About 80% of phones world wide are GSM, and GSM includes encryption, so this clearly isn't a big problem, particularly with forward error correction techniques. However, this encryption is not end-to-end, has been cracked (in one variant) and in some countries is not available (due to crypto regulations) - phones switch down to lower encryption depending on what's available.
I'm basing this on existing 3G deployments in Japan, Korea, Europe and North America - the only one that was not backward compatible with 2G (i.e. NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service) was quite unsuccessful until it introduced dual-mode handsets.
Anyway, China is a big enough market for mobile phones that Nokia and co already have factories there and will no doubt support TD-SCDMA. Siemens is already working closely with the Chinese government on TD-SCDMA too. Much as I'd like to see a single 3G standard, this probably isn't going to happen - however, perhaps software radio will come to the rescue enabling a single handset to use virtually all 2G and 3G standards.
I just about buy the argument about PDAs being large etc, but the Treo is a happy medium for many people - its screen is big enough to be usable, and has good colour, but the whole thing is nicely pocketable and fits your hand really well. You can use it as a phone without a headset (I never use my headset), and its battery easily lasts a full day, even if you are in poor coverage.
GSM and CDMA cell phones already work fine in China - any TD-SCDMA phones will probably support one of these existing 2G standards, so this doesn't really fly as a way of controlling the population.
Safety Critical is entirely separate from high security - ITSEC only covers the latter. Safety critical means the level of assurance of correct operation that is needed in fly-by-wire, power station control systems, etc.
Try a Treo 600 (from Handspring, now PalmOne) - it has 32 MB RAM built in, but a slot for an SD card. There is at least one vendor (SanDisk) of 1GB smart cards for about $300 - see http://www.mobileplanet.com/product.asp?cat_name=& cat_id=&pf_id=MP853582&dept_id=1446&listing=1. USB is supported.
Palm has very good sync software for Windows and Mac, so syncing should not be a problem - however, you'll need to check into additional software that syncs the flash card. The APIs are published so you could even write your own software using commercial SDKs or GCC.
The P800 isn't as great as it's painted - I used one (in the UK) for over a year, and have now switched to a Treo 600, due to issues such as:
- P800 frequently crashed - yes, I know Symbian is protected mode and Palm OS isn't, but the Treo has virtually never crashed. Even Opera crashing sometimes caused the P800 to require a reboot, and people who sync to the P800 calendar have worse stability than I had.
- If you fill up the main flash file system on the P800 (C drive), which is easily done with photos and email, it decides that the filesystem is corrupt. That's bad enough, but it then just re-formats the whole flash file system, erasing all your contacts and in my case Xmas photos... You need to download a special tool to track your flash usage and not do too much email. This happened twice - the second time is when I decided to go for a Treo.
- The P800 doesn't have an 'incremental backup of all data every time you sync' model like Palm devices - instead you have to run a full backup (15 to 30 minutes if you include a small flash card) every time. Since backups are slow and you can't use your phone at the same time, and aren't part of the sync process, my backups were of course rather out of date... Adding another thing to have to remember to back up is NOT a goal of mine!
- There's quite a lot of P800 software, but it's mainly shareware not freeware. The Palm also has huge amounts of shareware (20,000 apps) but you're more likely to find freeware as well. This keeps down the cost of owning the device.
- The P800 flip broke off quite rapidly - solved in P900, whose buttons are better.
- Dialling numbers without the flip is painful particularly if you have to give the phone to someone else to dial in a car - even getting the unlock to work is a bit painful as you have to stab the screen many times until you hit on the OK button to start the unlock sequence.
The P800 does have some good bits - multi-tasking is quite nice, although I used it less than I expected, and Opera is good (although it has some annoying UI features, so I find the Palm browsers easier to use). Also, having the GPRS/signal/battery status visible in all apps is nice, and should really be adopted by Palm smartphones.
The Treo has pretty good battery life, as long as you don't install mLights (meant to improve battery live) - even though it likes to stay on GPRS all the time without disconnecting, you don't really consume a lot of battery unless you are in poor coverage areas or use the GPRS/voice features a lot.
The Treo keyboard makes an enormous difference - it's really easy to enter text messages, short emails, calendar info, etc, and this can be done one-handed. For my money, a Treo style Qwerty keyboard is the only way to go on smartphones, since you can be walking along the street sending a text, just like a normal phone, but without multi-tap or predictive text hassles.
The Treo app software for phone, contacts, SMS and email is really well designed - you can tap buttons during calls for speakerphone, mute, etc, and you can find contacts with just three key presses typically, due to clever searching of the contacts database.
Also, if you are trying to reach someone on their landline, and they are not there, the software remains on their full contact entry so it's easier to try their mobile or whatever, or send them a text or email. I've always wondered why phones don't do this by default.
To get somewhat back on topic - Linux is as good a basis for a smartphone as Symbian, but the above rant shows that there are many non-OS (hardware and software) issues that can make or break a smartphone. What's really important is that Linux smartphones are implemented right at the application level and with the right form factor and hardwre.
The cost of the OS is not a huge issue but will become more significant as smartphones take a larger share of the market and thus reduce in cost. What's probably more significant is that Symbian is now effectively controlled by Nokia, so other vendors may increasingly turn to Linux as a more open alternative.
I loved every single one of Neal Stephenson's books (even Zodiac) but I couldn't finish Quicksilver. It's far too long and it's quite painful to keep track of all the details involved, although there are a few fascinating passages and it's something of a tour de force.
I can recommend Kil'n People by David Brin, though...
I just tried configuring Squirrelmail for Japanese on Dreamhost, my web host - I got some Japanese text messages but it didn't work well, and gave a fatal error due to PHP's multibyte support. So I don't recommend that host at least - presumably a web/mail host based in Asia will have the best support.
Re:Most implementations will be in written in C...
on
Implementing CIFS
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· Score: 1
Why not use a very high level language that has performance as good as C? OCaml is one such language (see my OCaml page for links including benchmarks). OCaml is a functional language with good OO features and system API access, and would easily be capable of performing well for a CIFS implementation - no need to drop down into C for performance.
Personally, I prefer programming in Perl - partly due to familiarity and the amazing CPAN (truly creates a very high level language where the primitives are things like SOAP, Amazon Web Services, DB access, parser generators, etc), but OCaml's performance is much better since it compiles to efficient machine code.
Java's JIT implementations do generate native code - the other ones just generate a bytecode, which is still data as far as the OS and CPU is concerned.
I don't agree - its entertaining design means that it falls off the rounded arm of my armchair unless I twist it 90 degrees, making it inconvenient to use without picking it up. All my other flat remotes sit on the arm without any problems. Since I don't clutch the remote all the time, I don't see why fit in the hand is more important than being able to rest on the arm of an armchair...
I forgot to say that over Xmas I took some photos on the P800 and it then had a really bad crash that re-formatted the C drive (yes, it really said that as it was booting), requiring a full restore from backup.
This was made worse by the very slow backup process on the P800 (unlike the Palm's incremental one), which prevents you receiving calls - hence my only backup was some days old. The result was that I lost a lot of photos... This is the main reason I'm buying a Treo 600 even though it's less than a year since I got the P800.
Palms tend to simplify your life - just sync them frequently and all is well. Friends who use the P800 and sync it for calendar etc find it is even less stable, and if you forget to backup you could lose a lot of data. Not a life simplifying gadget...
My Palm devices (Palm Pro, Visor, M515 and Zire) have hardly ever crashed using various PalmOS versions (pre OS 5) - particularly the Zire since I don't have many hacks or apps installed.
By contrast, my Symbian based SonyEricsson P800 is incredibly crash prone - sometimes it just locks up and I have to restart the phone; other times it just goes into a weird countdown screen requiring a restart. It's also very upset if it goes out of coverage for a long time (e.g. a day) and usually crashes after that. And putting it in Flight Mode where the radio side is off also causes it to fail to get any SMSs for a long time (until next restart). I only have a couple of extra apps installed (Opera and MIB) but the phone often gets into a state where all memory is used and that requires another restart.
The OS is only one factor in crashing these types of devices - the Palm is very mature (both the OS and apps) and just doesn't crash unless you load it up with huge numbers of hacks and apps, even when it has virtually no memory left. The P800 is just a lot more fragile for some reason, despite Symbian being a better OS generally (more like PalmOS 6).
It may just be that you are in a more relaxed posture when using a laptop. Some serious misconceptions here, though:
- placing your hands closer together does NOT help since it increases muscle tension to hold this unnatural position - one of the best keyboards out there is the Maltron, which separates the hands by at least 6-8 inches.
- having the screen attached to the laptop is also a bad idea since the neck must be held in a bent position
The first thing I advise people who have RSI (who typically use laptops) is to get a full-size monitor and keyboard where possible to plug into the laptop.
Whatever your beliefs, please just google for 'ergonomic workstation setup' to see pictures of a good ergonomic setup. Getting RSI/carpal tunnel is no fun.
You write a script to dial properly using calling cards - just tried this today with my SonyEricsson P800 phone, which supports auto dialling the service number and calling card number but is not *quite* flexible enough to make this work. Perl plus suitable hooks into the phone + contact manager API would make this really easy.
Having Perl on a mobile phone would be great, because I already know Perl and would like to be able to write scripts. It would also be handy to have a Wiki that runs on the phone (which is really a PDA) and can be used to take notes, syncing to a real web-based Wiki when needed. Perl makes many things easier than Java, at least for me, but it's surely better to have more options rather than fewer... J2ME is clearly a big success on mobile phones, spawning a market for Java app downloads, but scripting is useful too and J2ME is not a scripting tool.
IPv6 will happen first in Asia and the US DoD (Department of Defense), as well as in home and 3G networks.
Asia needs IPv6 because they got so little address space (at least that's the perception driving adoption, although in reality APNIC seems to have equitable access to IPv4 addresses). The Japanese government is pushing IPv6 hard, and many Japanese ISPs already support it. The US DoD mandated IPv6 for all new procurements for its key network from October 2003, so it's already causing vendors to have to support this.
As for home and 3G: huge volumes of IP-enabled kit will be shipped in the next 5 years (think TV, DVD recorder, hi-fi, personal MP3 players, fridge, alarm clock with weather forecast built in, etc.)
3G phones in Europe are beginning to mandate this (even my GPRS based SonyEricsson P800 has IPv6 built-in, as do all other recent Symbian phones). Even with GPRS, there are too many mobile phones for IPv4 to be practical and NAT is somewhat painful - this is why you can't do peer to peer from your phone (or laptop when mobile connected).
Peer to peer may be the one thing that really makes IPv6 take off - it doesn't necessarily have to be about copyright violations, of course, and it makes much better use of the processing power of phones, PDAs and laptops than client/server.
I agree that 2005 is not a reasonable prediction for wide adoption - I'd say at least 3-5 years out, depending on the above 'killer app' type scenarios.
Gentrification? Ma and Pa ISPs can simply use Linux or BSD based routers, which are highly cost-effective for IPv6 and have pretty good IPv6 support - either 'proper routers' such as Imagestreams, or building their own routers from PC boxes.
IPv6 will have more of an impact on mid-size ISPs who are using Cisco routers, but even there the upgrade is basically free (software only) and there is a great deal of hardware acceleration for the new IPv6 IOS images.
I wouldn't say learning Lua takes an hour, but it is a very nice language and specifically designed for embedding - amazing that it's not mentioned more. It's used by Tomsrtbt (Linux boot disk) for its incredible compactness - many of the Linux utilities are re-implemented as Lua scripts - and by many applications as an extension language.
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About 80% of phones world wide are GSM, and GSM includes encryption, so this clearly isn't a big problem, particularly with forward error correction techniques. However, this encryption is not end-to-end, has been cracked (in one variant) and in some countries is not available (due to crypto regulations) - phones switch down to lower encryption depending on what's available.
I'm basing this on existing 3G deployments in Japan, Korea, Europe and North America - the only one that was not backward compatible with 2G (i.e. NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service) was quite unsuccessful until it introduced dual-mode handsets.
Anyway, China is a big enough market for mobile phones that Nokia and co already have factories there and will no doubt support TD-SCDMA. Siemens is already working closely with the Chinese government on TD-SCDMA too. Much as I'd like to see a single 3G standard, this probably isn't going to happen - however, perhaps software radio will come to the rescue enabling a single handset to use virtually all 2G and 3G standards.
Try this Google cached page to donate while they are down.
I just about buy the argument about PDAs being large etc, but the Treo is a happy medium for many people - its screen is big enough to be usable, and has good colour, but the whole thing is nicely pocketable and fits your hand really well. You can use it as a phone without a headset (I never use my headset), and its battery easily lasts a full day, even if you are in poor coverage.
GSM and CDMA cell phones already work fine in China - any TD-SCDMA phones will probably support one of these existing 2G standards, so this doesn't really fly as a way of controlling the population.
I believe that 'dd' comes from OS/360 JCL's DD statement - see this page. There are some other pages that say the same thing.
Safety Critical is entirely separate from high security - ITSEC only covers the latter. Safety critical means the level of assurance of correct operation that is needed in fly-by-wire, power station control systems, etc.
Try a Treo 600 (from Handspring, now PalmOne) - it has 32 MB RAM built in, but a slot for an SD card. There is at least one vendor (SanDisk) of 1GB smart cards for about $300 - see http://www.mobileplanet.com/product.asp?cat_name=& cat_id=&pf_id=MP853582&dept_id=1446&listing=1. USB is supported.
Palm has very good sync software for Windows and Mac, so syncing should not be a problem - however, you'll need to check into additional software that syncs the flash card. The APIs are published so you could even write your own software using commercial SDKs or GCC.
The P800 isn't as great as it's painted - I used one (in the UK) for over a year, and have now switched to a Treo 600, due to issues such as:
- P800 frequently crashed - yes, I know Symbian is protected mode and Palm OS isn't, but the Treo has virtually never crashed. Even Opera crashing sometimes caused the P800 to require a reboot, and people who sync to the P800 calendar have worse stability than I had.
- If you fill up the main flash file system on the P800 (C drive), which is easily done with photos and email, it decides that the filesystem is corrupt. That's bad enough, but it then just re-formats the whole flash file system, erasing all your contacts and in my case Xmas photos... You need to download a special tool to track your flash usage and not do too much email. This happened twice - the second time is when I decided to go for a Treo.
- The P800 doesn't have an 'incremental backup of all data every time you sync' model like Palm devices - instead you have to run a full backup (15 to 30 minutes if you include a small flash card) every time. Since backups are slow and you can't use your phone at the same time, and aren't part of the sync process, my backups were of course rather out of date... Adding another thing to have to remember to back up is NOT a goal of mine!
- There's quite a lot of P800 software, but it's mainly shareware not freeware. The Palm also has huge amounts of shareware (20,000 apps) but you're more likely to find freeware as well. This keeps down the cost of owning the device.
- The P800 flip broke off quite rapidly - solved in P900, whose buttons are better.
- Dialling numbers without the flip is painful particularly if you have to give the phone to someone else to dial in a car - even getting the unlock to work is a bit painful as you have to stab the screen many times until you hit on the OK button to start the unlock sequence.
The P800 does have some good bits - multi-tasking is quite nice, although I used it less than I expected, and Opera is good (although it has some annoying UI features, so I find the Palm browsers easier to use). Also, having the GPRS/signal/battery status visible in all apps is nice, and should really be adopted by Palm smartphones.
The Treo has pretty good battery life, as long as you don't install mLights (meant to improve battery live) - even though it likes to stay on GPRS all the time without disconnecting, you don't really consume a lot of battery unless you are in poor coverage areas or use the GPRS/voice features a lot.
The Treo keyboard makes an enormous difference - it's really easy to enter text messages, short emails, calendar info, etc, and this can be done one-handed. For my money, a Treo style Qwerty keyboard is the only way to go on smartphones, since you can be walking along the street sending a text, just like a normal phone, but without multi-tap or predictive text hassles.
The Treo app software for phone, contacts, SMS and email is really well designed - you can tap buttons during calls for speakerphone, mute, etc, and you can find contacts with just three key presses typically, due to clever searching of the contacts database.
Also, if you are trying to reach someone on their landline, and they are not there, the software remains on their full contact entry so it's easier to try their mobile or whatever, or send them a text or email. I've always wondered why phones don't do this by default.
To get somewhat back on topic - Linux is as good a basis for a smartphone as Symbian, but the above rant shows that there are many non-OS (hardware and software) issues that can make or break a smartphone. What's really important is that Linux smartphones are implemented right at the application level and with the right form factor and hardwre.
The cost of the OS is not a huge issue but will become more significant as smartphones take a larger share of the market and thus reduce in cost. What's probably more significant is that Symbian is now effectively controlled by Nokia, so other vendors may increasingly turn to Linux as a more open alternative.
Despite myths to the contrary, IPv6 users don't have to have IPSec turned on all the time, even if it's technically mandated for IPv6 implementations.
I loved every single one of Neal Stephenson's books (even Zodiac) but I couldn't finish Quicksilver. It's far too long and it's quite painful to keep track of all the details involved, although there are a few fascinating passages and it's something of a tour de force.
I can recommend Kil'n People by David Brin, though...
I just tried configuring Squirrelmail for Japanese on Dreamhost, my web host - I got some Japanese text messages but it didn't work well, and gave a fatal error due to PHP's multibyte support. So I don't recommend that host at least - presumably a web/mail host based in Asia will have the best support.
Personally, I prefer programming in Perl - partly due to familiarity and the amazing CPAN (truly creates a very high level language where the primitives are things like SOAP, Amazon Web Services, DB access, parser generators, etc), but OCaml's performance is much better since it compiles to efficient machine code.
Java's JIT implementations do generate native code - the other ones just generate a bytecode, which is still data as far as the OS and CPU is concerned.
I don't agree - its entertaining design means that it falls off the rounded arm of my armchair unless I twist it 90 degrees, making it inconvenient to use without picking it up. All my other flat remotes sit on the arm without any problems. Since I don't clutch the remote all the time, I don't see why fit in the hand is more important than being able to rest on the arm of an armchair...
I forgot to say that over Xmas I took some photos on the P800 and it then had a really bad crash that re-formatted the C drive (yes, it really said that as it was booting), requiring a full restore from backup.
This was made worse by the very slow backup process on the P800 (unlike the Palm's incremental one), which prevents you receiving calls - hence my only backup was some days old. The result was that I lost a lot of photos... This is the main reason I'm buying a Treo 600 even though it's less than a year since I got the P800.
Palms tend to simplify your life - just sync them frequently and all is well. Friends who use the P800 and sync it for calendar etc find it is even less stable, and if you forget to backup you could lose a lot of data. Not a life simplifying gadget...
My Palm devices (Palm Pro, Visor, M515 and Zire) have hardly ever crashed using various PalmOS versions (pre OS 5) - particularly the Zire since I don't have many hacks or apps installed.
By contrast, my Symbian based SonyEricsson P800 is incredibly crash prone - sometimes it just locks up and I have to restart the phone; other times it just goes into a weird countdown screen requiring a restart. It's also very upset if it goes out of coverage for a long time (e.g. a day) and usually crashes after that. And putting it in Flight Mode where the radio side is off also causes it to fail to get any SMSs for a long time (until next restart). I only have a couple of extra apps installed (Opera and MIB) but the phone often gets into a state where all memory is used and that requires another restart.
The OS is only one factor in crashing these types of devices - the Palm is very mature (both the OS and apps) and just doesn't crash unless you load it up with huge numbers of hacks and apps, even when it has virtually no memory left. The P800 is just a lot more fragile for some reason, despite Symbian being a better OS generally (more like PalmOS 6).
Some desktop keyboards do get rid of the number pad. Since I never use it, this would be an improvement, to allow the mouse closer to the main keys.
It may just be that you are in a more relaxed posture when using a laptop. Some serious misconceptions here, though:
- placing your hands closer together does NOT help since it increases muscle tension to hold this unnatural position - one of the best keyboards out there is the Maltron, which separates the hands by at least 6-8 inches.
- having the screen attached to the laptop is also a bad idea since the neck must be held in a bent position
The first thing I advise people who have RSI (who typically use laptops) is to get a full-size monitor and keyboard where possible to plug into the laptop.
Whatever your beliefs, please just google for 'ergonomic workstation setup' to see pictures of a good ergonomic setup. Getting RSI/carpal tunnel is no fun.
The clue is that people with 4-digit or lower userids on Slashdot are the industry gurus you should trust :)
You write a script to dial properly using calling cards - just tried this today with my SonyEricsson P800 phone, which supports auto dialling the service number and calling card number but is not *quite* flexible enough to make this work. Perl plus suitable hooks into the phone + contact manager API would make this really easy.
Having Perl on a mobile phone would be great, because I already know Perl and would like to be able to write scripts. It would also be handy to have a Wiki that runs on the phone (which is really a PDA) and can be used to take notes, syncing to a real web-based Wiki when needed. Perl makes many things easier than Java, at least for me, but it's surely better to have more options rather than fewer... J2ME is clearly a big success on mobile phones, spawning a market for Java app downloads, but scripting is useful too and J2ME is not a scripting tool.
IPv6 will happen first in Asia and the US DoD (Department of Defense), as well as in home and 3G networks.
Asia needs IPv6 because they got so little address space (at least that's the perception driving adoption, although in reality APNIC seems to have equitable access to IPv4 addresses). The Japanese government is pushing IPv6 hard, and many Japanese ISPs already support it. The US DoD mandated IPv6 for all new procurements for its key network from October 2003, so it's already causing vendors to have to support this.
As for home and 3G: huge volumes of IP-enabled kit will be shipped in the next 5 years (think TV, DVD recorder, hi-fi, personal MP3 players, fridge, alarm clock with weather forecast built in, etc.)
3G phones in Europe are beginning to mandate this (even my GPRS based SonyEricsson P800 has IPv6 built-in, as do all other recent Symbian phones). Even with GPRS, there are too many mobile phones for IPv4 to be practical and NAT is somewhat painful - this is why you can't do peer to peer from your phone (or laptop when mobile connected).
Peer to peer may be the one thing that really makes IPv6 take off - it doesn't necessarily have to be about copyright violations, of course, and it makes much better use of the processing power of phones, PDAs and laptops than client/server.
I agree that 2005 is not a reasonable prediction for wide adoption - I'd say at least 3-5 years out, depending on the above 'killer app' type scenarios.
Gentrification? Ma and Pa ISPs can simply use Linux or BSD based routers, which are highly cost-effective for IPv6 and have pretty good IPv6 support - either 'proper routers' such as Imagestreams, or building their own routers from PC boxes.
IPv6 will have more of an impact on mid-size ISPs who are using Cisco routers, but even there the upgrade is basically free (software only) and there is a great deal of hardware acceleration for the new IPv6 IOS images.
I wouldn't say learning Lua takes an hour, but it is a very nice language and specifically designed for embedding - amazing that it's not mentioned more. It's used by Tomsrtbt (Linux boot disk) for its incredible compactness - many of the Linux utilities are re-implemented as Lua scripts - and by many applications as an extension language.