It's a computer and it has an Ethernet jack (wi-fi too, I believe, although I didn't RTFA.)
It's a stripped down Mac running a stripped down version of OS X 10.4.7 (Tiger). All the software in it is open for you to examine.
Why should Apple pay all the bandwidth charges if they can get us to provide all of it, for free?
Why would Apple do that ONLY for the iTunes customers who happen to have an AppleTV, when they could get so much more from putting it in iTunes?
The point isn't that AppleTV isn't capable of being used as part of a "real time swarming distribution system", it's that iTunes is even more capable... and it's a more profitable place to put that functionality, if they were going to do it at all.
Unless cracking the box open requires some particular cleverness.
Installing a program on a hard drive on a computer that's got absolutely no protections against installing programs on it hardly qualifies as a "hack".
Looking at the forums pointed to from this story, it's amazing how naive a lot of these wannabe "hackers" are. You've got folks asking, apparently seriously, whether you can run Power PC binaries on the AppleTV. I mean, really...
There are MUCH more interesting tricks the AppleTV and its baby copy of OS X might make possible.
You probably wouldn't want people hacking into your real-time swarming video distribution system getting movies and TV shows for free.
If they were going to do that, wouldn't it be easier to do that with the computer that's actually running the software (iTunes) that's doing the distribution? AppleTV isn't even potentially part of any "real-time swarming video distribution system".
If all rev2 models will only run Apple signed binaries, then we'll know Apple's intentions.
What's in it for them? They're not selling games that they get a kickback from, they're not selling it under cost and making it up on content, or on services... the AppleTV hardware isn't worth $300 by any stretch of the imagination. There's no loss to them if you buy it and "hack" it.
Not that I'd classify installing a binary on a hard drive a "hack".
For example, I've seen a co-worker (who was EXTREMELY talented) fired at a previous job I was at because he listened to heavy metal/goth, and during a major emergency on a Saturday night when servers melted (UPS failure), he ran into work in full club gear in order to get servers back up and running. Even though he got the servers up in an hour, he got fired a week later, not because of performance, but because his boss was a country music type of guy and didn't like anyone who didn't drive a pickup truck and attend rodeos in the first place, and him finding an underling who listened to something totally different caused him to dig up anything to fire the guy by.
That's not "don't mix work and home", that's "don't work for crazy people".
1. Reduce group in question to two, robotic types. 2. Toss about simplistic arguments concerning said types. 3. Leave real world situation utterly unanalyzed. 4. Profit!
Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment and experience therein and (2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures.
And (3) sanity. What you're describing is the equivalent of trying to land on Jupiter in a Cessna. And we have a lot less experience with the Jovian atmosphere than any people capable of intersteller travel would have with rocky planets like the Earth.
Well, you don't *have* to subscribe. You can just sign up for one month... and $10.00 at eMusic is $30-$40 at iTunes or in the record stores and it's DRM-free, so if you end up not using all your song credits you're still ahead of the game.
Provided their bizarre credit card verification system doesn't screw up on you. It seems to be based on the old UNIX "ed" user interface... there's only one error result: if there's a problem with your card, or your browser, or your internet connection, the result is the same... you click the button to submit your credit card information and nothing changes. You're supposed to intuit which of these alternatives it is. Don't guess wrong and try it from another browser, because if you try and change your credit card too often they quit accepting it... and they're alarmingly coy about letting you know that's why.
But they *are* the best alternative right now if you're interested in buying legal DRM-free music online.
it's frustrating to see a job that takes a half hour to run consistently using only 50% of CPU. (No, I didn't write the software in question.) I keep thinking that if only the application was multi-threaded, then it would finish in 15 minutes. Am I wrong?
You might be. Some programs get very little benefit from parallising, and some actually become slower if you try to spread them over more processors because more time is spent coordinating the threads than doing the computation because every thread needs to coordinate with another thread for every step.
Concurrency is a problem, but its one that you *can't* avoid.
Sure you can. As the parent article suggested, you divide the program up into loosely coupled components and use an asynchronous coordination mechanism. For a lot of workloads that happens more or less automatically, jobs like software builds can trivially be distributed across multiple cores, and any problem that can be addressed using a dataflow approach is well suited to the job. In a game you have many components that can be made independant: physics, AI, rendering, and these can be further broken down: mob AI and character AI; large and small scale physics; special objects like vehicles; and so on.
The programming language is much less important than the programming model. You can write FORTRAN code in any language, and I'm sure that Erlang is no exception.
It's not even "you're not allowed to", it's "the skill-set required to convince management to spend the money is a lot rarer than the skill-set required to do a good job with it". These days an IT department needs to have a salesman on staff just to get the funds it needs to do its job.
Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
I get a lot of my books over the Internet these days, from Fictionwise and Baen Webscriptions. None of them are DRMed, they're more convenient to carry around and read on the go, I can fit a hundred paperbacks into a flash card the size of my thumbnail and read them on a PDA that fits in my pocket... and costs less than 100 paperbacks.
But it's not even the "Internet" that's killing your business.
The independant bookstore is dying, just like the independant record store is. If that book store across the road is doing great business, and it's not a chain store like Borders, then it's a miracle. And if it's a chain then it's doing great business selling CDs as well... and you don't need to look any further than the other side of the street to see where your sales are going. If they're not going to the chain store across the street, they're going to one within a few minutes driving.
Because Borders has pretty much every CD you do, and all the ones you refuse to carry and many of the "obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them." And they're cheaper. And they've got a Starbucks. What on earth makes you think you can compete with that?
The first two licenses are not GPL-compatible. They're compatible with the BSDL, but supercede it.
I'm not sure what kind of binary distribution license either permits. They both have a term to the effect that "If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license." In the case of the Ms-Cl, that seems clear enough, but for the Ms-Pl I'm not sure what this actually means.
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It's a computer and it has an Ethernet jack (wi-fi too, I believe, although I didn't RTFA.)
It's a stripped down Mac running a stripped down version of OS X 10.4.7 (Tiger). All the software in it is open for you to examine.
Why should Apple pay all the bandwidth charges if they can get us to provide all of it, for free?
Why would Apple do that ONLY for the iTunes customers who happen to have an AppleTV, when they could get so much more from putting it in iTunes?
The point isn't that AppleTV isn't capable of being used as part of a "real time swarming distribution system", it's that iTunes is even more capable... and it's a more profitable place to put that functionality, if they were going to do it at all.
Unless cracking the box open requires some particular cleverness.
Installing a program on a hard drive on a computer that's got absolutely no protections against installing programs on it hardly qualifies as a "hack".
Looking at the forums pointed to from this story, it's amazing how naive a lot of these wannabe "hackers" are. You've got folks asking, apparently seriously, whether you can run Power PC binaries on the AppleTV. I mean, really...
There are MUCH more interesting tricks the AppleTV and its baby copy of OS X might make possible.
You probably wouldn't want people hacking into your real-time swarming video distribution system getting movies and TV shows for free.
If they were going to do that, wouldn't it be easier to do that with the computer that's actually running the software (iTunes) that's doing the distribution? AppleTV isn't even potentially part of any "real-time swarming video distribution system".
If all rev2 models will only run Apple signed binaries, then we'll know Apple's intentions.
What's in it for them? They're not selling games that they get a kickback from, they're not selling it under cost and making it up on content, or on services... the AppleTV hardware isn't worth $300 by any stretch of the imagination. There's no loss to them if you buy it and "hack" it.
Not that I'd classify installing a binary on a hard drive a "hack".
Why do you think the chances are "slim"? It's just a stripped down Mac mini.
Let's put this into perspective, shall we?
It's the BSD geeks who really need to worry.
Hi Jay! Soon as I saw this topic I just *knew* what was coming.
I like BSD better, myself. Though of course BSD's already shacking up with Mac...
It's got composite output, so it can't require HDMI.
OK, I'm not a TV geek, so this might be a dumb question... but... how many people would have a widescreen TV that isn't HDTV?
For example, I've seen a co-worker (who was EXTREMELY talented) fired at a previous job I was at because he listened to heavy metal/goth, and during a major emergency on a Saturday night when servers melted (UPS failure), he ran into work in full club gear in order to get servers back up and running. Even though he got the servers up in an hour, he got fired a week later, not because of performance, but because his boss was a country music type of guy and didn't like anyone who didn't drive a pickup truck and attend rodeos in the first place, and him finding an underling who listened to something totally different caused him to dig up anything to fire the guy by.
That's not "don't mix work and home", that's "don't work for crazy people".
1. Reduce group in question to two, robotic types.
2. Toss about simplistic arguments concerning said types.
3. Leave real world situation utterly unanalyzed.
4. Profit!
Um, yes, that's the point. Read the message I was replying to. :)
Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment and experience therein and (2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures.
And (3) sanity. What you're describing is the equivalent of trying to land on Jupiter in a Cessna. And we have a lot less experience with the Jovian atmosphere than any people capable of intersteller travel would have with rocky planets like the Earth.
Well, you don't *have* to subscribe. You can just sign up for one month... and $10.00 at eMusic is $30-$40 at iTunes or in the record stores and it's DRM-free, so if you end up not using all your song credits you're still ahead of the game.
Provided their bizarre credit card verification system doesn't screw up on you. It seems to be based on the old UNIX "ed" user interface... there's only one error result: if there's a problem with your card, or your browser, or your internet connection, the result is the same... you click the button to submit your credit card information and nothing changes. You're supposed to intuit which of these alternatives it is. Don't guess wrong and try it from another browser, because if you try and change your credit card too often they quit accepting it... and they're alarmingly coy about letting you know that's why.
But they *are* the best alternative right now if you're interested in buying legal DRM-free music online.
it's frustrating to see a job that takes a half hour to run consistently using only 50% of CPU. (No, I didn't write the software in question.) I keep thinking that if only the application was multi-threaded, then it would finish in 15 minutes. Am I wrong?
You might be. Some programs get very little benefit from parallising, and some actually become slower if you try to spread them over more processors because more time is spent coordinating the threads than doing the computation because every thread needs to coordinate with another thread for every step.
Start reading here
Concurrency is a problem, but its one that you *can't* avoid.
Sure you can. As the parent article suggested, you divide the program up into loosely coupled components and use an asynchronous coordination mechanism. For a lot of workloads that happens more or less automatically, jobs like software builds can trivially be distributed across multiple cores, and any problem that can be addressed using a dataflow approach is well suited to the job. In a game you have many components that can be made independant: physics, AI, rendering, and these can be further broken down: mob AI and character AI; large and small scale physics; special objects like vehicles; and so on.
The programming language is much less important than the programming model. You can write FORTRAN code in any language, and I'm sure that Erlang is no exception.
It's not even "you're not allowed to", it's "the skill-set required to convince management to spend the money is a lot rarer than the skill-set required to do a good job with it". These days an IT department needs to have a salesman on staff just to get the funds it needs to do its job.
:p
Oh, but that costs money too.
Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
I get a lot of my books over the Internet these days, from Fictionwise and Baen Webscriptions. None of them are DRMed, they're more convenient to carry around and read on the go, I can fit a hundred paperbacks into a flash card the size of my thumbnail and read them on a PDA that fits in my pocket... and costs less than 100 paperbacks.
But it's not even the "Internet" that's killing your business.
The independant bookstore is dying, just like the independant record store is. If that book store across the road is doing great business, and it's not a chain store like Borders, then it's a miracle. And if it's a chain then it's doing great business selling CDs as well... and you don't need to look any further than the other side of the street to see where your sales are going. If they're not going to the chain store across the street, they're going to one within a few minutes driving.
Because Borders has pretty much every CD you do, and all the ones you refuse to carry and many of the "obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them." And they're cheaper. And they've got a Starbucks. What on earth makes you think you can compete with that?
100% agree. Concurrency is a problem, not a solution, and it needs to be abstracted out early if you need it at all.
You can get it all, DRM-free, less than the cost of a CD, and legal.
Unless the protocol definitions are redistributable without fees or royalties this means absolutely nothing.
This won't run on OSX because OSX doesn't provide /dev/ access to hardware.
I'll bet if you stuck a little program that fed from the mike to a named pipe called "/dev/mike" you could get your server to work from it.
Interesting.
The first two licenses are not GPL-compatible. They're compatible with the BSDL, but supercede it.
I'm not sure what kind of binary distribution license either permits. They both have a term to the effect that "If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license." In the case of the Ms-Cl, that seems clear enough, but for the Ms-Pl I'm not sure what this actually means.