While I was out at the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol earlier in the month I sat down with Dale Dougherty to talk about how to make iPhones and iPads talk to the open source world.
Showing posts with label Open Source. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Source. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Monday, May 05, 2008
The death of the desktop, the end of the Internet?
With the publication of his new book, "The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It", Johnathan Zittrain has started a debate amoungst the great and the good. People suddenly seem to be getting worried that gadgets are killing the Internet and that the iPhone might murder the web. He argues that today's technological market is dominated by two contrasting business models: the generative and the non-generative. The first model, general purpose computers, allow third parties to build upon and share through them. The second, non-generative model, is more restricted, with appliances that can only be modified by the vendor. He is very much afraid that the second model, where we are locked in by vendors is coming to predominate.
Well first of all I think he's just plain wrong, you only have to look at appliances like the Linksys NSLU2 or even the iPhone, which is oddly enough seems to be being held up as the poster child for vendor lock in, to see that we aren't being locked in by these devices at all. Or at least, some of us aren't. I think he's right in one respect, I think we're entering a period where the number of people that can hack on the devices we use to talk to the network is going to become smaller.
I'm not worried, like Peter Semmelhack I'm old enough to remember how it was before desktop computers came along. However unlike Peter I'm more philisophical about the passing of the desktop computer. I'm surprised he isn't because from my perspective he's one of the people that are storming the barricades. If the desktop dies, it'll be because of the open source hardware movement, and people like him...
Which is why I argued that we're entering a period of change, it's not that we're being locked into devices, it's that the people with the skills to hack on the devices are changing.
Out of the existing infrastructure, the idea of network neutrality is the important thing to hang onto. I'm far more worried about the possible loss of that, than I am about information silos or Facebook.
With open hardware like the Arduino arriving we've been given a new tool. In the same way the arrival of the desktop computer changed everything, the growing availability of open source hardware will do it again. Peter should drink some of his own Kool-Aid.
The Web as we know it today might already be dying, and that may be no bad thing. Because you have to remember that the Web isn't the Internet. The Internet existed before the Web and it'll be around a long time afterwards. This too, shall pass...
In its place I think we're looking at the arrival of something much more interesting, a pervasive information architecture. The New York Times (via Slashdot) carried an article recently talking about embedded devices, but there is an important distinction to be drawn between these and ubiquitous computing, where you have a pervasive architecture of computing devices. Between independent gadgets responding to simple environmental conditions, and a pervasive information architecture shared across a number of ubiquitous computing devices.
Compared to a real ubiquitous computing we're at the banging the rocks together stage
but that's no bad thing either, projects like Quickies from MIT, while still awkward, show the potential of moving our computing off the desktop and embedding it into the real world. It's an exciting time to be alive...
When the web came along and changed everything, I was really surprised that I was going to get to live through such a change. After all the desktop computer had only come along a few years before, it had changed everything, and while my first computer was a PDP-11 I was a bit too young to really appreciate what had happened at the time. Now I get to live through yet another huge change in the way the world works, people like Chris Anderson are quietly making it happen. If you haven't been following along Chris has been quietly scratching his itch and building autonomous UAV.
This wouldn't have been possible a couple of years ago, going beyond a crude prototype with hardware was hard. Even getting to the prototype stage was hard. Now it's the next big thing...
The fact that you have to go out and learn some electronics to take part in the next big thing isn't such a big deal. You're supposed to like learning new things. Go buy a soldering iron and stop worrying about information silos so much...
Well first of all I think he's just plain wrong, you only have to look at appliances like the Linksys NSLU2 or even the iPhone, which is oddly enough seems to be being held up as the poster child for vendor lock in, to see that we aren't being locked in by these devices at all. Or at least, some of us aren't. I think he's right in one respect, I think we're entering a period where the number of people that can hack on the devices we use to talk to the network is going to become smaller.
I'm not worried, like Peter Semmelhack I'm old enough to remember how it was before desktop computers came along. However unlike Peter I'm more philisophical about the passing of the desktop computer. I'm surprised he isn't because from my perspective he's one of the people that are storming the barricades. If the desktop dies, it'll be because of the open source hardware movement, and people like him...
Which is why I argued that we're entering a period of change, it's not that we're being locked into devices, it's that the people with the skills to hack on the devices are changing.
Out of the existing infrastructure, the idea of network neutrality is the important thing to hang onto. I'm far more worried about the possible loss of that, than I am about information silos or Facebook.
With open hardware like the Arduino arriving we've been given a new tool. In the same way the arrival of the desktop computer changed everything, the growing availability of open source hardware will do it again. Peter should drink some of his own Kool-Aid.
The Web as we know it today might already be dying, and that may be no bad thing. Because you have to remember that the Web isn't the Internet. The Internet existed before the Web and it'll be around a long time afterwards. This too, shall pass...
In its place I think we're looking at the arrival of something much more interesting, a pervasive information architecture. The New York Times (via Slashdot) carried an article recently talking about embedded devices, but there is an important distinction to be drawn between these and ubiquitous computing, where you have a pervasive architecture of computing devices. Between independent gadgets responding to simple environmental conditions, and a pervasive information architecture shared across a number of ubiquitous computing devices.
Compared to a real ubiquitous computing we're at the banging the rocks together stage
A big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere...and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
but that's no bad thing either, projects like Quickies from MIT, while still awkward, show the potential of moving our computing off the desktop and embedding it into the real world. It's an exciting time to be alive...
When the web came along and changed everything, I was really surprised that I was going to get to live through such a change. After all the desktop computer had only come along a few years before, it had changed everything, and while my first computer was a PDP-11 I was a bit too young to really appreciate what had happened at the time. Now I get to live through yet another huge change in the way the world works, people like Chris Anderson are quietly making it happen. If you haven't been following along Chris has been quietly scratching his itch and building autonomous UAV.
This wouldn't have been possible a couple of years ago, going beyond a crude prototype with hardware was hard. Even getting to the prototype stage was hard. Now it's the next big thing...
The fact that you have to go out and learn some electronics to take part in the next big thing isn't such a big deal. You're supposed to like learning new things. Go buy a soldering iron and stop worrying about information silos so much...
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
ETech: Open Source Hardware
I'm in Open Source Hardware given by Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried. I've acually seen some of this talk before as a keynote at OSCON, but it's well worth seeing again...
Friday, July 27, 2007
OSCON: OSS Amateur Robotics
Next up is Amateur Robotics given by Mark Gross from Intel.
Mark's entry for the SRS Robot Magellan contest
Update: He's talking about the on-board computing system for the robot, which is running a hacked NSLU2, which is pretty cool, as I've got one of those kicking around somewhere.
Unlike the previous talk, which was at about my level of hands-on with hardware, this stuff is well beyond my level of competence. I'm a software guy with delusions of grandeur, but I know my limits...
Update: More on the NSLU2-Linux and the Open Embedded projects.
Update: His slides are available, although they're in Open Office format, which isn't amazingly useful. But there is a lot more information on his website.
 |
| CREDIT: Mark Gross |
Update: He's talking about the on-board computing system for the robot, which is running a hacked NSLU2, which is pretty cool, as I've got one of those kicking around somewhere.
Unlike the previous talk, which was at about my level of hands-on with hardware, this stuff is well beyond my level of competence. I'm a software guy with delusions of grandeur, but I know my limits...
Update: More on the NSLU2-Linux and the Open Embedded projects.
Update: His slides are available, although they're in Open Office format, which isn't amazingly useful. But there is a lot more information on his website.
Monday, July 23, 2007
OSCON: Understanding Asterisk
My afternoon tutorial today is Understanding Asterisk given by Brian Capouch. I went to Brian Acker's session on Hacking your Home Phone during OSCON 2005 so, like this morning, I thought that it was worth following up with a tutorial.
Brian Capouch talking about Understanding Asterisk
Update: Brian's gone back to basics and is talking about how the POTS network actually operates, and I'm suddenly realising why VoIP is taking off so much more quickly in the US than it is back home in the UK. I was totally floored to find out that some US telcos charge for touch tone dialling. That's just bizarre...
Update: He's going through the two different views of how this stuff works, it looks like the telephone guys and the computer guys really didn't talk things out before setting up standards and writing software. Both sides call the same things different names.
Update: Brian is giving a good impression of someone trying to cram a ten week lecture course in a three hour tutorial. He's got a lot of background material here, and I'm not sure its really relevant. For instance do you really have to talk about the Nyquist frequency and the nuts and bolts of analog-to-digital conversion to talk about configuring and using Asterisk? In fact he hasn't mentioned Asterisk much at all yet, this isn't really what I'd signed up...
Update: Coming from an academic background it's really very apparent that this guy is an academic, Brian is obviously really excited by the mathematics behind VoIP and about the theory behind different types of codecs.
Update: Googling for slightly more practical stuff, it looks like O'Reilly book "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony" by Meggelen, Smith & Madsen is available online under the Creative Commons License.
Update: Time for afternoon coffee, back after these messages...
Update: Back from the break, and Brian has actually started to talk about Asterisk. This material basically looks like what I was expecting him to kick off with a couple of hours ago. He's doing a demo right now, although I'm not sure how useful it's going to be as the demo seems consist of him going through how his own home network is set up.
Update: After staring at a directory listing of the Asterisk source code for a bit, we're looking at some random configuration files. I don't think this is a particularly useful approach, I don't even know which file we're looking at here, what it's for or why I'd like to edit it. I especially don't know at what stage of an install I'd be editing it...
Update: I'm sure some people in the room are following this, but I'm not. Brian is standing at the front of the room with multiple SIP devices, calling each other, while we're watching the logs from his home Asterisk server.
Update: ...and we're done. To be perfectly honest I don't think I know anything more about Asterisk than I did three hours ago, however at least I am leaving with the determination to buy the books I was hoping to avoid buying by going to this tutorial in the first place.
Brian Capouch talking about Understanding Asterisk
Update: Brian's gone back to basics and is talking about how the POTS network actually operates, and I'm suddenly realising why VoIP is taking off so much more quickly in the US than it is back home in the UK. I was totally floored to find out that some US telcos charge for touch tone dialling. That's just bizarre...
Update: He's going through the two different views of how this stuff works, it looks like the telephone guys and the computer guys really didn't talk things out before setting up standards and writing software. Both sides call the same things different names.
Update: Brian is giving a good impression of someone trying to cram a ten week lecture course in a three hour tutorial. He's got a lot of background material here, and I'm not sure its really relevant. For instance do you really have to talk about the Nyquist frequency and the nuts and bolts of analog-to-digital conversion to talk about configuring and using Asterisk? In fact he hasn't mentioned Asterisk much at all yet, this isn't really what I'd signed up...
Update: Coming from an academic background it's really very apparent that this guy is an academic, Brian is obviously really excited by the mathematics behind VoIP and about the theory behind different types of codecs.
Codecs are really interesting... part of the fun of running an Asterisk system is playing with codecs. - Brian CapouchI'm not sure he's really pitching this material at the right people, at a different time and place I'd be quite interested, but I'm not sure he's carrying the audience. I'd be more interested in a hands-on look at Asterisk itself. I wasn't looking to have fun with different codecs, I was looking for some practical look at how to set up a VoIP network and interconnect the system with other providers. Hopefully we're going to get onto some more practical stuff later on...
Update: Googling for slightly more practical stuff, it looks like O'Reilly book "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony" by Meggelen, Smith & Madsen is available online under the Creative Commons License.
Update: Time for afternoon coffee, back after these messages...
Update: Back from the break, and Brian has actually started to talk about Asterisk. This material basically looks like what I was expecting him to kick off with a couple of hours ago. He's doing a demo right now, although I'm not sure how useful it's going to be as the demo seems consist of him going through how his own home network is set up.
Update: After staring at a directory listing of the Asterisk source code for a bit, we're looking at some random configuration files. I don't think this is a particularly useful approach, I don't even know which file we're looking at here, what it's for or why I'd like to edit it. I especially don't know at what stage of an install I'd be editing it...
Update: I'm sure some people in the room are following this, but I'm not. Brian is standing at the front of the room with multiple SIP devices, calling each other, while we're watching the logs from his home Asterisk server.
Update: ...and we're done. To be perfectly honest I don't think I know anything more about Asterisk than I did three hours ago, however at least I am leaving with the determination to buy the books I was hoping to avoid buying by going to this tutorial in the first place.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sun to open source Java
Robert Scoble and Tim Bray are reporting that Sun is going to open source Java. This is major news, even for those of us who dislike the language.
I'm mostly a Perl guy. Actually, I'm mostly a non-statically typed language kind of guy but that's another story. However I'll turn my hand to anything at need, I'm not proud, and have written more Java than I really care to remember. So, for me, this is a really good thing.
Why? Well, hopefully it'll give a major boost to Parrot and we'll end up with an implementation of Java running on top of the Parrot virtual machine, which will pretty solve all my problems in a single blow. Of course, Parrot with or without Java, will pretty much solve all my problems. Here's hoping...
I'm mostly a Perl guy. Actually, I'm mostly a non-statically typed language kind of guy but that's another story. However I'll turn my hand to anything at need, I'm not proud, and have written more Java than I really care to remember. So, for me, this is a really good thing.
Why? Well, hopefully it'll give a major boost to Parrot and we'll end up with an implementation of Java running on top of the Parrot virtual machine, which will pretty solve all my problems in a single blow. Of course, Parrot with or without Java, will pretty much solve all my problems. Here's hoping...
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