Tony Duell wrote:
I am stil lowndering what is so great about replacing something with 10
transsitors (a cassette recorder) with something with sevreral million
transistos,
Those several million transistors may actually use fewer atoms than the 10
transistors in the cassette player when one includes packaging.
Maybe, maybe not.
I like simplicity too, but there are many ways of assessing which
'fewer' is better.
True enough. My experience suggests thatm for example, the IC version of
a circuit is likely to be more relaible than the discrete component
version, but that a more complex IC based system may well be less
reliable than the simpler discrete comonent circuit. When it comes to
repairing it, though. I'd much rather have the discrete component version.
I still claim the cassette recorder is simpler than the iPod/iPAd, for
the following reason. I can take a schematic of my discrete-transistor
cassatte recorder nad pretty much understand the purpose of every
component in it. I am not sure I could calculate all the values from
scratch (some of them would depend on the characteristics of the tape and
heads), but I can understand why they're there. I think that even if I
could get a tranasitor-level schemaitc of an iPod, it would be way
beyond me to understnad it (let alonde understanding the software), anf
I think it would be beyond any of us.
I know which
I'd rather have to keep running in 40 years
time (and yes, I do have a cassette recorder over that age, all it's ever
needed are new belts).
I think the concept is that in 40 years the choice will be the 70-year old
cassette player vs. whatever the future playback technology is, not the
then-40-year-old now-current playback technology.
That rather depends one what the data is stored on ...
-tony