In article <004cb0df4b.rowledge at goldskin.attbi.com>,
Tim Rowledge  <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org> wrote:
>cgreuter at csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Chris Reuter) wrote:
>
>> I don't see the X-Box being a practical Squeak platform unless you can
>> just insert the CD and run it.  Hmmm.  Maybe somebody could get MS to
>> give us a signed Squeak VM?  I mean, it's not like it's going to cut
>> into their market share or anything.

>That's pretty much the point of the real meat of that posting. The
>control that M$ (et al.) get from a closed box with massive DRM built
>in. 

The X-Box's DRM doesn't bother me all that much, actually.  I mean,
game consoles are really just appliances and are sold on a lock-in
model.  They aren't open but they don't really need to be.  That's why
we have computers, after all.  (The laws against tampering with DRM
_do_ bother me, as do the proposed Palladium and TCPA standards, but
that's starting to get beside the point.)

X-Box hacking has always seemed pretty pointless to me.  It's just a
limited PC.  Something like the PlayStation or Dreamcast at least has
interesting hardware, but I can out-cool the X-Box with something from
mini-itx.com[1].


>> Actually, I'm surprised nobody's tried porting Squeak to the Sega
>> Dreamcast.  The things are really cheap these days and you can get a
>> mouse and keyboard easily enough.   I actually have a copy of the
>> Linux port and it runs X just fine, so Squeak for Linux should port to
>> it easily enough.

>Hadn't heard of that one and it's probably not important in market terms
>because Sega seems to be losing the race to stay in business.

The Dreamcast itself has been discontinued for over a year now and I
don't think you can get new ones anymore.  But they're cheap and, as
mentioned above, aren't PCs.


>Another interesting target for Squeak is the PVR arena like the high end
>TiVo etc. Similar kid of hardware (less emphasis on 3D graphics I
>guess!) and similar potential for reaching many livingrooms.

Personally, I find this whole goal sort of perplexing.  PVRs and game
consoles are appliances.  Yes, they have computers in them, but (most)
people buy them because they want to record TV shows or play video
games.  If they want to compute, they get computers.

Game consoles generally make lousy computers.  All of the required
peripherals (mouse, keyboard, hard-drive, etc.) usually need to be
bought separately and often require some amount of hacking before
they'll work.  TV screens are horrible for reading text and the
maximum display resolution is going to be low because games don't need
high-res displays.  

And in any case, living rooms are not great places to program.
They're places to talk to people, watch TV, play video games, etc.
They're _not_ places where you'd typically concentrate on a
text-filled video screen.  (That's why I also expect those set-top
boxes Rogers[2] is flogging to fail.)

Or am I missing something here?  My take is that you're trying to make
programming accessible enough that _anyone_ can learn it, right?  The
thing is, most people have a computer these days anyway, which they
typically use for word-processing, email and maybe games.  Squeak
already runs on those, so I'd think that would be that.



                              --Chris



[1] A great place to poke around if you're looking to build a PC-based
    set-top box.
[2] Canadian Cable TV provider and, with the demise of @Home, my ISP.
    They've been flogging those set-top boxes (based on their services) with
    the selling-point that you DON'T NEED A COMPUTER!!!!11!!!
-- 
Chris Reuter                           http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~cgreuter
"This partition table editor is very easy to use (in the author's opinion), but
 you will probably hate it."
                           --MINIX installation manual