Soap Box – Page 4 – Roo's View

Beware the Browser

I tend to use my browser state (and plenty of tabs) as lightweight bookmarks. This means leaving a couple of browser windows open perpetually. Often my machine is configured to sleep after about 20mins, but in the case of my work laptop it doesn’t sleep if plugged into the wall (intentional on my part). I don’t think my usage is atypical – I would not be surprised if several of my friends have similar usage patterns.

A picture tells a thousand words:

This graph is from DD-WRTv24. You might think “Ah, Roo’s just been doing some torrents” – but the truth is that almost all of the traffic from June 10th-16th and then the June 21st spike are due to a couple of open browser windows on my laptop (overnight). This was my conclusion last night at 2am when I closed 3 browser windows on my laptop and watch the bandwidth on my WAN port drop to zero bytes.

Let’s look back a bit to some more typical usage:

You might have noticed the scale is vastly different. In fact, the usage for the entire month is basically the same as what I was pulling down in a single day.

Granted – I’m claiming it was the browser (some page auto-refreshing?) doing this. Checking my web logs indicate that visitors to the websites hosted on lowtek hasn’t massively spiked this month. It could have been something else as well, but the coincidence of my closing the browsers and seeing the traffic drop is good evidence. [Edit – I may have been wrong (yes, it happens) see comments]

Consider the possibilities here. If you wanted to be evil, and you were say an ISP – you’d ensure that your customers default home page was a nice friendly AJAX enabled launchpad linked to webmail etc.. and you’d put something to cause a slow trickle download cost as long as the user has that page open. This would likely cause a fair percentage of your customers to consume more of their bandwidth cap sooner.

Future of Java Embedded VMs

I’m writing about this topic based on a request made by Artur Lojewski back in November last year, it has taken me a while to collect my thoughts on this topic as well as find time to sit down and write a posting. Artur attended Eclipse Summit Europe where Dave Thomas (Big Dave) gave a talk entitled “Next Generation Embedded Software – The Imperative is Agility!” and asked what my opinion was.

Unfortunately I didn’t attend that Eclipse Summit Europe, so I didn’t hear what Dave had to say. Talking to some folk that I do know who went – their impression was “Vintage Dave“. I have made reference to this in the past – but I did work for Object Technology International and my university education was heavily influenced by Dave Thomas – myself and my classmates were some of the first to work our way through learning datastructures etc., in Smalltalk. So a lot of my opinions of what Dave says are going to be coloured by my past experience (and his influence on the start of my career).

Almost any talk given by Dave will get people to sit back and think – he’s also not afraid to stand in front of an audience full of Java programmers and tell them that they’ve picked the wrong language. In my experience he always has some good points and is worth listening to, but to interpret his talks as a set of black and white statements (or out of context) is dangerous. There were two other bloggers that gave some in person accounts of his talk – I’d encourage you to read those. Another reasonable reference is to read about Dave’s thoughts on JavaScript – and if you go back to what got Java started (the browser plug-in) and where Java is today, it is clear that the language didn’t fulfill the original promise.

There are others who are predicting that embedded java is dead, even James Gosling has suggested that J2ME is done. However, if we take a look at embedded Java today – you’ll see that the Blu-ray format is a new niche for this technology. As well, even low cost phones such as the Nokia 2760 support the J2ME profile. This means that as a platform, there are actually billions of devices out there – how is this not success?

I think it depends on what the original goals were, and the future of the platform. Among the various J2ME enabled devices, there are differences. This isn’t really a lot better in the browser / javascript space, but Web2.0 holds the spotlight at the moment. Probably the biggest threat to the J2ME space is the new generation of smart phones: iPhone, G1 and Palm Pre – none of these have embraced Java as the path forward.

Looking at embedded hardware, we’re starting to see more and more capable hardware in the palm of your hand. For example – iPhone is a 400MHz ARM cpu compare this to a hot desktop circa 1998 (PentiumII 400MHz), the very definition of what embedded means is changing. In the near term J2ME will continue to be an expected feature in cell phones, so there is still a market which will continue for several (5?) years. As the smart phone market sorts itself out we’ll see which new (or old) technology rises to the top. It is probably safe to say that J2ME will have an impact on the outcome, but to bet on it as the winner is probably long odds.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

DVD vs Blu-ray

I was a fairly early adopter of the DVD format, buying my first DVD player (a Toshiba 2109) back in 1998 for a bit more than $700. That player is still going strong and doing duty at my sister in-laws place, replacing their Sony player that stopped working reliably. I’ve got more than 250 DVDs in my collection, and friends and family regularly borrow and watch them.

It took me a while to make the leap to Blu-ray. Initially the format war gave me a good reason to stall. My previous projector being a CRT didn’t have HDMI inputs and was not capable of a full 1080p display (1080i worked fine). Moving the Blu-ray also means fewer people are able to borrow the media and enjoy it.

Eventually my will power crumbled, I think what tipped me over the edge was the pack-rat in me. The sheer volume of data that the Blu-ray format represents is just so cool, so many bits – in such a neat package.

The first Blu-ray movie we watched was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The menu system and intro to the disc look really sharp, much more crisp than any DVD menu. I did find that the special effects (groundhogs) tended to look a little unreal. I was very pleased at the detail visible in long shots, it never felt constrained like DVD can at times. In general terms the amount of detail helped make the picture much more engaging, things just looked “wow” all of the time. Any time there was a limitation in detail, it seemed to be specifically the directors intention (ie: depth of field) vs. a limitation of the format.

I did have a chance to compare directly to the DVD version, switching between my PS3 (for Blu-ray) and the Oppo 980 (for DVD). For Indian Jones, the special effects seemed to blend better into the overall image – they were more convincing on the DVD. On the flip side, you could tell in the direct A/B comparison which was the Blu-ray and which was the DVD – there was clearly more fine detail in the image. However, in isolation – both looked really good. Similarly Wall E on DVD vs the Blu-ray version had similar observations – in side by side A/B comparison it was easy to see the extra details in the image, but if you switched to the DVD for a minute or two you quickly forgot and didn’t feel that you were missing anything.

It is probably important to note here that to see the difference you may need to have a fairly high end system, and a pretty big screen. I’m using the Epson 1080UB and a 80″x45″ screen (more than 6 feet wide). The first row of seating is about 11 feet away, so its a big sharp image that helps make the difference more obvious.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the challenges for Blu-ray. Today the cost of the media is generally more expensive. Large displays are certainly getting more common, but considering that DVD will look really good – without a direct A/B comparison Blu-ray may be a tough sell at the increased price point. The Blu-ray players are also more expensive, and they are relatively slow compared to a DVD player (for menu operations and start-up).

I still intend to buy movies on DVD, but I suspect that the majority of my future purchases will be Blu-ray. While DVD does look awesome with my setup, Blu-ray is awesomer.