Saturday, July 31, 2010

CD-ROM

CD-ROM (pronounced /ˌsiːˌdiːˈrɒm/, an acronym of "compact disc read-only memory") is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback, the 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony andPhilips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data.[1]CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer (such as ISO 9660 format PC CD-ROMs). These are called enhanced CDs.Although many people use lowercase letters in this acronym, proper presentation is in all capital letters with a hyphen between CD and ROM. It was also suggested by some,[who?]especially soon after the technology was first released, that CD-ROM was an acronym for "Compact Disc read-only-media", or that it was a more "correct" definition. This was not the intention of the original team who developed the CD-ROM, and common acceptance of the "memory" definition is now almost universal. This is probably in no small part due to the widespread use of other "ROM" acronyms such as Flash-ROMs and EEPROMs where "memory" is usually the correct term.[citation needed]At the time of the technology's introduction it had more capacity than computer hard drivescommon at the time. The reverse is now true, with hard drives far exceeding CDs, DVDs andBlu-ray, though some experimental descendants of it such as HVDs may have more space and faster data rates than today's biggest hard drive.

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