GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) currently being deployed in a lot of European countries is IPv6 ready. While initially it will use IPv4 to provide consumer net access, the plan is that when UMTS is launched in a few years it will use IPv6.
The way things are being pushed in the mobile market, the $ involved and the potential consumer base (which would require the IPv6 address space) means that suppliers of mobile internet access devices and services will be a major influence in shifting the 'net towards IPv6.
Therefore I reckon in 2 to 3 years time, we will be using IPv6 to download our pr0n in a secure and efficiently routed manner...and perhaps while on the go;-)
The article mentions platform and language independence.
This may have something to do with their Intentional Programming research (being carried out at Oxford University), which is a way of abstracting the intention of a piece of code away from its implementation detail. Here's some links
Sony will back up its drive into the merchant market with a $1.2 billion investment to expand its semiconductor manufacturing plants.
From this statement I assume, that opening the specs to other fabricators is not on the cards, (or if it is, all produce will be routed through Sony onto the market, i.e. not allowed to sell the chips independently of Sony).
The move is most likely not about easing bottlenecks, but expanding markets, and by selling the chips, Sony will be able to control (gasp!) the market, recover development costs faster, and fill it's coffers to the brim!
...maybe, it's not like I'm an Economist/MBA or anything!
Everyone seems to think Sony are opening the specs, where in fact all they are doing is selling their proprietary chips to third parties (i.e. like Nvidia, mentioned earlier)
If I am reading things correctly my guess is this a slap in the face for the X-Box. Microsodt is using commodity components to build a good value console, on the other hand Sony is going to sell the chips such they themselves become commodity items.
The integration of PS2 chips into TVs and the like would be quite groovy, however the problem with all this integration is the problem of upgrades.
Perhaps one of the goals of this strategy is to allow people like Creative Labs and the like to produce PC expansion cards that can handle PS2 games, with appropriate restrictions to ensure the games are read from the DVD/CD-ROM drive to ensure "playster" never becomes a reality.
This will almost definitely be hackable, however with the massive market available, my guess is the card might cost £50 (eventually), and this will almost definitely mean that Emulators (especially considering that most of them are Piss Poor) would be defunct.
In a sense the record companies have been dictating what music we may have the pleasure to listen to, for a long time.
While historically they may have acted as some kind of crap filter, it seems these days the only market they are interested in is the MASS market, and hence most (but not all) the stuff available is contrived, manufactured and dull.
I say, go to your fave legal MP3 site, find some music genres that you are interested in, and download away. Safe in the knowledge that everything is legal, and proud of the fact that you might actually be distinguishing yourself from the millions of corporatised drones that seem to inhabitate the earth. Brain washed by years of advertising and bullshit. Then you may well capture that quality which is all too rare in the current global climate...individuality! Just something to think about. Cheers, faichai
The problem is that computer science became popular among those people who have no real call in their lives and who regard their work as simply a way of getting their salary.
Bravo! I bitch and moan all the time about all these wannabe geeks! The problem as well is that most of them are so good at bullshitting their way into good positions that from a CV perspective it is getting harder and harder to distinguish between the "could code before i could walk" hard core and the "Microsoft S/W is soooo good, I wish I could suck BG's c**k" losers, who do treat it as just another job, and have no inherent talent.
One thing that gets me about the OSS community is the over-reliance on C.
Petrol(UK->US Translation - Gasoline)? Check!
I mean look at Gnome and GTK+, it based on some ugly C struct kludge to enable pseudo-object-orientation!
Flame-throwers are go!!
And then there is KDE 2.0 based on even uglier preprocessor commands.
I mean WTF is going on. The method of production in OSS is innovative, but the resulting programs end up being MS ripoffs. We need some true innovation regarding what we develop and the tools we use to do so. Because lets face it, most app level programming would really benefit from C++, or even something like Eiffel and the concepts of design by contract. Using pre/post conditions and invariants as in B notation, one can almost guarantee the correctness of one's program. (Eiffel and B were both in part developed by Betrand Meyer, he also played a hand in Z notation).
There is also an interesting project called EDMA That is trying to create an enviroment in which objects can be inherited from after they are built, a bit like CORBA, but IMO better.
void SelfPromotion {
I am in the early stages (i.e. thinking a lot and getting myself confused) of developing a Dynamic Object Enviroment to support reflection and better models of code reuse through selective "pilfering" of code and structure from other objects (Classes don't exist, only instances, although instances may share code). No links, or anything much to speak of as yet.
}
Anyway I digress, we should start thinking about the tools we are using, and ensure that they are suited to the job. For most things, the performance benefits of C, are not really crucial WRT anything outside the Kernel.
IANAQP, however while Quantum Computing will render existing prime number based cryptography useless, mastery in the Quantum realm will also enable completely secure communications based on the existance of the Uncertainty Principle.
See www.qubit.org for some interesting introductory articles.
It is common knowledge in the cellular industry, that they are not expecting (in the long run) to get a lot of money from connectivity, as this is a base standard thay everyone expects to be cheap.
In the long run, the main source of income is likely to be revenue from on-line services that actually provide value as opposed to a simple net connection.
Although that said I don't know if the current situation WRT dotcoms has changed that at all.
The advantage of cellular internet access, is that micropayments become feasible, by adding them to your phone bill. And so you can begin to pay for services that are useful to you, but not vey much.
Although I am not sure what this means for those harcore types that tend to stick with free everything anyway, I suppose they are a minority with which the phone companies will just have to cut their losses.
Slashdot Mirror
The way things are being pushed in the mobile market, the $ involved and the potential consumer base (which would require the IPv6 address space) means that suppliers of mobile internet access devices and services will be a major influence in shifting the 'net towards IPv6.
Therefore I reckon in 2 to 3 years time, we will be using IPv6 to download our pr0n in a secure and efficiently routed manner...and perhaps while on the go ;-)
This may have something to do with their Intentional Programming research (being carried out at Oxford University), which is a way of abstracting the intention of a piece of code away from its implementation detail. Here's some links
MS Research - IP Overview
MS Research - IP Detailed
From this statement I assume, that opening the specs to other fabricators is not on the cards, (or if it is, all produce will be routed through Sony onto the market, i.e. not allowed to sell the chips independently of Sony).
The move is most likely not about easing bottlenecks, but expanding markets, and by selling the chips, Sony will be able to control (gasp!) the market, recover development costs faster, and fill it's coffers to the brim!
If I am reading things correctly my guess is this a slap in the face for the X-Box. Microsodt is using commodity components to build a good value console, on the other hand Sony is going to sell the chips such they themselves become commodity items.
The integration of PS2 chips into TVs and the like would be quite groovy, however the problem with all this integration is the problem of upgrades.
Perhaps one of the goals of this strategy is to allow people like Creative Labs and the like to produce PC expansion cards that can handle PS2 games, with appropriate restrictions to ensure the games are read from the DVD/CD-ROM drive to ensure "playster" never becomes a reality.
This will almost definitely be hackable, however with the massive market available, my guess is the card might cost £50 (eventually), and this will almost definitely mean that Emulators (especially considering that most of them are Piss Poor) would be defunct.
Anyway, thats my 2p, what do you think?
In a sense the record companies have been dictating what music we may have the pleasure to listen to, for a long time.
While historically they may have acted as some kind of crap filter, it seems these days the only market they are interested in is the MASS market, and hence most (but not all) the stuff available is contrived, manufactured and dull.
I say, go to your fave legal MP3 site, find some music genres that you are interested in, and download away. Safe in the knowledge that everything is legal, and proud of the fact that you might actually be distinguishing yourself from the millions of corporatised drones that seem to inhabitate the earth. Brain washed by years of advertising and bullshit. Then you may well capture that quality which is all too rare in the current global climate...individuality! Just something to think about. Cheers, faichai
Bravo! I bitch and moan all the time about all these wannabe geeks! The problem as well is that most of them are so good at bullshitting their way into good positions that from a CV perspective it is getting harder and harder to distinguish between the "could code before i could walk" hard core and the "Microsoft S/W is soooo good, I wish I could suck BG's c**k" losers, who do treat it as just another job, and have no inherent talent.
Anway, enough ranting!
faichai
Pilot Light? Check!
One thing that gets me about the OSS community is the over-reliance on C.
Petrol(UK->US Translation - Gasoline)? Check!
I mean look at Gnome and GTK+, it based on some ugly C struct kludge to enable pseudo-object-orientation!
Flame-throwers are go!!
And then there is KDE 2.0 based on even uglier preprocessor commands.
I mean WTF is going on. The method of production in OSS is innovative, but the resulting programs end up being MS ripoffs. We need some true innovation regarding what we develop and the tools we use to do so. Because lets face it, most app level programming would really benefit from C++, or even something like Eiffel and the concepts of design by contract. Using pre/post conditions and invariants as in B notation, one can almost guarantee the correctness of one's program. (Eiffel and B were both in part developed by Betrand Meyer, he also played a hand in Z notation).
There is also an interesting project called EDMA That is trying to create an enviroment in which objects can be inherited from after they are built, a bit like CORBA, but IMO better.
void SelfPromotion {
I am in the early stages (i.e. thinking a lot and getting myself confused) of developing a Dynamic Object Enviroment to support reflection and better models of code reuse through selective "pilfering" of code and structure from other objects (Classes don't exist, only instances, although instances may share code). No links, or anything much to speak of as yet.
}
Anyway I digress, we should start thinking about the tools we are using, and ensure that they are suited to the job. For most things, the performance benefits of C, are not really crucial WRT anything outside the Kernel.
Cheers,
faichai
See www.qubit.org for some interesting introductory articles.
In the long run, the main source of income is likely to be revenue from on-line services that actually provide value as opposed to a simple net connection.
Although that said I don't know if the current situation WRT dotcoms has changed that at all.
The advantage of cellular internet access, is that micropayments become feasible, by adding them to your phone bill. And so you can begin to pay for services that are useful to you, but not vey much.
Although I am not sure what this means for those harcore types that tend to stick with free everything anyway, I suppose they are a minority with which the phone companies will just have to cut their losses.