Just in case anyone is having trouble getting to the page mentioned in the article, q3arena.com caches ID's.plan updates as well. John Carmack, Graeme Devine, Xian and the rest of the crew are over there.
I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it. At about 9:25, our local NBC affiliate (WCMH-4, Columbus, Ohio), ran a message across the screen:
This movie is a fictional thriller, and does not suggest that any of these events will or could actually occur. For information about Y2K-related issues, call 821-4444
I nearly laughed my ass off. They ran the message twice. Did anyone else see messages like this? If you are, I hope you're at least half as amazed as I am. I sincerely hope the general public doesn't need a reminder like this to know F-18s won't be crashing into their house.
Um... perhaps we should have a quick lesson on what an ERP is:
Enterprise Resource Planning: An integrated information system that serves all departments within an enterprise. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry, ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than proprietary software written by or for one customer. ERP modules may be able to interface with an organization's own software with varying degrees of effort, and, depending on the software, ERP modules may be alterable via the vendor's proprietary tools as well as proprietary or standard programming languages.
An ERP system can include software for manufacturing, order entry, accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, purchasing, warehousing, transportation and human resources. The major ERP vendors are SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Baan and J.D. Edwards. Lawson Software specializes in back-end processing that integrates with another vendor's manufacturing system.
Kenwood will not be contributing code or distributing Linux, but rather using Linux.
Not to nitpick, but 98lite.com points to some cheapo internet access provider. I'm guessing it's 98lite.net that you want.
98lite basically just replaces elements of the Windows 98 installation (mainly the shell) with those from Windows 95. I guess you get to keep the kernel, but lose the Internet Explorer based shell.
Hrm... I don't know if I'm stating the obvious here, but on old Apple IIs PEEK and POKE commands were a means of writing and reading directly to/from system memory and CPU registers.
You could do fun things like freeze the machine, disable system key combinations, or just generally make the machine act like it was going to explode. The Apples has no concept of "protected" memory like (some of us) do now.:).
Oh... and I guess it is A Good Thing (tm) to examing the memory with PEEK before you overwrite it with POKE.
Actually, Windows users have more advanced and far more complex pronunciation issues than any of the primitive *nix operating systems do.
Take, for example, a case I encountered yesterday. While I exclaimed that Windows was really an "ass-smoking handicapped piece of crap" after it refused to boot, my boss, only a room away, interpreted windows as more of a "bloated, sheep-probing pile of crap" as the file server BSOD'd.
These subtle linguistic variations prove the flexibility of Windows and demonstrate a truly superior design, especially when compared to the antiquated Unix architecture.
I was comparing this announcement side-by-side to the Apple Cinema Display earlier, and it seems the main difference is in pixel density (2048x1536 for the IBM vs. 1600x1024 for the Apple display, on, give or take an inch, the same surface area).
In my short history with laptops, I've had multiple bad pixels on measly 12.1" LCDs with maximum resolutions of 800x600. Based on some really primitive early-morning logic, it seems the pixels are just going to pop twice as fast on the IBM display.
Have the manufacturing processes changed at all in the past two years to allow them to cram 9 million transistors in this thing? (Besides the removal of the "spacer balls"?) (Heh)
I followed the link on their site to get "Technical Specifications", and was mildly disappointed. I've gathered from previous posts that the "Personal Jukebox" (yeech... the name... make it stop) uses a 2.5" IBM drive. Does anyone know of a source of some technical specs on the IBM 2.5" drives that are in these players?
I do a lot of jogging, and would love to use one of these, but I want to take a look at some detailed specs for a couple reasons:
Resistance to Shock: How well do these players hold up when they're shaken? How about dropped? I currently use a Sharp MD-702 minidisc player for portable music - its been dropped multiple times and has never had any of its (important) parts damaged. I would imagine the solid-state MP3 players would present even more resistance to shock and acceleration.
Time Before Estimated Failure: Hard drives usually have a MTBF given to them in terms of thousands of hours of operation. Say I jog 45 minutes to an hour every day for two years, carrying the unit in my hand. The disk drive would probably hold up that long, but would the repeated shock of jogging decrease the estimated time before failure?
Can anyone (at least semi-scientifically) address any of these issues or point me to some relevant shock/mtbf specifications? Is this design anywhere close to as durable as CD/MD players? Are the drives replacable?
Hrm... I kind of rushed off the original message... let me see if I can explain in a little more detail:
IT staff will be punished if they adopt Internet Explorer, as it actively violates the standards that Mozilla will (hopefully) support...
I was syntatically off the mark here. I don't mean to imply that Internet Explorer breaks all the W3 standards, or that Netscape supports them all. I'm merely expressing a hope that a created from scratch, open source browser project will give the users some clout when it comes time to draft out standards. Have you ever noticed that Microsoft "played key roles" in the development of CSS, XML, and other supposed "standards"? Is it that surprising that they are fully implemented in Internet Explorer?
Nevermind the fact that Internet Explorer has bastardized (I know, someone else said this... but I like the word) standards and even forced some of their own so-called standards upon users. Microsoft polluted Java with the "Windows Foundation Classes", called VBscript a "standard" client-side scripting solution (only to back off and use it only in ASP), and told WWW developers to use those nifty new ActiveX controls that tie entire WWW sites to Win32. It was around this time that they started declaring COM as an "open standard". They made a big deal about COM on Solaris, which is now nowhere to be found.
Now, I'm not excusing Netscape in any way. Netscape has failed to support even standards that Microsoft has nothing to do with, and is looking more every day like a huge conglomoration of useless third-party software. Just take a look at the specs for the Wintel Communicator 4.7: It includes AOL Instant Messanger, RealPlayer, Winamp, Betnik something-or-other... It seems they've reved the product for the past year only by tacking new gadgets on.
What I hope can happen, is that the Mozilla project can distance themselves enough from the Netscape/AOL marketing mess to produce a worthy graphical open-source browser, something I've yet to see (correct me if I'm wrong). Netscape/AOL can use it if they want to, but the free software community can guide it toward goals that aren't necessarily world domination of Netscape's Netcenter portal.
I'm not an open-source bigot, in fact I'm using quite a bit of Microsoft software right now. I just think that we could all benefit from having an open-source browser that is at least detached from the motives of a company. (Refer to the article on the Opera site on why "free" is never really "free").
By the way, has anyone ever tried typing about:mozilla in the location box of a copy of Internet Explorer? It pulls up a blank, blue page. Any speculation as to why? Is M$ just too used to creating big, blue rectangles? (Cough..NT..Cough)
It's times like these when I wish I had that little moderation drop-down box in front of me that reads "Funny". Someone please do me a favor and moderate this up.:)
I couldn't agree more that Netscape Communicator has become bloated and buggy. Rather than abandon Netscape, however, we should thrust our efforts into the Mozilla project. Not only will we get a high quality, open source browser, but we'll get another nice stick to beat Microsoft with.
As far as I know, the results of the project will not be "owned" per se by Netscape; this will only aid the acceptance of Mozilla as the standard WWW browser. IT staff will be punished if they adopt Internet Explorer, as it actively violated the standards that Mozilla will (hopefully) support.
Fight until the very end. I'd be surprised to see a multi-company DVD consortium rearrange their entire approach to the medium because the encryption scheme was cracked.
The encryption scheme, as far as I can tell, was designed so the movie industry could avoid the costs of anti-"piracy" enforcement that plague the VHS and music industries. I wouldn't be surprised if 1) they go after illegal duplicators of movies faster and harder than they ever have, and 2) they try to drum up some sort of legal action against the "crackers", whether it has any legal grounds or not.
Another take on this, is they could gradually "phase in" new keys (if I understand the spec correctly), possibly using this incident as a lesson in the need for a more open DVD spec.
Look on the bright side: This would sure speed the transition to IPv6. If every little kid got his own IP address, we'd run out in no time! (Or would we? Anyone care to comment on exactly how many IPv4 addresses are out there still?)
Hrm... Personal freedom or new IP protocols to play with? I'll have to think about this one...
Grand Prize: A Palm VII(TM) connected organizer, a HandSpring Visor(TM), a full Code Warrior(TM) development environment...
Is it just me, or are these not very compelling prizes for someone who has the knowledge and resources to win a Palm programming contest?
Contest Winner: "Wow! I won a free Palm and compiler... always wanted one of these... Maybe I could use these to win a contest... no... wait a minute..."
There's also a number of security flaws that are neglected by Microsoft and are rolled into service packs, fixed in the interim only by manual and downright abysmal workarounds. (Like "uninstall it".) A couple examples:
MS99-043: "Javascript Redirect" Vulnerability "Microsoft recommends that customers add sites that they trust to the Trusted Zone, and disable Active Scripting in the Internet Zone."
MS99-025: IIS RDS Vulnerability "If you don't intentionally use the implicit remoting functionality in the DataFactory object, you should disable it. Please note that you can still use RDS to invoke Business Objects on the server, but an administrator must explicitly enable access to these object by inserting keys for them in the registry."
Even important patches are declared by Microsoft to be "not fully regression tested" and not warranted along with the core Windows 98/NT binaries.
On top of this, NT security administrators must wait for a single company to release a single binary-only patch at their whim. Security administrators cannot analyze or audit the code, and this shows, as Microsoft has made a habit of releasing patches to their previously released patches. Remember NT Service Pack 2?
Well... if the "First Post!" thing gets really bad, we could always have Hemos insert a line in the Slash scripts to grep each one of the incoming messages for "First Post", throwing the matching posts into/dev/zero.
I agree with you on a couple points here. I read an interview with a team of NT developers about a year ago that cited 'strong development tools' as one of Microsoft's chief means of pulling developers (and consequentially users) into their OS/UI/desktop. For the most part, this strategy has worked.
I'm really interested in seeing progress in Integrated Development Environments licensed under the GPL that are platform-independent and in CVS (KDevelop is the only one that comes to mind at the moment). This would, IMO, would not only strengthen Linux and all of the Unixes as true developers' platforms, but help to 'pull in' developers who may not be so familiar with traditional Unix compilers and debuggers.
Someone mentioned this in an earlier post, but i'll reiterate: Microsoft could do some serious damage by porting their development tools to other operating systems, mostly in the business realm. We should work to establish one or more de facto IDEs that run on good and stable kernels, and use these tools as ramps toward improving Linux desktop environments and the overall Linux 'experience' (how's that for Microsoft-esque marketing babble?).
Also, regarding NT kernel performance: It's not good, but I've never seen it as bad as you've just described. NT eats an insane amount of I/O bandwidth; even all the goodies like asynchronous I/O haven't fixed this. On my home system, I recently moved from an Ultra DMA/33 drive to a fancy new Ultra2 SCSI 10k RPM drive; this smoothed out performance tremendously, especially when running large builds.
Wow... I need to find my way back to a high school science/math department fast... Scientific notation errors are about as embarassing as they get...:)
Hrm... X is old. X is optimized for uses other than single-machine desktop use. X can do things other (and much more recent) GUIs can't; for example X can run applications transparently even over high-latency network connections.
X is not shit, and there's a reason it's been around this long. IMO, however, its strongest suit is not powering a single desktop or workstation. It's behind in some areas, but well ahead in others.
In my opinion, the major advantage Xi Graphics, Inc. has over the Free Software Community is their willingness to sign non-disclosure agreements which, though they effectively tie the product to a closed-source model, allow for a fuller featured and more hardware-specific X server, not a more stable X server.
Yes: it's corporate mudslinging at its finest, a vain attempt to differentiate themselves from the free "competition" by including terms that the public can identify with (like "stable", "secure", and "fast") that have very little technical merit. A page explaining NDA agreements and the politics of the situation wouldn't make a real convincing ad, and would prove that Xi is doing little more than attempting to translate a political advantage into an economic one.
The findings point to a need for further research into these processes, since they suggest that a modest, temporary rise in calcium levels results in growth and proliferation of these important brain cells, while a larger and more prolonged rise causes the cells to collapse. The implications for long-term memory and learning are not yet clear.
The article seemed to come to the conclusion that an excess of calcium can actually cause brain cells to collapse. Can an excess of caffeine trigger an excess of calcium in the brain? If so, wouldn't caffeine only be good for you in moderation (like most things)?
This does exist. There's a specification for MD-Data out there, originally designed to replace 3 1/2 inch floppy drives on desktop computers.
However, Minidiscs have a native capacity of 140MB of compressed ATRAC audio. There is a read-only label track on each MD that distinguishes an MD Audio and MD Data disc; MD equipment looks at this label to determine what kind of disc it is accessing.
Normal Minidisc recorders, unless modified, refuse to touch MD-Data discs, thus would not work. MD-Data drives would be of questionable value because of their small 140MB capacity. 640MB MD-Data drives are supposedly in the works, but I've yet to see any concrete product.
Slashdot Mirror
Just in case anyone is having trouble getting to the page mentioned in the article, q3arena.com caches ID's .plan updates as well. John Carmack, Graeme Devine, Xian and the rest of the crew are over there.
I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it. At about 9:25, our local NBC affiliate (WCMH-4, Columbus, Ohio), ran a message across the screen:
This movie is a fictional thriller, and does not suggest that any of these events will or could actually occur. For information about Y2K-related issues, call 821-4444
I nearly laughed my ass off. They ran the message twice. Did anyone else see messages like this? If you are, I hope you're at least half as amazed as I am. I sincerely hope the general public doesn't need a reminder like this to know F-18s won't be crashing into their house.
Um... perhaps we should have a quick lesson on what an ERP is:
Enterprise Resource Planning: An integrated information system that serves all departments within an enterprise. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry, ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than proprietary software written by or for one customer. ERP modules may be able to interface with an organization's own software with varying degrees of effort, and, depending on the software, ERP modules may be alterable via the vendor's proprietary tools as well as proprietary or standard programming languages.
An ERP system can include software for manufacturing, order entry, accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, purchasing, warehousing, transportation and human resources. The major ERP vendors are SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Baan and J.D. Edwards. Lawson Software specializes in back-end processing that integrates with another vendor's manufacturing system.
Kenwood will not be contributing code or distributing Linux, but rather using Linux.
Not to nitpick, but 98lite.com points to some cheapo internet access provider. I'm guessing it's 98lite.net that you want.
98lite basically just replaces elements of the Windows 98 installation (mainly the shell) with those from Windows 95. I guess you get to keep the kernel, but lose the Internet Explorer based shell.
Hrm... I don't know if I'm stating the obvious here, but on old Apple IIs PEEK and POKE commands were a means of writing and reading directly to/from system memory and CPU registers.
:).
You could do fun things like freeze the machine, disable system key combinations, or just generally make the machine act like it was going to explode. The Apples has no concept of "protected" memory like (some of us) do now.
Oh... and I guess it is A Good Thing (tm) to examing the memory with PEEK before you overwrite it with POKE.
Heh. Just a wild guess. I could be wrong.
Actually, Windows users have more advanced and far more complex pronunciation issues than any of the primitive *nix operating systems do.
Take, for example, a case I encountered yesterday. While I exclaimed that Windows was really an "ass-smoking handicapped piece of crap" after it refused to boot, my boss, only a room away, interpreted windows as more of a "bloated, sheep-probing pile of crap" as the file server BSOD'd.
These subtle linguistic variations prove the flexibility of Windows and demonstrate a truly superior design, especially when compared to the antiquated Unix architecture.
I was comparing this announcement side-by-side to the Apple Cinema Display earlier, and it seems the main difference is in pixel density (2048x1536 for the IBM vs. 1600x1024 for the Apple display, on, give or take an inch, the same surface area).
In my short history with laptops, I've had multiple bad pixels on measly 12.1" LCDs with maximum resolutions of 800x600. Based on some really primitive early-morning logic, it seems the pixels are just going to pop twice as fast on the IBM display.
Have the manufacturing processes changed at all in the past two years to allow them to cram 9 million transistors in this thing? (Besides the removal of the "spacer balls"?) (Heh)
I do a lot of jogging, and would love to use one of these, but I want to take a look at some detailed specs for a couple reasons:
Can anyone (at least semi-scientifically) address any of these issues or point me to some relevant shock/mtbf specifications? Is this design anywhere close to as durable as CD/MD players? Are the drives replacable?
Hrm... I kind of rushed off the original message... let me see if I can explain in a little more detail:
IT staff will be punished if they adopt Internet Explorer, as it actively violates the standards that Mozilla will (hopefully) support...
I was syntatically off the mark here. I don't mean to imply that Internet Explorer breaks all the W3 standards, or that Netscape supports them all. I'm merely expressing a hope that a created from scratch, open source browser project will give the users some clout when it comes time to draft out standards. Have you ever noticed that Microsoft "played key roles" in the development of CSS, XML, and other supposed "standards"? Is it that surprising that they are fully implemented in Internet Explorer?
Nevermind the fact that Internet Explorer has bastardized (I know, someone else said this... but I like the word) standards and even forced some of their own so-called standards upon users. Microsoft polluted Java with the "Windows Foundation Classes", called VBscript a "standard" client-side scripting solution (only to back off and use it only in ASP), and told WWW developers to use those nifty new ActiveX controls that tie entire WWW sites to Win32. It was around this time that they started declaring COM as an "open standard". They made a big deal about COM on Solaris, which is now nowhere to be found.
Now, I'm not excusing Netscape in any way. Netscape has failed to support even standards that Microsoft has nothing to do with, and is looking more every day like a huge conglomoration of useless third-party software. Just take a look at the specs for the Wintel Communicator 4.7: It includes AOL Instant Messanger, RealPlayer, Winamp, Betnik something-or-other... It seems they've reved the product for the past year only by tacking new gadgets on.
What I hope can happen, is that the Mozilla project can distance themselves enough from the Netscape/AOL marketing mess to produce a worthy graphical open-source browser, something I've yet to see (correct me if I'm wrong). Netscape/AOL can use it if they want to, but the free software community can guide it toward goals that aren't necessarily world domination of Netscape's Netcenter portal.
I'm not an open-source bigot, in fact I'm using quite a bit of Microsoft software right now. I just think that we could all benefit from having an open-source browser that is at least detached from the motives of a company. (Refer to the article on the Opera site on why "free" is never really "free").
Rant mode disengaged.
Heh... Quoting "about:mozilla". Now that's funny.
By the way, has anyone ever tried typing about:mozilla in the location box of a copy of Internet Explorer? It pulls up a blank, blue page. Any speculation as to why? Is M$ just too used to creating big, blue rectangles? (Cough..NT..Cough)
Ha!
:)
It's times like these when I wish I had that little moderation drop-down box in front of me that reads "Funny". Someone please do me a favor and moderate this up.
http://devlinux.com/pub/namesys
If you grab the sources from the site, the README.FIRST file says to:
I couldn't agree more that Netscape Communicator has become bloated and buggy. Rather than abandon Netscape, however, we should thrust our efforts into the Mozilla project. Not only will we get a high quality, open source browser, but we'll get another nice stick to beat Microsoft with.
As far as I know, the results of the project will not be "owned" per se by Netscape; this will only aid the acceptance of Mozilla as the standard WWW browser. IT staff will be punished if they adopt Internet Explorer, as it actively violated the standards that Mozilla will (hopefully) support.
My $0.02...
Or, Option Four:
Fight until the very end. I'd be surprised to see a multi-company DVD consortium rearrange their entire approach to the medium because the encryption scheme was cracked.
The encryption scheme, as far as I can tell, was designed so the movie industry could avoid the costs of anti-"piracy" enforcement that plague the VHS and music industries. I wouldn't be surprised if 1) they go after illegal duplicators of movies faster and harder than they ever have, and 2) they try to drum up some sort of legal action against the "crackers", whether it has any legal grounds or not.
Another take on this, is they could gradually "phase in" new keys (if I understand the spec correctly), possibly using this incident as a lesson in the need for a more open DVD spec.
My $0.02...
Look on the bright side: This would sure speed the transition to IPv6. If every little kid got his own IP address, we'd run out in no time! (Or would we? Anyone care to comment on exactly how many IPv4 addresses are out there still?)
Hrm... Personal freedom or new IP protocols to play with? I'll have to think about this one...
Grand Prize: A Palm VII(TM) connected organizer, a HandSpring Visor(TM), a full Code Warrior(TM) development environment...
Is it just me, or are these not very compelling prizes for someone who has the knowledge and resources to win a Palm programming contest?
Contest Winner: "Wow! I won a free Palm and compiler... always wanted one of these... Maybe I could use these to win a contest... no... wait a minute..."
There's also a number of security flaws that are neglected by Microsoft and are rolled into service packs, fixed in the interim only by manual and downright abysmal workarounds. (Like "uninstall it".) A couple examples:
MS99-043: "Javascript Redirect" Vulnerability
"Microsoft recommends that customers add sites that they trust to the Trusted Zone, and disable Active Scripting in the Internet Zone."
MS99-025: IIS RDS Vulnerability
"If you don't intentionally use the implicit remoting functionality in the DataFactory object, you should disable it. Please note that you can still use RDS to invoke Business Objects on the server, but an administrator must explicitly enable access to these object by inserting keys for them in the registry."
Even important patches are declared by Microsoft to be "not fully regression tested" and not warranted along with the core Windows 98/NT binaries.
On top of this, NT security administrators must wait for a single company to release a single binary-only patch at their whim. Security administrators cannot analyze or audit the code, and this shows, as Microsoft has made a habit of releasing patches to their previously released patches. Remember NT Service Pack 2?
My $0.02...
Well... if the "First Post!" thing gets really bad, we could always have Hemos insert a line in the Slash scripts to grep each one of the incoming messages for "First Post", throwing the matching posts into /dev/zero.
:)
Okay... maybe that's a bit extreme.
I agree with you on a couple points here. I read an interview with a team of NT developers about a year ago that cited 'strong development tools' as one of Microsoft's chief means of pulling developers (and consequentially users) into their OS/UI/desktop. For the most part, this strategy has worked.
I'm really interested in seeing progress in Integrated Development Environments licensed under the GPL that are platform-independent and in CVS (KDevelop is the only one that comes to mind at the moment). This would, IMO, would not only strengthen Linux and all of the Unixes as true developers' platforms, but help to 'pull in' developers who may not be so familiar with traditional Unix compilers and debuggers.
Someone mentioned this in an earlier post, but i'll reiterate: Microsoft could do some serious damage by porting their development tools to other operating systems, mostly in the business realm. We should work to establish one or more de facto IDEs that run on good and stable kernels, and use these tools as ramps toward improving Linux desktop environments and the overall Linux 'experience' (how's that for Microsoft-esque marketing babble?).
Also, regarding NT kernel performance: It's not good, but I've never seen it as bad as you've just described. NT eats an insane amount of I/O bandwidth; even all the goodies like asynchronous I/O haven't fixed this. On my home system, I recently moved from an Ultra DMA/33 drive to a fancy new Ultra2 SCSI 10k RPM drive; this smoothed out performance tremendously, especially when running large builds.
My $2e-2,
Dave
Wow... I need to find my way back to a high school science/math department fast... Scientific notation errors are about as embarassing as they get... :)
Hrm... X is old. X is optimized for uses other than single-machine desktop use. X can do things other (and much more recent) GUIs can't; for example X can run applications transparently even over high-latency network connections.
X is not shit, and there's a reason it's been around this long. IMO, however, its strongest suit is not powering a single desktop or workstation. It's behind in some areas, but well ahead in others.
In my opinion, the major advantage Xi Graphics, Inc. has over the Free Software Community is their willingness to sign non-disclosure agreements which, though they effectively tie the product to a closed-source model, allow for a fuller featured and more hardware-specific X server, not a more stable X server.
Yes: it's corporate mudslinging at its finest, a vain attempt to differentiate themselves from the free "competition" by including terms that the public can identify with (like "stable", "secure", and "fast") that have very little technical merit. A page explaining NDA agreements and the politics of the situation wouldn't make a real convincing ad, and would prove that Xi is doing little more than attempting to translate a political advantage into an economic one.
My 2e-2 cents...
The findings point to a need for further research into these processes, since they suggest that a modest, temporary rise in calcium levels results in growth and proliferation of these important brain cells, while a larger and more prolonged rise causes the cells to collapse. The implications for long-term memory and learning are not yet clear.
The article seemed to come to the conclusion that an excess of calcium can actually cause brain cells to collapse. Can an excess of caffeine trigger an excess of calcium in the brain? If so, wouldn't caffeine only be good for you in moderation (like most things)?
This does exist. There's a specification for MD-Data out there, originally designed to replace 3 1/2 inch floppy drives on desktop computers.
However, Minidiscs have a native capacity of 140MB of compressed ATRAC audio. There is a read-only label track on each MD that distinguishes an MD Audio and MD Data disc; MD equipment looks at this label to determine what kind of disc it is accessing.
Normal Minidisc recorders, unless modified, refuse to touch MD-Data discs, thus would not work. MD-Data drives would be of questionable value because of their small 140MB capacity. 640MB MD-Data drives are supposedly in the works, but I've yet to see any concrete product.