Citat:
The following day, TRON SHOW 2004 officially opened its doors to the public, and the number of people who showed up to listen to Prof. Sakamura's keynote speech, the first event of the show, was close to 800. This has to be a record. The keynote speech was most unusual in that it was to be followed by presentations by MontaVista's James Ready, formerly president of Ready Systems Corporation who gave presentations at the fifth and sixth TRON Project international symposiums in 1988 and 1989, respectively, and Microsoft's Susumu Furukawa, who represents the company that is widely credited with having been the cause of the attempted destruction of the BTRON-based educational computer project back in 1989 at the hands of the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Perhaps it was because of the presence of Mr. Ready and Mr. Furukawa, but Prof. Sakamura gave a much more emotional presentation than he usually gives at the start of a TRON show, which seems to have led him to say a few startling things.
For example, he noted that U.S. government and industry are extremely annoyed that Japan has taken the lead in super computers, so annoyed in fact that they have formed a special committee to develop new super computer technologies that will attempt to leapfrog Japanese super computer technology. Having a strong sense of nationalism himself, Prof. Sakamura said that's not a bad idea for a country like the U.S. that understands its national interests and wants to lead the rest of the world, but he lambasted the Japanese government, which until recently has always showed lukewarm support for the TRON Project out of fear of offending the U.S., as not having the courage to do likewise. He said Japanese government and industry would never form a committee to develop, for example, an operating system that would challenge Microsoft's dominance. In fact, he noted that a lot of people originally weren't happy about the TRON Project, and this includes many people in Japanese industry, since it was going to upset markets.
Citat:
At one point, BTRON had a chance of becoming a popular desktop operating system in Japan. In 1989 the Japanese company Matsushita released an Intel-based PC with the BTRON operating system. Though it only had an Intel 80286 processor with 2 MB of RAM, the system could render color video in a separate window. The Japanese government planned to introduce the Matsushita PC in its schools, but the United States government objected, claiming that the plan constituted market intervention and threatening Japan with sanctions (partly at the request of Microsoft).
Citat:
The TRON Project is not new; in fact, it was poised to its mark more than a decade ago, in Japan's PC industry, but the U.S. government intervened. In 1989, Japanese electronics giant Matsushita introduced a BTRON PC, a machine that stunned the industry with its advanced capabilities. The BTRON PC had an 80286 Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel chip running at 8 MHz and a mere 2 MB of memory, but it could display moving video in color in a separate window. Also, it had a dual-booting system that could run both the BTRON OS and MS-DOS.
When the Japanese government announced it would install BTRON PC in Japanese schools, the U.S. government objected. It called the Japanese initiative "actual and potential market intervention" and threatened the move with sanctions. The Japanese, dependent on the U.S. export market, quickly dropped the plan. The U.S. government later withdrew its threat, but the damage had already been done. Nearly all Japanese companies involved in TRON-related activities had canceled their projects.