What Comcast is doing is bad. But if they're injecting RST packets indiscriminately (i.e., on long-lived connections, be them VPN, SSH, long downloads, etc), that's far less offensive than what TW is doing. Yet the FCC is only going after Comcast?
Great - so I can sync music if I buy it from Apple* but I can't sync music I've recorded myself. Thanks Apple - that's intuitive!
* but not play it on a generic mp3 player
If you have a regular iPod... you go into that nice directory marked "iPod Control" then look for a folder marked "Music". Sure the filenames are messed up, but nothing a competent ID3 tag editor can't fix.
Geez, Apple makes it "non-trivial" to copy your music back and people complain. This trick has worked since first-gen iPods! Apple doesn't want to make it too easy to copy music off the iPod, otherwise they'd get sued (fairly or unfairly) for people doing P2P filesharing (iPod to iPod). Unless you want MORE people getting sued by the RIAA (Apple, and Does 1-100million (iPod users)).
They went with 50" TV because they wanted people to watch the Superbowl. After all, you can't watch it on any TV larger than 55" or you're violating the NFL's copyright.
You criticize the $400 pricetag without understanding how many companies failed before e-Ink became a reality. Please understand that it is an industry changing technology and the pioneering companies who developed it need to make money for the Venture Capitalists who invested in their ideas during the formative stages of the technology. Also, the components used in e-Ink are arguably in a stage of production that they don't enjoy the benefits of scale of mass-production that tends to lower prices.
There's also one fundamental aspect - convenience of replacement.
Take the cliched "want to curl up with a book" scenario. Most people do so with a snack of something - a bag of chips/cheese-balls/cookies/etc. With a regular book, these crumbs fall in and accumulate. If it gets too disgusting, you discard the book (recycle), and buy a new copy. With a laptop/pda/e-reader, it just gets disgusting. Think keyb0ard-disgusting. And unfortunately, discarding one of these things is a lot harder than your $5 book, even ignoring the DRM hassles.
The same goes for the longevity of the newspaper - given that everyone can get their news off the web, why do newspapers still exist? Why doesn't everyone just read the same news via a laptop at the table? Because people also realize that getting a 50-cent newspaper icky is no big deal - it goes into the recycle bin and you get a fresh copy the next day. I dare anyone to do this for any length of time with even an EeePC. All those crumbs from toast, oil from bacon etc., will make any laptop disgustingly unusable.
Sure people can clean their equipment after using it, but that's a chore that's harder than simply discarding (recycling) it for a fresh copy.
That's really what's keeping this from mass acceptance - the mass ability to throw away without it hurting in the wallet. Once they become literally disposable pieces of equipment would ebooks and e-newspapers really take off.
Also, while there are only a few triple-A titles on Stardock Central, their scheme of 'digital download' + 'mail you a box for shipping costs' is much more palatable to me than Valve's Steam service where you are forced to make your own hardcopies from their backup files. It also get nicely out of the way once you've installed the game vs Valve's ubiquitous TSR style.
Since when did anyone have to do a backup of Steam's apps? You can delete 'em at will, and re-download 'em freely (I've done so on all my PCs - just install Steam client, enter my username/password, and pick the ones ones I needed to download).
Only reason I see to make backups is if you're on a slow link. But making backups of games is completely optional. It's one of the nicer aspects of the Steam service - it records what you have, so you can grab 'em at any time again.
Of course, this is contrasted with the iTunes store, where you can't redownload what you bought... not sure if the Stardock service does same.
No matter how well R&D goes for these vehicles, I don't see how we can successfully convert people to electric cars without some sort of infrastructure in place. Sure, you can charge your car at home for the daily commute, but what about road trips?
How about a gas-powered engine trailer? A tiny little engine generator that you tow along for those long car trips. Like diesel-electric locomotives, your car is powered by an electric motor. Give it decent range for the typical commute and them some, and the 90% use case would be for the commute. For the spring break trip, hook up the gas engine trailer and away you go. Given modern technology, you'll be on electric most of the time, when the battery starts running low, the engine starts up and recharges the battery.
Other than truckers, I'm sure the vast majority of people don't go on long trips every single day of their lives, and instead maybe drive 100-200km/day.
Well, consider this: NAND is commonly used in solid state drives. I doubt companies like Dell, Lenovo and Apple would sell computers configured with SSD:s if they sucked it down with only a few cycles. This was a problem in early versions, but things have improved much and will surely improve to a point that makes it practically "unbreakable".
Not really.
There's still cycle time limits. The main issue came from NOR flash, which is different from NAND. NOR flash came first (mid-80s), and the very early versions suffered from poor lifetimes (~10,000 write-erase cycles). (However, they're perfect for firmware, which is their initial purpose - even during development, it's rare to wear it out). Modern NOR flash has a cycle life of around 100,000 cycles.
In the early 90s, NAND flash came out, and due to their exploitation of quantum mechanics (NOR flash uses tunnelling and hot-electon injection (literally forcing electrons through the insulator). NAND flash uses tunnelling exclusively) resulted in a significant improvement in life - normally 1,000,000 cycles.
Add in wear levelling, and things get interesting. Assuming a perfect wear-levelling algorithm, and maybe a large-block NAND chip (128kB block size), a 128MB chip (tiny these days) has 1,024 blocks. To wear it out, requires over a billion write-erase cycles! A GB chip would have 8192 blocks, thus over 8 billion write-erase cycles. And you want 32GB/64GB SSDs? It's gotten to the point where an SSD in normal use will probably outlast a mechanical disk.
Oh, and most flash chips, these cycle times are very conservative - most will survive another order of magnitude of erase-write cycles before becoming unusuable.
Try do random access on the next USB-flash stick you have access too.
That's a USB issue, not a flash issue.
The reason is that USB does things in transactions, and has to schedule all the transactions with priority. This is because of USB's fundamental flaw - it requires the host to poll devices. So a host will poll interrupt devices first, then handle isochronous transfers (bandwidth and time dependent traffic). Leftover bandwidth is then allocated to control and then bulk traffic. A USB host can do this once every millisecond, but most OSes break it out into more coarse granularity to avoid overloading the CPU when doing USB transfers. 10ms is about average for Windows, Linux is around 4ms. Basically, Windows will schedule all traffic on 10ms boundaries, so every part of a transaction will take place every 10ms. (10ms is a nice number because it means Windows can do the scheduling every timer tick).
If you do a USB disk request (read block N), the USB Mass storage driver will make a transaction to read a block. It will then issue the request to Windows' USB stack, which then add it with all the requests. If there's sufficient bandwidth in the next 10ms frame, it'll add the request to that frame. In the meantime, it's handling the current frame. When the next frame goes through, it sends the request, and if your USB stick is fast enough (usually is, but hard disks, it isn't) it responds immediately. If your USB stick isn't fast enough, then it will accept the request and wait for Windows to poll it again to see if there's any data, at which point the data will be transferred.
It's not the flash memory doing the seek (in fact, every time you access it, you "seek" it, it's part of the normal behavior) it's USB.
I would love to see (and willing to pay extra) if for starters standardization appears for laptop batteries and power bricks
There was a standard, briefly, in the mid-90's. Pushed by Duracell, I believe (who obviously wanted to sell laptop batteries), and was used in a few laptops (Toshiba?). Alas, it died mostly because it was "Yet another battery" and very few people used it. Plus, since the battery determined the formfactor, it was somewhat constraining in that all laptops now had a fixed minimum size in two directions (the last one isn't very constraining, since you need the rest of the laptop hardware). Of course, it probably lasted a few years, then people realized that they either didn't bother buying extra batteries, or if they did, it sat on the shelf, and by the time they needed it, it was as bad as their current one (such is the life of Li-Ion/LiPo batteries - their life decreases as they get older - so if you bought an extra battery when you bought the laptop, in 2 years, they both will hold very similar capacities if treated well).
A laptop that is easy to upgrade is worth more to the consumer, so you could sell it for more by pointing out you won't need to buy another laptop. Why doesn't it happen ? In a way it does, there are laptop manufacturers that produce these kinds, but they are not really popular, they're a bit bloated etc.
Perhaps. BUt as we see with desktops - people don't upgrade their computers much. Sure they may stick in another hard disk or change the memory, but that's about all. Video cards, other accessories are added way less often nowadays (especially since everything's gone USB or Firewire), so upgradability is less of a concern now than it was. Laptops offer portability and enough power, and with all the external hard drives, capture cards, etc. etc. etc., all the functionality that was once in a desktop without having to install cards and all that.
A modern laptop is designed to upgradable within a limited range of parts (see the "customize" button on every manufacturer's page? They just pop in different parts), which for most people is OK. Incremental upgrades are done less and less these days because it's not worth it.
If you consider optimizing the crap out of something which is ultimately pointless, to be somehow comparable to what real programmers do, I suppose.
I used to write these things back when all I wrote in was assembly language. It's cool, it's fun, it's a puzzle and a challenge. Comparing it to "modern programmers" though is sort of like comparing a Sudoku expert to a professional in applied mathematics. The Sudoku expert will probably outclass the generalist at Sudoku but I wouldn't describe it as putting the mathematician to shame, nor would I trust the Sudoku expert to work out some difficult integrals for me.
Alas, I came across the yearning to re-watch some of these demos lately. They're nice, but then you realize nowadays, when one could benefit from learning all these tips and tricks for optimization, the source code's lost to the ether forever.
After all, it would be nice to have the source to see how they did those nice Second Reality effects or Mars. Sure it won't compile on a modern compiler and assembler, but sometimes it's fun seeing how to do things better. Yes, you could run it through a disassembler, but figuring it out then becomes an exercise in frustration due to the heavy optimization.
I just wish half this stuff existed in source form these days. Heck, I wish ScreamTracker and ImpulseTracker were open, as well. They did so much so efficiently.
That doesn't really hold water. If the motivation for the funny names and the hidden directory was simply to make traversing the file system simple, then why would they bother preventing drag-outs from the iPod in iTunes? Newer versions of iTunes won't let you copy music back out of your iPod into your computer; it is now necessary to dive into the hidden directory.
The directory may have originally been intended as you describe, but then they took advantage of the happy side effect of obfuscation, as part of a trend of increasing evil/stupidity.
Clearly, the iPhone was designed to be completely locked up -- unlike the iPod, it doesn't get mounted as a file system when you plug it in.:-(
By preventing dragouts, you keep a simple form of piracy at bay. I.e., you show your friend a cool tune on your iPod, and he wants it, so he connects to iTunes and drags it out. It's the sneakernet form of P2P sharing. (Nothing prevents you from copying the music elsewhere in disk mode, either).
The music industry is already jittery about digital music. You really want them to start suing iPod users for copying music amongst each other? Why do you think the Zune's WiFi sharing is so crippled?
And compared to the Zune, Apple deems the obfuscation enough. Nothing's keeping you from actually dragging the folder out and running an ID3 editor on it to move/rename the files back, after all. You don't even need the iTunes database for that. Better than Microsoft, which requires using their software to access the Zune (it's MTP, but the Zune does a certificate exchange at the beginning, otherwise it locks out access to the media). The only advantage is that a modern PC lets you browse the MTP virtual directories in a sensible manner - the're stored in equally strange arrangement if you actually mount the disk (it's TFAT - transactional FAT, but mountable as regular FAT32).
As for evil/stupidity, considering the iPod keeps this (at least for all "dumb OS" iPods - i.e., non-iPod Touch, non-iPhone) arrangement for years. The database format has changed (for better or worse). If Apple wanted to be evil, they'd have added encryption to all the files, or put them all in a big "virtual hard disk" or other mechanism such that the simple circumvention isn't possible. As it is, it probalby keeps 95% of the iPod using population at bay - the other 5% would've cracked whatever complex scheme they cook up. DRM is a money sink - you add engineering R&D time and get back nothing, effectively (other than a slightly lower chance of getting sued). Apple knows making it tough to copy the music off an iPod doesn't add any value - those that won't, haven't, those that do, will find a way.
The iPhone and iPod Touch run OS X internally. They can't really export the filesystem as a disk because a Windows bug can easily corrupt the OS X part of the firmware, and attempting to do so in software is unpredictable. Plus, OSX might decide to mount the HFS+ partition that forms the OSX part of the iPhone/iPod Touch, leading to all sorts of fun. (Mass storage class exports a block-level interface - the OS just says "write sectors 3-10 with this data". Allowing two computers to independently access the same disk is a Very Bad Idea - see race conditions and other fun corruption stuff).
It's a good thing you read the article before you posted (I know this is/. but come on). People, by and large, still prefer the feeling of holding a physical book, of being able to kick back in a chair or on the couch or in bed and still be able to read. Blah blah e-readers blah kindle... Not enough of a market and the library is too small.
Physical books are also cheap and disposable. E-readers are neither.
One activity that follows curling up with a good book is often snacking. Crumbs get everywhere. Makes any electronic device rather nasty in short order. With a book, if it's still published, you toss/recycle it and buy a fresh copy. WIth electornics, you let it fester and get nasty since you can't easily replace said E-reader or laptop or PDA.
Or take another common reading spot - the bathtub! Yes, I want to see anyone read a book on their laptop, PDA or Kindle in the bathtub. Again, book gets soaked accidentally, no big deal. Either live with it, or buy a new copy. Not so easy if item cost $400...
It's beyond physical feel - it's simple economics and convenience. Why do printed newspapers still sell despite online news? One can eat breakfast over a newspaper and not care, since it'll get recycled the next day. Eat breakfast in front of the computer - things get nasty quick.
Maybe they'll take off when they're $20 for the unit. But the DRM will probably make it a pain if you buy a new unit to transfer over all your books to the new unit...
While it doesn't seem fossology is addressing exactly the same problem space, I can see a project like this taking some marketshare away from commercial products like BlackDuck's protexIP and Palamida ipAmplifier.
I remember a customer doing something with our code (commercial) - they scanned our submitted code against open-source code to check for violations (making sure we weren't checking in open-source code as proprietary).
We didn't, but the output it got back was pretty enlightening. We still had to defend it, but the worst chunks ended up being "You're initializing a window class structure - since Microsoft's documentation says the structure is laied out that way, it makes sense people would initialize it that way" (just a bunch of generic initializations you'd find in any Windows book or online FAQ). Though, said project wasn't using libwine - I don't know what it used, just it ended up using a data structure practically identical to Win32. The other alleged violations were things like "i = 0" and more generic Win32-like code.
no, BSD software can be relicensed under the more restrictive GPL, just not the other way around. By the way, I downloaded the source for Abiword-2.4.6.tar.gz and found the hash.cpp with the full license inside but no tword.cpp file
Actually, no. Prior to the modified-BSD license (which became the official BSD license), the original BSD license is incompatible with the GPL. This is because the original BSD license had an "advertising" clause that stated the software must say it includes portions copyright the Regents of California. That very clause makes it incompatible with the GPL (because the license makes additional terms in order to use the code - something the GPL prohibits).
Now, I believe in the late 90's, the BSD folks reorganized the license and eliminated that clause, thus making BSD compatible with the GPL. They made it retroactive, I believe, but you had better be careful with code with the original terms since BSD originated code is under the new license, but the old code from a different author (but same license) may not be using the modified/revised BSD terms.
Why are the PS3 guitars 2.4 Ghz instead of Bluetooth? Is this really a cost-saving move? They have to include a dongle, and I can't power on the system with the controller. This just seems stupid.
Probably. It costs a lot to develop a Bluetooth solution. For the PS3, it would involve figuring out how to pair the controllers together and all the itty bitty parts of PS3 negotiations (controller assignments, etc). Especially if you need to get it certified. If you wouldn't mind the PS3 version costing 2x more than every other version out there, it could be done. Also remember the cost has to be kept down - say, less than a Wiimote. At least a Wiimote's R&D can be recouped across many 10s of millions of units. The PS3's version may sell a million.
Also, the Wii version incorporates the Wiimote for wireless, and I'm sure Nintendo designed the Wiimote connector for easy "dumb" device interfacing. The Microsoft one, they licensed the Microsoft wireless protocol chips, which again probably have simple ways to implement a controller. The PS3 Bluetooth version would require a bluetooth module, a controller to drive the module and get buttons information, and a whole Bluetooth stack (almost always licensed from a third party). More pricey for a more limited market.
Far easier to use one of the trillions of custom PSX/PS2 wireless solutions out there - simple to interface on the hardware, and the other end is trivial to convert to USB. Heck, the wireless guitar for the PS2 is probably identical to the PS3. The PS3 just has a PS2-to-USB adapter in the wireless dongle, but is otherwise identical to the PS2 version.
How about this for a travesty - the PS3 version of Guitar Hero only supports Dolby Pro Logic audio. Why is it the Xbox360 can have Dolby Digital audio in full surround? Not matrix surround, but 5.1 audio (encoded in real-time via the 360's Dolby Digital encoder).
Heck, the PS3 version of a lot of ports often only do 720p, while the Xbox360 does 1080p. Or they may support 1080p, but have reduced framerate compared to the Xbox360 version.
ok, so if it's all binary formats only, does this mean they won't be releasing the specs for the notepad format? I've been waiting for this forever.
Which format of notepad file do you want?
(You jest, but Notepad supposedly can open ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 (big and little endian) and documents. It can't comprehend the oddball UTF-7 format, though. It helps though if your Unicode documents have a header (BOM) so Notepad can choose the right format.)
Why does it matter? It's a dying format. Even if people jump on now, everyone's scrambling to get away from HDDVD discs! The real news will be when BluRay players are 150 bucks a pop.
And this is the best way to do it.
The Blu-Ray folks are complaining that HD-DVD forced them to release crappy players that are going to be horribly obsolete and not play *well* new Blu-Ray discs. They did this because HD-DVD players have, in their specification, everything that Blu-Ray Profile 2.0 (BD Live) is supposed to have, practically two years earlier!
And then, the HD-DVD players debuted at a price of $500.
The first Blu-Ray players in North America debuted as a price for $1000, but were basically upgraded DVD players that added Blu-Ray disc support and HD decode.
Now, you can find HD-DVD players for $150. The price of a good Blu-Ray player (at least one supporting profile 1.1, and optionally supporting upgrade to 2.0) is $400 (PS3, for varying definitions of "good" because of a lack of IR support (and thus integration with useful devices like Harmony remotes)).
I'm fairly certain if it wasn't for the push to the bottom, Blu-Ray players would take their sweet time coming down in price, and we'd still be at Blu-Ray 1.0. And double-layer Blu-Rays would be nonexistent, rather than heavily developed (which is where HD-DVD triple layers are - dual layer HD-DVDs are trivially simple since they have millions of DVDs to refine the process).
If we believe the Blu-Ray guys, then Blu-Ray wouldn't have been out until a year after it was released (what the PS3 would use, who knows).
The funny thing is, the Blu-Ray Association claimed profile 2.0 was long settled before the first player made it to market, as well (and still, the combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players have the hardware, but don't support profile 2.0).
This US recession, at least, is being lead by the plummetting dollar and conversely skyrocketing oil prices along with just about every other commodity. Sub-prime fallout isn't helping and even with an impending intrest rate cut from the fed it's still not going to right itself anytime soon. This particular pain hurts every industry equally and IMHO there will be less money to go around altogether. With a shrinking pie, OSS might get a bigger slice of it but overall I don't see it getting better in the immediate future as far as funding.
Actually, the US dollar is plummeting because of a very costly military expense. To pay for it, the US Treasury Department has been pumping out tons and tons of US dollars. In most cases, this causes devalulation immediately, but as the US dollar is a reserve currency, it held value purely because everyone wants to hold US dollars.
Oil prices skyrocket because of huge demand (China), and uncertainty in the supply market (rattling sabres in the middle east and in South America makes people nervous, which makes the oil production unsteady). THe devaluing US dollar also encourages it to rise, and oil-producing countries (which pay in their own currency) require more US dollars to pay for the oil extraction.
But this has been going on for years. What really brings it on is the change in the credit laws and the subprime mortgage crisis, as that leads to shortages of cash for borrowers. Companies can't borrow to expand operations and they lose potential profits, and the subprime mortgages causing foreclosures and a sudden glut of homes on the market (impacting construction and related industries, and the trickle-down effect).
Huge chain of events, but it looks like the subprime mortgages may be what broke the camel's back.
I remember seeing a curve of cost/gig over time of SSDs vs magnetic media, and it seemed to show that although both were falling, SSDs were falling faster, and were due to overtake their clicky brethren in the 2012-2014 time frame.
That must've been a while ago... SSDs can only drop in price as fast as Moore's Law (only faster if someone dumps them) - the bytes/area of silicon is fixed by Moore's Law (as is the cost/area of silicon - or why full-frame DSLRs are always going to be pricey - silicon wafers are more or less the same cost, until some breakthrough means we can use larger wafers. But it's taken many years to go from 12cm wafers to 30cm wafers (decades). Hard drive storage seems to double faster than Moore's Law, practically doubling yearly. Last year's pricey drive was a 500GB one, and now 500GB is economical, with 1TB disks being pricey.
Of course, right now, the technology is immature, so as it matures, it may be increasing in space temporarily faster than Moore's Law (as we figure out how to do controllers to do accesses over multiple devices, etc).
I think it has more to do with there only being one refinery that makes avgas, and the demand a tiny fraction of "mogas".
Yup.
The demand is tiny - to service ptactically all Avgas needs for North America and then some, ONE refinery is needed for just one or two days per year to make the year's worth of avgas demand. Despite how much is flown, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to mogas. In fact, the refinery does exactly that - switch production for a day or two to avgas, then switch back, rather than make it on demand. Most of the other costs are in storing the volatile gas.
HD-DVD supports regionalisation. As a tactic, they haven't implemented it yet. This is all Mopar vs Chevy, Mac vs PC, chunky vs smooth rubbish. I bought a PS3 because I have a whack of PS2 games and there were movies I liked on Blu-Ray. I'll likely end up buying an XBox as well...they just better include a reference HD-DVD player. But mark my words, the DRM stuff ain't going away soon, in either format.
Problem is, as a format, HD-DVD may support it, but if it isn't implemented, it's going to be a royal pain in doing so!
HD-DVD avoids a lot of this "Blu-Ray nastiness" by making a fixed standard from the get-go (all the stuff BD Live (Blu-Ray 2.0) supports). Heck, HD-DVD supports triple layers too. The 17GB/layer is a hack, but the players are tolerant enough of the extra bit density to make it possible. Of course, no one makes triple layer HD-DVDs because the technology isn't perfected yet (like double-layer BDs). HD-DVD manufacturing can go with dual layers (even though it's more complex) because it's been refined over the billions of DVDs manufactured to the point where yields are high, and despite complexity, cheap. Triple layer HD-DVD and dual-layer BDs aren't quite there yet.
Now, let's say HD-DVD implements regionalization. It's been a while since HD-DVD has been released - what's going to happen to the million players and discs? Are they going to be grandfathered as "regionfree" discs and players (since they are already, and people have taken advantage of it)? Or are they going to have to figure a way to put the region marks on every existing unit and disc out there? It's not an easy problem to solve, and the longer HD-DVD goes on, the harder it becomes. The DVD forum folks are extremely wary of breaking the existing market, too.
DRM isn't going away, but it's certainly possible to choose a format that offers less DRM than even DVD (yeah, DVD's cracked, but it's technically still DRM protected).
One way to deal with this problem would be to make sure every device has a clearly marked reset button that performs a hard-reset and returns the system to its initial state. Most equipment has this but some does not.
But you don't know how contract manufacturers work. Everyone farms out production to them.
The pace is extremely hectic - if you find a way to speed up testing per unit by 5 minutes, you can save a ton of money.
What happens at the contract manufacturer is a bunch of boards are made, then the "assembly" part comes into play, where each station is given a board and the rest of the manufacturing takes place. You can specify how many stations are in use simultaneously (usually dictated by how much specialized hardware you have that they need (JTAG, router ports, etc). Each station is equipped with a PC, lab power supplies, multimeters and oscilloscope. They can test voltages, or use the PC for various tasks via USB or serial.
These PCs are rarely, if ever, connected to the internet - they take a screenshot and save it to a disk and then get back to their manager and email you with the problem. Of course, disk, PC, etc. are in an unknown state. If you insist on a clean PC, you basically end up paying for a few hours per station while they're all clean reinstalled. Yes, it's added to your bill - you rent the stations and labor.
If the guy before you had infected software, the PCs you have may very well be infected. If your device is next in line to be made uses USB Mass Storage, it's very likely that your disk will get infected. Since it's all about throughput, downtime costs someone money. And if your device has a USB port, you want to test that. Either supply your own PCs, or USB test hardware, or use the PC and risk infecting a run of products.
Since each station is in an unknown state, it can very well be just one station is infected, and you end up with a production run where 5% of your product is infected, and the rest are clean (like the iPods were), making it hard to diagnose.
Don't forget the Blu-Ray DRM. With the region codes they intend to spring if they win the format war.
News to me. HD-DVD lacks one major key DRM component that DVD has - region coding. It just has AACS (which isn't mandatory), which is an encryption system, an evolution of DVD's CSS.
Blu-Ray has mandatory AACS, plus region coding (luckily they "won't spring it on you" - it exists, now), plus BD+, plus ROM-Mark. The last 3 are Blu-Ray only (and probably why HD-DVD is losing - lack of region coding means HD-DVD releases are delayed to avoid losing theatre revenue. Lack of DRM makes studios unhappy.)
Funny though - we complain so much about music DRM, but considering protection of videos goes way back, it seems that we've become oblivious to all but the most obvious of DRM protections for videos. E.g., VHS and Laserdisc has Macrovision (analog, though). DVD has CSS and Macrovision. HD-DVD has AACS and Macrovision. Blu-Ray has AACS, Macrovision, BD+, ROM-Mark. Yet the only time we really notice it is when people's purchased downloadable video gets screwed up.
Somewhat strange, really.
And we all know the only reason the music labels are going DRM-free is because they're scared of Apple. iTunes Store being the #3 music retailer? That's scary. They're used to being in control - controlling how people listen to music (album content, radio, etc), controlling what music is made, and most of all, controlling how music is sold (artists sign with labels because that's really the only way to make it into a record store). Now that a third party's experiment with music is turning out to be a huge success that takes control away from them and they don't like it. The iPod is a huge market, and they don't want to lose that, so smaller stores where they can dictate the terms aren't doing it for them (because while the Microsoft DRM is great, it doesn't run on iPods).
Right now, it's good for the consumer (competition is good). But once the labels break Apple's unwillingness to change the (crappy to them) iTunes Store contract (which doesn't allow "flexible pricing"), well, they're going to be back to the beginning of them. They chose Amazon because Amazon is a huge name so giving up DRM to it will hopefully force Apple to change their iTunes contract. Notice how the video section of iTunes is a bit lacking, and how Apple seems to be compromising on terms (raising prices, etc)?
Nothing complicated about it, ground out one of the wires and the port acts as host, let it float and it acts as a device. Only limitation it has that doesn't exist as part of the regular USB standard is the available current is only half (IIRC) of the regular usb standard. Some usb chipsets allow the switching to be down with software instead of using special cables even, something like 'echo "host" >/proc/usb/0' or somesuch, check the internet tablet forums to see how the Nokia IT users are already making good use of both methods.
You didn't describe OTG. You described a port that could be host or client, but is NOT OTG compliant. In fact, if you're using a mini-AB port for that, the device isn't USB certified.
To be OTG compliant, the controller must support Session Request Protocol (which is how a client notifies a host, in case Vbus is gone (yes, OTG allows the host to turn OFF Vbus, and in the meantime, a device can be plugged in). If you plug the host end of the cable, the host may power up Vbus for a few seconds, fail to find any device, then turn off Vbus to save power. When you plug the client end of the cable in, the client will use SRP to tell the host "Hey, I'm here! Enumerate me!" if Vbus is off. It's a slightly convoluted protocol because D+ is supposed to be pulled by a pullup resistor to Vbus, which isn't there.
Also, OTG devices should support Host Negotiation Protocol. This is because you can hook two OTG devices "backwards" (i.e., you plug the host end of the cable on the wrong device). HNP allows for the devices to switch roles (device becomes host, host becomes device) without swapping the cable ends.
FInally, OTG devices must have a "Targeted Peripherals List" - a list of devices that the OTG compliant device supports (really, a subset since the spec does not call for what happens when unapproved devices are connected). HNP is often used in this way - if the device isn't on the list, or can't be driven, the host enables HNP on the client (SET_FEATURE command), then suspends the bus. The device, if it wants to be host, then becomes the host.
To support this, the OTG spec describes a state machine - interesting states likes A_Peripheral and B_Host exist because HNP may switch the roles of the device electrially. Also, all OTG devices draw a minimum of 8mA to power the OTG circuitry. And they are only required to supply 100mA of power (this can be problematic).
OTG isn't embedded USB host. OTG is a complex spec, which is why there are practically ZERO OTG certified devices out there. MOst "OTG" devices are really devices that can be host or client, but they don't support the full OTG spec.
It's such a hack that people who spec "USB OTG" really often mean "Supports USB Host" when they learn of the complexities of the OTG specification. And people really want USB Host, hot this hacky OTG protocol, so they can plug in their thumbdrives and cameras. Most devices do this, they don't support OTG. Supporting USB Host via a mini-AB plug != USB OTG.
PS: The mini-AB and mini-A plugs are officially deprecated because of devices using them when they don't support OTG, just USB host. The new spec is micro-AB and micro-A.
Did they make a P2P version so that I don't need a computer to connect a camera to a hard drive and have it work?
Yes, they did. Several years ago, in fact. It's called USB On the Go
Actually, it's not strictly P2P using USB OTG. One device is still the host, the other the client. It's just there's a complex protocol they can go through (Host Negotiation Protocol) to switch roles if necessary. Of course, both sides have to support OTG.
Also, there aren't many devices out there that are actually OTG complaint. Most just have an USB host port. Or an illegal USB Mini-AB connector (reserved for OTG-logo'd devices), but they don't support OTG.
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But not Time-Warner for doing similar things? And shouldn't things be worse when you hobble competition to promote your own services?
What Comcast is doing is bad. But if they're injecting RST packets indiscriminately (i.e., on long-lived connections, be them VPN, SSH, long downloads, etc), that's far less offensive than what TW is doing. Yet the FCC is only going after Comcast?
If you have a regular iPod... you go into that nice directory marked "iPod Control" then look for a folder marked "Music". Sure the filenames are messed up, but nothing a competent ID3 tag editor can't fix.
Geez, Apple makes it "non-trivial" to copy your music back and people complain. This trick has worked since first-gen iPods! Apple doesn't want to make it too easy to copy music off the iPod, otherwise they'd get sued (fairly or unfairly) for people doing P2P filesharing (iPod to iPod). Unless you want MORE people getting sued by the RIAA (Apple, and Does 1-100million (iPod users)).
They went with 50" TV because they wanted people to watch the Superbowl. After all, you can't watch it on any TV larger than 55" or you're violating the NFL's copyright.
There's also one fundamental aspect - convenience of replacement.
Take the cliched "want to curl up with a book" scenario. Most people do so with a snack of something - a bag of chips/cheese-balls/cookies/etc. With a regular book, these crumbs fall in and accumulate. If it gets too disgusting, you discard the book (recycle), and buy a new copy. With a laptop/pda/e-reader, it just gets disgusting. Think keyb0ard-disgusting. And unfortunately, discarding one of these things is a lot harder than your $5 book, even ignoring the DRM hassles.
The same goes for the longevity of the newspaper - given that everyone can get their news off the web, why do newspapers still exist? Why doesn't everyone just read the same news via a laptop at the table? Because people also realize that getting a 50-cent newspaper icky is no big deal - it goes into the recycle bin and you get a fresh copy the next day. I dare anyone to do this for any length of time with even an EeePC. All those crumbs from toast, oil from bacon etc., will make any laptop disgustingly unusable.
Sure people can clean their equipment after using it, but that's a chore that's harder than simply discarding (recycling) it for a fresh copy.
That's really what's keeping this from mass acceptance - the mass ability to throw away without it hurting in the wallet. Once they become literally disposable pieces of equipment would ebooks and e-newspapers really take off.
Since when did anyone have to do a backup of Steam's apps? You can delete 'em at will, and re-download 'em freely (I've done so on all my PCs - just install Steam client, enter my username/password, and pick the ones ones I needed to download).
Only reason I see to make backups is if you're on a slow link. But making backups of games is completely optional. It's one of the nicer aspects of the Steam service - it records what you have, so you can grab 'em at any time again.
Of course, this is contrasted with the iTunes store, where you can't redownload what you bought... not sure if the Stardock service does same.
How about a gas-powered engine trailer? A tiny little engine generator that you tow along for those long car trips. Like diesel-electric locomotives, your car is powered by an electric motor. Give it decent range for the typical commute and them some, and the 90% use case would be for the commute. For the spring break trip, hook up the gas engine trailer and away you go. Given modern technology, you'll be on electric most of the time, when the battery starts running low, the engine starts up and recharges the battery.
Other than truckers, I'm sure the vast majority of people don't go on long trips every single day of their lives, and instead maybe drive 100-200km/day.
Not really.
There's still cycle time limits. The main issue came from NOR flash, which is different from NAND. NOR flash came first (mid-80s), and the very early versions suffered from poor lifetimes (~10,000 write-erase cycles). (However, they're perfect for firmware, which is their initial purpose - even during development, it's rare to wear it out). Modern NOR flash has a cycle life of around 100,000 cycles.
In the early 90s, NAND flash came out, and due to their exploitation of quantum mechanics (NOR flash uses tunnelling and hot-electon injection (literally forcing electrons through the insulator). NAND flash uses tunnelling exclusively) resulted in a significant improvement in life - normally 1,000,000 cycles.
Add in wear levelling, and things get interesting. Assuming a perfect wear-levelling algorithm, and maybe a large-block NAND chip (128kB block size), a 128MB chip (tiny these days) has 1,024 blocks. To wear it out, requires over a billion write-erase cycles! A GB chip would have 8192 blocks, thus over 8 billion write-erase cycles. And you want 32GB/64GB SSDs? It's gotten to the point where an SSD in normal use will probably outlast a mechanical disk.
Oh, and most flash chips, these cycle times are very conservative - most will survive another order of magnitude of erase-write cycles before becoming unusuable.
That's a USB issue, not a flash issue.
The reason is that USB does things in transactions, and has to schedule all the transactions with priority. This is because of USB's fundamental flaw - it requires the host to poll devices. So a host will poll interrupt devices first, then handle isochronous transfers (bandwidth and time dependent traffic). Leftover bandwidth is then allocated to control and then bulk traffic. A USB host can do this once every millisecond, but most OSes break it out into more coarse granularity to avoid overloading the CPU when doing USB transfers. 10ms is about average for Windows, Linux is around 4ms. Basically, Windows will schedule all traffic on 10ms boundaries, so every part of a transaction will take place every 10ms. (10ms is a nice number because it means Windows can do the scheduling every timer tick).
If you do a USB disk request (read block N), the USB Mass storage driver will make a transaction to read a block. It will then issue the request to Windows' USB stack, which then add it with all the requests. If there's sufficient bandwidth in the next 10ms frame, it'll add the request to that frame. In the meantime, it's handling the current frame. When the next frame goes through, it sends the request, and if your USB stick is fast enough (usually is, but hard disks, it isn't) it responds immediately. If your USB stick isn't fast enough, then it will accept the request and wait for Windows to poll it again to see if there's any data, at which point the data will be transferred.
It's not the flash memory doing the seek (in fact, every time you access it, you "seek" it, it's part of the normal behavior) it's USB.
There was a standard, briefly, in the mid-90's. Pushed by Duracell, I believe (who obviously wanted to sell laptop batteries), and was used in a few laptops (Toshiba?). Alas, it died mostly because it was "Yet another battery" and very few people used it. Plus, since the battery determined the formfactor, it was somewhat constraining in that all laptops now had a fixed minimum size in two directions (the last one isn't very constraining, since you need the rest of the laptop hardware). Of course, it probably lasted a few years, then people realized that they either didn't bother buying extra batteries, or if they did, it sat on the shelf, and by the time they needed it, it was as bad as their current one (such is the life of Li-Ion/LiPo batteries - their life decreases as they get older - so if you bought an extra battery when you bought the laptop, in 2 years, they both will hold very similar capacities if treated well).
Perhaps. BUt as we see with desktops - people don't upgrade their computers much. Sure they may stick in another hard disk or change the memory, but that's about all. Video cards, other accessories are added way less often nowadays (especially since everything's gone USB or Firewire), so upgradability is less of a concern now than it was. Laptops offer portability and enough power, and with all the external hard drives, capture cards, etc. etc. etc., all the functionality that was once in a desktop without having to install cards and all that.
A modern laptop is designed to upgradable within a limited range of parts (see the "customize" button on every manufacturer's page? They just pop in different parts), which for most people is OK. Incremental upgrades are done less and less these days because it's not worth it.
Alas, I came across the yearning to re-watch some of these demos lately. They're nice, but then you realize nowadays, when one could benefit from learning all these tips and tricks for optimization, the source code's lost to the ether forever.
After all, it would be nice to have the source to see how they did those nice Second Reality effects or Mars. Sure it won't compile on a modern compiler and assembler, but sometimes it's fun seeing how to do things better. Yes, you could run it through a disassembler, but figuring it out then becomes an exercise in frustration due to the heavy optimization.
I just wish half this stuff existed in source form these days. Heck, I wish ScreamTracker and ImpulseTracker were open, as well. They did so much so efficiently.
By preventing dragouts, you keep a simple form of piracy at bay. I.e., you show your friend a cool tune on your iPod, and he wants it, so he connects to iTunes and drags it out. It's the sneakernet form of P2P sharing. (Nothing prevents you from copying the music elsewhere in disk mode, either).
The music industry is already jittery about digital music. You really want them to start suing iPod users for copying music amongst each other? Why do you think the Zune's WiFi sharing is so crippled?
And compared to the Zune, Apple deems the obfuscation enough. Nothing's keeping you from actually dragging the folder out and running an ID3 editor on it to move/rename the files back, after all. You don't even need the iTunes database for that. Better than Microsoft, which requires using their software to access the Zune (it's MTP, but the Zune does a certificate exchange at the beginning, otherwise it locks out access to the media). The only advantage is that a modern PC lets you browse the MTP virtual directories in a sensible manner - the're stored in equally strange arrangement if you actually mount the disk (it's TFAT - transactional FAT, but mountable as regular FAT32).
As for evil/stupidity, considering the iPod keeps this (at least for all "dumb OS" iPods - i.e., non-iPod Touch, non-iPhone) arrangement for years. The database format has changed (for better or worse). If Apple wanted to be evil, they'd have added encryption to all the files, or put them all in a big "virtual hard disk" or other mechanism such that the simple circumvention isn't possible. As it is, it probalby keeps 95% of the iPod using population at bay - the other 5% would've cracked whatever complex scheme they cook up. DRM is a money sink - you add engineering R&D time and get back nothing, effectively (other than a slightly lower chance of getting sued). Apple knows making it tough to copy the music off an iPod doesn't add any value - those that won't, haven't, those that do, will find a way.
The iPhone and iPod Touch run OS X internally. They can't really export the filesystem as a disk because a Windows bug can easily corrupt the OS X part of the firmware, and attempting to do so in software is unpredictable. Plus, OSX might decide to mount the HFS+ partition that forms the OSX part of the iPhone/iPod Touch, leading to all sorts of fun. (Mass storage class exports a block-level interface - the OS just says "write sectors 3-10 with this data". Allowing two computers to independently access the same disk is a Very Bad Idea - see race conditions and other fun corruption stuff).
Physical books are also cheap and disposable. E-readers are neither.
One activity that follows curling up with a good book is often snacking. Crumbs get everywhere. Makes any electronic device rather nasty in short order. With a book, if it's still published, you toss/recycle it and buy a fresh copy. WIth electornics, you let it fester and get nasty since you can't easily replace said E-reader or laptop or PDA.
Or take another common reading spot - the bathtub! Yes, I want to see anyone read a book on their laptop, PDA or Kindle in the bathtub. Again, book gets soaked accidentally, no big deal. Either live with it, or buy a new copy. Not so easy if item cost $400...
It's beyond physical feel - it's simple economics and convenience. Why do printed newspapers still sell despite online news? One can eat breakfast over a newspaper and not care, since it'll get recycled the next day. Eat breakfast in front of the computer - things get nasty quick.
Maybe they'll take off when they're $20 for the unit. But the DRM will probably make it a pain if you buy a new unit to transfer over all your books to the new unit...
I remember a customer doing something with our code (commercial) - they scanned our submitted code against open-source code to check for violations (making sure we weren't checking in open-source code as proprietary).
We didn't, but the output it got back was pretty enlightening. We still had to defend it, but the worst chunks ended up being "You're initializing a window class structure - since Microsoft's documentation says the structure is laied out that way, it makes sense people would initialize it that way" (just a bunch of generic initializations you'd find in any Windows book or online FAQ). Though, said project wasn't using libwine - I don't know what it used, just it ended up using a data structure practically identical to Win32. The other alleged violations were things like "i = 0" and more generic Win32-like code.
Actually, no. Prior to the modified-BSD license (which became the official BSD license), the original BSD license is incompatible with the GPL. This is because the original BSD license had an "advertising" clause that stated the software must say it includes portions copyright the Regents of California. That very clause makes it incompatible with the GPL (because the license makes additional terms in order to use the code - something the GPL prohibits).
Even the FSF states that the original BSD license is incompatible with the GPL.
Now, I believe in the late 90's, the BSD folks reorganized the license and eliminated that clause, thus making BSD compatible with the GPL. They made it retroactive, I believe, but you had better be careful with code with the original terms since BSD originated code is under the new license, but the old code from a different author (but same license) may not be using the modified/revised BSD terms.
Probably. It costs a lot to develop a Bluetooth solution. For the PS3, it would involve figuring out how to pair the controllers together and all the itty bitty parts of PS3 negotiations (controller assignments, etc). Especially if you need to get it certified. If you wouldn't mind the PS3 version costing 2x more than every other version out there, it could be done. Also remember the cost has to be kept down - say, less than a Wiimote. At least a Wiimote's R&D can be recouped across many 10s of millions of units. The PS3's version may sell a million.
Also, the Wii version incorporates the Wiimote for wireless, and I'm sure Nintendo designed the Wiimote connector for easy "dumb" device interfacing. The Microsoft one, they licensed the Microsoft wireless protocol chips, which again probably have simple ways to implement a controller. The PS3 Bluetooth version would require a bluetooth module, a controller to drive the module and get buttons information, and a whole Bluetooth stack (almost always licensed from a third party). More pricey for a more limited market.
Far easier to use one of the trillions of custom PSX/PS2 wireless solutions out there - simple to interface on the hardware, and the other end is trivial to convert to USB. Heck, the wireless guitar for the PS2 is probably identical to the PS3. The PS3 just has a PS2-to-USB adapter in the wireless dongle, but is otherwise identical to the PS2 version.
How about this for a travesty - the PS3 version of Guitar Hero only supports Dolby Pro Logic audio. Why is it the Xbox360 can have Dolby Digital audio in full surround? Not matrix surround, but 5.1 audio (encoded in real-time via the 360's Dolby Digital encoder).
Heck, the PS3 version of a lot of ports often only do 720p, while the Xbox360 does 1080p. Or they may support 1080p, but have reduced framerate compared to the Xbox360 version.
Which format of notepad file do you want?
(You jest, but Notepad supposedly can open ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 (big and little endian) and documents. It can't comprehend the oddball UTF-7 format, though. It helps though if your Unicode documents have a header (BOM) so Notepad can choose the right format.)
And this is the best way to do it.
The Blu-Ray folks are complaining that HD-DVD forced them to release crappy players that are going to be horribly obsolete and not play *well* new Blu-Ray discs. They did this because HD-DVD players have, in their specification, everything that Blu-Ray Profile 2.0 (BD Live) is supposed to have, practically two years earlier!
And then, the HD-DVD players debuted at a price of $500.
The first Blu-Ray players in North America debuted as a price for $1000, but were basically upgraded DVD players that added Blu-Ray disc support and HD decode.
Now, you can find HD-DVD players for $150. The price of a good Blu-Ray player (at least one supporting profile 1.1, and optionally supporting upgrade to 2.0) is $400 (PS3, for varying definitions of "good" because of a lack of IR support (and thus integration with useful devices like Harmony remotes)).
I'm fairly certain if it wasn't for the push to the bottom, Blu-Ray players would take their sweet time coming down in price, and we'd still be at Blu-Ray 1.0. And double-layer Blu-Rays would be nonexistent, rather than heavily developed (which is where HD-DVD triple layers are - dual layer HD-DVDs are trivially simple since they have millions of DVDs to refine the process).
If we believe the Blu-Ray guys, then Blu-Ray wouldn't have been out until a year after it was released (what the PS3 would use, who knows).
The funny thing is, the Blu-Ray Association claimed profile 2.0 was long settled before the first player made it to market, as well (and still, the combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players have the hardware, but don't support profile 2.0).
Actually, the US dollar is plummeting because of a very costly military expense. To pay for it, the US Treasury Department has been pumping out tons and tons of US dollars. In most cases, this causes devalulation immediately, but as the US dollar is a reserve currency, it held value purely because everyone wants to hold US dollars.
Oil prices skyrocket because of huge demand (China), and uncertainty in the supply market (rattling sabres in the middle east and in South America makes people nervous, which makes the oil production unsteady). THe devaluing US dollar also encourages it to rise, and oil-producing countries (which pay in their own currency) require more US dollars to pay for the oil extraction.
But this has been going on for years. What really brings it on is the change in the credit laws and the subprime mortgage crisis, as that leads to shortages of cash for borrowers. Companies can't borrow to expand operations and they lose potential profits, and the subprime mortgages causing foreclosures and a sudden glut of homes on the market (impacting construction and related industries, and the trickle-down effect).
Huge chain of events, but it looks like the subprime mortgages may be what broke the camel's back.
That must've been a while ago... SSDs can only drop in price as fast as Moore's Law (only faster if someone dumps them) - the bytes/area of silicon is fixed by Moore's Law (as is the cost/area of silicon - or why full-frame DSLRs are always going to be pricey - silicon wafers are more or less the same cost, until some breakthrough means we can use larger wafers. But it's taken many years to go from 12cm wafers to 30cm wafers (decades). Hard drive storage seems to double faster than Moore's Law, practically doubling yearly. Last year's pricey drive was a 500GB one, and now 500GB is economical, with 1TB disks being pricey.
Of course, right now, the technology is immature, so as it matures, it may be increasing in space temporarily faster than Moore's Law (as we figure out how to do controllers to do accesses over multiple devices, etc).
Yup.
The demand is tiny - to service ptactically all Avgas needs for North America and then some, ONE refinery is needed for just one or two days per year to make the year's worth of avgas demand. Despite how much is flown, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to mogas. In fact, the refinery does exactly that - switch production for a day or two to avgas, then switch back, rather than make it on demand. Most of the other costs are in storing the volatile gas.
Problem is, as a format, HD-DVD may support it, but if it isn't implemented, it's going to be a royal pain in doing so!
HD-DVD avoids a lot of this "Blu-Ray nastiness" by making a fixed standard from the get-go (all the stuff BD Live (Blu-Ray 2.0) supports). Heck, HD-DVD supports triple layers too. The 17GB/layer is a hack, but the players are tolerant enough of the extra bit density to make it possible. Of course, no one makes triple layer HD-DVDs because the technology isn't perfected yet (like double-layer BDs). HD-DVD manufacturing can go with dual layers (even though it's more complex) because it's been refined over the billions of DVDs manufactured to the point where yields are high, and despite complexity, cheap. Triple layer HD-DVD and dual-layer BDs aren't quite there yet.
Now, let's say HD-DVD implements regionalization. It's been a while since HD-DVD has been released - what's going to happen to the million players and discs? Are they going to be grandfathered as "regionfree" discs and players (since they are already, and people have taken advantage of it)? Or are they going to have to figure a way to put the region marks on every existing unit and disc out there? It's not an easy problem to solve, and the longer HD-DVD goes on, the harder it becomes. The DVD forum folks are extremely wary of breaking the existing market, too.
DRM isn't going away, but it's certainly possible to choose a format that offers less DRM than even DVD (yeah, DVD's cracked, but it's technically still DRM protected).
But you don't know how contract manufacturers work. Everyone farms out production to them.
The pace is extremely hectic - if you find a way to speed up testing per unit by 5 minutes, you can save a ton of money.
What happens at the contract manufacturer is a bunch of boards are made, then the "assembly" part comes into play, where each station is given a board and the rest of the manufacturing takes place. You can specify how many stations are in use simultaneously (usually dictated by how much specialized hardware you have that they need (JTAG, router ports, etc). Each station is equipped with a PC, lab power supplies, multimeters and oscilloscope. They can test voltages, or use the PC for various tasks via USB or serial.
These PCs are rarely, if ever, connected to the internet - they take a screenshot and save it to a disk and then get back to their manager and email you with the problem. Of course, disk, PC, etc. are in an unknown state. If you insist on a clean PC, you basically end up paying for a few hours per station while they're all clean reinstalled. Yes, it's added to your bill - you rent the stations and labor.
If the guy before you had infected software, the PCs you have may very well be infected. If your device is next in line to be made uses USB Mass Storage, it's very likely that your disk will get infected. Since it's all about throughput, downtime costs someone money. And if your device has a USB port, you want to test that. Either supply your own PCs, or USB test hardware, or use the PC and risk infecting a run of products.
Since each station is in an unknown state, it can very well be just one station is infected, and you end up with a production run where 5% of your product is infected, and the rest are clean (like the iPods were), making it hard to diagnose.
You didn't describe OTG. You described a port that could be host or client, but is NOT OTG compliant. In fact, if you're using a mini-AB port for that, the device isn't USB certified.
To be OTG compliant, the controller must support Session Request Protocol (which is how a client notifies a host, in case Vbus is gone (yes, OTG allows the host to turn OFF Vbus, and in the meantime, a device can be plugged in). If you plug the host end of the cable, the host may power up Vbus for a few seconds, fail to find any device, then turn off Vbus to save power. When you plug the client end of the cable in, the client will use SRP to tell the host "Hey, I'm here! Enumerate me!" if Vbus is off. It's a slightly convoluted protocol because D+ is supposed to be pulled by a pullup resistor to Vbus, which isn't there.
Also, OTG devices should support Host Negotiation Protocol. This is because you can hook two OTG devices "backwards" (i.e., you plug the host end of the cable on the wrong device). HNP allows for the devices to switch roles (device becomes host, host becomes device) without swapping the cable ends.
FInally, OTG devices must have a "Targeted Peripherals List" - a list of devices that the OTG compliant device supports (really, a subset since the spec does not call for what happens when unapproved devices are connected). HNP is often used in this way - if the device isn't on the list, or can't be driven, the host enables HNP on the client (SET_FEATURE command), then suspends the bus. The device, if it wants to be host, then becomes the host.
To support this, the OTG spec describes a state machine - interesting states likes A_Peripheral and B_Host exist because HNP may switch the roles of the device electrially. Also, all OTG devices draw a minimum of 8mA to power the OTG circuitry. And they are only required to supply 100mA of power (this can be problematic).
OTG isn't embedded USB host. OTG is a complex spec, which is why there are practically ZERO OTG certified devices out there. MOst "OTG" devices are really devices that can be host or client, but they don't support the full OTG spec.
It's such a hack that people who spec "USB OTG" really often mean "Supports USB Host" when they learn of the complexities of the OTG specification. And people really want USB Host, hot this hacky OTG protocol, so they can plug in their thumbdrives and cameras. Most devices do this, they don't support OTG. Supporting USB Host via a mini-AB plug != USB OTG.
PS: The mini-AB and mini-A plugs are officially deprecated because of devices using them when they don't support OTG, just USB host. The new spec is micro-AB and micro-A.
Actually, it's not strictly P2P using USB OTG. One device is still the host, the other the client. It's just there's a complex protocol they can go through (Host Negotiation Protocol) to switch roles if necessary. Of course, both sides have to support OTG.
Also, there aren't many devices out there that are actually OTG complaint. Most just have an USB host port. Or an illegal USB Mini-AB connector (reserved for OTG-logo'd devices), but they don't support OTG.