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Sony, Toshiba And IBM To Develop New OS
gaijin writes: "According to this article in the English version of the Japanese newspaper
'Daily Yomirui', Sony will use its experience developing the PS2 OS (hey, wasn't
it Linux based?) and work with Toshiba and IBM at the hardware side
to create
a new OS that 'would allow personal computers and home appliances to exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen, through a broadband connection.'"
. . . like they'll probably be licensing that Microsoft Digital "Rights" Management patent. I would beware of any OS offering from the likes of Sony that claims to be all about media over a broadband connection.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Wonderful. I could watch the cheese in the fridge grow mold on the TV, or even put it on the web. Beats Survivor, anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It looks to me like they want something with Digital Rights Management, but don't want to work with Microsoft (and Linux is too open). Evil.
It's also worth noting that 2005 is about the time the next Playstation should emerge. That's not a coincidence.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
... but this sounds like more of a PR op than anything else. Since when has a game console shuffled more data than a workstation or even a desktop computer? And since when has a TV (even an HDTV) been higher resolution than a 21" monitor?
It's PR BS, but hopefully the OS will have some merit. Choice is good.
exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen
So, the product is already vaporware?
Why bother.
What does this new OS provide that we don't already have and are not already capable of doing? You can already watch TV on your computer and view your computer's monitor on your TV. Regular NTSC resolution isn't that high anyway and is easily handled by a computer. You can already store television programs on your computer -- in fact, we even have things like TiVo which are consumer devices just for that purpose.
Also via X-10 hardware we can control just about anything from our PCs -- including air conditioners. The problem isn't availability, it's just that most people don't really need to control their microwave or other hosehold devices/appliances from their computer.
The new OS sounds cool, and the companies developing it are respectful and would no doubt produce a quality product, but there is much more information needed besides the media-PR blurb given in that article. I get the sense that this paper didn't have anything else to write about so it made something up, because throughout the article not one department or source is mentioned besides "industry sources". I would also think the three huge companies mentioned -- IBM, Toshiba, and Sony wouldn't work together anyway. Each one would be more than capable of developing and operating system on their own, and IMO there would be too much departmental overlay to justify cooperation with two other huge firms.
Work on the OS project has not yet begun, but the three companies have begun joint development of next-generation semiconductors that will be hundreds of times faster than current integrated chips and feature networking functions.
Yeah, and the're also working on a way to colonize Mars, too.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
don't forget the source of this info either.
The Daily Yomiuri is the Japanese equivalent of the New York Post. Big flashy stories for the masses but mostly sensationalized.
----- shoganainaa
The PS2 does not run any form of Linux.
However, Linux is used on the PS2 Dev kits for developing games. (The PS2 Dev kits are effectively PCs with a built-in PS2 - the dev kits emulates the DVD/CDROM etc... if needed)
"TVs with the OS installed will be much smaller as they will not need a tuner, the sources said."
And we all know how huge TV-tuner-modules are.
At least several cubic centimeters !
Strangely this ties in well with the comments I made (1, 2) on the X Box sequel story The possibility of abuse of any technology has to be watched. This story on the Whitdot website reveals one aspect of business leaders trying to use technology to their advantadge.
There are many advantadges to this technology, but there is the flip side of this.
For example, the X-Box sequel fits nicely into this kind of setup. And obviously MS wants to be in this market. Do you trust Microsoft?
Actually, it is more a matter of the advatadges of the technology vs your trust or lack of trust for the big corporations. Which gets us into the whole Anti Globalist thing. I am not so sure of that as well. It spins out of control into a flame war of the evils of technology vs the evils of no technology really fast.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
At least the PAL system (mostly used in Europe), it's 768x576.
Ok, 3-4 years(depending on when in 2005 it's released) of development for a new OS. But what is it going to provide...
Current OSs can transfer large amounts of data, it's the broadband connections that are lagging behind... My P-90 can easily handle the 128Kb/s uplink my DSL provides... And the number of people paying for Broadband is not increasing at the rate everyone expected... The research needs to be how to get faster broadband at a cheaper price.
Even though this looks like open source, they have worded it carefully: 'to other companies', doesn't say 'free' so it could be available to other companies at a price that no individuals could afford it.
Doubtful Sony would allow something like that, without charging a arm-and-leg for it...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Someone has to say it, so it might as well be me. Does the world need ANOTHER OS? Especially one that won't launch for another 3 years and will obviously be tied down to specific platforms, technologies and underlying agendas (Sony). How many different OS's can you think of off the top of your head already? And isn't IBM hard-core Linux now?
According to the article, the OS will be able to run on PCs and be accessible from your TV (for the elderly the article says) and enable tasks impossible using current technology. Like WHAT? What can a whole new OS provide that 3 years of development on the Linix kernel or some other existing OS can't? Or is this $400,000,000 to recreate the wheel?
2005: I get to use Microsoft at work, Linux on my web server, Simbian on my phone and some other random Sony OS on my television... joy.
-Russ
Man - did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or what...
Me
While it's nice and all to build a whole new OS to accomplish what they're trying to do, couldn't all they're trying to do be accomplished using existing VNC and streamed media technology?
--The more you know, the less you know.
well, first of all, they seem to be hiding something that the story is not telling us. all the things that they say an OS can do, so can linux and windows and just about every other mature OS on the market today.
if they were developing a new OS, they need to do one thing: the thing that makes the Palm different from the Newton: all data is integrated into the OS, making it very easy to communicate between different programs. that is what most OSs lack. it is very difficult to make programs communicate with each other, except maybe with FIFO files that take up extra space. it is not really possible for one program to write in the memory of another. sure that is 3V1L for desktop and server OSs b/c they are VERY vulnerable, but its perfect for an OS that is supposed to communicate with appliances.
Now, if you have been thinking to mod me down because I did not mention grep on unix..wait right there! grep is a great tool, but it still has its extents. you cannot do everything with grep. programs can use each other's data (making it very useful for doing complicated tasks via simple programs) but they cannot in the full sense of the word intercommunicate. most importantly, grep is essentially a one way connection.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
We shouldn't be striving for a "standard" OS in all those appliences. (Who would want to run Windows in their embedded systems anyway? Yes, Microsoft would probably succeed in making Windows the standard OS in such a case...) We should be setting standards for exchanging data between those systems instead.
TCP/IP is a good carrier of the information exchange - the global Internet has proven that. But service discovery, naming and security are issues that needs to be delt with. Hopefully, this will be developed out in the open just like the Internet protocols once were developed and not beind closed doors, patents and intelectual property lock-ins.
... but only in Japanese for now (see http://www.ps2linux.com/)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
"When Sony and IBM get together it means nothing but trouble"..
Careful, you might upset YRO readers. Times are tough -- and theres only so much tinfoil to go around, you know.
Bowie J. Poag
The only good thing to come out of Microsoft as a monopoly is that many devices follow their "standard". Yes, it is true that Microsoft ignores industry standards, but at least they create a conformity that allows many devices to work together without too much of a problem.
Look at the cell phone market in the United States and you will see what a hinderance lack of standards can be. The US is very far behind in cell phone techonology with regards to many other nations, and mostly because of big companies each willing to push their own proprietary technology because they believe they will be profiting more in the long run.
Well, back to the new OS, what's gonna happen here? The description of services offered, control their home appliances via PC, and watch television programs and movies on their PC at any location , sound great, but how are Microsoft and even Apple gonna react to this? They obviously both want a piece of that market share and I'm not sure if they are all willing to conform to each others standards.
Ideally, every company would be small and would have to follow industry standards. These standards would be imposed by a legislation with representation from all the developers. Instead what we get is a couple people fighting like babies over who will dictate the future standard. No one wins, and technology gets screwed.
There have been a number of fairly spectacular failures in this arena. Consider, for example:
Software development successes seem to start with a small team who understand the position and purpose of the product. Once that's achieved, then the team can scale up. I'd be concerned that the three companies behind this announcement are likely to have difficulty assembling an appropriately small and well-focused core team.
Evil vrs Evil. As they fight and splinter their standards those who co-operate most with all shall win. What vendor would dare diss the three challengers of the M$ Domination? They shall be everywhere and their stuff will work and it will be better than M$ psuedo standards like AVI. The greedheads will punish each other.
Digital Rights Management, that is more disturbing. We know they want to put it in hardware. That M$ will also pay toll to the new trolls is cold comfort if such stuff is used as the thin wedge of a legislative attack on general computing with hardware backing it up.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
If they build the OS from the ground up, it may take a lot longer to hack the thing then say, a Tivo for instance. While Tivo has been cool about it, I'm sure that Sony doesn't want that to happent to them if they can help it.
While it is easy to hack into a Tivo, one of the reasons is bacause it runs a common user OS. Openness was one of the reason Tivo has had a fairly low cost to get into the market. Sony doesn't care about cost in an instance that this. I bet they were sitting around some conference room talking about how they want PC like features, but not PC like hackability. Some bright guy threw out, "well, we just make our own OS then...the way we want it." Doesn't sound too far fetched to me. Don't have to allow console access from a serial port to configure...make you own serial protocol, command structure, serial cable connections, etc, etc. It is still hackable, but not by the average geek, even with instructions. Even if you do get into to some useful interface...what then?
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Sony sells a heck of a lot more TVs than playstations. Perhaps this new OS is aimed at the much more ubiqitious TV market. Combine that with IBM's support of CPRM. Welcome to pay-per-veiw tivo work-alike. Shure would make the MPAA Happy.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I don't know how many times when hauling my VCD, DVD, consoles, etc around that I've wished they could just jack into the local WiFi network and then the tv could pick the feed it wanted to receive by checking a 'Network Neighborhood' type of thing that looked just like picking a channel. You can send video over a WiFi network without any problems so all you need is a tv smart enough to receive it.
:)
:)
Then to be even better they cold make the power cords optional so you could go 'unjacked' for a while and then just plug the system back in later to play/charge. The PS1 already has battery packs so why not DVD players and newer consoles.
Not sure why they need a new OS for it. A simple protocol that agrees on the type of video stream and a way to communicate available channels should work. You could even offer encryption of streams if you wanted to make sure your kids couldn't see the porn your watching. Screw the $400 million. Someone hire me for a year and I'll develop it myself using Linux and standard embedded components.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
According to the sources, the firms intend to make the source code of the finished OS available to other companies in an attempt to make it the global standard of the anticipated high-speed Internet age.
If they are going to do that, why not just spend the $400 million on adding the needed features to linux? They would already start out with a good system that many people already are familiar with and the GPL would insure that the source would be available. This would satisfy their goals unless they wanted to sell the licenses to the source code and be able to restrict it to those who paid for it. If they wanted to do that, they could just take one of the BSD systems and do the same thing. Why create a whole new system from scratch when systems already exist that do most of what they want but may be a litte rough around the edges? Leverage the work that others have already done and is freely available and spend your money polishing it up. IMHO, that's basically what Apple did with OS X.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
"TVs with the OS installed will be much smaller as they will not need a tuner, the sources said." :)
Heh... I worked as a TV technician for a year or so while I was out of work, tuners were 6cm x 2cm then in new TV's.... I always thought it was the tube and gun that made them so bulky...
All speling, factual, tact, and/or grametical errers be the result of netwerk interpherance or# transmition ererrs.
BeOS redux?
PS> Great. But will it run UT?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
According to the story, Sony is going to be writing the OS. IBM and Toshiba are going to be making the chips. I believe IBM makes the cpus for the GameCube, so it would be somewhat funny to have the guts of competing game consoles come from the same factory. IBM probably doesn't care what OS Sony runs on it as long as it helps keeps their chip plants running at capacity.
I hardly ever watch TV anymore too. I'm not interested in the programs being aired and I'm busy doing other things. However, for many other people, the home entertainment center is the focal point of life inside their home. It's practically all they do after they get home from work. I have a brother and sister (both 30 or over) that you can't even talk to if they are watching TV. The TV has 100% of their attention and to have a conversation with them, you have to turn it off or physically block the view of the screen. It's like when they watch TV, they go into a trance. Adults and kids like these are the ones that Sony & Co are gunning the latest and greatest TV equipment for.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Current OSs can transfer large amounts of data, it's the broadband connections that are lagging behind... My P-90 can easily handle the 128Kb/s uplink my DSL provides... And the number of people paying for Broadband is not increasing at the rate everyone expected... The research needs to be how to get faster broadband at a cheaper price.
The spread is even more than that. In 1994 we had two T1s to the internet via uunet. One was dedicated to our webserver... a P60 running Windows NT3.5 and Netscape Enterprise Webserver. About 75% of our content was static, but there was a good amount of CGIs and background tasks (email, dns, and ftp daemons). And yet, our P60 worked like a charm. Sure, we should have used Linux or maybe even Solaris on a SPARC, something a bit more suited to the task... but it worked, even when the T1 was fully saturated.
The person writing the story obviously got some out of date marketing material - fitting an ADSL modem into an MCA bus should indeed work on your PS/2.
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
What the devil am I talking about, I am talking the the assault on our freedom and in particular the freedom of fair use.
This device is precisely the thing the the media industries (The MPAA and RIAA to mention a few) want, a closed device to deliver content to the end user where they have complete control of what gets done with it. It is just one in a serious of steps, including the DMCA, which the media industries hope will eventually lead to this.
Is it going to happen, NO. But are they going to try, most defiantly. There is a fundamental paradigm shift on our hand due to the Internet. The simple fact is that it is going to be imposable to control the flow of any sort of information. It has already happened with music and it is eventually going to happen with video and other forms of information. And there is nothing the media industries can due about it. Unfortunately the media industry doesn't really see this and those that due refuse to accept and will do everything in there power to make the Internet into what they want. And thus it is going to be hell. What we have seen already is just the begging of the storm. It is going to get a lot worse in the coming years as they media industry continue to try there tricks to control the free flow of information. If you do not see this conflict by now I fell very sorry for you as the signs are everywhere, the DMCA, the SSSCA, and Microsoft's .NET to mention a few.
What can we do about it? Well that is a very good question. We can't avoid this conflict but we can prepare for it. Some of the things we can do are: 1) Support Open Source software (although I think that goes with out saying). 2) Write (snailmail, not email) your congressperson to repeal the DMCA. 3) Refuse to buy hardware you can't develop for. I for one have no interest in TiVO are it competitors for one simple reason, it is a black box that is not designed to be user programmable. And finally 4) spread the word.
For more insight into this issue see the article The Coming Storm by Bruce Bell.
Truthfully, one thing I personally would really like to do is to develop, but really don't have the resources to do so, is a truly open TiVO like device that is *designed* to be user programmable and will store everything completely unencrypted. This device will force the MPAA industry to accept the inevitable. It is completely legal but the MPAA will completely hate it and will do everything in there power to stop it. And with out a lot of will power and a major team of legal exports to back me up they probably will.
... is not Linux. While there is the PS2 Linux kit out there that lets you run Linux on your PS2, the operating system used by the games is a proprietary one, with no relation to Linux.
The PS2 development kits are modded PCs that run Linux and emulate a PS2 environment.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Since Sony is involved, the only supported storage devices will probably be Memory Sticks and Minidiscs.
It's nice to be able to run Linux on your PS2 but that's not what it's running when you are playing Tekken.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Check Gamefront Magazine (German). Sony denied the claims of that Japanese newspaper, calling them a misunderstanding. Sony, IBM and Toshiba are developing a shared broadband network, no OS.
ohhh boy, with IBM involved, it just might end up being a warmed over version of OS/2
Then why not call it "OS2"? If OS/2 ran on the PS/2 computer, why not make OS2 run on the PS2 console?
Will I retire or break 10K?
So, what do they do? The desparately try to find a justification for their existence and they pitch various projects to their management. "Media OS", "low latency", "very high bandwidth", "digital rights management", and "working with Sony", is what stuck. Among the few choices that they had to justify working on a new proprietary OS, that's probably the best they could do.
I doubt it will come to much. In the best case (for them), the PS/3 may run this thing, but PS/2 already runs a proprietary OS. But Linux will be able to handle all those problems as well or better by the time the system comes out, and you will see Linux in more and more media and consumer devices. That's not to say Linux is perfect, just that what these people seem to be proposing doesn't improve on Linux in the areas where it needs improving.
They may be running a version of this for the PC in 2005, but it won't have to be run on that. I bet when the next Playstation comes out, they'll be using this OS - they're not just trying to bring us a new operating system, they're probably trying to reinvent the personal computer. And Sony alone is large enough to take care of a relatively middling company like Microsoft.
In 5 years, the PC as we know it will be on the way out. It's about time, too.
what BeOS was all about? Doh!!
Smeghead every day of the week.
It seems to me that the big names in consumer electronics are hedging their bets on broadband digital entertainment and integrated home entertainment systems as being the big sellers as the economy recovers. Problem is, it'll all be proprietary and have dozens of DRM layers throughout designed to allow content producers to suck every last cent out the consumer. Quite simply, open standards don't allow corporations to manipulate the market. Unless we want to lose all control of entertainment technology and popular media, we need to act now. There needs to be a fully open alternative to the digital media jaggernaut that hollywood and big manufacturers / software companies are preparing. And unfortunately, we are very far behind. We need a media infrastructure that is as good or better than what is currently being developed. And it must be freely available the world over. Unfortunately, there seems to be little interest in multimedia among the top Open Source developers. This needs to change. If MS and the like lose the war for web, they will move elsewhere in attempt to obsolete current Open Source solutions by redefining the market. Frankly, the average consumer hates current desktop computing and rightly so, as it does not truly meet their needs. We must be careful not to fall behind the trends as we polish our desktop solutions.
Did anybody count the number of call to arms posts on this thread? I nearly pissed myself laughing. Not only is the article not really up on details but Sony flat out denied they were working on an OS. Sounds like somebody was speaking engrish on one end of the line and got somebody else confused.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
According to the sources, local area networks will be used to connect PCs installed with the operating system to TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators and other home appliances, giving great flexibility in controlling home appliances.
... we can ... Oh, never mind.
Ahhh, the long awaited broadband connection to the fridge. A whole new world is upon us. Where the fridge is connected and we can
Wait, I remembered,- it can report back to the manufacturer BEFORE the computer chip, used to connect the fridge to the net, is about to fail. So they can send out a service team to replace the chip BEFORE the internet connection even went out!
You wonder how people have lived without it this long.
I can already control my appliances. I can already control my computer using a TV as a monitor. To watch a video/audio source on a computer screen, I can stick a realtime mpeg encoder at the source and easily stream it through a 10mbps network with no difficulty.
Doesn't Tivo save TV programs already? If not, I'm always able to download them off usenet or other places due to the due diligence of a few dedicated individuals.
What this looks like is that they're attempting to create an all-in-one solution and standardize it. Good/Bad who knows. The point here is.. We have 3 years to come up with an alternative solution and standardize the market on it before they have a chance to embrace/extend/exploit.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
X-10 insn't what they are looking for. Heck I outgrew x-10 years ago
X10 definatly has it's limitations, but it's not at all bad for playing around with. It's very cheap, and doesn't require running wires through all the walls.
Sadly, it COULD be an excellent system if 2-way devices didn't all cost many times the proce of an equivilant 1-way device.
on/off, up/down isn't too bad with creative mapping. I use my X10 remote and a perl script to control xmms + the lights.
Of course, if I had time or was building a new house, I'd just run extra cat5 and be done with it.
erm have you ever actually worked in TV industry ?
head end cost 1/2 million while STB (set top box) under $150
but yes I know ship 2-3 million STB's and that exeeds the cost if the head end but companies (broadcasters) still look at the cost of head end (servers) as the real cost
Linux as a STB is already there look at the ATI chip
strangely its MIPS based much like the PS2 (-;
broadcast will be done on RTSP and linux can do this really easy AND has alll the add ons such as web browseing, email and such that a digital world demands
look who cares about linux on x86 but where it willll go on MIPS & ARM and maybe Power THAT will be the turning point
regards
john jones
Sony will use its experience developing the PS2 OS (hey, wasn't it Linux based?)
No. There is however a version of Linux for the PS2. That hardly qualifies the PS2 as a Linux Based device. Almost no games (possibly none at all) have anything Linux in them.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.