Rockwell should be boycotted

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Gert wrote:
>Rockwell is still something to avoid like the plague. They don't care for
>exisiting standards, their implementation of ***whatever*** is usually
>very sloppy and buggy, and their "technical support" is even worse.

<Begin Rant>

Rockwell is also to be boycotted upon the general principle that all
companies that require any non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) for any of
their products are to be boycotted.

Rockwell came up with RPI, a non-standard for a crippled modem that does
not implement error correction or data compression in hardware.  They
require an NDA before they will tell you how to interface with some
software that performs these functions.  You can't get source for the
software that performs error correction or data compression, and it is
only available for DOS.  In addition, because of the NDA, you can't even
reveal (for example in free published source code) how to interface with
that DOS software.  Such crippled modems will never be usable with any
OS other than DOS.

Any company that does such a thing deserves to be totally boycotted.
When you buy HARDWARE you have a right to know how to properly interface
to and use that hardware.  (Companies that want to keep secrets should
keep them in firmware that is sold with the hardware.)  In addition, no
hardware should be OS dependant.  (Furthermore, RPI is technically a bad
idea---but that is beside the point.)

I strongly recommend that anybody with a clue never buys any modem
product with any Rockwell chips---even if the product is otherwise
acceptable.  There are lots of other hardware manufacturers out there
with more reasonable business practices.

I will never buy any modem product with any Rockwell chips in it for the
rest of my life, and I shall also never recommend for purchase any such
modems to any employer that I work for.

<End Rant>

-- 
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~khendric    kjh@seas.smu.edu, kjh@pollux.usc.edu
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We are upping our standards ... so up yours.     Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/5