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Sony and Sun Form Net Appliance Pact
grayhame writes "It seems that Sony and Sun have decided to team up to co-develop digital consumer electronic appliances with access to the internet. " Sun seems to be moving towards consumer space. Sun and Specialized are doing a co-branding thing where Specialized uses Sun workstations to design their bikes, and in return, there will be Sun-purple co-branded bikes.
Another thing that he's developed is a nice little VB application that lets people at the part search through his tracks for an artist and then add it to the playlist in a similar way to a jukebox in a bar.
Net radio is already there. Just try here (You have to start the stream first, of course). I've seen a couple of these "program as you go" bitcasters, and I like 'em. Hats off to ya Nazz.
+&x
So DJ'ing with Mp3's is something that I do, and write code to support. I have also spun in the "old school" fashion using a 4+ channel mixer with 2 cd players and 2 technics turntables...
Here are my thoughts on the problem with "professional" dj'ing using mp3's:
1) vinyl does sound better. Really. The crowd doesn't usually notice though.
2) Beat matching:
2a) According to an old TA of mine (who could teach signals and systems to a brick... which I was.) true software beat tracking is rough. It's one of those things which is simplistic in analog, but comparably a pain in the ass to do digitially.
2b) pitch control. professional dj equipment allows you to adjust the speed of the track by +/- 10%. This way you can seamlessly fade directly from one song into another, or overlay a track over a background track. Once the first track is faded out, you are free to readjust the playback speed. To the best of my knowledge, the software to do this requires fast interpolation/decimation code and some really funky polyphase low pass filters. I've done it with Matlab/Mathematica but not in real time. According to my calcualtions it is really memory intensive... (I'm still learning about the math side of all this, so if i'm wrong please enlighten me)
3) User interface. Ever use a mixer? a real one with sliders and a crossfader? It is *so* much easier to use the old reliable sliding controlers instaed of a mouse and keyboard. Your multitasking (pardon the lingo...) is only limited by the dexterity of the 10 digits on your hands. With one hand you can control the volume on 2 or 3 channels, run the crossfader with your thumb, and adjust the equalizer with the other hand. Current "free" mp3 UI's are based around a single input source.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
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Wow, I'd be the coolest geek on the block! How much are they and where can I find one!
-Lokar "Saddle me up and ride me into the future"
...insert joke about it being slower than a regular bike... :)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Sun's incentive in this collaboration is to get the ball rollin on it's JINI technology. What better place to go than the King of appliances? Sony is probably ticked at MS' overtures into the gaming market that Sony all but owns and sees this as a way to smack MS down a bit. Once again, MS steps on the toes of potential corporate partners in its all-consuming quest to be everything to everyone.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
OK, lets start small. How about we have this wireless access from all Laptops, then move to having access from EVERYTHING. Personally I can't wait for the day when I can set up a HUGE file server at my house, full of Mp3s, and be playing them from my car, or better yet from a RIO sized Mp3 player. I could go running with a .5oz device (Most of the weight being buttons) and still have access to my entire 73 day music collection! I hope this is how it ends up working out. I could be be truely wired and connected 24/7, this is a doog thing :) Imagine a DJ showing up to your house to have a party/dance (I know you guys are slashdot geeks, but you can imagine can't you? J/K) he shows up with nothing but speakers and his little Rio sized mp3 decoder, or maybe he brings a laptop so he can play games or read Slashdot while at the party :) Now a days, DJ's bring 500 lbs of CD's. This would be made much easier if music was all kept on a central server to be accessed remotely (Presonally, if I was a DJ I would have a nice computer with 40+ gigs of HD space, I would then bring my computer and stero equipment to the party. Thus no need for all the other work of bringing CD's. I have yet to see this. But this would change what the DJ had to do imensely. Imagine, what song you want? Typing it in and playing it, vs trying to find it in a stack of 500 CD's.) ((Boy, I sure got side tracked))
Of couse their aer other uses for being able to be connected to the internet with other "appliences". Bikes for instance. You could have a GPS built into your childs bike. Then, if he was to go out riding and it was getting dark, or he got lost, you could just bring up your computer and get the GPS cordinates, bring up a map, and know exactly where they are at. This would also work in case the bike was stolen, it would be kind of like a security system.
Overall, I love this idea. I can't wait till the day this happens. What are your predictions on when it is wide spread? I would say not for quite a while, in fact, it may be a long way off. But then, a while ago I would have told you that 200 mhz computers were a long way off to!!
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds
How about these marketing strategies: Co-branding with Starbucks for Sun Java drinks. with the Weather Channel-- partly Sunny(TM), Sunny(TM), etc. with Lucky Charms-- adding purple Suns to the mix, for the really young geeks.
This is more than stupid, but if Sun and Sony ever spin off a joint company or division, someone should name it "Sunny".
The eBike runs on multiple platforms using Sun's own Java technology. Currently, virtual machines exists for both concrete and pavement, with a port for dirt in the works.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
...I can't find anything on Specialized's or Sun's websites that mention a word about Sun-purple bikes. Very disapointing. They had a picture of McNealy being presented with a custom-made bike that was sun purple. But, according to the press release, the co-branding ACTUALLY involves putting a logo saying 'Desgined on Sun' on all the bikes and helmets. Oh well. Too good to be true, I guess.
Lets get rid of a few misconceptions here:
Java is not slow because it executes slower than natively compiled code. In fact natively compiling Java code doesn't help you much since the execution speed is not the main cause for its slowness. Benchmarks actually show hotspot and IBMs VM faster then native compilers for Java.
The real reason that Java is slower has to do with how Java manages objects and memory. Unlike languages like C/C++, Java uses a more dynamic form of memory management. This makes allocations slower and also the deallocation process (by the garbage collector) is slower. Then there are several other issues that also slow down java.
But none of them has to do with the fact that Java is interpreted (or rather JIT compiled). Theoreticially, if it weren't for these issues, Java would be faster than C/C++ since dynamic compilers like hotspot can do something that static compilers like the ones used for C and C++ cannot do: using runtime information to steer the optimizations.
I do agree with the poster that eventually most of the current problems with Java will either be solved or won't be so much of a problem because of cheaper, faster hardware. Eventually Moore's law will solve this issue.
Also I saw somebody whine about the performance of 3d graphics in Java. Apparently this person is not aware of the fact that Java only provides an API for the 3d rendering. The actual rendering happens natively. The advantage of this is that you can write renderer and OS independent 3d graphics applications.
If you still have doubts about the use of interpreted languages in 3D applications, both quake 3 and unreal use an intrepreted scripting language. I think John Carmack even played with the idea to include a Java vm in quake.
Ps. Why is it that everytime the word Java is dropped on this site, the anti MS FUD people start spreading fud and other ill informed arguments about it Java. I mean, this is a site about technical subjects, most people posting here are obviously techies too and yet they manage to poor out all this bullshit about a subject that gets plenty of media attention. Most of the arguments broad forward in this post have been used before in postings on other stories. And despite this if Java is in the news again tomorrow or so, the whining will start all over again. It is a bit depressing that some people are stuck on their current, rather mediocre, knowledge level. I have learned a great deal since I started reading slashdot nearly a year ago.
Jilles
Also from the thinner is better department, COMPAQ is announcing the release of the "iPaq" Internet PC for businesses. "iPaq is the industry's first "Legacy-Free" Windows 2000 device, using USB ports in place of ISA/PCI expansion slots or legacy ports. Available in January 2000 via the Web and phone, it will be aggressively priced, starting at $499 (U.S. price with Internet keyboard, without monitor)."
"The silver and black device, which weighs just over 10 pounds and is only 40 percent as large as the conventional beige box PC, is designed as a desk-side computer and runs Intel Corp.'s latest Pentium III chips."
A P-III for $499 sounds like a good deal, even if you can't put linux on it. I also can't figure out how you can get a P-III AND a copy of Windows2000 and keep the price under $500?
Regarding the name, even if they don't get sued by Apple, I expect this French Company will have some issues with it.
I agree that the hype has taken disproportional sizes at some time. But that aplies to almost any technology of the past few years: www, linux, windows, XML, visual basic, corba, activeX,.....
All these things have been hyped and got lots of ill informed media attention. Also all of them have survived the hype stage (well perhaps activeX didn't). In my opinion Java is getting past the hype stage too and I expect such a thing to be recognized by people posting on a site dominated by technology news. It's a bit disappointing to see the same shittyy arguments used over and over again. I don't mind a little well funded criticism but just whining "Java is slow, use xxx instead, you #@!@##" fals into the troll category as far as I'm concerned.
Jilles