Re:The MSX was undoubtedly a computer
on
Consoles M.I.A.
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· Score: 1
Cartridges we often a route for expansion of one kind or another. The VIC-20 had a slot that that I used for programming with the machine code monitor as well as using as a memory expansion.
All of the early Atari computers also had cart slots.
This is what GNU/Linux and the open source community have been dealing with for a long time now. In the case of Red Hat, as one of the distros that have been around for some time, they've faced this sort of thing before. Mandrake was originally an exact copy of RHL that was compiled for 586 instead of 386. Red Hat continued on from that. For one thing, they have their reputation. There are several other distros that are based upon Red Hat to some degree or another. This could end up being little more than that.
From Oracle's point of view, they are able to take a bit more control of their environment. If you take a look at their perceived competitors then it makes a lot of sense. MS provide the complete software stack as do IBM. We may not approve of what is happening here but Oracle are making what makes good business sense. After all, it doesn't seem that long ago that you would expect to get the whole of your environment from one vendor. I certainly remember the days when you would buy your hardware from someone like Dec as well as your O/S, DB and development tools. Could we be seeing Oracle attempt something like their Hot Metal strategy again?
I thought my hacked uk tivo was great. It had a network card and I regularly archived programs from my tivo to DVD. The problem was, put simply, I was abandoned by tivo. No new models with new features. No skytivo (tivo with built in satelite) or freeviewtivo (tivo with built in DVB tuners) to speak of. Not only that, no one else manages to build a device for the uk or europe with DVB plus a DVD writer and hard disk recording so I built my own. It's exactly what I want. A good amount of storage (a shade below 1TB in RAID5), 2 DVB tuners, AMD64 processor with 1GB RAM and a dual layer writer. All I can say about Myth is that it's great. I though I might leave my tivo running in parallel or even just to take advantage of it's suggestions. Nope, it's been turned off now for months and I doubt I'll use it again. Myth doesn't have all the features of tivo but given that it doesn't have a dedicated service for the program schedule it does very well. The interface could be a little better but the truth is that it is really rather good. Suggesting that tivo is comparable is really a US centric point and doesn't make sense to the majority of/. readers who aren't in the US and don't have tivo as an option.
That would be becuase the generation of console the Dreamcast was competing against was the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox and not the PS1/N64. Sega believed (so I understand) that being first to market with the new generation was what had made the PS1 a success.
100% agree. DRM is on the verge of killing off a whole market place if you ask me and is now becomming a relevant issue to consumers. After all, if Sonys DRM for Blu ray is for real, you won't even be able to lend a legit copy of a film to a friend! If the manufactures of both devices and media don't sort themselves out they are going to have products that no one will want to buy. I still think that the most significant thing that can be done to resolve the issue of privicy is to make prices more reasonable. I have certainly noticed that the typical price of a newly released DVD in the UK has risen by around GBP5 in the last year or so. This has been enough for me to stop buying newly released DVDs altogether and waiting 6 to 9 months to get them cheaper. If new disks were around GBP10 (as some suppliers seem to manage for a few days after a new release) and older disks were between GBP5 and GBP8 I would expect piracy to disappear.
Running java inside a database is the same reason you'd run any processing within the database - speed. I've seen many examples of developers, happily producing application code that runs a simple database query and then manipulates that data within the client. They are then surprised when performance is dreadful. When they try to tune their database query they find that there is nothing wrong with it. What is a problem though is that they are transfering data, piecemeal back and forth. What they could have done instead was to write a stored procedure in pl/sql (oracles native processing language) or java. The improvements in processing data within the database can be massive. This is the reason for doing processing within the database. Allowing java as a processing engine was Oracle giving developers a bit of flexability in their langauge choice.
The industry is in a dangerous situation of alienating their potential customers. Lets face it, we already have hi-def audio and it was a huge flop. And that was without any obsessive protection systems. I for one am not convinced that the average punter is going to be interested in investing in a new system so soon after investing in DVD, particularly as DVD has been so susccessful. Like it or not, hi-def is not as significant an improvement as the manufacturers would like you to think. The biggest problem the manufacturers are going to have is that, unlike DVD, it's not just a case of sliding a new box under the TV, you also have to buy a new TV!
If you consider what has happened to music, the major factors within that over the past few years has not involved an improvement in quality at all, it has been about improvements in portability and the way people are accessing music they already have. I expect that we are starting to see a similar thing happen in the video arena. With the introduction of the video ipod and sony psp (as well as other portable devices), it appears that people are happy to compromise on quality for something else, video on the move and the ability to aquire content via the internet. Lets, face it, with all the protection mechanisms involved, plus the basic problem of huge capacity, we aren't going to be downloading hi-def content any time soon.
My expectation is that hi-def is going to end up like Laserdisc, at least in the short to medium term. It will be successful in a limited way. There will be people who appreciate what is on offer and are prepared to pay the price for the upgrade. However, most people will simply decide that what they've already got is good enough. Longer term (5+ years), I expect hi-dev might succeed but it will be through it becoming cheaper and cheaper to the point where, when people are ready to replace their DVD players, they buy a blu-ray (or HD-DVD) set instead. Even then, they may not buy new content in the hi-def format.
What exactly is the official point of these cards? Politicians are always refering to them as an important weapon in the war on terror but no one ever explains why. How will they help fight the terrorists?
Although I don't have the figures to hand, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo were a close third place with Sony in 1st and M$ only just second. Also, it's also worth pointing out that of the three, Nintendo is the only one who also makes money selling the consoles. For both Sony and M$ the console is a loss leader.
As far as I can see, the issue here whether the cable network should be opened in the same was as the phone network. However, isn't it the case that the phone network is considered to be a public asset whereas the cable network is a private one? This is certainly the case in the UK where the phone network is a public network that is gradually being made open to any internet supplier. However, there's no reason that I can see that Telewest or NTL should be expected to open a network that they put there own private money into. Is this not exactly the same thing? If it is, although one might like the cable company to open it's networks, it doesn't seem to me that there is any obligation or regulation that should expect it.
the DG/One
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/dg-1/.
It may not qualify as 'clam shell' due to having it's hinge more toward the centre but to my mind it set the design that all others followed. It was a full laptop pc in 1983!
It's worth mentioning that in the years leading up to the introduction of DVD, there were in fact, at least two competing formats. As I remember it there was a camp mainly occupied by Hollywood and another mainly occupied by the Japanese consumer electronic companies and they did manage to get together and come up with one single standard - the DVD that we have today.
I think you'll find that most European countries are phasing nuclear out. The UK hasn't built new nuclear plants for some time and there is an uproar everytime it's suggested.
I wrote to my MEPs too (except for the BNP). Of the 5 emails, 3 replied. The Conservative talked of compromise but both the Liberal Democrats and Labour seemed to belive that, at least in general, software patents were not a good thing and opposed them.
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All of the early Atari computers also had cart slots.
From Oracle's point of view, they are able to take a bit more control of their environment. If you take a look at their perceived competitors then it makes a lot of sense. MS provide the complete software stack as do IBM. We may not approve of what is happening here but Oracle are making what makes good business sense. After all, it doesn't seem that long ago that you would expect to get the whole of your environment from one vendor. I certainly remember the days when you would buy your hardware from someone like Dec as well as your O/S, DB and development tools. Could we be seeing Oracle attempt something like their Hot Metal strategy again?
I thought my hacked uk tivo was great. It had a network card and I regularly archived programs from my tivo to DVD. The problem was, put simply, I was abandoned by tivo. No new models with new features. No skytivo (tivo with built in satelite) or freeviewtivo (tivo with built in DVB tuners) to speak of. Not only that, no one else manages to build a device for the uk or europe with DVB plus a DVD writer and hard disk recording so I built my own. It's exactly what I want. A good amount of storage (a shade below 1TB in RAID5), 2 DVB tuners, AMD64 processor with 1GB RAM and a dual layer writer. All I can say about Myth is that it's great. I though I might leave my tivo running in parallel or even just to take advantage of it's suggestions. Nope, it's been turned off now for months and I doubt I'll use it again. Myth doesn't have all the features of tivo but given that it doesn't have a dedicated service for the program schedule it does very well. The interface could be a little better but the truth is that it is really rather good. Suggesting that tivo is comparable is really a US centric point and doesn't make sense to the majority of /. readers who aren't in the US and don't have tivo as an option.
That would be becuase the generation of console the Dreamcast was competing against was the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox and not the PS1/N64. Sega believed (so I understand) that being first to market with the new generation was what had made the PS1 a success.
100% agree. DRM is on the verge of killing off a whole market place if you ask me and is now becomming a relevant issue to consumers. After all, if Sonys DRM for Blu ray is for real, you won't even be able to lend a legit copy of a film to a friend! If the manufactures of both devices and media don't sort themselves out they are going to have products that no one will want to buy. I still think that the most significant thing that can be done to resolve the issue of privicy is to make prices more reasonable. I have certainly noticed that the typical price of a newly released DVD in the UK has risen by around GBP5 in the last year or so. This has been enough for me to stop buying newly released DVDs altogether and waiting 6 to 9 months to get them cheaper. If new disks were around GBP10 (as some suppliers seem to manage for a few days after a new release) and older disks were between GBP5 and GBP8 I would expect piracy to disappear.
Running java inside a database is the same reason you'd run any processing within the database - speed. I've seen many examples of developers, happily producing application code that runs a simple database query and then manipulates that data within the client. They are then surprised when performance is dreadful. When they try to tune their database query they find that there is nothing wrong with it. What is a problem though is that they are transfering data, piecemeal back and forth. What they could have done instead was to write a stored procedure in pl/sql (oracles native processing language) or java. The improvements in processing data within the database can be massive. This is the reason for doing processing within the database. Allowing java as a processing engine was Oracle giving developers a bit of flexability in their langauge choice.
If you consider what has happened to music, the major factors within that over the past few years has not involved an improvement in quality at all, it has been about improvements in portability and the way people are accessing music they already have. I expect that we are starting to see a similar thing happen in the video arena. With the introduction of the video ipod and sony psp (as well as other portable devices), it appears that people are happy to compromise on quality for something else, video on the move and the ability to aquire content via the internet. Lets, face it, with all the protection mechanisms involved, plus the basic problem of huge capacity, we aren't going to be downloading hi-def content any time soon.
My expectation is that hi-def is going to end up like Laserdisc, at least in the short to medium term. It will be successful in a limited way. There will be people who appreciate what is on offer and are prepared to pay the price for the upgrade. However, most people will simply decide that what they've already got is good enough. Longer term (5+ years), I expect hi-dev might succeed but it will be through it becoming cheaper and cheaper to the point where, when people are ready to replace their DVD players, they buy a blu-ray (or HD-DVD) set instead. Even then, they may not buy new content in the hi-def format.
What exactly is the official point of these cards? Politicians are always refering to them as an important weapon in the war on terror but no one ever explains why. How will they help fight the terrorists?
Although I don't have the figures to hand, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo were a close third place with Sony in 1st and M$ only just second. Also, it's also worth pointing out that of the three, Nintendo is the only one who also makes money selling the consoles. For both Sony and M$ the console is a loss leader.
As far as I can see, the issue here whether the cable network should be opened in the same was as the phone network. However, isn't it the case that the phone network is considered to be a public asset whereas the cable network is a private one? This is certainly the case in the UK where the phone network is a public network that is gradually being made open to any internet supplier. However, there's no reason that I can see that Telewest or NTL should be expected to open a network that they put there own private money into. Is this not exactly the same thing? If it is, although one might like the cable company to open it's networks, it doesn't seem to me that there is any obligation or regulation that should expect it.
the DG/One http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/dg-1/.
It may not qualify as 'clam shell' due to having it's hinge more toward the centre but to my mind it set the design that all others followed. It was a full laptop pc in 1983!
It's worth mentioning that in the years leading up to the introduction of DVD, there were in fact, at least two competing formats. As I remember it there was a camp mainly occupied by Hollywood and another mainly occupied by the Japanese consumer electronic companies and they did manage to get together and come up with one single standard - the DVD that we have today.
I think you'll find that most European countries are phasing nuclear out. The UK hasn't built new nuclear plants for some time and there is an uproar everytime it's suggested.
I wrote to my MEPs too (except for the BNP). Of the 5 emails, 3 replied. The Conservative talked of compromise but both the Liberal Democrats and Labour seemed to belive that, at least in general, software patents were not a good thing and opposed them.
We're talking about the BBC here. 6 eps constitute a full series and not a mini-series.