Geek up
I had a terrible night's sleep last night. It was one of those nights when my brain would not deactivate for the purposes of unconsciousness. I tossed and turned all night long, having insane dreams about mathematics problems and waking up with a start when I couldn't solve them in my head. At one point I woke up to find the pillow on the floor. The same sort of thing happened when I first started studying computer science, it's as if my brain is re-adjusting to having to cope with a barrage of unfamiliar information. It's uncomfortable right now, but perhaps it'll pay dividends.
In order to give my brain a bit of a rest I'll talk about geekery instead, for which I apologise in advance to non-geeks, as I'm sure their eyes are about to have a heavier glaze on them than a delicious pork bun from Ho's Bakery in Manchester. I can't help it though, I love geekery, and it's got to come out one way or another. My fellow graduates (actually, they're graduates, I'm not because I'm yet to receive my degree results) and I are frequently told off for discussing geekery in public, and we duly have to slink away to the kitchen and huddle together to talk about such forbidden topics as cross-compilers and RISC architectures.
One of the things that has been exciting me of late is the Raspberry Pi, a fully-functioning computer costing £16 ($25). It is absolutely bare bones (of course for that price it would be), but it is capable of streaming 1080p video, something this somewhat dilapidated computer I'm using now struggles with. It's an exciting prospect that seems utterly impossible, and yet is mere weeks away from full-scale production. I can only imagine what would have happened had I gone into a computer shop in 2003 and said I would like a new computer please, a basic one is fine. Here's £16. Great peals of thunderous laughter would have soon given way to merciless violence I'm sure.
The internet being the internet, this delightful little machine has spawned some vicious little online arguments concerning the impact that its release would have on consumers in various different parts of the world. Whilst the makers of the product intend it to plug the gap between passive technology user and informed computer science student (by providing a programming platform for young hobbyists that is cheap and easy to re-flash), it seems everyone has their own idea as to the significance of the project and to where and to whom it should be supplied. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that it should be run along the lines of the "One Laptop Per Child" organisation to provide an inexpensive learning tool for third-world children. Whilst that sounds like a noble sentiment, ultimately it becomes bogged down in the quagmire of politics, with people suggesting that its use in the first-world by comparatively wealthy individuals to solve first-world problems is despicable and should be prohibited. My own particular take on this is that (assuming production is potentially unlimited and the units are not being produced at a loss) there's no reason everyone can't have one for whatever reason they please. If one person wants to buy one and use it as a streaming media center instead of a learning tool, it's still money in the pocket of the organisation, which can only be a good thing for its potential success. I'd rather see that than take-up of the device be limited. With sufficient units produced, everyone can have what they want, and there'll be no need for squabbling. I know I have several things that I want from it.
One of the things it potentially facilitates is the resurrection of my access to a computer running RISC OS natively. RISC OS is the operating system that ran on those old Acorn computers from the 80s and 90s. Anyone old enough to remember that far back can be reminded by looking at the screenshot under the cut:
Yes, if that doesn't just take people back. Back to the days of using tin cans on string as walkie-talkies, and drawing headlamps and a grille on the front of a cardboard box and making VROOM noises whilst sitting inside. Actually this OS probably was the technological equivalent of those things. Nevertheless, it booted from cold in five seconds (it was housed on a ROM chip!), was impervious to viruses (ROM chip again), didn't need to be shut down (...ROM chip...), ...and other features that probably had more to do with the ROM chip than the OS itself. Hmmm. Well anyway, I liked it because it was developer-friendly, and began my love affair with computer programming. As a nine year old I made games and wrote applications (such as a password protection system for my private folder) that gave me a great outlet for my creativity (my other outlet was scrawling pictures of MONSTER MAN on dot matrix printer paper) and potentially gave me a marketable skill as well. It was all taken away from me with the rise of the IBM compatible PC though, as those old Windows 3.x machines were the most (child) hobbyist unfriendly devices on the planet. My ability to program on them was precisely nil unless I was prepared to pay AT&T or whoever for a compiler. It was a sad day, and put an end to my programming ambitions until I took up my recently completed computer science degree.
The thought of being reunited with my beloved RISC OS is almost too wonderful. I don't care if it's laughably obsolete, or if it wasn't actually that well designed in the first place. It's still the mother of my geekery, and I love it as such. The Raspberry Pi is built using the ARM processor often found these days in smart phones and the like, as they consume relatively little power and dissipate relatively little heat. The ARM processor was also the processor of Acorn computers in a previous life before Acorn hit the wall as a result of its own inflexibility in the face of the rise of the PC. That means that RISC OS was basically designed to run on this machine. Initial testing has shown that RISC OS boots with no problems on the alpha version of the Raspberry Pi. The only problem is that the machine uses USB to connect to its keyboard and mouse (an invention that came long after RISC OS hit the skids), so work is actively being done to convert Linux/BSD USB drivers to work on a RISC OS machine. This will ensure that the user can actually interact with the machine instead of merely staring at it in frustration once the boot up has been completed. This will be incorporated into RISC OS Open, a sort of open source project that provides the source code to an as-yet incomplete version of RISC OS. This source code can be downloaded for free, but complex legal restrictions involving rival RISC OS manufacturers limit their ability to distribute a built and ready-to-use version on certain architectures. Uuurrgh. I'll monitor the situation carefully, but I'm already having visions of being sucked into a horror vortex of build trees and make systems.
Oh good heavens, it's late again. I'm going to bed despite the fact that I had more to say. I'll carry on with this next time.
In order to give my brain a bit of a rest I'll talk about geekery instead, for which I apologise in advance to non-geeks, as I'm sure their eyes are about to have a heavier glaze on them than a delicious pork bun from Ho's Bakery in Manchester. I can't help it though, I love geekery, and it's got to come out one way or another. My fellow graduates (actually, they're graduates, I'm not because I'm yet to receive my degree results) and I are frequently told off for discussing geekery in public, and we duly have to slink away to the kitchen and huddle together to talk about such forbidden topics as cross-compilers and RISC architectures.
One of the things that has been exciting me of late is the Raspberry Pi, a fully-functioning computer costing £16 ($25). It is absolutely bare bones (of course for that price it would be), but it is capable of streaming 1080p video, something this somewhat dilapidated computer I'm using now struggles with. It's an exciting prospect that seems utterly impossible, and yet is mere weeks away from full-scale production. I can only imagine what would have happened had I gone into a computer shop in 2003 and said I would like a new computer please, a basic one is fine. Here's £16. Great peals of thunderous laughter would have soon given way to merciless violence I'm sure.
The internet being the internet, this delightful little machine has spawned some vicious little online arguments concerning the impact that its release would have on consumers in various different parts of the world. Whilst the makers of the product intend it to plug the gap between passive technology user and informed computer science student (by providing a programming platform for young hobbyists that is cheap and easy to re-flash), it seems everyone has their own idea as to the significance of the project and to where and to whom it should be supplied. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that it should be run along the lines of the "One Laptop Per Child" organisation to provide an inexpensive learning tool for third-world children. Whilst that sounds like a noble sentiment, ultimately it becomes bogged down in the quagmire of politics, with people suggesting that its use in the first-world by comparatively wealthy individuals to solve first-world problems is despicable and should be prohibited. My own particular take on this is that (assuming production is potentially unlimited and the units are not being produced at a loss) there's no reason everyone can't have one for whatever reason they please. If one person wants to buy one and use it as a streaming media center instead of a learning tool, it's still money in the pocket of the organisation, which can only be a good thing for its potential success. I'd rather see that than take-up of the device be limited. With sufficient units produced, everyone can have what they want, and there'll be no need for squabbling. I know I have several things that I want from it.
One of the things it potentially facilitates is the resurrection of my access to a computer running RISC OS natively. RISC OS is the operating system that ran on those old Acorn computers from the 80s and 90s. Anyone old enough to remember that far back can be reminded by looking at the screenshot under the cut:
Yes, if that doesn't just take people back. Back to the days of using tin cans on string as walkie-talkies, and drawing headlamps and a grille on the front of a cardboard box and making VROOM noises whilst sitting inside. Actually this OS probably was the technological equivalent of those things. Nevertheless, it booted from cold in five seconds (it was housed on a ROM chip!), was impervious to viruses (ROM chip again), didn't need to be shut down (...ROM chip...), ...and other features that probably had more to do with the ROM chip than the OS itself. Hmmm. Well anyway, I liked it because it was developer-friendly, and began my love affair with computer programming. As a nine year old I made games and wrote applications (such as a password protection system for my private folder) that gave me a great outlet for my creativity (my other outlet was scrawling pictures of MONSTER MAN on dot matrix printer paper) and potentially gave me a marketable skill as well. It was all taken away from me with the rise of the IBM compatible PC though, as those old Windows 3.x machines were the most (child) hobbyist unfriendly devices on the planet. My ability to program on them was precisely nil unless I was prepared to pay AT&T or whoever for a compiler. It was a sad day, and put an end to my programming ambitions until I took up my recently completed computer science degree.
The thought of being reunited with my beloved RISC OS is almost too wonderful. I don't care if it's laughably obsolete, or if it wasn't actually that well designed in the first place. It's still the mother of my geekery, and I love it as such. The Raspberry Pi is built using the ARM processor often found these days in smart phones and the like, as they consume relatively little power and dissipate relatively little heat. The ARM processor was also the processor of Acorn computers in a previous life before Acorn hit the wall as a result of its own inflexibility in the face of the rise of the PC. That means that RISC OS was basically designed to run on this machine. Initial testing has shown that RISC OS boots with no problems on the alpha version of the Raspberry Pi. The only problem is that the machine uses USB to connect to its keyboard and mouse (an invention that came long after RISC OS hit the skids), so work is actively being done to convert Linux/BSD USB drivers to work on a RISC OS machine. This will ensure that the user can actually interact with the machine instead of merely staring at it in frustration once the boot up has been completed. This will be incorporated into RISC OS Open, a sort of open source project that provides the source code to an as-yet incomplete version of RISC OS. This source code can be downloaded for free, but complex legal restrictions involving rival RISC OS manufacturers limit their ability to distribute a built and ready-to-use version on certain architectures. Uuurrgh. I'll monitor the situation carefully, but I'm already having visions of being sucked into a horror vortex of build trees and make systems.
Oh good heavens, it's late again. I'm going to bed despite the fact that I had more to say. I'll carry on with this next time.