Open Source may be open, but in my experience most of it is far, far too complex--and undocumented--to truly be considered open. Yes, closed source is usually complex, too. Some reasons for this complexity:
1. Inappropriate language choice, usually using systems-level applications to write applications.
2. Inexperienced programmers. When you're 18 you don't know much about software engineering. There's the fundamental issue that who wrote the software can be just is important as what it is supposed to do.
The Xbox is one of the most innovative consoles to ever hit the market. First and foremost, it's the first console to ever include a hard drive.
That's not innovation. There's a reason that Sony, et al, don't include a hard drive: it raises the cost and adds a major point of failure for very little return.
Also, the Xbox was built to be easy to program, utilizing standard libraries (DirectX)
That's not true. It wasn't "built to be easy to program." That basic rendering is fairly straightforward on the Xbox has little to do with Direct3D and everything to do with using video system that essentially takes a giant memory buffer and knows what to do with it. DirectSound and DirectInput are not used on the Xbox. Also note that 80% of game programming has nothing to do with graphics, sound, or the controller.
Generally, it refers the type system; i.e. the language is dynamically typed (as opposed to statically typed).
The type system is part of it, but it's more an overall philosophy: Make the language flexible and useful without worrying about how to turn it into efficient machine code. Or at least don't worry about that at all until the language is well designed and already proven useful.
Other things you'll see in some dynamic languages are interactive command shells which allow quick testing, the ability to redefine modules or functions on the fly without having to reload the entire program, and access to the compiler at run-time.
In reality, the correct way to go is to step back and look at how succesful home computers worked. Take for example, the commodire 64. This had a user interface that came up in about a second, and was immediately useable. Nobody ever looked at my C64 in a confused way wondering what it does. They knew. It was obvious.
That we have to go back and look at a clunker of a system like the C64 shows just how much things have stagnated. The C64--and other home computers like it--had two big advantages: it booted like lightning and when it came up you had BASIC right there. That meant you could do match and write programs to help you with your homework. What's the cosine of 0.43 radians? "PRINT COS(0.43)". (Or even just "? COS(0.43)" on some systems. Very direct, very simple, very powerful.
After that, well, you're pushing it. The simplicity of it all was good, but the C64 was such a poor system compared to the kind of thing Kay was working on in the 1970s. But in comparison with all the junk we have now, there's some great appeal in that simplicity.
Just like Atari. Kinda silly that these companies fold, then the names go through many hands before being tacked on to a different company. Nothing wrong with that, but don't even vaguely insinuate that there's any connection with the original company.
This is a real-time system with definite consequences if it goes wrong (dented fender?). A system that may lockup is out of the question. It is useful for others to know that Linux is available as a solution for control-applications.
But you haven't answered the question. There's no guarantee that Linux won't lockup, just as there's no guarantee that Windows XP won't lockup (I've never had either one lockup).
Okay, it's Slashdot, I know. But it's not like (1) Linux is doing all the work here, or (2) there's something special about Linux that makes it an integral part of the solution. It could just as well have been Linux or Windows 95 or MS-DOS, really.
(I honestly don't mean this as a flame. I like Linux. But I don't know what good it does to say things like "Panavision-Powered Camera Shoots Oscar Winning Film.")
The first image conjured up by "sloppy" is someone using sprintf in production code (much buffer overrun potential), raw pointers unnecessarily, ad-hoc string manipulation code, and so on. But it's much deeper than that.
Consider something as simple as BMP file format decoder. Writing a decoder is easy. It takes about 30 minutes tops to write one for a subset of the format. But writing a safe version is much more difficult. First, you have to validate all fields. Easy enough. Then you have to handle attempts to crash an application by passing in really huge values, like 10,000,000 pixels in each dimension. That's a bit trickier, because you have to figure out what you should allow and what you shouldn't. Then you have to deal with intentionally malformed images, where the RLE information doesn't add up to the total image size. Depending on how the code is written, this can cause you to chew through memory past the end of the image. To fix this, you have to put some checks into your inner decoding loop. The temptation to avoid doing this is strong, especially among "performance" oriented coders.
So, yes, you can blame this on poorly written code. But had this been written in a checked language, like Lisp or Python or any similarly safe language, then some of the problems go away immediately. Not all of them but some.
How long before nonvolatile memory becomes the solution to crash-prone software rather than better programming?
Seriously, Slashdot would be so much more interesting if editors just posted news stories without the little editorial riders. Sometimes these are from the submitters, sometimes from the editors, but they're almost always either biased, inflammatory, or just plain wrong. Enough already!
Remember how Linux advocates, real early on, used to love to quote Ghandi? You know, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you've won? Well, it works both ways. Now we have both camps bitterly and intentionally fighting with each other. And what good does it do? If Linux--excuse me, I mean "open source in general" is so blindly superior to Windows in every single way, then that's it. It's over. The existing momentum will carry through and eventually the better solution wins. It's a quiet revolution. It isn't a niche loss, like laser discs or Betamax.
Now what should be worrying people like Mr. Raymond is that Linux-based desktops (which is what we're really talking about, not simply "open source"), is that Linux *isn't* so blindingly superior as to carry the day. Truthfully, I think this is the case. I've used UNIX, I like Linux, but we're essentially having a big battle of the old and huge operating systems here, and none of them is a revolution. None of them is so much better than all the others is wonderful and positive ways. (Mostly they're all negative: don't get virii, don't have to deal with Microsoft.) In fact, the entire concept of the big operating system is a relic. Does anyone argue about the OS in a digital camera? Or a Palm? Or a cell phone? No. And those are more akin to what an "OS" of the future needs to be: thin, small, and unobtrusive. We need the Commodore 64 of the next decade, not the next VAX.
It's not just Microsoft-funded think tanks that have criticized open source, a lot of intelligent people in the technology world have too (and I'm not talking about people of the Robert Cringely class!). Note that "criticism" does not mean "stating the open source is worthless." Hardly. But thee really are some valid things to say about open source that aren't all roses and rainbows:
1. There's far too much willingness to put hobby projects from seventeen year olds with no software engineering experience on the same footing as Perl and gcc. "Open source" isn't a general moniker for "great software." When zealot promotes some half-assed IDE written by some bored college students as alternative to Visual Studio, then that does more harm than good.
2. Many tenets of popular open source theses lean more toward grandiose pet theories than fact. You have people talking about how more eyes find more bugs, when in reality hardly anyone really understands the source to something like gcc, and this only applies in a significant way to fundamental applications that many people use as a basis for further development. In fact, a basic principle necessary to make open source really work is _simplicity_. How can anyone understand the architecture of several hundred thousand lines of code enough to make more than ad-hoc changes?
3. "Making the source freely available" is turning out to be more valid than "open source development." Many of the big projects _besides_ the over cited Perl, Apache, gcc, Linux kernel examples, are developed by core groups of people who listen to outside opinions, but do all development internally. The developers of OCaml, for example, all work together in research institute in France. Erlang is still primarily developed by a group that works within Ericsson. Sure, they give the source away, but this isn't bazaar development.
1. IE has become a tangled mess of security-hole laden crap that I am not convinced it can be just fixed. Netscape had HTML problems, but that represents a smaller portion of the overall browser.
Now you're just saying that. Really. The only deep flaw in IE is that it deals with ActiveX controls. If you have a low security setting, it will even download and run unsigned controls without telling the user. Otherwise, though, we're just talking about some typical exploits (like buffer overruns).
Yes, cool. But this also isn't specific to Mozilla. Opera has had tabbed browsing for years.
better bookmarks
I don't know. IE and FF are so close in this regard that it doesn't matter to most people.
themes
Irrelevant. And "Yuck!"
find as you type
Okay, cool.
works identically on all 3 platforms
Irrelevant. Most people use Windows for everything.
secure (and you never have to be paranoid about clicking on dodgy links)
True, but this is more that people aren't looking for security holes in Mozila/FF like they are for IE. Why would a spyware author target FF? But it's still a win at the moment.
popup-blocking
Yes. You can also get this for IE. The catch with all of them is that sometimes critical popups are blocked. You can get to them by clicking on a little icon, but it's another thing to have to tell grandma.
ad-blocking
Yes, and again you can also get this for IE. But it can be dodgy, in that you can block some ads and not others and accidentally block all images from real sites.
I use Firefox, but I have to admit that it's essentially a "catch up to IE" browser with a couple of nifty extra features. It has no spark of its own. It doesn't bring anything new to the table. It's just the result of a lot of people gunning for an existing and well-done product.
If you criticize IE, then you're also criticizing Mozilla. Really, the big difference is that IE is a large and known target, so virus and spyware writers can have a field day. IE is a highly usable browser otherwise. Okay, popup blocking would be nice, but you can already get that as an ad on (and it will be official in the next version anyway).
Really, we're looking at two almost identical pieces of software. It's not like comparing Visual Basic and Perl, for example.
Dynamic perhaps, lightweight no.. scripting languages have far more overhead than compiled code, you have to run the interpreter aswell as the actual program, you consume more ram and more cpu every time you run the program, as opposed to just once when you compile it.
But still nothing like compiling a C++ program. I write code in Perl and Python and more esoteric languages all the time. I don't have performance problems as maddening as waiting for a C++ program to link. Ever.
as a developer i want compilation to be a quick as possible.
Then don't use C++. Seriously.
I've been using Delphi since it was Turbo Pascal, and compile times have been a non-issue for me since I can remember. Even on my 333MHz P2, I've never had a perceptible compile/link time, ever. Even for full rebuilds.
And these days, anyone doing heavy software development should be using Perl, Python, Lua, Lisp, anything dynamic and lightweight.
The virtual presence system including the LLuna2 client is designed to protect the privacy and prohibit any indecent use, be it commercial use, advertising, or profiling. But: do you want to meet people on the Web at all?
Wow, very negative. I don't understand such a knee-jerk bitter reaction. That should be right up there with "Do we really want to be on the Web anyway?" and "I don't know about these newfangled digital cameras; was anything really wrong with film?"
Wikis have always been useful for self-promotion in less obscene ways. If you're knowledgeable in a field, and there's a wiki for it, then some tasteful posting and linkage is good for getting your name around. Ditto for Usenet and web-based discussion forums.
And wikis have always been abusable--by design, really--by people with agendas. Hate Java or Python or Emacs or Perl or Windows? Then go to a popular wiki, delete positive comments about them, add positive comments about your own pet topic, and there you go. There's even a term for this.
With the 'Rise of the Digital Camera' I suspect we will also see the 'Rise of the Dodgy Digital Photo'. As digital cameras get in the hands of more and more snap happy photographers there will be more and more average images cluttering the PC's of the world.
Oh my, is that negative or what? And a bit misguided too, in that (a) digital cameras are hardly new, and (b) this is a topic from the rise of the point-and-shoot camera era many decades ago. I did get a chuckle of out "I suspect," though. It sounds like something Peggy Hill would say:)
On the desktop, that so many programmers have a calculator next to their computer is...well, it's sad really. It's either that they can't find an affordable way to use the monstrous machine in the front of them for off-the-cuff calculations, or that there isn't any blindingly easy to use and affordable software to do just that.
As for pocket calculators, even the most bottom end handheld PC is more powerful than just about any calculator. It doesn't matter if RPN calculators go away, you just run an RPN calculator "emulator" on your handheld. And emulator is really the wrong word here, because I'd hope you could do more advanced stuff with your handheld than with a calculator.
Consider Borland's once-flagship product Delphi. You used to be able to buy the standard edition for ~$70 and the professional edition for ~$500. The pro version included some more stuff in it, but it didn't matter for the vast majority of development. Naturally, the $70 product became popular among hobbyist programmers.
Then Borland went and changed the license of the standard edition to prohibit using it for commercial purposes. You couldn't sell software written with it. You couldn't even use it for internal software development at a place of business. They changed the name from "standard" to "personal." At the same time, the upped the price of the professional edition from $500 to over $1000.
Other than the license change, the sofware was the same. But in doing so, you had to pay an additional $930, essentially killing the Delphi hobbyist market.
The reason music is dead is very simple. There is no innovation.
I am tired of hearing this. It's just a bitter, cynical view, and it simply is not true. If you listen to stations that play Creed and Britney Spears and so on, then DUH, you won't hear anything interesting. In the 60s you would have been complaining that music is dead because of The Monkees and The Archies. In the 1970s you would have cited Donna Summer and various novelty disco acts. In the 1980s, Bon Jovi, Stacy Q, and Pet Shop Boys.
Music is not dead. Music is and continues to be highly innovative. Most ultra-pop music continues to be crap, but what else is new?
Unfocused, not specific to modern times
on
The Way the Music Died
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I watched this last night. It was kinda interesting, but mostly old news and not very insightful. Most of the show was about two new artists trying to make it big: Sarah Hudson (kind of a generic poppy singer with glitzy production values) and Velvet Revolver (Stone Temple Pilots / Guns 'n Roses mix-up band). All the points about becoming successful in music are interesting, but they aren't new. These threads were tossed in with a occasional comments about the consolidation of the recording industry and the domination of Wal-Mart, but these were not the primary focus of the show. The previews blurb talked about file sharing, but this was only briefly mentioned once in the show.
All-in-all I didn't get much out of it, especially not anything about why the music industry is much different than it was in the 1960s.
Come on folks, this is a console. The whole point is to have fairly raw access to the hardware, to keep things lean and fast and mean. That's how consoles--and most performance-oriented embedded systems--work. And you want to put a relatively bloated operating system like Linux or BSD on there? Why? Okay, the article is talking about putting Windows on there for some things, but not for games, and probably not a full-blown Windows system anyway, but something simple and cut-back, like DirectX on the original Xbox. But people clamoring for Linux or BSD on this kind of system...it's like people wanting to put a jumbo jet body on a fighter plane.
Slashdot Mirror
Open Source may be open, but in my experience most of it is far, far too complex--and undocumented--to truly be considered open. Yes, closed source is usually complex, too. Some reasons for this complexity:
1. Inappropriate language choice, usually using systems-level applications to write applications.
2. Inexperienced programmers. When you're 18 you don't know much about software engineering. There's the fundamental issue that who wrote the software can be just is important as what it is supposed to do.
3. Computing culture that reveres complexity.
The Xbox is one of the most innovative consoles to ever hit the market. First and foremost, it's the first console to ever include a hard drive.
That's not innovation. There's a reason that Sony, et al, don't include a hard drive: it raises the cost and adds a major point of failure for very little return.
Also, the Xbox was built to be easy to program, utilizing standard libraries (DirectX)
That's not true. It wasn't "built to be easy to program." That basic rendering is fairly straightforward on the Xbox has little to do with Direct3D and everything to do with using video system that essentially takes a giant memory buffer and knows what to do with it. DirectSound and DirectInput are not used on the Xbox. Also note that 80% of game programming has nothing to do with graphics, sound, or the controller.
Generally, it refers the type system; i.e. the language is dynamically typed (as opposed to statically typed).
The type system is part of it, but it's more an overall philosophy: Make the language flexible and useful without worrying about how to turn it into efficient machine code. Or at least don't worry about that at all until the language is well designed and already proven useful.
Other things you'll see in some dynamic languages are interactive command shells which allow quick testing, the ability to redefine modules or functions on the fly without having to reload the entire program, and access to the compiler at run-time.
In reality, the correct way to go is to step back and look at how succesful home computers worked. Take for example, the commodire 64. This had a user interface that came up in about a second, and was immediately useable. Nobody ever looked at my C64 in a confused way wondering what it does. They knew. It was obvious.
That we have to go back and look at a clunker of a system like the C64 shows just how much things have stagnated. The C64--and other home computers like it--had two big advantages: it booted like lightning and when it came up you had BASIC right there. That meant you could do match and write programs to help you with your homework. What's the cosine of 0.43 radians? "PRINT COS(0.43)". (Or even just "? COS(0.43)" on some systems. Very direct, very simple, very powerful.
After that, well, you're pushing it. The simplicity of it all was good, but the C64 was such a poor system compared to the kind of thing Kay was working on in the 1970s. But in comparison with all the junk we have now, there's some great appeal in that simplicity.
Just like Atari. Kinda silly that these companies fold, then the names go through many hands before being tacked on to a different company. Nothing wrong with that, but don't even vaguely insinuate that there's any connection with the original company.
This is a real-time system with definite consequences if it goes wrong (dented fender?). A system that may lockup is out of the question. It is useful for others to know that Linux is available as a solution for control-applications.
But you haven't answered the question. There's no guarantee that Linux won't lockup, just as there's no guarantee that Windows XP won't lockup (I've never had either one lockup).
Okay, it's Slashdot, I know. But it's not like (1) Linux is doing all the work here, or (2) there's something special about Linux that makes it an integral part of the solution. It could just as well have been Linux or Windows 95 or MS-DOS, really.
(I honestly don't mean this as a flame. I like Linux. But I don't know what good it does to say things like "Panavision-Powered Camera Shoots Oscar Winning Film.")
The first image conjured up by "sloppy" is someone using sprintf in production code (much buffer overrun potential), raw pointers unnecessarily, ad-hoc string manipulation code, and so on. But it's much deeper than that.
Consider something as simple as BMP file format decoder. Writing a decoder is easy. It takes about 30 minutes tops to write one for a subset of the format. But writing a safe version is much more difficult. First, you have to validate all fields. Easy enough. Then you have to handle attempts to crash an application by passing in really huge values, like 10,000,000 pixels in each dimension. That's a bit trickier, because you have to figure out what you should allow and what you shouldn't. Then you have to deal with intentionally malformed images, where the RLE information doesn't add up to the total image size. Depending on how the code is written, this can cause you to chew through memory past the end of the image. To fix this, you have to put some checks into your inner decoding loop. The temptation to avoid doing this is strong, especially among "performance" oriented coders.
So, yes, you can blame this on poorly written code. But had this been written in a checked language, like Lisp or Python or any similarly safe language, then some of the problems go away immediately. Not all of them but some.
How long before nonvolatile memory becomes the solution to crash-prone software rather than better programming?
Seriously, Slashdot would be so much more interesting if editors just posted news stories without the little editorial riders. Sometimes these are from the submitters, sometimes from the editors, but they're almost always either biased, inflammatory, or just plain wrong. Enough already!
Remember how Linux advocates, real early on, used to love to quote Ghandi? You know, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you've won? Well, it works both ways. Now we have both camps bitterly and intentionally fighting with each other. And what good does it do? If Linux--excuse me, I mean "open source in general" is so blindly superior to Windows in every single way, then that's it. It's over. The existing momentum will carry through and eventually the better solution wins. It's a quiet revolution. It isn't a niche loss, like laser discs or Betamax.
:)
Now what should be worrying people like Mr. Raymond is that Linux-based desktops (which is what we're really talking about, not simply "open source"), is that Linux *isn't* so blindingly superior as to carry the day. Truthfully, I think this is the case. I've used UNIX, I like Linux, but we're essentially having a big battle of the old and huge operating systems here, and none of them is a revolution. None of them is so much better than all the others is wonderful and positive ways. (Mostly they're all negative: don't get virii, don't have to deal with Microsoft.) In fact, the entire concept of the big operating system is a relic. Does anyone argue about the OS in a digital camera? Or a Palm? Or a cell phone? No. And those are more akin to what an "OS" of the future needs to be: thin, small, and unobtrusive. We need the Commodore 64 of the next decade, not the next VAX.
Thanks for listening
It's not just Microsoft-funded think tanks that have criticized open source, a lot of intelligent people in the technology world have too (and I'm not talking about people of the Robert Cringely class!). Note that "criticism" does not mean "stating the open source is worthless." Hardly. But thee really are some valid things to say about open source that aren't all roses and rainbows:
1. There's far too much willingness to put hobby projects from seventeen year olds with no software engineering experience on the same footing as Perl and gcc. "Open source" isn't a general moniker for "great software." When zealot promotes some half-assed IDE written by some bored college students as alternative to Visual Studio, then that does more harm than good.
2. Many tenets of popular open source theses lean more toward grandiose pet theories than fact. You have people talking about how more eyes find more bugs, when in reality hardly anyone really understands the source to something like gcc, and this only applies in a significant way to fundamental applications that many people use as a basis for further development. In fact, a basic principle necessary to make open source really work is _simplicity_. How can anyone understand the architecture of several hundred thousand lines of code enough to make more than ad-hoc changes?
3. "Making the source freely available" is turning out to be more valid than "open source development." Many of the big projects _besides_ the over cited Perl, Apache, gcc, Linux kernel examples, are developed by core groups of people who listen to outside opinions, but do all development internally. The developers of OCaml, for example, all work together in research institute in France. Erlang is still primarily developed by a group that works within Ericsson. Sure, they give the source away, but this isn't bazaar development.
1. IE has become a tangled mess of security-hole laden crap that I am not convinced it can be just fixed. Netscape had HTML problems, but that represents a smaller portion of the overall browser.
Now you're just saying that. Really. The only deep flaw in IE is that it deals with ActiveX controls. If you have a low security setting, it will even download and run unsigned controls without telling the user. Otherwise, though, we're just talking about some typical exploits (like buffer overruns).
tabbed browsing
Yes, cool. But this also isn't specific to Mozilla. Opera has had tabbed browsing for years.
better bookmarks
I don't know. IE and FF are so close in this regard that it doesn't matter to most people.
themes
Irrelevant. And "Yuck!"
find as you type
Okay, cool.
works identically on all 3 platforms
Irrelevant. Most people use Windows for everything.
secure (and you never have to be paranoid about clicking on dodgy links)
True, but this is more that people aren't looking for security holes in Mozila/FF like they are for IE. Why would a spyware author target FF? But it's still a win at the moment.
popup-blocking
Yes. You can also get this for IE. The catch with all of them is that sometimes critical popups are blocked. You can get to them by clicking on a little icon, but it's another thing to have to tell grandma.
ad-blocking
Yes, and again you can also get this for IE. But it can be dodgy, in that you can block some ads and not others and accidentally block all images from real sites.
I use Firefox, but I have to admit that it's essentially a "catch up to IE" browser with a couple of nifty extra features. It has no spark of its own. It doesn't bring anything new to the table. It's just the result of a lot of people gunning for an existing and well-done product.
If you criticize IE, then you're also criticizing Mozilla. Really, the big difference is that IE is a large and known target, so virus and spyware writers can have a field day. IE is a highly usable browser otherwise. Okay, popup blocking would be nice, but you can already get that as an ad on (and it will be official in the next version anyway).
Really, we're looking at two almost identical pieces of software. It's not like comparing Visual Basic and Perl, for example.
Dynamic perhaps, lightweight no.. scripting languages have far more overhead than compiled code, you have to run the interpreter aswell as the actual program, you consume more ram and more cpu every time you run the program, as opposed to just once when you compile it.
But still nothing like compiling a C++ program. I write code in Perl and Python and more esoteric languages all the time. I don't have performance problems as maddening as waiting for a C++ program to link. Ever.
as a developer i want compilation to be a quick as possible.
Then don't use C++. Seriously.
I've been using Delphi since it was Turbo Pascal, and compile times have been a non-issue for me since I can remember. Even on my 333MHz P2, I've never had a perceptible compile/link time, ever. Even for full rebuilds.
And these days, anyone doing heavy software development should be using Perl, Python, Lua, Lisp, anything dynamic and lightweight.
The virtual presence system including the LLuna2 client is designed to protect the privacy and prohibit any indecent use, be it commercial use, advertising, or profiling. But: do you want to meet people on the Web at all?
Wow, very negative. I don't understand such a knee-jerk bitter reaction. That should be right up there with "Do we really want to be on the Web anyway?" and "I don't know about these newfangled digital cameras; was anything really wrong with film?"
Wikis have always been useful for self-promotion in less obscene ways. If you're knowledgeable in a field, and there's a wiki for it, then some tasteful posting and linkage is good for getting your name around. Ditto for Usenet and web-based discussion forums.
And wikis have always been abusable--by design, really--by people with agendas. Hate Java or Python or Emacs or Perl or Windows? Then go to a popular wiki, delete positive comments about them, add positive comments about your own pet topic, and there you go. There's even a term for this.
With the 'Rise of the Digital Camera' I suspect we will also see the 'Rise of the Dodgy Digital Photo'. As digital cameras get in the hands of more and more snap happy photographers there will be more and more average images cluttering the PC's of the world.
:)
Oh my, is that negative or what? And a bit misguided too, in that (a) digital cameras are hardly new, and (b) this is a topic from the rise of the point-and-shoot camera era many decades ago. I did get a chuckle of out "I suspect," though. It sounds like something Peggy Hill would say
On the desktop, that so many programmers have a calculator next to their computer is...well, it's sad really. It's either that they can't find an affordable way to use the monstrous machine in the front of them for off-the-cuff calculations, or that there isn't any blindingly easy to use and affordable software to do just that.
As for pocket calculators, even the most bottom end handheld PC is more powerful than just about any calculator. It doesn't matter if RPN calculators go away, you just run an RPN calculator "emulator" on your handheld. And emulator is really the wrong word here, because I'd hope you could do more advanced stuff with your handheld than with a calculator.
Consider Borland's once-flagship product Delphi. You used to be able to buy the standard edition for ~$70 and the professional edition for ~$500. The pro version included some more stuff in it, but it didn't matter for the vast majority of development. Naturally, the $70 product became popular among hobbyist programmers.
Then Borland went and changed the license of the standard edition to prohibit using it for commercial purposes. You couldn't sell software written with it. You couldn't even use it for internal software development at a place of business. They changed the name from "standard" to "personal." At the same time, the upped the price of the professional edition from $500 to over $1000.
Other than the license change, the sofware was the same. But in doing so, you had to pay an additional $930, essentially killing the Delphi hobbyist market.
The reason music is dead is very simple. There is no innovation.
I am tired of hearing this. It's just a bitter, cynical view, and it simply is not true. If you listen to stations that play Creed and Britney Spears and so on, then DUH, you won't hear anything interesting. In the 60s you would have been complaining that music is dead because of The Monkees and The Archies. In the 1970s you would have cited Donna Summer and various novelty disco acts. In the 1980s, Bon Jovi, Stacy Q, and Pet Shop Boys.
Music is not dead. Music is and continues to be highly innovative. Most ultra-pop music continues to be crap, but what else is new?
I watched this last night. It was kinda interesting, but mostly old news and not very insightful. Most of the show was about two new artists trying to make it big: Sarah Hudson (kind of a generic poppy singer with glitzy production values) and Velvet Revolver (Stone Temple Pilots / Guns 'n Roses mix-up band). All the points about becoming successful in music are interesting, but they aren't new. These threads were tossed in with a occasional comments about the consolidation of the recording industry and the domination of Wal-Mart, but these were not the primary focus of the show. The previews blurb talked about file sharing, but this was only briefly mentioned once in the show.
All-in-all I didn't get much out of it, especially not anything about why the music industry is much different than it was in the 1960s.
What I'm saying is that you don't want *any* kind of bloated OS. What you want is a thin layer, and that's all--for both game playing and otherwise.
The concept of a big operating system is as outdated as the mainframe.
Come on folks, this is a console. The whole point is to have fairly raw access to the hardware, to keep things lean and fast and mean. That's how consoles--and most performance-oriented embedded systems--work. And you want to put a relatively bloated operating system like Linux or BSD on there? Why? Okay, the article is talking about putting Windows on there for some things, but not for games, and probably not a full-blown Windows system anyway, but something simple and cut-back, like DirectX on the original Xbox. But people clamoring for Linux or BSD on this kind of system...it's like people wanting to put a jumbo jet body on a fighter plane.