The 1988 Microsoft CD-ROM Conference held in Seattle in March, attracted about 2,000 industry insiders. The tone and ambience of the conference reflect a definite change in the industry. Most companies were represented not only by top management, but by their marketing personnel. Few blue-jeaned engineers or techies were found in the crowds. CD-ROM appears to have arrived.
FINDING A PATHWAY TO THE FUTURE
In his keynote address, Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder and chairman, reiterated his goat of making computers affordable and attractive enough to be "on every desk, in every home." Gates reported that less than 50,000 CD-ROM drives are currently in the marketplace. These are either in very narrow vertical markets, such as libraries, or are being used by the industry itself. The problem of low drive sales is compounded by the high cost of developing a multimedia product. Gates estimated that it costs $1 million for each disk product, an investment that many companies have been unwilling or unable to make.
The lack of a "rich standard for audio-visual" components of CD-ROM development, and the limited tools available to developers today, are two other important reasons Gates cited for the slow growth of the CD-ROM industry.
CD-ROM and "multimedia" was useful in the era before internet speeds caught up with the capability of computers to show video and sound. My "Time Almanac 1990s" CD-ROM was useful, and would probably be on par with what's available online now, in quality and production values.
And this assessment is cause for optimism. Look at many of the upcoming cohort of blockchain-based projects: LivePeer, Fluence, Augur, dare I say NuCypher (I'm on this team) - all of them have far more interesting things to offer than their use of blockchain tech. They render unto the blockchain what is the blockchain's, but all do way more interesting things.
Well put. Block chain certainly has applications but they're almost entirely a design choice.
The reality of block chains is that they'll always be complicated enough that there will always be a man in the middle. Mt. Gox demonstrated that block chains will always be exploitable because the man in the middle is easily compromised. And anything that's worth going to the trouble of protecting with block chain is worth compromising.
https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-6501528/microsoft-s-thi...
The 1988 Microsoft CD-ROM Conference held in Seattle in March, attracted about 2,000 industry insiders. The tone and ambience of the conference reflect a definite change in the industry. Most companies were represented not only by top management, but by their marketing personnel. Few blue-jeaned engineers or techies were found in the crowds. CD-ROM appears to have arrived.
FINDING A PATHWAY TO THE FUTURE
In his keynote address, Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder and chairman, reiterated his goat of making computers affordable and attractive enough to be "on every desk, in every home." Gates reported that less than 50,000 CD-ROM drives are currently in the marketplace. These are either in very narrow vertical markets, such as libraries, or are being used by the industry itself. The problem of low drive sales is compounded by the high cost of developing a multimedia product. Gates estimated that it costs $1 million for each disk product, an investment that many companies have been unwilling or unable to make.
The lack of a "rich standard for audio-visual" components of CD-ROM development, and the limited tools available to developers today, are two other important reasons Gates cited for the slow growth of the CD-ROM industry.