FreeBSD, ARM and the rest of the components
on
iPhone Not Running OS X
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
1. Here are the iPhone components according to FRB Research via arstechnica:
- Samsung Electronics for the CPU/Video processing
- Marvell for the 802.11 chipset
- Infineon Technologies for baseband communications
- Broadcomm Corp. for the touch screen controllers
- Cambridge Silicon Radio for the Bluetooth chipset
2. Darwin is an open source core based on FreeBSD according to Apple, Inc..
3. Here is freebsd on ARM processors (intel-based). ARM FreeBSD.
4. Why is it tough to believe that Apple would simply recompile necessary components of Darwin on the ARM processors and then include and compile the necessary (and only the necessary!) mid level libraries? Many existing apps would work with only minor modifications (to take into account the new control scheme) and a recompile.
Optimised OS X sits on 'versatile' flash
on
iPhone Not Running OS X
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Looks like it really is a scaled-down version of Mac OS X. From Macworld Expo:
The iPhone is running an optimised but full version of OS X that weighs in at "considerably less" than half a GB, according to Apple vice president of worldwide iPod marketing Greg Joswiak.
Joswiak confirmed that the operating system sits in the flash memory of the device and that Apple will "provide updates to the operating system like we do today."
Joswiak claimed that the reduced size of the operating system was a result of expertise of the team at Apple, rather than cutting out functionality or removing core technologies. "Remember that OS X on a Mac features a lot of applications that we don't have to ship on the iPhone," he added.
We wouldn't be able to send messages back in time right now (for example, 2006 -> 2005 and warn everyone of Katrina). However, we would be able to launch a split photon signal into the "future", and then receive messages back. You only need to extrapolate the science to many, many, many miles of fiber optics and send out enough particles to generate simple morse code. (Not 1 particle and 50 ms, but 1000 particles and 10 days.) This seems like less of a stretch than many other macro applications in quantum land.
However, how does this effect course of events? Send a signal out as Katrina is forming, split, receive morse "levies break, many deaths, evacuate city" so we evacuate the city and butress the levies... but then there aren't many deaths and the levies don't break...
Why was this modded offtopic? TFA is a Phanfare blog entry that, while not being particularly offensive in handling another business model, is clearly commercial. The article summary doesn't do a good job mentioning that this is a Phanfare note, comparing Phanfare to YouTube!
I'm not sure why I haven't read more bad press about Sony "manipulation". Two weeks ago we were told repeatedly by Sony that everything was a go for a Spring launch when the crew in charge knew that the developers wouldn't even have the final dev kits until June! I mean it's laughable. "This is not a pipe." - Magritte
Corporate Microsoft definitely has an agenda to get Windows in the living room, but your lame-ass comment, "Microsoft cares nothing at all about games" does disservice to the Microsoft employees and affiliate employees (like Bungie) who actually do have a passion for games and a passion for producing quality games.
I used to think Sony had a sure win. I'm definitely not sure anymore. Look at:
HD DVD on Vista
Toshiba releasing a laptop reasonably soon with HD DVD
cheaper MSRP ($499 vs $999 and $799 vs $1799)
Sony is releasing first round of writable blu-ray disks that are slow (2x) and smaller than first release HD DVD (25 GB vs 30 GB)
Studios and electronic manufacturers increasingly hedging their bets.
Delay of PS3
I'm really beginning to believe that, once again, Sony competition (HD DVD) will become the "normal" standard with Blu-ray being the standard for those with a Sony PS3 or Sony-compatible hardware. Statistically speaking, that's exactly what has happened in the past with various degrees of success (Beta, Memory Sticks, Mini-discs, UMD, etc.)
I follow this standards battle with the same eager enthusiasm that I think many people reserve for reality TV, soap operas and sporting events. It really involves two titans that I can't help to both love and hate (gaming systems = great!, monopoly / drm = not great!) and a ton of significant other players (Toshiba, HP, Apple, Dell, Intel). This is great stuff, people! We'll be talking about this for years.
Specifically to this post, I'm just amazed over the last six months to what extent (in my own head and probably others), I've gone from thinking Sony was invincible to feeling it's really 50 / 50 with the HD DVD camp. I'm not sure what the merits are of releasing Blu-Ray movies next to a $1000 Blu-ray player given an imminent Playstation 3 delay. Especially knowing that one stand over are cheaper HD DVD movies and a $499 player. Poor sales goes on for six months or so and that's a huge psychological advantage for HD DVD.
I have to wonder if maybe I really assumed Blu-ray would win because of the Playsation 3 and not because of any merits compared to HD DVD on its own. And then I have to ask myself how would Blu-ray do without the Playstation 3? How would the Playstation 3 do without Blu-ray? (I can argue "better" -- out faster, cheaper. I can argue "worse" -- no tech advantage over XBox 360.) They are so fundamentally linked to each other that it really does feel like a double-or-nothing for Sony.
Can't wait for the next Slashdot tidbit regarding any of this.
Yes, the op ed section of the New York Times is probably left of median center, but it is still a great paper.
Most people don't mind the gov logging calls as long as it obeys the laws in place to do . We're not far now from having the government record and monitor any call from any person to any other person for any reason with little accountability. This is a clear violation of personal privacy. Even if you fully trust the current administration's intentions, you should be worried about the next administration. Or the one after that. If you bend the rules now without proper legislation, they will stay bent indefinitely and the moment you end up with an administration who has less noble intentions...
Frankly, if a telcom surveillance law / act is no longer apropos, then we need to update it, not ignore it. This is a double issue about both checks and balances (we could be legislating whether the sky is blue for all I care) and civil liberies (one of the few areas in life where the "slippery slope" argument actually plays a vital role instead of just being annoying banter).
I do realize this is a little off topic. Where is a good place for me to post these questions? (What made me think of them in relation to this thread was the disappointed regarding Sony schedule and price and then further disappointment in their denial.) Thanks!
So, which fanboys / experts / developers want to tackle the following discouraging issues that I have with the Sony Playstation 3? (And, no, I'm not a plant for Microsoft -- just trying to make sense of the whole Next Gen console thing.)
Drive Speed
A Blu-ray 1x drive transfer rate is 4.5 megabytes per second. A DVD 12x drive transfer rate is about 12 - 16 megabytes per second. Sony will have to release at least a 3x drive to compete with DVD 12x speeds. Will they? Or will they release a 2x drive and have a drive that is significantly slower than the XBOX 360? (The Blu-ray specification has indicated that a 1x blu-ray drive is too slow for HD video, so I'm assuming that this isn't an option...)
HDTV 1080p
A screen at 720p has (720 x 1280 =) 921, 600 pixels.
A screen at 1080p has (1080 x 1920 =) 2,073,600 pixels.
That is, 1080p requires 2.25x the general bandwidth of 720p. Does the Playstation 3 really have 2.25 the general bandwidth of an XBOX 360? Is anyone going to develop games for 1080p at the cost of 2.25 x "other things"?
Anti-Aliasing
XBOX 360 gets AA practically for free thanks to 10 MB embedded DRAM. Apparently, the Playstation 3 must do this in software with a performance hit. Does it matter?
Unified Memory
The Playstation 3 has 256 MB system RAM and 256 MB video RAM. The XBOX 360 has 512 MB unified memory. This means that a developer could use 128 MB system RAM and 384 MB of video RAM, which is 50% more video RAM than a Playstation 3 for holding textures, etc. Isn't that fairly substantial? Won't that allow for the possibility of better looking / higher detail games on the XBOX 360 if the system RAM isn't needed?
Well, actually, it kind of does. My experience has been that non-compete agreements and IP rights that you do completely away from the work environment are very difficult to defend in a court. However, if you have a good relationship with your boss and coworkers, you can probably explain the situation to them and they will respect you even more. Just don't work on personal projects at work.
Obviously, neither of you have a clue. First of all, assert() code is COMPLETELY TURNED OFF for a production build. You only use it for testing to guarantee all inputs / outputs / state changes, etc.
Second,p = malloc(42), assert(p != NULL) IS a stupid idea because memory is a resource that _can_ be used up in a realtime production environment. In that case you want to use exceptions or error codes. In other words, use assert() liberally in your code for test harnesses for debug, but always use exceptions for something that can happen in real time. This is basic stuff, guys, and you shouldn't reply unless you've really used it in enterprise-grade production code. One of my current applications process millions of health care claims daily (multi, multi stage, ridiculous pipeline) where a single regular expression situation can cause a company to lose a tremendous amount of money. I use asserts(). I use exceptions().
I've spent over a decade refining how best to create stable, great software. And guess what? I still learn things every day. If you are really new to enterprise-grade software, the best thing you can do is search amazon and choose 3 to 5 great books about writing stable, bug-free enterprise code and just start reading and scheming. Give yourself lots of time. Be neurotic, type-A, attention to every detail, stay up at night wondering how your system could fail and what you can do to prevent it. Some immediate thoughts, however:
1. Good hardware. Obviously. Redundancy everything, self-diagnosing, etc. How can things go wrong? What will go wrong? How can I know when something is going wrong? How I can fix it quickly without impacting the system? Etc.
2. Enterprise grade (n-tier) architecture: You'll definitely want to do something where you have a database running on one or two (or more) machines, at least two business servers and at least two web servers. Redundancy is good. As you suggested, a setup like this lets you isolate problems (and provides for better security in general).
3. Test, test, test. From the very start, every day to the very end. Start coding by writing test suites for your code. Learn about unit testing, black box testing, user testing, regression testing, etc. And hire developers and QA whose sole job is test, test, test using great automated testing software.
4. Profile. Stress-load-test. Know how your system responds to all scenarios. Feel comfortable knowing the limits of your system. There should be no surprises.
5. Assert. Learn the magic of assert(). If your code isn't at least 25% asserts, you are not trying hard enough.
I told myself I was only going to write the first five thoughts that came to my mind, otherwise I could spend weeks trying to answer your question!
Slashdot Mirror
1. Here are the iPhone components according to FRB Research via arstechnica:
- Samsung Electronics for the CPU/Video processing
- Marvell for the 802.11 chipset
- Infineon Technologies for baseband communications
- Broadcomm Corp. for the touch screen controllers
- Cambridge Silicon Radio for the Bluetooth chipset
2. Darwin is an open source core based on FreeBSD according to Apple, Inc..
3. Here is freebsd on ARM processors (intel-based). ARM FreeBSD.
4. Why is it tough to believe that Apple would simply recompile necessary components of Darwin on the ARM processors and then include and compile the necessary (and only the necessary!) mid level libraries? Many existing apps would work with only minor modifications (to take into account the new control scheme) and a recompile.
Looks like it really is a scaled-down version of Mac OS X. From Macworld Expo:
c fm?newsid=16927
The iPhone is running an optimised but full version of OS X that weighs in at "considerably less" than half a GB, according to Apple vice president of worldwide iPod marketing Greg Joswiak.
Joswiak confirmed that the operating system sits in the flash memory of the device and that Apple will "provide updates to the operating system like we do today."
Joswiak claimed that the reduced size of the operating system was a result of expertise of the team at Apple, rather than cutting out functionality or removing core technologies. "Remember that OS X on a Mac features a lot of applications that we don't have to ship on the iPhone," he added.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.
Quantum entangledness is fun.
We wouldn't be able to send messages back in time right now (for example, 2006 -> 2005 and warn everyone of Katrina). However, we would be able to launch a split photon signal into the "future", and then receive messages back. You only need to extrapolate the science to many, many, many miles of fiber optics and send out enough particles to generate simple morse code. (Not 1 particle and 50 ms, but 1000 particles and 10 days.) This seems like less of a stretch than many other macro applications in quantum land.
However, how does this effect course of events? Send a signal out as Katrina is forming, split, receive morse "levies break, many deaths, evacuate city" so we evacuate the city and butress the levies... but then there aren't many deaths and the levies don't break...
Why was this modded offtopic? TFA is a Phanfare blog entry that, while not being particularly offensive in handling another business model, is clearly commercial. The article summary doesn't do a good job mentioning that this is a Phanfare note, comparing Phanfare to YouTube!
I'm not sure why I haven't read more bad press about Sony "manipulation". Two weeks ago we were told repeatedly by Sony that everything was a go for a Spring launch when the crew in charge knew that the developers wouldn't even have the final dev kits until June! I mean it's laughable. "This is not a pipe." - Magritte
Corporate Microsoft definitely has an agenda to get Windows in the living room, but your lame-ass comment, "Microsoft cares nothing at all about games" does disservice to the Microsoft employees and affiliate employees (like Bungie) who actually do have a passion for games and a passion for producing quality games.
I used to think Sony had a sure win. I'm definitely not sure anymore. Look at:
HD DVD on Vista
Toshiba releasing a laptop reasonably soon with HD DVD
cheaper MSRP ($499 vs $999 and $799 vs $1799)
Sony is releasing first round of writable blu-ray disks that are slow (2x) and smaller than first release HD DVD (25 GB vs 30 GB)
Studios and electronic manufacturers increasingly hedging their bets.
Delay of PS3
I'm really beginning to believe that, once again, Sony competition (HD DVD) will become the "normal" standard with Blu-ray being the standard for those with a Sony PS3 or Sony-compatible hardware. Statistically speaking, that's exactly what has happened in the past with various degrees of success (Beta, Memory Sticks, Mini-discs, UMD, etc.)
I follow this standards battle with the same eager enthusiasm that I think many people reserve for reality TV, soap operas and sporting events. It really involves two titans that I can't help to both love and hate (gaming systems = great!, monopoly / drm = not great!) and a ton of significant other players (Toshiba, HP, Apple, Dell, Intel). This is great stuff, people! We'll be talking about this for years.
Specifically to this post, I'm just amazed over the last six months to what extent (in my own head and probably others), I've gone from thinking Sony was invincible to feeling it's really 50 / 50 with the HD DVD camp. I'm not sure what the merits are of releasing Blu-Ray movies next to a $1000 Blu-ray player given an imminent Playstation 3 delay. Especially knowing that one stand over are cheaper HD DVD movies and a $499 player. Poor sales goes on for six months or so and that's a huge psychological advantage for HD DVD.
I have to wonder if maybe I really assumed Blu-ray would win because of the Playsation 3 and not because of any merits compared to HD DVD on its own. And then I have to ask myself how would Blu-ray do without the Playstation 3? How would the Playstation 3 do without Blu-ray? (I can argue "better" -- out faster, cheaper. I can argue "worse" -- no tech advantage over XBox 360.) They are so fundamentally linked to each other that it really does feel like a double-or-nothing for Sony.
Can't wait for the next Slashdot tidbit regarding any of this.
Yes, the op ed section of the New York Times is probably left of median center, but it is still a great paper.
Most people don't mind the gov logging calls as long as it obeys the laws in place to do . We're not far now from having the government record and monitor any call from any person to any other person for any reason with little accountability. This is a clear violation of personal privacy. Even if you fully trust the current administration's intentions, you should be worried about the next administration. Or the one after that. If you bend the rules now without proper legislation, they will stay bent indefinitely and the moment you end up with an administration who has less noble intentions...
Frankly, if a telcom surveillance law / act is no longer apropos, then we need to update it, not ignore it. This is a double issue about both checks and balances (we could be legislating whether the sky is blue for all I care) and civil liberies (one of the few areas in life where the "slippery slope" argument actually plays a vital role instead of just being annoying banter).
I do realize this is a little off topic. Where is a good place for me to post these questions? (What made me think of them in relation to this thread was the disappointed regarding Sony schedule and price and then further disappointment in their denial.) Thanks!
So, which fanboys / experts / developers want to tackle the following discouraging issues that I have with the Sony Playstation 3? (And, no, I'm not a plant for Microsoft -- just trying to make sense of the whole Next Gen console thing.)
Drive Speed
A Blu-ray 1x drive transfer rate is 4.5 megabytes per second. A DVD 12x drive transfer rate is about 12 - 16 megabytes per second. Sony will have to release at least a 3x drive to compete with DVD 12x speeds. Will they? Or will they release a 2x drive and have a drive that is significantly slower than the XBOX 360? (The Blu-ray specification has indicated that a 1x blu-ray drive is too slow for HD video, so I'm assuming that this isn't an option...)
HDTV 1080p
A screen at 720p has (720 x 1280 =) 921, 600 pixels.
A screen at 1080p has (1080 x 1920 =) 2,073,600 pixels.
That is, 1080p requires 2.25x the general bandwidth of 720p. Does the Playstation 3 really have 2.25 the general bandwidth of an XBOX 360? Is anyone going to develop games for 1080p at the cost of 2.25 x "other things"?
Anti-Aliasing
XBOX 360 gets AA practically for free thanks to 10 MB embedded DRAM. Apparently, the Playstation 3 must do this in software with a performance hit. Does it matter?
Unified Memory
The Playstation 3 has 256 MB system RAM and 256 MB video RAM. The XBOX 360 has 512 MB unified memory. This means that a developer could use 128 MB system RAM and 384 MB of video RAM, which is 50% more video RAM than a Playstation 3 for holding textures, etc. Isn't that fairly substantial? Won't that allow for the possibility of better looking / higher detail games on the XBOX 360 if the system RAM isn't needed?
Well, actually, it kind of does. My experience has been that non-compete agreements and IP rights that you do completely away from the work environment are very difficult to defend in a court. However, if you have a good relationship with your boss and coworkers, you can probably explain the situation to them and they will respect you even more. Just don't work on personal projects at work.
Obviously, neither of you have a clue. First of all, assert() code is COMPLETELY TURNED OFF for a production build. You only use it for testing to guarantee all inputs / outputs / state changes, etc.
Second,p = malloc(42), assert(p != NULL) IS a stupid idea because memory is a resource that _can_ be used up in a realtime production environment. In that case you want to use exceptions or error codes. In other words, use assert() liberally in your code for test harnesses for debug, but always use exceptions for something that can happen in real time. This is basic stuff, guys, and you shouldn't reply unless you've really used it in enterprise-grade production code. One of my current applications process millions of health care claims daily (multi, multi stage, ridiculous pipeline) where a single regular expression situation can cause a company to lose a tremendous amount of money. I use asserts(). I use exceptions().
...that you are about to board.
I've spent over a decade refining how best to create stable, great software. And guess what? I still learn things every day. If you are really new to enterprise-grade software, the best thing you can do is search amazon and choose 3 to 5 great books about writing stable, bug-free enterprise code and just start reading and scheming. Give yourself lots of time. Be neurotic, type-A, attention to every detail, stay up at night wondering how your system could fail and what you can do to prevent it. Some immediate thoughts, however:
1. Good hardware. Obviously. Redundancy everything, self-diagnosing, etc. How can things go wrong? What will go wrong? How can I know when something is going wrong? How I can fix it quickly without impacting the system? Etc.
2. Enterprise grade (n-tier) architecture: You'll definitely want to do something where you have a database running on one or two (or more) machines, at least two business servers and at least two web servers. Redundancy is good. As you suggested, a setup like this lets you isolate problems (and provides for better security in general).
3. Test, test, test. From the very start, every day to the very end. Start coding by writing test suites for your code. Learn about unit testing, black box testing, user testing, regression testing, etc. And hire developers and QA whose sole job is test, test, test using great automated testing software.
4. Profile. Stress-load-test. Know how your system responds to all scenarios. Feel comfortable knowing the limits of your system. There should be no surprises.
5. Assert. Learn the magic of assert(). If your code isn't at least 25% asserts, you are not trying hard enough.
I told myself I was only going to write the first five thoughts that came to my mind, otherwise I could spend weeks trying to answer your question!