Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/09/15/06:16:11
Your Mother <adalee AT sendit DOT sendit DOT nodak DOT edu> wrote:
> I was wondering why they would do something dumb like this as
> opposed to having it right-side up, but then I realized that early
> technology most likely dictated that the CDs had to be upside down, and
> we've been stuck with it since because we have to remain standard.
No, that's not backwards compatibility. That's doing something just
because that's how it was done before. There is no reason why your
CDs wouldn't work just as well the other way up (in fact that's how
they are in all CD players in HiFi systems I've seen recently; at
least one car autochanger has them the right way up as well, and at
least one has them vertically).
Backward compatibility is something like supporting tapes as well
as CDs. I wouldn't get a CD-only player for a car, because most
of the things I want to listen to while driving are on tape rather
than CD (and those I have on CD I can easily put on tape anyway).
In the same way, I wouldn't bother with a 'DOS' which couldn't
run my existing applications. It wouldn't be DOS. It might be
'better' in some ways, but would also be useless.
> In wanting to get rid of some backwards compatibility, I don't
> mean we'd have to move to a completely new sytem, like DATs or
> MDs, but rather just fix the little things that bother people.
Like the CPU, you mean? That seems to be most of what people
complain about in DOS...
A 32-bit DOS would have to maintain some way of running an 8086
style program to be compatible, and that will cause bloat and
likely still not be fully workable (many DOS programs access
hardware directly, for instance, particularly for comms and
video).
Chris C
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