I'm rather hoping that CF cards behave like memory chips and obediently cough up bytes on demand. But if they need handshaking and I have to resort to PC-style buffering then I will lose interest. I'll probably crank down the speed by a couple of orders of magnitude and turn the thing into a cassette player!
I am first and foremost a DSP engineer. I hate the 'goes-as-fast-as-it-goes' disease that has gripped electronics. I hate caching (sure it will work great - MOST of the time). And I hate the whole PC thing with emphasis on throughput but with lousy turn-around (so a PC can handle high definition TV but can't address a simple 1kHz control loop application).
Sorry, I had to rant at someone today - someone just suggested I program DSPs in Java!!!!!!