Subj : Re: the machine stops
To   : August Abolins
From : Tony Langdon
Date : Thu Jul 11 2019 03:56 pm

-=> On 07-10-19 23:36, August Abolins wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

 AA> After I got my first cd player in the mid-80's, I wondered wouldn't be
 AA> better if instead of CDs (and all the crazy moving mechanics to control
 AA> the disc speed, the laser, changing a disc in a multi-player, etc..),
 AA> that the music was on little ram modules that could be inserted into
 AA> the player. The whole idea was to avoid moving parts.  But I guess the
 AA> cost of memory at that time would not make such a thing doable until
 AA> about 10 years later when portable mp3 players arrived instead.

Yeah, I knew that was the Holy Grail, but I also knew that the amount of memory
required was impractical, but would eventually be feasible.  And the other
thing is that the storage had to be non volatile.

What I didn't anticipate, which brought forward the the feasability by several
years at least, was the invention of MP3 and similar compression algorithms,
which reduced the file size by over 90%.


.... All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.
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