On 11 Aug 2004, at 11:56 pm, Bryon Daly wrote:
For example: most DVDs are region-encoded and can only be played on machines from their native area.
In the UK it is very easy to buy a multi-region DVD player which will ignore region-encoding and play any DVD. I bought one from Amazon.co.uk last week for �29.99 with free delivery (Yakumo XL2). And it plays VCD, SVCD, XSVCD, DVD (-R, +R, -RW, +RW) etc as well. And PAL/NTSC with an onboard converter if one's TV isn't dual standard (mine is anyway).
VHS tapes had no such restrictions.
Actually thanks to PAL/NTSC and other little TV differences around the world tapes mostly wouldn't play outside a region. Of course �30 VHS players are PAL/NTSC dual-standard nowadays, but not in the time before DVD.
There are many freely and easily available compilers in many languages so this doesn't really disturb me. I've heard Yet Another Basic is good (though I haven't used it myself): http://www.yabasic.de/
For your son, maybe you'd also want to try teaching him LOGO. I googled up a free LOGO version for Windows here: http://www.softronix.com/logo.html
LOGO was supposed to be a great educational language. And there is LOGO for Lego, to control the robotics stuff. Didn't seem to catch on though. I'm not sure if the educational theory behind it (Piaget's stuff I recall) is out of favour or for some other reason.
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
"Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux." - Bill Joy.
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