So… I decided I would, because it would be interesting.

I’m going to make the schemetic open sourced and available here. Expect more here soon.

Sam

Yes it’s true, samsung (I think – don’t quote me) have decided to release a 1ghz smartphone (running wm6.1).

What a waste. It really is truely astonishing that such a small device should need such a processor. Until recently I happily ran wm6.1 on my hermes (~200mhz but I can’t remember actually, no quotes), so what would you be running requiring 5x that power?

Interestly, that 1ghz processor (ARM) is also the one that is going in the new arm netbooks… could make for an interesting netbook-pda ‘whats the difference?’ Moment.

Sam

I’m rather in the dark about how many of you (readers) there are, as there doesn’t seem to be any decent statistic tools out there that only count RSS reader updates. But how can there be?

This rather sucks, as the blog received 10,000 hits this month, but who knows where from? And how many of those are returning? How many of those are me?? That’s abit easier to work out, but you get my drift.

If I find the answer to by little problem, I’ll report back here

Sam

Title says it all really.

There was a fairly big crowd outside the council buildings in birmingham, so I went to ask what was going on. I was told by someone carrying a copy of the ‘morning star’ (the uk communist newspaper) that they had just had a council meeting about unions. The content of the meeting was unimportant. The simple fact there was a large gathering of communist supporters for such an event is potentially, a ‘sign of the’ new ‘times’.

One of the first of many for the communists in Britain? Are we going to see an uprising? Time will tell…

Sam

As time goes by, I get more and more agitated by the state of politics in general, but more specifically the state of politics in computer science.

It would appear to me, that as Gordon Brown continues to meddle with the economy (in a positive way) and David Cameron continues to slag him off for it, Britain needs a party of change. Furthermore, in my opinion, Britain needs a social-libertarian party of change.

This growing agitation has lead to my starting of a new chain of posts on the topic of politics and my ideologies. If you agree or disagree, thats fine – please feel free to comment. We all love alittle light hearted debate.

One thing i must make clear is that i’m no parlimentary researcher – my statistics are only what I can gather from the most reliable sources possible around the net. Thus, all my calculations can only be very rough. Please keep this in mind.

Lets get on with the show..

File sharing of Music

• What about a government that doesn’t pour money into trying to fight a loosing battle against file sharers, but makes the content available freely and subsidies the artist appropriately?

I know that is a rather fetched and costly affair, but if you pay the artists directly for the content as opposed to though middle men the price would not be too high. 40 Billion tracks were illegally file shared last year. So taking a exagerated estimate that 20% of those files were downloaded in the uk. We can do some sums…

5% of 40bn = 2bn files downloaded in the uk

45% of 79p (the actual amount an artist gets from a sale on iTunes) = 35.5p

2bn x 35.5p = £710m (total cost of subsidising all illegally downloaded music in the UK)

710m / 31.7m (number of tax payers in UK) = £22.40

So there you have it… the cost of fully subsidising all the illegal downloads in britain would be £22.40 to every tax payer for an entire year. That’s not bad considering the average tax payer pays ~£7 an hour in tax. So just over 3 hours work would cover it.

I’m going to leave you to ponder over the benefits of such a system, but think about how it could affect the following.

• Easier access to the industry for new comers
• ‘Get into arts’ schemes
• Less persecution, more help in (particularly young) peoples lives. (Gives the government a better reputation).
• Fairer deals etc. (95% of downloaded music in the world is done so illegally, make that 5% or 10% in the Uk and you’ve got a hefty salary increase – and if people want your music; then its well earnt).

Thanks alot for listening to me ramble for 400 words, I hope you feel you’ve learnt something from this post.

Sam

Where’d it go?

From the small fringe party in Sweden spawned a revolutionary anti-copyright force… but then it disappeared? In Britain anyway.

It’s a shame really… if anyone knows what happened to the Britsh Pirate Party, could they comment please?

I’d like to know more…

Sam

 

Obliviously just a taster/scene setter

More to come shortly, stay tuned…

Any feedback would be great, thanks a lot. 

Project Boost

(Sam & Aidan)

Ok guys, most of you will have been redirected here from the old hAndroid wiki.

I’m sorry to report my Hermes dead (explained here). This puts the hAndroid project in a tight spot.

After talking to a disappointed hAndroid hopeful, I realised it would be foolish and irresponsible just to let this die due to an accident involving a wall…

I also had a look at the hAndroid usage statistics yesterday and realised that over the last 14 days, 5400 people accessed the hAndroid wiki. This pushed my thinking even further. So heres the deal.

If we can find people to fill the following positions in the project…

- Wiki master (x1)
- Document writers (1/2)
- Experienced linux programmers/porters (3-5)
- Project manager (with experience of a similar role) (x1)
- Testers (3 to 10 – not necessarily required)

…. I will…

- Re-open the wiki.
- Host forum/mailing list and other internal communications stuffs.
- Host all files etc.
- Help manage if required.
- Generally help out as much as I can, where necessary (without a device)

I know the team list looks large, but with those people I’m fairly confident we can make hAndroid succeed.

To offer your assistance, please just write a comment here and leave an email address and the position you wish to fill.

Don’t feel you have to be of a great standard to take part, as long as you have a brain and some sticking power I’m sure you’d be a valuable asset to the team.

One last point I’d like to make is that if you do apply, you really must be willing to help (as 10 testers that ‘can’t be bothered’ is utterly useless, the team may as well have none).

Thanks for your time, I hope the above seems ok by everyone.

Best wishes,
Sam

P.S

Let’s get the ball rolling!!

It’s been awhile since the incident in question happened, so I thought I better inform the worl d what happened.

Hermes =======> WALL

Roughly covers it.

It wasn’t my fault either, in fact it wasn’t even in my hands when it went. A friend was using it, turned around with it held loosely in her hand. As you can guess, the phone left her hand and found it’s way to a nearby wall. A very solid one.

Note to self. Walls are solid. Very.

I ended up getting myself a G1 (with android xD). I’ll post more about that some other time though.

Sam

I hadn’t thought it would take this long…

I’m still on ‘make modules’ after about… 1.5 hours?

you would have thought with 1gb of ram and a 1.6ghz processor it would be fairly speedy…. but no.

I’ll write back on how I got the whole of arch linux to work on my netbook… when I do.

Sam