"Charles M. Hannum" writes:
> 
> Of course, nobody in their right mind would even consider running a
> hard real-time application (e.g. industrial process control) on a
> general purpose OS

How about:

Compressed video decoding under NetBSD so you can watch videos without 
annoying dropouts?
Using a NetBSD box as a phone?
Doing a software modem on your NetBSD box (the originally described
app)?

There *are* uses here.

.pm