Date : Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:58:25 +0200
From : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Minitel in France
On 21/07/2011 22:30, F. Haroon wrote:
> A natural death is better then artificial ramming of newer technology
> down our throats by vested interests,
Oooh, aren't we the little rebel?
[beat]
It seems really weird *me* pointing this out. Am I succumbing to apathy?
Or maybe mental entropy...
> e.g. digital switch-over.
Like everything, it has its good points and its bad.
Consider:
Digital: Wider choice of channels, more "features" (red button stuff).
Options of interactivity. Possibility of video on demand.
-ve: We're becoming accustomed to crappy artefact-ridden pictures,
and a scheduling nightmare. Don't talk to me about repeats!
Needs a box, or a new telly, probably a better aerial. Though
being in France, I pick up my stuff with a dish and get an
even bigger selection, though much of it is crap (some of the
music channels are unbelievably awful, and the various "god"
channels are jaw-droppingly beyond description (TBN, I'm
looking at you). Only an American could pull that off...
Personally, I like FilmFour and HorrorChannel, both of which are
"minority" and would not have possibly existed before digital/satellite.
I also make use of the +1 channels for when two items of interest are
shown at the same time on different channels. But I notice blockiness in
motion on most channels that aren't BBC. FilmFour isn't bad, but
HorrorChannel is. Anim?Central suffered horribly from this, though in
some cases I think it helped the techno-noir style (Ghost In The
Shell-SAC/2ndGig for instance).
Likewise Minitel - it isn't so much new tech stomping on the old, it is
more a matter of:
Minitel - ?1/min flat fee for all-you-can-eat from a selection of
a thousand choices, piped into your brain at 1200bps.
Internet- ?35/MONTH flat fee for all-you-can-eat from more places
and services than you can put a name to, singing and
dancing with colours and sounds and whatever other rubbish
can be stuffed into an swf, piped in front of your eyeballs
at 20000000bps, maybe a magnitude faster.
If all else fails, Rule 34, man, Rule 34...
> Well, I guess still that a provider's own business model intransigence
> can be its own demise, much like Prestel...
Funny, somebody ought to tell this to Old Media. If a person has to jump
through hoops to get a legal copy of a song or movie, ends up with
"licencing" and territorial limitations, conditions of use (playable for
X days or only-on-this-machine), yet can probably find a DivX with a few
minutes of looking, that screams to me, not copyright theft, but "whoa,
why can't big media try this? cough up a divx in return for a euro or
two". I guess trying to blame a bored housewife for a loss of profit
equal to the GDP of a medium sized country is better than them getting
up off their fat arses and realising that on-line, nobody gives a <beep>
about arbitrary pseudo-political boundaries. If my money ain't good
enough for you......
As for business model intransigence being its own demise, I wonder if
this is a trap Acorn fell into. They made the Archimedes. Half the world
wet itself in excitement, the other half sulked. We went from <cough>
Arthur </cough> which could justifiably be likened to a port of the
Master MOS (!) to RISC OS 2, and then along came RISC OS 3 which offered
loads more, along with a range of machines with more modern parts (IDE
on-board, combi-IO for parallel/serial instead of logic chips and such),
plus a faster processor.
I would argue that the RiscPC's greatest achievements were in hardware,
for we had a different (yet mostly compatible) chipset and a faster yet
processor, while RISC OS itself didn't really seem to change that much.
It was tarted up and expanded to utilise the newer features of the
machine. I went from 3.10 on my A5000 to 3.7 on my RiscPC, and I didn't
find the change to be as exciting as RISC OS 2 -> 3.10. I was, in fact,
more excited by the hardware - the x86 card which, while underpowered,
harkened right back to the past Beeb/Tube glory and allowed 'alien'
software to run, right on the machine. Sure, it's no big deal now, but
back then it was pretty cool.
Acorn should have transitioned to 32 bit at that juncture. Instead of
the RiscPC being the next generation, it should have been the next
level. Not just an Archimedes clone with sexier bits inside.
Acorn made the grade, kicked ass, then stood by as the world took stock,
caught up, and flew by leaving a trail of dust. I guess it doesn't help
that American tech dictated to the world, but I think Acorn dropped the
ball. A lot.
We have a lot to be thankful for, RISC OS is still around, and the ARM
is doing quite fine. But I can't help wonder what might have been.
Still, it isn't bad for an itty-bitty company that overdesigned a
computer, pitched it as their solution to a telly program, and
(rightfully) trounced the (mediocre) competition.
Best wishes,
Rick.
--
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...