On 08/12/12 14:31, Werner Almesberger wrote:
Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote:
I guess the market would be those that can't afford
?100 pocket computer phone.
There's one of the problems with the cartridges: you still need
the same Ben. The hardware of a Ben that is constrained to only
run tetris costs exactly the same amount as that of a Ben that
has hundreds of sophisticated applications installed.
So one of the key cost benefits of single-function devices is
already lost.
Of course, assuming a revenue stream from cartridges, one could
sell Bens at a loss and cross-finance via the cartridges. The
problem with that is that those Bens would still be able to do
a lot more and also people who don't care about the cartridges
would buy Bens. And the cheaper you sell the Ben, the more
attractive it gets for "unintended" uses.
You could counter that by adding some "trusted computing" that
only lets it run cartridges, but such a move would make it
highly unpopular in the Free Culture.
Another way would be to sell Ben and cartridges as a bundle,
but then you may as well just preinstall all the goodies, or
make them available for download, and dispense with the
cartridges.
So I don't quite see how this concept that fit in the late
1970es to early 1980es could be adapted to fit in today's
world, with radically different technology (ubiquitous global
networking, cheap large storage) and also with different
cultural expectations (Free vs. corporate control).
- Werner
Time to get this post out of my drafts and into the records. You will
probably want to skip this post as it's more for the record/history than
some new interesting discussion.
I was thinking about the "market" for NN on large scale. So not just
those of us that care a lot for NN.
I will never support DRM, untrusted computing.
I my self don't like cartridges. It was a thought exercise. Around this
time of the thread I had seen a err keen 13 or 14 (?) year old lad play
the games on my NN. He was keen about the games less the possibility’s &
freedoms of the NN. This thread got me wondering whether the
"convenience" of SD card(s) pre-setup would be of interest to him. I was
also thinking that cartridges would help space wise. One SD for games
games games! Another SD of every thing else. This way you have space
left for music,videos,info,etc. Then again this would be mass marketed
and so more NN made and so I guess one could make the internal flash
bigger! Doh!
I know this is not the answer and I won't wast my time trying to do
something like cartridges for someone else thinking it will win them
over/get there approval.
Regarding free space on the internal flash, OPKG can install pkgs in odd
places like "/mnt/sd/".
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