:Dread Pirate PJ’s House of Hacks and Tricks

Mateusz, Lenny, thanks for the comments.

Update: Reader Mateusz points out that there is an effort under way to port the XNA frameworks to other platforms using Mono. It’s great to see what the subversive, creative types come up with all on their own. It would be hilarious if PS3 owners could run XNA games by simply booting Linux. Take that, Redmond! Welcome to our social. LMAO!

My own take is that Sony is taking a laissez-faire approach, a la Franklin D. Roosevelt and the economy: let’s provide the tools, and whatever happens, happens. Let the market take it where it may. (I hope I am not embarrassing Mrs. Freite, my history teacher in high school, by mixing my economic strategies and presidents.)

While that is great, I think they could be a bit more proactive. They could encourage garage game development with the PS3 Linux project, by marketing it as such. A program like the old PSX Net Yaroze, but with PS3s and Linux, could attract some great talent. (See? Sony has been thinking about this garage developer thing for quite a long time.)

IBM and Toshiba see this as another marketing venue for the Power processor line, especially the work on the Cell Engine that they did. Toshiba only promotes Cell within its embedded processor market, not putting an oar in to help with the garage developer thing. IBM is a bit more active, but only within their established promotional circles: developerWorks and alphaWorks. And it is hardly a big push.

Microsoft is, of course, going all out, promoting XNA as a garage developer’s haven, especially generating excitement with the possibility of garage developers selling games on XBox Live Marketplace for both PC and XBox360. In my opinion, MS is doing a better job at pushing their ideas.

It’s like IBM and Sony don’t quite see what it is they have to do, having just provided the tools and sitting back to see what develops. While it’s great they’re not stirring the pot too much, the stew is gonna ruin if there’s no cook minding the stove.

OK, that’s enough analogies for today. Thanks for keeping the conversation going, guys. Comment away, and let’s keep talking. Anyone else have any thoughts to share?

Technorati Tags:
hacks, software.development, game.development, open.source, free.culture, linux, windows, sony.ps3, xbox.360, ps3.linux, xna

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Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 1: An introduction to Linux on the PlayStation 3

The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) is the easiest and cheapest way for programmers to get their hands on the new Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) processor and take it for a drive. Discover what the fuss is all about, how to install Linux on the PS3, and how to get started developing for the Cell BE processor on the PS3.

Let’s ignore the $600 USD “cheapest” flame bait and concentrate on the business significance of Sony and IBM providing and promoting Linux for the PS3, shall we?

The PS3 is not the first game console officially sanctioned by the manufacturer to run Linux out of the box. For a few years, Sony sold a $99 Linux kit for the PS2, available only through their online store. It was discontinued early last year, and is now only available on eBay.

But why would Sony provide Linux for any of their video game consoles? What do they have to gain? In business, nothing is done “just” for the benefit of the consumer, much less for pure “free as in freedom” idealism. In the end, it all comes down to driving revenue and profits up, which ultimately pleases the shareholders. Cynical, perhaps, but do you really believe a public company as large as Sony does anything if not for the sake of revenue and profits? Any activity that does not somehow help improve those two factors, will not be seen very positively with the shareholders.

But still, what does it mean? How does PS3 Linux translate into revenue and profits for Sony? Let’s examine this some more, in the context of an obscure game console manufacturer with a similar strategy.

In Korea, the GP32 game console may not have run Linux, but the manufacturer provided on its website, a full set of open source programming tools that ran on Windows. Linux and Mac OS X support was added by the GP32 developer community shortly later. This made the GP32 the first off-the-shelf game console where the users were officially encouraged to make games for it. GamePark, the makers of the GP32, followed up nearly four years later with the Linux-powered GP2X, which also had a free, full set of development tools, including most of the source for the device’s implementation of Linux.

The response to the consoles was great, both in its native Korea and around the world. There is a healthy global open source game development community. Code-savvy game geeks from all around the world have taken to the GP32 and GP2X. Instead of dismal failure competing against Nintendo and Sony, GamePark has survived and grown against all odds. The gadget-happy Koreans responded despite fierce competition, and a healthy Korean commercial game developer community has grown to serve the Korean GP32 market. Many of these commercial developers were founded by the proverbial “two guys in a garage,” propelled to creativity by the open community GamePark fostered.

So back to the PS3. Sure, it’s freakishly expensive for just a single threaded, single tasking, web browser, digital photo gallery, photo slideshow player, propietary-format movie player, game console. But with Linux and the Blender Game Kit, OpenGL, SDL, etc., this is a garage game coder’s dream workstation on the cheap, with high-definition accelerated 3D graphics, surround sound, and all kinds of fun wireless tech at the developer’s fingertips. At $600 for a 60 GB model with 512 MB of RAM, it would make a nicer Linux computer than most sub-$1000 Windows PCs out there.

Perhaps a cottage gaming industry will grow out of the PS3 Linux strategy, like the GP32’s in Korea. Which makes this Linux play by Sony the direct competitor to Microsoft’s XNA move. You see, both Sony and Microsoft see independent game developers as the future savior of the game industry.

The big game publishers and developers screwed themselves, just as the MPAA and RIAA did, by making production ever more expensive, formulaic, and insipidly uncreative, and by depending on the quarterly mega-blockbuster to survive. They did this at a time when more people than ever have access to the means of production and distribution of digital creative content.

The goal of Sony’s Linux strategy and of Microsoft’s XNA, is to attract the independent game developers to their respective platforms. Microsoft believes that giving the tools away for “free as in free beer,” while keeping the secret sauce bottled up, is the successful strategy. Sony believes making the tools as open as possible without screwing the pooch is the the best strategy.

Now, as an open source fan, I will argue that a truly open community of coders, without central control and oversight, is going to prevail over the “you must please the gatekeeper” culture Microsoft wants to impose with XNA on XBox360.

But let’s not be too idealistic and see this independent game developer thing for what it really is. Just like IBM’s open source moves and Tim O’Reilly’s publishing strategy, both Microsoft’s and Sony’s strategies are all about the alpha geek mind share, and self-interest in the increase in revenue it generates.

But cynical as that may sound, open source is still the better thing. It gives more control to the developer and imposes less order, which leads to greater opportunity for creativity to go where it may. Anything less than an open technology and open community will stave off innovation before it even has a chance to set in.

Technorati Tags:
hacks, software.development, game.development, open.source, free.culture, linux, windows, sony.ps3, xbox.360, ps3.linux, xna

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Let’s cut to the chase: the iPhone is the most innovative communications and media device of the 21st century’s first decade. The other devices and manufacturers don’t even come close. Before the iPhone, you could think the competing devices had evolutionary interfaces, a step up from the previous interface. Now, you can’t help but think them mediocre in comparison to the iPhone. The user interface is the iPhone’s forte, followed by the convergence of widescreen media player, full featured web browser, PIM, and cell phone into one device. Is my opinion clear enough?
All that being said, the iPhone is not ideal, nor flawless. The PIM features are, in my opinion, incomplete. I am referring to the fact that you can’t enter new data into the Notes, Contacts or Calendar apps, except by syncing the device to a Mac running Stickies, iCal and Apple Address Book. I hope Apple starts to see the potential market this has with more PIM features. Maybe they were pressed for release, and cut the features out for now to add them later. We’ll have to wait and see on that.

Apple could also open the device for third party development. According to Apple, it’s just Mac OS X Tiger inside. Perhaps someone will figure out how to hack Safari to download Mac OS X apps on to it. Or at least let us install Dashboard widgets on the thing.

But this being an Apple product whose name begins with I and P, it is a great media player. Strong Bad Emails, Ask A Ninja, and Tiki Bar TV rule! They’re my favorite videoblogs. Evil Genius Chronicles, Coverville, Raven n Blues, and Bandana Blues, are among my favorite podcasts. Since the iPhone is essentially a phone with 8GB video iPod features, we’ll be able to access all our new media on it, with a better interface than anyone has ever produced. I predict Apple will bring the iPhone UI (without the phone features) to the rest of the iPod family within the year. They’ll be stupid not to. MultiTouch rocks!

Of course, the iPhone’s price has to come down for it to be really mainstream. I predict (you heard it here first, folks, LOL) that next year, the 8GB model will be the low end, and a higher capacity (16GB?) model will be the $600 high end.

In order for the iPhone to be really successful and mainstream, it should also be sold unlocked, free of carrier lock-in. Not everyone wants to be Cingular subscriber. The whole carrier lock-in thing is bone headed anyway. It surely has been demonstrated in Europe that expensive carrier-exclusive phones are not necessary to retain customers. And the practice isn’t that effective for that purpose either anyway. Carrier chickenshits, if you ain’t got good service, an expensive locked-in phone won’t help you keep any subscribers you’ve pissed off. They’ll just sell it on eBay and move on.

In conclusion, the iPhone is a great innovative cellphone/media player with some PIM functionality. The crux of its innovation rests on the MultiTouch touchscreen interface and wide screen media playback. It has a few flaws, namely the lack of smartphone PIM features and a closed development model. To really hit it big, it has to come down in price a bit, and be available at more than one carrier in the US. In any case, Apple has essentially raised the bar way up in the user interface front, making the competition look ancient in comparison.

Technorati Tags:
technology, gadgets, iphone, podcast, personal.media, videoblogs, mac.os.x

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It’s more than probable pjtrix reader Ken is going to blog about this one, but I’m calling it before he does.

Officers use taser to free tangled deer

January 17, 2007

CANBY, Ore. –Confronted with a deer whose antlers were tangled in a rope swing at a rural home, two officers saw no good choices. They weren’t about to try to free the animal themselves. It weighed several hundred pounds and was thrashing wildly. A bullet in the skull seemed the alternative.

I’ll leave the rest of the story to your imaginations, or to your reading, whichever you prefer.

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I receive some mailings from Sun every month. And for the most part, they are entertaining. As in laugh out loud hysterical. But this one takes the cake.

Easier, faster, and more secure the Solaris 10 OS is the only operating system robust enough to address enterprise security, compliance, and business continuity concerns, and at a lower cost and running across more hardware platforms than any other OS on the market.

Excuse me, but “more hardware platforms than any other OS on the market?” I don’t know what Sun’s definition of platform is, but last I checked, Solaris didn’t run on HP PA-RISC and IBM S/390s. Linux does, though. Linux runs on all three platforms that Solaris runs on **snort, yeah they’re beating their chest over three platforms** and then some. And I bet that when they say “OS on the market,” they mean commercially supported OS. Which conveniently disqualifies NetBSD, which is available for over forty platforms.

Hear from Sun’s Vice President of Software Marketing, Peder Ulander, and Vice President of Services Marketing, Brian Winter about how Sun’s Solaris 10 Operating System — the only multiplatform, free, and open source enterprise-class OS on the market — allows you to leverage existing infrastructure investments and anticipate rapid growth by bringing applications and services online more quickly, and at lower support costs, than any other commercial OS offering, including Red Hat, HP-UX, AIX, and Windows.

Whoa, Nelly! “The only multiplatform, free, and open source enterprise-class OS on the market”. That’s likely to get you thrown in court in most free countries, never mind hanged in those run by Sharia law! I’m not saying that Solaris isn’t free, or that it isn’t open source, or that it isn’t multi-platform. I guess 3 platforms does count as multi-platform.

But my beef is with “only”. Say what?!? Are you so desperate, Sun Microsystems, that you have to resort to outright lies? No outgoing links on this post for you, Sun!

For the record, I do like Solaris. It’s false claims like these from Sun which I despise.

Technorati Tags:
open.source, system.architecture, cross.platform, linux

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I’ve upgraded Wordpress to version 2.0.7, and added a plugin. The Share This plugin by Alex King lets you share a link to any of my posts on Digg, del.icio.us, and many other social bookmarking sites. If you see anything on this blog that you consider share-worthy, click on the Share This link at the end of the post, and share away! You only need an account at the social bookmarking site of your choice.

Joined the Amazon affiliate program

I’ve applied for an Amazon affiliate account. Among the different content on pjtrix in 2007, I plan to post book reviews on different subjects, but mostly about technology and software development, as that is what I know best and what I typically buy. I will only post about books I have actually read.

These posts will not be sponsored in the typical sense, in that no one will be offering to pay me to write the post. But the post will have an Amazon link to the book. I will earn an affiliate fee from any purchase made from that link. I will have a disclosure paragraph at the top of such posts, the titles will begin with “Book Review:”, and I will tag them book.review. It’s up to you whether you want to read the reviews. It is up to you whether you follow the link to Amazon and buy something.

Feedback

If any of my recent writing about ReviewMe.com, PayPerPost.com, Google AdSense, and now Amazon.com affiliate stuff bothers you, don’t forget to speak up in the comments! Or if you have anything else to say about it, don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

I will not be seeing any money from these programs for some months. But I hope to recoup what I’ve spent so far on hosting. I will put any moneys earned into paying for my hosting expenses.

I’m certainly not going to be making a living, much less striking it rich from Google AdSense, Amazon affiliate fees, and getting paid to blog about stuff. My intention is to keep the site running, and to keep writing about things I care about, in the hopes others can benefit from it.

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The Secret Online Geekly Articles Site is …

… rejecting one of my article proposals, because it is similar in subject to an article they had published recently (whoops!) I’m starting to like the idea of seeing my name online as a tech writer (ha ha!) So I’ll try to pitch this article idea at other sites. If nobody else wants to pay me to write it, I’ll just post it here.

PayPerPost.com, ReviewMe.com, Google AdSense

As Dave Slusher says, “forewarned is forearmed.” In order to pay for my hosting in 2007, I have signed up with Google AdSense (they’ll be in the sidebar), PayPerPost.com and ReviewMe.com. And I thought I’d let you know in advance.

I could care less about the controversy around the “paid blogging” sites. I was raised to believe that any job is dignifying when done with pride and honesty. And I’m not going to turn down $20 USD or $30 USD dollars each month, in exchange for very few hours of effort, just because some particular people might sneer at me. $20 USD or $30 USD per month will cover my hosting expenses at the moment, and that’s what I’m concerned about.

So over the next few months, I will write PayPerPost and ReviewMe sponsored articles. I’ll try to pick PayPerPost articles that I find personally interesting and are tech or web development related. Hopefully, ReviewMe patrons will make offers about tech products or about web development. I’ll do no more than three per month and I’ll space them out as best I can. I won’t spam you.

I will tag these with payperpost or reviewme, as the case may be. I’ll prefix the post title with “PPP:” or “RM:”. The first paragraph of these posts will say “Disclaimer: this is a sponsored post” or something like that. I mention this so that you can decide whether you care to read the post or not when you see the tag, the title prefix, or the disclosure paragraph.

If you don’t care about the sponsored content and really wish you could remove it, you can, after a fashion. Most feed readers today feature smart feeds, with filtering. There are also online sites that can filter another online site’s feeds. There are browsers extensions that can block Google AdSense.

It’s all up to you, really.

Server hosting changes coming

pjtrix’s server account with GoDaddy expires March 1st. Their new virtual dedicated server accounts have Fedora Core 4. And guess what? Fedora Core 4 is unsupported since exactly one month ago. Just like FC2, it’s SOL. (LOL, I like that product classification.)

I have been a customer of GoDaddy for these last two years, and they always screwed up the initial install of the account (I created new accounts each year because they had upgraded the OS.) There’s no reason what I payed for should not work from the get-go and need support to get it working. That is inexcusable, specially since it happened twice. That just shows it wasn’t a mere fluke, but instead showed me broken initial installs are the status quo.

But at least this was the only issue I had with them. I have heard horror stories about other established providers, and even of horror stories about GoDaddy itself. Maybe I was one of the lucky ones, but I’d like to give credit where it’s due: I never had any problems except for the initial install screw ups. Availability was supperb, and I’m confident I got what I paid for.

GoDaddy’s customer service was decent, for what little I used it (the initial install screw ups mentioned above.) 50 % of the time, I got someone that sent me to the very “help” pages that didn’t help. What I did was to ask the question again in a slightly different way. Then I’d reach someone that was actually helpful. Go figure.

So, because of their inexcusable initial account screw ups, and because of their iffy customer support, I’m not going to be using GoDaddy servers after the end of February. I found a few virtual private hosting companies which charge between $15 USD and $25 USD per month with no setup fee and no contract. This is less than what GoDaddy wants for the same service. Some of these other providers will even let me choose an up-to-date, supported, Linux distribution of my choice.

After some Googling for complains and reviews about the VPS hosting companies I found, I’ve settled on VPSLink hosting, and their Fedora Core 5 + MySQL + Rails + LightTPD package. I like that they pre-configure the server for Rails. LightTPD also runs about 30% faster and uses 90% less RAM than Apache, any day.

LightTPD supports most open source-based web applications without issue. I should be able to get WordPress and Trac running just fine. For the next few weeks, pjtrix stuff will continue running where it’s at right now, on the GoDaddy server. Meanwhile, I’ll be running Wordpress, Subversion, Trac, and Gallery2 tests on the new VPSLink server. I’ll be making sure I can move my and my friends’ content over without problems.

Once I’m satisfied, I’ll make a backup of everything, copy it over, configure things properly, and finally, switch the name servers over to the new hosting provider. This will probably happen mid-February.

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It seems I had written out some silly stuff using the Wordpress web UI in the last few months. I typically post from MarsEdit, a great weblog post editor, by the same developer as my favorite feed reader, NetNewsWire. I guess I entered the posts, got distracted, and forgot about them after some days. They don’t show up in my drafts folder in MarsEdit. So I only saw them now that I came to admin the weblog, clean out the Akismet spam, reorganize my catetories, etc.

The “content”, as it was, wasn’t all that important, so no harm done. Anyhow, they’ve been pushed out to the blog, whereabouts when I think I entered them in.

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This sounds like fun!

Whistle while you work: Use the open source sndpeek program and a simple Perl script to read specific sequences of tonal events — literally whistling or humming at your computer — and run commands based on those tones.

I can just imagine the “Star Trek XXXIV: Superfluous” movie scene now, with the brand spanking new Enterprise, the NCC-1701-ZZXYZ.

Lieutenant Atad: Snognilk on the bridge!

Captain Dracip: Commander Rekir, set the auto-destruct sequence on the main computer, quick!

** Commander Rekir begins whistling the tune from “Bridge Over The River Kwai” a.k.a. “Colonel Bogey March” **

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Something Else I don’t know about Wordpress

Ken wonders why, when his blog posts are quoted by other bloggers, the quoting posts don’t show on his blog as trackbacks. But when he quotes someone, his quoting posts show up on other people’s blogs as trackbacks. Weird.

This post is a Wordpress trackback test.

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