ImageDisk project is canceled

[Tony Duell]

> > Without seeing the source code to Imagedisk, how do I know that it 
> > actually follows that spec. I will assume Dave is not so malicious as to 
> > XOR the sector data with pseudorandom bit stream or anything stupid [1] 
> > but how do I know that there isn't a bug in the progrma that causes it to 
> > fail if there are more than 27 sectors/track or something?
> 
>   Then you must be a better programmer than I, to be able to tell if a

I don't claim to be a programmer at all. But I will make this claim. It's 
a lot easier to discover a bug in software if you have seen the sources. 
I know for a fact it's a lot easier to see possible design bugs in 
hardware if you have the schematics (because that I have done many times).

> 	1.  Do you have the source code to every operating system for every
> 	computer you own?  I also know you have PCs, so what in the world

For the machines I _use_, yes I do. Even a couple of my calculators. No, 
they are not open-source in the FSF sense, but the source code is available.

> 	did you do prior to Linux?  Refuse to use MS|PC-DOS?

My views changed majorly once I started to run Minix (not open-source, 
but source available) and more particularly linux. I found I had many 
fewer problems because I could read the source to find the cause of an 
error message (rather than just an entry in the manual), I found I could 
modify and fix things. Sometimes the problem would be due to my somewhat 
unconventional hardware (which I would not expect anyone to support other 
than me). I could either fix the problem with the hardware (e.g. a port 
bit was not doing the right thing in some odd circumstance) or I could 
patch the program. 

And having dscovered the advantages of being able to do that, I am not 
going to go back, certainly not on a machine that I depend on.


> 
> 	2. (might as well ask, as long as I'm asking)  I know you dislike
> 	the whole "board swap" mentality and that you prefer replacing
> 	blown chips over replacing a whole board.  But why not repair those
> 	non-functioning chips?  I mean, one blown gate and you toss the

I am not sure anyone can repair a chip. Are you suggesting I start moving 
atoms around to correct the wrong doping levels, oxided metal traces, etc?

> 	*whole* chip?  What's with that? [2]
> 
>   -spc (And you actually trust chips to do what they say?)
> 
> [1]	Not my footnote
> 
> [2]	Or in other words---the "components" in today's computers are bigger
> 	than yesterday's computers.  Right now, the "components" are
> 	boards/cards and I can certainly see it being whole computers

Maybe to you, but it's not happened here yet.

-tony