Agreed. I think the logic in this article is slightly backward. Furthermore, I would suggest that there is a very high negative correlation to people who are religious and people who are highly educated in sciences.
I see nothing to indicate they're going to enter the phone market themselves especially since it mentions the hardware is from "a partner".
I guess I missed the 'partner' keyword on my first read. That would seem a little bit more realistic than for Google to start manufacturing themselves. It would certainly make the OHA continue to resemble more of a playground than a battlefield.
One interesting note, is that the article does not explicitly say its a phone but rather a "device". Could this finally be the next step in the evolution of Qualcomm's SmartBook? Personally, I see it as a highly compatible platform for the Chrome OS.
Wow, if Google starts eating its own dogfood, by taking the leap into the handset manufacturing business, then I'll most certainly be eating my own words.
I honestly thought that they would be more of a nonpartisan member of the OHA, focusing entirely on the software side of things. With a handset manufacturing division, they would be directly competing with the manufacturing members of the OHA. However, with Google's superiority in software, I doubt that the competition will be able to keep up, at least in the Android universe. Other manufacturers might then just be striving to make a Google phone that measures up to the actual Google phone. Surely there would be some proprietary software components that Google would not be releasing, no?
If that were the case, wouldn't that be a motivating factor for OHA members to discontinue Android development altogether? Maybe its just me... but I would certainly hope that Google keeps their Android improvements entirely open for the OHA to remain sustainable (aside from the Google API components, of course).
Has Apple essentially admitted that they are infringing on Nokia's patents by not stating exactly which patents they're counter-suing for?
Maybe Apple thinks it can level out the playing field by saying 'we patented the ${x}', where ${x} can be any one of 'portable computing device', 'portable multimedia player', 'portable touch device', 'portable internet', 'portable camera', 'portable transistor', 'portable wheel',... , etc.
but we patented the portable media wheel... see?... [click-click-click-click]
GSM was rendered practically insecure a long time ago... I guess this is supposed to be some kind of demonstration of Nvidia's awesome computing power?
I would argue that the 'ingenuity' required to make hardware vs. software is most certainly not equal. Many software developers might not understand why, but that's because they are not hardware developers. A software analogy is, for example, defining specifications versus defining implementation. A hardware-ish example is the analog / digital divide. Hardware designers know, that nothing actually is digital.
The concept of patenting software has so many logical weak points it's not even debatable in my opinion.
if the FFT is implemented in x86 ASM, certainly the FFT in ARMv7 ASM is fundamentally a different 'device', even when drawn at the block-diagram level or flow-chart level.
if a software patent on a different arch / OS is patentable, then the holder of the patent should show prior art when someone augments their design for a different arch / OS, but they often can not and will not.
since there are many different ways to make a processor (ISA included), it's theoretically impossible for one entity to hold a patent for all software 'devices' that perform a similar task. If that were the case, then I could design a new processor with a new ISA, and make an augmented design and file for a new patent.
works for any number, n, of arch's / ISA's, but will always face contradiction for n+1
... the list of holes in the software patent system goes on...
True, it was kind of dumb that Nokia demonstrated something in a video that was obviously in violation of copyright. However, Nintendo hasn't been supporting those systems for what, like a decade now? There was a large generation of people (myself included) who preferred the classic NES or SNES over today's consoles.
This video demonstrated that there still is a market for the work that Nintendo did over 10 years ago, and they should pursue a strategy with Nokia to monetize that if they're so concerned.
All I can say is that this article was well-described as being speculative.
Why?
Google is not in the manufacturing business, they are in the software business, and their role in the OHA is quite clear.
Why would Google brand a single mobile from a single manufacturer, when they could brand 120 mobiles from 5 different manufacturers? Its the exact same situation for the up-and-coming commercial release of devices with the Chrome OS. It would just plainly be bad-business to limit the scope of one's own client base.
The telcos will still benefit in the end by having more people sign up for 'unlimited' data plans in order to get the phone (and its Google-branded apps) at an amortized price (e.g. half-price up-front w/ an expensive 3 year contract).
The article could be accurate in saying that Google is planning an 'attack', but probably only by offering Google Voice on a much broader range of mobiles than it currently is.
Also, I would like to clarify that any data is not the same as any other data. "Real-time" video or voice data certainly has different statistical / spectral / max-latency characteristics as, for example, email, web-browsing, or file downloading (including youtube), and that is the case regardless of whether or not its being pushed through the telephone system (circuit switching) or through a packet-switching network as IP data. In the latter case, however, latency usually becomes somewhat noticeable, so the compromise between price and latency (i.e. quality) is ultimately at the discretion of the end-user.
It could potentially be the first time the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a (benevolent) dictator! I'm pretty sure that still qualifies him as somehow politically active.
In all seriousness though - Linus' contribution was definitely revolutionary, and has changed the world in a very positive way. I can't imagine what evil regime I would be stuck working for if I hadn't started playing with Linux so many years ago.
If Linus were to win the prize, I would imagine that he should probably put the funds back into a charitable organization, since there are and were countless numbers of others who have made substantial contributions to the evolution of his kernel as well.
This isn't a particularly bad idea and community-driven distros (or maybe the community of community-driven distros) like Ubuntu would probably benefit from it quite significantly. You can even strip unnecessary binary portions out of most programs (at least with the mach-o binary format), although it would really only effect disk usage. With the disk capacities today, it's really negligible disk-usage savings anyway.
In terms of the Linux kernel, this would mean a major overhaul for a large portion of the kernel and I can't see it being adopted very widely outside of the Desktop market.
I've observed first-hand how ridiculous (publicly funded institution) spending is, in Ontario, and this does not surprise me in the least.
I used to work at a certain university in downtown Toronto. Rather than giving this task to their already 100+ employees (who usually had very little to do anyway) with CS or related degrees, they opted to hire 20+ external consultants at a rate of ~ $100,000 CAD / year (for a couple of years at least) to 'integrate' some proprietary 3rd-party product (ahem... PeopleSoft!).
The alternative was to build a fully-customizable, easily-maintainable, more efficient, user-friendlier product themselves for essentially $0, as all of the employees who would build said project were already on salary.
Why? Liability. Rather than ensuring a product is up-to-snuff by their internal standards, by professionals who are more qualified to set those standards, and quickly writing fixes internally, the management preferred to have someone external to blame in case things went wrong. That way they could spend another $1M on consultants to fix the problem later on;-)
It really makes you question how your hard-earned tax dollars are being spent.
Assuming that they are interested in patenting software or business methods, Microsoft is making the very poor assumption that the 99% of the countries in the world who don't support software or business method patents would suddenly change their minds.
There is a reason that software patents are only valid in the U.S. and Japan. Plainly, most of the rest of the world would rather not have them.
You should probably eliminate your screensaver altogether and set the windowing environment to power-off the monitor after a certain timeout occurs.
Your web browser (e.g. Firefox) should be set to use browser.disk.cache.parent_dir=/tmp in about:config (mount/tmp as tmpfs). Really anything creating or writing files periodically should write them to tmpfs. Also, you might want to just make a symbolic link from ~/.mozilla/firefox/[profile]/Cache ->/tmp.
Eliminate ALL logging - it will wake up the hard disks every time a message is logged, unless you log to tmpfs.
With Ubuntu 9.04, also keep in mind that video / 2D / 3D operations are not accelerated because Canonical chose to use FLOSS-only drivers on this release. That means, your CPU works overtime to account for all of Ubuntu's fancy compositing. Apparently with Ubuntu 8.10 restricted drivers are still allowed, so you might want to consider downgrading. They have the added benefit of lowering the work of the main CPU (i.e. less power is used), using silicon to accelerate graphics rather than software.
User powertop
Tweak the kernel to enable dynamic ticks (i.e. a 'tickless' system)
Really look through your ~/.xyz files to see which of them contain logs and caches. Redirect those to/tmp using a symbolic link.
It's sadly true that almost all Linux applications / distributions have not taken writing-to-disk into account to reduce power. On the other hand, video / 2G / 3G graphics acceleration in hardware makes a huge difference, which is why I would really like to see more companies offering more in terms of stable hardware acceleration.
There seems to be a lot of comments about how the average joe is going to be pissy when he discovers that he can't run his windows applications on his arm netbook, or print well for that matter. That is obvious, and therefore redundant to talk about. This is a website dedicated to (hopefully intelligent) nerds, right? I'm more interested in running Linux anyway, or possibly an up-and-coming Mac OS X for ARM.
I would like to say to DELL - excellent idea!!! ARM for netbooks / smartbooks only makes perfect sense! The battery will last longer, they're fully capable of doing everything that a netbook should (including all multimedia applications), they're SILENT / FANLESS. All of that makes me (a green geek / engineer) very happy! If you could pull off an aluminium unibody, then you would have Apple beat if they ever got around to making a Mac smartbook.
My advice though, is to choose your components wisely. People won't want to wait for application contexts to be reactivated from swap, so make sure that you have enough RAM to keep everything going. Also, make sure that you prelink all binaries so that loading times are much faster! Last but not least, I would highly recommend that you choose a dual-core ARM SoC like the TI OMAP-4, which is based on the Cortex-A9 ARM family. With dual-cores, there would be many more pipelines available for concurrent threads, which means very little noticeable lag times.
Specifically for the OMAP, I really hope that the integrated PowerVR 3D graphics core and integrated video codec will get full Linux support at some point soon. TI seems pretty dedicated to supporting Linux on their devices, so I don't think that full support is unrealistic. The enhanced DSP ARM instructions will accelerate any multimedia applications in the mean time, and those are fully supported by GCC, with optimizations in the works for mplayer, ffmpeg, etc, until a decent architecture-agnostic kernel drm layer is in place, with PowerVR / IVA support.
For Windows enthusiasts, I'm sure that Windows 7 will be available at some point for ARM, as we have seen some of the demonstrations already at Computex (although Android seemed to be much easier to port). Will Microsoft even bother making a compatibility layer for ARM? I have to hand it to Apple, that they are in a better position than MS to make a fully featured ARM netbook, given their universal binary format in Mac OS X.
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Fabrice Bellard continues to amaze me.
Agreed. I think the logic in this article is slightly backward. Furthermore, I would suggest that there is a very high negative correlation to people who are religious and people who are highly educated in sciences.
I see nothing to indicate they're going to enter the phone market themselves especially since it mentions the hardware is from "a partner".
I guess I missed the 'partner' keyword on my first read. That would seem a little bit more realistic than for Google to start manufacturing themselves. It would certainly make the OHA continue to resemble more of a playground than a battlefield.
One interesting note, is that the article does not explicitly say its a phone but rather a "device". Could this finally be the next step in the evolution of Qualcomm's SmartBook? Personally, I see it as a highly compatible platform for the Chrome OS.
Wow, if Google starts eating its own dogfood, by taking the leap into the handset manufacturing business, then I'll most certainly be eating my own words.
I honestly thought that they would be more of a nonpartisan member of the OHA, focusing entirely on the software side of things. With a handset manufacturing division, they would be directly competing with the manufacturing members of the OHA. However, with Google's superiority in software, I doubt that the competition will be able to keep up, at least in the Android universe. Other manufacturers might then just be striving to make a Google phone that measures up to the actual Google phone. Surely there would be some proprietary software components that Google would not be releasing, no?
If that were the case, wouldn't that be a motivating factor for OHA members to discontinue Android development altogether? Maybe its just me... but I would certainly hope that Google keeps their Android improvements entirely open for the OHA to remain sustainable (aside from the Google API components, of course).
so very true...
Has Apple essentially admitted that they are infringing on Nokia's patents by not stating exactly which patents they're counter-suing for?
Maybe Apple thinks it can level out the playing field by saying 'we patented the ${x}', where ${x} can be any one of 'portable computing device', 'portable multimedia player', 'portable touch device', 'portable internet', 'portable camera', 'portable transistor', 'portable wheel', ... , etc.
but we patented the portable media wheel ... see? ... [click-click-click-click]
GSM was rendered practically insecure a long time ago... I guess this is supposed to be some kind of demonstration of Nvidia's awesome computing power?
I would argue that the 'ingenuity' required to make hardware vs. software is most certainly not equal. Many software developers might not understand why, but that's because they are not hardware developers. A software analogy is, for example, defining specifications versus defining implementation. A hardware-ish example is the analog / digital divide. Hardware designers know, that nothing actually is digital.
The concept of patenting software has so many logical weak points it's not even debatable in my opinion.
True, it was kind of dumb that Nokia demonstrated something in a video that was obviously in violation of copyright. However, Nintendo hasn't been supporting those systems for what, like a decade now? There was a large generation of people (myself included) who preferred the classic NES or SNES over today's consoles.
This video demonstrated that there still is a market for the work that Nintendo did over 10 years ago, and they should pursue a strategy with Nokia to monetize that if they're so concerned.
All I can say is that this article was well-described as being speculative.
Why?
The article could be accurate in saying that Google is planning an 'attack', but probably only by offering Google Voice on a much broader range of mobiles than it currently is.
Also, I would like to clarify that any data is not the same as any other data. "Real-time" video or voice data certainly has different statistical / spectral / max-latency characteristics as, for example, email, web-browsing, or file downloading (including youtube), and that is the case regardless of whether or not its being pushed through the telephone system (circuit switching) or through a packet-switching network as IP data. In the latter case, however, latency usually becomes somewhat noticeable, so the compromise between price and latency (i.e. quality) is ultimately at the discretion of the end-user.
I would have to agree - I don't see how this can be used to reduce delays.
Their server is definitely under some heavy load. I've been loading the page slowly for the last 10 minutes.
This could be a very historic moment!
It could potentially be the first time the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a (benevolent) dictator! I'm pretty sure that still qualifies him as somehow politically active.
In all seriousness though - Linus' contribution was definitely revolutionary, and has changed the world in a very positive way. I can't imagine what evil regime I would be stuck working for if I hadn't started playing with Linux so many years ago.
If Linus were to win the prize, I would imagine that he should probably put the funds back into a charitable organization, since there are and were countless numbers of others who have made substantial contributions to the evolution of his kernel as well.
Maybe he could rename it the Han Solo Award and give it back to the Rebel Fleet.
This story has also been covered before by a CBC documentary.
This isn't a particularly bad idea and community-driven distros (or maybe the community of community-driven distros) like Ubuntu would probably benefit from it quite significantly. You can even strip unnecessary binary portions out of most programs (at least with the mach-o binary format), although it would really only effect disk usage. With the disk capacities today, it's really negligible disk-usage savings anyway.
In terms of the Linux kernel, this would mean a major overhaul for a large portion of the kernel and I can't see it being adopted very widely outside of the Desktop market.
no seriously, i couldn't hear you, can you speak a little louder?
As soon as I heard Microsoft, I could only imagine this thing going downhill.
My last comment was rather negative towards consultants. I do feel that this article is very positive in general - excellent work Mac!
Also, there are annual licenses that have to be renewed on a per-workstation basis for this software, and it is not cheap.
I've observed first-hand how ridiculous (publicly funded institution) spending is, in Ontario, and this does not surprise me in the least.
I used to work at a certain university in downtown Toronto. Rather than giving this task to their already 100+ employees (who usually had very little to do anyway) with CS or related degrees, they opted to hire 20+ external consultants at a rate of ~ $100,000 CAD / year (for a couple of years at least) to 'integrate' some proprietary 3rd-party product (ahem ... PeopleSoft!).
The alternative was to build a fully-customizable, easily-maintainable, more efficient, user-friendlier product themselves for essentially $0, as all of the employees who would build said project were already on salary.
Why? Liability. Rather than ensuring a product is up-to-snuff by their internal standards, by professionals who are more qualified to set those standards, and quickly writing fixes internally, the management preferred to have someone external to blame in case things went wrong. That way they could spend another $1M on consultants to fix the problem later on ;-)
It really makes you question how your hard-earned tax dollars are being spent.
They don't need price cuts, they should really just start targeting the best of the consumer population with the Shii
The chances of being able to sue somebody over copyright infringement in the recording industry are a heck of a lot better than playing the lottery.
It's like winning 1000 lotteries at the same time! Screw the lottery!
Time for a career change? I can't sing or dance particularly well, but people can take lessons for that kind of thing.
Sorry, this is flipping ridiculous.
Assuming that they are interested in patenting software or business methods, Microsoft is making the very poor assumption that the 99% of the countries in the world who don't support software or business method patents would suddenly change their minds.
There is a reason that software patents are only valid in the U.S. and Japan. Plainly, most of the rest of the world would rather not have them.
Get real Microsoft.
It's sadly true that almost all Linux applications / distributions have not taken writing-to-disk into account to reduce power. On the other hand, video / 2G / 3G graphics acceleration in hardware makes a huge difference, which is why I would really like to see more companies offering more in terms of stable hardware acceleration.
There seems to be a lot of comments about how the average joe is going to be pissy when he discovers that he can't run his windows applications on his arm netbook, or print well for that matter. That is obvious, and therefore redundant to talk about. This is a website dedicated to (hopefully intelligent) nerds, right? I'm more interested in running Linux anyway, or possibly an up-and-coming Mac OS X for ARM.
I would like to say to DELL - excellent idea!!! ARM for netbooks / smartbooks only makes perfect sense! The battery will last longer, they're fully capable of doing everything that a netbook should (including all multimedia applications), they're SILENT / FANLESS. All of that makes me (a green geek / engineer) very happy! If you could pull off an aluminium unibody, then you would have Apple beat if they ever got around to making a Mac smartbook.
My advice though, is to choose your components wisely. People won't want to wait for application contexts to be reactivated from swap, so make sure that you have enough RAM to keep everything going. Also, make sure that you prelink all binaries so that loading times are much faster! Last but not least, I would highly recommend that you choose a dual-core ARM SoC like the TI OMAP-4, which is based on the Cortex-A9 ARM family. With dual-cores, there would be many more pipelines available for concurrent threads, which means very little noticeable lag times.
Specifically for the OMAP, I really hope that the integrated PowerVR 3D graphics core and integrated video codec will get full Linux support at some point soon. TI seems pretty dedicated to supporting Linux on their devices, so I don't think that full support is unrealistic. The enhanced DSP ARM instructions will accelerate any multimedia applications in the mean time, and those are fully supported by GCC, with optimizations in the works for mplayer, ffmpeg, etc, until a decent architecture-agnostic kernel drm layer is in place, with PowerVR / IVA support.
For Windows enthusiasts, I'm sure that Windows 7 will be available at some point for ARM, as we have seen some of the demonstrations already at Computex (although Android seemed to be much easier to port). Will Microsoft even bother making a compatibility layer for ARM? I have to hand it to Apple, that they are in a better position than MS to make a fully featured ARM netbook, given their universal binary format in Mac OS X.