of the world, when in actual fact these same systems that you are
discussing are running most of the world. Yes, anything that works now can
break in the future. Yes there can be incompatibilities. But you continue to
just go on and on about how impossible the whole situation is and how I'm
going to die or burn out or be totally overwhemled by something that ended
up taking a few minutes. It's pretty Chicken Little really.

Certainly there is room for improvement, as there is in any complex system.
But, in the meantime, the realists get on with making what we have work, and
it can be made to work very reliably if you know what you are doing. If you
don't know what you are doing, then then you take your chances, or you get
someone who does know what they are doing to do it for you.

And no, as I explained, the IPod and other devices that you quote are not of
the same ilk. The I-Pod isnt' a problem, we just haven't gotten around to
even starting on it. That's all. The Z-Wave discussion was just that we were
limited in the information we had and therefore it took some experimentation
to reach the correct compromise if speed vs. system integrity. Getting
information was initially quite expensive because they assumed everyone
wanting the SDK was a hardware developer and charged a lot for it because it
included various bits of hardware and they assumed a lot of support costs
for hardware development.

Anyway, bottom line, the computer industry isn't enormous for nothing. It
can deliver and deliver reliably if you take the time to know how to do it
right. It's no different than a car. Most people don't understand or
maintain their own cars, therefore they either take them to professionals
for that work, of the car eventually breaks down. But, somehow, people
continue to drive cars and the automative industry makes a lot of money
around the world.

---------------------
Dean Roddey
Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems, Ltd
www.charmedquark.com