2001-05-01

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2001-12-31

In my reading a computer gaming magazine, there is a tutorial about writing BASIC programs on Sony Playstation 2. I was really excited by this feature! Now people can learn programming very inexpensively. Think about it: $300 for Sony Playstation2. $200 for Harddisk + network + keyboard extension. $100 for TV. You can get the whole thing for $600 dollars. That's cheaper than real computers in computer store where the prices usually aren't less than $1000 for a system, due to store overhead.

If you factor in CD and DVD players, Game machine for PS1 and PS2, and other uses such as Keyboard Mania for learning music, you have got to agree that this is a very good deal. Of course, you don't really get killer 1 Ghz and above CPU, since this is, after all, a toy. What a toy, though. And anyway, it suffices for most purposes. If, by any chance, it's not, then you simply network it with other computers and achieve blazing speeds via parallel processing. Incredible!

Of course, BASIC isn't the most powerful language on earth. In this case, yabasic is limited to only eight colors, and an extremely slow drawing rate. That's okay, though. You may not be able to program the next Quake clone, but there's plenty of other things to do.

What's really fascinating is that Linux is supposedly coming to Playstation 2, as well. Then it will get really exciting, although I must admit this isn't an easy thing to do any more. My advice is to just learn basic programming technique using yabasic, which is compatible to Unix and Windows, by the way, and graduate later to real Unix programming.

Then I went online and found out that not only will the copies be limited to 1000 units, but that it's restricted to Japanese units only. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGH!!!!!!!!!!

I want to see Yarouze for the masses!