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."

Comments

Viable idea

[unterderbrucke]

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.

Hmm

[Cyno01]

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.

Is this good or bad?

[GrouchoMarx]

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.)

Great for copy protection.

[Rolo Tomasi]

During the installation, the install program writes your processor's serial number (or soon your TCPA ID) to the CDRR. You probably don't want to "borrow" that CD to anyone anymore.

Or, you could limit how many times a program can be installed ... endless possibilities.

Good for Canadians...

[Abcd1234]

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.

Think about applications for games.

[carlmenezes]

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!