Posted by Wayne Parham [ 65.69.120.165 ] on May 09, 2004 at 14:02:08:

In Reply to: My views on cable: transparent posted by akhilesh on May 08, 2004 at 11:52:05:

I remember our discussion about this on the porch. When you were describing what Transparent offers as a product, I remember thinking that it was more than just a cable. It is an RFI filter built-in to a cable. I can see how a cable assembly like this would be more expensive than a similar cable without an RFI filter.

As for the cable itself, that is probably a different matter. There was a big discussion (fight) that broke out on one of the other sites where one guy claimed a high-end cable was actually a standard product by Belden or someone, and that the only difference was the sales tag.

I saw this and thought to myself that the person reporting this information might have an axe to grind. But maybe not. The other side might have had an agenda, who knows. It just all seems to get way out of hand on something like that. This is especially true on the site where the "discussion" broke out, since one of its main goals is to promote controversy in order to increase traffic. If you watch the Jerry Springer show, you expect to see fights. And you kind of know that most of them are made up fights, pure fiction with play-actor participants.

But setting aside the controversy and reasons for it to be generated, the matter is really limited to a discussion about the merits of specific cables. I see this as sort of like talking about bolts. We can talk yield and tensile strength, corrosion resistance, etc. There are some things to consider when choosing a fastener, just like there are some things to look at when picking the right cable. But once a cables discussion starts getting weird, I tend to tune it out. It's definitely a "get a life" topic in my eyes, once we get past the (relatively simple and easy to describe) physical characteristics.

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