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Presenting The CDR-ROM
nachoboy writes "Here's a cool new idea: the CDR-ROM. Allows a portion of the CD to be written and them mass produced, leaving the remaining area recordable by the user. It may sound funny, but if AOL started sending out CD's like this I might just start keeping them around."
CD-ROMRW
The kiddies could use a program to take care of their little Pokemon/Yu-gi-oh/the popular electronic pet du jour, and write it to the cd when they're done and carry it around for them. No need to carry around a disc to play your saved game.
Wouldnt CDRW-ROM make more sense? why would you have a write once portion of a disc with a part already stamped. With a CDRW-ROM you could save your games on the game cd, no more save files or memory cartriges.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Good: Knoppix CDs that boot themselves and then let you write to a small section of the CD, so that you can keep a permanent record of the files you write in the computer lab.
Bad (and the likely goal): CDRs that have DRM features written at the beginning of the disk to keep you from writing "untrusted" content to the rest of it. Watch these replace normal CDRs and hurt the CD remixing industry. (While the RIAA collects a higher piracy tax on them anyway.)
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
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Or, you could limit how many times a program can be installed ... endless possibilities.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Some companies might take the opportunity to sell them just like CD-R's but cheaper because every CD would have a small ad burned on it. So every time you burn to the CD or even look at the CD, you'll see the company's logo, play a little jingle or something.
This is actually semi-good thing.
:)
Imagine game that you dont need to install, it plays off the CD itself and writes save games there. Bad thing about it -- games could become "one time playable" only.
Or even worse -- one time installable software, that writes some reg. info to CD itself.
How about some exams on CD that you pass or not pass and it saves your results directly to CD?
But again, could be possible to create copy of this CD and do this again, and again, and again...
I can't seem to get to the site (/.'ed?) but one use that springs to mind is being able to update the data for some application. Right now you purchase some app that might come on a cd, lets say a mapping app. When you want to install updated data, you either get a new cd, or you download, but you can't have the updated stuff with the cd, since it's still on the machine you downloaded. With this, you could download and burn the update and still have everything together.
Another app could be a way to distribute homework to students. The homework/text is on the stamped portion. As the students do their homework, it can be burnt on the cd. At the end of the year you have a permanent record of the class. You could extend this to storing markup information (bookmarks, notes, etc) and adding supplemantal info as well.
In fact I seem to recall (circa 1996 ?) that AOL sent out a CD without the session being properly closed (or some such flaw) so you could write more stuff to it. One of the guys in the office was collecting them to write his data on.
Possibly, anyway. We pay a levy here on blank CDRs. BUT, they must be blank. SO, with something like this, you might be able to conveniently skirt said levies, with a small reduction in capacity.
I think this is a great idea. If one could extend this idea into maybe a CDRW-ROM allowing a lot of writes or perhaps even a DVDRW-ROM. This way for game consoles, you can actually save your game without the need of a Hard Drive (XBox) or a memory card. This might bring back some of the concepts that were promised by the cancelled (in US) N64 DD, allowing a game to be very changeable. Imagine an RPG like this, like where a lot more of the scenery can change, you slash your sword along a wall, turn off the console, load it up again the next day and you'll still see a little mark on that same wall. More so, in an RPG like game, there would be even more interactivity, like where you can change entire landscapes with your "magical" powers. This is something that would be hard to do on a game console, even with an 8 gig HD which I doubt developers would want to be half full because of one game. I'm curious how expensive this technology would be though.
As of February 19, the No More AOL CDs project has collected 141,803 CDs.
am i missing the whole point? couldn't exactly the same be done with multisession CDs? i mean, im all for new technology, but this seems really pointles
as for the aol example, i dont see them doing it. if they really want to be nice to their suck^H^H^H^H customers, they'd just start a multi session CD, burn their crap on it, and let their customers write on the rest
Actually, companies might get a hold of these new CD's and make them even cheaper than CD-R's. They might burn a small ad on the CD so that whenever you write to it or even view it, the company logo might pop up, play a little jingle, or something like that
Wouldn't this idea make it possible for people to abuse AOL's name and give out the CD again (some way or another) with additional malecious programs. This would easily trick many people into installing them and then the blame would go into the CDR-ROM producer (AOL in this case).
I always believed the inability to write over a distributed CD coming from a kind of trusted company is a good idea because it disallows such kinds of faking.
Khalid
"What you 'seek' is what you get!"
Tons of people in the computer lab I used to work in would keep AOL floppys to save stuff on, because even though they were totally unreliable they were abundant and free.
This would be a really good idea for bands jsut starting out. Record a CD with three songs and leave the rest blank, give away free. People burn other stuff on the end, and hear your tracks first. Free advertising marketed to people who might actually dig your sound.
Of course, you could do the same with recorded commercials...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
If you burn a CD using a package such as Nero, and do not "close" the CD, you can use it as a floppy disk - i've rewritten to such a "write-once" media fourty times before the disc failed on me.
AOL Time Warner is a leading member company of both RIAA and MPAA.
Shortly after the MD was released, I recall reading about Sony's intention of releasing an MD-Data. This was to have come in three flavours:
The MD-Data had a capacity of only 140MB, and I never actually saw one on sale.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"It may sound funny, but if AOL started sending out CD's like this I might just start keeping them around."
Back when AOL used to send out 3.5" floppy discs a lot of people wanted to get as many as possible. They'd format the discs, rip off the label, put their own label on and use it later.
I remember seeing sites that listed a bunch of methods on how to get more. Thanks to AOL you never had to buy floppys again! But unfortunately, as everyone knows, they switched to CDs and now everyone would rather see less of 'em. If they were rewritable that would probably be a different story for many -- and thus even if CDR-ROM was an option AOL might not do it for this very reason.
Consider this scenario :
Games don't use the windows registry at all, or they use temporary registry settings if necessary. All configuration info is kept on the CD.
The game is essentially playable off the CD. Your saved games go BACK ON the CD. Which is nice. That way you can carry around all your settings in a neat little package whereever you go.
(If this looks familiar, it's nothing but the Linux concept of keeping configs in files).
Why would games want to do this?
1) There is no issue of hard drive space.
2) The entire game is now portable.
3) It would be so much more convenient to customers.
4) It wouldn't cost them more.
5) They could even take this one step further by creating their own bootable CD thereby eliminating the need for a specific OS, but then...I'm not sure that's a very good idea as it turns a game company into an OS producer too, unless the micro kernel the game runs on is standardised for all games. If you manage that, you've essentially given PC users almost all the convenience of console gaming!
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Now imagine this... a custom linux computer interface whittled down to fit in 300 or so megabytes and configured to boot properly and DHCP across a wide array of hardware. The other 400 are for you to store your files and settings for later use. Set it up with a few essentials - text editor, web browser of your choice, various clients, *maybe* some basic compiler tools.
Take the CD anywhere you chose to and use your own interface/desktop from any PC in the world that will let you have access to the CDROM drive and the reset switch.
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I quite like this idea of disks that have rewritable sections of them because they will permit an increased deal of organisational neatness.
If one were to decide to install an old game from a few years ago you would first have to find the install disk, then the various disks on which you've saved patches you've downloaded. Then perhaps if you use any expansion packs with the game you then have to find that disk too. If you're as untidy as I am this could get to be a real nightmare.
By the sound of this, however, you could just store the relevant patches and expansions (and maybe even keep a copy of a file containing your preferences) on the writable portion of the software's install disk and have it all in one place. Could be neat.
*Maybe* you could have a game run entirely from CD, saving progress in the RW area
A really good idea... but a few hitches:
-What about drivers for the particular burner, or is there a generic?
-Needs to have it's own burning software.
Even rewritable discs have a finite lifetime, although technically so do diskettes.
This is bad. Very bad.
1. You get new game on CDR-ROM.
2. You install it. During installation procedure, CD is written to by the installation.
3. CD will no longer install.
4. No re-install, no backup, no piracy, either.
5. Profit.
It wont work in the long term.
What happens when i want to play that 2 year old game again, but I have a brand spanking new graphics card?
No drivers.