If you don't have root access it's not really your machine. As computers get ever more personal, from desktop to mobile to (physically) embedded systems, it's critical that every user has the ability to keep their data safe from governments and corporations, crooks and perverts.
Although we went through a period thinking we have an abundance of CPU power, efficiency is back in vogue as it's needed everywhere from the mobile, because of limited cpu/battery, to servers trying to solve the the C10K problem (serving >10K simultaneous connections).
Couple of interesting projects are the Redis server, written in tight ANSI C, and the Go language, kinda like a combination of C++ and python with a nod towards erlang.
http://code.google.com/p/redis/ Redis is an advanced key-value store. It is similar to memcached but the dataset is not volatile, and values can be strings, exactly like in memcached, but also lists, sets, and ordered sets. All this data types can be manipulated with atomic operations to push/pop elements, add/remove elements, perform server side union, intersection, difference between sets, and so forth. Redis supports different kind of sorting abilities.
2) If Android apps do become popular and a competitive advantage, AFAIK there's nothing to stop Apple or someone else from porting Dalvik and underlying libraries and services to the iPhone. After all, both the iPhone and Android are at their cores just little unix boxes. If so, the project should be called Blade Runner. The Warner Bros lawsuit would be good publicity.
Agreed, iPod Touch has a great mobile browser, see Jakob Nielsen's study of mobile browser usability below.
It's very easy to create a simple thumb-friendly site which is formatted well for the small screen using the "iui" javascript/css library: http://code.google.com/p/iui/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html In practice, however, most of the other [non-iPhone] full-screen devices we tested had usability that was so weak users didn't browse the Web much better with them than they did with regular smartphones.
Yeah, the iphone nano is the bigfoot of the gadget world -- anyone who says it exists is an idiot or a con man. And even though everyone knows it doesn't exist, somehow evidence of it becomes a media sensation periodically. Wasn't the last bigfoot hoax also just a rubber suit?
Btw is the iPhone an example of the BSD license failing to protect user's freedom? BSD is used in OSX, and OSX is used in the iphone. Would Apple still be able to decide what apps iphone owners can run if the BSD-licensed code was instead GPL?
The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled is making people believe that Windows 7 actually exists.
Like I commented on yesterday's article, they knew they had to get something, anything, out and into the press for damage control of the Vista debacle. They labelled a Vista code branch "Windows7", got it building, called it a beta.
The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled is making people believe that Windows 7 actually exists.
They knew they had to get something, anything, out and into the press for damage control of the Vista debacle. They labelled a Vista code branch "Windows7", got it building, called it a beta.
I don't understand -- an iphone app (at least jailbroken) can do all those things: IPC, run in background, launch other processes. Don't confuse Apple's App Store restrictions with iphone os restrictions.
Don't know what you mean about webkit -- of course that's been ported to the iphone.
Like an Android phone, the iphone is in many ways just a little unix box in your pocket, so assuming all of Android is open source, seems possible to port enough libraries over to allow Android apps to run.
I thought the same thing -- it would be really interesting, and a lot easier, to just port the Android Runtime http://code.google.com/android/what-is-android.html (the core libraries and Dalvik Virtual Machine) on top of the iPhone OS. Doesn't seem like it would be hard, many of the listed Libraries are already ported, and code written for Linux ports easily to MacOSX. Then the iPhone can run Android applications, don't even have to recompile them. iParallels?:)
This was a really interesting article about the kind of optimizations javascript is getting. Btw, it still amazes me that after the GUI class library wars of the 90s, and all those Java ui frameworks in the early 2000s, "javascript over http" is state of the art in human-computer interfaces. Anyone who would have accurately predicted this future would have been labeled a madman.
"Why JavaScript? Well, it was Ajax. See, what happened was... Lemme tell ya how it was supposed to be. JavaScript was going away. It doesn't matter whether you were Sun or Microsoft or anybody, right? JavaScript was going away, and it was gonna get replaced with... heh. Whatever your favorite language was.
I mean, it wasn't actually the same for everybody. It might have been C#, it might have been Java, it might have been some new language, but it was going to be a modern language. A fast language. It was gonna be a scalable language, in the sense of large-scale engineering. Building desktop apps. That's the way it was gonna be.
The way it's really gonna be, is JavaScript is gonna become one of the smokin'-est fast languages out there. And I mean smokin' fast."
If I exchange an email, link, song, or video with my friend, why does that have to be a marketing opportunity for some company?
I'm on the Internet, my friend is on the Internet, we should be able to communicate directly, privately, and securely. Sure, unless we have a 24/7 connection, we'll need some intermediate place to store the data, but we shouldn't need anything more than a dumb bitshifter for that.
I don't want to rent my eyeballs to google or anyone else. Yes, I know private person-to-person communication is possible today, I'm just saying it should be the norm.
We discuss these problems with google and facebook providing users adequate security from snooping by governments, corporations, crooks, and perverts, but I think we miss the bigger point that we shouldn't be relying on third party servers to communicate with each other.
Thanks for the post. I just got screwed by SDV -- bought a TivoHD, bought a 3 year subscription, got TimeWarner to set up the cable card, only to find out I can't get several channels like MTVHD and CNNHD because they are transmitted with SDV. Now I have to wait for CableCard 2.0 or some other standard, and buy all new hardware?
So in your opinion what is the problem? Is the technology really that hard to get right, or are cable companies just not interested in getting it right because it's not in their financial interest? Why didn't the FCC foresee this problem, did they have any say over the CableCard spec?
This is a great article about the Chandler saga: http://www.gamearchitect.net/Articles/SoftwareIsHard.html. It's the Mitch Kapor financed Exchange killer. So many smart people, so many good intentions, but 7 years later it's barely beta.
I've always thought really smart, hard working people are the biggest problem with software -- they tend to make things that only really smart, hard working people can use, fix, and extend.
Why would a company's marketing department give out schwag? I guess it's better than nothing, but if they really wanted to a glowing review from the reviewer they would give out... Oh wait, "sWag". Never mind.
Wikipedia says "intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn."
Having a constant Internet connection with an experience much better (I assume) than Opera Mini *is* a pretty big deal. What it needs to really be worth that price? Apple should add flash soon, that's a big part of the web, like it or not. And it needs Google Gears on it, so apps can be written that don't rely on a connection. And it needs to be able to talk to Exchange, lots of potential users need this to justify getting an iPhone instead of a Blackberry. Then expose the phone features (eg, address book, iPhone screen UI) through a javascript API, and we won't miss J2ME/Java ME.
Yeah, I know I'm getting ripped off for spending so much money, but assuming the ipod functionality is good, it's not *so* outrageous a price. I should wait for the next gen version, but I can't -- it's just too interesting and radical a change in the mobile device market.
Eh, is Java the direction mobile software needs to be moving? I wish a solution like Java ME (J2ME) worked well, since it's on a lot more phones, but it doesn't. Too many hassles, too little compatibility. I don't really blame Apple for not making Java a priority. I'm more surprised Flash isn't supported (yet?).
The AJAX/HTML/Javascript "solution" seems hacky but it might work well if Safari provides a rich iphone-specific API via javascript and lets these web applications control the iphone, access local and remote data, and maybe share objects between webapps. Of course this would have to be secure (from crooks, apple.com, and wireless.att.com) and the user would have to approve all webapp permissions. Apple would need to port the Google Gears plugin or something like that, to allow for offline use of these web sites. Then Safari just needs to provide good javascript thread control, and the browser becomes the os.
Don't know if Flash (Lite? Mobile Apollo?) is or will be a better platform. It would at least be portable to other phones.
Maybe Apple could work with Opera Mini folks, to make their javascript API for accessing phone features portable, but now I'm really dreaming.
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If you don't have root access it's not really your machine. As computers get ever more personal, from desktop to mobile to (physically) embedded systems, it's critical that every user has the ability to keep their data safe from governments and corporations, crooks and perverts.
I can has your clothez, bootz, and motersykle?
Although we went through a period thinking we have an abundance of CPU power, efficiency is back in vogue as it's needed everywhere from the mobile, because of limited cpu/battery, to servers trying to solve the the C10K problem (serving >10K simultaneous connections).
Couple of interesting projects are the Redis server, written in tight ANSI C, and the Go language, kinda like a combination of C++ and python with a nod towards erlang.
http://code.google.com/p/redis/
Redis is an advanced key-value store. It is similar to memcached but the dataset is not volatile, and values can be strings, exactly like in memcached, but also lists, sets, and ordered sets. All this data types can be manipulated with atomic operations to push/pop elements, add/remove elements, perform server side union, intersection, difference between sets, and so forth. Redis supports different kind of sorting abilities.
http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#What_is_the_purpose_of_the_project
Okay, not really related to ancient Mayan plumbing, but that article did make me think about this great talk by neuroscientist and writer David Eagleman:
http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/apr/01/six-easy-steps-avert-collapse-civilization/
Couple of things to keep in mind in the iPhone vs Android development wars:
1) Android also allows native (C/C++) development with the Android Native Development Kit (NDK): http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html#overview
2) If Android apps do become popular and a competitive advantage, AFAIK there's nothing to stop Apple or someone else from porting Dalvik and underlying libraries and services to the iPhone. After all, both the iPhone and Android are at their cores just little unix boxes. If so, the project should be called Blade Runner. The Warner Bros lawsuit would be good publicity.
Agreed, iPod Touch has a great mobile browser, see Jakob Nielsen's study of mobile browser usability below.
It's very easy to create a simple thumb-friendly site which is formatted well for the small screen using the "iui" javascript/css library: http://code.google.com/p/iui/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html
In practice, however, most of the other [non-iPhone] full-screen devices we tested had usability that was so weak users didn't browse the Web much better with them than they did with regular smartphones.
Yeah, the iphone nano is the bigfoot of the gadget world -- anyone who says it exists is an idiot or a con man. And even though everyone knows it doesn't exist, somehow evidence of it becomes a media sensation periodically. Wasn't the last bigfoot hoax also just a rubber suit?
Excellent points. Also see http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/5-reasons-to-avoid-iphone-3g about the importance of maintaining our freedoms on the new, even more personal, computer: the mobile.
Btw is the iPhone an example of the BSD license failing to protect user's freedom? BSD is used in OSX, and OSX is used in the iphone. Would Apple still be able to decide what apps iphone owners can run if the BSD-licensed code was instead GPL?
The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled is making people believe that Windows 7 actually exists.
Like I commented on yesterday's article, they knew they had to get something, anything, out and into the press for damage control of the Vista debacle. They labelled a Vista code branch "Windows7", got it building, called it a beta.
The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled is making people believe that Windows 7 actually exists.
They knew they had to get something, anything, out and into the press for damage control of the Vista debacle. They labelled a Vista code branch "Windows7", got it building, called it a beta.
I don't understand -- an iphone app (at least jailbroken) can do all those things: IPC, run in background, launch other processes. Don't confuse Apple's App Store restrictions with iphone os restrictions.
Don't know what you mean about webkit -- of course that's been ported to the iphone.
Like an Android phone, the iphone is in many ways just a little unix box in your pocket, so assuming all of Android is open source, seems possible to port enough libraries over to allow Android apps to run.
I thought the same thing -- it would be really interesting, and a lot easier, to just port the Android Runtime http://code.google.com/android/what-is-android.html (the core libraries and Dalvik Virtual Machine) on top of the iPhone OS. Doesn't seem like it would be hard, many of the listed Libraries are already ported, and code written for Linux ports easily to MacOSX. Then the iPhone can run Android applications, don't even have to recompile them. iParallels? :)
Too slow? Gmail's polling interval will delay incoming mail.
This was a really interesting article about the kind of optimizations javascript is getting. Btw, it still amazes me that after the GUI class library wars of the 90s, and all those Java ui frameworks in the early 2000s, "javascript over http" is state of the art in human-computer interfaces. Anyone who would have accurately predicted this future would have been labeled a madman.
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike-back.html
"Why JavaScript? Well, it was Ajax. See, what happened was... Lemme tell ya how it was supposed to be. JavaScript was going away. It doesn't matter whether you were Sun or Microsoft or anybody, right? JavaScript was going away, and it was gonna get replaced with... heh. Whatever your favorite language was.
I mean, it wasn't actually the same for everybody. It might have been C#, it might have been Java, it might have been some new language, but it was going to be a modern language. A fast language. It was gonna be a scalable language, in the sense of large-scale engineering. Building desktop apps. That's the way it was gonna be.
The way it's really gonna be, is JavaScript is gonna become one of the smokin'-est fast languages out there. And I mean smokin' fast."
Maybe I need a little ritalin...
Yup, won't be [much] longer before passing a drug test for employment means your results have to come back positive.
Yup, won't be longer before passing a drug test for employment means your results have to come back positive.
Yeah, truly the future of computer interfaces, as imagined in 1986. Actually, it reminds me of the computer/desk the bad guy had in Tron:
http://arcanecode.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/windowslivewriterarcanesurfaces-10559trondesk1-thumb2.jpg
If I exchange an email, link, song, or video with my friend, why does that have to be a marketing opportunity for some company?
I'm on the Internet, my friend is on the Internet, we should be able to communicate directly, privately, and securely. Sure, unless we have a 24/7 connection, we'll need some intermediate place to store the data, but we shouldn't need anything more than a dumb bitshifter for that.
I don't want to rent my eyeballs to google or anyone else. Yes, I know private person-to-person communication is possible today, I'm just saying it should be the norm.
We discuss these problems with google and facebook providing users adequate security from snooping by governments, corporations, crooks, and perverts, but I think we miss the bigger point that we shouldn't be relying on third party servers to communicate with each other.
Helping to defeat DRM... wow, Mr. iPhone, is there anything you can't do?!
Thanks for the post. I just got screwed by SDV -- bought a TivoHD, bought a 3 year subscription, got TimeWarner to set up the cable card, only to find out I can't get several channels like MTVHD and CNNHD because they are transmitted with SDV. Now I have to wait for CableCard 2.0 or some other standard, and buy all new hardware?
So in your opinion what is the problem? Is the technology really that hard to get right, or are cable companies just not interested in getting it right because it's not in their financial interest? Why didn't the FCC foresee this problem, did they have any say over the CableCard spec?
This is a great article about the Chandler saga: http://www.gamearchitect.net/Articles/SoftwareIsHard.html. It's the Mitch Kapor financed Exchange killer. So many smart people, so many good intentions, but 7 years later it's barely beta.
I've always thought really smart, hard working people are the biggest problem with software -- they tend to make things that only really smart, hard working people can use, fix, and extend.
Why would a company's marketing department give out schwag? I guess it's better than nothing, but if they really wanted to a glowing review from the reviewer they would give out... Oh wait, "sWag". Never mind.
Wikipedia says "intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn."
Fancy stats != intelligence
Having a constant Internet connection with an experience much better (I assume) than Opera Mini *is* a pretty big deal. What it needs to really be worth that price? Apple should add flash soon, that's a big part of the web, like it or not. And it needs Google Gears on it, so apps can be written that don't rely on a connection. And it needs to be able to talk to Exchange, lots of potential users need this to justify getting an iPhone instead of a Blackberry. Then expose the phone features (eg, address book, iPhone screen UI) through a javascript API, and we won't miss J2ME/Java ME.
Yeah, I know I'm getting ripped off for spending so much money, but assuming the ipod functionality is good, it's not *so* outrageous a price. I should wait for the next gen version, but I can't -- it's just too interesting and radical a change in the mobile device market.
Eh, is Java the direction mobile software needs to be moving? I wish a solution like Java ME (J2ME) worked well, since it's on a lot more phones, but it doesn't. Too many hassles, too little compatibility. I don't really blame Apple for not making Java a priority. I'm more surprised Flash isn't supported (yet?).
The AJAX/HTML/Javascript "solution" seems hacky but it might work well if Safari provides a rich iphone-specific API via javascript and lets these web applications control the iphone, access local and remote data, and maybe share objects between webapps. Of course this would have to be secure (from crooks, apple.com, and wireless.att.com) and the user would have to approve all webapp permissions. Apple would need to port the Google Gears plugin or something like that, to allow for offline use of these web sites. Then Safari just needs to provide good javascript thread control, and the browser becomes the os.
Don't know if Flash (Lite? Mobile Apollo?) is or will be a better platform. It would at least be portable to other phones.
Maybe Apple could work with Opera Mini folks, to make their javascript API for accessing phone features portable, but now I'm really dreaming.