Vonage vs. Verizon [was: Anyone had experience with Comcast SMC modem/router? ]

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jan 19, 2007, at 13:14, Ben Scott wrote:

>  The only
> other public sector stuff I know of with this level of fault tolerance
> is medical life support equipment.

We'd like to think so.  The prevailing attitude among manufacturers  
in the 90's was "the FCC gives us an exemption for interference so  
we're not going to shield anything!".  Yes, you could put a cell  
phone next to one of the ventilators and it would stop working.   So,  
next generation, they wrapped their gear in some sheet metal, but,  
boy, that was an additional cost.

I loved reading the article about the shuttle group again - in the  
end the easy-to-measure metric is that the shuttle code is about the  
most expensive per LOC out there ... and the best.

It's almost like: "you get what you pay for."  Except in the case of  
the ventilators none of the customers asked for a $2 cheaper  
ventilator that wasn't shielded from interference - and I doubt the  
vendor marked the price down for it.

Fortunately, open source gives you more control than when you're at  
the mercy of a vendor or a cartel of vendors.

-Bill

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