From: "Mike Allison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asks:
> is the MiniDisc of MD fame related to the optical disc systems such as
those
> found on the NeXT? Or other small(?) capacity Optical Disc systems? I
was
> just wondering if anyone had examined ways to use the MD, or I was just
> walking down a well trod path.
I don't know what "the MiniDisc of MD fame " means -- maybe you could fill
me in, Mike -- but this note tempts me to wonder why we use spinning media
for memory storage so much more than we use linear or arrayed banks of
rememberers.
Isn't it because we all came up with gasoline engines, and implicitly
coal-fired steam, in our veins?
Only now being born are the first generation of children for whom motors
that go thump-thump-thump, torque-stores that go whrrrrr through the nights,
are out in daddies' attic memories, for whom directly addressed arrays are
normal.
* * *
<ASIDE FOR THE YOUNG> When the 0.7th generation of computers were being
built, in England in the 1940's, they had their core memory in magnetic
spots on rotating metal drums.
The systems coders would optimise their code for the next time the drum came
around, an easily identifiable number of milli-, not yet micro-, seconds
away.
Then they got switched over to memory-swimming-in-a-bath-of-mercury, and
found that their operating system was not quite as optimal as they had
thought...
</ASIDE FOR THE YOUNG>
* * *
For a couple of generations in there, writing code to get what you needed
was an alien notion: "Wha? Hoo? Me? Me write a script to get what I need out
of the system?? Nahhh, Go away with ya..."
That was the normal way ordinary people thought, from about 1950 through
maybe 2010.
Only when kids came up with their own TV sets, the first bunch programming
their Microsoft Expedias from their potty-stools, the second wave looking
over their mothers' breasts at the WholeNet(tm) which they control, as we
all know, myoelectically with the chip that is installed while they get
their silver nitrate eye-drops at birth..
* * *
This generation were the first of our race to understand DMA (direct memory
addressing) in a visceral way, and thus to pioneer the way from the age of
machines into the Age Of Touch in which we revel and glory today.
We certainly admire those people who made the MiniDisc of MD fame, just as
we admire a monkey that can wash a potato or an American that can drive a
carcar.
Still, those things are in our past, and we are grateful to be rid of them.
-dlj.
