Abstract: A method for mass producing whole-seed crackers as a dehydrated food product is provided. In one embodiment a raw food product is produced. Mucilage-producing whole seeds, preferably flax seeds, are soaked in water to cause them to produce a mucilage, but not long enough to cause them to sprout. They are then mixed with ground seeds, preferably sunflower seeds, and herbs, spices and vegetable flavors, to form a dough having a selected moisture content, and cooled to produce a dough that has a water content, viscosity, elasticity, tensile strength and cohesiveness such that when sheets of dough having a desired thickness come through the extruder they have a smooth texture, do not wrinkle or curl, hold together without tearing, and do not stick to surfaces of processing equipment with which they come into contact. The sheets are then scored to outline substantially regular-shaped crackers.

Abstract: Apparatus and method providing improved fault tolerance through redundancy of hardware and software suitable for use in a head-end of an interactive information distribution system. Communications between each of a head-end controllers and each of the server modules are coincidentally sent along at least two signal paths to provide to additional fault tolerance in the event one of the signal paths becomes inoperable. In one embodiment, a video switch comprises a plurality of I/O ports coupled between a plurality of server modules and a plurality of subscriber equipment for transferring video information between the server and the subscriber equipment. A primary and secondary switch controller are each coupled to the head-end controllers and the plurality of I/O ports. The primary switch controller is used for routing data packets containing said video information between the plurality of I/O ports.